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'As Sunside's rains roll down off the barrier mountains,' she said, her husky whisper echoing into the darkness and back from unknown places, 'and as storm-clouds burst less frequently over the furnace desert itself, so great bodies of water find their way underground. Many major tributaries may be found in the west, and others to the east, between the desert and the mountains. And so the Great Dark River under the earth is the sump of the world!
The hard bedrock of the underworld is tilted eastwards; likewise, naturally, the course of the river. Where the rocks are softest, the rain of centuries has formed many cavern systems. Of these, the safest and most suitable have become Thyre colonies. The underworld is as important to the Thyre as your forests are to you Szgany. Temperate, it provides shade from the sun in the heat of the long day, and is a refuge from the bitter chill of desert nights. We could not live without it, or without the river which is its dark lifeblood.
'During its life the river has carved wide ledges in the rock. Of these, the driest and safest are used as paths along which we may follow the water's course where it rushes through dark gullies. In parts the river is navigable over long miles, forming vast sunless lakes where the blind fishes swim; but in other places the way is tighter and the water roars furiously!
'As for its length: the river parallels the barrier mountains; it passes under the Great Red Waste, and meanders past a range of lesser mountains where dwell people much like yourself... or perhaps unlike yourself, for they give of their young to the Wamphyri. And so the river flows into the unknown. Some say it journeys to a sea far in the east, beyond the caverns of the necromancers; but this is rumour, because no one of the Thyre has ever been there.'
Nathan listened attentively to Atwei; he looked at the ledges carved by the river in the canyon walls of the cha
And yet it wasn't so much the river's size as its course which most affected Nathan's imagination: a course that followed the mountains east into that region beyond the Great Red Waste where the Wamphyri held sway, out of which they had returned into Starside. And as the river was a road to the Thyre, which they might follow on foot and by boat, colony to colony for all its many leagues, so might Nathan follow it...
Sunups came and went; Nathan's work in the Cavern of the Ancients neared completion; he told The Five that he pla
In the meantime his nightmares had got no better; if anything they were worse. Over and over Nathan lived through the hell of that night and morning in Settlement, the time of the Wamphyri raid. Also, he was aware of time fleeting by, and wondered how Lardis and the Szgany Lidesci fared now. Often in the Cavern of the Ancients he would sense his wolves trying to contact him. But they were distant and he was shielded by massive walls of rock; and anyway, what would they have to say except - it seemed likely - things he did not wish to hear? For by now, surely the Wamphyri were mighty again, a plague throughout all of Sunside.
Once (for once on his own), he fell asleep in the Cavern of the Ancients and dreamed that the numbers vortex waited for him. That mighty, bottomless whirlpool of figures tugged at him insistently; he felt that if only he knew the meaning of all of these rapidly mutating symbols . .. they could open up whole new worlds to him. Any world would be better than the one he'd left behind, providing that it let him live among his own kind. And again he felt like a traitor who had turned tail and fled from his enemies, his friends, even from himself.
And now he must flee again, put greater distance between himself and the past, go searching for some shadowy fulfilment just around the corner of tomorrow ...
In the Cavern of the Ancients he said his farewells. The dead were silent for a while. They would miss him.
But ... he might return, one day? He couldn't say for definite, but possibly. Well, they had had their fair share of him, and the dead of other places were eager to meet him.
Nathan spoke to Shaeken. Working so much together, they had developed firm bonds, a warm friendship and understanding. And: 'In time, your works will be a blessing to the Thyre,' he told the great engineer.
They were nothing without you, Nathan, the other was flattered. But in a moment, and much more seriously: Nathan, these numbers which plague your dreams .. .
'Oh? You've been spying on me?' Nathan knew it wasn't so.
Hardly that! We can't help it. After all, you are the Necroscope. But the numbers: I've seen them, it's true. And as you know I have a small understanding of numbers.
'You understood the vortex?'
He sensed the shake of a head. Did I understand it? No. Was I afraid of it? Yes: even as a child fears the lightning! By comparison, my own calculations are ant tracks in the sand - quickly blown away - while yours are alive and work towards an end. And just as your deadspeak is unique among the living, so is the vortex yours alone. It is a part of you, Nathan! I'm no philosopher; my thoughts are shallow, mechanical things; but I sense that if one day you should fathom it, then you will be that much closer to your destiny. In Open-to-the-Sky there was upon a time an elder who was a mathematician. He is dead now, but what is that for a barrier? Perhaps you should seek him out.
'Maybe I will.' Nathan was grateful.
Finally he spoke to the one who would miss him the most, Rogei, and discovered himself incapable of even a small white deception. This will be my last visit to the Cavern before I leave,' he told him. 'And I don't think I'll be back.'
I know it, the other answered, trying to make light of it. Only think of me now and then; reach out with your mind and... who knows? I might be there. But if you can't speak to me, try speaking to Him Who Listens, for I feel sure He would listen to you. As for what Shaeken told you: will you seek out this mathematician? I think you must, for I am a philosopher and believe a man should follow his destiny.
Til probably seek him out,' Nathan nodded.
Also, Rogei said, there is that which you should know. In your time here you've proved yourself a friend, to both living and dead alike, and I have tried to be the same to you. I have spoken to the dead of the Szgany on your behalf, to tell them what an opportunity they have missed. Alas, only mention your powers, they withdraw. For whatever reasons, they are afraid of you.
'I knew that,' said Nathan.
The reason is simple: the dead have always feared necromancy, and now that the Wamphyri are back in the land they fear it more than ever. Somehow, they associate you with necromancy. Now... they will no longer speak to me! But you Szgany have a saying: 'like father, like son'? Well, I kept reading that thought in their minds before they closed me out. And so I am given to wonder - I hesitate to ask - but could it be, perhaps, that your father did something to alienate the Szgany dead, which now causes them to shun you?
'My father, Hzak Kiklu?' Nathan frowned. 'But he was just a man, murdered by the Wamphyri like so many before and since. Why, I never even knew him ... I wasn't born ... what could he have done?'