As for the four Wamphyri Lords: Shaitan was rather more leery of them. Let them fight among themselves first, wear themselves out. It seemed only prudent. In his youth (which Shaitan scarcely remembered), ah, it would have been different then! He'd have had the measure of all of these and four more just like them. But three and a half thousand years is a long time, and time takes its toll of more than memory. Indeed, of almost everything. Now he was… tired? If it must be admitted, even his vampire was tired! And his vampire was by far the greater part of him.
Not ailing, frail or dying tired, just… tired. Of the unrelenting cold, which periodically would cut through the volcanic rock to the mountain's heart, even to the blowhole caverns in its roots; of the interminably dull routine of existence; quite simply, of the sameness and emptiness of being in these eternal, ageless Icelands.
But not yet tired of life. Not utterly.
Certainly not to the extent that Shaitan would advertise his presence to such as Fess, Volse, Shaithis and Arkis Leperson! No, for when you came right down to it there were plenty of better ways to die. Aye, and now that the exiles were here there might be more and better reasons to stay alive, too.
Especially this 'Shaithis'.
Indeed, with a name like that he might even prove to be the realization — the embodiment? — of a totally new existence. This last was only a dream of Shaitan's, true, but it had not faded with time. While all else had turned grey, his dream had stayed clear and bright. And red.
A dream of youth, renewed vigour, a victorious return to Starside and Sunside and of laying them waste, and then the invasion of worlds beyond. Shaitan's belief, his instinctive conviction that indeed such worlds existed, had sustained him through all the monotonous centuries of his exile, giving purpose to that which was otherwise untenable.
But while the dream remained young and bright, the dreamer had grown old and somewhat tarnished. Not in his mind but in his body. The human parts of Shaitan had wasted, been replaced by inhuman tissues; the metamorphism of his vampire had transcended the deterioration of the host body until the man-part had disappeared almost entirely, leaving only rudimentary or vestigial traces of the original flesh, organs and appendages. But the fused mind of man and vampire remained, and for all that a great deal had been forgotten, still the accumulation of that mind's contents — its knowledge — was vast. And EVIL.
Shaitan's EVIL was fathomless, but he was not mad. For intelligence and evil are not incompatible. Indeed they are complementary. The murderer requires a mind to construct his clever alibi. An idiot cannot build an atomic weapon.
Evil is the perverse rejection of goodness, which in Shaitan was absolute. His was an EVIL which might put the universe itself to the torch, then gaze upon the cinders and find them good! He was Darkness, Light's opposite; he could even be said to be the Primal Darkness, which opposed the Primal Light. Which was the reason why even the Wamphyri had banished him. But he knew, without knowing how he knew, that he'd been banished long before that.
Banished… by Good? By some benevolent God? No metagnostic, still Shaitan could conceive of such a One. For how may EVIL exist without GOOD? But for now -
— He put such thoughts aside. He'd thought them for long enough. In three and a half thousand years a mind has time to think many things, from the remotely trivial to the infinitely profound. For the moment his origin was not important, but his destiny was. And his destiny might well be part and parcel of this man, this being, called Shaithis.
In the Old Times the Wamphyri had named their 'sons' after themselves. Bloodsons, egg-recipients, common vampires — all had adopted the name of their sire. The custom had changed somewhat but not entirely. Arkis Leperson was the recipient son of his leper father Radu Arkis: 'Arkis the Leper', they'd called him. Wherefore his 'son' — a Traveller lieutenant who more than a century ago found favour in Radu's scarlet eyes — was now Arkis Leperson. He carried Radu's egg.
Similarly Fess Ferenc was the bloodson (born of woman) of Ion Ferenc; his Traveller mother died giving birth to the giant, whose size was such it impressed his father to let him live. A great error, that. While yet a youth Fess had killed Ion, then opened his body to steal and devour his vampire egg whole. This way Ion could not pass it to any other, and his aerie on Starside must devolve 'naturally' to Fess.
Shaitan, in his day, had sired many offspring and by various means, but his egg had gone to Shaithar Shaitanson, who in his turn had become a father of vampires. And Shaitan's bloodspawned children had been named Shaithos, Shailar the Hagridden, Shaithag, and so on. While among Shaithar Shaitanson's spawn had been one called Sheilar the Slut, and possibly others with similar-sounding names, derived from the One Original. And all of these before Shaitan himself was banished.
Wherefore… was it too much to ask, too improbable, that three thousand years later this one, this Shaithis, should now appear, banished like his forebear before him? Shaitan thought not. But a direct descendant? The blood is the life, and only blood would tell.
Yes, blood would tell.
Take from him, Shaitan commanded the miniature officers of his law. Just one of you. A nip, the merest sip. Take from him and bring it to me. He said no more.
And in his ice-crevice hiding place Shaithis scarcely felt the fish-hook-sharp needles that punctured the lobe of his ear and drew blood, and was only faintly aware of the whir of small wings making away from him into the frozen labyrinth of the ice-castle, then out of that amazing sculpture and into the star-bright night of the world.
Some short time later, the albino swooped down inside the all but extinct central cone to Shaitan's sulphur-yellow apartments, and there hovered, waiting on his command.
From his dark corner he commanded it: Come, little one. I won't crush you.
The tiny creature flew to him, folded its wings and fastened to Shaitan's… hand? It coughed up spittle and mucus into what passed for a palm, and one small bright splash of ruby blood. And: Good! said Shaitan. Now go. Only too pleased to obey, the bat hastened from its master and left him to his own devices.
Fascinated, for a long while Shaitan gazed at the ruby droplet. It was blood, and the blood is the life. He waited impatiently for the vampire flesh of his hand to open into a tiny mouth and sip the droplet in — an automatic thing, born of hideous instinct — from which he would know that this was just the blood of a common man. But he waited in vain, for like himself Shaithis was uncommon. Very much like himself.
And: 'Mine!' said Shaitan at last, in a croaking, shuddering, delighted whisper. 'Flesh of my flesh!'
At which the droplet quivered and soaked through the leprous skin of his hand, and into him as if he were a sponge…
3 The Ferenc's Story
Shaithis slept long and long.
The bats kept him warm (at least kept him from freezing solid in his ice-niche); his wounds healed; his thoughts, like Shaithis himself, remained hidden. Until it was time to rouse himself and be up and about. Which was when his hiding place was discovered.
What!? Who!? The astonished, involuntary mental exclamations brought Shaithis starting awake, echoing in his mind. While still the echoes rang he was on his feet, his blanket of albino bats breaking up in chittering disarray, whirring away from him like a shock of sentient snow. Another moment and his hand filled his gauntlet; he let his Wamphyri senses reach out — but cautiously, tentatively — to discover who was there. Whoever, he must be near, else he wouldn't have sensed Shaithis's emergence.