“Yes,” said Shandaha. “So you claim. Now tell me, Earl how far did you ever travel from your village?”
“What?” Dumarest frowned, thinking, remembering. His host did not wait for an answer.
“A young boy. Physically weak, barefoot and forced to cover rough terrain. Five miles out and the same back? A full day’s effort. You agree?”
“So?”
“In total, assuming your people stayed in the same area and that you took a different route every day, you would have covered an area of less than a hundred square miles. In that area you claim to have seen the scars of ancient wars and the scattered remains of bygone civilizations. You claim that Earth, the planet of your birth, is so scarred. Am I correct?”
Dumarest said, stubbornly, “I know what I remember.”
“That is the puzzle.” Shandaha lifted the decanter, filled the goblets, handed one to Dumarest. The act of a gracious winner. “The terrain all scarred and torn by ancient wars. The scattered ruins. How could you have seen them, Earl? Such things could only be seen from space and you didn’t even know what space was. So how could you describe what you had never seen?”
He smiled over the rim of his goblet. The winner of a game that Dumarest, as yet, knew nothing about.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sleep was a misted honeycomb of tiers and shifting planes, of cells filled with glowing hues of amber and gold, silver and ruby, of chrome and dusty orange. Colors which held an enticing brilliance, fading to flare again in rainbows of novel configurations, to yield to the embracing softness of nacreous mists and tinted wreaths of drifting smoke.
Places holding strange shapes and broken shards of elaborate constructions. Of veiled faces and bizarre landscapes. Of presences that rose to walk beside him to vanish as he turned to face them, to become shadows of colored mist, wisps of gossamer cloud.
Dumarest stirred, knowing he was nude, resting on softness, draped by thin fabrics that held the subtle scent of springtime sweetness. The memory of Shandaha was strong as was the puzzle he had set, the elusive manipulation of words and logic that had threatened long-held convictions. There had been too many words and too much wine, if wine it had been, the lambent emerald seeming to dissolve in his throat to leave a glowing euphoria. One that had led to a glowing world of sleep-induced dreams populated by ghosts and haunted by the unknown.
Somehow he must have left the chamber to strip and get into bed. Or had the bed come to him and had he ever been clothed at all? Questions without answers. Too many puzzles each presenting a disturbing mystery. It was time he found some solutions.
He moved and felt a momentary nausea then was standing, facing an eerie scene of lowering night edged by the dull red glow of the western sky. One he had seen before when on Gath and he looked again at darkness illuminated by moving lanterns carried on rafts, held by tourists, attendants, accompanying guards. A wending line of men and women heading north across a sea-edged plateau towards the fabled mountains of a world holding a unique formation. A spectacle that intrigued the woman standing at his side.
“It looks like a snake,” she said. “Or a centipede. Or an eltross from Vootan. They are composed of seven distinct types of creature united in a common symbiosis. Have you ever seen one?”
The Lady Seena, spoiled ward of the Matriarch of Kund, slender, beautiful, wearing a fortune in gems and rich fabrics. Beside her, dressed in his traveler’s garb, Dumarest was a grey shadow.
He made no comment, eyes searching the column, seeing things he had seen before and was seeing again by a trick of woken memory, the figment of a dream.
“You did not answer me.”
He was her companion. An attendant she regarded as a paid servant. She expected a response. Obediently he said, “No, my lady. I have never seen a eltross.”
“You should. They have a certain charm.” A subject forgotten as she found a new interest.
“That man!” Seena pointed to a figure stooped and struggling beneath a heavy burden. “What does he carry?”
Dumarest told her. She stared in amazement. “A coffin holding the dead body of his wife? You can’t be serious.”
“It is so, my lady.”
“But why?”
“He is probably very attached to her.” He added, dryly, “I understand that some men do feel like that about their wives. They cannot bear to be parted.”
“Now I know that you are joking.” Seena was impatient. “It is hardly a subject for jest. Why is he carrying such a burden? Why did he bring her with him? What can he possibly hope to gain?”
“That is the question, my lady.” Dumarest looked at the woman at his side, seeing again what he had seen so long ago. Knowing what was to come, what she would say. “I am not sure as to his reason but there is a legend on Earth that, on the very last day, a trumpet will sound and all the dead will rise to live again. Perhaps he hopes to hear the sound of that trumpet-or that his wife will hear it.”
“But she is dead.”
“So he claims.”
“But if she is dead how could she hear?” She frowned her irritation. “You fail to make sense,” she complained. “I have heard of no such legend. And I have heard of no such world. Earth!” She laughed at the concept. “Do you really expect me to believe there is such a place?”
“You should-it is very real.” He began walking so as to keep abreast of the column, pausing to allow her to catch up, continuing when she did. “I was born there. I grew up there. It is not a pleasant world. Most of it is desert, a savage, barren expanse in which little grows. It is scarred with old wounds and littered with the ruins of bygone ages and lost civilizations. But-”
He broke off, senses reeling as the scene before him swirled and blended with mist. A time of deja vu ending as soon as recognized. But the question remained.
How had he known?
How?
He could not have known the details he had mentioned. He had been too young, too small, too weak to have traveled far. The moon, yes, that was plain for all to see, but the scars of old wars, the ruins, the vast expanse of wilderness? As Shandaha had pointed out there was no way he could have seen them and yet he was certain they existed. Certain that all was as he had claimed. Convinced he knew the truth.
Like ghosts thin voices whispered in his mind.
“Earth? A strange name for a planet. Why not call it Sand or Loam or Dirt?”
Laughter at the concept.
“It has to be a legend. A fanciful myth. A world that does not exist.”
More laughter at his insistence that it did.
“Then why isn’t it listed in the Almanac? If it was real it would be registered. The coordinates would be known. They aren’t so it doesn’t.”
Syllostic logic of the kind Shandaha had demonstrated. All planets were listed in the Almanac. If a world was not listed it didn’t exist. Earth was not listed so Earth did not exist. Proof according to the rules of the system used, but the initial premise was at fault. Change it a little to-‘all known planets are listed in the Almanac’-and the reasoning held no value. For if Earth was unknown it could not be listed, but it could still exist.
Comfort of a kind and surely the existence of Earth could soon be no longer a matter of speculation. For he had found the planet. The legendary world of limitless wealth. He had managed to return, to get back home. The coordinates were no longer a secret. The Kaldari must have them and could have sold them on. They, or others, would use them driven by curiosity and greed.
Given time more vessels must surely arrive.
To be greeted as he had been? Blasted from space to be sent to crash in ruin on the surface of a hostile world? To be eliminated or made a prisoner for the amusement of some decadent being?