Strangers in a Strange Land

The guard was joined by some of his fellows, and they escorted Fred and Astra into the city. After Fred and Astra had bathed to get rid of the worm's digestive juices, and had been given some clean clothes to replace their ruined garments, they were provided with a meal and water. Then they were brought before the captain of the city guard, who unlike most of the cityfolk could speak the Common Tongue.

Fred and Astra had been able to have a brief whispered conversation before being brought in front of the captain (whispered, since it would not have been safe to rely on none of the guards being able to understand their tongue). They had agreed that it would be unwise to tell the truth, that they had been brought all the way from the Calamari in the belly of a worm. That would surely not have been believed, or if by any chance it had been believed would have caused them to be thought practicioners of the black arts.

Though they had not had a chance to discuss it, both independently felt that their survival, when they should have perished very quickly, must have involved magic. In which case their being swallowed by the worm must presumably have been anticipated by whoever was the mage responsible. Also only magic seemed able to explain their having been brought from the Calamari to the Arabi. Though the two deserts were almost adjacent at one point, they were divided by a range of hills, the northward extension of the Carpathian mountain range; no sandworm could ordinarily have made such a journey. Also why had they both been so uncharacteristically passive for so long? Each of them had a sword (Astra's provided by Vincent). Why had they not tried to kill the creature from within and then attempted to hack their way out?

Fred was inclined to blame Vincent for what had occurred, for surely it could not be mere coincidence that the worm had brought them much nearer to their ultimate destination? However it had scuppered his plan of going to Caemlyn first in the hope of mounting a proper expedition. Had Vincent become aware of his plan? He might have inferred it if he had been able somehow to spy on them, and had seen that they were heading south rather than southwest. Did he not want others to learn of their mission? Or was it that he thought that going via Caemlyn would delay them too much?

But Fred had no more opportunity to ponder on these matters, for they were now in front of the captain. "My men say that you must be demons, to have survived in the belly of a sandworm," was his first remark. "What say you to that?"

"We were only in the worm for a very short time," Fred said. "It did not have long enough to digest us."

"So you must have been swallowed by the worm not far from the city. What can have brought two easterners into the Arabi? I cannot recall the last time that easterners ventured here."

"We were not in the Arabi from choice," Astra said. That at least was true enough. "We were travelling through Gana, when we were set upon by bandits, and we could only escape by fleeing into the desert. Soon after that, the sandworm attacked us." She did not know just where in the Arabi they were, but she assumed that most of the population - and hence a city such as this - were likely to be located in the south of the country, nearer to the major trade routes through Gana and the nations of Ryngaerd. Thus she hoped that they would be near enough to Gana to make her story credible.

1. The captain appeared to believe their story.
2. The captain did not believe them. "Quaz'a'hwad is over a hundred of your miles from Gana," he said.
3. The captain said: "In our land the women know their place, and let their menfolk do the talking."

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