his voice.
But if it was a person, they either didn’t hear him or ignored him.
Larten changed direction. It was probably nothing, a leaf or a scrap of cloth, but hope drove him on. If it was a person, he could hand over the baby. Maybe the boy didn’t have to die with the vampire. Instead of a cave, he might wind up in a cottage with a fire burning brightly in one corner and a pail of warm milk to drink from.
There was only ice in the place where Larten had glimpsed movement. He stood, peering into the snow-riddled darkness, trying not to breathe. For a long time he saw nothing. But then, as the wind briefly died down, he caught sight of it again, a long way off, something green and yellow. He started to cry out, but lost sight of the object once more as the storm revived.
Larten trailed the phantom for the rest of the night. The longer he chased it, the more convinced he became that it wasn’t real. He thought a ghost was leading him to his doom, toying with him cruelly. Or the snow had impaired his vision and the occasional flashes of green and yellow were nothing more than a flare at the back of his eyes. If he’d been alone, he would have abandoned the colours and their mocking promise of hope. But as long as the baby breathed, Larten owed him. If there was even the slimmest of chances that this might prove the saving of the boy, Larten had to seize it.
So he pushed on, through snow, over ice, defying the bitter wind. Cold was setting in again, despite his covering of fur. He could feel himself drawing close to the end. Even vampires had their limits. As plagued as he’d been with sickness recently, it was a miracle he had made it this far. He tried chewing a piece of meat to renew his strength, but it only made him feel sick.
He had bottles of blood, taken from the few sailors he’d spared on the ship, but he was reluctant to drink. Human blood was nectar to a vampire. He could go a long way on a small amount. If he drank now, he’d find the strength to continue, but that would carry him further than he cared. He didn’t want another week of life. So he left the bottles buried deep beneath his shirt and stumbled on.
Shortly after dawn, as he readjusted the fur to protect his face from the weak sunlight, the green and yellow flashes vanished. He had lost track of them many times before, only to catch another flicker out of the corner of his eye a few minutes later, so he waited calmly. But eventually he realised the colours – if they’d existed in the first place – had disappeared for good. He and the baby were alone, stranded and more lost than ever.
Larten sneered at the wind and snow. He should have known better. He had let himself be distracted when all that mattered was finding a cave. There was no hope for the baby in this damned land. All he’d done was waste time and make it more likely that the child would have to rot in the open with him.
“The same old Larten,” he muttered. “Always indecisive. But no more.”
He straightened and let the rough cloak of bloodstained fur drop to the snowy ground. Enough was enough. He was going to do what he should have done as soon as he got ashore — dig a hole and bury the baby alive. Not a pleasant way for the boy to die, but at least his suffering would be short. It would be hard digging through ice and frozen earth, but his vampire nails were a match for the job. Once the grim deed was done, he could go in search of his own death.
Larten stopped halfway into a crouch. The wind had dropped for a second and he’d spotted an opening in a rocky ridge to his left. It looked like the mouth of a cave.
For a long moment Larten stared slackjawed at the ridge. Was this real? If so, perhaps the colours had been too. Maybe the yellow and green flashes had been shades of the baby’s parents, leading Larten to this place, so that their son could be laid to rest in a proper tomb. It was unlikely, but Larten had seen and heard of stranger things.
Sighing, he picked up the fur, covered himself and the boy again, and set off towards the hole in the rock. One way or another he was determined to part ways with the baby at the ridge. Death had been cheated long enough. It was time to pay the grim reaper his due.
It wasn’t a cave. It was a palace of the dead.
Larten couldn’t believe it at first. The opening in the rock was larger than it had looked from afar, but he’d assumed it was no more than an ordinary cave. He entered happily, glad to be out of the bite of the wind, thinking maybe this would be a good place for him to die too. He stood within the entrance a while, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness.
And then he realised it wasn’t that dark. The world behind him was sparkling beneath the rays of the day’s young sun, but the cave ahead was illuminated too. There was a source of light at the other end. Frowning, Larten made sure one of his knives was within easy reach – he felt nervous for some reason – then inched forward, whispering to the baby to keep him quiet.
When the tunnel opened out into a great cavern, Larten forgot about his knife, the baby and everything else, and just stared around in silent, dumbstruck wonder.
Like many of the halls of Vampire Mountain, this monumental cave had started out as a natural feature, but had been worked on by other hands since nature last applied her touch. Rocks had been removed from the ceiling and panels of crystal inserted in their place. That was why the cave was bright, the light of the sun reflecting through the crystals.
Symbols and pictures had been carved into the walls, along with words, row after row of text, encircling the cavern. Larten had never learnt to read, so he wasn’t sure what language it was, but from the different styles he assumed more than one person had worked on the carvings.
There were dozens of ice sculptures dotted around the cavern and hanging by ropes from the ceiling. Some of the sculptures were of objects — a chandelier that looked like it was decorated with candles, a drinking fountain, a four-poster bed, several chairs and thrones. Others were of men, or to be more precise, vampires. Even if there hadn’t been the marks on their fingertips and the scars of warfare on their faces and limbs, Larten would have known. One vampire always recognised another, even if that other was only an icen statue.
The grandest sculpture stood at the centre of the cavern. It was a perfect replica of Vampire Mountain, carved out of ice, twenty feet tall. Larten felt a pang of homesickness, which surprised him — after all, he hadn’t been forced out of the mountain, but had left of his own accord.
At the foot of the giant sculpture sat a long coffin made of ice. Others were spread around the hall, an almost perfect circle of them, only disturbed in two places by a chasm that Larten would soon explore. But first the main coffin. He didn’t want to die before his curiosity had been sated.
The coffin was beautifully decorated with carvings of wolves, bats and bears. Weapons were buried within the ice, a sword, several knives and an axe. They surrounded the body of a naked vampire, one of the finest warriors the clan had ever produced. As Larten drew abreast of the corpse, he peered through the lid of ice at the face of the vampire inside, preserved as if he’d died only a few nights ago. He noted the missing hand and half a missing jaw, but he didn’t need those features to identify the dead General. He’d known as soon as he set foot inside the cavern. Part of him had known when he saw the opening in the ridge from afar. “Perta Vin-Grahl,” Larten sighed, and knelt before the final resting place of the vampire who had passed into the realms of myth hundreds of years before.
When the vampaneze broke away from the clan, Perta Vin-Grahl fought harder than anyone to eliminate the traitors. He hated the breakaway group, but loved the vampire clan even more. When the Princes agreed a truce, Perta couldn’t accept their decision. In order not to clash with his leaders and create more problems, he led a group of similarly inclined vampires away into the frozen wilds to perish out of sight and mind.
