The elders entered.
There were five of them, not all “old” by any means and certainly not decrepit. Nathan calculated their ages on what he knew of the elderly among his own people. The youngest of the five was possibly forty-five, while the oldest would be well into his seventies. Revise your estimates upwards by at least fifteen years, Rogei told him. The Thyre are long-lived. Since each colony has only jive elders, a man cannot even aspire to become one until he is at least sixty.
Nathan looked openly, respectfully, at each of the elders in turn. The youngest of them was spindly and quite bald, but as yet largely unwrinkled. His eyes were somewhat smaller than those of his companions; their pupils were grey, dartingly alert and (Nathan felt sure) more than a little suspicious. Three of the remaining four were quite simply Thyre; dressed in knee-length, pleated, belted yellow skirts, apart from the difference in their ages there was nothing to distinguish one from the next. The final member of the group was the one anomaly: bearing a torque of gold around his neck, he was heavily wrinkled, bent, and wore flowing white hair to his shoulders. His eyes were huge, moist, and uniformly yellow as the gold of his torque. He was at a glance the Elder of elders.
They peered at Nathan obliquely, blinkingly as they gathered to the table and their eyes adjusted to the extra light. Each carried a small stool, which they placed in a semicircle to enclose him. Then, straightening, they stood facing him.
Atwei, standing behind them, said, “Nathan, please sit.” And as he sat down, so did they. And without pause the interview and question session got underway.
“We shall dispense with formalities,” said the youngest of the five in a high-pitched, superior tone. “You are after all Szgany and cannot know the ways of the Thyre.”
Excellent. said Rogei. This spokesman thinks he knows it all, a common failing among the young. So you must prove him wrong. Bow your head twice to him, then three times—but more slowly—to the Elder.
Nathan did as Rogei instructed and the Thyre, including Atwei, sat up straighter. Then the five turned their heads to look at her, until she huskily protested, “No, I have not instructed him!” In this way, and without saying a word, Nathan had their attention. But more than that, he had apparently earned himself the enmity of their spokesman.
“So,” said that one, frowning, “your telepathy is not as embryonic as we thought, for patently you stole this greeting from my mind. What is more, I failed to detect the theft! Yet in your fever these unseemly skills of yours were not obvious, which tends to show a naturally deceptive turn of mind.”
Rogei was quick off the mark. Point out how a man, even an elder, who jumps to conclusions to prove an elusive point may well deceive himself!
Nathan did so, and added: “One who investigates the mind of another while he is feverish risks discovering phantoms.”
At which point the Elder himself took over. In a voice which creaked like the branch of an old tree in the wind, he asked: “And how many of these phantoms are there in your mind, Nathan of the Szgany?”
A great many, Rogei whispered in his inner ear, speaking now as Nathan himself. Some of them are the ghosts of my past, which are mine alone to reveal or hold at bay as I see fit. But there are also the voices of an hundred Ancients of the Thyre, who would gladly speak through me to prove my innocence—if the Elder of elders so desires.
Nathan repeated it.
“That is a blasphemy!” the spokesman made to stand up, but the Elder took his arm and held him down. The spokesman glanced at the venerable one and frowned, saying, “But plainly he is a necromancer! He entered the Cavern of the Ancients in order to molest and torture our dead for their secrets!”
“If so,” the Elder nodded, patiently, “the more we let him speak the more his words will condemn him. So far he is correct in one respect at least: namely that some are too quick to jump to conclusions! Let him say on.” And again he turned his great soft eyes on Nathan.
Tell them your story in brief, said Rogei, while I spy on them through your eyes.
Nathan complied. “The Wamphyri have returned to Starside where they inhabit the last aerie. They raided Settlement, my home in the west of Sunside. During the raid, my mother and … and a Szgany girl were stolen and my brother went missing. Searching for him, I followed his trail east where I met a band of Travellers and determined to join them. But first I had to try one last time to find my brother. Finally, learning that he was dead, I tracked my Traveller friends to their camp at the edge of the grasslands and discovered that they were —” He paused and shook his head. “—They were no more. The Wamphyri …” He hung his head for a moment to drive out the memories of these very real phantoms, then looked up.
