The Ahara Chronicles, Chapter Three: The Nature of Mortality
By Dave Mollett
Three fresh young girls, as nubile and buxom as they should be, sit up against cold stone walls, to which they are tied, and tied together to prevent one from escaping at the expense of the others, in the crypt in the old cemetery. The sixth lord Beavan, attired in moth-eaten old frock-coat and black leggings, as one would expect, stands above them with finger to red lips, appraising.
“Damn that baron Skailurker.” He mutters under his breath. For he is finding it hard to choose between these three darlings. Two of them are to be made companions of, leaving the one remaining for their first meal.
He surveys them with the trained eye of one accustomed to the appraisal of potential suitors for well over a hundred years now, but still he has difficulty. Perhaps, he muses, the standard has increased in recent decades, since it was never this hard. See, regard their differences. Neophyte number one is pert, and wears her bonds well, the silken wrists by silken rope together and held out in front, the noose around the neck like lace; she looks up at him with pearly grey eyes, not pleading at all, resigned to whatever the goddess Kismet has granted her; her thin, white frame is not bony, not skeletal, her bottom exaggerated accordingly, her breasts small and firm. And then eyes follow rope along at the neck to virgin number two, an exotic beauty from across the Siriun sea, perhaps from the rich kingdom of Lirania, has a look of defiance on her face, and tugs at her ropes now and again, and her teeth have become jagged from repeated attempts at biting through those wrist-bonds; when her lord looks down at her she looks up in defiance, her black eyes speaking for her gagged mouth. Her dark brown skin gleams beautifully in the torchlight, her generous curves catching flames in the dark. And the third, she looks up wistfully from time to time, as if pleading; such a temperament is one in which the master does not delight, but she is easily the most comely of the three. Her thighs are well firmed and her calves, in his opinion, have just that right mass of muscle to give her real strength while still looking light, her back is smooth and sculpted in two by her slender spine, and the eyes, blue, blue as the sky he once gazed upon when he was alive. And she also wears her bonds well, he thinks, does not struggle but slips into them, becomes accustomed to them as if she had been fitted into them by her own personal tailor. Yes, he thinks, perhaps I shall be her own personal tailor.
The sixth lord Beavan, after sitting watching the three for several days, makes his decision, and finally bites through the ropes of virgins two and three, making sure to push himself deeper into their necks as he does so, leaving number one for them to feed on for later. He makes a small incision in both his own male breasts, allows the two to feed gorgeously a while from the little red trickles he makes there, then leaves them bound to the wall with the mortal for a few days while the changes take place in them.
“All hail the baron Skailurker!” is the shout from Vaueha, the ninth lord Beavan, and all in his great throne room raise their goblets to the young nobleman and drink, drink of the blessed red nectar.
“The new vampire slayer!” exclaims count Marlowe enthusiastically straight afterwards, downing his goblet in one draught, having been disappointed with only one toast.
“The new vampire slayer!” echo the attendant throng.
Count Marlowe has goblet refilled by Johnson, faithful butler to the house of Beavan. His steely eyes look disapprovingly at the count, who is quite blotto by now, as usual, but he fills the receptacle nevertheless. How long Johnson has been servant to the house is not generally remembered by any guest there, and you the reader will have to wait a while to find out the why of that, but for now we shall say that the steely-eyed servant does not share the enthusiasm of his employer’s guests, since he suspects that the baron Skailurker’s slaying of two beautiful female vampires on midsummer’s eve is not the end of the story.
And of course, since you have read the preceding, you will know his suspicions to be accurate in this matter.
But anyway, I digress.
In fact, this whole chapter is a bit of a digression, but you will notice later that it is a necessary one, since it is required of me that I set the scene for Ahara’s later adventures, in particular, in this instance, to give at least a preliminary account of the decadence which was rife in the court of the lord Beavan just prior to her arrival, and of how the succession of that noble family has proceeded in recent years. You need not worry, of course, for you will recall, I hope, my comment about the velocity at which time passes on the various planes of existence. Such that, while at this present moment in the chronicles, Ahara is about to rush from the Abyss through a weird gate to the prime, months, even years, are passing at her destination.
However, “get on with it!” is the cry I hear from you now, so without further ado I shall.
As you may have gathered, baron Skailurker, a young paladin, who recently inherited his father’s estate and wished to prove himself to a certain young lady as well as to his liege (that is to say, the lord Beavan himself, and his daughter, not in that order), went off to the cemetery one night to slay the vampires which had been rumoured to be living there (although living isn’t the right word, really). Anyway, he was of course successful to a certain extent, since he killed two of them, but what he omitted in his report was that the lead vampire escaped.
