Brian Lumley - Necroscope V - Deadspawn

'It was white, but not a healthy white. The white of hiding in places too dark, like some cavern fungus. It had legs — a great many, I think — with clawed, webbed feet. Its body was fishlike, its head too, with jaws ferocious! But the weapon it bore — '

'A weapon?' Arkis thrust his face forward. 'But you said the thing was mindless. And now… mind enough to carry a weapon?'

The Ferenc glanced at him scornfully, then held up his own talon hands. 'And are these not weapons? This thing's weapon was part of it, fool, just as your own boar's tusks are part of you!'

'Yes, yes, understood,' said Shaithis impatiently. 'Say on.'

Fess settled down again, but his eyes were uneasy, wide in his massive, malformed face. 'Its weapon was a knife, a sword, a lance. But with tines like thorns all down its length, from tip to snout. A barbed rod for stabbing, and once stabbed the victim's hooked, with no way to free himself except tear his own flesh wide open! And at the tip of that bone-plated ram, twin holes like nostrils. But not for breathing…'He paused.

'… For what, then?' Volse could not contain himself.

'For sucking!' said the Ferenc.

'A vampire thing.' Shaithis seemed convinced. 'A warrior, but uncontrolled, with no rightful master. A creature created by some exiled Wamphyri Lord, which has outlasted its maker.' He said these things, but he did not necessarily believe them. No, he uttered them aloud to cover the nature of his true thoughts, which were different again.

Fess fell for Shaithis's ploy, anyway. 'These are possibilities, aye.' The giant nodded. 'Stealthy — sly as a fox, and all unheralded — it crept out from a side tunnel; but when it struck — ah! — lightning moves more slowly. It slid into view and its spear stabbed at Volse three times. The first blow ripped him open through boils and all, and spattered me and the walls of the tunnel with all of his pus, whose amount was prodigious. He was like one huge blister, bursting and wetting everything with his vile liquids. I was drenched. The second thrust hit him while he was still reeling from the first; it almost sawed his head off. And the third: that sank into him — into his heart — where it commenced to suck like a great pump! And while the thing held him upright, impaled on its weapon against the wall, sucking at him, so the creature's saucer eyes fixed me in their monstrous glare. So that I knew I was next.

'That was when I fled.' (And Fess actually shuddered, which amazed Shaithis.)

'You couldn't have saved him?' Arkis sneered, questioning Fess's manhood; a dangerous line of inquiry at best.

But the other took it well. 'I tell you Volse was a goner! What? And so much of his liquids used up, his head half shorn away, and the thing's great siphon in him, emptying him? Save him? And what of myself? You, Diredeath, have not seen this creature! Why, even Lesk the Glut — in whichever hell he now resides — would not stray near such a monster! No, I fled.

'And all the way out of that long, long tunnel, I could hear the thing's slobbering as it drained Volse's juices. Also, by the time I struck light and open air, I fancied it slobbered all the louder, perhaps hot on my trail. In something of a panic — yes, I admit it -1 called a mist out of myself and hurried out onto the slopes and down to the plain of snow and ice. There I stripped off, for Volse's drench was poisonous, and without further pause hurried back here… and found you two waiting for me.

'The tale is told

Arkis and Shaithis sat back, narrowed their eyes and fingered their chins. Shaithis kept his thoughts mainly to himself (though truth to tell there was nothing especially sinister or vindictive about them); but Diredeath, feeling that he still had the Ferenc at something of a disadvantage, was somewhat loath to let the giant so lightly off the hook.

'Times and fortunes change,' the leper's son eventually said. 'I went starving — went, indeed, in fear of my life! — when you and the great wen had the upper hand. But now… you are only one man against myself and the Lord Shaithis.'

'These things are true,' Fess answered, standing up and stretching, and flexing the mighty talons which were his hands. 'But do you know, I can't help wondering what the Lord Shaithis sees in you, leper's son? For it seems to me there's about as much use in you as there was in that mighty bag of slops called Volse Pinescu! Also, and now that I come to think of it, it strikes me I sat still for a good many hurtful slights and insults while relating my story. Of course, I was hungry and cold as death, and a man will sit still for a lot while there's a chance he can fill his belly. But now that my belly's full and I'm warm again… I think you'd do well to back off, Diredeath. Or come to just such an end as your name suggests.'

'Aye,' said Shaithis with a quick nod, coming between them. 'Well, and enough of that. For let's face it, we've all we can handle in the Icelands themselves, without we're at each other's throats, too.' He took their arms and sat down, drawing them down with him. 'Now tell me,' he said, 'what are the secrets of these Icelands? For after all, I'm the newcomer here; but the two of you…? Why, you've explored and adventured galore! And so the sooner I know all that you know, the sooner we'll be able to decide on our next move.'

Shaithis let his gaze wander to and fro, from one to the other, finally allowing it to settle on Arkis's dark and twitching countenance, his coarse lips and the yellow ivory of his tusks. 'So how about it, Arkis?' he said. 'You've had a little less freedom than Fess, it's true, but still you've managed to explore a few ice-castles. Well, the Ferenc has told us his tale of the horror in the cone, so now I reckon it's your turn. What of the ice-aeries, eh? What of these ancient, exiled, ice-encysted Wamphyri Lords?'

Arkis scowled at him. 'You want to know about the frozen ones?'

'The sooner all is known,' said Shaithis, nodding, 'the sooner we may proceed.'

Arkis shrugged, however grudgingly. 'I have no problem with that,' he said. 'So… you want to know what I've seen, done, discovered? It won't take long in the telling, I promise you!'

Tell us anyway,' said Shaithis, 'and we'll see what we make of it.'

Again Arkis's shrug. 'So be it,' he said.

'After the mayhem in The Dweller's garden,' (Arkis commenced), 'when it was seen how The Dweller and his helllander father had destroyed our armies, shattered our centuried stacks and brought our aeries crashing down, there seemed no alternative but flight. The Dweller had our measure; the Wamphyri were fallen; to remain in the ruins of Starside would surely bring these Great Enemies down upon us one last time in a final venting of their furious might.

'However, it is the immemorial right of the fallen to quit Starside and forge for the Ice lands. Thus, in the lull which followed on the destruction of our aeries, those survivors who had the means for flight forsook their ancient territories and headed north. Aye, and I was one such survivor.

'Along with a pair of aspiring lieutenants — ex-Traveller thralls of mine, twin brothers named Goram and Belart Largazi, who vied with each other for my egg — I cleared away the debris of my fallen stack from the deeply buried entrance to subterranean workshops, so freeing one flyer and one warrior kept aside and safe against the event of just such a calamity as The Dweller's victory. These beasts we saddled and mounted (I myself took the warrior, an ill-tempered creature personally trained to my tastes), finally fleeing on a course roughly northward from the wrack and ruin of the aeries.

'Our heading was not true north — perhaps a little west of north — what odds? The roof of the world is the roof of the world; to left or right it is still the roof. We paused only once, where a shoal of great blue fishes had got themselves trapped in the formation of a shallow ice-lake, and there glutted ourselves before proceeding further.