Nathan could no longer speak; his thoughts had to speak for themselves. 1 mean no insult, he said, but there's no help for it. Each and every thought I think, you hear it — everything! There's nothing I can hide from you.
He sensed the other's nod of understanding. It seems unfair, I know. But I was born with my telepathy and practised it aJl my days, while in you it is a fledgeling thing. And as a Necroscope you are likewise a novice. But these are skills which may well grow in you with time.
Nathan snorted, perhaps bitterly. Granted, that is, that time is on my side!
Rogei continued to sense his needs. Of food there is none. But water… there may be a little. Except you must get to it.
In here? Nathan looked at the cave's entrance, much larger than the others.
Perhaps, but deep inside, a long way. And that delirium you so desired is much closer now. Rogei's mental voice despaired. I can feel the flickering of your flame.
It would be a shame, Nathan thought wanderingly, to die now when I no longer want to! He stood up, leaned against the arched entrance to the cave, peered with swimming eyes at its weathered carvings. The bas-reliefs were almost as old as the desert and sand-blasted to obscurity, but his trembling fingers could follow their still flowing contours in the stone.
And for the first time he knew something of awe to match the sensation he had known when he stood on the crater rim of the Starside Gate. From out of the cave, an aura of antiquity flowed over him; from unsuspected deeps a cool breath of air carried a not unpleasant musk and a hint, the merest suggestion… of moisture?
Water, yes, but deep down below, Rogei said again. Beyond the Cavern of the Ancients. Come in, Nathan Kiklu, Necroscope. We welcome you.
From some secret inner well, Nathan forced the last drop of spit down his throat, and with it croaked: 'We?
How many of you? And why are you the only one who has spoken to me?' Staggering out of the glaring sunlight into the cool shade, for a moment he was blind, but in the next he saw the walls of the tunnel extending before him into deepening gloom.
When we sensed your presence and heard your thoughts and dreams (Rogei answered, from very much closer now), and when we heard how you spoke to wolves so far away — which was not a dream — then we decided upon a spokesman. Since it seemed you were Szgany, and since in my life I occasionally had dealings with the so-called Travellers, I, Rogei, was honoured.
Nathan leaned forward until he felt he was falling. Then, mustering his feet into reluctant life, he went weaving, stumbling down the high, wide tunnel. Weightless, it seemed as if he floated from wall to wall. But for all that his body was suddenly light, he knew that in fact he was sinking, and each step threatened to be his last. I feel… that I should rest now, he thought! I feel I should rest for a very long time. Except now that it's time, I'm afraid to do it.
Then don't! Rogei's mental voice was vibrant with alarm. Take it from us, Nathan: while death is not the desert which living men believe it to be, life by comparison is an oasis!
Nathan nodded deliriously. But this oasis is drying up.
The passage widened out, became a cave, a cavern. Nathan entered from gloom into light and fell to his knees in drifted dust. Lolling there, knuckles on the floor, shoulders slumped and head swaying, he knew that this could only be the Cavern of the Ancients, a Thyre mausoleum. And from the look of it, it was probably the greatest of them all.
He craned his neck to look up.
Across the centre of the sandstone ceiling wall to wall, set into the yellow rock like the slit pupil of a cat's eye, a gash of white quartz seemed carved from light. The cavern was riven right across its width, which was huge, but the seepage of centuries had filled the gap with crystals which had hardened to stone. Crystal stalactites hung from the ceiling, and glowing humps of it like shining candles reached up from the floor. And all around its perimeter — in alcoves and niches, on shelves and ledges carved from the stone itself — lay the mummied ancients of the Thyre, whose socket eyes gazed back at Nathan where he observed them.
And: 'Here I am,' he croaked, rolling over onto his back, surrendering to the weirdness of it all without further question.
Again Rogei was anxious for him, telling him: Nathan, you may sleep, but you may not die!
Oh? he thought back. And will you stop me again? It might not be so easy a second time.
Brothers/ Rogei cried out, this time speaking to his dead companions and not to Nathan. And were we not right? Only feel the warmth of his thoughts? Is he not a light in the darkness? We dare not let him die.' And they knew that he was right.
The massed voices of more than a hundred dead Thyre rose up in a tumult at first, and sighed like a wind in his strange mind: Nathaaan! But they soon saw the error of that and began to speak as individuals, so that shortly he could distinguish them one from another: You must not die, Nathaaan..
Rogei is riiight…
Szgany youth, you are the light. Continue to shine for us, Nathaaan…
You are like a bridge between worlds, Necroscope: should you fall, one world is cut off foreeever!
On and on, so many of them…
Much like Nathan's own thoughts, those of the dead Thyre were warm as blankets; they wrapped him where he lay. And with their warmth surrounding him, comforting him, he began to drift into sleep. But Rogei was concerned that Nathan might possibly drift beyond sleep, and even in death the anxiety of the Thyre spokesman was such that it gnawed at him. He must be sure, and take whatever measures must be taken.
Nathan thought he heard a groaning of antique leather and a clatter as of dry sticks rattling together. It was a curious sound, but not enough to lure him back from what might well be his last sleep. Neither was the hand which at the last clasped his hand. They were small and shrivelled, those fingers, cool and dry… and dead. But the thoughts which accompanied them were warm, so that Nathan was not afraid, as other men would, assuredly, have been.
The final proof, Nathan Kiklu, Rogei whispered, his awed voice trembling with the wonder of it. A secret which not even I knew! And now rest, Nathan, rest.
Aye, rest, Nathaaan, the others sighed in unison from their many niches and benches in the walls. Your flame is strong and will not die. But should the spark burn low, we will be here to blow on the embers. And so you may sleep, Necroscope, sleep…
The Thyre were not people to desert their dead and leave them unguarded against scavengers; a fox or mangy dog might wander here from the grasslands, or a vulture discover the way in. But as Rogei had been well aware from the start, the Cavern of the Ancients was a natural sounding-chamber. Only let a footfall sound within — the snuffle of a beast's snout, the tearing of old leather or breaking of centuried bones — and its echoes would find their way below.
Down there, beyond a labyrinth of natural and carved passageways, caves and grottoes, the guardian of the place already knew there was an intruder. Nathan's rasping words, 'Here I am,' had thundered down to him like the shout of a giant; the slap, slap, sJap of his sandalled feet had reverberated, and… there had been other sounds, more dreadful sounds. Plainly the ancients were discovered and molested.
Throughout his long watch the guardian, out of respect for his ancestors, had sat in an antechamber within sight of the sacred cavern. He had not entered it, for even the dust was fashioned of men and thus holy. Towards the end of his watch, hearing the signal trill of a whistle blown far, far below, he had set out to meet his relief half-way. But now, before they could even come together, exchange a few words of greeting and pass each other by, there was this: an intruder had entered the Cavern of the Ancients. Worse, a human intruder, but not of the Thyre breed of humanity.