The Lost Years Vol 1, page 27
part #9 of Necroscope Series
‘Aye, and there were climbers, too,’ Auld John reminisced. ‘But no out this way.’ No, for this was the Cairngorms Nature Reserve: more than a hundred square miles of mountain heights and wilderness; the haunt of deer and wildcats, of foxes, otters, and other creatures of the wild - but rarely men. And it was John’s domain, too. These were the trails where he was a guide, which made it easier to ensure that the most secret of the forest tracks remained secret. Oh, sometimes, even in the winter months, some idiot climber would ignore all the posted warnings to bring his team in here and stray this way… and sometimes they wouldn’t make it out again. It rather depended on where they walked, and especially where they climbed - and also on who else might be climbing there…
Now the ground was rising. At a break in the trees Bonnie Jean and Auld John paused and looked back along the way they’d come, across Loch -an Eilein with its crumbling castle. Bonnie Jean was well acquainted with a local tradition: that the old castle in the lake was much associated with the outlawed son of Robert II, called the Wolf of Badenoch; Badenoch being the area east of the Spey and along the Cairngorms foothills. Ah, but she also knew that ‘the Wolf had been dead for a hundred years before the castle was built; which seemed to her to beg the question, just which wolf was remembered here - and just how well had diverse traditions kept themselves apart? Or how badly?
Among the trees, mossy granite outcrops began to show: ‘the tears o’ the titan mountains,’ as Auld John was wont to call them. And at last they were through the foothills to the base of an almost sheer rock face. And: ‘Granite,’ Auld John informed unnecessarily, ‘an’ more than four thousand feet of it, at that - perpendicular!’ Well, not quite.
He had carried her pack; now he helped to transfer it to her person, tied back her hair with his own clasp, and filled a small pouch at her belt with chalk powder, to keep her fingers dry for the climbing. Finally: ‘Where the going’s rough, use the rope,’ he advised, for he dared not order.
And up she went…
Four thousand feet of granite. But by no means perpendicular, not all of it. In places the going was flat, or very nearly so: scree-filled basins, domed plateaux, rocky re-entries and pine-clad saddles. Oh, in one or two places it was sheer, and in the worst place of all vertiginous to overhanging through five hundred feet of a traverse that would cause the best of climbers to blink and cringe back from it, if only for a moment or two, before the actual assault. But to Bonnie Jean’s mind that was what climbing was all about: the challenge.
Not so much of a challenge to her, though, whose business, whose duty it had been to climb these rocks at least once in a three-month, every season of the year, for the last one hundred and seventy years! Some six hundred and eighty times now - she occasionally lost count -B.J. had pitted herself against these heights, and so knew each crack and crevasse, every cave, ledge and chimney along the way.
She knew where veins of rose quartz shone pink and purple in the grainy granite face, and a chimney where curious smoky crystals or ‘germs’ (cairn gorms) had weathered loose and lay in a neat pile, like a natural cairn. She knew where to avoid the aeries of the great Golden Eagles, especially now, in the mating and nesting season, and used as landmarks the bruised and rusted pitons of yesteryear, more often than not her own, out of times when she’d lacked experience.
And for every thousand feet she climbed, she would move laterally a kilometer or more, ever deeper into the mazy interior of the mountain system, where few climbers had ventured before. But in one hundred and seventy years - especially the last thirty - there had been climbers, some of whom had come too close.
Well, the Cairngorms were notoriously unforgiving mountains, and in places they were entirely inaccessible. Some bodies had never been, never would be discovered. But Bonnie Jean knew where the bones of a handful of them lay, at least; knew, too, what was become of their flesh…
Some two hours after midday, she rested on a ledge overlooking a dark ravine with a waterfall and white water that rushed down to the swollen,’ near-distant Spey. Almost all the snows of winter had melted down into the earth and the rocks now, to filter their way into falls and cataracts. The heavy rains of the last few months had added to the tumult, and the tumbling tributary four hundred and fifty feet below sent up spray to dampen the rocks. Higher up, a series of caves opened into a far greater cavern system: the lair itself.
