by Brian Lumley
In black bowels of earth beneath the colony, where even the fishermen of the Thyre must cast their nets by flaring torchlight, Atwei showed Nathan a section of the Great Dark River and explained as best she could its source and destination.
“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 channel through ages immemorial, at the blackly gurgling water flowing swiftly by, and the catches of the fishermen wriggling in their nets. And at one and the same time the river both repulsed and fascinated him. Merely to think of its sheer length was an awe-inspiring exercise in itself: more than three thousand miles of subterranean waterways, if Atwei was right, and Nathan was sure that she was. Why, Sunside’s rivers were streams by comparison; the Great Dark River covered more miles than Nathan had seen in his entire life!
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 planned to move on, and they swore him to secrecy. He promised that whatever the future held, he would never tell his brothers in the outside world what he had learned of the Thyre and their ways.
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.
“I’ll 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?”
Rogei’s baffled shrug. I could only try; I failed; I know no more. However, there is one other matter on which I would advise you.
“I
will always value your advice.”
Nathan, I know you have put this thing from your mind. The elders have not mentioned it; the subject has never come up; men are wise to leave well enough alone. But the fact is that when you needed someone I came to you. Your power goes beyond simply speaking to the dead. Do you understand me?
“I think so, yes. What is your advice?”
Simply this: beware what you call up to a semblance of life, Nathan, for some things may be harder to put down …
Nathan wasn’t sure he did understand, not fully, but he thanked Rogei anyway. And then he said goodbye …
PART SEVEN:
Nestor—Titheling—Turgosheim
I
Equipped with new clothes, a good leather belt and a polished ironwood knife with a bone handle, Nathan was ready. He would journey east downriver, for west would take him too close to home, or to what had once been his home. Only go that way … it would be very hard to resist returning to Settlement, and he dreaded the thought of what he might find there now.
Atwei accompanied him upon the first leg of his journey; she took the lead, striding out along the stone-carved “banks” of the Great Dark River.
Ostensibly he went to visit other Thyre colonies, to talk to their elders and their dead; but there was a lot more to it than that. Now that he was possessed of talents (his deadspeak, full-fledged among the Thyre, and his telepathy, as yet inchoate but promising, at least according to Atwei and others of her people), his confidence was that much greater. Where the past must remain a wasteland, anathema, it seemed the future might hold something of fulfilment at least. He had things to learn and people to talk to; whether they were living or dead … that no longer made any difference.
Nathan’s new clothes were quite remarkable. Fashioned in the Szgany style generally but of soft, sand-coloured lizard-skin, the cut was all Thyre, the work of a very high standard, and the fitting exact. In short, the Thyre of Place-Under-the-Yellow-Cliffs had dressed Nathan tip to toe much as they saw him: as a person of very special qualities. His fringed jacket had a high collar and wide lapels; his trousers were flared to fit snug over soft leather boots; his silver belt-buckle was scrolled to match the ornamentation on the sheath housing his knife.
All in all, with his startling blue eyes, and his yellow hair grown shoulder-length (outrageous colours in a man of the Szgany, and impossible among the Thyre), the ensemble gave him a mystical, even alien look in keeping with his standing. The only irony was that having done so much for the Thyre, gained so much in the way of respect, he should remain impotent to do anything for his own people. But they were not forgotten, and perhaps there was time yet.
For the first time in his life, Nathan was a person of substance, albeit in a world remote from his largely insubstantial previous existence. And he could not help but wonder: while his stature was vast among the Thyre, what would it be outside their limited sphere? What would he be now among his own kind, the Szgany Lidesci? Would he still be a freak, a mumbling fool, or were those days gone forever? And what of Sunside’s Travellers themselves: all of them, the Szgany as a race? What were they now to the Wamphyri?
Cut off from them in self-imposed exile, he could not know. But two thousand miles away down the Great Dark River, where others of his kind cowered under the tyranny of grotesque Wamphyri masters, he might yet find an answer. For as they were now—stumbling serfs, cattle, scarlet sustenance for hideous vampire Lords—so must his own people inevitably become! Horrific as the thought was, it was also fascinating. And the more Nathan dwelled upon it the more he saw his obligation unwinding before him, much like the black canyon walls of the serpentine river …
Every half-mile or so along the way, Atwei would pause to point out caches of tarry torches wrapped in oiled skins in niches in the damp walls. The torches were long-lasting; she would let two or three of these replenishment points go by before renewing her own and Nathan’s brands. Torches came and went like fireflies through the utter dark on both sides of the black river, as other Thyre passed them along the way. Nathan strained to hear the thoughts of these torchbearers in this blackest of black nights but heard nothing, only the far faint whispers of the dead …
Only fifteen miles to the east along a course that wound a little deeper into the desert, Open-to-the-Sky was the next colony. Nathan and Atwei were there in less than five hours. As to the colony’s name: the reason for that was immediately apparent. The place was, quite literally, open to the sky.
