Ah, but there had been changes. He was still bearded, and shortish in the limbs and trunk as before, but much of the fat was gone from him now so that he no longer appeared squat. He was a leaner Dezmir Babeni, certainly, but just as surely the same man. And he was no longer dead.
This was a new thing. Before Babeni, Shaitan had never so depleted a man, or even a trog, as to kill him. The creatures who were his thralls had not died but lived only to accommodate Shaitan's needs. This man, however, had died. Babeni was dead… or undead?
'Master! Master!' the young Gogosita came ghosting to Shaitan, hands fluttering. 'Take me back, I beg you! I have nowhere else to go, nowhere else to be.' Shaitan did not even look at him but put him aside. For his gaze was rapt upon Babeni. And Babeni's rapt upon him, and full of hatred!
The undead man growled and lurched forward, his pale grey hands reaching, his eyes like sulphur pits, lit with fire in their cores. 'You!' he accused, his voice harsh and rasping. 'You, Shaitan, you did this thing to me. And now this youth tells me you've done other things to my daughter!'
He bore down on Shaitan, grasped him, went to fasten his teeth in his neck. And Shaitan saw how those teeth were grown into fangs! Stunned until now, immobilized, finally he summoned his vampire strength to throw the other off, then leaped on him to choke him. Babeni's grey face turned purple under the crushing power of Shaitan's hands, but still he fought back and his body heaved with an impossible strength.
Amazed, Shaitan knocked Babeni's head again and again upon the hard and stony ground, until the skull at the back was soft and dented. Finally the other quit fighting and lay back. But he was not dead and his limbs twitched, and his yellow eyes followed Shaitan wherever he moved.
And Shaitan looked at him and thought: The strength of your body is second only to mine, and its wounds heal even as fast. In relieving you of your frail human life, I have given you this unlife. However unwittingly, it seems I have bestowed certain powers upon you! And yet you are not my thrall and will not accept me as your master. Wherefore I must kill you, lest you become a rival. But how may I kill you, if you are undead?
Babeni was even now taking up a jagged rock, staggering to his feet, mewling brokenly as he lurched towards Shaitan. Spittle dribbled from a corner of his mouth and his head and neck were soaked in blood; because of his damaged brain, he came on lopsidedly, like an idiot. Shaitan stepped aside, tripped him, looked for a large stone with which to finish it. But:
'How may I kill you?' he asked out loud, as yet again the mewling thing clambered upright.
'Master,' Vidra Gogosita clawed at his arm. 'I know how to kill him!' For Vidra had sat at the campfire one time when Turgo Zolte had been telling his stories.
'Oh?' Shaitan looked at him, at the same time avoiding the staggering cripple. 'And would you redeem yourself? Well, and maybe you have your uses after all. Say on then: what will it take to put him down?'
'A stake through his heart,' Vidra gasped. 'To fix him in place. Then cut off his head. Finally, burn him — all of his pieces!'
'All of that?'
Vidra nodded. 'This is how the Szgany Hagi will deal with you, if they catch you!'
Shaitan nodded. 'Indeed? Then we must test this thing. You shall build me a fire.' And to Ilya Sul where he fended off the thing which had been Dezmir Babeni: 'Put your bolt through his heart.'
The other obeyed and Babeni was knocked down, stretched out upon the ground, with only the flight of the bolt sticking up from his chest. He bled the merest trickle, even when Sul took a knife and commenced sawing through his neck, its pipes and the bones of his spine. Through all of which the undead man's limbs jerked and twitched, and air whistled in and out of his chomping jaws, until the pipes were severed and the head detached.
Then they burned him, but even burning he thrashed about while his fats were rendered down…
Observing all, Shaitan nodded again. 'And this is how they would deal with me? Hah! But if you think he died hard, then you don't know the half of it. The Hagi shall not catch me, Vidra Gogosita; and if they do, I will not be the one to die.'
Meanwhile, Ilya Sul had built the fire to a roaring blaze. 'I… I can't seem to warm myself,' he complained, examining his cold grey arms.
'I am the same,' Vidra agreed. 'For we have known the kiss of the great Wampir, our master Shaitan.'
And again Shaitan was interested. 'Wampir?'
Vidra explained, repeating all that he had heard from Turgo Zolte. And when he was done:
'Ah, no!' said Shaitan. 'For the wampir is a common bat, a dull creature which is my Starside familiar. But I am uncommon. Wherefore I shall be called… Wamphyri! Aye, for I like the sound of it. The great Lord Shaitan, first of the Wamphyri! So be it.'
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:
