the lesser stacks and ate them up in a veritable frenzy of conquest. Until shortly, only two camps left: Shaitan on the one hand, and his Great Enemies on the other.
The stacks under Shaitan's control were many; flesh of his flesh, his own bloodsons and daughters, inhabited them. But one of these (Shaitan's 'true' son, or egg-son, the once-Turgo Zolte, long returned from banishment and grown mighty in Starside) joined now with his father's foes in the longest and bloodiest bloodwar so far ... which in the end Shaitan won.
Then the reckoning, when Hengor Hagi, Klaus Lankari, and Thereza Lugosi were buried alive out on the boulder plains, to stiffen to stones, and Turgo Zolte was banished into the northern Icelands; except he reneged on his punishment and fled east over the Great Red Waste, out of his father's jurisdiction, and presumably to his death. And the Drakuls, Nonari the Gross, and Radu were hurled, along with a handful of surviving thralls and supplicant Szgany, into the Hell-lands Gate; many of whom resurfaced in a land caled Dacia by its Roman overlords, on a great river caled the Danuvius, in a world an entire dimension's remove from Starside, in the year AD
They emerged close to a harbour, where Roman merchants and the soldiers who protected them, along with local Dacians, gathered to buy or barter, and to trade in slaves. And because they arrived by the light of the ful moon it was a joyous time for Radu, when he and his ran free and amok among the sparse local populace ...
Eventually, the Drakuls and theirs went up into the mountains (later the Carpathians), to find or build an aerie; Nonari 'the Gross' Ferenczy fled east from Radu's wrath and took a new name; and Radu crossed the river with his followers, who spread out into al the lands around. And in an age of legends, it was the beginning of a new legend - indeed, of several. The legends of the vampire and the werewolf, and the dark things of night.
As for the place of Radu's resurgence, the barter-camp of the Romans and Dacians, it would have many names down the centuries. But to the superstitious people of that region, who had long memories, it would always be known as Radujevac:
'Where Radu came forth,' of course ...
DREAMS IN RESIN
V
DREAMS IN RESIN
Radu dreamed his olden, less than vivid dreams, and strove to reinstate, restructure them, in the eye of memory. He dreamed of ages past and of the life he'd known then, and of the many lives he'd consumed since then. Crimson dreams of his genesis as a man in a far vampire world; of his monstrous conversion into something other than a man during his time of banishment; of his everlasting (and soon to be on-going) revenge on those who had dared to rape and ruin what little he had loved.
Less than vivid, these dreams of his, aye - unless they were recounted, reinforced, revisited time and again to bring them into nightmare definition in a yet more nightmarish mind. For time has the power to blur and even erase, and these were things that Radu desired to remember forever. During his sleep of centuries they had been his one recourse, his only means of keeping his hatred alive while he waited out his time undead.
He recalled names out of the fading past, names that were cursed for all time to come. Such as the Zirescus: Giorga, Ion, and Lexandru - and the Ferenczys, Lagula and Rakhi, once Lords in Olden Starside. Except all were dead in another time, even another world. Dead by his hand, aye! And Radu relished resurgent memories of how he had dealt with them who had borne those names, and how he would next deal with any survivor, any descendant, when once more he was up and abroad in this new world where his dreams would become the new reality.
True, the resolution of ancient blood-feuds was but a very small part of the overall schemes he'd schemed in his immemorial sleep ... but a delicious part! And it would be for any survivors just as it had been for their ancestors, or worse.
His 'immemorial' sleep ...
Well, immemorial to those he'd left behind - Szgany supplicants, thralls to remember and restore him when his time was nigh - but not to him. For despite the fact that Radu's dreams and memories required constant restoration, still they remained his one true anchor on the dimly