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'Quite excellent,' said the elder after a moment. 'But now that your thoughts are in order and guarded, you must concentrate more on your emotions. The two are closely linked.'
Nathan nodded. 'I've heard much the same before.'
'Nathan,' said Ehtio, 'I have been asked to tell you that should you desire it, there will always be a place for you with the Thyre.'
It was a great honour and Nathan acknowledged it. Except: 'First there are things I must do,' he said. 'And even then ... afterwards ... I don't know.'
Things you must do? Put your life at risk, do you mean? Go among the eastern Szgany, who give themselves - and their children - to the Wamphyri without protest? Oh? And how then shall they deal with you?'
'It's hard to believe they do that to their own,' Nathan shook his head. 'Not without protest. As for me ... I have to know how it is for them there, and how it's yet to be in Sunside.'
Ehtio made a hopeless gesture. 'But what good will it do? What can you change? You have nothing to gain, everything to lose. Yes, and we too, the Thyre, have everything to lose.'
'In me?'
'Of course.'
'You value me too highly.'
'How so? You are invaluable!'
'I have to go,' Nathan was determined. 'But I'm grateful to the Thyre for all I've learned from them. And I will work on my telepathy - yes, my emotions too - and on the numbers shown to me by Ethloi. It strikes me there has to be a reason, a purpose, in all of these things. But I must go east, if only to speak to Thikkoul in River's Rush and discover my future in the stars.'
The first two are things you can do without risking yourself,' Ehtio answered. 'And the last is an excuse, or at best a forlorn hope. It seems to me you go to sacrifice yourself.'
'No,' Nathan denied it. 'I go to improve myself. Some time ago - it seems a long time now - I made my Szgany vow. It may be I made it in anger and horror, but it was still my vow. If I forsake it now, that would be ... unseemly. Perhaps these gifts of mine are tools, which I must learn to use in order to fulfil my obligations. In which case it will be a useful thing to know my future.'
'You are stubborn,' Ehtio told him, but without rancour.
'I'm Szgany,' Nathan answered, simply ...
A further twelve sunups and Nathan reached River's Rush. Here the Great Red River's course became a borehole, and the river itself a solid chute of water hurtling through eleven miles of narrow, subterranean sumps before widening out and being reasonable, placid again. Below ground those miles were u
As for the Thyre: there were only two more colonies to the east, beyond which the river flowed on into myth and mystery. But the two must remain unvisited; River's Rush was Nathan's last stop at the end of a journey which had carried him more than two thousand miles from his birthplace.
On the surface, the place was a small oasis twenty miles south of 'Sunside' (the Sunside of these unknown eastern regions, at least). Beyond Sunside were mountains, and across the mountains 'Starside'. There the Wamphyri dwelled in a mighty gorge, whose name Nathan had learned from the Thyre: Turgosheim. But even though the vampires were the undisputed masters here, still the restrictions upon them were the same: the night was their element, but the sun was their mortal enemy.
Upon a time the Thyre had traded with the Szgany in the grassland fringe between desert and forest, much as they did in the west; all that had come to an abrupt, bloody end some three years ago. For the Szgany of this region had become a gaunt, greedy people. Worn down by the Wamphyri, their sensitivities had been eroded away until they were little more than feral creatures, no longer trustworthy.
When the members of a Thyre trading party had seen how they were being cheated, even threatened by the Szgany, they had tried to withdraw back into the desert. The Szgany fell on them and murdered them; their few goods were stolen; they paid with their lives for a handful of medicinal salts and a few polished lizard skins. Only one man, wounded in his side, had returned to River's Rush to tell the tale.
The story made Nathan afraid, and not a little ashamed. For these were Szgany, his people. Also, he had intended to visit among them. Maybe now he would change his plans ...
In any event, his work came first, and for the duration of a single sunup he proved his credentials in the mausoleum called the Hall of Endless Hours. There, when at last his time was his own, he spoke to Thikkoul: a bundle of venerable rags in a niche lit by a constantly flickering candle.
And so you've come, that one's deadspeak came as a whisper in the Necroscope's mind. Well, it should not surprise me, /or I remember how, before I went blind, I saw it in the stars: a visit from one who would make me see again, however briefly. Then I died and still you had not come. And I thought: so much for my astrology! And all my life's work was in doubt. Ah, how could I know that even in death there may be light!
'Did you really read men's futures in the stars?' Nathan was fascinated.
Do you doubt me?
'It seems a strange talent, this astrology.'
Oh, and is it stranger than telepathy? Stranger than this deadspeak which allows me to communicate with my myriad colleagues among the Great Majority? Stranger than your own unique talent?
'It's not that I'm without faith,' Nathan answered. 'But even the Thyre bolster their faith with fact. Show it to me.'
The other chuckled. Gladly! Only show me the stars, and I will show you the future.
Nathan nodded. 'But there are no stars in the Hall of Endless Hours, Thikkoul. I'll have to go up into the desert. Stay with me . ..'
Above, it was night. The stars were diamonds, but they shone softer here than over Starside and the barrier range. Nathan walked out over sands which were cool now, away from the oasis. And in the silence and aching loneliness of the desert, Thikkoul's thoughts came more clearly into his i
'Yes?' Nathan put down a blanket, lay upon it, and looked up at the stars. Likewise Thikkoul.
Except . .. first I should warn you: things are rarely as I see them.
'You make errors?'
Oh, I see what I see! Thikkoul answered at once. But how the things which I see shall come to pass, that is not always clear. The future is devious, Nathan. It takes a brave man to read it, and only a fool would guarantee its meaning.
'I don't understand,' Nathan frowned, shook his head.
Thikkoul looked out through Nathan's eyes at the stars - looked at them for the first time in a hundred years - and sighed. Ahh! he said. Boy and man, they fascinated me, and continue to fascinate me. I am in your debt, Nathan Kiklu of the Szgany. But repayment may be hard, for both of us.
'No, it will be easy. Read my future, that's enough.'
But that was my meaning. What if I read hard things for you? Must I tell you your fate as well as your fortune?
'Whatever you see, that will suffice.'
I shall do as best 1 can, the other told him, and for a while was silent. Then ... it came in a flood, in a flash, a river bursting its banks. So fast that Nathan could scarcely cling to the words and images as Thikkoul threw them into his mind: I see ... doors! Like the doors on a hundred Szgany caravans but liquid, drawn on water, formed of ripples. And behind each one of them, a piece of your future. A door opens. I see a man, Szgany, a so-called 'mystic'.
His name is - lo ... Jo ... lozel! And his game - is treachery! Now I see Turgosheim; the manse of a great wizard; you and he together. He would use you, learn from you, instruct and corrupt you! The door closes, but another opens...