B.J. could have - perhaps should have - chosen the ‘easy’ route into the lair: up onto the plateau’s shattered roof, and down through any one of several shafts into the dusty, rubble-strewn heart of the place. But this way had been a challenge, albeit a small one, for here the rock was rotten and given to crumbling. Thus it presented her with an opportunity to test secondary skills, this time with the generally despised apparatus of the professional climber.
And having eaten just a bite, and sipped a little water, then - for the first time during her climb - pitons and hammer, karabiners and fine, light nylon rope came into play. She used them all to form a hoist, then cranked herself up onto the last ledge, where a treacherously fractured ‘window’ opened into the gloom of the lair. And leaning back with her feet on the ledge and every ounce of her weight suspended on the rope, she looked down through all that deadly height to where fangs of rock were blackened by the torrent, and the gorge was a snarling gash of a mouth more terrible than any dark beast’s—
—Almost.
And so into the lair, which for all B.J.‘s previous visits was at least as fearsome a step as the actual climb itself…
Once inside, after a brief scramble through shrouding cobwebs, accumulated dust and sharp, stony debris, B.J. wasted no time. With the ease of any night-sighted animal and most wild creatures, her eyes very quickly adjusted to the gloom. Had it been pitch-black, they would have served her just as well. So that even as she shrugged out of her harness, she was able to gauge fairly accurately her location in this cavern system which she had explored so many times before. She knew where she was, and therefore where He was.
And between them, maybe two hundred feet of pitfalls and crumbling pathways, jumbles of fallen, hexagonal pillars, and dizzy causeways over crevasses which, for all she knew, might well go down to the roots of the mountains. On this one level she had explored the lair, for this was His place. But as for other possible levels: she didn’t know, couldn’t say.
And apart from the natural obstacles of this great cavern, there was one other thing standing between B.J. and her Master. A Thing, yes, and she shuddered at the thought of it… even the ‘wee mistress’ herself.
It was something of His, she knew, but still it was beyond reason. Beyond her reason, anyway. But it was sentient; it knew things, sensed things. It would know she was here, and it would stir when she passed by. And it would know why she was here… that it, the Thing itself, was one of her reasons. For just as B.J.‘s Master hungered, so did His creature…
That would be the part she disliked, the one aspect of her duty that bothered her. Her Master’s needs were one thing, but the needs of His creature were something else. She… disliked feeding it, even with beast’s blood. Also, she never failed to be amazed by the fact that so little could satisfy so much. But would it be the same when the Thing was up? Surely He intended to bring it up, else what was its purpose? But Bonnie Jean had never inquired about it; it wasn’t her business to question but to guard and inform, as it was her duty to obey.
The place was unquiet; only take a single step away from the crack of light gleaming through the dusty, irregular shape of the ‘window,’ and silence fell as if someone had switched it on - or switched all sound off -except for the echoes of the lair itself: the dripping of water in various unseen locations, and B.J.‘s own breathing, her own muffled movements. Quiet, yet unquiet… But by no means a contradiction of terms. The tumult of the gorge was dead here; it couldn’t find its way in; something shut it out.
