Deadspawn

'Huh!' the other grunted. 'I dreamed only of ice. I dreamed I was frozen in an ice-tomb, and that some unknown thing was melting its way in to me.'

'Then it's as well my cry of sweet pleasure woke you up,' said Shaithis.

'Aye, but too early,' the Ferenc grumbled. 'Arkis sleeps on. In this he's the wise one. Let's drift a further hour or two before we're up and about.'

Shaithis agreed; and grateful that the giant had not read him, he settled down again and closed an eye...

And again Shaithis dreamed. Except that this time, even more certainly than the last, he knew it was much more than any common dream. The setting was a meeting between himself and the being known as Shaitan the Fallen, whom he recognized at once as that selfsame Dark Hooded Thing who had been his sinister, frowning familiar - perhaps even his alter-ego? - in his nightmare of frustrated revenge.

He was aware of the Thing as a shadow among lesser shadows in a cavern of black rock, unsuspected except for the red glow of its eyes where they floated in luminous yellow orbits. What he, Shaithis, was doing in such a place he could not say, except that he felt he'd been called here. Yes, that was it: he was not here entirely of his own free will but mainly because this enigmatic being had called him here.

And as if to confirm that thought: 'Shaithis, my son,' said the Dark Hooded Thing, whose true voice was deeper, darker, and probably more deceiving than any Shaithis ever heard before. 'And so at last you've answered me. Difficult to reach you, my son, through that clever deflective screen of yours, else I had known you and called you here long before now.'

Shaithis's Wamphyri eyes and awareness were accustomed now to the gloom of the place. Indeed he saw and sensed as well as ever, which is to say very well indeed: as a cat at night or Desmodus on the wing. The darkness made no difference; in fact, and with regard to his whereabouts, it merely served to confirm his first instinctive guess that he was in some natural chamber deep in the belly of the slumbering volcano. Which would appear to make Shaitan the Lord of these subterranean regions.

In such close proximity, the other read his thoughts as if they'd been spoken words and answered: 'But of course, just as I have been since... oh, a long, long time.'

Shaithis peered intently at the crimson-eyed shadow which was Shaitan. It was strange, but for all his vampire-enhanced awareness he saw only an outline of the other's form. No fault of his; his senses were not impaired; Shaitan must be shielding his physical self in a manner like to Shaithis guarding his thoughts. But... Shaitan the Fallen? Could it really be - was it really possible - for any creature to live so long? He made up his mind that indeed it must be, for here he stood in the presence of just such a one.

And: This isn't just a dream,' said Shaithis then, with a shake of his head. 'I can feel your presence and know you are reaclass="underline" that same Shaitan of whom Kehrl Lugoz was, and is, so mortally afraid, that ancient Being out of the first annals of Wamphyri legend. You were banished here in prehistory, and you live here still.'

'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.

But the fact remained that Shaithis had once been a common man - a Traveller vampirized when Shaidar Shaigispawn renamed him, made him his chief lieutenant or 'son', and gave him his egg - and as such he'd learned what fear was all about. Even now after half a millennium he still remembered, if only when he slept. For however monstrous a man may become, the things that frightened him as a youth will continue to do so in his dreams.