Thyre place-names became a blur in his mind as weeks grew into months underground or in the seemingly trackless sands of the surface: Eight-Trees-Leaning, Glowworm Lake, Garden-Gorge-Over and Garden-Gorge-Under, Seven Wells South, Place-of-the-Hot-Springs, Big Swirly Hole and Crumble Cavern. Until, from the dead of Saltstone Sump, he learned the name of an Ancient in River's Rush beyond the Great Red Waste: Thikkoul, who had read men's futures in the stars. Alas, Thikkoul had gone blind before he died, and the stars had become invisible to him. But now, through Nathan ... perhaps it was possible he could read them again? Perhaps he might even read Nathan's future in the stars.
Nathan determined to speak with Thikkoul, but many miles yet to River's Rush, and a great many colonies in between ...
On the fertile rim of Crater Lake, rising like a false plateau from the surface of the furnace desert, Nathan spoke to his guide Septais, a young Thyre male only five or six years his senior. Septais had been with him now for a three-month; they were firm friends and felt little or nothing of strangeness or alienage in each other's company. Nathan's voice was hushed, even awed, as he asked: 'How can it be that Szgany and Thyre don't know each other? We've dwelled so close, so long, and yet apart from the occasional trading contact, we're strangers!'
'But ... we do know you,' Septais answered, blinking.
'Yes,' Nathan nodded, 'you know us - you know something of us, anyway - but the Szgany have never really known you. And they certainly haven't known this!' He held out his hands as if to encompass all of Crater Lake.
The place was simply that: a giant crater a mile across, with a raised inner caldera. The river entered through caverns in the base of the west wall; it formed a great blue lake which emptied through a gap in the reef-like central node of jutting rocks, and from there down into the sump of a whirlpool. After that, deep in the earth again, the Great Dark River ran east as before. And so the colony was an oasis, but vast and very beautiful.
'You mean our oases, our secret places? But if you knew of them they would not be secret. And if you knew of them ... how long before the Wamphyri learned of them, too?' Septais gave a shrug. 'You Szgany have your places, the forests and the hills, and we desert folk have ours.'
'I don't blame you for not wanting to share this,' Nathan told him.
'Perhaps different men should live together,' Septais answered. 'But our experience is that they can't. Upon a time, the Eastern Necromancers invaded. In aspect, they seemed much like the Thyre - far more like us than you Szgany - but they were not. For one thing, they did not have our telepathy. But they did have ... other arts.'
'I've been told about them,' Nathan nodded. Again Septais's shrug. 'We trade a little with the Szgany, so that they may know us for a peaceful people. It is enough.'
'I understand,' Nathan said. 'But I still can't understand why we don't know about you. So close, and yet so ignorant. And your telepathy: I know that certain men of the Szgany have had such talents before me. Did they never hear your minds conversing? Did they never wonder?'
'Our thoughts are guarded,' Septais said. 'From birth to death, we are careful how we use this skill. Among the Szgany, telepathy is rare. But among the Wamphyri - it is not!'
Nathan nodded. 'That makes sense, for I couldn't bear the thought of them here!' Giving an involuntary shudder, he fell silent for a moment. But he was still curious, puzzled. 'That aside,' he said in a while, 'we are very close - I mean physically, geographically - with nothing so vast as the barrier range to separate us. It surprises me that men, Szgany loners, haven't stumbled upon your oases.'
'Really?' said Septais. 'You are surprised? Well, your geography may be sound in Sunside, Nathan, but it lacks something here in the furnace deserts. You ask, why have men not stumbled upon us?' He pointed north and slightly west. 'Over there, some sixty miles, lies the eastern extent of the barrier range, where the mountains crumble to the Great Red Waste.' Keeping his spindly arm raised, he turned slowly east through ninety degrees. 'And all of that, for a thousand miles, is the Great Red Waste. Beyond it lies a continuation of Sun-side, the mountains, the Szgany and the Wamphyri: an unknown or legendary land, to you. Men, Szgany, have not crossed the Great Red Waste. How could they, when even the Thyre have not crossed it on the surface? You shall be the first of the Szgany, but you shall pass around and beneath it!'
Nathan looked where Septais had first pointed. 'Sun-side, only sixty miles away,' he mused. 'And not even a crag showing on the flat horizon, because the mountains lie beyond the curve of the world. And of course you are right, Septais: why should any sane man of the Szgany ever venture out here? The forests blend into grasslands, which turn into scrub and sand, and the deserts sprawl sunwards forever. Only the strange, thin, dark-skinned nomads may dwell in the desert, and theirs is a fragile existence among the sun-bleached dunes, the rocky canyons and barren mesas. So we have always supposed; little we knew.' He pulled a wry face. 'But I wonder: if my people are to die out, killed off or ... changed, by the Wamphyri, mightn't a few be saved, out here in the desert?'
'That is for the elders,' the other sighed. 'If I were one of them . .. you know I could never deny you but would try to arrange it. For I have felt your sadness: how it washes out from you in great waves. A great deal of sadness, but hatred, too - for the Wamphyri!'
'You "feel" it?' Again Nathan's wry smile. 'Do you spy on me, then?'
'No need for that!' said Septais. 'But I think: perhaps you should learn how to guard your thoughts, Nathan, like the Thyre. Why, sometimes they are so strong I must steel myself against them, unless they repel me!'
That strong? He looked at Septais and nodded, but grimly now. Aye, maybe, but 1 wish they were stronger: so strong that I could think all of the Wamphyri into extinction! Especially the one called Canker Canison.
The other shook his head, took Nathan's arm. 'The will is not enough,' he said. 'No man can think some- thing into existence, Nathan, or out of it. Nor would we like it if we could. For as well as good, there is evil in all men. Who knows what a man might think, in some sad, frustrated moment?'
'Evil in all men,' Nathan answered. 'Yes, you're right - but more of it in the Wamphyri! I know, for I've seen it first hand. And you may believe me, I would drown them in my numbers vortex, or think them to death, if I could!'
'Well then,' said Septais, 'in that case you have a great deal of studying to do, for as yet your numbers are weightless and could not drown a fly. Likewise a great deal of thinking; for while your thoughts are passionate, they are also ungovernable, and you are the only one who is likely to die of them!'
And in this Septais showed wisdom far beyond the range of his two-score years .. .
Nathan had been with the Thyre for a year and five months - some seventy-three 'days' - when he surfaced through Red Well Sump on the edge of the Great Red Waste. He had parted company with Septais eleven sunup cycles earlier, since when he'd had various Thyre guides along the course of the Great Dark River. But from here on in the name of that subterranean torrent would be different: it was now the Great Red River, after all of the mineral wastes washed into it from the rusty, ruined earth.
Nathan's new guide was a spry Thyre elder called Ehtio, whose knowledge of this entirely uninhabitable region was as good as anyone's: at best rudimentary. In the ghastly glow of a crimson twilight, Ehtio showed Nathan a map drawn on lizard skin, which detailed the course of the river from their last stop, Ten-Springs-Spurting, to their current location.
'The river has swung north,' he husked, 'taking us under the Great Red Waste. And this -' he gazed all about, his soft Thyre eyes blinking, '- is the Great Red Waste, its southern fringe, anyway. Aptly named, as you see.'
They had come up steps cut in the wall of a vast well. A hundred and fifty feet below them, their boat was moored where Thyre oarsmen waited. There was no colony here; their stop was to be of the shortest duration, just long enough for Nathan to see and loathe the place. And from his first glance, he did loathe it.
Standing on the pitted wall of the well, behind its parapet, he turned in a slow circle and gazed out across the Great Red Waste. And in every direction he saw the same thing: wave upon wave of red and black dunes, with areas between like massive blisters which had burst and turned brittle, and crumbled back into themselves, and others which were lakes of seething, bubbling, smoking chemicals. Nathan smelled tar, sulphur, the overpowering reek of rotten eggs, the stench of mordant acids. The contours of the dunes were like wrinkles in diseased skin, as if this entire landscape were the body of some cosmic corpse dead of its lesions and infections, its flesh torn and rotting, and Nathan and Ehtio standing in its navel.
It was the twilight of evening. South, the horizon was a sick, shimmering, smoky ochre: the sunset seen through a smog of rising vapours. North, the horizon was black, humped, alien. Overhead, the stars wavered; they blinked on and off like sick fireflies, dying in the rising reek.
