2 The search for the truth
She is free. She heads north and begins to seek a place to make her permanent abode. She settles on a ruined tower, which she finds at the foot of the craggy mountains in the middle of the Termagant forest, or rather, in its remnants, for many thousands of trees have been felled to fuel the industrialization of Nosgoth. It is in an area not overly frequented by either humans or vampires, and it is doubtful that anyone will find it, if they do not already know that it exists. She uses human labour to rebuild this tower, luring the builders with the promise of a sizable reward, which of course, they never get to see.
The interior she decorates herself. She recalls having once been taken to see a church in the provincial town of Coorhagan, whose cellar walls were lined with human bones. It had been done out of desperation, during an outbreak of the plague, when there was not space to bury the dead in the hallowed grounds of the churchyard. In deliberate parody of this pious practice, she begins to decorate the interior walls of the tower with the bones of her victims.
By the time she reaches her two hundredth year, this work is almost completed. While the exterior of the tower remains ordinary in appearance, the inside has been transformed. Beyond the sturdy wooden door and the iron-gate set behind it, lies a twisted, fairytale fantasy. Walls and ceilings are now dazzling white, every surface thickly frosted with bone. On the right hand side of the door, the top portion of a skeleton emerges, as if struggling to get free of the wall. It is turned to face the doorway, its eye sockets set with obsidian, which glitters, cold and malevolent, in the light of the lamps. Over its right shoulder, it carries a scythe, seemingly poised for action, as indeed it is. If the door is forced open, or simply opened incorrectly, the scythe, which is wickedly sharp, will swing down to decapitate the intruder. Across the room and facing the door is another skeleton in similar pose. This one holds an hourglass with all the sand run out to the bottom. Should anyone be so unfortunate as to set off the trap, this will be the last thing they see.
The walls of the entrance hall are particularly beautiful. The entire surface covered in a honeycomb of tiny gothic arches all made from human bones. As the slender pillars reach the ceiling, they spread out into delicate fans, interwoven to cover the entire surface. The only stonework visible is the floor, which is black marble; the centre inlaid with a thin double spiral of white, about two feet in diameter. Pressed tight against the inside wall, a staircase of black marble winds up to the first floor. The stairs themselves are extremely narrow, and polished to a treacherous sheen.
The first floor of the tower she makes her armoury. Here an impressive array of swords, blades, and armour are stored, all robbed from her victims, most of them Sarafan in origin.
The walls of this room are more simply adorned than the one below. Thighbones carved with spiral patterns, have been placed side by side, vertically from floor to ceiling, each row divided from the next by a row of rounded joint bones. Against these walls, stand six skeletal warriors, in full armour, their swords held before them.
The second floor is the library. The walls here are completely lined with bookshelves. A large fireplace is in the centre, providing the sole source of heat in the entire building, included more for the benefit of the books than for Jas herself. A row of skulls, eyes set with pale amethysts, occupies the space between the top of the bookcases and the ceiling. They are angled to leer down at her while she peruses the shelves.
The third and final floor has no obvious purpose. Three tall, arched windows face out onto a narrow platform, which circles the top of the tower. Tall columns of lapis lazuli support the window arches and tiles of the same material clad the lower half of the walls. Three benches, also of lapis, are set against the walls. The only other furniture is a small, round table of plain white marble in the centre of the room. The work on the walls is particularly delicate almost all of it being wrought from human hand and wrist-bones.
*
The years pass and slowly she changes with them. Her physical appearance has actually changed very little; anyone who knew her in life would still be able to recognise her now. Her skin is paler of course, and her dull, biscuit-coloured hair has darkened to a rich, deep amber, but the shape of her face remains the same, apart from the fact that her ears are now pointed, and her eyes are still slate-grey.
The physical changes that have been wrought by her rebirth, she delights in. Her human body was beginning to show the first signs of the degeneration that comes to all mortals; the pains and weakness of old age were all she had expected the coming years to bring her. Now sickness is but a fading memory, her body never ails and her powers grow with each passing year. Already she possesses strength beyond the dreams of most mortal men.
