The suns of Scorpio Read Online Free PDF Page B

messenger or spy of the Star Lords. As I saw it so I felt that familiar lassitude, that sickening sense of falling, overpower me, and I felt my knees give way, my sword arm fall, my every sense reel and shiver with the shock of dissociation.
    “No!” I managed to cry out. “No! I will not return to Earth! I will not. . . I will stay on Kregen. . . I will not return!”
    But the blue mist encompassed me and I was falling. . .
CHAPTER THREE
    Into the Eye of the World
    North or south . . . Grodno or Zair . . . green or red . . . Genodras or Zim . . . Somewhere a conflict was being fought out. I did not know then and even now I must in the nature of things be unaware of all that passed as I sank down in a stupor in the courtyard of the tidal buildings of Akhram with the frightened rabble of peasantry about me and the massive lenken door fast shut with its bronze bolts and bars. I was aware of a vast hollow roaring in my head. This perturbed me, for on my previous transplantations from Kregen to Earth, or from Earth to Kregen, the thing had been done and over with in mere heartbeats.
    I seemed detached from myself. I was there, in that courtyard with the kindly concerned face of Akhram bending over me. And, also, I was looking down on the scene from a goodly height and the scene eddied around like a whirlpool, like that whirlpool into which I had plunged in my leaf boat going down the River Aph. I shuddered at the thought that I might be seeing that scene from the viewpoint of the Gdoinye, the scarlet and golden bird of prey.
    As I looked, both upward and downward, simultaneously, I saw a white dove moving smoothly through the level air.
    I thought I understood, then.
    I thought the Star Lords, who I imagined had brought me here to Kregen on this occasion, did not want me to go to the north shore cities of the followers of Grodno, the cities of the green sun; but maybe the Savanti, whose messenger and observer the white dove was, would prefer it if I did go. I hung as it were in a kind of limbo.
    With a hoarse scream the scarlet bird swung toward the white dove.
    This was the first occasion on which I had seen either bird take any notice of the other. The white dove moved with that deceptively smooth wing-beat and climbed away, slipping past the stooping bird of prey.
    Both birds turned and rose in the air. I followed them into the opaline radiance of the sky where the twin suns shed their mingled light fusing into a golden pinkish glory whose edges shone lambently with a tinged green. Then I could see them no longer and I sank back and fell, and so opened my eyes again on the dust of the courtyard.
    Sandaled feet shuffled by my nose. Hoarse breathing sounded in my ears and hands reached down to lift me. I guessed I had not lain on the ground for half a minute. The friendly and concerned peasants were trying to carry me. I hauled out an arm and waved it and then, still groggy, stood up. I do not smile often, but I looked not without pleasure on the courtyard of Akhram, on the peasants, on the great lenken door, and on Akhram himself, who was staring at me as though, truly, I had risen from the dead. There remains little to tell of the rest of my stay in Akhram, the astronomical observatory of the Todalpheme.
    I learned what I needed of the local language with a fierce obsessive drive that disconcerted my teacher, a Todalpheme with a gentle face and mournful eyes. His voice, as high-pitched as the others, and his face, as smooth as those of the younger brethren, unsettled me. I learned quickly. Also, I learned that if I wished to cross the wide outer ocean to reach Vallia, it would be necessary to take a ship from one of the ports of the inner sea. Few ships ventured past the Dam of Days, and it would serve my purpose to go to a city rather than wait meekly here for a ship from the outside world to pass on her way home.
    Finally, Akhram spoke gently to me, pointing out my knowledge of the sea, tides, and calculations over which