Necroscope V: Deadspawn

'I've noticed,' said Shaithis to the others, almost conversationally, 'how the small albinos come and go from the west. So I say we stick to the ledge and see where it goes.'

'No!' the Ferenc growled. 'Something's wrong, I'm sure of it.'

Shaithis looked at him, then at Arkis. 'Do you wish to go down again? Have we wasted all our time and effort? Has a cloaking vampire mist entirely unnerved you? But our enemy wouldn't have issued it unless we had unnerved him!'

Arkis said, 'I'm with the Ferenc.'

Shaithis shrugged. 'Then I go on alone.'

'Eh?' The Ferenc stared hard at him. 'Then be sure you go to your death.'

'How so? Is this the place where Volse was taken?'

'No, that was on the other side, but…'

'Then I'll take my chances.'

Arkis said, 'Alone?'

Shaithis shrugged. 'Which is worse, to die now or later? Better to do it here, I think, locked in combat, than locked in the ice with something drilling its way to my heart.' And then, suddenly, as if he'd run out of patience, he hissed at both of them: There are three of us, remember! Three 'great' — hah! — Wamphyri Lords against… what? An unknown being who quite obviously fears us almost as much as we — as you — fear him.' And he turned away from them.

'Shaithis!' the Ferenc called after him in a tone half-angry, half-admiring.

'Enough,' Shaithis snapped over his shoulder. 'I've done with you. If I win through all is mine. And if I lose — well, at least I'll die as I've lived, Wamphyri!'

He continued along the ledge, and without looking back sensed the eyes of the two following him. Then: 'We're with you,' came the Ferenc's final decision, but still Shaithis stared straight ahead. And at last he heard Arkis's voice, too, calling out: 'Shaithis, wait for us!'

He did no such thing but hurried on that much faster, so that now they must scramble to catch up. And with the pair hot on his heels so he came upon the mouth of the first cave even as Shaitan had forewarned. Here, because it would be expected of him, Shaithis paused. Breathing heavily, the others saw the dark cavern entrance into which he concentrated his gaze.

'A way in, d'you think?' said Arkis, but none too eagerly.

Shaithis stared harder yet into the cave's gloomy interior, then made a show of carefully backing away from it. 'Obviously so,' he said. 'Perhaps too obviously…' And to the Ferenc: 'What say you, Fess? For it's amply apparent that the cold of these climes has focused your awareness to a fault. Is this a safe way to go or not? Myself, I think not. It seems to me that far back in the cavern something stirs. I sense a thing of great bulk but limited intelligence, yet stealthy, too.' Which was, of course, the Ferenc's own description of a sword-snout. And as Shaithis had hoped might be the case, it put a picture of just such a creature into the giant's mind.

Fess thrust forward his great head into the cave, glared into its depths and wrinkled his snoutlike nose. And, 'Aye,' he growled in a little while, 'I sense it, too. And indeed this could well be a way in, for the cone's master has guarded it with a bloodbeast.'

Shaithis nodded. 'Or maybe with the bloodbeast?'

'Eh?' said Arkis.

'Perhaps he has only the one creature,' said Shaithis. 'For if there were a pair, then Fess here might well have been taken at the same time as Volse.'

'But what does that matter now?' Fess shrugged. 'Even on its own, this thing is a monster. Are you suggesting we might go against it? Madness! One of us would surely die — possibly two, even all of us — or at least end up sorely wounded before this thing succumbed. I saw it strike three times in as many seconds, unerringly, and ram Volse through and through like a fish on a Traveller's spear. Why, he didn't even know what hit him!'

But Shaithis shook his head. 'No, I'm not proposing to take it on; quite the opposite. What I'm saying is this: if there's only one such beast and it's here, then we go in by some other route.'

'What?' Arkis scowled. 'And they come thick and fast, these entrances and exits, do they?'

Shaithis shrugged. 'So it would seem. The tunnel where Volse was taken. The cave you thought you saw back there on the lava-cliff. This dark entrance here before us. Now listen: the master of the cone sent a mist to confuse us, didn't he? But not to keep us from this cave, not if this is where he's stationed his sword-snout. So… perhaps there's another entrance close by.' He gave a sharp nod. 'I say we continue to follow the ledge, a little way at least. Then, even if it comes to nothing, at least we'll have explored this part of the face to the full.'

'Fair enough,' said the Ferenc. 'No argument here. As long as you're not asking me to go in there!'

Arkis growled, 'Then let's get on. We waste time with all this talk and conjecture.' He started off, in the lead, and the Ferenc followed on. And now Shaithis brought up the rear.

Overhead the small cloud had snowed itself out; the aurora writhed and the stars gave the icy curve of the world's horizon a blue sheen; Shaithis sensed the vampire awareness of his two 'companions' focused ahead, leaving him free to converse with Shaitan. And: There, he sent a tight-guarded thought. And how does this formation suit you? Also, what was the idea of the small snow storm? I thought you were eager for them, yet there you go trying to frighten them off.

The answer came back at once:

First, your formation suits both of us very well. Second, the snow served to confuse and distract them — especially the giant. Now listen and I'll describe your route from this point forward. Very soon now you'll come to a place where the rock is riven into deep crevices. One such crack has been filled in with lava which forms a floor. Follow this and it will lead you direct to my abode at the hollow core. As for your companions, alas their time runs very short. Indeed they haven't enough of it to find their way here. Not on their feet anyway.

There was nothing of humour in Shaitan's mental voice, only an icy resolve. Shaithis made no further comment; and anyway Arkis, heading the column, had come to a halt. Fess joined him, then Shaithis.

Before them the surface of the ledge and the near-vertical face of the cliff were split with deep fissures a full pace in width. Arkis looked at the others. 'What now?'

'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