Blood Brothers

  And so he looked at the Thyre female again; also at the—room?—in which he now found himself. And she was right: his surroundings were strange! He must give his mind time to absorb them, and slowly.

  Seated on a stool beside his bed, the … girl was alert and her demeanour erect, graceful, somehow regal. Nathan saw that standing she would be quite tall. Her youth shone out of her eyes: young eyes are self-apparent in all creatures; they shine and have a brilliant clarity. She was also brown as the kernel of a freshly cracked nut but not at all wrinkled, and like all of the Thyre she was slender to the point of emaciation. The highly sensitive pupils of her large eyes were lemon green against a background of olive irises, and were shaded by the horny ridges of her eyebrows.

  She wore a red skirt and sandals, nothing else. Her small breasts were loose, pear-shaped, slightly pendulous; not at all “deflated paps”, which was how Nathan had heard Lardis Lidesci describe the breasts of trogs. Her ears were large, her mouth and chin small, her nose wide and flattened, with dark flaring nostrils. The odour of her body was a light musk, but she also carried a pleasing scent of lemons.

  “Is there something?” she said, tilting her head a little. And Nathan was surprised to recognize the source of the sweet lemon smell: it was her breath. Somehow, he had not expected it to be so clean and refreshing. But … if she was reading his thoughts that, too, was one which she might easily find offensive.

  He sighed and shook his head. “Nothing I think comes out the way it was intended,” he said. “Each time I give my brain free rein it issues insults which then require apologies. I’m sorry.”

  “But your thoughts are your own,” she told him, seemingly taken aback. “I would not enter unless it was necessary. That is an unspoken rule. You, too, have the talent. And would you come into my mind uninvited?”

  “Rogei said much the same thing,” Nathan answered, “that I was gifted. He said it might grow in me. But right now your mind is a blank to me. When I was young I would sometimes read my brother’s mind, and … I have a knack with certain wolves of the wild. But I am not a telepath.” He shook his head.

  “You will be,” she said. And then, obviously curious:

  “But this … Rogei? Who is he? And for that matter, how do you know that the Thyre are telepathic? That is one secret which we have kept well. Or so we thought.”

  Nathan was cautious. It might—just might—have been delirium, all of it. But if so his feverish mind had forecast all of this with remarkable accuracy. And so it seemed he must accept what had taken place as fact: he had indeed talked to a dead creature (no, a dead “man”), and so discovered the things he knew about the Thyre. He was … a Necroscope? That being the case, it seemed Rogei had supplied him with a real reason for living; the Thyre Ancient had not only saved his life but had given it meaning—but had also made it meaningless, if he couldn’t pass the knowledge on.

  “Rogei is the one who told me about your telepathy,” he finally answered, aware that she was listening intently and sitting up that much straighter. “He demonstrated it to me. Except his talent is different now. As Rogei has suffered … a change, so has his telepathy, which in turn allows me the use of my talent. For where the Thyre mind-talk with the living, I…”

  “Yes?”

  “… What is your name?” He stalled.

  “That is a secret!”

  “Of course it is,” Nathan sighed, shrugged. “And so are the things which you have asked me. But you’ve been my nurse and I thought that made us friends.”

  She understood his comment: faith and trust is a two-way system or it doesn’t work. “My name is Atwei—At-we-ay. Now then, who is Rogei?”

  Nathan took a deep breath. “Rogei’s body lies in the Cavern of the Ancients, Atwei,” he said. “He was Thyre. Now he is an Ancient! And I … am a Necroscope and talk to dead people. My talent lets me talk to the dead of the Thyre.”

  If Atwei was surprised it scarcely showed. Nodding, she answered quietly: “There are desert folk who practise such an art. They are a far-away tribe, not Thyre, and do other things which are unseemly. Once, when they would spread into the lands of the Thyre, they made war with us; their warriors invaded our colonies under the earth. The Thyre trapped them there, opened floodgates and drowned them all. Since when they have sent no more armies against us and we no longer kill men, for the mind-cries of the dying are awful! Instead, they are satisfied with their lands beyond the Great Red Waste and the Last Mountains. They are called necromancers, after that art which they use to torture the dead for their secrets.”

  “Rogei the Ancient called me a Necroscope,” Nathan told her. “He knew the word from the dead of the Szgany, with whom he had spoken mind to mind as you speak to the living. Upon a time, not long ago, the Szgany had known just such men as I am. They were not necromancers and neither am I. I’ve tortured no one, Atwei, neither the living nor the dead. But if you’re not convinced, only look inside my head. It is that I hear the dead whispering in their graves, and on occasion they hear me. Rogei was one of them who heard and talked to me. He saw that I had problems and guided me to the Cavern of the Ancients.”

  She nodded. “So, you are not deranged. The Thyre elders have read certain of these things in your mind. They could not be sure but thought you might be mad. If what you say is true, plainly you are sane and have a weird, unique talent. And who am I to decide if it is for good or for evil?”

  Nathan frowned. “It seems I remember something of that: voices which questioned me while I slept. About the Cavern of the Ancients and what happened there. Also about my past. But … did I invite them into my mind? I don’t think so. Which is strange, for as I recall you mentioned an unspoken rule. Also, you awakened me with a mind-call! Do you make and break these rules of yours so easily then, Atwei?”

  She drew back from him. “But several strange things had happened, and there were matters which the elders required to understand. At first it seemed you might not live. Before you could die, it was necessary that they look into your mind. As for myself: how could I determine your progress, without that I first inquire within?”

  He nodded but this time made no apology. “And did they get what they wanted, the elders?”

  “Not everything. Your mind is closed to the past, locking out all of the pain which lurks there. There is a great deal of pain in you.”

  “I no longer feel it.”

  “Because it is locked out—or in! This is not a physical thing, Nathan.”

  He changed the subject. “What will become of me?”

  “That is for the elders.”

  “Then you should call them, or take me to them.”

  “I have called them and they will come, soon. Before then you should eat. Will you eat with me?” She seemed eager now to make up for any possible misunderstandings. And after all, she had told him her name.

  “Here?”

  “Oh, yes. For it will be a while before you can get up. A long day has passed, and a night. Up above, the sun is freshly risen. And all while you have lain here.”

  An entire cycle! Nathan thought, easing his bones a little and stretching in his bed. But he wasn’t surprised: it felt at least that and more. And Atwei was right: he was hungry. “I’ll gladly eat with you.” he told her.

  “Food has been prepared,” Atwei nodded, stood up, backed away and out through an archway. “I shall return.” Left alone, he studied his surroundings.

  The place where Nathan lay was a cave. Despite its rudimentary furniture, whitewashed walls, and crude mosaic floor of white and green flagstones, which gave it something of a room’s appearance and made it habitable, it was still a cave. Central in the high ceiling, an irregular shaft three feet in diameter and possibly artificial ascended out of sight. But in an apparently subterranean room without windows, the most surprising features were the light and the warmth.

  Down through the shaft in the ceiling streamed a beam of light, catching drifting dust motes in its ray in exactly the same wa
y as sunlight coming into a barn through a gapped roof. Not solid sunlight, no, but light diffused and scattered, so that it emerged into the room almost as a haze. And falling onto a table near the foot of Nathan’s crude wooden bed, the beam or shaft of soft yellow light struck against polished mirrors of gold to further permeate the room.

  While Rogei had caused Nathan to believe that the Thyre colonies went deep indeed, as yet he had no idea how far he’d actually been carried underground. With sunlight like this to warm and light the place, however, he was sure it couldn’t be far. Perhaps there were passageways leading from the Cavern of the Ancients to caves in the foot of the cliffs. In that case the shaft of light was nothing more than sunlight penetrating through some ancient chimney, and the warmth was residual of the desert.