“I had nothing left in the world, and no longer wished to live. But remembering how I sometimes overhear the dead whispering in their graves—a strange gift, I know, and one which I had kept hidden—I thought that I might join them in death. Perhaps then I would be able to talk to my mother again, to my brother, my girl. Wandering beneath the stars, I crossed the grasslands into the desert, where sunup found me at the foot of sandstone cliffs. There I decided to die.
“But as I lay down to sleep I heard the voice of a man, an Ancient of the Thyre, who called himself Rogei. He told me certain things, led me to the Cavern of the Ancients. By then I was weak and fell unconscious. I woke up and was here. And now I’m accused of desecration and blasphemy.”
The elder spokesman was angry again. “Despite that Rogei is a revered name among the Thyre, it is not uncommon. There is more than one Rogei in the Cavern of the Elders, as this Szgany necromancer guessed there would be. He must have learned the name from our traders, and remembered it to put to evil use.”
“How so?” The Elder looked at him. “Who among the Thyre would reveal his secret name to a Szgany youth met briefly at the trading? For what good purpose? No, I think not.” He shook his head. “Also, if it were so, does it mean you have changed your accusation? If so, then what is this man’s crime? Is he a vile necromancer or merely a clever liar?”
The other pursed his lips. “I say we should speak in our own tongue,” he said sharply. “He listens; he is intelligent; he is a talented deceiver!”
“I say again: you deceive yourself,”
Rogei prompted Nathan into speech. “I can prove what I’ve said.”
“Then do so,” the spokesman snapped, “and so condemn yourself!”
I do believe I know this one, Rogei spoke to Nathan. Yes, and also the Elder. Even under the trappings of his great age, still I know him. But the Spokesman: he has the looks and mannerisms of my own son. Why, it could be that he is my grandson! It would explain his vehemence, which is rare among the Thyre. Don’t you see? He believes you interfered with the remains of his grandfather.
“But I didn’t!” Nathan burst out—and the Thyre elders drew back a little on their stools, staring at him curiously.
No, but I did touch you. No dream, Nathan. You are the Necroscope which I named you, beloved of the dead. In the Cavern of the Ancients, when I thought you were about to die, I was—moved—to come to you! And rising up, I was beside you, to comfort you in your fever!
“You … came to me?” Nathan wasn’t able to hold back from blurting it out loud. “But you’re a dead man!”
“Hah! He speaks nonsense!” The spokesman sneered, and went on to add some choice invectives in the Thyre tongue. But the Elder had read something in Nathan’s strange eyes, causing him to caution his chief accuser:
“No, make yourself understood to him also. For if we desire to bring charges, he must have the benefit of the doubt.”
Rogei came to Nathan’s rescue, telling him what to say and how he must say it. And looking at the Thyre spokesman he repeated Rogei word for word, faithfully, only leaving out his acid sarcasm. “Ah, but your grandfather recognizes you at last, Pe-tey-is!” he said, gazing directly into the spokesman’s eyes and nodding slowly. “Petals, son of Ekhou and grandson of Rogei the Ancient, bo
rn in that same hour that your grandfather took to his sickbed. But before he died he saw you in your mother’s arms and was proud of you, just as he is proud now to see that you’re an elder! Rogei knows you not only from your premature loss of hair, familiar features and bearing in general—which is to say, moulded in an almost exact likeness of your father, his son—but also from your abrupt mannerisms and the heat of your argument. As Ekhou was ever the fiery one, so are you!”
Petais’s mouth had fallen open. He couldn’t speak and so gurgled a little, his eyes bulging. Under Rogei’s expert guidance, Nathan gave him no time to recover but carried on. “Now tell your grandsire, do you accept that these are his words? I hope so, for if not we must summon Ekhou your father and Amlya your mother, who will know me better. I know that they are not dead, for if they were I would have spoken to them in the Cavern of the Ancients!”
Petais shook his head wildly, stood up, sat down again. He was still lost for words. But the Elder of elders was not. “Who is it speaks, you or Rogei?”
“A little of both,” Nathan answered. “I repeat his words, faithfully if I can.”
The Elder nodded, reached out a trembling hand to touch Nathan’s arm. “I perceive that it is true,” he said, his eyes rapt on him and unblinking. “Plainly a great wonder has come among us!”
Petais groaned and said, “Still we must be sure!”
“I am sure,” the Elder answered him. “You do not remember, Petals—of course not, for you were a child newborn—but I too was there when your mother took you before the dying Rogei, and indeed he was proud of you. I know, for I was Rogei’s nephew, the son of his brother!”
Nodding, Petais seemed to sag a little. “What must be must be. But it had to be decided, one way or the other.”
I was right, Nathan, Rogei sighed. The Elder is my nephew, Oltae!
Even as he spoke his ethereal words, the one he had named turned from Petais to Nathan. “I know you will understand that Petais is correct,” the Elder said. “We had to be sure. Even now, we must be sure.”
“Test me however you will, Oltae,” Nathan told him.
The Elder gasped, gave a small start, and his hand tightened on Nathan’s arm. “That is my name, aye,” he nodded. “And I know you did not steal it from my mind, for I have built a wall there which is impenetrable! Wherefore, one final test, and I shall be satisfied.”
Rogei prompted Nathan to say: “Now I speak as Rogei. Let me guess this test, nephew. Has it to do with your examination for a place among The Five? You were a young man then, as Petais is now, but I remember your examination well for I was your examiner! I had many questions for you, but your answer to one of them won exceptional marks! Do you remember it, Oltae?”
“I do indeed,” the Elder whispered.
“And I asked,” Rogei spoke through Nathan, ““When will we know if The One Who Listens exists?” And you answered —”
“—My answer was this,” Oltae the Elder cut him short. “We shall know that He exists when finally He speaks, which will not be until we are better capable of knowing and understanding Him.” And as he gazed deep into Nathan’s eyes, for a moment Oltae thought he saw an image of Rogei looking back at him, smiling. But as the Necroscope blinked, it was gone.
The Elder sighed, nodded in his fashion, and creaked to his feet; likewise his four colleagues. But before they left, Oltae said to Nathan (also to Rogei): “It is my thought that today, perhaps we are one step closer to understanding Him!”
And then to Nathan alone: “Rest, get back your strength. We shall talk again …”
In the long days which followed—days which would each have been as long as a “week” in the time-scale of Nathan’s unknown hell-lander father—he learned a great many things and did a great deal of “teaching”. The Thyre called it teaching, anyway, though to Nathan it seemed he merely passed on the messages of the Ancients. But certainly the previously irretrievable knowledge of the dead was of enormous advantage to the living.
Long sessions were spent with The Five in the Cavern of the Ancients, where Nathan’s talent as a Necroscope was proved beyond any further doubt; and as the living of the Thyre warmed to him, so did the Ancients themselves. And just as Harry Keogh had been a lone, bravely flickering candle to the dead of a far distant world, so now his son became a light in the darkness of the Thyre beyond.
Much like the Szgany, the Thyre had very little of true writing; rather than words, they used a system of complicated glyphs to illustrate whole ideas, so that a lot of the detail was inevitably lost. Most of their “history” had come down to them in this way, and in the form of myths and legends passed mouth to mouth (or mind to mind), from generation to generation; out of which had sprung their art-form of storytelling. Foremost amongst makers of Thyre romance had been one Jhakae, dead for more than two hundred and eighty years. Now, through Nathan, Jhakae could relate all of his best stories, created for a limited audience of dead Ancients, and know that they would be passed down to thousands of the living.
Nathan relayed tale after tale, each of them furiously scribbled down and recorded as best as possible in the Thyre glyphs: the Story of the Fox and the Kite, the Fable of the Gourd and the Granule, the Tale of Tiphue and the Dust-Devil. Twenty of them, then thirty, finally forty, and all jewels of Thyre fantasy. But Jhakae’s latest and greatest tale, as yet unfinished, would be that of the Szgany Youth in the Cavern of the Ancients: a Parable. And so Nathan was honoured.
