But perhaps most special of all, dreaming in their cavern mausoleums, the revered and mummied Ancients of the Thyre knew that he was back; for among the dead of the desert folk he was as great a legend as his father had been to the Great Majority of mundane mankind, in an alien world an entire dimension away. Nathan, who had brought light into their darkness, translated their works and appraised their living descendants of a continuity of sorts in a place beyond death.
If there was a single place in Sunside more safe than any other, it must be with the Thyre. For dwelling so close to the sun, they had never known the terror of the Wamphyri except in the lore and lives of the Szgany, with whom they occasionally traded. Being telepathic - albeit secretly, so that men had never suspected their talent - the Thyre and their dead had more readily accepted Nathan's deadspeak, thus enabling him to become their spokesman among the living.
Which was how he knew exactly where to take the cavers for safety, and who would welcome him in that place.
So that even as Maglore the Mage recoiled from the Power of the now purposeful numbers vortex, drew back claw-like hands from his golden sigil, and wondered at Nathan's velocity as he sped - where? And through what weird medium? - the Necroscope had already used the Mobius Continuum to reach his destination. And guiding his charges out through a Mobius door, and holding on to them as they staggered this way and that, gasping their amazement, he sighed his relief that the co-ordinates had not misled him. Except, of course, he knew that it was more than mathematics which had guided him safely here. Then, as if to confirm it:
Nathan! And this was one deadspeak voice which he would never forget, the first such voice which had ever deigned to acknowledge him. Nathan ... you were absent, gone away from us, even out of the world. Then, a moment ago, you came back, but far away on Starside. I cannot be mistaken, for I sensed you there. Yet now .. . you are here! Or is it that your telepathy has outstripped you? If so, then your instructors among the Thyre should be congratulated, that you have learned to project your mind with such clarity. For I would swear that you are more than a mere thought.
It was the philosopher Rogei, a Thyre Ancient; and this was his resting place and that of many another like him. The Cavern of the Ancients, one of the many mausoleums where the Thyre entombed their most revered: a great, glowing cave buried deep in a desert gorge, but a cave unlike any other.
Overhead, splitting the sandstone ceiling wall to wall like the slit pupil of a cat's eye, a slash of white quartz seemed
carved from light. The cave was cracked right across its width, but the slow seep of centuries had filled the gap with crystals which had hardened to stone. Light still found a way in from somewhere overhead, but to get here must pass through the quartz; hence the hazy, softly luminous glow. Stalactites of crystal festooned the ceiling, and glowing dripstone mounds like candles of light reached up from the floor. And all around the cave's perimeter, in alcoves and niches, on shelves and ledges carved from the stone itself, lay the Ancients of the Thyre in their last resting places, slowly becoming one with the dust of ages.
While the three cavers got a grip on themselves as best they might, the Necroscope quickly crossed the floor to Rogei in his niche. Finding him among all the others was no problem; the Ancient's deadspeak led Nathan directly to him. And close up, as Nathan drew near, Rogei knew that indeed this was more than a mere thought.
You .. . you really are here.' His deadspeak gasp of astonishment was as real as if Nathan had heard it with his ears.
'Yes, I really am. But I can't stay, not just now. I will be back, though, if only to collect these friends of mine.'
You have brought others here? Of your own kind? But now Rogei was frowning.
There was nothing else for it,' Nathan told him. 'I came at a time not of my choosing, and even as we speak - or if not now, then very soon - the Wamphyri will be raiding on Sunside. I've got to help my people, but I can't look after these others at the same time. They're simply not prepared for Sunside ... I can't take them there ... not when the Wamphyri are there. And so I propose to leave them here, for now.'
You would help your people? But how?
Nathan showed him a variety of weapons - showed him how they worked, and their effect - but all in his mind. And they were a wonder to Rogei, who could scarcely believe their powers of devastation. And at last he understood something of the places Nathan had been to, and the things he must have seen.