The Search For Zei by L. Sprague de Camp

Author:L. Sprague de Camp [Camp, L. Sprague De]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 1962-06-19T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XII

So it came about that evening found them putting out into Bajjai Bay aboard a tubby wallowing coastal lateener, the Giyam, so laden with wine jars that her freeboard could only be measured in centimeters. The master laughed at their obvious apprehension when a lusty wave sent a sheet of water racing across the deck.

"Nay," he said, "'twill not be the season of the hurricane for several ten-nights yet."

For want of anything better to do, Barnevelt dug out of the bag the navigational handbook he had bought in Novorecife and tried to work out a line-of-position from the meager data provided by the ship's compass (which spun this way and that in maddening disregard of direction), the time as given by his pocket sundial, and Roqir's altitude as worked out by an improvised astrolabe. With so many sources of inaccuracy, however, his calculations showed the ship hundreds of hoda up the Zigros River, between Jeshang and Kubyab.

"Reading's useless baggage for the true sailorman," said the master, watching Barnevelt's struggles with amusement. "Here I have never learned the clerkly art, and look at me! Nay, 'tis better to spend one's time watching wave and cloud and flying thing, and becoming wise in their ways—or yet in learning the habitudes of the local gods, so that ye please each in his own bailiwick. Thus in Qirib I'm a faithful follower of their Mother Goddess, but in Majbur I'm a votary of jolly old Dashmok, and in Gozashtandu ports a devotee of their cultus, astrological. Did our seas reach to your cold Nyamdze, I'd doubtless learn to adore squares and trigons as do the sour Kangandites."

It was high time, Barnevelt thought, that he and George decided how they were going to gain access to the Sunqar. After some casting about for ideas, they resolved to combine those that had already been suggested to them by their friends and acquaintances on Krishna. In other words, they would seek entry with one or both of them disguised as expressmen of the Mejrou Qurardena with a package to deliver.

The wind held fair and true, and the morning of the third day found the Givam heading into the harbor of Ghulinde. As the sun rose out of the sparkling sea, Barnevelt stared in silent wonder.

Before them lay the port, not properly Ghulinde at all but the separate city of Damovang. Southwest of Damovang rose tall Mount Sabushi. In times long past, before the matriar-chate had elevated the cult of the fertility goddess and suppressed its competitors, men had carved the mountain into an enormous squat likeness of the war-god Qondyor (called Qunjar by the Qiribuma) as though sitting on a throne half-sunk in the earth, to the height of the god's calves. Time had blurred the sculptors' work, especially around the head, but the city of Ghulinde proper with its graceful forest of spiky spires lay in the great flat lap of the god.

Finally, far behind Mount Sabushi, against the sky rose the towering peaks of

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