she?
'Will you or won't you?' Nathan repeated him.
'If you wish it,' she said. She came round the table and he made to stand up. 'No, remain seated, and ... talk to this Rogei.' She placed a small, trembling hand on his brow.
Atwei, 1 am Rogei the Ancient, once Rogei the elder. His mental voice was suddenly stern.
She snatched back her hand and placed it on her breast. Nathan got to his feet. 'You heard him?'
Her mouth had fallen slightly open. She closed it, shook her head and said, 'No ... but I felt something. A presence!'
An echo, said Rogei. Atwei sensed the merest trace, the smallest ghost of me, amplified by your mind. It doesn't work, and I didn't think it would. You are the Necroscope, Nathan. Such talents are not commonplace.
Soft, padding footsteps sounded from outside the room. Atwei backed shakily away, turned and went to meet the elders. Rogei read Nathan's concern and said, Well, too late or that now. We must deal with it as it comes. More ways than one to strip a cactus.
The elders entered.
There were five of them, not all 'old' by any means and certainly not decrepit. Nathan calculated their ages on what he knew of the elderly among his own people. The youngest of the five was possibly forty-five, while the oldest would be well into his seventies. Revise your estimates upwards by at least fifteen years, Rogei told him. The Thyre are long-lived. Since each colony has only jive elders, a man cannot even aspire to become one until he is at least sixty.
Nathan looked openly, respectfully, at each of the elders in turn. The youngest of them was spindly and quite bald, but as yet largely unwrinkled. His eyes were somewhat smaller than those of his companions; their pupils were grey, dartingly alert and (Nathan felt sure) more than a little suspicious. Three of the remaining four were quite simply Thyre; dressed in knee-length, pleated, belted yellow skirts, apart from the difference in their ages there was nothing to distinguish one from the next. The final member of the group was the one anomaly: bearing a torque of gold around his neck, he was heavily wrinkled, bent, and wore flowing white hair to his shoulders. His eyes were huge, moist, and uniformly yellow as the gold of his torque. He was at a glance the Elder of elders.
They peered at Nathan obliquely, blinkingly as they gathered to the table and their eyes adjusted to the extra light. Each carried a small stool, which they placed in a semicircle to enclose him. Then, straightening, they stood facing him.
Atwei, standing behind them, said, 'Nathan, please sit.' And as he sat down, so did they. And without pause the interview and question session got underway.
'We shall dispense with formalities,' said the youngest of the five in a high-pitched, superior tone. 'You are after all Szgany and cannot know the ways of the Thyre.'
Excellent.' said Rogei. This spokesman thinks he knows it all, a common lailing among the young. So you must prove him wrong. Bow your head twice to him, then three times - but more slowly - to the Elder.
Nathan did as Rogei instructed and the Thyre, including Atwei, sat up straighter. Then the five turned their heads to look at her, until she huskily protested, 'No, I have not instructed him!' In this way, and without saying a word, Nathan had their attention. But more than that, he had apparently earned himself the enmity of their spokesman.
'So,' said that one, frowning, 'your telepathy is not as embryonic as we thought, for patently you stole this greeting from my mind. What is more, I failed to detect the theft! Yet in your fever these unseemly skills of yours were not obvious, which tends to show a naturally deceptive turn of mind.'
Rogei was quick off the mark. Point out how a man, even an elder, who jumps to concJusions to prove an elusive point may well deceive himself!
Nathan did so, and added: 'One who investigates the mind of another while he is feverish risks discovering phantoms.'
At which point the Elder himself took over. In a voice which creaked like the branch of an old tree in the wind, he asked: 'And how many of these phantoms are there in your mind, Nathan of the Szgany?'
A great many, Rogei whispered in his inner ear, speaking now as Nathan himself. Some of them are the ghosts of my past, which are mine alone to reveal