Страница 122 из 153
The sun rises and sets, and sunups come and go in a blur where you wander in a great dark castle of many caves. I see your face: your hollow eyes and greying hair? Now I see ... a /light to freedom, yes! But ... upon a dragon? One door closes, and another opens. I see ... a maiden; the two of you - three of you? -together. You seem happy; doors continue to open and close; and now you seem sad .. .
Some hours are long as days; others fly like seconds; long and short alike, they draw you into the future. And always the doors of your mind, opening and closing. I see ... a battle - war! - Szgany and Wamphyri! You win, and you lose. Now I see an eye, white and blind and glaring, much like my own before I died, but vast as a cavern! You stand before it and the eye ... is another door! It blinks! And in the blink of a great blind eye, you ... are ...
Thikkoul paused, like a man breathless.
'Yes?' Nathan's real voice was hoarse with excitement ... but Thikkoul's deadspeak was hoarse with horror as finally he continued: You are - gone!
Ill In the chill, cheerless hours before dawn, made all the more cold and lonely because he was on his own now, Nathan walked away from the oasis over the blown sands which kept the subterranean caverns of the Thyre secret. He had been told that the going was firm between here and Sunside; but in any case, he'd grown used to walking in the desert and found it no great discomfort. The night was bright and the stars clear; Nathan's shadow walked behind him, cast by the moon as it hurtled over the mountains of the barrier range, whose serrated ridge made a scalloped horizon in the far dark distance. Frequent meteorite showers left brilliant, ephemeral tracks across the sky.
After so much time spent underground, Nathan's night vision was much improved; he could see almost as well as in full daylight. As for direction: no chance that he could lose his way. No one among the Szgany knew the stars as well as he did; not even among the Thyre, that he knew of ... except Thikkoul. And as he went at a brisk, long-striding pace across the featureless desert, Nathan thought back on what Thikkoul had told him, the conversation which had followed fast upon the dead astrologer's reading:
'What does it mean?' He had wanted to know.
Everything. And nothing, Thikkoul had answered, a little sorrowfully now.
'I can ignore it?'
Of course. But alas, it won't ignore you.
'Can't you make yourself plainer?'
Thikkoul had sighed. Didn't I warn you? The future is a devious thing, Nathan. This is the problem: will what I have read in the stars come to pass because, believing it, we make it come to pass? Or will it happen whether or no? And what if we should try to avoid it, how then? Could it be that our actions will cause the very event we seek to avoid? But in fact (Nathan had sensed the other's incorporeal shrug), there's no riddle - nothing contrary - in any of this. The answer is simplicity itself: what will be will be! And that is all. 'I can set about making it happen,' Nathan had scratched his chin, repeating what the other had said but in his own way, 'or take steps to avoid it, or simply let it be. But whichever I choose, it will make no difference?'
Exactly. But there is one other complication. My readings are often symbolic. I don't understand the doors 1 saw in your future: they seemed to be part of you. Nor do I understand the dragon-flight, or the vast eye which swallowed you in a blink. For these are things of your future, which are perhaps linked to your past. And so it's for you to know and understand them. Jf not now, most certainly later ...
Nathan had frowned as he held to one of the things Thikkoul had told him. 'How may a thing come to pass because I try to avoid it? What if I know of this blind white eye which you mentioned - for indeed I believe I do - and make sure I go nowhere near it? How then can I be swallowed by it?'
There was a man, the other had answered. He feared water and had bad dreams, premonitions, about his death. He came to me that I would read his stars. I told him the dangers but he insisted. The forecast was this: that in the course of a single sunup he would drown in the borehole of River's Rush, and his body never be found!
I did not want to tell him but he insisted. Then, when he knew the truth he left River's Rush and climbed to the surface, and travelled west, alone, into the desert. He would escape his fate, do you see? Well, he found himself a little shade and sat out in the desert for all of that sunup, until the evening was nigh. Then, making to return, he stumbled and took a fall which broke his skin of water. Close by was a well; he went to it and lowered the bucket. But then, when he hauled up the water, the wall crumbled and he fell in.
The well was fed by the Great Red River; the river swept him> away; he was seen, alive, lifting his hand up from the torrent, before being swirled into the borehole, lost forever ...
At the end of his story Thikkoul had sighed again before lapsing silent, waiting for Nathan's response.
'But if he went into the desert alone,' Nathan had queried eventually, 'how can you know the sequence of events?' At which, once again he had sensed the other's simplistic shrug, enabling him to guess the answer even before he heard it. It was deadspeak, of course: the ability of the Great Majority, and of Nathan, to converse among themselves in their graves.
Because he told me all on the day I died! Thikkoul confirmed it. And his is a singularly awful 'resting place', Nathan, where in fact he knows no rest at all! For he was trapped in a swirling sump, where to this day his body remains, rotated and whirled in the frothing tumult. And all of his flesh long sloughed away; his bones all broken and reduced to rounded marbles, from the action of the waters. But at least he no longer fears the water, which has done its worst.. .
Later, Nathan had asked The Five of River's Rush if they knew of a man - Szgany, a 'mystic', perhaps - who dwelled in Sunside. Indeed they did: his name was lozel Kotys, who upon a time had had dealings with the Thyre. He had traded with them: low-grade iron knives for their good skins and medicines. But a mystic? That was a device which lozel had used all his days to avoid being taken in the tithe, until now he was well past his prime and had no need of it. But he was still the cu
After that, there had seemed nothing for it but that Nathan must go into Sunside. For quite apart from Thikkoul's predictions - even despite them, anticipating or pre-empting them - he had after all travelled the length of the known world in order to do just that. His original intention had been to see how the Szgany of these parts lived, and so discover how his own people must live one day, in the shadow of the Wamphyri. But beyond that, his reasons were now several.
The things which Thikkoul had told him had come thick and fast, but among the purely verbal had been blurred, indistinct scenes, even as the astrologer had seen them for himself. The impression of insubstantial doors opening and closing; dim figures (chiefly Nathan's) weaving in and out of a succession of situations and locations; strange faces ogling and peering. Except ... two of the latter had not been strange at all but loving, and beloved.
Nathan remembered Thikkoul's words, and the fleeting scene which had accompanied them. I see a maiden; the two of you - three of you? - together. You seem happy . ..
Of course he would seem happy, if such were true. But how could it be? For those dim, wavering female forms had worn the glad shining faces of his mother, and of Misha Zanesti! Which was why, at the end of Thikkoul's reading, Nathan's voice had been hoarse with excitement. Ah, but now, thinking back on the rest of the astrologer's words, his excitement was replaced by doubts and uncertainties.