The Source

Vyotsky's eyes were wide now and his lips trembled to match his straining arms.

'Alas,' said Shaithis, 'but I no longer have a warrior and so can't keep my promise. But I would, you may believe me! Except, of course, we do not know that you were fleeing. Ah, but I also remember telling Gustan that he was to carry you with him upon his flyer when we went to sack The Dweller's garden. Could it be that Gustan forgot my command? A shame, for I so wanted you to be there - to witness the way I would have dealt with the woman Zek and the man Jazz. On the other hand... perhaps you were hiding, waiting for us to leave before making a break for it?'

Vyotsky managed to shake his head in silent denial. 'I... I...' he stuttered.

'Oh, indeed!' Shaithis nodded, smiling hideously. 'I... I...' And as his smile once more slid from his face he reached down a second time into the space where the Russian had been trapped - and this time he drew out Vyotsky's SMG, and a leather sack containing provisions.

Again Vyotsky moaned out load, closing his eyes and swaying where he sat racked with pain. But Shaithis only burst out laughing, slapping his thigh as at some rich joke - then abruptly stopped laughing, reached out with his gauntlet and slapped Vyotsky across the knees. For Shaithis - by his standards - the blow was the merest tap, light as the touch of a feather. It ripped open Vyotsky's combat-suit trousers, tore away his kneecaps in a red welter. He did faint then, toppling sideways off the flat stone. But Shaithis caught him up before he could further injure himself. Then -

Without further pause the vampire tossed him over his good shoulder - and proceeded with him down into the black bowels of his workshops...

Below, it was not as bad as Shaithis had thought it might be. Parts of the stone and cartilage ceiling had collapsed here and there, and several of the protoplasmic things in their deep pits had been blocked in, so that their mindless cries were made faint by masses of fallen stone, but in the main all was in order. The larger vats were undamaged, and Shaithis's new flyer uninjured. It mewled when it saw him, bending its glistening, spatulate, armoured head in his direction. Soon the liquids in its vat would all be absorbed into it, and then its skin would form into membranous leather. After that a training flight, and finally Shaithis would be ready to undertake his great journey northwards.

Before then, however, there was one last task he must perform, one final act of vengeance in this place. He had admitted to the hell-lander Karl Vyotsky that his warriors were all dead. Well, and so they were - but that was not to say he couldn't make another. Indeed, the making of warriors and other beasts was an art of the Wamphyri, and certainly Shaithis was a great artist. Moreover, he had the necessary materials right here. Ah, but this one would be the warrior!

In a recent experiment, Shaithis had created a small creature of such primitive slyness and insidious vileness that his creation had surprised even him. The small mind of a trog, with some subtle alterations, had governed the thing - if governed was the word - while its principal physical component had not been man-flesh but that of wild creatures. The tissues of a great bat and a feral wolf had featured strongly, together with protoplasmic flesh from Shaithis's pit-things. But twice the creature had escaped, which in the end prompted him to put it down and have done with it.

Indeed, it would not have been prudent to let it live -not here, anyway - not and chance the other Wamphyri Lords learning of it. For while Nature often gave wild creatures a vampire egg, it was generally deemed unseemly for the Wamphyri themselves to perform such experiments.

And yet Shaithis had done just that. Slighted by a lesser Lord, he'd challenged and killed him, and so earned the right to burn his remains. Instead he had brought the body here to his workshop, cut out the vampire within and transplanted its egg into his creature! But when he saw how uncontrollable was the thing, then he'd sent it through the Gate. It had seemed to him a grand jest: that his creature should take its own brand of hell with it into the hell-lands.

Ah, but that was before he realized just how hellish the hell-lands were! Shaithis little doubted now but that all his troubles stemmed from that unknown place beyond the shining sphere-gate; perhaps even The Dweller himself had his origin there. Which was why he would now create the WARRIOR of all warriors! And, who could say, perhaps it might even be the last warrior? Aye, and when they saw what he had sent them, then the wizards of that world would think again before sending their hirelings adventuring here.

So thinking, Shaithis tossed Karl Vyotsky's limp form down onto the great slab of stone which was his workbench, then went to fetch the other ingredients of his work and certain instruments with which to fuse them...

It was a long job; sunup came and went, and a new sundown was begi

In the interim he had tested his flyer; the beast was better than any before it, fit steed for the long journey ahead. First, however, Shaithis would gaze once more upon the face of that mother of all treachery, the beautiful face of the Lady Karen. He flew to her aerie and without

hostility began circling it, calling to her in the way of the Wamphyri until she came to a window.

'So, Karen,' he called, from where he rode a gusting wind, 'then you are the last. Or maybe the first? Still, no matter, we are all undone because of you.'

'Shaithis,' she answered, 'of all the great Wamphryi liars, you are the greatest. You even lie to yourself! You blame me for your troubles, or whoever else it takes your fancy to blame, when in fact you know that you alone have brought the Wamphryi to this end. And in any case, what care you for them? Nothing! You care only for the Lord Shaithis.'

'Ah, you're a cold, cruel creature, Karen!' he nodded and scowled at her across an abyss of air.

'Merely accurate,' she answered. 'Do you think I did not know your plans for me? The truth is that you underestimated, Shaithis. You underestimated me, The Dweller, everything. You were so bloated up with your own schemes and lust for ultimate domination that you considered yourself beyond defeat. Well, and now we see how wrong you were.'

He flew closer, all of his great fury visible in his partly-healed face; until she cautioned: "Ware, Shaithis! I have a warrior. It's but the work of a second to launch him/

He drew back. 'Aye, I have seen it. But do you call that a warrior? I doubt if it would have my measure, not if I was the whole man. Which I will be, one day.'

'Are you in a position to threaten?'

He glared at her, saw that a second face had appeared at her window. 'Ah, and you even managed to save a companion for yourself!' he said. 'A lieutenant lover to warm you through all the lonely time ahead, no doubt? But ... I don't recognize this one. Now tell me, who is he?'

'I speak for myself,' Harry Keogh answered. 'I'm a hell-lander, Shaithis. The father of the one you call The Dweller.'

Shaithis gasped, drew back further yet. But in a little while his courage returned. From what he knew of The Dweller and his sort, if they were desperate to have him dead, then he would be dead! Perhaps they were satisfied with what they had done. Curiosity overcame all, and Shaithis flew his beast closer. Tell me one thing,' he called out. 'Why did you come here? To destroy the Wamphryi?'