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this?"
Absu mes Marur nodded. "Such is the custom."
"I swear," said Grahame solemnly, "by the sacred robe that there is nothing of deceit or treachery in
what I have to say. I swear also that neither I nor my companions have any enmity towards the lord Absu
mes Marur or his people."
"The lord Grahame is generous in his oath."
"Russell is my first name and I understand that Absu is your first name. Is it proper for us to use
these names to each other?"
"Only if we have made the bond."
"How can we make this bond ?"
Absu mes Marur smiled. "With a sword or a lance or a poniard at each other's throats. Between
sept lords it should properly be swords."
"I have no sword, but I wish to make the bond." He glanced at the weapon that had not left Absu's
bedside since he had placed it there. "May we not manage with one sword only?"
"It has been known," conceded the knight, "but chiefly on the field of battle."
"My friend," said Grahame without humour, "I think we may regard ourselves as being, in this place,
on the field of battle."
"So be it," said the knight. "Let us then draw blood."
With a surprisingly agile movement for one who was injured and lying in bed, Absu mes Marur
gripped his sword, leaned forward and pressed the point lightly into Grahame's throat.
Grahame felt a thin trickle of blood running down his neck. He gazed along a metre of razor sharp
metal into the fierce eyes of a man who could end his life by a slight jerk of the wrist. He did not move.
Absu mes Marur growled. "Here is one whom I cannot kill. Here is one upon whom I may turn my
back. Here is one in whose presence I may sleep. Here is one with whom my women may speak. If I
forget these things, may a shameful death remind me. Thus, by the robe, it shall be."
He put down the sword and gestured to Grahame to take it.
Grahame held it gingerly. He did not trust himself with it. He was afraid to place it too near Absu's
neck.
"Draw blood!" snapped the knight. Seeing that Grahame was reluctant, he pushed his throat on to
the tip of the blade, and a thin stream of blood began to flow. "Now repeat the bond!"
Looking along the blade into the eyes of his companion, he spoke the words. Oddly, he found them
very moving. They were, after all, a most powerful incantation. For they could stop men killing each other.
When he had finished, he placed the sword by Absu's side.
"This means that we no longer need to fight each other?" he asked.
"It means that we must never meet in combat."
"Good. To your custom, Absu, let us add one from my country." He held out a hand and showed
Absu mes Marur how to clasp it and shake it. "I give you my hand in friend-ship ... Now, if you are not too
tired, I will tell you about my own country and how I and my companions were brought to this place. When
I have done so, you shall tell me about yourself."
In as simple a way as possible, he tried to describe the technological civilization of the industrialized
countries of Earth. But when he spoke of flying machines, of machines that could cover great distances
rapidly on land or sea and of machines for communicating at a distance, he saw that Absu's understanding
and credulity were at breaking point. Hastily, he concluded with a description of their arrival on Erewhon in
the plastic coffins and of their attempts at exploration.
"You are, then, a race of magicians?" Absu regarded him mistrustfully.
"No, Absu, we are not magicians. I think the main difference between us is that my people have
had longer to work metals than your people. And the clever men among us discovered how to make
machines that would do much of the work of men and beasts... Now let me hear your story. There will be
time enough for us both to think about these things."
So it was that Grahame, his head aching because Absu naively assumed much background
knowledge on his part, learned of the fateful red spice caravan travelling from the Kingdom of Ullos to the
Upper and Lower Kingdoms of Gren Li. Absu had been in command of the whole entour-age, which
consisted of some thirty warriors, nine or ten merchants, about fifteen women and more than thirty
pulpuls a sort of mixture of deer and horse carrying spice and other goods. Absu had no idea how or
when the attack, as he chose to define it, had taken place. In this respect, his memories and those of his
companions were just as hazy as the recollections of the terrestrials. All that he knew for certain was that
the caravan had been five days out of Ullos and was making its way across the high and extensive
mountain range that separated Ullos from the Upper and Lower Kingdoms.
The manner of their arrival on Erewhon was much the same as that of the terrestrials except that
instead of an hotel there was a stout wooden keep and instead of a supermarket there was a herd of
pulpuls. The curious thing was that Absu had received his injuries in the same way that Gunnar had met his
death quite possibly, even in the same pit.
Fortunately, on his exploratory jaunt, Absu had been riding a pulpul, which had taken the brunt of
the fall and had impaled itself on the sharpened stakes. Ironically, most of Absu's wounds were caused by
the pulpul in its death throes. He evidently became unconscious for a time, but in the end he managed to
stand on the remains of the pulpul and haul himself out of the pit.
Being half out of his mind with pain and shock, he had tried to find his way back to the safety of the
keep only to wind up in a place that seemed, as he put it, to have been fashioned in the country of the dead.
The white faces of the people he met it appeared he had not noticed Selene only served to confirm his
first impression that he was among demons or ghosts.
"You are not among magicians or demons or ghosts," said Grahame, when he had finished his
account. "You are among people like yourselves, Absu. It is true that our skins are paler though some of
our people are also dark and that we are taller and live in different ways. But we, also, are men and
women. Like you we have been taken from our own world and placed "
"From your own world?" interrupted Absu. "You mean, do you not, from your own country ?"
"No, from our own world."
Absu mes Marur laughed. There was a look of relief upon his face. "So you magicians do not know
everything," he observed jovially. "Know, friend Russell, that there is only one world. It is at the centre of all
things, and the sun is its lantern ... You have already spoken some nonsense of a world beyond the stars
and on the far side of the sun. But such cannot exist; for Earth is as it always was the play-board of the
gods."
Grahame was confounded for a moment. "You speak of Earth?"
"I speak of Earth, this stage whereon our games are played, where we were born and where we
must die. It is the only place, Russell, where men can live. It is the only place in all the strange abundance
that the gods have created."
Grahame gazed at him in perplexity. "What shape do you think this earth is ?"
Again Absu laughed. "So much for the great machines and the great wisdom of you magicians.
Truly, you must live near to the rim and so to outer darkness ... Even children know the shape of the Earth.
It is flat and round like a platter and very great are its dimensions. It is, doubtless, filled with many countries
and many strange peoples with strange customs. But both your race and mine, Russell, belong to this Earth.
We are its children."
"Then tell me," said Russell helplessly, "what would hap-pen if a man were to journey to the very
end of the world?"
"He would fall off," said Absu. "He would fall into dark-ness and be seen no more by his fellows.
Such is the punish-ment of folly."
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