'The Immortals'

by

Marc Lecard

T

hey could never have defeated us. No one could have. And so we prevailed. We had shared this planet with them for countless centuries, hiding in the waste places, peopling the darkness, feeding on their life and growing in strength. When at last we realized that our number was greater than theirs, we emerged from our concealment and conquered them. It was a time of triumph, of fierce exultation. One by one, we hunted them down and drank their blood, so that we might live, so that they might become as we are—immortal.

The long wars men waged against each other had weakened them terribly, reduced their populations almost to nothing. We too suffered in those wars—for the only deaths that can finally touch us are those of fire and the light of day, and fire rained from the sky for days, weeks, months, until vast stretches of the world were cleansed of life, turned to desert, scorched, glassy plains on which nothing grew, nothing drew breath, nothing walked by day or by night. Yet when the fire stopped, and we came out of our secret places, and knew for the first time our superiority, it seemed justice, vindication. For long years our race had been feared and detested by men, forced into hiding, reviled and hunted. Preposterous mythologies were invented around us, containing only enough truth to endanger us and force us to walk with caution in the nighttime world. Now we were the lords, in strength as well as spirit. We fed and grew great.
The cities we had depopulated became ours, and we rebuilt them to our own purposes and taste—stern, proud towers, dripping with ornament, lush and wild and fantastic, rose on all sides, black stones gleaming by moonlight. If we had a shared aesthetic, it was a love of elaboration, of detail, complexity and subtlety. Each dome, each tower, each enormous monument had its own style, a pure expression of its builder's genius. No two were alike—this was our strength, we thought, that each of us stood apart. Though we might gather together, we formed no society, but a community of individuals. We fed, and grew great. The mortal men and women whose blood sustained us became fewer, and harder to find. Our numbers, however, increased vastly, since we took the best of those lives that fed us, and made them immortal. (The ordinary way is to take life without giving it, to feed without perpetuating, and in these latter days some recommend only this course. But many still refuse to follow this path, preferring in their pride to recreate themselves, to glory in their power to confer eternal life.) It became apparent that the race of man had so weakened itself that it would soon cease to exist. Only then did we begin to understand our utter dependence on it.

. . . .

Night 14, Hunger Moon, Year 326 of Our Triumph I went, finally, as I swore I would never do, to the blood market. My hunger . . . all of us must now eat our pride. Salvato was there himself, not wanting the rights to such a one as myself to fall to an underling. Obscene and louring, he paraded his pitiful wares before me. Once, when our dominance was complete, the mortal men and women we brought to our cities were dressed always in finest finery, in full glory of silks and costly embroidery, cloth of black and cloth of gold. This was appropriate for those about to join us in our power; it also served to recall the days when we gathered our substance in secret, with love and passion and subtlety.

Now all that is put aside. The captives Salvato brought from his dungeons were dressed only in rude shifts, belted with rope. Many were naked—a scrawny, beaten, wholly unerotic nudity.

This lot was exceptionally pathetic, frightened, idiotic savages from the ruined towns and woodlands of the interior. To think that once we made the best of this race our own, the highest of the land, possessors of beauty, wisdom, wealth, and power!

I chose one girl, pale and shivering, the wounds on her throat showing plainly through the usual cosmetics. (In spite of promises and protests by the marketeers, such captives are generally sold drained nearly dry.) I could see that this young woman contained scarcely enough to cover the blood-debt I would incur by taking her, a debt payable directly to Salvato, who would call in his chits at need or desire, and visit me to feed. Detestable contract!

Yet something beyond hunger moved me as I looked at the girl, some resurgence of the old passion. Her life would flow into mine, and mine into hers, until we became something greater . . . not for years had I felt the old joys so keenly.

"She pleases you?" Salvato was bending toward me, watching my face, smirking greasily. "Send her to me," I answered, avoiding his eyes, not from shame, but from disgust, with Salvato and with myself, with the decay of all things.

He paused a moment; the smile faded from his long, pale face.

"There is the form," he said quietly.

I looked at him a long while.

"You may trust me," I said. "Come when you will." I turned before he could answer and walked from the market.

. . . .

Night 20, Hunger Moon, Year 326 Today I hear that Victor is returning from his voyage, the hold of his ship packed to the hatches with living captives. To me this tale, filtered and distorted by common gossip, sounds like another of Victor's empty boasts. But my curiosity is greater than my disgust; perhaps I shall go watch him land.

Evening; I have surprised myself and come to the landing place. The dockside is a wasteland; we have no need of the commerce of men. A few of the old commercial buildings have been transformed into palazzi; between these lie ruined, abandoned structures, roofs sagging, windows broken by the elements. A few vessels lie at anchor, yachts and pleasure craft in the styles of various times and nations: a trireme, a xebec, a sloop, a trimaran, a solar sail. All along the broken stones of the pier, slippery with weed and mud, a great crowd has gathered. Oily water surges uneasily between rotted pilings, stumps of rusted metal stained with bird droppings, lines of concrete pylons half-submerged.

The crowd is silent. Looking around I recognize few faces, none from the old families. Most of these starveling, tense figures were, not long ago as we count time, mortal men. They bear their hunger with less dignity, I think; perhaps because they have had less time to know it.

Yet for the first time there are distinctions among us; not only between the ancient names and the new, but between those who are fed, and those who starve.

The moon rises, enormous and pale on the horizon; against its globe the black outline of masts, a hull—Victor's ship. A sailing vessel: so like him, I think, so typical of his arrogance. He hopes to demonstrate his sense of style and history, yes, but also his contempt for time. His contempt for time: as if now, with our constant hunger, we did not all know time in a new, urgent way.

The ship sails closer, appearing now in splendor, sails billowing, banners and pennants whipping forward in the wind of the harbor, dark forms swarming the rigging. Slowly, pompously, it makes its way in to port. The sails fall; the ship swings round. Chains rattle, the anchor splashes into the water, the gangway bumps to shore. Then the cargo is disembarked. The holds were full, as rumored. Africans, men and women, staggering in chains, are urged down the gangplank by squat, dark, beetle-like beings wielding long pikes, attenuated pitchforks, unidentifiable weapons resembling kitchen implements, musical instruments. Victor, as always the showman.

The crowd on the dock grows stiller, more silent yet, if that is possible, as they watch the captives led away toward Victor's preposterous mansion in the heart of the city. A thousand eyes follow the healthy, vigorous limbs, the terrified faces, the living bodies filled with blood. I can feel the hate and hunger in this crowd, cold and massive, like a glacier. Victor, appearing at last in the rear of his file of captives, is impervious to this, as always. The lemur-like forms of his crew, the beetle guards—phantoms, simulacrae, figments of his will—fade and blow away; the ship rocks in its moorings; the clanking of the captives' chains fades away. Victor himself, his grotesque, fat form trailing cloaks and scarves, at last swaggers out of sight. Only then does the crowd begin to break up, slowly melting back into the city to brood on its hunger.

Later in the cafes I hear a rumor that the Africans are no more real than the crew or the guards, a mere show to cover Victor's failure to find a living being anywhere on the globe. The teller took a grim delight in his tale. In fact, such a charade would be only too typical of Victor, his vanity—and, I am very much afraid, of all of us, now. We work our magic on ourselves; our powers turn against us.

Returning home afterwards, I found the girl in my rooms, paler still, near death—no doubt the messenger had supped. I was a fool not to take her myself.

Angrily I cut away her bonds—absurd and unnecessary ropes, to where would she escape? —and led her to the couch. She wouldn't look at me, from fear, or weakness. I made her lie down, then covered her with fur, with eiderdown, brought spiced wine and meat (obtained at great cost and some danger).