Now, unbeknown to him, or to the attendant guests at this time is that the ninth lord Beavan’s daughter (which, as I’m sure you are working out, is Ahara’s aunt, which will make matters interesting later) has been kidnapped by the vampire and turned into his companion (she was number three, in case you were wondering). Which is a fitting revenge, really, when you think about it.
The vampire in question is in fact, to complicate these family relations still further, the sixth lord Beavan, who in his decadent lust for dark sorcery and diabolic power fell foul of the dark side and ended up a vampire himself. This took place in the previous century. On top of this, it appears that in his rage he is not a good judge of whether or not a girl is a virgin, since the lord’s daughter had already had an affair with a certain mysterious extra-planar visitor of whom mention may be made later at this narrator’s discretion, which affair produced a child, who was subsequently, by the butler, Johnson, disguised as the ninth lord’s wife’s son who is thus the heir to the throne, who will play a significant part later on in this saga. Due to various weirdnesses of the affair, this child is now seventeen years old, and his mother about the same. No, I’m not going to explain it. Wait and see. Just accept it for now please.
All you need to know right now is that the ninth lord Beavan is planning a banquet in honour of firstly the baron Skailurker’s vampire slaying and secondly the engagement of said baron to his daughter the aforementioned adultress, father of the heir to the throne and now vampire mistress herself, at which the sixth lord Beavan, the vampire master, is also planning to attend in order to do some slaying of his own and get some more revenge, since he is an egotistical sort and is not content with making the bride an undead horror.
Actually, this is the sort of thing which occurs in Dylath-Leen quite frequently nowadays.
Yes, this episode is perhaps just to give you a taste of the future, of the things to come, and is full of digressions.
In fact there is a shop in Dylath-Leen where you can buy a taste of the future. Naturally it is on Go-By street, and one must ask for it in particular, since it is not on display. In fact there isn’t much that is on display, as it is no ordinary shop. What it purports to sell are magical items of various sorts and sizes, like braziers, gauntlets, rings, etc. But on certain days, when the moon is at its correct phase, you might wander in there one night, for that is the only time it opens, perhaps to escape the stench which the south wind brings, and if you are lucky you might come across, say, a lamp, within which some janni or djinni lurk, trapped and willing to grant you any wish you might care to explore.
Now these creatures are experts at the arts of entanglement. There was one time, when I was…
When I say that Dylath-Leen is a den of iniquity, this is not true of all its inhabitants. Shariz, for example, is a jeweller of the highest standard, whose stall in the bazaar is visited by the highest class of clientèle. And this fellow is quite shy of decadence. Of course, he’ll gladly accept your stolen gems and earrings etc., but that’s hardly the same.
So when the sixth lord Beavan brushed back the beaded curtains and stooped to enter the smoky chamber of commerce, and without hesitation asked the proprietor if he could fashion him a ruby studded set of silver manacles tied to a diamond-set necklace by an onyx chain, Shariz was fairly taken aback. Still, in the face of five thousand pieces of gold, he was not about to refuse. Even in the face of the answer to his question about what it was for (since he was innocent in these matters), which was “I need it so that I can parade a princess at my heel like a slave around the lord’s forthcoming pageant”, our esteemed jeweller merely blushed, and accepted the sack of gold gleefully and without further question. He would have it ready in three days, he said, at which the well heeled vampire was quite satisfied. “Good.” replied the undead monster. “I’ll have two then.” And then left.
We shall be encountering this jeweller, Shariz, many times over the course of these chronicles, once the lady Ahara herself finally shows her gorgeous personage in the city. By the end of this saga, you can be assured, he will not be so innocent as he is at its outset.
Anyway, enough of this facetious scene-setting. The night of the Lord’s banquet drew nigh, and the assorted guests from all surrounding fiefdoms of the black city of Dylath-Leen arrived in their various carriages, and with their various and diverse corteges of hangers on and courtesans.
In the distance, from atop the hill where the cemetery lies, still, mist-shrouded, a dark figure watches the great gothic basalt spires of Dylath-Leen, and surveys this vision field as one possessed. As has been remarked upon before, by another, from a distance Dylath-Leen looks like a bit of the giant’s causeway, but is interspersed here and there by sharp black towers, overlooked by rotten and ruined castles from elder ages, and with the ocean behind it, not black as it should be by night, but a deep blue, a deep blue as befits the sea of Sirius. Upon that sea glide huge black galleons, from no known shore, the owners of which monstrosities are monsters themselves, with the queerest of small feet and beneath their head-dresses - well, the way their turbans are bunched up in two points is in especially bad taste. It is they who bring with them the unholy stench. They would not be tolerated were it not for the massive rubies they bring with them, the likes of which are not found anywhere here on Earth’s dreamlands.