  Wrong! said a voice in his head, one which he recognized at once as Rogei’s. The Place-Under-the-Yellow-Cliffs is very deep, Nathan. But the temperature in the Thyre colonies is a constant. It is a natural thing and a great many of the caves under the desert are like this. Why would we dwell in the cold places, or for that matter the hot ones, when so many temperate labyrinth systems exist for our habitation?

  Used to this thing now, Nathan sat up in his bed. He saw that under his quilt of furs he was naked. His clothes, washed and mended, lay folded on a shelf at one side of the room. Now, with some effort—leaving his bed and dressing himself on the one hand, and on the other concentrating upon Rogei—he said: “Well, it appears you were right. I was rescued from the Cavern of the Ancients and brought here. And now the elders are coming to question me.”

  Like me, Rogei answered, they’ve waited patiently for you to wake up. But you must be careful how you answer their questions. They demand respect, elders, and until you prove otherwise they will doubtless accuse you of desecration. Merely to enter a forbidden place is bad enough; and as for the rest of it … Nathan sensed the other’s shrug.

  “The rest of what?” He was mystified. “You welcomed me in and I entered; I could go no further and collapsed; I spoke to the old ones dead in their niches and upon their shelves. Then, at the end, I dreamed you came to me and comforted me.”

  And touched you? Took your hand in mine?

  “Yes.”

  No dream that, Nathan.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Probably as well, for the time being. Anyway, all is back to rights now.

  Nathan frowned but didn’t press him; there were too many other things he wanted to know. For example: “If this place is so deep underground, where does the light come from?”

  From the surface.

  “The shaft falls straight? Like a well? In that case the sun would have to stand directly overhead, which it never does.”

  I doubt that the shaft falls straight, Rogei answered. No, for the cracks of the earth are like a maze. But some of these mazy cracks have mirrors at every junction!

  “Mirrors?”

  Where the bedrock breaks through the desert sand, Rogei patiently explained, there, in certain protected places, the Thyre tend and polish their mirrors. The sunlight falls upon them and is deflected into the earth’s potholes and passageways. Passed from mirror to mirror, it descends into the dark places under the desert. Thus the Thyre bring a little light into their colonies.

  Nathan nodded. “Else you’d all be blind down here.”

  No, for our eyes are like trog or Wamphyri eyes …or perhaps not like the letter’s, for the night is their element. But given even a little light, the Thyre see well enough. It is just that the light is a special comfort. Down there in the hollow earth, it is treasured.

  Nathan would ask next about the Thyre talent for tongues. Apart from some small initial hesitation, Atwei’s conversation had been in perfectly good Szgany. He knew of course that the Thyre traded with Travellers from time to time, but would find it astonishing if they shared the same native tongue.

  Seeing the question coming, however, and perhaps far too many more of them, Rogei cried: Wait! Enough of these questions for now, Nathan. There are more important matters. First we must talk about the Thyre elders …

  But before he could continue, Atwei returned with a yoke round her slender neck from which depended a pair of thin silver trays laden with small wooden bowls of various edibles. And looking at the bowls as she transferred them from the trays to the table, Nathan found his mouth watering. For the first time in a very long time he knew which matters were most important to him. Most immediately important, anyway.

  Seated on tiny stools on opposite sides of the table and between the mirrors, Nathan and Atwei ate. There in the shaft of diffused sunlight, she looked more golden than brown, and he noticed how her pupils shrank to match the light’s greater intensity.

  The foodstuffs were fascinating, even exotic. Nathan had never imagined that these “primitive” desert folk enjoyed such variety. Insisting that the food was for him, Atwei took only a little; she was simply keeping him company while he ate. And at that Nathan felt privileged. He rightly supposed himself to be the first of the Szgany to ever learn of such things. Certainly he was the first to ever taste them.

  There were walnuts marinaded in vegetable oils, yellow bladder-roots with a bittersweet taste which stung the mouth as the vegetable was crushed, fried slivers of meat in aromatic sauces, several varieties of mushroom, and small, eyeless fishes baked whole. Various fruits followed: tangy cactus apples, figs and round ripe lemons, a bunch of small grey grapes. Everything was delicious, but Nathan had found a sort of small sausage especially succulent and asked Atwei what it was made of. That was a mistake.