There was some light, at least; rays or curtains of dim light filtering dustily down from various faults in a ceiling of ill-defined height and extent: the shafts through which she might have descended, if she’d chosen a different route. Light in this place, anyway, but not where He lay. For B.J.‘s Master could no longer suffer direct sunlight. The moon was His light, and the full moon His glory! And it would be the same for B.J. in time to come, for she too was a moon child. So far as possible, she shunned the sun even now, though as yet it wouldn’t kill her - not in her human form, at least. And she had often wondered: why here? Why build a lair in this high place, when Radu might have found Himself a place of darkness utter? But as she knew well enough, it had been a matter of circumstance, not choice. And anyway, He had been used - in a different age, in a different world - to a lofty manse indeed. But then, He’d been used to many things in His time…
Carrying her pack slung over her shoulder, and following a trail of poorly arranged ‘flagstones’ long since fallen from the ceiling, Bonnie Jean set out through the maze of stony rubble. In places the path was obscured, almost obliterated, where recent falls had crashed down and caved-in the paving stones or hurled them aside, forming angular granite piles and jumbles of rock which were almost crystalline in their nitre-fused shapes. But ‘recent’ in B.J.‘s terms meant other than it would to persons of normal longevity. Indeed, it meant any time in the last ten decades! Still, it was as well that her Master’s time would soon be up - that He would soon be up - for this place wouldn’t last forever. And in this modern world… well, “repairs’ were out of the question! Oh, there remained a handful of thralls in various parts, and B.J.‘s girls, of course, but getting them up here safely and secretly would be nigh impossible, and the task itself utterly beyond them. This place had been ‘built’ before B.J.‘s time, and the thralls who had built it for Him had died at their work. But in that bygone time all the land around was a wilderness, when prying eyes were few and far between…
Thus her thoughts ran as she approached the place of the Thing, that dark cave to one side of the main cavern, where the light never reached and the silence was near absolute; the physical silence, anyway. But the atmosphere, or aether - if there really were such a thing - seemed to seethe here; she felt the oppressive weight of the place almost tangibly upon her shoulders.
B.J. was no mentalist (it was only the awesome strength of her Master’s sendings that made possible communication with Him, let alone His creature!), but as always in this place, so close to the Thing, she sensed emanations of weird entity, the foetal fumblings of that which waited to be born. And because it was her duty, despite the fact that she hated it, still she turned from the path, however briefly, entered the cave of the Thing, and thus ‘announced’ her presence.
And as her eyes adjusted to the greater darkness, so the aura of awful sentience - of a vacant yet savage awareness - grew more tangible yet… and the sure knowledge that she in her turn had been recognized.
An outline or silhouette took shape in the darkness, one which radiated its own almost imperceptible red glow, like the embers of an almost-dead fire in a dark room. It was a cylindrical shape formed of hexagonal granite columns standing on end like the staves of a barrel. At their bases these pillars were buried in rubble and buttressed with boulders to stop them toppling outwards; they formed the walls of a massive container or vat. But several of them were cracked, and others were slightly splayed or stood askew, or had been forced apart by the geological stresses of the mountains, allowing trickles of a resinous sealant or preservative to escape from within and form puddles hardening to amber at the bases of the surrounding boulders.
B.J. approached the vat, reached out tentatively at first, but finally placed her hands upon two of the columns. The stone was cold to her touch; it shouldn’t convey anything but that it was stone; nothing of the nature of its contents should be apparent. But something was apparent. And B.J. thought: Ifs like listening to the sea in a sounding shell. Except the sea has an entirely natural sound, with nothing of sentience and entirely oblivious to the rest of the world around it. It can’t respond, except to ignore.
But this Thing, her Master’s creature, was not oblivious. And even as she listened to it, so it ‘listened’ to her. And:
Thud! (Dully, like some far, faint vibration, felt in her fingertips).
She had felt, heard or sensed it before and didn’t recoil. In another five minutes, or fifteen, or twenty, if she cared to stand here so long, she would hear it again.
The slowed-down, almost-stilled, hibernating heartbeat of the Thing. No, not hibernating (she corrected herself) but suspended, indefinitely extended… waiting! And alive, oh yes!
Alive, in there, Her Master’s future… what, guardian? Something to take her place, when He was up again? That was a thought she had thought before, even scarcely daring to think it. His own fierce creature, to guard Him in His lair…
Thud!
And this time, because she stood there rapt in thought - and perhaps unworthy thoughts, at that, because He had assured her often enough that she would always have a place with Him - Bonnie Jean was startled and snatched back her hands.
