She nodded. 'So, you are not deranged. The Thyre elders have read certain of these things in your mind. They could not be sure but thought you might be mad. If what you say is true, plainly you are sane and have a weird, unique talent. And who am I to decide if it is for good or for evil?'

Nathan frowned. 'It seems I remember something of that: voices which questioned me while I slept. About the Cavern of the Ancients and what happened there.

Also about my past. But ... did I invite them into my mind? I don't think so. Which is strange, for as I recall you mentioned an unspoken rule. Also, you awakened me with a mind-call! Do you make and break these rules of yours so easily then, Atwei?'

She drew back from him. 'But several strange things had happened, and there were matters which the elders required to understand. At first it seemed you might not live. Before you could die, it was necessary that they look into your mind. As for myself: how could I determine your progress, without that I first inquire within?'

He nodded but this time made no apology. 'And did they get what they wanted, the elders?'

'Not everything. Your mind is closed to the past, locking out all of the pain which lurks there. There is a great deal of pain in you.'

'I no longer feel it.'

'Because it is locked out - or in! This is not a physical thing, Nathan.'

He changed the subject. 'What will become of me?'

'That is for the elders.'

'Then you should call them, or take me to them.'

'I have called them and they will come, soon. Before then you should eat. Will you eat with me?' She seemed eager now to make up for any possible misunderstandings. And after all, she had told him her name.

'Here?'

'Oh, yes. For it will be a while before you can get up. A long day has passed, and a night. Up above, the sun is freshly risen. And all while you have lain here.'

An entire cycle! Nathan thought, easing his bones a little and stretching in his bed. But he wasn't surprised: it felt at least that and more. And Atwei was right: he was hungry. Til gladly eat with you,' he told her.

'Food has been prepared,' Atwei nodded, stood up, backed away and out through an archway. 'I shall return.' Left alone, he studied his surroundings.

The place where Nathan lay was a cave. Despite its rudimentary furniture, whitewashed walls, and crude mosaic floor of white and green flagstones, which gave it something of a room's appearance and made it habitable, it was still a cave. Central in the high ceiling, an irregular shaft three feet in diameter and possibly artificial ascended out of sight. But in an apparently subterranean room without windows, the most surprising features were the light and the warmth.

Down through the shaft in the ceiling streamed a beam of light, catching drifting dust motes in its ray in exactly the same way as sunlight coming into a barn through a gapped roof. Not solid sunlight, no, but light diffused and scattered, so that it emerged into the room almost as a haze. And falling onto a table near the foot of Nathan's crude wooden bed, the beam or shaft of soft yellow light struck against polished mirrors of gold to further permeate the room.

While Rogei had caused Nathan to believe that the Thyre colonies went deep indeed, as yet he had no idea how far he'd actually been carried underground. With sunlight like this to warm and light the place, however, he was sure it couldn't be far. Perhaps there were passageways leading from the Cavern of the Ancients to caves in the foot of the cliffs. In that case the shaft of light was nothing more than sunlight penetrating through some ancient chimney, and the warmth was residual of the desert.

Wrong! said a voice in his head, one which he recognized at once as Rogei's. The Place-Under-the-Yellow-Cliffs is very deep, Nathan. But the temperature in the Thyre colonies is a constant. It is a natural thing and a great many of the caves under the desert are like this. Why would we dwell in the cold places, or for that matter the hot ones, when so many temperate labyrinth systems exist for our habitation?

Used to this thing now, Nathan sat up in his bed. He saw that under his quilt of furs he was naked. His clothes, washed and mended, lay folded on a shelf at one side of the room. Now, with some effort - leaving his bed and dressing himself on the one hand, and on the other concentrating upon Rogei - he said: 'Well, it appears you were right. I was rescued from the Cavern of the Ancients and brought here. And now the elders are coming to question me.'

Like me, Rogei answered, they've waited patiently for you to wake up. But you must be careful how you answer their questions. They demand respect, elders, and until you prove otherwise they will doubtless accuse you of desecration. Merely to enter a forbidden place is bad enough; and as for the rest of it ... Nathan sensed the other's shrug.

The rest of what?' He was mystified. 'You welcomed me in and I entered; I could go no further and collapsed; I spoke to the old ones dead in their niches and upon their shelves. Then, at the end, I dreamed you came to me and comforted me.'

And touched you? Took your hand in mine?

'Yes.'

No dream that, Nathan.

'I don't understand.'

Probably as well, for the time being. Anyway, all is back to rights now.

Nathan frowned but didn't press him; there were too many other things he wanted to know. For example: 'If this place is so deep underground, where does the light come from?'

From the surface.

'The shaft falls straight? Like a well? In that case the sun would have to stand directly overhead, which it never does.'

7 doubt that the shaft falls straight, Rogei answered. No, for the cracks of the earth are like a maze. But some of these mazy cracks have mirrors at every junction!

'Mirrors?'

Where the bedrock breaks through the desert sand, Rogei patiently explained, there, in certain protected places, the Thyre tend and polish their mirrors. The sunlight falls upon them and is deflected into the earth's potholes and passageways. Passed from mirror to mirror, it descends into the dark places under the desert. Thus the Thyre bring a little light into their colonies.

Nathan nodded. 'Else you'd all be blind down here.'

No, for our eyes are like trog or Wamphyri eyes ... or perhaps not like the letter's, for the night is their element. But given even a little light, the Thyre see well enough. It is just that the light is a special comfort. Down there in the hollow earth, it is treasured.

Nathan would ask next about the Thyre talent for tongues. Apart from some small initial hesitation, Atwei's conversation had been in perfectly good Szgany. He knew of course that the Thyre traded with Travellers from time to time, but would find it astonishing if they shared the same native tongue.

Seeing the question coming, however, and perhaps far too many more of them, Rogei cried: Wait! Enough of these questions for now, Nathan. There are more important matters. First we must talk about the Thyre elders...

But before he could continue, Atwei returned with a yoke round her slender neck from which depended a pair of thin silver trays laden with small wooden bowls of various edibles. And looking at the bowls as she transferred them from the trays to the table, Nathan found his mouth watering. For the first time in a very long time he knew which matters were most important to him. Most immediately important, anyway.

Seated on tiny stools on opposite sides of the table and between the mirrors, Nathan and Atwei ate. There in the shaft of diffused sunlight, she looked more golden than brown, and he noticed how her pupils shrank to match the light's greater intensity.

The foodstuffs were fascinating, even exotic. Nathan had never imagined that these 'primitive' desert folk enjoyed such variety. Insisting that the food was for him, Atwei took only a little; she was simply keeping him company while he ate. And at that Nathan felt privileged. He rightly supposed himself to be the first of the Szgany to ever learn of such things. Certainly he was the first to ever taste them.