'No!' Shaithis spat at him, and stabbed again for his gauntlet - and the Ferenc at once swept him from the stairs!
Shaithis fell. Too depleted and restricted for metamorphosis into an airfoil, he could only grit his teeth and wait for gravity to do its worst. On the way down he struck several ice-ledges but suffered no real damage, until at the last he crashed down on his shoulder and chest - in snow! Merciful snow!
Blown in through an arched ice-window, the drift was three or four feet deep with a thick crust of ice. Shaithis crunched through the latter, compressed the former, wrenched his right shoulder and broke a pair of recently healed ribs. And then he lay there in his agony and cursed Fess Ferenc from the depths of his black heart!
Curse me all you will, Shaithis. The Ferenc had heard him. But I'm sure you'll think better of it. Of course you will, for it was you or your flyer, after all. Volse would have chosen you: for there's a vampire in you! Ah, the very essence! But personally, I think it were better if you live. A little while longer, at least.
Shaithis stood up, staggered away, looked for a place to hide. He allowed his hurt to wash over him, deliberately conjuring all the agonies of his crash on Starside, when he'd broken his body and face, and of his fight with the she-bears, to add to the pain of this latest tumble. And these were the false impressions of severe damage which he let flood out of him, to be picked up and (hopefully) wrongly translated by the Ferenc's vampire mind. Volse might conceivably read them, too, but Shaithis doubted it. The boil-fancier was a dullard, too much obsessed with the manufacture of abscesses.
What? the Ferenc seemed surprised, however uncaring. That much pain? Did you crash down face-first, Shaithis? He offered a grim mental chuckle. Well, and now you know how I've felt all this time, for your face has always been hurtful to me!
Aye, (Shaithis could not restrain himself), laugh long and loud, Fess Ferenc! But remember: he who laughs last...
The Ferenc's chuckling faded in Shaithis's mind, and: Not too seriously hurt, then? A pity. Or perhaps you merely put a brave face on it? But in any case, I think a warning is in order: don't interfere, Shaithis. If you think to command your flyer into flight, forget it. For if we can't find your creature, then be sure we'll come back for you. Order it to attack us, still we'll triumph in the end. For as you know well enow, flyers make poor warriors and our thoughts would stab it like arrows. And then we'd come back for you! But only let it be our way and make no protest, and for some little time to come... well, at least you'll know where to go when you're hungry. And for as long as your flyer lasts - and provided we are not in the vicinity when you go to feed - then you shall last just precisely so long, Shaithis of the Wamphyri.
Shaithis found a deep, sheltered ice-niche in the castle's labyrinth and hid himself away. He wrapped himself in his cloak and toned down his vibrant vampire aura. Now must be a time of healing. Perhaps he would sleep and conserve his energy. And there was still a little bear-heart left over for when he awakened. So long as he guarded his thoughts and his dreams alike, Volse Pinescu and Fess Ferenc would not find him.
But first there was something he must know. Why, Fess? he sent out one last telepathic question. You could have killed me yet let me live. Not out of the 'goodness' of your heart, surely. So why?
Halfway down the ice-stairs, the Ferenc smiled with a mouth almost as wide as his face. You were ever a thinker, Shaithis, he answered. Aye, and a clever one at that. Oh, you've made mistakes, certainly, but the man who never made a mistake never made anything. The way I see it, if there's a way out of this place you'll find it. And when you do I'll be right behind you.
And if I don't?
(The Ferenc's mental shrug): Blood is blood, Shaithis. And yours is good and rich. Let one thing be clearly understood: if this is as far as we go — if the ice is our destiny - then at the last I shall be the one who sits encased awaiting the Great Thaw. Fess Ferenc and none other. But I shall not go hungry to my fate...
Two exiled Wamphyri Lords - one grotesque and huge, and the other hugely grotesque - left the glittering ice-castle and sniffed the bitter air, then let their snouts guide them to Shaithis's doomed beast.
Meat was not the flyer's usual fare; its diet would normally consist of crushed bone, grasses from Sunside, honey and other sweet liquids, and some blood. Having metamorphic flesh, however, it was capable of consuming almost anything organic. On this occasion, having gorged itself on the frozen flesh of another flyer, it must now rest until the food was digested and converted. Bloated, it no longer lay where the ex-Lords had first spied it beside the gnawed carcass of Volse's flyer, but had found shelter slumped in the lee of a great block of ice half a mile to the west, where Shaithis had sent it.
Forming great saucer eyes in its leathery flanks, the dull, stupid thing gloomed on the Ferenc and Volse Pinescu and lolled its diamond head at them as they approached. Moist and heavy-lidded, its eyes 'saw' but could scarcely comprehend. Until the flyer was instructed to do something, and then by its rightful master, Shaithis himself, it would do nothing, not even think. Oh, it would seek to protect itself to a degree, but never so far as to harm one of the Wamphyri. For stabs of concentrated vampire telepathy could sting such creatures like darts, bringing them to trembling submission in a moment. Thus, while the flyer would not fly for Fess or Volse, it would lie still for them. Even when they sliced into its warm underbelly to sever great pipes of veins, which they would then suck open.
Shaithis, in his niche in the ice-castle, 'heard' the huge creature's first mental bleat of distress and was tempted to issue orders, such as: Roll, crush these men who torment you! Bound up and fall upon them! Even now, at a distance, he could transmit such commands and know that the flyer would instantly, instinctively obey him. But he also knew that while the beast might injure the Lords it could not kill them, and he remembered the Ferenc's warning. To set the flyer upon them (unless it could be guaranteed to incapacitate them utterly) would be to place himself in direst jeopardy. Which was why he ground his teeth a little but otherwise lay still and did nothing.
To Shaithis it seemed a great waste: his good flyer, used for food. Especially since Volse's flyer - literally two tons of excellent if not especially appetizing meat - already lay out there going to waste. Except even that were not entirely true. Frozen, the creature would not waste but remain available for long and long. But Shaithis knew that there was more than mere hunger in it; the Ferenc had a purpose other than to fill his belly.
For one, the beast would be left so depleted by this first gluttonous 'visit' of Fess and Volse that any further aerial voyagings would be out of the question; which meant that Shaithis was now stuck here no less than the others. It was partly the Ferenc's way of paying him back for his failure in the battle for The Dweller's garden, but it was mainly something else.
For the fact was that indeed Shaithis had been the great thinker, with a capacity for scheming which had set him above and apart even from his own kind, the universally devious Wamphyri. If any man could find his way out of the Icelands, then Shaithis had to be the one. An escape which must likewise benefit Fess Ferenc, who would doubtless follow his lead. And as Fess had so vividly pointed out, this was the reason Shaithis's life had been spared: so that he could concentrate on survival to the benefit of all the exiles.