What had frightened Shaithis the most in those early days of his abduction from Sunside - in that time now five hundred years in the past, before the Lord Shaidar coughed his scarlet egg into his throat and changed him for ever - had been the many and monstrous anomalies of Shaidar's lofty aerie: the cartilage creatures and gas-beasts, the entirely unthinkable siphoneers, the vast vats in the lower levels of the stack where trogs and Travellers alike became flyers or warriors or yet weirder facets of Shaidar's hybrid experimentation. For the vampire Lord had delighted in showing to Shaithis (at that time a young, as yet innocent Traveller) his most nightmarish creations, and in torturing his mind with the half-threat that one day he, too, might be a diamond-headed flyer, armour-scaled warrior or flaccid, pulpy siphoneer.
Morbid distortions and abnormalities such as these, then, had been the harbingers of Shaithis's worst nightmares during those early days of Wamphyri apprenticeship. But in time, as he himself ascended to the aerie's throne-room, such fears had receded, been suppressed, had succumbed to the vampire in him, which bade him become a maker of monsters in his own right; an art in which finally he'd excelled. And his flyers had been the most weirdly graceful, his warriors ferocious beyond any previous ferocity, and his other creations and experiments... varied. So that it was only in dreams out of his youth that he remembered and took fright at such things. Except that even in the most vivid and awe-inspiring of these, nothing that memory had conjured had been half as monstrous as that which the Dark Hooded Thing had shown him.
'Ugly,' Shaitan had called himself, but there is ugly and there is ugly. And as for hybridism...
Shaithis pictured again the thing which had stood there when his ancestor relaxed his hypnotic shield to let himself be seen as he really was: an abomination which not even the most perverse or insane Wamphyri mind might envisage, made all the worse through its reality. It had been... what? A man-sized slug or leech - corrugated, glistening black, and mottled grey-green - but rearing upright like a man? A vampire, yes, such as might develop from an egg inside a man or woman, but grown huge beyond all reasonable measures; so that Shaithis had wondered: But if this grew inside a man, then what became of its host!?
Then, as the grotesque but mainly vague picture of the thing (made vague, by virtue of its obscenity) scarred itself into his mind, so he'd become aware of something of its finer detail, which in the next moment had sufficed to shock him awake.
The thing (no, he must not think of it as a 'thing' alone but also as Shaitan, his ancestor?) had rubbery limbs, some of which ended in suckered tentacles. Others, however, did not but were equipped with vestigial human and other animal parts: mummied hands and withered, rudimentary feet, and even a gleaming bone claw. And it was these parts, and also Shaitan's flat, composite face on its spade-shaped cobra head, which repulsed Shaithis the most and brought about the resurgence of his long-forgotten phobia.
For he knew that the hybridism he saw here was not that of some Wamphyri Lord's experimental vats but of Nature; or rather of the vampire's unnatural tenacity, its determination to cling to life in circumstances however desperate, through travails and triumphs down all the nameless ages. Aye, for the Lord Shaitan had grown simply too ancient for the accommodation of mortal, human flesh, and his original body had wasted away to be replaced almost in its entirety by the metamorphic organism which was his vampire. Which was, indeed, now him.
Ugly? The result was hideous; especially so to Shaithis in his dream, for there it had been the embodiment of every nightmare of his apprenticeship.
As to how he knew the fate which had befallen Shaitan in his ice-bound isolation - his evolution, no, devolution, from man-vampire or Wamphyri to pure vampire - that had been written in the vast intelligence, hatred and sheer evil of the leech-thing's scarlet eyes, unblinking under their cobra's hood. Not the unbridled, mindless hatred so often seen in the seething eyes of a warrior, or the vacant, lidless stare of a hugely nodding flyer, and certainly not the watery, vapid gaze of a siphoneer. But such evil intelligence that Shaithis had known this thing was no morbid experiment but a true mutation.
He had known, too, with reinforced certainty, that indeed this was Shaitan the Unborn, called the Fallen. For of all Wamphyri legends there was one of universal prevalence: that to the innermost core of his being, Shaitan had been evil above all other men and creatures...
6
Dark Liaison
Shaithis's mental guard was down, his mind accessible as he emerged more fully from sleep. And there was someone there, a dark presence, to take advantage of his confusion. It was Shaitan, of course; even at a distance his gurgling, venomous 'voice' was unmistakable.
Evil? Do you say I was evil? No, I was wronged. Wronged by the Wamphyri, my own kind! For I was stronger than them and they feared me. And you, son of my sons? Do you also fear me? See how you start awake from me, as if I were some DOOM come down upon you rather than your salvation.
Shaithis went to close his mind... and hesitated. His hideous ancestor was the master of the dead volcano, wasn't he? What harm could he do from there? This could well be the perfect opportunity to learn more about him without alerting the others to his presence.
Shaitan picked all these thoughts out of Shaithis's mind and chuckled monstrously. Aye, he gurgled, for it would never do to let them in on our secret. Not until it's too late. Or at least, too late for them.
Shaithis lay back, narrowed his eyes and scanned across the glittering expanse of the ice-castle's hollow heart to focus upon the huddled shapes of Fess Ferenc and Arkis Leperson where they slept on. He reached out with his Wamphyri awareness to touch upon the flimsy mental barriers they'd erected about their sleeping minds, satisfying himself that they were in fact asleep.
And finally he answered that dark intelligence which had proclaimed itself his ancestor: I think I prefer you this way, Shaitan: out in the open, as it were, and not cloaked in dreams. But it was clever of you to break in on me like that. My so-called 'peers' among the Wamphyri were never up to it.
They were not of your blood, Shaitan at once answered. Or should we say, they were not of mine? Our minds mesh like those of twin brothers, Shaithis. It's a sign, that you're a true son of my sons, so that we are as one. We were meant to be as one and triumph over all adversity, and then go on to victories unimaginable.
Aye, Shaithis nodded, wonderingly, in this and in other worlds, as you have stated. I think it would be interesting to know more about that. Indeed it would interest me greatly to retake Starside from the alien enemies who dwell there now, and to avenge myself upon them. Now tell me your thoughts. For you've hinted we've a way to go together. Have you planned our first steps along that way? And how do I know 1 can trust you anyway? Your legends are infamous even among the Wamphyri, who themselves are not much known for straight dealing.
Again Shaitan's loathsome chuckle. My son, you'll trust me because you have to - because without me you're stuck here — and I shall trust you for the same reason. But if a token of my good will is required: have you not already seen enough of it? Who was it sent his small albino bats to you to keep your sore bones warm while you slept? And who was it disposed of one of your enemies, whose intentions were dire against you to say the least?