The air is bad,' said Ehtio. 'We can't stay.'
'A thousand miles of this?' Nathan shook his head, turned towards the stairwell. 'I don't want to stay ...' The damp, musty air rising from the well seemed sweet by comparison. Descending in flickering torchlight, Nathan asked: 'What happened, up there? Does anyone know?'
'Not for sure,' Ehtio shook his head. Too old to be part of history, it is myth, lore, legend. I cannot guarantee it.'
Tell me anyway.'
'One day in the long ago, a white sun fell from the sky. It skipped over the world like a flat stone bouncing on water. This was one of the places where it bounced; such was the impact, its iron shell was broken and fell on the land in so many pieces they could not be counted. The land became hot; chemicals in the soil gathered into pools; acids ate the white sun's metal skin into rust. It is a process which continues to this day. But the core of the white sun made one final leap. Shrinking, it sped west and slightly north; such was its fascination, it drew up the mountains to form the barrier range, and was in turn drawn to earth.'
Nathan nodded. 'We have much the same legend. The white sun fell on Starside and fashioned the boulder plains. It sits there even now - I've seen it - like a cold blind eye, glaring on Starside. But that's not all, for Szgany legend has it that this sphere of cold white light is a kind of doorway, to hellish lands beyond.' 'Beyond what?' Ehtio looked at him. 'Beyond itself, beyond this world.' Nathan shook his head. 'Beyond my powers to describe. But ... it's not just a legend, for men have come through that Gate from the world beyond. And creatures from Starside have likewise crossed to their side.' 'Creatures?'
'Wamphyri! I've heard it said that sometimes they would cast one of their own out - cast him into the Gate.'
'Indeed,' said Ehtio, offering a sad, slow, very thoughtful nod. 'And so vampires have passed through this "Gate", eh?' He nodded again. 'Well then, it strikes me that if these lands "beyond" were not hellish before, they are now.' Which reminded Nathan that Lardis Lidesci had once said much the same thing ...
From Red Well Sump the river swung south again and back under a comparatively healthy desert. Such was its load of rust, its waters would run red for a further hundred miles.
Forty miles east of Red Well Sump and eighteen south of the Great Red Waste, the next Thyre colony was called Place-Under-the-Orange-Crags. It reminded Nathan of Place-Under-the-Yellow-Cliffs; also of Atwei, his Thyre sister. The Cavern of the Ancients was similar, too, except there was no Rogei and no crystal ceiling.
Place-Under-the-Orange-Crags fronted a sprawling plateau lying roughly east to west. Looking north from its summit towards the Great Red Waste, Nathan saw that the entire northern horizon was a dirty red smudge. The barrier range lay far to the west; likewise Sunside and Settlement, which through all of his formative years he'd called home. He was homesick; no, he was sick for anything Szgany. Once, he'd been a loner even among the Sunsiders; he'd wanted nothing so much as to escape to an alien world, while in this one Misha had been his only anchor. Now Misha was gone and he actually lived in an alien world, which palled on him more every day.
'Men are contrary,' Ehtio husked from beside him. 'Aye, Szgany and Thyre alike.' His voice drew Nathan back to earth.
'Oh? Was I thinking out loud again?'
'Often,' said the other. 'Do you no longer practise your mind-guard?'
Nathan thought of Misha's face - he couldn't help it; it flashed into his mind - but just as he had been taught by Septais during many an hour of trial-and-error instruction, so now he 'cloaked' both the thought and the picture. And: There,' he said. 'How's that?' He felt Ehtio's probe: a tingle on the periphery of his awareness, which he held at bay.
'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 unnavigable; it made little or no difference to Nathan, whose route now lay to the north, across the surface.
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, for 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 inner mind. Lie down, look up, gaze upon the heavens. Let me look out through your eyes upon all the times which were, are, and will be. For just as the light from the stars is our past, so is it our future. Except...
'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...
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 cunning one, lozel Kotys! Why, it was rumoured among the Szgany that he had even been to Turgosheim in Starside! If so, then lozel was the only man who ever returned unchanged from that dreadful place.
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.