She preys on the human population with relish. From the first days of her existence, she has taken pleasure in the hunt and her enjoyment does not diminish with time. Nosgoth's human population however is in decline. Kain's vampire sons have captured thousands of humans; some for food and others enslaved to work. It is their labour that has built the many fine buildings which now house the clans, as well the furnaces, which burn constantly, belching grey smoke into the sky, so dense as to blur the distinction between day and night. The remaining feral humans are regularly hunted by the clans for sport. Many have become nomadic, moving constantly to avoid detection. While there is still an abundance of food, Jas often has to work hard to find it.
To the north west of her tower, lies a city, strongly fortified and surrounded by deep moats, in which a sizable proportion of the human population has taken refuge. No vampire is able to penetrate its defences, though many have tried. Jas makes but few attempts to gain access herself, content instead to watch the roads that lead to it. The humans who are forced to venture out on various errands often find her at the end of their journey.
However, the amusements provided by her tower and the hunting are no more than momentary diversions. Jas increasingly finds her mind occupied with weightier matters. She is obsessed with discovering who it was that made her and how she ended up in the Sarafan stronghold. Yet, this is a puzzle for which she is unable to find the key.
She knows Kain possessed the ability to make new vampires at the time she was born but she doubts that he is her maker. From a safe distance, she watches his empire and observes the growth of the clans. He has made only six vampires, and his children are not at all similar to her. He has only ever chosen males, and had she been one of his firstborn, she should have been so much stronger. As a fledgling, she had been weak. The strength she now possesses has taken years of patient slaughter to achieve.
The only other she knows of with the ability to create new vampires, is Vorador. However, Vorador seems just as unlikely a choice as Kain. While Vorador has made many vampires, the females he chooses are invariably attractive to the eye. Her body still bears the scars from her stay in the Sarafan dungeon; somehow, she doubts that she would be to Vorador's taste. Another factor is Vorador's attitude to those he has created; he seems strongly paternal, his alliance with Kain apparently foundered over the killing of a daughter. It seems inconceivable that he would create a vampire and then leave her, completely unaided, in the stronghold of his enemy.
The only other possibility is that there exists, or that there did exist, a third vampire with the ability to make one such as herself, but though she searches diligently for any reference to such a being, she finds nothing.
Only a few tattered bands of Sarafan remain active at this time. Jas raids the deserted parts of the stronghold and other places of theirs, looting the archives in particular. Any useful books or documents she takes back to her tower. It is a dangerous occupation, which is one of the reasons she enjoys it. She feels the need to be challenged, and these Sarafan warriors are fierce, battle-hardened and more fanatical than they ever were, when the Sarafan held sway.
Over the years, these raids yield many artefacts and documents. Through careful study of her trophies, Jas acquires much knowledge of Nosgoth's history, though her sources are all heavily biased towards the Sarafan viewpoint. Frustratingly, she still finds some places inaccessible, extremely well guarded and she suspects, protected by spells as well.
The first of the long sleeps, as she comes to call them, comes in her three hundredth year and takes her completely by surprise. As soon as she awakens, she realizes that she has been subtly changed, though at first, she does not know how. On venturing outside, she discovers that the moon no longer presents a danger to her. Instead of being revealed by its light, she is able to conceal herself within it, becoming almost invisible. This gift enables her to enter places that were previously closed to her. Now she is able to slip into the most heavily defended areas with minimal risk to her life.
It is on one of her moonlit forays into the stronghold that she finds the orb. At first, she does not know what it is. It is so completely black that she assumes it to be a hole in the wall. Stretching out her hand to see what is inside, she touches the surface. It is only then, that she realizes that far from being a void, it is in fact, a solid, a perfect sphere about three inches across. It is as smooth as glass to the touch, yet it does not reflect the light at all, not even when she holds it near to a lantern. She takes it because it intrigues her. That it may have a purpose only occurs to her later. She keeps it in the topmost room of her tower, resting in a depression that she has ground into the centre of the table.
