'Once inhabitants,' Nathan told him in a whisper that somehow managed to echo. 'But not of this world, Ben. Starside. And, no, we're not there yet.'
The cavern was roughly the shape of the interior of a rugby ball, half-full of water and big as a church. The black, inward-curving walls were ribbed like a gigantic throat, with cracks and crevices here and there where the water had eaten into the rock strata, shallow ledges at various levels, and black tunnels two to three feet in diameter, where the mouths of a great many magmass wormholes -alien energy channels - disappeared into the otherwise solid bedrock. And seated, crouched or crammed into several of the higher niches, where they had doubtless escaped from rising water in times of flooding, Trask's 'inhabitants' leered out in stony silence.
Or at least, they were silent to Trask and the others. But not to the Necroscope. For when Nathan had spoken to Trask out loud, of course his words no less than his thoughts were deadspeak. His words and thoughts alike, they always were deadspeak - except when he shielded them. And the long-dead creatures of the cavern had heard him. Moreover they knew him, or his sort, at least, for he was not the first living man who had spoken to them in that way. Another had been here before him. And because of that other, the dead of the cavern responded in a way which Nathan had grown to expect:
Hah! Returned, are you? Well, and the first ever, be sure. Ah, but it took you long enough/ What? Nigh on a thousand sunups, I'd suspect. Still, what is time to such as us? This from a nightmarish, mummy-thing jammed tight in a niche, where dripstone had fused it in position like a weird embryo in a womb of gleaming calcium. A hideously misshapen skull, whose empty eye-sockets reflected the glare of the Gate, protruded from the grotesque stalactite. Frozen in true death, the yawning jaws were wolfish and toothed like a carnivore. And indeed this had been a carnivore - Wamphyri! Or a lieutenant on the brink of ascendancy, at the very least. But now it was just a dead thing. Yet still it seemed to leer at Trask and his party with a permanent, imperishable malignancy.
Startled at first, Trask now stepped closer to the wall of the cavern and gazed up at the monster. Obviously it had crouched there like this for a very long time. 'What, a statue? Or is it the real thing?' Even asking it, he knew that the creature was or had been real, alive, of course. His talent told him that much. But he did not have Nathan's talent, could scarcely imagine that even now the Necroscope and the ossified thing were conversing:
'Oh, it's the real thing,' Nathan quietly answered. 'Withered away, shrunken down and encased in stone, but definitely real.' And then, to the long-dead lieutenant: I'm not who you think I am. That one was my father. He passed this way before me, on his way to Starside. He was Harry Keogh, and 1 am his son, Nathan.
Indeed? And like father like son, you would follow in his footsteps, eh? Well, if he went to Starside, then your father's Jong dead and gone from both worlds! Now begone. For this is a private place.
It wasn't usual for the dead to be so surly, abrupt, rude. But this wasn't one of the usual dead. Unperturbed, Nathan inquired: Whose man were you, anyway?
The other seemed astonished. His very presence - his previous nature - was enough in itself to cow the thoughts of most of the other dead people here. What was this Nathan anyway but a pup, and a human pup at that? Whose man was I? Why, I was my own man, of course -called Cezar Bitesthrall.
But Nathan knew well enough how the Wamphyri named their thralls, and so could work it out for himself which Lord this one had served. Bitesthrall? But you've given yourself away, Cezar, he said. You were in thrall to Menor Maimbite, who died in the battle for The Dweller's garden on Starside. Yes, and it was my father who killed him!
Now the other really was astonished. You are little more than a boy, he gasped, and yet .. . you know so much! How is it you know so much? When a man passes through the Starside Gate, he is gone forever. Yet your knowledge of Starside is plainly considerable. But ... did you say that Menor is dead? Truly?
The caver spokesman, suddenly aware of a strange silence, said, 'Well, what now?' His colleagues were equally mystified, not least by Nathan's expression as he stared at the freakish thing in its high niche.
But Trask, Anna Marie and David Chung all knew what now: that Nathan was speaking to a dead man, or something which had once been a man. Espers, they sensed something of it at least.
'In a minute,' Trask whispered, stepping back a pace from Nathan but never taking his eyes off him for a moment. 'But right now .. . would you mind keeping quiet for a while?' Among the several things he hadn't told them was this, that Nathan was a Necroscope. The concepts of telepor-tation and parallel universes were difficult enough, without that he should ask them to also believe in a man who conversed with the dead!
Dead, yes, Nathan had meanwhile answered Cezar's question. A thousand sunups ago, aye. And all of the olden Wamphyri with him.