Nathan had always assumed that his mother and Misha were dead, or worse than dead, even though he had never seen their bodies or known for sure their whereabouts. And how should he think of them now? Thikkoul had told him: These are things of your future, which are perhaps Jinked to your past. And so it is for you to know and understand them.
But how was he to understand them? Had the faces of those loved ones out of past times been simply that: scenes from the past, which yet influenced his future? Of course they had influence over him; they always would have. Or ... was there more to it than that? What if they were alive even now: not as monstrous Wamphyri changelings but as simple slaves, thrall servants in some Starside aerie or craggy mansion? And if so, how to find them?
Which was why he walked to Sunside in the brightening air, with the stars gradually fading overhead, and the barrier range growing up before him like a mirage out of the desert. For his future was right here; time bore him forward into it with every passing second; and since he couldn't avoid it, he might just as well meet it head on. And somewhere along the way, all unsuspecting, lozel Kotys was waiting for him. Which seemed as good a place as any to start. ..
In the Sunside of Nathan's infancy the Szgany had preferred to stay close to their mountains. Most of the Traveller trails had been in the foothills, rarely in the forests. The reasons were several: clouds breaking on the peaks provided good water; wild life was plentiful on the slopes and the hunting was excellent; the roots of the mountains were riddled with hiding places in the rocks, where cavern systems abounded.
Here things were different. While these eastern people were Szgany, or of the same basic stock, they were not Travellers. Perhaps - almost certainly - they had been in the long ago, but no longer. Now, under total Wamphyri domination, they lived in sorry townships (corrals or pens, in effect) and wandered no more. In the Sunside Nathan knew, in the old times, his people had become Travellers in order to avoid and defy the vampires, and had only settled after their supposed 'destruction'. But here the people had settled because the Wamphyri ordered it, which had marked the beginning of the infamous, immemorial tithe system. And so their towns were spread out evenly and in the open, like market places, where the Starside Lords and Ladies sent their lieutenants on regular, long-established errands to replenish their spires and manses. Except that unlike a market, the Wamphyri 'purchased' nothing, but took what was deemed to be theirs by right of conquest. Which amounted to a percentage of everything, from grain and oils to beasts and blood - but mainly blood, and human.
North of the grasslands at the edge of the forest, some twelve townships out of a total of around fifty stood roughly equidistant: four in the west, and eight towards the sprawling morass which lay beyond the habitable region to the east. The Thyre estimated that the distance between the Great Red Waste on the one hand and the swamp on the other was more than six hundred miles; and so Nathan considered himself fortunate that the first of the four towns to the west, a place called Vladistown after its founder, was the origin and last known home of lozel Kotys.
Dressed in his good rich clothes, and with the first rays of the sun warm on his back, Nathan came out of the desert and crossed the savannah, and saw the smoke of morning fires going up in lazy blue-grey spirals along the forest's rim. Angling a little to the left, he headed for the closest huddle of houses where the woods had been cut back into a clearing.
The first man he met was in the grasslands at the very edge of the forest: a hunter, he was shooting rabbits with a crossbow. Nathan heard the deceptively soft whirrr of a bolt and ducked, saw a rabbit bound spastic-ally and fall back dead in the grass. Then ... he saw the man with the crossbow, where he rose from his knees in a patch of gorse; and a moment later the hunter saw him. At first, facing each other across a distance of no more than a dozen paces, they froze; then the hunter's jaw dropped, and his face turned pale.
Nathan approached him fearlessly. The man was Szgany after all, and the Thyre had told him that although these people were not trustworthy, they could at least be trusted not to take his life. No, he was far too valuable for that. They might give his life away - give it to the Wamphyri, in return for their dubious favours - but they would never dare to take it for themselves. Also, apart from the ironwood knife he carried, Nathan was unarmed; he posed no obvious threat. But from the reaction of the other, one might very easily suppose that he did, and an extreme threat at that!
The man dropped his weapon, fell to his knees again, and shivered like a naked child in morning sunlight which was warm and bright. He choked out some inarticulate greeting, an apology, and a question all in one. His speech was Szgany but the accent was difficult. Nathan frowned, looked into his eyes ... and suddenly the man's words and their meaning gained resolution.
