‘All true,’ the other answered, and darkness stirred where he stood, as if he had offered a casual shrug. ‘I am that same Shaitan, the so-called Unborn, who was and is your immemorial ancestor!’
‘Ah!’ said Shaithis, as truth finally dawned. ‘We are of one blood.’
‘Indeed, and obviously so. You stand out from the others like a meteor speeding through the stirless stars, much as I stood out in that distant time when I fell to earth. And our ambitions are the same, aye, and our intelligence. I am your origin, Shaithis, and your future. And you are mine.’
‘Our futures are bound up together?’
‘Inextricably.’
‘Outside of these Icelands, you mean? In more civilized places?’
‘In Starside, and in worlds beyond Starside.’
‘What?’ Shaithis was taken aback, for there was something here which smacked of that earlier dream. ‘Worlds beyond Starside? You mean the hell-lands?’
‘For a start.’
‘And you know of such places?’
‘Upon a time, I was the inhabitant of just such a place. But that was before I fell – or was thrown – to Earth.’
‘And you remember it?’
‘I remember nothing of it!’ The Dark Hooded Thing growled, moving marginally closer; and there was that about its motion – as if its very flux had intelligence, a sentient viscosity – which caused Shaithis to take a pace to the rear. ‘My memory, all memory, was robbed from me when I was cast out.’
‘No memory of what you did, who and how you were?’
Again the Thing moved closer, and once more Shaithis backed away, but not too far for fear he should back right out of his own dream. ‘Only my name, and that I was vain and proud and beautiful,’ said Shaitan, conjuring more echoes of that former dream. ‘But it was a long time ago, my son, and given time all things change. I, too, have changed.’
‘Changed?’ Shaithis tried hard to understand. ‘You’re no longer vain, no longer proud? But even the least of the Wamphyri know such vices – and enjoy them. They always will.’
Shaitan slowly shook his hooded head, which Shaithis knew from the movement of his crimson eyes in their yellow orbits, the only parts of the creature which were visible through the warp of his inky, impenetrable mental shield. ‘No longer beautiful!’ he said.
‘But it’s the same for all of us,’ Shaithis answered. ‘We know we are not beautiful and accept it. And anyway, what has beauty to do with power? Why, there are those of us who even foster our ugliness as a measure of our might!’ Inadvertently, he thought of Volse Pinescu.
Shaitan picked the picture clean out of his mind. ‘Aye, that one was ugly. But he himself willed it. I did not. And physically and mentally hideous as the Wamphyri are, still by comparison they are beautiful.’ And for the third time he came closer.
Shaithis stood his ground but groped for his gauntlet. It was a dream, true, but he’d not yet relinquished all control. ‘Do you wish me harm?’ he said.
‘On the contrary,’ the other answered, ‘for we’ve a long way to go together. But this art I practise is wearying. It were better if you knew me as I am.’
Then show me yourself.’
‘I was preparing to,’ Shaitan answered. ‘Indeed, I was preparing . . . you.’
‘Enough!’ said Shaithis. ‘I am prepared.’
‘So be it!’ said his ancestor, and relaxed his hypnotic will.
What Shaithis saw then shocked him awake a second time, as if the sleeping volcano itself had erupted under his feet. He started up gasping in his ice-niche, wide-eyed and astonished by the castle’s luminous light after the dream-darkness of the cone’s core, with a chill in his black heart spawned more – far more – of what the Dark Hooded Thing had shown him than of any mundane or merely physical condition. And because the dream had been more than a dream, in fact a visitation, it didn’t fade back into some subconscious limbo of obscurity but remained sharp, etched in the eye of his mind as clear as the sigils on an aerie’s fluttering banners and pennants.
Shaithis, himself a monster in every respect, was not a creature to shock easily. Where the Wamphyri were concerned, ‘fear’ or ‘horror’ were more or less defunct concepts, eradicated and replaced by rage. Adrenalin was rarely released into a vampire’s system to encourage or enable flight, but usually to trigger his animal passions so that he would stand and fight – viciously, brutally! An awareness of their superiority had been bred into Star-side’s vampires through all the long centuries of their sovereignty, when it was indisputable that of all their world’s creatures they were far and away the dominant species. Much as common Man was dominant in his world.