Taking pride of place in the city, however, is the palace of the lord Beavan. This magnificent gothic masterpiece consists of five tall spires which pierce the clouds, connected at varying levels by red granite walkways which criss-cross the edifice like some great spider’s web. The granite is encrusted, and so gleams and twinkles in the starlight.
The sixth inhabitant of that uncommon structure watches as various trains of rich and decadent mortal guests file in through the city’s western gates, and parade up the main thoroughfare towards the palace. Naturally, the local conjuror from the wizard’s and sorceror’s guild has put on a magickal fireworks display to mark the occasion, and all eyes are turned skyward as his mad illuminations light up the night. The vampire tugs on his chain, and his two mistresses, bound to him and to each other, draw closer until they are pressed up tight against his tall frame. The one, formerly a Liranian princess, snarls lovingly at him, and the other, formerly a resident of the palace, looks up at him with pearly red eyes, all innocent and adoring, until her tongue darts out and licks the blood from her master’s teeth. They begin to move.
The servants swim around the grand chamber, their huge silver platters adorned with exotic fruits from far-flung lands, or goblets of fine Liranian wine, or barbecued satyr ribs. Two fat black men from Parg bring in a whole boar on a spit, and set it up in the centre of the room, as another comes in with a huge great scimitar and with one swing slices the roasted thing open, whereupon burst forth hundreds of kiwi-like fruit from the perfumed jungles of Kled. Scantily clad adultresses and half-naked minor nobles wander through this throng, parading their beautiful figures, or lie reclined on chaise-longes being fed grapes or red wine by adoring young men. The lord himself has had a few of them, and who knows how many heirs to his own granted estates he, unknown to himself, fathers.
But still, this, although fairly reminiscent of later Roman orgies, is nought compared to the lovely and wicked things which Ahara will get up to and instigate once she, finally, arrives on the scene.
Into this party the sixth lord Beavan, with newly sired vampires in tow, strolls in, unannounced and with head held aloft, just as his descendent is about to make some tiresome speech concerning the hero of the hour. So you are spared that speech, dear reader.
The hero, being a paladin, senses evil immediately, and spots the vampire straight away. He shouts, and the musicians stop, and the crowd parts, and he draws his longsword, it glowing blue in this dark light, and charges at the undead and uninvited new arrival. The vampire smiles, steps aside, to reveal his two mistresses chained together with their beautiful, exclusively-designed-by-Shariz loose diamond and ruby studded neck and wrist braces, these two beauties smiling and snarling in his wake, and carrying loaded crossbows, now raised in the paladin’s direction, as the crowd of assorted adulterers and heathens gasp, not just at the crossbows but at the fact that these two vampires were once princesses, and one can almost see the ensuing in slow motion as the bolts let fly, cascading through the air towards the onrushing mortal, as he raises his sword to strike, and embedding firmly into his chest. The blow knocks him back off his feet, and he lies there writhing on the ground. He does not have the strength to fend off his two assailants as they throw down their weapons and run up towards him, burying their fangs into his wounds, one on either breast, and sucking up his loving red blood, as their master watches gleefully.
And the crowd, they watch, stunned into hushed motionlessness, as all this takes place. Until, finally waking up to the reality, suddenly they all bolt out of the room, screaming and wondering what their lord had put into their wine this time. Until only the lord is left, sitting on his empty throne, goblet in hand. The two vampire girls look up, still bound together as one, and kiss the spilt bits of blood off each other’s lips. They run their hands through each other’s fine hair, down the napes of their necks, around to the front, and kiss each other again hard as their fingers step downwards across each other’s bare chest. Then they turn their attention to him.
But he is not afraid. He looks at the girls, watching intently, and then at their master, and speaks. Speaks to him.
“Haven’t you ever wondered about the nature of mortality? Do you know, really, what it is that keeps you bound to this plane? I’ve seen things, you know, and I have books in the library, perhaps you have read them, they tell of what happens to us when we die, and where we can expect to go, and what manner of gorgeous things we will enjoy there when we do. Why, you don’t even know where we are now! Don’t even remember your past life, above! No, I am not afraid of death, certainly not of death by your hand. For I know where you will end up after this, once someone slays you, in turn. And someone will, eventually, slay you. And maybe sooner than you think!” He laughs. “I, I for my sins am going to Elysium! But you! Hah! The burning pathways of Baator for you, my friend! The burning pathways of Baator!”
But the vampire is not amused, and replies in his own turn: “Who says I am going to kill you?” he asks him. “Who says I am going to let you die?” smiling.
And he is the only one in the room left smiling at the end of this episode. Even his two mistresses, well, you couldn’t really say they were smiling, despite their obvious enjoyment. Grimacing, perhaps, moaning, certainly, but by no means smiling. By no means smiling.