Blood Brothers

  They crossed the mountains in the night, and on the way Shaitan questioned Vidra as to how he had found him. The youth answered that he had “felt” his master in his mind, and had known that he must go to him. On the way, as the power of the sun’s rays waned, he had met with Dezmir Babeni, who had hidden in a crack in a cliff to keep himself out of the sunlight. Being undead, he had been more nearly like unto Shaitan, and the sun was his mortal enemy.

  The night passed, and as the three—Shaitan, Vidra and Ilya Sul—descended into Starside, so they discovered Shaitan’s trog thralls waiting. They, too, had known where to find their master. And now they numbered thirteen in all: the three, plus seven female trogs and three male. And Shaitan called all of the others his disciples.

  Then they saw a light shining up into the night, a white and hazy shimmer unlike the coldly flickering auroras of the north, which Ilya Sul said must be the fallen white sun, which some called a gate into hell.

  “White sun?” Shaitan had drawn back.

  “I’ve heard it’s cold,” the other answered. “It isn’t harmful, if you keep your distance. But you must never touch it.”

  Shaitan was curious, however, and said he must see this hell-gate.

  They climbed the low crater wall and stood at the rim, and looked down upon the ball of cold white fire within. The trogs were blinded and staggered this way and that. One tripped and fell, landing on a ledge close to the white glare. Terrified, he put up a hand to fend it off. His hand touched the surface of the dazzle, sank into it … and he cried out in his guttural fashion as the hell-gate dragged him in and swallowed him whole!

  The trog was gone, and only his strange slow cry came echoing back. Shaitan believed he could see him down there, a small frightened figure, dwindling, but the light hurt his eyes so that soon he must look away.

  And he said: “This shall be the punishment for those who offend me three times. Three times, aye—for I am forgiving, as you see.”

  “A fitting punishment,” Vidra fawned upon him.

  “As well you think so,” Shaitan answered. “And as well you mark my words. One: you told the Hagi about me. Two: you told Dezmir Babeni how I had honoured his daughter. Do not wrong me a third time.” His voice was dark, and very frightening.

  “And there shall be other punishments,” he told them all. “For I am Shaitan who can make men undead. Any who would do me harm, let them think on this: I shall take their blood and bury them deep in the ground. And when they awaken, they shall lie there and scream forever, until they stiffen to stones in the earth.

  “Also, that land there to the north; I perceive that it is icy cold. No fit habitation even for such as we. Therefore, let him who would deny me beware. For in my house there shall be no warm bed or woman-flesh for him; no kind master to guide and instruct him; neither wonders to be witnessed, nor mysteries revealed. For I shall banish him north, to freeze in the ice all alone.

  “But for him who would obey me in all things, and be my true servant and thrall, a rich red life forever! Aye, even unto death—and beyond! So be it…”

  “Where shall your house stand, Lord?” Ilya Sul ventured with a shiver, as they left the Gate behind to cross the wide mouth of a pass where the light from Sunside was a pale purplish haze in the “V” of the split range. “For this seems a desolate place—a plain of boulders, lacking rivers, where lichens live and scrubby grasses—with wolves in the mountains and bats in the crags, but never a man.”

  “There are men of sorts,” Shaitan answered him. “Under the mountains, in their caverns, dwell trogs. They shall provide—they shall be—my food. Until we are established. But on Sunside there is life galore! Common fare will suffice, at first, but the true blood which is the life lies beyond the mountains. And in all the nights yet to be we shall hunt. As for my house: it shall stand east of here a ways, for I am drawn east.” Then, looking sharply at Sul: “But do you doubt me?”

  “Never, Lord!”

  They trekked for several miles, and came to a region of stone stacks worn out from the mountains, which littered the plain like the petrified stalks of gigantic mushrooms. Their bases were fortified with scree jumbles, but in their columns were ledges and caverns, many of which were vast as halls.

  Shaitan admired these stacks, for they were very grand and very gaunt. And: “One of these shall be my house,” he said.

  Sul answered him: “They are like the aeries of the mountain eagles!”

  And: “Aye,” said Shaitan. “The aeries of the Wamphyri!”

