of his past; he had a deal more of respect from his new friends than his own had ever shown him. He was satisfied, or believed he was satisfied, for a while at least...
He was pleased to perform personal favours. Rogei felt compelled to discover the fortunes of various kith and kin; Nathan stood in his debt and so made inquiries on his behalf; Rogei was enabled to 'speak' with those who were here, still alive. Others however had moved away, to far colonies beyond the range of Thyre dead-speak. For just like the telepathy of the living, that of the dead had its limitations, too. Many of the ones Rogei sought were dead in distant places, beyond his reach.
Meanwhile Nathan's fame had spread abroad; Thyre from other colonies began to arrive at the Place-Under-the-Yellow-Cliffs, all bearing invitations from their elders. Invariably they would seek audience with Nathan and let it be known that he would always find a welcome should he ever decide to visit. He promised Rogei that if ever he accepted such an invitation, he'd be sure to seek out his old friend's relatives en route, wherever his travels took him.
But in the interim he worked ...
With the exception of trivial items vetted out by Rogei, first Nathan satisfied all the personal queries of the dead in the Cavern of the Ancients, and of the colony's living alike, before setting to with a will. Then: He made known all of the gourmet Arxei's myriad secret recipes, which that one had never revealed in life; he delivered a formula of preservation from the mirror-polisher Annais, a vegetable varnish to protect the Thyre mirrors and keep them from tarnishing; he gave voice to the gardener Tharkel's conclusions on bees, pollination, and the keeping of hives. In life Tharkel had made an oasis with his own hands, which had failed only through the lack of an adequate water supply; since when he'd planned bigger and better ones. Now, with the advent of Shaeken's Hydraulic Hoist, they could be real!
Nathan did all of these things, and as the work gradually slackened off even found time for a little local travelling and studying among the Thyre. And since the elders did not consider it fitting that a person of Nathan's importance should concern himself with the basic requirements of life, Atwei became his aide among the living just as Rogei was his spokesman among the dead. Dealing with all mundane matters, she left Nathan free to explore the possibilities of his unique talent.
In fact he was given too much freedom and failed to use it to his best advantage. For as the furious pace of his life slackened, so he allowed a host of dreams and memories of past, unbearable things to creep back in to plague him. He dreamed of Canker Canison's barking laugh as the loping dog-thing carried Misha away to the horror of some unthinkable future; and of his mother, a flame-eyed thrall in the service of a hideous vampire Lord; and of Nestor rotting in the river, a thing of weeds and sloughing grey flesh, dissolving into the mud. Nightmares such as these invariably brought Nathan gibbering awake, and Atwei would come running to comfort him . ..
In black bowels of earth beneath the colony, where even the fishermen of the Thyre must cast their nets by flaring torchlight, Atwei showed Nathan a section of the Great Dark River and explained as best she could its source and destination.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
'As Sunside's rains roll down off the barrier mountains,' she said, her husky whisper echoing into the darkness and back from unknown places, 'and as storm-clouds burst less frequently over the furnace desert itself, so great bodies of water find their way underground. Many major tributaries may be found in the west, and others to the east, between the desert and the mountains. And so the Great Dark River under the earth is the sump of the world!
The hard bedrock of the underworld is tilted eastwards; likewise, naturally, the course of the river. Where the rocks are softest, the rain of centuries has formed many cavern systems. Of these, the safest and most suitable have become Thyre colonies. The underworld is as important to the Thyre as your forests are to you Szgany. Temperate, it provides shade from the sun in the heat of the long day, and is a refuge from the bitter chill of desert nights. We could not live without it, or