The girl ate and drank ravenously. I watched her, brooding on the degradations of hunger, how it replaces all passion and subtlety with itself, how it reduces pleasure to mere satisfaction.

As she tore at the flesh I provided her, the girl never took her eyes from me. They were round with terror. I only hope she does not sicken, as so many captives do. She must sustain me for some time.

Finished with the food, the girl sat back in the bed, wiping her greasy mouth with the back of an arm, still regarding me with those eyes of fear. "I hope your hunger is stilled," I said to her. She could not know the complex ironic resonance this remark had for me.

Her face changed as she stared at me, and I saw with fascination and hope that fear had been replaced by anger.

"You feed me only to feed yourself," she said to me, the words dripping with contempt.

I said nothing—what could I answer?—but continued to examine her. Yes, there is more strength in her than at first appeared. Such strong ones we were once proud to make our own.

Still without having spoken, I arose and left the chamber. I did not lock the door. I knew she would not leave.

Night 21, Hunger Moon, Year 326 I spent the shuttered hours of daylight in selecting a wardrobe for the girl, drawing it from the considerable collection left in the palazzo by old companions. Companions now fled, or vanished, killed, or fallen into the sleep of hunger. I drowned myself in old chests and armoires, my arms buried to the shoulder in furs and silks and rich embroidery. What I had not anticipated was the loss and regret that seemed to have been put away with this ancient raiment. I had not realized I was capable of such emotion.

Entering the girl’s room, I surprised her at the window, busy replacing the lock on the shutters. I knew well enough what she had planned to do.

"You may open them now," I told her, crossing the room in a single movement, expressly to terrify her. I threw open the shutters; the leprous moon shone balefully down on us. Together we stared out at the night. The girl was trembling—with fear, yes, but with cold as well. She still wore only the stained and tattered shift Salvato provided his prisoners. "I have brought you clothing," I tell her. Her face, when she sees what I have gathered, loses for a moment its fear and anger, and glows with a nearly forgotten delight.

I had hoped it would be so.

One by one, the girl put on the costumes I had found for her, and paraded them before me. Her initial delight vanished; she looked at me now quite seriously, almost defiantly, as if to say, "you will drain the blood from my body and kill me in the end, but now, now I am beauty, I am loveliness, I am life!"

"Truly you are worthy to wear the finery of my house," I tell her. This seems to please her; she bows her head.

Her name, I discover, is Ephanoria—weak, pretty, like a fluttering insect—a very human name. Yet I think there is more strength in her than her name would suggest.

Night 24, Hunger Moon, Year 326 Victor, as so often, is the subject of every conversation. Yet even his inexhaustible vanity would not wish to hear such gossip. For the talk is that his court—his retinue of hangers-on and parasites, who lurk at his elbow to catch any stray drop of blood that may fall—have left him, deserted and gone to the houses of his enemies. The greater part of these creatures were created by Victor himself, and owe their immortality to him. But in these days such a gift may earn more hatred than gratitude or loyalty, it seems.

Victor’s human discoveries, his African captives, have turned out to be phantoms after all, as so many suspected, bloodless illusions, mere trickery. Not even one was real, and the retainers in Victor’s castle have begun attacking those passing in the street. In our hunger we feed on ourselves, and will drain ourselves out of existence.

There are those, of course, who sustain themselves on the blood of lower animals; I have never done so myself. This nourishment is unsatisfying, blunting rather than sating the hunger, I am told. Yet, beyond this, those who so feed become less—their power much diminished. Eventually these ones become mortal, less than mortal, and perish in hideous mimicry of decay, shriveling and rotting in a matter of weeks.

We were made for one thing, one food: human blood. We are not what we must be without it.

Yet in spite of this, the whisper of the crowd has it, Victor has begun to feed on mere livestock. This if true would explain the flight of his retinue.

. . .

