Missals grew brilliantly along the upper level of the Grand Canal where the grass was cropped short. I stared at a particular grove of the missals, seeing their pink and white blossoms, thinking back. Duhrra sensed my mood and remained silent.
Slowly, I walked toward the edge of the Grand Canal. The last time I had come this way, Waterloo had been less than a year gone.
How I remembered! The sweltering Bombay night, then Kregen, glorious Kregen with the streaming mingled sunshine, the air like nectar and a whole world in which to go adventuring. Well, I had been a long way since then and done many things and seen many wonders. Then I had been callow in the ways of Kregen. Now I felt myself not wise so much as indoctrinated. I knew in my heart that I was just the same nurdling onker who would rush headlong into incredible danger where the prudent self I now imagined myself to be would hang back. It is all in the situation.
Over there I had seen a dying Chulik stagger from the bushes, his face ripped off by the teeth of the grundals. Lower down the cliff face flanking the Grand Canal I had fought the grundals and so saved Gahan Gannius and Valima. Saved them at the behest of the Star Lords, for I had been in mortal fear lest the Everoinye fling back to Earth a pawn who disobeyed. I had saved them for the day they could marry, mate and so bring forth the suppurating evil that today was called Genod Gannius, the man who ate up the Zairians, their lands, beliefs and spirit. Truly the Star Lords planned long and long into the future. I stood there thinking back on my handiwork and I realized afresh that each person with whose destiny I had meddled at the orders of the Star Lords must play a part in the greater destiny of Kregen. Even my own part, which I had then thought worthy, of creating a slave phalanx of my old vosk-skulls and thrashing the hated Overlords of Magdag, had been turned against my Zairians by the machinations of Genod Gannius. Perhaps the Star Lords had seen what I would do. I could not believe that, for it had not been a thing of careful edges; rather it had grown and accreted of itself. No wonder the Star Lords had snatched me away in the moment of victory. A puzzle that had been with me for many years and seasons on Kregen had been solved.
Duhrra coughed, a hugely artificial cough, and said, "The suns decline, master. If we are to reach Akhram before nightfall. ."
"Aye," I said, somewhat heavily. "I have been thinking what a garblish onker I am, when the Deldars are ranked."
He didn’t bother to reply and I saw by the way he twitched his stump he did not agree. We went down the staircase cut into the wall of the Grand Canal and our sectrixes followed down the angled sloping paths cut for animals and swam the blue water; we climbed the other stupendous wall and came to Akhram.
The top of the Grand Canal was five miles across, flanked by cut steps a hundred yards broad, a mile or so deep, with something like forty steps of varying heights around a hundred and fifty feet average. The sheer colossal size of this man-made artifact impressed me all over again, as it had before. The perspective dwindled out of sight to the west. At that end of the Grand Canal lay the Dam of Days. For the simple satisfaction of actually seeing it I knew I would go there very soon. Duhrra and I approached the portal of the Akhram on this northern bank. Once again I saw that confusing collection of domes and steeples and minarets clustered within the stone walls. Once again the bronze-bound lenken door opened and the Todalpheme in their blue-tasseled cords and yellow hooded robes approached, bearing torches, making us welcome.
Their smooth skins showed the ministrations of oils and strigils, their faces fleshed with good living and yet ascetic with the mysteries of their profession. The Tides of Kregen are monitored by the Todalpheme. It is an art and a science. They had asked me to join them and I had refused. The old Akhram, the leader, was dead, and a new old Akhram lived in the chief place in his stead, as he had told me would happen.
There is little to say of that night Duhrra and I were made welcome, appointed a chamber, given food, were sent packing to bed. I lay awake for some time, pondering long on what had happened to me since I had last been here. It was incredible, but it had all happened.
The following morning after breakfast I walked with the Akhram, trying to recapture those old feelings of mine. He remembered my walking with his predecessor for, after all, it had been merely a quarter of his life span ago. I glanced up as a shadow fleeted below the suns.
I gaped.
A voller speeded up there, a fast two-place scout, quick and nimble. It vanished toward the west, flying fast and low.
The Akhram folded his hands within the sleeves of his robe, his face smooth and yet knowing. "A flying boat, yes, of late we have seen it a number of times."
"You are surprised?"
"Yes. We know of Vallia and Donengil here, of Wloclef and Loh and Djannik and a few other places. We have heard tales of boats that fly."
I rubbed my chin through the beard I had let grow. I did not like the look of this. "You have heard of Havilfar?"
He regarded me gravely. "Had you asked me that question but a sennight ago, I would have answered no. Today I must answer yes."
I felt the black bile, the anger, the remorse that I had stayed so long here in the inner sea. My place, I thought then, was at home countering the wiles of Hamal, the rich and evil Empire of the continent of Havilfar.
"We Todalpheme, as you know, take no part in the struggles between the green and the red. Our own people support us, and wear brown. They are raided — you will, I think, remember one such raid?"
"Yes."
The Todalpheme, because of their vital function, were taboo subjects over most of Kregen. No man would strike one down, lest the next tide should sweep him, his family and home away to watery destruction. I glanced up. Clouds massed before the suns. The temperature dropped markedly as we walked back along the battlements of the Akhram.
Akhram went on speaking: "We hear that this Genod Gannius has enlisted new allies in his struggles against the Zairians. He has brought new fighting men and weapons, and he has asked for a quantity of these wonderful flying boats."
I stared at him. Again the sense of vast unseen struggles enveloped me. The shadowy purposes of the Star Lords had, it seemed to me, been made a little more plain. They had used me to save Gahan Gannius and Valima and thus ensure the creation of their son Genod. What Genod was doing, therefore, must be desired by the Star Lords. I did not know why they should wish the green of Grodno to overcome the red of Zair, here in the Eye of the World.
The Akhram was still speaking, his face shadowed as the clouds grew over the bright face of the suns.
"We predict a great tide and the representatives of Genod Gannius have asked us to make sure a convoy of ships bearing the flying boats is allowed through the Dam of Days before we close the caissons." He glanced obliquely at the clouds. Already I, an old sailorman, had sensed the gale brewing.
"If the storm breaks with the tide the ships will be safely inside the Grand Canal. We could not refuse Gannius, for he brought an army with his request, and they guard the Dam of Days now, to enforce their orders."
If I seem to you particularly stupid in that I did not at once seize on these facts and construct an impressive theory, I must plead only that I had taken a savage whirling in the blasts of fate and now I only wished to turn my back on the inner sea. Yes, I would feel a terrible grief when the red of Zair went down, when Zy was destroyed and Sanurkazz ravaged. But they were merely small places in a small locale hidden from the rest of Kregen. My place lay in Valka and Vallia, maturing our plans to withstand the insane ambitions of the Empress Thyllis of Hamal, or in Djanduin with my Djangs, or taking hard steps to combat the raids of the shanks from around the curve of the world. I also had to visit Strombor in the enclave city of Zenicce and assure myself that my house prospered. And I would then go on a visit to my clansmen of the Great Plains of Segesthes, my wonderful clansmen of Felschraung and Longuelm. So there was much I must do in this marvelous and terrible world of Kregen. The inner sea shrank in my estimation of the important things in my life.