shown me by Akhram of the Todalpheme of Denrette.
Soon at the best speed of our vollers the western coast came in sight, a green-blue glittering expanse of water stretching out beyond the last fingerings of land, a vast mass of empty water stretching out no man knew whither. This was the Ocean of Doubt.
“There!” screeched Oby, pointing, the wind in his hair.
A collection of yellow-green onion domes rose from the edge of an inlet. Ships lay moored and signs of activity from what were clearly dockyards showed that these people kept themselves busy, an impression heightened by the size of the town strung along the water’s edge. The low yellow fortress guarding the mouth of the inlet was not lost upon us. These folk trafficked upon the sea, and yet they built defenses. We all thought we knew for whom those stout walls had been built.
The Akhram stood aloof from these mundane pursuits, the cluster of onion domes glistening in the limpid air.
How far we had come! Right to the edge of the known world — over it, for all we had previously known of these foreign parts. Where one might have expected to discover an uncouth half-savage people, it was clear there was wealth down there, industry and commerce — and, for sure, a deal of loot from the coasts of Havilfar, including Djanduin.
I had argued with my friends and overborne them.
Delia said: “But I should go with you! I have been to Aphrasoe before. Therefore-”
“Therefore you will stay here, with the fleet.”
She pouted at me, making a mockery of my heavy-handedness. But I would not be swayed. I had brought a fleet and a large body of fighting men, for that is the best way to travel on Kregen when you are in a hurry and will meet foes — and carry a bedridden, dying emperor. The very best way, of course, is alone, like a savage clansman in hunting leathers — and, truly, better even than that, is just the two of you, just the two, alone in the whole wide world of Kregen. .
So I would not be swayed now. Nath the Needle said he dare not leave the emperor. The poison wasting away the once stalwart frame was insidious, and any cure that might once have been possible was long since too late, by far. All he could do was administer what antidote he could. Every bur the emperor had to take a teaspoonful of the nauseating mixture Nath prepared, swallowing it down past clenched teeth we had gently to prise open with silver levers. Also, acupuncture needles had to be used, carefully inserted in the right nodes and along the correct lines to ease the increasing pain. I had studied assiduously with Nath the Needle as well as other eminent doctors to discover all I could of the arcane mysteries of the needleman’s art. I could insert a needle now and know with sure certainty that it would do the work intended.
Making preparations as the fleet hovered over the Akhram, I gave my last instructions. “I go alone and hope to win through with gold and peaceful talk. If I am not back within three burs then, Seg and Inch, you’d better fly down and see what is keeping me. I trust you will bring a few sturdy fellows with you, and, as well, leave another pack of sky-leems up here to guard our return.”
They nodded. They were not joking, even if I tended to treat this whole escapade as just that. They didn’t like me jaunting off by myself. Even I had to admit that that was because they cared for my leathery old hide, and not, as I dearly loved to believe, because they fancied I was hogging all the action. All my experiences on Kregen so far indicated that the Todalpheme were quiet, studious, peace-loving men who wished only to get on with their tasks of tracking the course of the moons and the suns and of predicting the tides. They kept up a force of brown- clad workpeople who were not slave, superintended by the Oblifanters, answerable directly to the Todalpheme. The Oblifanters and their work force were not cloaked by the universal acceptance of the sanctity of the Todalpheme. They might be entrapped, made slave, killed. So they were a rougher bunch. Their methods of work I had seen at the Dam of Days.
The voller spun away and I was lunging for the cluster of greenish-yellow onion domes within the long walls.
While it is not true to say that one Akhram is very much like another, they must all share a deal in common as to the purpose of their architecture. They each possess an observatory and a library and a refectory. As I expected, after a wait, I was shown into a small room where Akhram would see me. Gold, even among the Todalpheme, sometimes eases the way. But the Todalpheme welcome students visiting them, and within the framework of their vital occupations will delight in conversation with visitors, seeing that they are usually cut off from normal human intercourse. As a rule they lead solitary lives, at one with the waves and the winds and the tides. I anticipated only the problem of convincing the Todalpheme of Bet-Aqsa that I was genuinely in need of secret information. Some thought had been taken as to my dress.
To go with the orange favors of the Djangs would be to excite instant suspicion if not hostility. To go as a Vallian would mean little, except to create wariness almost as much as a Hamalian. Finally I donned a simple short russet-colored tunic, edged with a deep yellow, belted with lesten hide and a great golden buckle — petty ostentation, this last, but designed with a purpose. A rapier and dagger swung at my sides and the old longsword jutted up over my shoulder. I hung a long white cloak around my shoulders, clear of the hilt of the longsword, and fastened off the bronzen zhantil-head clips. The unworldly combination should provoke interest, at the least.
“And are you a prince, dom?” said Akhram, coming into the chamber and sitting down. He was a fat and fleshy man, with pursed lips despite the fat jowliness of his cheeks, and pouchy eyes. I did not like the sound of that “dom” which is common among ordinary folk as a greeting name, and among friends as a mark of affection. For the first time I felt unease, that I had blundered.
“That is not of importance.” I put to him the reason for my visit. I opened the lesten-hide bag and showed him the contents. As I did this I watched his eyes. My hackles rose. He was a Todalpheme; I do not deny him that. And, also, I knew there was much and much I did not know about Kregen. But he was like no other Todalpheme, least of all an Akhram, that I had met before.
“Pretty baubles,” he said, lifting the golden chains. But his face betrayed far different emotions from his words.
“All yours, Excellency.” I used the word deliberately. “The man is very sick. Only the Savanti can cure him.”
He looked up quickly, the golden chain swinging from his soft plump ringers. “So you know their name?
The brothers grow careless. And you have come far?”
“A goodly way.” I pushed the heavy bag nearer. “Tell me where lies Aphrasoe and these are yours and I will leave at once.”
No strangeness afflicted me as I considered what I said, what I demanded. The search for information had upheld me for long periods of my life upon Kregen. It was a secret I had hungered for, suffered for, something I had thought meant more to me than anything else in two worlds. Paradise! I had been thrown out of the paradise that was Aphrasoe, the Swinging City. I had asked and asked and always to no avail, and then real life had taken me in and the Swinging City had dimmed. And now, here I was, calmly offering gold to buy the secret. Weird!
So the strangeness of it all did affect me, after all.
“I think, dom,” said this Akhram, touching his lips, which shone, moist in the lights through the open windows. “I think the bag of treasure is mine, whether I give you the secret or not.”
“How so?”
“We do not impart this to everyone who asks. It is a high trust placed in our hands.”
Again, I blundered.
“I do not believe that. You came by the information by chance-”
“Do not presume!” He flared at me, shaking already with an anger he did little to control. This Todalpheme showed a petty emotion. “We have sent our men before. Good men. In vollers that cost a great deal of money in far Havilfar.”
By saying “far” Havilfar, he sought to entrap me into some kind of reaction by which he might judge my place of origin.
Stony-faced, I said: “I need the information and I need it in a hurry. I do not quarrel with anything you say of your acquisition or trust of the secret. The man is like to die. You will tell me.”
“And if I will not?”
I put my hand on the bag.
He sneered. “We have sent brothers to Aphrasoe and often they do not return. Gold will not buy their
