Continuing to gaze down on his ancestor's preserved experiments, Shaithis had nodded. 'I see you've tried a warrior or two,' he commented. 'Fearsome but… archaic? Perhaps I should advise you: Starside's warriors have come a long way since your day. In all truth, these things of yours would not last long against certain of my constructs!'
If Shaitan was offended, it hardly showed. 'Then by all means instruct me in these superior metamorphic skills,' he'd answered. 'Indeed, and in order that you may do so, you shall have complete freedom of my workshops, materials and vats.'
Which had been much to Shaithis's liking…
Another time, Shaithis had asked: 'What of your ingurgitors? Since plainly they are working beasts, and since it's your habit to — separate them? — from what they take from their victims, how do you sustain them? On what do you feed them? For as you yourself have pointed out: these Icelands are very nearly barren.'
Shaitan had then shown him his reservoirs of frozen blood and minced, metamorphic flesh, explaining: 'I've been here a long, long time, my son. And when I first came here, ah, but I quickly learned what it meant to go hungry! Since when I've made provision not only for myself but for my creatures, both now and in the dawn of our resurgence.'
In blank astonishment, Shaithis had gazed upon the rims of (literally) dozens of potholes of black plasma. 'Blood? So much blood? But not from the frozen Lords, surely? There were never sufficient of the Wamphyri in all Starside to fill these great bowls!'
'Beast blood,' Shaitan told him. 'Whale blood, too. Yes, and even a little man blood. But you are correct, only a very little of the latter. The blood of beasts and great fishes is fine for my creatures; it will fuel them to war when that time is come, following which… why, there'll be food aplenty for all, eh? But the man blood is mine — and yours, too, now that you're here — for our sustenance.'
Shaithis had been even more astonished. 'You've bled the great fishes in the cold sea?'
'Actually, while I called them fishes, they are mammals.' Shaitan had shrugged in his fashion. They're warm-blooded, those giants, and suckle their young. Soon after I came here I saw a school at play, spouting at the rim of the ocean, so that my first ingurgitor was designed with them in mind. It was a good design and I've scarcely changed it down the centuries. Doubtless you've noted the vestigial gills, fins, and other seeming anomalies in the volcano's guardian creatures; likewise in my driller.'
Shaithis had noted those things. Indeed it was his habit to note everything…
On another occasion, fascinated by the sheer age of his self-appointed 'mentor', Shaithis had thought to suggest: 'But you have been here — upon the earth, in Starside and in the Icelands, mainly in these frozen wastes — almost.since the Beginning!' Even speaking those words he had realized how naive they must sound and how much in awe of the other he must seem, which his ancestor's dark chuckle had at once confirmed.
The Beginning? Ah, no, for I perceive that the world is a million times older than I am. Or did you mean the beginning of the Wamphyri? In which case I can but agree, for I was the first of all.'
'Really?' Again Shaithis forgot to distance himself from his astonishment. It was hard to be inscrutable in the face of revelations such as these. Of course, the legends of Starside said that Shaitan the Fallen had been the first vampire, but as any fool is aware, legends are like myths: mainly untruths or at best exaggerations. The first? The father of us all?'
The first of the Wamphyri, aye,' Shaitan had answered at last, after a long, curious silence. 'But not… the Father, did you say? No, not the Father. Oh, I fathered my share, be sure, for I was young with a young man's appetites. I had been a man entire and fallen to earth here, where my vampire came to me… came out of… out of the swamps…' He paused, leaving his words to taper into a thoughtful silence.
And after a while: 'Out of the vampire swamps?' Shaithis had pressed him. There are great swamps to the west of Starside, and according to legend others to the east. I know of them but never saw them. Are these the swamps of which you speak?'
Shaitan was still distanced by strange reverie. Nevertheless he nodded. Those are the swamps, aye. I fell to earth in the west.'
Shaithis had heard him use this term — about 'falling to earth' — before. Frowning and shaking his head, he'd said, 'I fail to understand. How may a man fall to earth? Out of the sky, do you mean? From your mother's womb? But weren't you also called the Unborn? Where did you fall from, and how?'
Shaitan had snapped out of it. 'You are a nosy person, and your questions are rude! Still, I'll answer them as best I may. First understand this: my memories start at the swamps, and even then they are faded and incomplete. Before the swamps, I… I'm not sure. But when I came naked to this world I came in great pain and great pride. I believe that I was exiled into this place, thrown down here even as the Wamphyri exiled me at last to these Icelands. The Wamphyri exiled me because I would be The One Power. Well, and perhaps I had tried to be a Power in that other place, too, wherefrom I was banished and fell to earth. It is a mystery to me. But this I do know: compared to the other place, this world was like a hell!'
'Someone had sent you here as a punishment, to a life of hell?'
'Or to a world which could become a hell, of my making. It was a question of wilclass="underline" anything could be, if I so willed it or allowed it to be. I repeat: it was because I was wilful and prideful that I was here. Or at least, that is how I seem to remember it.'
'You do not actually remember falling, then? Only that you were suddenly there, in the vampire swamps?'
'Close to the swamps, yes, where my vampire came into me.'
Shaithis had been keenly interested in that last. 'In our time,' he mused, 'we've both had occasion to kill enemies and tear their living vampires out of them to devour. Fess Ferenc and Arkis Leperson were only the most recent. We know what such parasites look like: full-formed they are barbed leeches, which hide in men to shape their thoughts and urges. And in certain hosts, over long periods, they may grow so fused as to become inseparable.'
'As in myself, yes,' Shaitan had answered. 'Indeed, there remains precious little of the original me at all, while my vampire is grown to what you see.'
'Just so,' said Shaithis. 'You, or rather your vampire — as a result of prolonged metamorphism — is now gross. But how was it then? Did it come to you as an egg? Did the parent creature remain in the swamps? Or did the parasite come to you full grown, take you by surprise and slither into you complete?'
'It came to me from the swamp,' Shaitan had repeated. That much I know… how I do not know.'
The problem had vexed Shaithis (and his ancestor no less), but on that occasion at least they'd been lost for further questions and answers.
A good many auroral periods later, however, when Shaithis was busy in a corner of the workshop, carefully constructing a warrior for his ancestor's approvaclass="underline"
'This is how it was!' said Shaitan, coming swiftly and in some excitement upon Shaithis where he worked, and flowing up to him like a midnight shadow. 'In that earliest existence of which I apprised you, I served another or others but desired to serve only myself. As a reward for my pride — which is to say for my wit and great beauty, of which I was perhaps too much aware — and for my pains, I was thrown out and removed from my rightful place in that society. I was not destroyed, not wasted, but used! I became to Them … a tool! A seed of evil, which They would sow between the spheres! Do you see? I was the folly and the penance! I was the Darkness which allows for the Light!'