And united — for the moment united, at least — the vampires set out to cross the snowfields and scintillant ice-jumbles, and the weird terraces and shimmering battlements of their target ice-castle loomed larger as gradually they narrowed the distance between. And forming a frowning centrepiece to the glittering, concentrically circling aeries, every now and then the duller, darker shape of the 'extinct' volcano would appear to puff a little smoke into the radiant, ever-changing sky.
Or perhaps this was just an illusion? Well, possibly. But Shaithis thought not…
Soon Shaithis discovered that one ice-castle was much the same as the next. This one, for example, might well be the stark, shivery, tinkling cold stack of Kehrl Lugoz; might be; except, of course, it was not the undead Kehrl who waited out the ages in the densely protective sheath of the core but some other Lord. Also, and whoever he had been in life, his waiting had long since come to an end and he was now entirely dead. An ice-mummy — frozen, starved, desiccated to a condition way beyond life — the olden vampire was one with all past things, leaving only his shell to represent him as part of the present.
Shaithis looked at him through the wavering impurity of the ice and wondered who he'd been. Whoever, it was probably as well that he was dead. His thoughts, if there had been any, might have told Arkis and the Ferenc secrets Shaithis would prefer them not to know… like why he lay there on his carved ice-pedestal, propped upon a skeletal elbow, one clawlike hand held up before him as if to ward off some dreadful evil. And his colourless eyes, from which time had bleached all of the scarlet but none of the nameless horror. Aye, even this member of the olden Wamphyri, horrified! By something or someone who had stood here where Shaithis stood even now.
'What do you make of this?' The sudden, echoing rumble of the Ferenc's voice caused Shaithis to start. He looked where the giant pointed a taloned hand at a hitherto unnoticed circular bore hole in the ice. Seven or eight inches in diameter, the almost invisible bore seemed to point like an arrow at the preserved Wamphyri relic upon his carved couch.
'A hole?' Shaithis frowned.
'Aye.' The Ferenc nodded. 'Like that of some gross worm in the earth. But an ice-worm?' He kneeled and stuck his hand and arm into the hole, which extended almost to the depth of his shoulder. And withdrawing his arm and sighting along the channel, he added: 'Directed straight at his heart, too!'
'More such holes over here,' Arkis called from a little way around the curve of the core. 'And it seems to me they've been drilled. See the heaped chips where they've spilled out upon the floor?'
And Shaithis thought: Such small privations as my dullard friends have known have made them observant. He followed the core's curve to Arkis and examined the new holes; rather, the newly discovered holes, for in fact they could have been made a hundred, two hundred years ago. And sighting along them just as the Ferenc had sighted, Shaithis, too, noted that these perfectly circular runs seemed aimed at the main mass of the ice-shrouded mummy's body.
He thought to himself: Runs, aye, and narrowed his eyes a little as he examined that concept more closely. For upon a time, Shaithis had visited the settlements of itinerant Szgany metal-workers east of the great mountain range which split Starside from Sunside. These were the 'tinkers' who designed and constructed the fearsome Wamphyri war-gauntlets. Shaithis had seen the way the colourful Travellers poured liquid metal down clay pipes or along earthen sluices into moulds; so that there was that about these bore holes which reminded him of running liquids. Except all of these incomplete runs climbed gentle inclines towards the dead Lord, which seemed to indicate that they had not been designed to carry anything to him. Something away from him, then? Shaithis shivered; he was beginning to find his investigations, and more especially his conclusions, damnable.
Indeed, there was something about this entire set-up which even Shaithis's vampire heart found ominous, oppressive, doom-fraught. And finally Fess Ferenc voiced his thoughts for him: 'Me and the whelky Volse, we saw cores where the ice wasn't so thick. In them the bore holes had penetrated right to the centre, and all that was left in there were small bundles of rags, skin, and bones!'
'What?' Shaithis frowned at him.
Fess nodded. 'As if the one-time inhabitants or slum-berers in these frozen stacks had been sucked entire down the bores, all except their more solid bits.'
It had been Shaithis's thought exactly. 'But how?' he whispered. 'How, if they were frozen? I mean, how does one draw an entire, frozen-solid body down a hole which can't even accommodate that body's head?'
'I don't know.' The Ferenc shook his own misshapen head. 'But still I reckon that's what this old lad was afraid of. What's more, I reckon he died from the fear of it…'
Later, a mile closer to the central cone, they entered one of the inner ice-castles.
'This is one I've not visited before,' said the Ferenc. 'But as close as it is to the old volcano, I'd guess it's a safe bet what we'll find.'
'Oh?' Shaithis looked at him.
'Nothing!' The Ferenc nodded, knowingly. 'Just shattered ice about a gob of black lava, and the empty hole from which some ancient Lord's been stolen away.'
And he was right. When they finally found the high lava throne it was empty, and its ice-sheath shattered into a pile of fused, frosted shards. A few fragments of rag there were, but so ancient and stiff that they crumbled at a touch. And that was all.
Shaithis kneeled at the base of the shattered sheath and examined its broken surface, and found what he was looking for: the fluted rims of a good many bore holes, patterned like a scalloped fan, all joining where they converged on the empty niche at the black core. And he looked at Fess and Arkis and nodded grimly. 'The author of this dreadful thing could have sucked out the unknown Lord like the yoke of an egg, but that wasn't necessary for the sheath was only two and a half feet thick. So he drilled his holes all the way round until the ice was loosened, then wrenched it away in blocks and shards, and so finally came upon his petrified prey.'
And Fess said, 'Did I hear you right? Did you say "this dreadful thing"?'
Shaithis looked at him, also at Arkis. 'I'm Wamphyri,' he growled, low in his throat. 'You know me well. There's nothing soft about me. I take pride in my great strength, in my rages and furies, my lusts and appetites. But if this is the work of a man — even one of my own kind — still I say it is dreadful. Its terror lies in the secrecy, the stealth, the gloating, leering malignancy of the slayer. Ah, yes, I'm Wamphyri! And if I should be trapped in these Icelands, then doubtless I, too, would develop various life-support systems, including a fortress, sophisticated defences, and a source or sources of food. And I, too, would be as secretive and sinister as needs be. But don't you see? Someone here has already done it! In these Icelands, we are come into the territory of one who victimizes and terrorizes the very Wamphyri themselves! That is the dreadful thing I mentioned. Why, the very atmosphere of this place seethes with its evil. And something else: it seems to me that it is evil for evil's sake!'
After that… Shaithis could have bitten off his forked tongue. Too late, for he fancied he'd already said or hinted far too much. But such was the crushing weight of this place upon his vampire senses — such was its psychic jangle upon his nerve-endings — he felt the others would have to be totally insensitive not to have felt it for themselves.