The first indication that they approached their destination came in a stirring and freshening of the air; the light improved and the sputtering flames of their torches were buffeted; ahead of them, the way seemed shrouded in a misty haze. Soon they were able to extinguish their brands and proceed in the gathering light. As the far bank receded, so the pace of the river slowed to a crawl. Then the swirling waters widened into the neck of a lake, and the scene which gradually opened to Nathan’s eyes was such as he could never have anticipated.
For suddenly … it was as if an oasis flourished underground! At first there were only ferns and mosses growing out of cracks in the walls, then small bushes overhanging the high ledges, eventually trees, vines and creepers, all straining for the indirect but beckoning sunlight. And where the river’s roof opened at last into a real canyon and the light of day streamed down from overhead, finally there was lush foliage springing up on every hand.
Here the river had shingle beaches and timbered jetties; true banks of red silt rose up to level ground on both sides of the water, where rudimentary stone wharves had been built to defend against flooding. All of which lay in the forefront of patchwork fields and allotments; while at the rear, houses on stilts rose in terraces where the higher ground backed up to the cliffs. Between and beyond the houses, dizzy pathways climbed vine-shrouded scree slopes, faults in the canyon wall, and cliff-hugging ledges, zig-zagging up and across the rising rock from cavern to cavern and ledge to ledge. And the Thyre came and went along these paths and causeways like ants about their daily business. While high overhead—
—A marvellous sight! The canyon walls reared up two hundred feet and more; the light where it came slanting in from the south to burst against the opposite wall was blinding after the Stygian dark of the river; despite that Nathan knew the surface must be mainly desert, still he saw the silhouettes of palms crowding the canyon’s rim. And so Open-to-the-Sky was an astonishing place.
Thyre elders met them where the worn-smooth granite of the river path met the rudimentary paving of the access road into the community. Nathan would have preferred to speak for himself from the onset, but by now well-versed in their code of conduct, he let Atwei act on his behalf; it was Thyre custom to open proceedings through an intermediary. His own name had been known in advance but theirs, of course, were secret. No introductions of that sort were necessary.
Nathan found himself greeted by a good deal of gravity, tempered with (he suspected), a small measure of scepticism; while Atwei, acting as his aide and spokeswoman—his dupe? perhaps his colleague in deception and blasphemy?—suffered an initially cool reception indeed.
As they passed through the lower levels of the colony and climbed a walled pathway to the Cavern of Long Dreams, a Thyre mausoleum one quarter of the way up the cliff, something of the stiffness and formality went out of The Five and they conversed with Nathan in cordial if restrained monotones. He continued to sense their hesitancy, however, and suspected there were those among them who thought he had somehow made fools of their colleagues in Place-Under-the-Yellow-Cliffs. Once inside the tomb he felt more at ease, and commenced to verify his credentials in very short order.
The Five had worked out a series of questions for Nathan to ask their dead ancestors, whose answers would permit of no deception or obfuscation. The dead, for their part, had heard faint rumours of the Necroscope’s coming from the Ancients of Place-Under-the-Yellow-Cliffs, and immediately recognized the purpose of these opening questions: that they were designed to
detect any charlatanry in Nathan. For which reason, once rapport was established and they felt the Necroscope’s warmth, the response of the dead was accurate and not without a measure of Thyre sarcasm directed at the elders themselves.
The most “junior” of The Five, perhaps irritated by Nathan’s dry and very un-mystical delivery of answers allegedly from beyond the grave, brought about an early interruption by asking: “Perhaps you could tell us why our ancestors converse so readily with you but not with their own kind?”
At which Nathan lost patience. This one reminded him of Petais, and he wasn’t about to go through all of that again! He might have answered in his own way, without prompting, but a voice in his head cautioned him against it and in a moment supplied the perfect answer:
“Quatias, your father Tolmia begs you to remember a time in your childhood—you were five?—when you lost your way in the desert just a mile from Open-to-the-Sky. All you had to do was climb a dune and you would have seen the oasis clearly, you were that close. But no, you were only a child and afraid; you sat down and cried. Be sure not to lose your way again, in the maze of your own doubts, now that you are even closer to a great truth.”
Quatias opened his mouth, closed it and made a strangled sound in the back of his throat. Finally, in a broken voice, he said: “Only my father Tolmia could have known … thought… said … that which you just said. Wherefore I no longer doubt. Nathan, please tell him that I love him very much!”
“He knows,” Nathan answered, all anger fled in a moment. “And he loves you in return, even as he did in life.”
Shortly after that the initial session broke up. Shaken, The Five must now reconsider things, think how best to employ Nathan—if they still had his good will. So they made to go off to their council chambers and discuss his awesome talent. But before he let them go:
