Petais groaned and said, 'Still we must be sure!'
'I am sure,' the Elder answered him. 'You do not remember, Petals — of course not, for you were a child newborn — but I too was there when your mother took you before the dying Rogei, and indeed he was proud of you. I know, for I was Rogei's nephew, the son of his brother!'
Nodding, Petais seemed to sag a little. 'What must be must be. But it had to be decided, one way or the other.'
I was right, Nathan, Rogei sighed. The Elder is my nephew, Oltae!
Even as he spoke his ethereal words, the one he had named turned from Petais to Nathan. 'I know you will understand that Petais is correct,' the Elder said. 'We had to be sure. Even now, we must be sure.'
Test me however you will, Oltae,' Nathan told him.
The Elder gasped, gave a small start, and his hand tightened on Nathan's arm. 'That is my name, aye,' he nodded. 'And I know you did not steal it from my mind, for I have built a wall there which is impenetrable! Wherefore, one final test, and I shall be satisfied.'
Rogei prompted Nathan to say: 'Now I speak as Rogei. Let me guess this test, nephew. Has it to do with your examination for a place among The Five? You were a young man then, as Petais is now, but I remember your examination well for I was your examiner! I had many questions for you, but your answer to one of them won exceptional marks! Do you remember it, Oltae?'
'I do indeed,' the Elder whispered.
'And I asked,' Rogei spoke through Nathan, ''When will we know if The One Who Listens exists?' And you answered — '
'- My answer was this,' Oltae the Elder cut him short. ' 'We shall know that He exists when finally He speaks, which will not be until we are better capable of knowing and understanding Him.'' And as he gazed deep into Nathan's eyes, for a moment Oltae thought he saw an image of Rogei looking back at him, smiling. But as the Necroscope blinked, it was gone.
The Elder sighed, nodded in his fashion, and creaked to his feet; likewise his four colleagues. But before they left, Oltae said to Nathan (also to Rogei): 'It is my thought that today, perhaps we are one step closer to understanding Him!'
And then to Nathan alone: 'Rest, get back your strength. We shall talk again…'
In the long days which followed — days which would each have been as long as a 'week' in the time-scale of Nathan's unknown hell-lander father — he learned a great many things and did a great deal of 'teaching'. The Thyre called it teaching, anyway, though to Nathan it seemed he merely passed on the messages of the Ancients. But certainly the previously irretrievable knowledge of the dead was of enormous advantage to the living.
Long sessions were spent with The Five in the Cavern of the Ancients, where Nathan's talent as a Necroscope was proved beyond any further doubt; and as the living of the Thyre warmed to him, so did the Ancients themselves. And just as Harry Keogh had been a lone, bravely flickering candle to the dead of a far distant world, so now his son became a light in the darkness of the Thyre beyond.
Much like the Szgany, the Thyre had very little of true writing; rather than words, they used a system of complicated glyphs to illustrate whole ideas, so that a lot of the detail was inevitably lost. Most of their 'history' had come down to them in this way, and in the form of myths and legends passed mouth to mouth (or mind to mind), from generation to generation; out of which had sprung their art-form of storytelling. Foremost amongst makers of Thyre romance had been one Jhakae, dead for more than two hundred and eighty years. Now, through Nathan, Jhakae could relate all of his best stories, created for a limited audience of dead Ancients, and know that they would be passed down to thousands of the living.
Nathan relayed tale after tale, each of them furiously scribbled down and recorded as best as possible in the Thyre glyphs: the Story of the Fox and the Kite, the Fable of the Gourd and the Granule, the Tale of Tiphue and the Dust-Devil. Twenty of them, then thirty, finally forty, and all jewels of Thyre fantasy. But Jhakae's latest and greatest tale, as yet unfinished, would be that of the Szgany Youth in the Cavern of the Ancients: a Parable. And so Nathan was honoured.
In everything Nathan transcribed from death into life, and vice versa, he had the invaluable advice and assistance of Rogei. But such was the body of information to be passed on, the enormous bulk of questions from both sides, that priorities must be decided, time apportioned, and the practical take precedence over theoretical, philosophical, and theological subjects. Within the comparatively narrow confines of Thyre existence, all such subjects were limited forms anyway; far more important and immediately applicable were ideas and devices such as Shaeken's 'Water Ram', his 'Hydraulic Hoist' and 'Wheel of Irrigation'.
Shaeken was that Ancient whose name Rogei had mentioned at their first meeting, who once designed leather buckets for the drawing of water from the wells. Pursuing his obsession in death as in life, Shaeken had proceeded to far greater things; but even without the benefit of his genius, Nathan might have brought the principle of the water wheel to the Thyre. Desert folk, they had never journeyed beyond the grasslands to such townships as Twin Fords, and had not seen how the Szgany used the raw energies of the river to assist them in their work.
But they were the Thyre; the better Nathan knew them the more he understood their pride; making nothing of his own (in any case limited) knowledge, he spent long hours with a graphite stylus and the skins of lizards stretched on frames, creating meticulous sketches of machines direct from Shaeken's mind. And joiners of wood and other artisans pored breathlessly over each drawing as it was completed, so that as his work progressed the principles were grasped and the first models began to be carved.
There were times when Nathan grew tired but he made no complaint. His life had purpose; his mind was so occupied as to hold at bay all the mourning and miseries 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 deadspeak. 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