Ephanoria when I go to her is occupied in repairing defects in the clothing I had brought her—defects to me invisible, but she works industriously to remedy them. I watch her work, but find myself unable to speak. Victor’s downfall has disturbed me more than I would have expected. In his catastrophe, grotesque and ridiculous as it is, I see the end of all of us.

I am told, delicately, that in my ignorance certain necessary items of female attire are absent from the clothing I have given her. Tomorrow night I will bring them.

. . .

Later the same night: in my solitary strolling I found myself near Victor’s palace, drawn in spite of myself , I suppose, by the rumors. There I observed the delivery—by the rear gate, to be sure—-of sheep.

. . .

Night 27, Hunger Moon, Year 326 They make animal noises behind Victor's back in the street.

He retains his dignity and ignores them. But he cannot last on such a diet. None do. Soon will begin the terrible degradation, the distortion of features, the crawling, the groveling . . . then dissolution.

I have a sudden fear, irrational, that Victor will ask me for help, ask me to share my good fortune with him. He cannot know of Ephanoria—though of course everyone knows everything that happens in this city of the undead, often before it has taken place. My fears, and my deep unwillingness to help Victor disgust me, sicken me with myself. He is no ally of mine, no near tie. Yet his house is as old as mine; like me he represents the best of the ancient order of things. Such distinctions, of course, are meaningless now.

. . . .

Night 30, Hunger Moon, Year 326 Appropriately, symbolically, on this last night of the hunger moon, I will end my long fast.

The food and drink, warm clothing, the fire and security I have given Ephanoria have enabled her to recover. She is strong now, and vigorous; the blood flows powerfully in her veins. She is ready for me. I will go to her in power, in the fullness of my form. I will feed.

. . .

Afterwards, when I had sated myself, she looked at me almost in surprise. "You were gentle with me," she said, putting a hand to the place of feeding. She continued to stare at me, and her expression became mysterious, inscrutable.

"You are not like the others," she said to me.

. . .

Night 1, Heat Moon, Year 326 Victor has vanished.

All the town is talking of it, though in these days such disappearances have become routine. I think there is a feeling of guilt and regret abroad, as if all feel a responsibility for his act. We are all glad enough to mock and deride, to ridicule. Less glad, perhaps, with the results of our malice.

He was seen, by late returners, in the hour just before dawn, walking east along the road out of the city, unaccompanied. Those who saw him said he was dressed in splendour, in elaborate sumptuous costume. How like him, to meet the end alone, in his finery, under the power of his own will.

It is better so. He has redeemed his absurdity. May all our endings be thus.

Perhaps Ephanoria was right; we cannot feel love. Certainly what we know by that name seems vastly different from what she describes. Yet regret: that I feel, and keenly. Surely no mortal man or woman ever felt the pangs of it as strongly as I do when I look at the ruins of our old families, lost to hungers and jealousies and resentments unknown in our days of power.

Among her people, she tells me, there are prophecies: that our race will perish, blow away in the wind, "like smoke," she says. Then the last of her kind will emerge from their hiding places as once we emerged from ours . . . but these tales do not interest me. They are fables, half true: yes, my race will vanish. But we have looked everywhere, everywhere. No more than a handful of mortal men and women exist; we know the location of every one, though they do not suspect it. And our certainty is our despair. How good, how comforting, if I could delude myself with tales and legends, as Ephanoria in her simplicity and anger manages to do!

. . .

Night 10, Heat Moon, Year 326 I have not visited Ephanoria for several nights now, and have not fed since that first, glorious feast. She must recover her strength; I must hoard my hunger.

When this evening I finally went to her chamber, she was silent and moody, speaking contemptuously to me.

"Are you come to feed again?" she asked when I first came in. I smiled and shook my head, taking my usual seat by her bed.

"You must recover your strength," I told her. She returned, frowning, to her mending, and would not look at me. After a long silence she laid down her work. looking not at me but at the tapestry that covers the wall at the foot of the bed, she asked me, "What are your plans for me? What will you do? Will you drain me dry, and throw my body from the walls? Will you sup and sup and sup, a little at a time, for years? What will you do with me?"

"Dear girl," I told her, "I follow my desire, not any plan. I do not know what I will do."

She looked at me now, filled with anger.

"I am only mortal, but I am not stupid," she said. "I know how things are done among you. I know that you may make me like yourself, if you desire it."

I answered nothing to this. Of all the mortal women I have seen and fed upon, and made immortal, she if any is worthy of our life. But in these last days of our race it would not be a kindness to make her like us.

"Do you?" she asked me, "Do you desire it?"

Silently, I rose and left the room.

.....

Night 11, Heat Moon, Year 326 She has vanished. I knew in an instant that she was gone, knew it the moment I saw the door to her chamber hanging open.

My first thought was that she was taken, stolen by some raiding party of my enemies. Trembling with fury, I called my retainers to me. They assured me that they had seen nothing and no one, that we had not been attacked.

So she has left of her own will, crept out in daylight. All the clothing I had gathered for her has been left behind, except for one robe. There is no word, no letter, no communication of any kind left behind. It is as if the daylight had dissolved her.

All that night I raged up and down the halls of the palace, crying out in my anguish, hurling down weapons and tapestries from the walls, destroying whatever crossed my path. Only when the first light of dawn began to leak through the shutters did I retire to my chambers.

Night 23, Heat Moon, Year 326 Today I saw her, at last, having heard only rumor in the intervening weeks. It is as everyone says. I found her, Ephanoria, whom I took from Salvato’s dungeons and placed in my own palace, among the memories of my ancient lineage, I found her in the train of the Countess Cosinca, last of one of the most respected of the old families. At least she has not come down in the world.

She leans on the arm of the countess, pale, drawn, wearing the dress I gave her, and more finery still, the gift of her new protector. She is near her time of transformation, I can tell, dressed in rich fur and embroidered cloth. Is it her choice? Or does she simply make what accommodation she must with fate, as we all do, drifting consciously to destruction? This transformation is what Ephanoria desires, I gather, that which I would not, could not give her. So she has sought it in another, and now will share our ruin.

The look she gave me when our eyes met: deep hunger, rage, and pain. And something else, a longing that encompasses all other feelings. Perhaps this is what she means by love.

Let her enjoy it. Soon she will become one of us, and all will turn to hunger. A hunger that cannot be satisfied, cannot be fed. I would not have wished this for her.

. . .

Night 28, Heat Moon, Year 326 The end days surely arrive. The market where I procured Ephanoria has been sacked, the owner disappeared, the men and women held captive there slaughtered. I went to see for myself, and saw the dregs of the crowd feeding on the mortal bodies. Drink deep, I thought in my rage, it is your last drinking.

The word around town is that I myself am behind the raid, that it was in vengeance for the kidnapping of Ephanoria by the house of Cosinca, and the supposed collusion of Salvato in this.

I let the world think so; vengeance is no disgrace. Better in any case that no one know the truth of my pain, my rage, my loss.

And there is worse news, if that were possible. Word has come back from the seekers, the hunters: there are no more mortal men and women, anywhere. The few pitiful captives hauled from Salvato’s dungeons were all that remained, save Ephanoria.

Ephanoria is the last mortal.

We should have bred them, of course. And there were some that tried, but the experiments were invariably unsuccessful. Most mortal men and women soon sickened and died in our pens. Raids by other houses, or the owner's rapacity and greed, their hunger and vanity soon eliminated the few surviving captives.

We are predators, after all, not nurturers. It was hardly surprising that the attempt would fail.

Perhaps, eventually, under pressure of circumstance, we could have adapted. But the crisis came upon us too suddenly, and our deepest nature prevailed. We fed, hunted, and changed as if there would never be an end to it. And now the end has come.

