The beast's wings extended from its sides as alveolate bones, membrane and muscle stretched and flowed in metamorphic flux. A moment more and it tilted forward on the rim of the bluff. Nestor clung with his knees, gripped hard on the reins. The flyer's thrusters uncoiled to hurl it aloft and forward… it flew!
Wind whipped in Nestor's face as his weird mount glided out over Sunside, gaining height. But Sunside wasn't the way to go. And: 'Starside!' he shouted, with mind and mouth both. 'Starside!' Until the flyer arched its manta wings into vast scoops or air-traps, turned in a rising thermal, and climbed for the peaks.
And down in the misted valleys and forests, everything Nestor had been and done — everything which he'd known and had now forgotten, forsaken — was left far, far behind…
Nathan followed the course of the Great Dark River, visiting Crack-in-the-Rocks, Many-Caverns, the twin colonies Lake-of-Light and Lake-of-Stars, and Place-of-the-Beast-Bones. Mostly he travelled the river route, deep under the desert; on occasion, where the river became a borehole with no path as such, he must be ferried through black bowels of earth; sometimes he went on the surface, from oasis to oasis, where wells or potholes connected the drifted sands to the subterranean silt of the river.
There were many Thyre colonies, though few of them accommodated more than a hundred or so individuals. Even Open-to-the-Sky, which was the largest so far visited, had only supported some two hundred and sixty inhabitants. According to Atwei, the total count of Thyre did not exceed five thousand. To expand in excess of that number would be to reduce their living standards in the limited space available.
Nathan passed on lore and learning wherever he went, firmly establishing himself as a friend of the Thyre, never once forgetting the humility which the desert folk — and their dead — so admired in him. And in the process of teaching, Nathan learned.
He came across others who said they 'knew' numbers, but no one whose understanding surpassed Ethloi the Elder's rudimentary grasp. He studied what Ethloi had shown him, worked with his 'Tens System' and explored division, multiplication, even decimals; all without knowing his purpose or even if he had one beyond that he had been told it was important to him. And sometimes he conjured the numbers vortex, trapping whole sections of its fluxing configurations and bringing them to immobility on the screen of his mind, so that he might examine them. They revealed nothing but remained as alien as the farthest stars. Only relax his concentration for a moment… they would flow, mutate, rejoin the vortex and be sucked back into an infinity of fathomless formulae…
The Thyre gave him news of the Wamphyri. Here, far to the east of the great pass into Starside, their works were less in evidence. What Nathan was able to learn fitted well with what he already knew: that only a handful had crossed the Great Red Waste into Starside, and that they had settled in Karenstack, the last aerie. There they consolidated their position, built their army, created vampires. Since all of the 'makings' could be found just across the mountains, an hour's flight away, as yet they'd felt no need to strike east; for the moment it satisfied them merely to scout on the eastern territories; coming in the dead of night, they'd been seen as shadows against the moon and stars, mapping out the land from on high, and gazing down rapaciously on the human wealth of tomorrow's conquests.
West of the pass, however — among the displaced and dispossessed, ensieged and embattled people of Settlement, Tireni Scarp, Mirlu Township, a half-dozen more towns and encampments, and all of the Szgany tribes which now wandered there — things were different. For there could be found the first real victims of the scarlet plague, but only the first. For just as soon as the Wamphyri had recruited sufficient thralls and lieutenants, made enough of flyers and warriors, and established themselves as an utterly incontestable conquering force, then it would be time to advance their borders east. The rape of Sunside would continue, expand, and finally engulf all. The old order would fall, and the Szgany… would be as cattle…
En route east, Nathan spent less time in each new Thyre colony; he felt himself drawn east, to the very roots of the cancer which was even now spreading through Sunside. Perhaps that was the main attraction: no longer satisfied to run from the plague, he had determined to meet it head on. For unless he was prepared to spend the rest of his life with the Thyre, eventually it must overtake him anyway. Why, given time, it might even overrun the Thyre themselves!
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!'