But even assisted by his as yet immature telepathy, still Nathan found the other's thoughts a kaleidoscopic jumble, and his speech even more so:
'Morning!' the other gasped. 'You are early ... the tithe is not until sundown! I mean ... why are you here? No, no,' (he fluttered his hands), 'for that's no business of mine! Forgive me, Lord, I beg you! I'm a fool taken by surprise, whose words fall all wrong. But ... the sun! Come, take cover in the woods! Hide yourself in the shade!'
Now all was apparent. The man thought Nathan was Wamphyri, a lieutenant at least! Comparing himself with the other, he could see how easily the mistake had been made: his clothes of fine leather, yellow hair and strange eyes; but most of all his pale, unblemished flesh, which, seen in silhouette against the sun, might even appear grey. As for the hunter: The man was Szgany, certainly, but not like any other Nathan had ever seen. Where was his personal pride? Where was any sign of pride at all? Maybe twenty-seven or -eight years old, he was dirty, ragged, grovelling; his hair was matted and full of lice, and there were open sores on his face and hands. Why, even the wildest old loner of olden Sunside had cared for himself better than this one! Perhaps he was an idiot; but if so, why did they trust him with a crossbow? Certainly he knew how to handle the thing.
'Get up,' Nathan told him, shaking his head. Tm not Wamphyri.'
'You're not ...?' A puzzled frown crossed the other's face; only to be replaced in a moment by narrowed eyes which glittered their suspicion. 'But you are one of theirs.'
'I'm nobody's,' Nathan said, stepping closer. Tm my own man, free, and you have nothing to fear from me.'
He went to take hold of his shoulder, draw the man to his feet. But the other fell backwards away from him, terrified in a moment.
'Your own man,' he babbled. 'Yes, yes, of course you are! And I'm a fool who says and questions too much, when in fact you are the one who should question, and I should supply the answers!'
Nathan felt sick with disgust. Perhaps this creature was the village idiot after all; but at least his words had given him an idea. 'You're right,' he said, nodding. That's what I need: a little shade and a few answers.'
'Then ask away!' the other cried, coming to a crouch and backing away towards the forest, and leaving his crossbow where it had fallen. 'Whatever questions you like, Lord. And if I can answer them I will, be sure!'
Nathan took up the weapon, loaded it with the spare bolt from under the tiller and applied the safety; and the other at once groaned and put up his trembling hands, as if to ward off a shot. Nathan looked at him, then at the crossbow in his hands and frowned again. 'What?' he said. 'Man, I won't shoot you! Do you always greet strangers this way?'
'Strangers!' the other was almost hysterical. 'Do I greet strangers this way ... always? But there are no strangers! Who would come? Who can come ... except such as you? As yet you are unchanged ... but soon, ah, soon! You're one of theirs, I know it, come to practise your deceptions among your slaves!'
'Deceptions?'
'Ah! No! I did not mean it!' The other threw his arms wide and fell to his knees for a third time in the dappled shade of the trees. 'Forgive me! I am confused!'
'You're ... a fool!" Nathan couldn't contain himself. The hunter burst out sobbing at once, crying:
'No, no! I was not taken in the tithe! Please don't take me now! Whatever you want, only ask it of me, but let me be a man all my days and not... not a monster!
'Now listen to me,' Nathan hardened his voice. 'You are wasting my time. There's something I want to know. And that's all I want with you.' He tossed the crossbow aside.
'Ask away! Ask away!'
'lozel Kotys - where can I find him?'
'Eh? lozel the mystic? lozel the hermit?'
'If that's what you call him,' Nathan nodded.
'lozel, aye!' the other's eyes started, as if he made some connection. 'For he has been there, of course!'
'Do - you - know him!?' Nathan's patience was exhausted; he spoke through clenched teeth.
'Yes! Yes, of course!' The hunter turned, pointed north across the forest to where a steep, thinly clad knoll or outcrop reared above the trees. There ... a mile ... the knoll. And at its foot, a cave. lozel lives there, alone. Only head for the knoll, through the woods, you'll cross a path, well-worn, which runs between the town and his cave.'
'Show me,' said Nathan.
'Indeed, yes, of course!' The hunter made to set off at once, but Nathan stopped him.
'Pick up your crossbow.'
'My weapon, aye!' the other licked his lips, trembling as he did as he was told ...