In everything Nathan transcribed from death into life, and vice versa, he had the invaluable advice and assistance of Rogei. But such was the body of information to be passed on, the enormous bulk of questions from both sides, that priorities must be decided, time apportioned, and the practical take precedence over theoretical, philosophical, and theological subjects. Within the comparatively narrow confines of Thyre existence, all such subjects were limited forms anyway; far more important and immediately applicable were ideas and devices such as Shaeken’s “Water Ram”, his “Hydraulic Hoist” and “Wheel of Irrigation”.
Shaeken was that Ancient whose name Rogei had mentioned at their first meeting, who once designed leather buckets for the drawing of water from the wells. Pursuing his obsession in death as in life, Shaeken had proceeded to far greater things; but even without the benefit of his genius, Nathan might have brought the principle of the water wheel to the Thyre. Desert folk, they had never journeyed beyond the grasslands to such townships as Twin Fords, and had not seen how the Szgany used the raw energies of the river to assist them in their work.
But they were the Thyre; the better Nathan knew them the more he understood their pride; making nothing of his own (in any case limited) knowledge, he spent long hours with a graphite stylus and the skins of lizards stretched on frames, creating meticulous sketches of machines direct from Shaeken’s mind. And joiners of wood and other artisans pored breathlessly over each drawing as it was completed, so that as his work progressed the principles were grasped and the first models began to be carved.
There were times when Nathan grew tired but he made no complaint. His life had purpose; his mind was so occupied as to hold at bay all the mourning and miseries of his past; he had a deal more of respect from his new friends than his own had ever shown him. He was satisfied, or believed he was satisfied, for a while at least…
He was pleased to perform personal favours. Rogei felt compelled to discover the fortunes of various kith and kin; Nathan stood in his debt and so made inquiries on his behalf; Rogei was enabled to “speak” with those who were here, still alive. Others however had moved away, to far colonies beyond the range of Thyre dead-speak. For just like the telepathy of the living, that of the dead had its limitations, too. Many of the ones Rogei sought were dead in distant places, beyond his reach.
Meanwhile Nathan’s fame had spread abroad; Thyre from other colonies began to arrive at the Place-Under-the-Yellow-Cliffs, all bearing invitations from their elders. Invariably they would seek audience with Nathan and l
et it be known that he would always find a welcome should he ever decide to visit. He promised Rogei that if ever he accepted such an invitation, he’d be sure to seek out his old friend’s relatives en route, wherever his travels took him.
But in the interim he worked …
With the exception of trivial items vetted out by Rogei, first Nathan satisfied all the personal queries of the dead in the Cavern of the Ancients, and of the colony’s living alike, before setting to with a will. Then:
He made known all of the gourmet Arxei’s myriad secret recipes, which that one had never revealed in life; he delivered a formula of preservation from the mirror-polisher Annais, a vegetable varnish to protect the Thyre mirrors and keep them from tarnishing; he gave voice to the gardener Tharkel’s conclusions on bees, pollination, and the keeping of hives. In life Tharkel had made an oasis with his own hands, which had failed only through the lack of an adequate water supply; since when he’d planned bigger and better ones. Now, with the advent of Shaeken’s Hydraulic Hoist, they could be real!
Nathan did all of these things, and as the work gradually slackened off even found time for a little local travelling and studying among the Thyre. And since the elders did not consider it fitting that a person of Nathan’s importance should concern himself with the basic requirements of life, Atwei became his aide among the living just as Rogei was his spokesman among the dead. Dealing with all mundane matters, she left Nathan free to explore the possibilities of his unique talent.
In fact he was given too much freedom and failed to use it to his best advantage. For as the furious pace of his life slackened, so he allowed a host of dreams and memories of past, unbearable things to creep back in to plague him. He dreamed of Canker Canison’s barking laugh as the loping dog-thing carried Misha away to the horror of some unthinkable future; and of his mother, a flame-eyed thrall in the service of a hideous vampire Lord; and of Nestor rotting in the river, a thing of weeds and sloughing grey flesh, dissolving into the mud. Nightmares such as these invariably brought Nathan gibbering awake, and Atwei would come running to comfort him …