Was it intelligent, like Him, she wondered? Would it perhaps be jealous of her, this unborn Thing?
She moved quickly to the side of the stone vat, climbed a stairway of stacked slabs, finally gazed down into the solidified murky swirl of a mainly opaque, luminous resin reservoir. And with eyes feral in the darkness, she kneeled at the rim to peer through the crusted surface deep into the looser liquids beneath, at the foetal Thing that was curled there -
—That massive wedge of a head as seen in profile. Those long dog jaws. The dark orbit of an eye big as a platter!
The last time she was here, its heartbeat had been slower, and the great lid of its eye entirely closed, asleep. But now:
Thud!
The Thing quickened beyond a doubt, and the lid of its eye seemed gashed where a crack of yellow light glowed from within, brighter than its protective resin sheath…
Bonnie Jean stood up, descended the stairs, left the cave for the less fearsome labyrinth of the cavern complex, and finally ran breathlessly to her Master…
… To Radu Lykan.
PART THREE
VAMPIRE GENESIS
I
SHAITAN: HIS RISE AND FALL.
CAMS SAPIENS: THE WEREWOLF CONNECTION.
Shaitan the Unborn came out of the vampire swamps, oh, a long time ago. The first and worst of the Wamphyri - the first of the Great Vampires - Shaitan was the source of undeath.
He came out of the west and saw that the darkness of Starside was good, but he felt through the thinning mists the withering rays of a hot sun blazing through the high passes of the barrier mountains; it turned his skin rough and red. So he took the left-hand path round the mountains, and came upon the boulder plains of gaunt and gloomy Starside whereon dwelled nothing of any threat; while southwards lay the sun which was injurious (and possibly even fatal) to him and all such as he would bring into the world. From which time forward he would always choose a dark and sinistral path through life…
When he knew a strange dark thirst, he drank of the sweet water tumbling down from the mountains; it quenched his thirst but did not truly satisfy him. When he felt a strange dark hunger, he ate grasses, herbs, some bitter fruits. These served to fill him but the hunger would not pass. It was the hunger of an evil spore, a leech, which had taken root within Shaitan, body, mind, and soul… if there had been a soul.
Shaitan was unclothed but unashamed, for he knew that he was beautiful; and he would display his beauty. So he compared himself to the beasts of the wild, of the swamps, foothills and mountains, and saw that their beauty came from their innocence. For which reason it was useless to display himself or even impose his will upon them. Unintelligent, innocent, they could not deny that he knew best; they would bend to his will too easily. Wherefore he would impose that will upon others of his own design. Except… where were they? Travelling east, he looked for them but discovered them not yet a while. And in his loneliness he took bats for familiars, whose flying skills he envied.
Eventually he came upon trogs, cavern un-men and -women, who were scarcely beautiful and not greatly like unto himself; but Shaitan corrupted them anyway, filling them with his vices, and making them sick and dead and undead. He took trog women to his bed, and there was issue. Such ‘children’ as were born were hideous, insane, ever hungry! They suckled blood, not milk, and grew too fast. Their mothers lay on them to smother them. Shaitan devoured one, in order to taste of its flesh. It satisfied the hunger of his leech… barely, for a while.
So then, with the bats and the trogs Shaitan had gathered minions unto himself. But was this all there was? The parasite within him was mature now; it desired more; it lived on Shaitan’s blood as he lived on the blood of others, but was not satisfied with its host’s regimen. And so he would seek out other men, on whom to impose his will. Except he sometimes wondered: whose will was it? His or his parasite leech’s? And from then on the question of free will, and integrity of spirit, became matters of great importance to Shaitan, even assuming dimensions of obsession in him. And in all subsequent vampires.
The trogs likened Shaitan to certain ‘men’ on the far side of the mountains, in Sunside. He determined to conquer Sunside, which would be as subtle as all his works. First he would approach the sunsiders as their friend, later as their master.