  And so Shaitan set to and commenced the building of his house. The task was huge; only a vampire and his thralls, with their longevity, could ever have accomplished it. And Shaitan would build not only a house but an empire of vampires.

  He recruited trogs out of their caverns in the lee of the mountains, and sent his lieutenants into Sunside’s nights to hunt and recruit Szgany. And in dark chambers in the base of the stack which he had chosen, he experimented with his own metamorphic flesh and powers to furnish himself with all of his requirements.

  He bred trogs which were no longer trogs but cartilage creatures, whose minds were small and bodies elastic. From these he made leathers and coverings for the aerie’s exterior stairways, and articles of furniture for his rooms. And all of them still living a life of sorts, gradually petrifying and becoming permanent in their places. He mated men with trog women, the issue from which was not seemly. He got foul, bloated things, all gross and mindless—but even these were not wasted. In nether caves he bred them into gas-beasts, for the heating of the stack, or into Things-Which-Consume, for his refuse pit.

  He took mindless vampire flesh and experimented with it; he would imitate the aerial prowess of the great bats, build flying creatures, soar out from his aerie upon the winds. At first he knew failure, but later he provided his flyers with the metamorphosed brains of men, that they should have something (but never too much) of volition. All of which creatures, nascent and full-formed alike, were Shaitan’s thralls.

  Word of his works went abroad, even into Sunside. And now Starside was double-damned and shunned utterly … by men, at least.

  But by now the Szgany of Sunside had problems other than Shaitan and his night-raiding lieutenants, for in the west the swamps were an entire spawning ground for monsters! Foolish men and innocent creatures went down to the scummy waters to drink, and things other than men and wolves came up from that place. So that in the first twenty years several beings who were very like unto Shaitan had come across from Sunside to build their houses in the rearing stone stacks. And because they were even as strong as him and much of a kind, he made no protest but let them build. In any case, there was space enough among the many stacks, so that even Shaitan was unable to lay claim to all of them; and, just across the mountains, there was food and entertainment for all.

  And it happened that at this time Shaitan’s lieutenants went a-hunting, and brought back from Starside a certain man of their master’s previous acquaintance. And as he went among the captives, inspecting them, he knew this one at once. Why, there was still a scar in his shoulder, put there by this very man, which Shaitan had kept as a reminder of that first night on Sunside! For the man was none other than Turgo Zolte, not quite so young but just as proud and independent as ever.

  Shaitan laughed and hung him in chains, tormenting him at will from that time forward. But the man had a trick: he could turn pain aside, much like Shaitan himself. And in his fashion, Shaitan liked Turgo for his pride and bravery: the fact that he would not cry out but rather faint from his agonies. So that in a while he took him down and made him his chief lieutenant … which was an error.

  For Turgo was strong in many ways, and had this streak in him which would not accept thralldom to any creature. Let the Lord Shaitan drain him all he would, to the very dregs of his blood, but while he lived he would be his own man. Which were feelings he kept very much to himself; likewise the fact that on Sunside he had been the great vampire hunter, who in twenty
years had learned many a diverse thing about the swamp-born menace. There was, for instance, a white metal, also the root of a certain plant, both of which were common on Sunside and poison to vampires. Perhaps even to Shaitan himself …

  And so Turgo grew close to the Wamphyri Lord Shaitan, who placed his trust in him. And if Shaitan had a brother it might well be Turgo Zolte, except …

  Turgo had no blood-lust. Or if he had, then it was special and deeply hidden …

  Eventually Turgo took Ilya Sul aside and spoke to him. And because Turgo was strong, Ilya listened to his treason—that they should kill Shaitan in the approved fashion, but with the new skills which Turgo had learned. “I’ve made a long knife of silver,” he explained, “to take his head! And I can devise a hardwood spear, with a barbed silver point. Silver will hold Shaitan in place while I rub him with oil of kneblasch root, which will poison his flesh. Then we’ll burn him.”

  “And Shaitanstack will be mine?” Sul was greedy.

