The other sighed his partial understanding, and said, Myself, I was of the Szgany Stengi, based fifty miles east of the great pass. There were Kiklus in my tribe, too ... He fell silent, as if memories of the olden times were proving too much for him. But in another moment his deadspeak voice had turned hard as his calcium sheath: Huh! All such things are done with now. Even life itself, done with. I was Szgany ... I was made undead ... possibly, I might even have been Wamphyri.' But all of these years in this place, frozen in the true death . .. it's as if all my life were a dream. And you have disturbed it. Because of you I know the truth of it: that it was wasted. You've brought me no comfort, Nathan Keogh.
At which another voice - but a much harder, darker, even angry voice - broke in:
Comfort? Is that what you're all about, Cezar BitesthraJl? Comfort? What, and you a lieutenant of the Wamphyri? Hah! But Menor erred when he apprenticed you! Even here, in this dreary place, we have comforts enough. And we've had enough of talk, too. Now, still the chatter and let this fool go on to his sure death in Starside.
Nathan located the source of the voice: a dripstone bulge in the wall where a gleaming calcium 'candle' seven feet tall seemed lodged in an ancient crevice under fang-like festoons of stalactite formations. The sheath was semi-opaque, glass-like; beneath it, frozen ferocious features were barely visible. But now that Nathan knew the source of the voice, he also knew the nature of its owner:
Wamphyri!
'Nathan!' It was Anna Marie, breaking into his thoughts, drawing him back from his deadspeak communications.
He glanced at her. 'Yes?'
'We can't stay here. The cold. And the time. We'd planned for you to go through in three days' time; by our calculations - based on what little we know - that would make it sunup on Sunside. But right now . .. the sun is sinking towards the barrier mountains even as we speak. And we don't know how long the journey through the Gate is going to take.'
Nathan turned to Trask. 'While I talk to them, you could begin by passing my weapons up into the Gate. According to the files, they will be drawn up, go right through, slide down the dome of the underground Gate in Starside. And
we won't be far behind. We'll go through together, or as close together as possible.'
Then, as Trask and the others set to it, he turned again to the dripstone thing in its stalactite tomb: Who were you?
Bah.' (The vampire Lord's voice was sour.) Rather, what am I now, that a mere child has power over me while I stand impotent, a stone which was once a man and more than a man, even a Lord of the Wamphyri!
'But that was then and this is now.' Nathan lapsed into common speech, which in his case was deadspeak, of course, but easier. 'You were a man. You were Wamphyri. But now you are a fossil. This is probably your last chance to talk to a man of the living world, even of two worlds. Will you waste it?'
The other considered his words; while from behind Nathan:
'Now what the hell -?' The caver spokesman snatched back his hand from where he had passed a box of ammunition up into the glare of the Gate. He'd been distracted by the sight and sound of Nathan talking to something locked in the dripstone; talking to it as if it lived and might even answer him back. The light .. . seemed to suck at me!'