  “Grubs of the earth,” she answered.

  And after a pause: “Worms?” He cocked his head a little, inquiringly.

  “Of a sort. We breed them …”

  The meal was at an end.

  They cleaned their hands in tiny fingerbowls, following which Atwei closed her eyes, placed the fingertips of her left hand upon her brow, and sat still for a moment. Then she smiled and asked: “Did you enjoy?”

  “Greatly. I thank you.”

  Again she smiled. “And I have thanked Him,” she said.

  “Him?”

  “Whoever listens.”

  “Do you believe there is some One?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Many of our beliefs died in the day of the white sun,” he quoted Szgany “history”, of which there was little enough. “Men had writing, numbers, science, and some believed in a god. Very little of science survived, and almost nothing of religion. In the close vicinity of the Wamphyri, it’s hard for men to have faith in a merciful god! Now when the Szgany pray or give thanks, they offer them to their stars, which are remote even beyond the influence of the vampires.”

  Then if I were you, Rogei said in his mind, I would seek out my guardian star right now! Nathan, I have kept apart out of common decency; the Thyre require privacy for eating; Atwei has honoured you greatly. But finally the time has come when we must talk about the elders!

  “Very well,” he answered.

  “Your pardon?” Atwei lifted an eyebrow.

  “I was talking to Rogei,” he told her.

  Her eyebrows went up higher yet, worriedly. “You should not have got up and dressed yourself. I told you that you must wait, until you had your strength back. You were delirious for a long time and … you could be again!”

  Nathan sighed and shook his head. “I’m a little weak,” he said, “that’s all.” But then he had an idea. “Atwei, listen to me: could you be delirious, too?”

  “I? Now? Of course not!”

  “Good! Now tell me if I’m correct: while I am limited in my ability to read minds, you are not. Right?”

  “If a mind is telepathic, I can read it,” she said, frowning. “Also, I can partially block another mind trying to read mine. These things come with practice. As yet, your talent is undeveloped. But your mind has the capacity.”

  “I was wondering,” he said, “if you could talk to Rogei through me? If
you were to enter my mind right now, would you be able to overhear our conversation?”

  “Eavesdrop on an Ancient?” She sat up straighter, looked more worried yet. “Even an elder would think twice!”

  “You believe me, then?”

  “We are friends,” Atwei hesitated a little, “you said it yourself. It takes two to build a friendship. If one lies it may be broken and have no value. This is proven; not only among the Thyre but also the Szgany, I think? And so I must believe you—at least until you are a proven liar.”

  Rogei sighed in Nathan’s mind. Very well, try your experiment. Get it over with. Actually, it has merit. It will save a lot of time if it works.

  “There,” Nathan spoke to Atwei. “He has nothing against it. And you needn’t fear him for after all he’s Thyre, one of your own. Also, Rogei’s a dead creature and harmless.”

  A dead “man”, Nathan, Rogei reminded. And not all dead things are harmless, believe me! Well, will she or won’t she?

  “Will you or won’t you?” Nathan repeated him.

  “If you wish it,” she said. She came round the table and he made to stand up. “No, remain seated, and … talk to this Rogei.” She placed a small, trembling hand on his brow.

  Atwei, I am Rogei the Ancient, once Rogei the elder. His mental voice was suddenly stern.

  She snatched back her hand and placed it on her breast. Nathan got to his feet. “You heard him?”

  Her mouth had fallen slightly open. She closed it, shook her head and said, “No … but I felt something. A presence!”

  An echo, said Rogei. Atwei sensed the merest trace, the smallest ghost of me, amplified by your mind. It doesn’t work, and I didn’t think it would. You are the Necroscope, Nathan. Such talents are not commonplace.

  Soft, padding footsteps sounded from outside the room. Atwei backed shakily away, turned and went to meet the elders. Rogei read Nathan’s concern and said, Well, too late for that now. We must deal with it as it comes. More ways than one to strip a cactus.