Night 3, Lightning Moon, Year 326 She has come back. Ephanoria has returned to me.

I rose at first dark, before moonrise, from a bed that had brought me no rest. Walking past what had been her chamber, I saw the door shut to. I had left it open since that night I found her gone. Now I threw open the door. She was standing there, in the act of closing the shutters. When she heard the door open behind her, she whirled around to face me.

I stepped into the room, then halted again. For perhaps the first time ever, I did not know what to do next. I tried to speak, but no sound emerged.

Ephanoria ran to me. I took her by the shoulders and stared into her face. She looked back defiantly, proudly, her eyes shining.

"You are still mortal," I said wonderingly.

"I am the last mortal," she said.

"You know this?"

"The countess told me," she said, pulling out of my arms and walking up and down the room. "I thought and thought about it. Then at noon, while the city slept, I slipped out and came here."

"Why?" The single syllable was almost more than I could manage.

She stopped pacing and turned to face me.

"I want to undergo the transformation," she told me. "I want to be changed by you. I only left you that I might be changed, and become your equal. I wanted to become an immortal, to be worthy of you, and knew that the Lady Cosinca, vain and hungry, would take me in and do as I wished. But I could not go through with it. I realized that you must be the one to change me." She ran to me, and threw herself in my arms. "I know how it will be. I know that your world is ending. But my world is already ended. And I have never wanted anything more than this."

"You understand—the pains? the hunger?" I asked. She nodded.

"I don’t care," she whispered. "Change me!"

We clung to each other, the last of our races.

. . .

Day 17, Lightning Moon, the Year 326 of Our Triumph. With what bitterness I write this dateline.

I sit in my high tower and watch the flames race across the dark line of the horizon. Another quarter lost to vengeance fires, feuding families, greed, hunger, defeat. Our proudest towers fall. There are no victors in such struggles. We are all weakened.

We feed on our own substance now, attacking one another. But without the human species there is no hope of continuance. The few who manage to survive the ending days will be disabled by their hungers, and fall into a motionless torpor, a suspended life-in-death from which there may be no awakening.

Ephanoria sits nearby, gazing not at the destruction of the city, but at me. She has been transformed; she is immortal, as I am. Bitterness and triumph, love and defeat.

I have prepared a tomb for us, deep in crypt below the palace. There is a door of stone, and beyond that, the burial chamber, heaped high with all the treasure of centuries, everything my family has accumulated in its long history. And beneath that, another chamber, empty but for a massive trapdoor of stone. Beneath that, a simple sarcophagus.

But even this shall not be our resting place. There is a further chamber, approached by a secret trap. There, when the hunger has reduced us and we begin to fall into the eternal torpor, the everlasting hunger, there we shall rest, and wait—and hope.

I will seal these words in a tube of lead—so as not to lure the greed of the looters sure to come after. I will leave this tube where it may be found. Our only hope—my only hope—is that somewhere, in some far corner of the globe, live men and women we have not found out. Not imposters or simulacrae, but living, breathing, dying men and women, that our seekers and hunters have missed, that our hunger has not discovered. And that, with the resilience of their kind, they will grow and prosper, without us to prey on them, and become the lords of this planet they once were—as we are now, for a short time longer. Then, some day, when pressure of population and the lure of the unknown reach a certain point, they will begin their journeys of exploration. They will find our great cities, and wonder at those who built them. They will uncover our tombs, our caverns, our necropoleis. In their curiosity they will awaken us then, no matter what dark legends might still linger in their old stories and songs. They will raise us from our cells, our beds, our hidden places, and we will walk in freedom and in power once again.

Until then, if this frail hope comes to be, until then, we wait, and prey on each other, and, one by one, fall into our deathless sleep.

We wait . . .

You, men and women of this world to be, these words are written for you, to you. We, the Immortals, need you.

Discover us!


*******

(c) Marc Lecard, All Rights Reserved

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