He sent her a letter of apology, and a gift. When no reply came, he sent a second letter, not quite so abject as the first but definitely conciliatory. She agreed to meet with him and gave convincing signs of having accepted his expressions of contrition. Even then there was still some distance between them, which at the moment he made no attempt to bridge, but it seemed to him that the damage was well on the way toward being repaired.
He had to spend the next two days doing the final surveying work out at the site of Vuldimin’s new palace in the country. When he came back, Hamiruld was waiting for him with the news that the expedition was off and Thalarne had left the city for points unknown, and the realization that he had no choice but to take himself back to Dawinno and face whatever it was that Silina’s people, or his father, or both, had in store for him.
He was still pondering his dilemma that evening when a burly, deep-chested man of middle years, with coarse thick fur and a fierce, glowering visage, hailed him by name in the street. Only after he had actually walked a few steps past him did the preoccupied Nortekku recognize him as Khardakhor, one of his father’s great commercial rivals, a dealer in metals and precious stones.
Once, many years back, Khardakhor and Nortekku’s father had been partners. Something had gone wrong between them, though. There had been a bitter and vindictive dispute and a court battle of some sort, and the name of Khardakhor was no longer mentioned in Nortekku’s house. But Nortekku had never known or cared very much about any of that and he saw no reason to snub Khardakhor now, this far from home. He halted and acknowledged the other man.
Khardakhor seemed amiable enough. He proved to be not nearly so fierce as he looked, greeting Nortekku like a long-lost nephew rather than as the son of an enemy. Evidently he had come north on business, and evidently, too, he had spent some time recently with Prince Vuldimin, because he knew about Nortekku’s having been hired to design a palace for the prince, and—wink, nudge, hearty grin—he knew about Nortekku’s affair with the beautiful Thalarne as well. “Quite a choice piece, that one is,” he said. “Saw her at Vuldimin’s a year or two ago, one of those dinner parties of his. If I were a little younger I’d have gone for her myself. I understand you and she have been cutting quite a swathe lately.—But why haven’t you gone off to Bornigrayal with her?”
“Bornigrayal?” Nortekku said blankly. What did Bornigrayal have to do with anything? He wondered whether he had heard correctly. Bornigrayal was a city on the other coast. He knew practically nothing about it, only its name and that it was one of the Five Cities back there. Everyone knew their names—Cignoi, Gharb, Gajnsiuelem, Thisthissima, Bornigrayal—but rarely did anyone from the two western city-states have any reason to visit one. Unknown tribes, emerging from unknown cocoons on the far side of the Hallimalla, had founded them after the Long Winter. For citizens of Dawinno or Yissou, they were all so distant that they might just as well have been on some other planet. “I don’t follow you. We didn’t have any plans for going to Bornigrayal. What we were about to do was to set out for the Hallimalla, to hunt for the old Koshmar-tribe cocoon.”
“Yes, of course. I heard about that project from Til-Menimat back in Dawinno. He expects you to find all sorts of marvels for his collection, I understand. But that’s been called off, hasn’t it? I ran into Thalarne’s husband Hamiruld yesterday”—wink, nudge, grin—“and he told me that he had put Thalarne aboard an airwagon bound for Bornigrayal, a few days back. There’s been some kind of discovery out that way that completely puts the cocoon thing in the shade.”
Nortekku shook his head. He felt as though a thick mist had wrapped itself about him. It seemed to him that he was moving from bafflement to bafflement these past few days, hardly having a chance to absorb one confusing thing before two or three more presented themselves.
“Well, maybe so. But Hamiruld didn’t say anything to me about her going to Bornigrayal,” Nortekku muttered, after a moment. He had difficulty articulating the words, like someone who was just coming up from sleep. “He told me she was gone, but he didn’t know where she had gone. Didn’t have any idea, is what he said.”
“Which is what he told you, anyway,” said Khardakhor, grinning broadly. “To me, he said something different. I can’t see where he’d have had any reason to lie to me. Maybe he just didn’t want you going off to Bornigrayal after her.” The fierce eyes narrowed a bit. “Well, you didn’t hear it from me, did you? But the girl’s in Bornigrayal. I have it on the best authority.”
This was incomprehensible. Nortekku felt a heavy pounding in his chest. Carefully he said, “And what could be in Bornigrayal that might interest her, do you think?”
“How would I know? Never been there, never thought much about the place. I don’t do any business there.” Khardakhor was studying him very closely. In the narrow glinting eyes Nortekku saw amusement, pity, even, perhaps, just a little envy. “Odd that she didn’t say anything to you, if you and she were really as thick with each other as all the rumors around town had it. But if that was how you and she really were, shouldn’t you be heading off to Bornigrayal to look for her?”
“Bornigrayal,” Nortekku said, hopelessly befuddled. The other end of the continent. It was frightening to think that she was that far from him, and frightening also to contemplate the notion of going there after her. It was an unimaginable distance. He had never traveled anywhere except up and down the Western Coast between Dawinno and Yissou. The journey to the banks of the Hallimalla would have been the grandest peregrination of his life. Why Bornigrayal? What could have possibly taken her there, on the spur of the moment, giving him no warning? To get away from him and all the complexities he had introduced into her marriage? It would hardly have been necessary to go to the ends of the Earth for that. Simply telling him it was over would have sufficed.
Bornigrayal, he thought, in wonder. Why? Why?
“I should go, yes,” he said. “Find her. Talk to her. Get all of this straightened out.”
Khardakhor was beaming now. “Absolutely, boy. Absolutely! Go to Bornigrayal. Do you know our ambassador there, Samnibolon? He’ll help you. He’s a very good man, is Samnibolon. You tell him you’re a friend of mine, that you’re looking for your girlfriend, that I told you she’s in Bornigrayal. Go, boy. Waste no time. Bornigrayal may be only the first stop for her. She may be planning to go even farther than that.”
It was all becoming something very dreamlike. He felt himself being drawn onward and onward, surrendering all volition. If this man Khardakhor thought he should go to Bornigrayal after Thalarne, who was he to say no? Go, boy. Waste no time.
Prince Vuldimin appeared to feel the same way. The prince knew nothing about Thalarne’s hasty departure and had no idea whatever of what could have drawn her to Bornigrayal, though he too seemed to know that that was where she had gone. Unhesitatingly he provided Nortekku with money for the trip. He provided a coachman, too, the following morning, who took Nortekku out to Yissou Sky Harbor, an enormous barren expanse of land far beyond the city walls, with two great concrete runways down its center and a huge gray airwagon sitting at the end of one of them. And within an hour Nortekku, who had never flown anywhere, who had never so much as thought of undertaking a journey by air, found himself aboard that great vessel as it made ready for takeoff.