*
Weeks later and almost by accident, the orb reveals its purpose to her. She is sitting by the window, rolling it idly between her palms and wondering, in an equally idle manner, about Kain and his children. The orb grows suddenly cold against her skin, causing her to look down at it and it is then that she sees the first point of light. It is almost as if it is filling with stars. At first, there are only a few, but they grow in number until the entire sphere is sparkling from within. Then just as suddenly as they arrived, the stars begin to fade. Now the orb appears to be filled with murky liquid. For a moment she watches it swirl around, trying to discern the misty shapes within, then, this too clears and she finds herself looking down into the canyon of the Abyss, almost as if she is flying high above it. As she watches, the view zooms in to show Kain and three others standing on the cliffs above the void.
A figure is being dragged towards the cliff's edge by two more vampires. When they reach the edge, they stop. The prisoner appears to be injured, he hangs limp between his two captors, flaps of bloodied skin clearly visible against his back. Jas finds herself wondering what horrible mutilation could possibly produce that effect on a body. Everyone else is looking towards Kain. With a growing sense of horror, she realizes that she is about to witness an execution.
There is something very disturbing about this scene, yet she is not sure why. Vampires' killing each other, is something Jas has always taken for granted, part of the natural order. She has no connection with any of Kain's people, and she does not recognise the prisoner. Yet somehow, she feels involved in this death, somehow she feels responsible.
At the signal from Kain, the prisoner is cast over the edge and into the swirling torrents below. While there is no physical sound, his screams echo in her mind as she watches him fall.
Jas quickly replaces the orb in its depression. It is some time before she touches it again.
*
Yet more time passes. In her five hundredth year, Jas experiences her second sleep. This gives her the ability to chill things, enough to kill a human, yet still leaving the blood liquid. In her seven hundredth year, her third sleep refines this gift. She gains the ability to freeze things. For a long while she regards this as nothing more than an amusing novelty. While she can use the new gift to kill, the blood solidifies, rendering the corpse useless. On one occasion, she freezes a stream of water and then plunges the resulting icicle, as thick as her wrist, straight through the heart of an enemy. However, diverting as this is, she still finds a sword to be a more practical weapon. One dimension of the gift that she does find useful is that snow and ice have lost their power to hurt her.
By the time she is in her nine hundredth year, time could almost be said to be hanging heavy on her hands.
She still avoids contact with her own species, now more than ever. All of Nosgoth has been brought under Kain's dominion, and the clans that his children have founded are each powerful entities, closely linked to each other. The vampires of the clans keep to themselves, as do Vorador's brood.
Vorador had made his peace with Kain fairly soon after the defeat of the Sarafan lord, but though the truce has held, it seems to be an uneasy one. He has rebuilt the fortress in the swamps, and his people seldom venture outside this area. It is a good defensive position, but Jas doubts Vorador could prevail long if Kain attacked. As yet, Kain has made no move against his former ally, which puzzles her somewhat, but it seems inevitable that he will. If it comes to war between the two factions, Jas realizes that she could be in an awkward position, alone and without allies. The question is, in the absence of a blood tie, would either Vorador or Kain be inclined to welcome her?
At present, the two sides merely avoid one another, and Jas avoids them both. She is in no hurry to form an alliance, for she values her independence.
She continues to seek information, almost obsessively, but in truth, she has all but given up hope of finding an answer. Despite all her efforts, she has been unable to discover anything that might cast light on her own creation. The question of who it was that made her and why she was made, has gnawed at her for centuries now. Yet, she knows no more than she did on that first night when she awoke outside the Sarafan stronghold.
Possibly, it is her obsession that blinds her to the fact that her information gathering has not gone unnoticed. She is being watched. In fact, she has been closely observed for some time.