  “Of course,” Turgo shrugged, “for you deserve it.” But he intended no such thing; for Sul was contaminated and his blood changed, and in the end he must go the same way as his master.

  Then Turgo sought out Vidra and said much the same things to him, to which the other agreed readily enough. But when Turgo’s back was turned, then the traitor went straight to Shaitan … who listened, smiled and nodded grimly, and did nothing … but merely waited.

  And down in his workshop, forbidden now to all others, he worked with an angry zest upon the flesh of trogs and men, designing a great abomination. And where Shaitan’s cartilage creatures were for the fashioning of useful things, and his flyers for conveyance and scanning out the land around, and while all of his creations served to supplement his works in one way or another—even his flaccid siphoneers and puffing gas-beasts—this new monster writhing in its vat was a thing entirely apart. Indeed, it seemed nothing so much as a death machine.

  It was just such an instrument of death! For fearing the treachery of his thralls, Shaitan had brought intobeing the very first Wamphyri warrior! And fashioned in part from his own metamorphic flesh, the thing was his in every part, mind and body alike. So that when in due time Turgo and the others came to find and destroy him, this was the nightmare he called down upon them. And no one—not even a dozen Turgo Zoltes—could stand against this. His knife, spear, oil of kneblasch, all were useless to him.

  Then Vidra Gogosita cried out to Shaitan, reminding him of his warning. But Shaitan in turn reminded Vidra of his warning, telling him that this was his third and last great treachery.

  Vidra was frozen, astonished! How had he offended?

  His offence lay not in the direction of his treachery, but in that he was treacherous. Also, in the very fact that he had warned of Turgo Zolte’s intended insurrection: Turgo, whom the Lord Shaitan had befriended. That was a bitter taste on Shaitan’s forked tongue, and Vidra had put it there.

  Without further ado he was taken to the Gate and tossed yelping into its glare, protesting his innocence to the last, and so disappearing there …

  As for Ilya Sul: Shaitan drained him of his life’s blood until he was pale and dead, then took him out into the boulder plain where his trog army dug a deep grave in the stony ground. And as time passed and the first rays of the sun shone through the great pass, and as Sul cried out and would rise up, naked and undead, so Shaitan said:

  “I have made you a vampire. The sun is the proof, which burns you even as it burns me. But you need not fear it, for you shall feel its rays never more. You sought to do me great harm, Ilya, but I am a kind master and shall not hurt you in any degree, except that I shall put you from my sight.”

  Then, at his signal, Sul was hurled screaming into the hole, which the trogs filled in with rocks and earth. “There let him lie forever,” said Shaitan, gravely, shielded by his bat-fur cloak from the risen sun. “Even until he stiffens to a stone. So be it!”

  And he turned to Turgo Zolte, who stood there pale, bound and scowling, saying: “You … are a special case. For you were only a man and I liked you. Oh, you suffered some small torment in my care, but I drank not of your blood. As I am what I am, so I allowed you to be as you would be, to see if time could sway you to my cause. It amused me to have a man—not a vampire, nor even a thrall, but a mere man—among them that are mine. Well, my amusement is at an end. I am no longer … amused.”

  They went back to Shaitanstack, where Turgo was thrown into a dungeon to repent a while. A very short while.

  Then the stack’s master came to him and said, “Vidra Gogosita is gone into unknown places, a land beyond. Call it hell, if you will. Ilya Sul cries out from the dark earth, and sometimes it pleases me to listen to him. But upon a time I decreed three punishments, one of which remains untried. You are a hard man, Turgo Zolte, but only a man for all that. If I send you north as a man, then you’ll die—but too quickly! Wherefore I shall first make you a vampire.”

  Turgo was bound to the wall, with his feet dangling inches above the stone floor. Shaitan reached up and cut him down, so that he collapsed in great pain, drained of his strength. Then Shaitan went down on his knees beside him, and gloomed upon him with his scarlet eyes. And his anger was very great. “I treated you as my brother, even my son,” he said. “And you would repay me by killing me! It would be fair and just if I killed you in your turn, but I want you to freeze in the ice and repent your iniquities.”

