For I've been listening to your thoughts for some little time. But when you talked to wolves, and them so far away ... then I knew I must speak to you. For even though you are Szgany, still you have the secret talent of the Thyre!
A talent? Nathan wondered.
Chapter 20
To speak mind to mind with other creatures - telepathy!
'Or to mumble and mutter to myself,' Nathan said out loud, nodding wryly. 'Delirium - or madness!' But at the same time he knew that it was partly true. How often had he listened to the whispers of dead people in his dreams, and sometimes when he was wide awake? And what of the thing he used to have with Nestor? Or had all of that, too, been madness?
To which the voice answered: And am I also mad?
'Not mad,' Nathan shook his head, 'but probably not real, either. You're a mirage, heat haze over a tar pit, an hallucination. When I was a child and ate toadstools, I saw things which weren't there. Now, because I'm hungry, hot and thirsty, I've started to hear things which aren't there.'
Wrong, said the other. For I can prove that I am. Or if not that, I can at least prove that I was.
'You don't have to prove anything,' Nathan shook his head. 'I only want you to go away. I have to sleep and not wake up.'
Oh, you'll do that soon enough, if you don't let me help you!
Nathan was curious despite himself. 'Why should you want to help me? What am I to you?'
A boon! said the other at once. A miracle! A light in the darkness of death! The chance to exchange thoughts, knowledge, legends, with living Thyre! That is what you are to me! There were others before you who spoke to dead men; they dwelled in Starside and talked to the spirits of Szgany and trogs. They didn't come here and in the end never could, because by then they were Wamphyri!
Nathan nodded. 'I've heard that: that sometimes among the Wamphyri there would be a necromancer.'
What? The other was aghast. No, no - not that! The ones of which 'I speak merely talked to the dead; they were beloved of the dead; they didn't torture them!
Beloved of the dead? But hadn't Nathan heard that expression before, as used by Lardis Lidesci in respect of certain hell-landers he'd known? The old Lidesci had never been too explicit with regard to The Dweller and his father, however, and had always spoken of them in hushed tones. It was a subject Nathan might like to pursue, but suddenly ...
... His senses were spinning! He swayed dizzily, staggered, and sat down with a bump. He pictured himself standing under a waterfall, letting the water flow over him. It was an entirely involuntary thing: an instinctive longing for old, irretrievable pleasures. But it was easy to see how, under extremes of deprivation, a man's mind might turn to the conjuring of false comforts in his final hours. Except in Nathan's case, his mind seemed to have called up a personal devil to torment him!
So that in answer to what this - this what? mental mirage? - had just said to him, he croakingly replied: 'Why does the idea of the living torturing the dead shock you so? Can't you see how you've reversed the process, so that now the dead torture the living? But for you I would be sleeping my last sleep, dying. And you are keeping me from it, prolonging it, making it worse.'
The other was horrified at Nathan's determination. What has brought you to this? The most precious thing any creature can have is life. And you, so young, reject it? The abnegation of alJ earthJy responsibility? Best be warned, Nathan: give up your pJace among the living -go willingly to an unnecessary death - and you'll find no solace among the Great Majority. What extreme is this you've been driven to, and why?
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
Nathan took his head in his hands and stared at the sand between his feet, and despite himself the events of the recent past were mirrored in the eye of his mind, where his inquisitor saw them. So that in a little while: In the Thyre there is no urge for vengeance. The 'voice' was quieter now. When we are hurt we move away from it, and never go back there.
'So would I,' Nathan told him. 'If you would let me.'
But in the Szgany