'We go on,' said Shaithis.
Perhaps his reply had been too ready, or he had sounded too sure of himself, for the Ferenc looked at him for long moments. And at last the giant said, 'But the way looks like a jumble of broken rock. Any cave we find will surely have collapsed in upon itself.'
'We won't know that until we look,' Shaithis answered. 'It's just that I feel we're very close now.'
The Ferenc narrowed his eyes. 'It appears I'm not the only one whose awareness has been focused to a fault. But very well, we press on. Arkis, lead the way.'
The leper's son, muttering darkly to himself, stepped out across the first crack, teetered a little on the far side and found his balance. And so they all proceeded.
Then, after negotiating a half-dozen more crevasses: 'Ho!' Arkis called back. 'But this next crack has a floor, formed of a frozen river of rock.'
'An ancient lava-run,' said Fess, joining him.
Shaithis came last and looked at the cliff, riven where in olden times the flow had forced an exit. 'Lava from the secret heart of the volcano,' he said. 'So perhaps we've found our way in after all.'
The Ferenc stepped under the cliff's overhang, into the shadow of the cleft. 'Let me scan it.'
Arkis went after him, with Shaithis bringing up the rear, and they all three sniffed the air, probing the way ahead with keen vampire senses. Until at last Arkis ventured: 'I sense… nothing!'
'Likewise,' said Shaithis, relieved that the small-talented Diredeath had discovered no threat (where in fact he found the place menacing and uninviting in the extreme). The Ferenc, however, seemed of a similar mind to Shaithis; except he was perfectly, and honestly, willing to voice it.
'I don't like it,' he gave his opinion, 'for it smells too much like the cave where Volse got his.'
'You've let Volse's death prey on your mind,' Shaithis told him. 'And anyway — and as has been said before — forewarned is forearmed. Also, there are three of us this time. Arkis and I, we have our mighty gauntlets, and you have your even mightier talons. And in any case we're already decided that the bloodbeast was hidden in that first cave. Myself,' (he paused to sniff the cave's air again), 'I think it likely that the cone's master has worked some beguilement here: he has gloomed on this place and left the smell of death here. But a smell is only a smell, and I smell success! I'm for going in.' He looked from Fess to Arkis.
Arkis shrugged. 'If this so-called "cone's master" has comforts in there, then I'm with you, Shaithis. I've had it to the tusks with hardship! I could use some rich red blood in my belly, and a woman in my bed. D'you suppose it's a harem he guards so jealously?'
Shaithis's turn to shrug. 'I've never been a one for the histories,' he said, 'but I've heard it said that some of the banished Lords took their concubines with them. We can't say what we'll find until we find it.'
'Comforts, aye,' said the Ferenc, licking his lips. 'I could use some of those myself. Very well, we go on.'
Shaithis put on a scowl and said, 'And how's this for a turn of events? Are you suddenly our leader? It seems you like having the last word, Fess Ferenc. "Arkis, you lead the way." And, "Very well, we go on."'
'Bah? was Fess's retort. 'If no one ever made a decision, then we'd be here for ever. Here, let me lead the way…'
Which was exactly what Shaithis had wanted.
The darkness of the interior was like daylight to the vampire Lords, indeed it was preferable to the auroral light and the blue sheen cast by the stars. The Ferenc strode where the way was obvious and unobstructed, inched along where it was made obscure by jumbles, or where the uneven ceiling came down low, or where blisters of lava had burst to form jagged-rimmed, circular cusps of rock like small craters in the almost corrugated texture of the floor. And where other natural fissures or blowholes radiated from the main run, he steadfastly followed the ancient lava flow.
Arkis stayed a pace or so to the Ferenc's rear, followed immediately by Shaithis. As they progressed so the oppressive sensation of ominous expectancy or foreboding lifted a little, which (to Diredeath and the Ferenc, at least) lent credence to Shaithis's 'theory' that the volcano's dweller had deliberately set a fearful aura over the mouth of the run to dissuade any would-be explorers.
Shaithis stayed very much on the alert, kept his thoughts fully guarded, would have liked to contact Shaitan but dared not, not with Fess and Arkis probing in all directions with their minds, their Wamphyri awareness sharp for the smallest hint of mental activity. And always they moved deeper into the heart of the rock.
Eventually the Ferenc called a halt, whispering, 'We must be halfway in at least. Time to take stock.'
'Of what?' Arkis grunted. His blunt query sounded like an avalanche, echoing out and back in slowly decreasing waves of sound.
'Dolt!' Fess whispered again when he could be heard. 'What use to have the senses of bats, to be able to smell out the way ahead like wolves and keep our minds tuned for the thoughts of others, when at every opportunity all you can do is make great noise! Would you alert our enemy to our presence?'
Abashed, Arkis kept his answer low: 'Hell, if he's at home, surely by now he knows we're coming!'
'Perhaps,' Shaithis intervened, 'but in any case, let's keep it quiet.'
'Taking stock, yes,' said the Ferenc. 'Going first all this way has taken the edge of my awareness. Arkis, you can spell me.'
'No problem.' The other took the lead, glad for the chance to make amends. But after moving on only a dozen or so paces: 'Now hold!' Arkis said. 'Something's weird!'
They had all felt it at the same time: a sensory void, a region vacant of all vibrancies, whether for good or evil, a place stagnant as some stirless, sunless subterranean lake. And they likewise knew what that meant: that the place had been made sterile, for even darkness and cold stone have a feel to them. Someone wanted them to believe that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, here… because there was something here.
Shaithis's flesh tingled and he knew the others must be feeling the same sensation. Arkis, in the lead, stood rooted to the spot, gurgling inarticulately; but it was much too late for gurgling anything. Shaithis felt the heavy mental curtain deliberately ripped open — felt fear and horror springing into being behind it and rushing to burst through its tattered drapes — then saw the blur of leprous grey which was to be the end of Arkis Leperson, called Diredeath. And indeed his death was dire!
Where the Thing came from would be hard to say — a niche in the wall of the place, a side-tunnel, a hiding place in the lee of some bulge of lava — but it came at great speed and with fell intent. And it was exactly as the Ferenc had described it. Patched white and grey, mottled like veined marble, it seemed to uncoil or erupt into being, as if some massive boulder half-buried in the floor had come to life and reshaped itself. Its legs were a blur, claws scrabbling as it reared before Arkis; its fishlike head bore a bone lance tapered to a sharp point and equipped with thorns or hooks all along its length; its eyes were like saucers, fixing its victim with their emotionless glare.
Arkis's gauntlet was on his hand, ready; but as he raised his arm the Thing struck at him in a move too fast to follow. Its lance gashed his short, squat neck as it sawed past, and its needle-toothed jaws closed on his gauntlet arm. The arm was severed, swallowed at a gulp. In drawing back, the Thing sawed at Arkis's neck again and sliced into his whistling air-pipe; in the next moment its lance was rammed forward a second time, directly into him, piercing his squat body to the heart. He jerked and throbbed where he was held upright on the bone blade, and his tusks chomped on thin air, turning red as he coughed up a spray of blood.