the brothers gave him, speak if or when spoken to, masturbate at his own peril. The sensitivity of the brothers, and especially of Daham Drakesh, was frightening. They could smell sex; they seemed to have the power to smell the very thought of it!
But he had been cleansed of outside influences, his body reduced and refined, his mind numbed. And Daham Drakesh - who was skiled in the arts of seeing without being seen, of knowing without being known, and of hearing without being heard - found him pleasing.
Drakesh took pleasure in purity and innocence, perhaps because he had never had any of his own. But he knew where to get it.
The High Priest took his time arriving at the room of the rite. First he visited the cavern of the creatures: hybrid vampire things waxing in their vats. They would be warriors eventually, the first of many. Then, as it had been in Sunside/Starside, so it would be here. And every high place an aerie, each deadly day a time of curfew, and the nights ... ah, the nights would belong to Daham Drakesh! In five, ten, fifteen years? A long time, aye, but what is time to the Wamphyri?
The cavern of the creatures: no one was allowed down here but Daham Drakesh himself and a handful of his lieutenants. If any common thrall should enter this place, he would be fortunate indeed to leave. Drakesh looked down into a vat, its gelatinous surface surging with long, slow ripples. They waxed, his beasts; they could be brought on quickly, if need be. Or they could lie here another hundred years, waiting to be born.
Then he looked at the trough-like conduits that serviced the vats, rust coloured runnels carved in the rock, umbilical sluices to feed the foetal abnormalities being bred here. That fool in Chungking, Colonel Tsi-Hong, would have Drakesh breed human warriors. Wel, and so he would - so he was, as witness the brotherhood - but Tsi-Hong knew nothing of such as these.
As the Lord of vampires inspected his vats, so there had commenced a familiar combination of whistling, cracking sounds from somewhere overhead; the acoustical quality of the monastery's chambers was remarkable. And now it came, a trickle at first but gradually sweling: the red tide. The life-blood of the brothers, given of their own free wil, gurgling down the sluices to the vats. Then, in the heart of every liquid womb, a sluggish stirring as vaguely outlined occupants sensed the flow of rich red food.
Daham Drakesh smiled in his fashion and moved on; he had seen al of this before.
He left the foetal vat-things to their gluttony, climbed stone stairs to the chamber of the trough, the long-accustomed scene of silent, ritual flagellation, and from there took long, loping, forward-leaning strides to the room of the last rite of initiation. He was eager now; the sight of the crimson flow in the cavern of the creatures, and the blood-tinged mist over the trough of silent agony, had set vampire juices working. Drakesh had his own needs no less than the waxing creatures in his vats of metamorphic creation. Except his needs were more selective.
The initiate was waiting; clad in white, kneeling between a pair of red-robed acolytes (Drakesh's lieutenants), he elevated his eyes as the Master entered - and at once lowered them. The room was small, square, high-ceilinged. At one end, a near-vertical, flue-like slot had been hewn into the solid rock wall. Six feet high from the floor, this chimney was sealed by a massive block of stone, stepped on one side like a dais. A pulley-system in the ceiling dangled long ropes of chains fitted with claw-like grapples.
To one side, a cart was piled with blocks of ice that were slowly welding themselves together. A stairwel in the opposite wal went down into darkness.
With the sinuous ease of the Wamphyri, Drakesh moved to a position in front of the initiate, placed a slender hand on his bowed head, and said: 'My son, are you sure? Are you prepared?' His voice was almost gentle, almost compassionate. 'Do you desire to exchange your white robe for the red robe of a brother?'
'Indeed, Master.' The initiate's voice was no more than a squeak. His fear was such that he might almost have said no ... but he would not give in now, especially not in the presence of Drakesh. In his sight, he would never dare to admit defeat.
'Look at me,' the Master of the