Alan Akers - The suns of Scorpio

I shook my head. “It is not that, Akhram.”

He turned away.

“It is difficult to find the right young men. But, if the Todalpheme were no more, who, then, would warn the fisher folk, the sailors in their gallant ships, the people of the shore cities? For the inner sea is a calm sea. It is flat, placid, smooth. When storms come a man may see the clouds gather and sense the change in the wind, and sniff the breeze, and say to himself a storm is due and so seek harbor. But — who can warn him when the tides will come sweeping in to smash and crush and destroy if the gates are not closed on the Dam of Days?”

“The Todalpheme will not die, Akhram. There will always be young men ready to take up the challenge. Do not fear.”

When it was time to go I promised the Todalpheme that I would halt on my journey to the outer ocean and give them Lahal. I also promised myself the sight of this wonderful Dam of Days and its gates and locks, for judging by the Grand Canal it must be an engineering work of colossal scale. They gave me a decent tunic of white cloth, and a satchel in which were placed, lovingly wrapped in leaves, a supply of the long loaves of bread, some dried meat, and fruit. Over my back I slung a profusely berried branch of palines. Then, with the hauberk and coif rolled up around my middle and the long sword depending from a pair of straps at my side, sandals on my feet, I set off. They all crowded to see me go.

“Remberee!” they called. “Remberee, Dray Prescot.”

“Remberee!” I called back.

I knew that had I tried, now, to take any other course I would have been flung back to Earth. Much though I wanted to rush to Delia, much though I yearned to hold her in my arms again, I dare not take a single step overtly in her direction.

I was trapped in the schemes of the Star Lords, or the Savanti — although I suspected that those calm grave men wished me well, even though they had turned me out of paradise. If I tried to board a ship for Vallia, I felt sure I would find myself engulfed by that enveloping blueness and awake on some remote part of the Earth where I had been born.

Being unprovided with either a zorca or a vove, those riding animals of the great plains of Segesthes, I walked. I walked for the better part of six burs.[1]

I had absolutely no concern over the future. This time was different from all the other times I had gone forward into danger and adventure. I might seek to hire myself out as a mercenary. I might seek employment on a ship. It did not matter. I knew that the forces that toyed with me and drove me on would turn my hand to what they had planned for me.

Do not blame me. If you believe that I welcomed this turn of events, then you are woefully wrong. I was being forced away from all that I held dear in two worlds. I had more or less resigned myself to the truth that I would never again return — or be permitted to return — to Aphrasoe, the City of the Savanti; and all that I wanted on Earth or Kregen was my Delia of the Blue Mountains. Yet if I took a single step in her direction I felt sure the forces that manipulated my destiny would contemptuously toss me back to Earth. I felt mean and vengeful. I was not a happy man as I walked out in the mingled suns-shine to seek the city of Grodno; the man or beast who crossed my path had best beware and walk with a small tread when I passed by.

The shoreline presented a strangely dead appearance.

I passed no habitations, no small fishing villages, no towns or hamlets bowered in the trees that grew profusely everywhere. Trees and grass and flowers grew lushly all along my way; the air tanged with that exciting sting of the sea, salty and zestful; the green sun and the red sun shed their opaline rays across the landscape and over the gleaming expanse of smooth blue sea. But I met no single living soul in all that journey.

When the provisions given me by the Todalpheme were exhausted I used my acquired Clansman’s skills and hunted more. The water in the streams and rills tasted as sweet as Eward wine from Zenicce. I was slowly working on the hauberk, unfixing the linked mesh along the spine and the sides and lacing it up again to a broader fit with leather thongs. I did not hurry the work; I did not hurry in my walk. If those dung-bellied Star Lords wanted me to do their dirty work for them, then I would do it in my own time. I could not be sure it was the Star Lords who had arranged this. I did feel sure, though, that if they did not wish me to travel where I was traveling they would stop me. I had the idea that the Savanti, powerful and mysterious though they were, could not, when all was said and done, overmaster the Everoinye, the Star Lords.

No matter who was forcing me to take this course (I did not discount the emergence of yet a third force into the arena where actions and conflicts were being battled out quite beyond my comprehension), I was being used on Kregen. I had been used in Zenicce to overthrow the Most Noble House of Esztercari. I had done so, and in the doing of it had become the Lord of Strombor. Then, in my moment of victory when I was about to be betrothed to my Delia, I had been whisked back to Earth. Oh, yes, I was being used, like a cunning and shiftless captain will use his first lieutenant quite beyond the bounds of duty. So. I can remember the moment well, as I walked along a low cliff line above the sea, that smooth inner sea of Turismond, with the breeze in my face and the twin suns shining brilliantly down. If I were to be used in a fashion that the modern world, the world of the twentieth century, would call a troubleshooter, then I would be a troubleshooter for the Star Lords, or the Savanti, or anyone else, on my own terms. Nothing I did must interfere with my set purpose to find Delia. But, equally, I could do nothing to seek her until I had settled the matter in hand. Accordingly, then, I walked along with a heart if not lighter, at least less oppressed. Still, I hungered for some tangible opponent to face with steel in my hand. I had not led a particularly happy life. Happiness, I tended to think in those far-off days, was a kind of mirage a man dying of thirst sees in the desert. I had found great wonder and pleasure among my Clansmen, and had striven for the achievement of Delia of Delphond only to lose her in the moment of gaining; I wondered if I would ever be able to say with Mr Valiant-for-Truth, out of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress : “With great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am.”

The days passed and I had seen no human life, only avoided a pack of grundals. I had looked out on an empty sea and walked through an empty countryside.

What I had seen at Akhram and my knowledge mainly gained from long hours reading during off-watch periods made me take a long swing inland. The Todalphemes’ maps had shown the inner sea, the Eye of the World ; it was marked down in the cursive script on the ancient parchment, as being bean-shaped, humped to the north, and something over five hundred dwaburs[2]long from west to east. Because of its indented coastlines, it was studded with bays, peninsulas, islands, and the river deltas. Its width was difficult to measure accurately although proportionally a bean-shape gives a good impression. The average width might be something in the order of a hundred dwaburs; however, that would not take into account the two smaller but still sizable seas opening off the southern shore, reached through narrow channels. I was in the northern hemisphere of Kregen still, and I had gathered that Vallia lay across the outer ocean, the sea that in Zenicce we called the Sunset Sea, east with a touch of northing in it from here. Between the eastern end of the inner sea and the eastern end of the continent of Turismond lay vast and craggy mountains; beyond were areas inhabited by inhospitable peoples around whom had gathered all the chilling and horrific legends to be expected from a land of mystery. I gathered also that these people of the inner sea, the Eye of the World, relished a tall story as much as the folk of Segesthes. So I struck a little inland, away from that shining sea.