Chapter 295 - Army of the Undead part 7

The next evening, Zenzele addressed the Orda, speaking to them as a general might address her troops. "Our intent was to convince the Hui to join our war against the God King." She glared at the contrite Orda, who were sitting on their knees before her. "In this, we failed… miserably."

Almost as one, the Orda dropped their heads in shame. Even Neolas had succumbed to the bloodlust, though he Shared with any mortal he fed from.

"It is not your fault," Zenzele went on, pacing back and forth in front of the men. "You are new blood gods. You have little control of your powers, and even less control of your thirst for blood. Be not ashamed. Control comes with experience, and we have been sorely remiss in your training. The fault lies solely with us, your makers."

She stopped and smiled fiercely down at them. "From this night forth, I shall address that failing."

"I shall teach you to control your lust for blood," she said.

That night, we hunted in the mountains. We hunted in a group, and took down a great old mountain goat, but Zenzele would not let the Orda feed.

"You must learn to resist the blood thirst," she told them, and then she shot a challenging look at me. "You, as well, beautiful one."

So I was going to starve, too.

I nodded gamely, seeing the necessity of it, though the Strix was twisting my guts into knots, though the smell of the goat's blood made my body quiver with need.

I watched as Zenzele fed, then Bhorg and Goro.

This is not so hard, I thought, but it was harder the next night, and the night after that.

It was not so bad when we were fleeing from the God King's minions. There was no time to think about the hunger then. We took what we could as we traveled, feeding quickly and without much thought.

This was different.

The nights were long with nothing to do and the hunger burning in our guts like hot coals. Zenzele, Bhorg and Goro drank all the blood they wanted, and I could smell it on them, on her, that rich, coppery scent. I licked her skin when we made love. I imagined she was a mortal woman and I was lapping up her blood. She would not Share with me during this training period, and pushed me away when she felt the prick of my fangs.

"You have to master your hunger!" she chastised me. "What will you do if Khronos captures you and tries to break your will by starving you? He has been known to do it. Will you bow and scrape at his feet for a bellyful of mortal blood?"

"No!" I quavered.

"It is a weakness he can use against you."

"I know!"

I think, perhaps, only those among you who have been addicted to drugs or alcohol might know what it is like for us when we are denied our sustenance. The blood hunger is very like the withdrawal symptoms a mortal addict suffers when his drug is taken away from him. It is maddening, all-consuming. It feels as if every cell of our bodies is crying out for blood. We cannot get the thought of it out of our minds. A vampire starving for blood is a tortured creature, and dangerous, deadly dangerous. I will rip the head off a puppy and squeeze every last drop of blood from its furry little body if I am starved. I would tear Mother Theresa's head off her shoulders and lap from the spurting fount of her sainted neck.

For days, weeks, months, we suffered. I watched as the flesh slowly collapsed upon the bones of my hands so that they looked like the hands of a desiccated mummy, white and leathery, the veins standing out like knotted cords. The Orda became shambling monsters, eyes bulging from their sockets, teeth jutting from taut lips. We fought amongst ourselves, our tempers frayed. We begged Zenzele for blood, cried, threw tantrums, but our mistress would not relent.

"You must master your hunger!" she snarled. "All new blood gods are trained in this manner in Uroboros. Are you lesser men than them?"

We even tried to escape from the cave, but Zenzele put down each pathetic rebellion. We were too weak to overpower her, too muddled to outwit her.

"When you have divorced your thoughts from your pain, when you can turn your lips from the blood you crave so badly, then I will allow you to eat," Zenzele said.

"I don't know what that means!" I cried, and the Orda howled feebly in solidarity.

"Seek a peaceful place in your thoughts," she said. "Your mind can shelter you from the pains of the flesh, if you will only think it so."

"How?"

"You must tell yourself there is no pain. There is no hunger. You must believe it."

I did not understand her words, but I loved her, I trusted her, and so I tried to master the pain with my mind.

There is no pain, I repeated to myself. There is no hunger.

And it worked, but only partially.

I tried to retreat into my Shared memories. Perhaps I could lose myself in the memories of those Others, hide from the pain, as the doe hides in the bush from the hunter.

I fled into the memories of Neolas, lived the past through his eyes, through his thoughts and impressions. And as I experienced his childhood, a rambunctious young boy who worshipped his older brother, the imaginative child he had once been inspired me. It happened when he fell and broke his leg. He had distracted himself from the pain as he mended in his father's tent with long and elaborate daydreams. Hunting mammoths with his father and brother. Fighting with their mortal enemies, the Eguhl. Neolas had possessed a vivid imagination when he was a boy. But it worked. The pain went away as he drifted in these fantasies, and I realized it was not enough to tell myself there was no hunger. I had to imagine that there was no hunger!

We all have this power when we are children. The power to bend the universe to our will. To make gods out of drifting clouds and monsters out of shadows. Somewhere around the time that we begin to develop into our adult bodies, that capacity for self-delusion begins to weaken. We shed our dream-selves like a snake sheds its skin. We leave it behind to crackle and fall to dust while we chase more adult pursuits. If I could learn to use my imagination again, like a muscle weak and wasted from neglect, I could conquer the hunger!

But it was not easy. I was not just an old man. I was an impossibly old man. Seven thousand years old by then! My childhood was a hazy memory, my mind as ossified as my cold vampire flesh.

It took days to move my atrophied imagination. To begin, very weakly, to exercise it again. But pain and hunger are the best motivators. They drove me to persevere, even when I feared the task was hopeless.

I pretended that my thoughts were a cave, and the hunger was an old wolf pacing and snarling at the mouth of it. He wanted to come inside, that old wolf. He wanted to eat me. But he couldn't. He was afraid of my fire. So I had to keep my hearth blazing. I had to feed wood constantly to the fire. I had to make sure it did not die, so that the wolf was not emboldened, so that he could not come inside and eat me.

I was easily distracted, and each time the fantasy slipped away, the hunger and pain swept back in upon me. Hungry wolf. Hungry belly. I was afraid. I was afraid I would go mad. But slowly, determinedly, I used my imagination to bend the universe to my will, as I had when I was a mortal child. To make gods out of drifting clouds. To make monsters out of shadows.

To believe.

I tell you this so that you, too, might conquer some unpleasant truth that torments you.

You cannot escape pain through the gate of rational thought, for the gatekeeper of reason is not a gullible fellow. But the gatekeeper of the imagination is a trusting fool, and easily distracted by flights of fancy.

I did not conquer the hunger. I transformed it. Or rather I transformed the world around it, and myself with it.

Zenzele tempted me with a bloody hare. She held the creature under my nose. Smeared its sticky blood upon my lips, but I did not drink. I did not even recoil from it.

(The wolf is back. The wolf is hungry. Must keep the fire burning. Must add more wood. Must have more fire.)

"Good," she said, smiling down at me. "You have done it, my love! You have mastered the hunger."

"No," I said, "I have mastered the world."

I fed that night, and then I shared my insights with the Orda so that they too might master their thoughts. Morgruss, the eldest of the Orda, had the most difficulty thinking as he had when he was a boy, but he finally came around.

"And now I shall train you to do battle as the t'sukuru do battle," Zenzele said.