In any event, his work came first, and for the duration of a single sunup he proved his credentials in the mausoleum called the Hall of Endless Hours. There, when at last his time was his own, he spoke to Thikkoul: a bundle of venerable rags in a niche lit by a constantly flickering candle.
And so you've come, that one's deadspeak came as a whisper in the Necroscope's mind. Well, it should not surprise me,
'Did you really read men's futures in the stars?' Nathan was fascinated.
Do you doubt me?
'It seems a strange talent, this astrology.'
Oh, and is it stranger than telepathy? Stranger than this deadspeak which allows me to communicate with my myriad colleagues among the Great Majority? Stranger than your own unique talent?
'It's not that I'm without faith,' Nathan answered. 'But even the Thyre bolster their faith with fact. Show it to me.'
The other chuckled. Gladly! Only show me the stars, and I will show you the future.
Nathan nodded. 'But there are no stars in the Hall of Endless Hours, Thikkoul. I'll have to go up into the desert. Stay with me..'
Above, it was night. The stars were diamonds, but they shone softer here than over Starside and the barrier range. Nathan walked out over sands which were cool now, away from the oasis. And in the silence and aching loneliness of the desert, Thikkoul's thoughts came more clearly into his inner mind. Lie down, look up, gaze upon the heavens. Let me look out through your eyes upon all the times which were, are, and will be. For just as the light from the stars is our past, so is it our future. Except…
'Yes?' Nathan put down a blanket, lay upon it, and looked up at the stars. Likewise Thikkoul.
Except.. first I should warn you: things are rarely as I see them.
'You make errors?'
Oh, I see what I see! Thikkoul answered at once. But how the things which I see shall come to pass, that is not always clear. The future is devious, Nathan. It takes a brave man to read it, and only a fool would guarantee its meaning.
'I don't understand,' Nathan frowned, shook his head.
Thikkoul looked out through Nathan's eyes at the stars — looked at them for the first time in a hundred years — and sighed. Ahh! he said. Boy and man, they fascinated me, and continue to fascinate me. I am in your debt, Nathan Kiklu of the Szgany. But repayment may be hard, for both of us.
'No, it will be easy. Read my future, that's enough.'
But that was my meaning. What if I read hard things for you? Must I tell you your fate as well as your fortune?
'Whatever you see, that will suffice.'
I shall do as best 1 can, the other told him, and for a while was silent. Then… it came in a flood, in a flash, a river bursting its banks. So fast that Nathan could scarcely cling to the words and images as Thikkoul threw them into his mind: I see… doors! Like the doors on a hundred Szgany caravans but liquid, drawn on water, formed of ripples. And behind each one of them, a piece of your future. A door opens. I see a man, Szgany, a so-called 'mystic'.
His name is — lo… Jo… lozel! And his game — is treachery! Now I see Turgosheim; the manse of a great wizard; you and he together. He would use you, learn from you, instruct and corrupt you! The door closes, but another opens…
The sun rises and sets, and sunups come and go in a blur where you wander in a great dark castle of many caves. I see your face: your hollow eyes and greying hair? Now I see… a
Some hours are long as days; others fly like seconds; long and short alike, they draw you into the future. And always the doors of your mind, opening and closing. I see… a battle — war! — Szgany and Wamphyri! You win, and you lose. Now I see an eye, white and blind and glaring, much like my own before I died, but vast as a cavern! You stand before it and the eye… is another door! It blinks! And in the blink of a great blind eye, you… are…
Thikkoul paused, like a man breathless.
'Yes?' Nathan's real voice was hoarse with excitement… but Thikkoul's deadspeak was hoarse with horror as finally he continued: You are — gone!
Ill In the chill, cheerless hours before dawn, made all the more cold and lonely because he was on his own now, Nathan walked away from the oasis over the blown sands which kept the subterranean caverns of the Thyre secret. He had been told that the going was firm between here and Sunside; but in any case, he'd grown used to walking in the desert and found it no great discomfort. The night was bright and the stars clear; Nathan's shadow walked behind him, cast by the moon as it hurtled over the mountains of the barrier range, whose serrated ridge made a scalloped horizon in the far dark distance. Frequent meteorite showers left brilliant, ephemeral tracks across the sky.
After so much time spent underground, Nathan's night vision was much improved; he could see almost as well as in full daylight. As for direction: no chance that he could lose his way. No one among the Szgany knew the stars as well as he did; not even among the Thyre, that he knew of… except Thikkoul. And as he went at a brisk, long-striding pace across the featureless desert, Nathan thought back on what Thikkoul had told him, the conversation which had followed fast upon the dead astrologer's reading:
'What does it mean?' He had wanted to know.
Everything. And nothing, Thikkoul had answered, a little sorrowfully now.
'I can ignore it?'
Of course. But alas, it won't ignore you.
'Can't you make yourself plainer?'
Thikkoul had sighed. Didn't I warn you? The future is a devious thing, Nathan. This is the problem: will what I have read in the stars come to pass because, believing it, we make it come to pass? Or will it happen whether or no? And what if we should try to avoid it, how then? Could it be that our actions will cause the very event we seek to avoid? But in fact (Nathan had sensed the other's incorporeal shrug), there's no riddle — nothing contrary — in any of this. The answer is simplicity itself: what will be will be! And that is all. 'I can set about making it happen,' Nathan had scratched his chin, repeating what the other had said but in his own way, 'or take steps to avoid it, or simply let it be. But whichever I choose, it will make no difference?'
Exactly. But there is one other complication. My readings are often symbolic. I don't understand the doors 1 saw in your future: they seemed to be part of you. Nor do I understand the dragon-flight, or the vast eye which swallowed you in a blink. For these are things of your future, which are perhaps linked to your past. And so it's for you to know and understand them. Jf not now, most certainly later…
Nathan had frowned as he held to one of the things Thikkoul had told him. 'How may a thing come to pass because I try to avoid it? What if I know of this blind white eye which you mentioned — for indeed I believe I do — and make sure I go nowhere near it? How then can I be swallowed by it?'
There was a man, the other had answered. He feared water and had bad dreams, premonitions, about his death. He came to me that I would read his stars. I told him the dangers but he insisted. The forecast was this: that in the course of a single sunup he would drown in the borehole of River's Rush, and his body never be found!
I did not want to tell him but he insisted. Then, when he knew the truth he left River's Rush and climbed to the surface, and travelled west, alone, into the desert. He would escape his fate, do you see? Well, he found himself a little shade and sat out in the desert for all of that sunup, until the evening was nigh. Then, making to return, he stumbled and took a fall which broke his skin of water. Close by was a well; he went to it and lowered the bucket. But then, when he hauled up the water, the wall crumbled and he fell in.
The well was fed by the Great Red River; the river swept him> away; he was seen, alive, lifting his hand up from the torrent, before being swirled into the borehole, lost forever…
At the end of his story Thikkoul had sighed again before lapsing silent, waiting for Nathan's response.