  Turgo looked at him and knew his time as a man was up. But while he was a man he would never bow to Shaitan. And he said, “Me, your son? You could never father a son, you swamp-thing! You only look like a man, but your tongue is a snake’s, and your blood is the blood of trogs, dupes, thralls. Your familiars are bats full of lice, and the clean sunlight boils your flesh like a snail in its shell. Hah! I, Turgo Zolte, Shaitan’s son? No, for I am the son of a man!”

  The other was no longer capable of controlling his anger; his parasite creature amplified his passion by ten; his jaws cracked open and his great mouth gushed blood from torn gums as teeth grew out of them like bone sickles. Handsome one moment—even with his blood-hued eyes, handsome—in the next he was the embodiment of all horror. And his passion incensed that of the creature within him, which now was him.

  He went to his knees beside his victim, used red-spurting talon claws to tear, prise open his chest, and laid his razor nails upon the pipes of Turgo’s pounding heart. None of which meant anything to Turgo, because he was already in the pit of oblivion. But as Shaitan saw his innards, his blood, the very circuits of his life … something new happened.

  His creature went into spasm within him. It gripped his spine, put out suckers into his veins and organs to revel in his, its, passion. Shaitan coughed, gagged, felt a rising in his gorge, something creeping in the contracting column of his throat. He choked the thing out: a pale sphere no bigger than an eyeball.

  It shimmered; it was alive with flickering cilia; it fell in a froth of spittle to Turgo’s open chest. And in the next moment it turned scarlet … and was gone, soaked into him!

  Shaitan reeled to his feet. He felt dizzy, nauseous; he knew instinctively that this thing—whatever it was—was irreversible as the breathing of swamp-born spores. Which was reason enough to see it out to its end. And so he left Turgo lying there unconscious, with his chest laid open and bloody, and the scarlet vampire egg burrowing in him and hiding in his flesh …

  Turgo Zolte recovered; his torn flesh healed, and quickly; he was Wamphyri!

  And he hated Shaitan as no creature was ever hated before. Shaitan knew it, and would say to him: “But you are my son—my true son—which is why I now name you Shaithar Shaitanson. You are not the ugly spawn of trogs, many of which I have made and put down, but Wamphyri! Oh, you had a father before me, but he made you mortal. And I have made you immortal. Why then do you despise me?”

  “I was what I was,” Turgo would growl in answer, from where he hung in chains of silver. “And I preferred it. You have made me other th
an that—”

  “—More than that!”

  “—Which disgusts me. I spit on your name and won’t take it! Nor will I drink the blood of men.”

  “Oh, but you will, eventually, or wither and die. The blood is the life.”

  “Not my life.”

  “Fool!”

  “Ordure of blood-sucking bats!”

  And always Shaitan would be enraged. But he could not kill him. For Turgo was his son, of a sort.

  In the end he turned him loose, sent him forth, banished him out of Shaitanstack. Not to the north, for he would watch his progress. No, he merely turned him out on to Starside, to make his own way in the world.

  Turgo went to Sunside but could not stay there. The Szgany pursued him; the sun threatened him; his foetal vampire tugged at his will, so that if he stayed he must kill. He did kill—but only to live on beast-blood. Finally he sought out men vampirized in the swamps, recruited them, returned to Starside and gathered together an army of trog thralls. And in thirty years he built Shaith-arsheim, but well away from the aerie of his so-called “father”. And so in the end Turgo did take his great enemy’s name, calling himself Shaithar Shaitanson … by which to remember his “father” the better and hate him all the more.

  By then Shaitan’s house was finished and furnished; his banner—a skull head with horns—fluttered from the high ramparts of his aerie, and he was known on both sides of the mountains as Lord Shaitan of the Wamphyri. Which pleased him greatly.

  Turgo was still a lesser Lord, and much given to nightmares. One night he dreamed he drank Szgany blood, and when he woke up it was true. In the night he had taken from his odalisque, a girl stolen from a Sunside tribe. He could deny it no longer: he was Wamphyri! Then, blaming Shaitan and loathing him more yet, he devised a sigil of his own: Shaitan’s horned skull-head—but split in two halves by a silver axe!