false plateau from the surface of the furnace desert, Nathan spoke to his guide Septais, a young Thyre male only five or six years his senior. Septais had been with him now for a three-month; they were firm friends and felt little or nothing of strangeness or alienage in each other's company. Nathan's voice was hushed, even awed, as he asked: 'How can it be that Szgany and Thyre don't know each other? We've dwelled so close, so long, and yet apart from the occasional trading contact, we're strangers!'
'But ... we do know you,' Septais answered, blinking.
'Yes,' Nathan nodded, 'you know us - you know something of us, anyway - but the Szgany have never really known you. And they certainly haven't known this!' He held out his hands as if to encompass all of Crater Lake.
The place was simply that: a giant crater a mile across, with a raised inner caldera. The river entered through caverns in the base of the west wall; it formed a great blue lake which emptied through a gap in the reef-like central node of jutting rocks, and from there down into the sump of a whirlpool. After that, deep in the earth again, the Great Dark River ran east as before. And so the colony was an oasis, but vast and very beautiful.
'You mean our oases, our secret places? But if you knew of them they would not be secret. And if you knew of them ... how long before the Wamphyri learned of them, too?' Septais gave a shrug. 'You Szgany have your places, the forests and the hills, and we desert folk have ours.'
'I don't blame you for not wanting to share this,' Nathan told him.
'Perhaps different men should live together,' Septais answered. 'But our experience is that they can't. Upon a time, the Eastern Necromancers invaded. In aspect, they seemed much like the Thyre - far more like us than you Szgany - but they were not. For one thing, they did not have our telepathy. But they did have ... other arts.'
'I've been told about them,' Nathan nodded. Again Septais's shrug. 'We trade a little with the Szgany, so that they may know us for a peaceful people. It is enough.'
'I understand,' Nathan said. 'But I still can't understand why we don't know about you. So close, and yet so ignorant. And your telepathy: I know that certain men of the Szgany have had such talents before me. Did they never hear your minds conversing? Did they never wonder?'
'Our thoughts are guarded,' Septais said. 'From birth to death, we are careful how we use this skill. Among the Szgany, telepathy is rare. But among the Wamphyri - it is not!'
Nathan nodded. 'That makes sense, for I couldn't bear the thought of them here!' Giving an involuntary shudder, he fell silent for a moment. But he was still curious, puzzled. 'That aside,' he said in a while, 'we are very close - I mean physically, geographically - with nothing so vast as the barrier range to separate us. It surprises me that men, Szgany loners, haven't stumbled upon your oases.'
'Really?' said Septais. 'You are surprised? Well, your geography may be sound in Sunside, Nathan, but it lacks something here in the furnace deserts. You ask, why have men not stumbled upon us?' He pointed north and slightly west. 'Over there, some sixty miles, lies the eastern extent of the barrier range, where the mountains crumble to the Great Red Waste.' Keeping his spindly arm raised, he turned slowly east through ninety degrees. 'And all of that, for a thousand miles, is the Great Red Waste. Beyond it lies a continuation of Sun-side, the mountains, the Szgany and the Wamphyri: an unknown or legendary land, to you. Men, Szgany, have not crossed the Great Red Waste. How could they, when even the Thyre have not crossed it on the surface? You shall be the first of the Szgany, but you shall pass around and beneath it!'
Nathan looked where Septais had first pointed. 'Sun-side, only sixty miles away,' he mused. 'And not even a crag showing on the flat horizon, because the mountains lie beyond the curve of the world. And of course you are right, Septais: why should any sane man of the Szgany ever venture out here? The forests blend into grasslands, which turn into scrub and sand, and the deserts sprawl sunwards forever. Only the strange, thin, dark-skinned nomads may dwell in the desert, and theirs is a fragile