By daylight it could be seen that the cloud blanket had indeed broken at last, but only recently, for still our vision of the world below was obscured by the whitish haze of extensive vapors, although these were in the process of dispersal. The layer of clouds had parted, here and there, revealing broken glimpses of the land surface. And my heart sank with dismay, for I could see nowhere the heavy jungles of the Grand Kumala that should have been beneath our keel; neither, raising my head toward what I fancied was the north, could I see anything resembling the mountain country on the horizon ahead.
The White Mountains of Varan-Hkor are the mightiest range upon all of Thanator* and should have been dimly visible on the northern horizon by this second day of our flight. But mountains were nowhere in sight.
Instead, the breaks in the cloud blanket below revealed rolling hills, broad meadows, uncultivated fields, and, far off to what seemed to be the east, a city or town.
I climbed into the control cupola, exchanged terse greetings with the officer of the watch, and consulted the night log. The slight headwind which had deflected us from our course had, it seemed, continued all night long, blowing first from the portside and later from the starboard. Each time the headwind had changed direction the watch officer had compensated by altering the pitch of our rudder and ailerons slightly, using his own untutored judgment as to the degree of compensation required to keep us on our north-by-northwest course.
Toward dawn the headwind had changed yet again, and this time it blew at gale strength, forcing the watch officer to lift the ship a few hundred feet to an even higher altitude than that to which we had held during the earlier portions of the night. By thus rising above the strong headwind, he had diminished the degree whereby we were being deflected from our course, but he had lifted the Jalathadar into an airstream moving at greater velocity than the prevailing air current we had been riding.
In other words, we were farther along than we should have been, and our course had probably been deflected to a considerable extent. But had we strayed off course to the east or to the west? There seemed no way of telling for certain.
I strained my eyes to make out the details of the city that was just visible on the horizon. It lay amid a level plain, so it certainly could not be Zanadar. If we had diverged due east, at right angles from our desired course, we might be approaching the home city of Lukor the Swordmaster, although it seemed highly unlikely that we had come so far as to approach the outskirts of Ganatol.
On the other hand, the fickle winds might have blown us off course to the west. Since we were obviously well beyond the jungles of the Grand Kumala, that would place us on the remote margin of the known hemisphere of Thanator. For the area due west of the northernmost edge of the Grand Kumala is commonly left blank on all Thanatorian maps I have ever seen.
If that was the case, then we were flying toward an unknown city, approaching the margins of the hemisphere itself.
I turned, calling over one of the cupola crew, and sent him below decks with instructions to rouse Master Lukor from his bed and, ere long, the old swordmaster joined me in the cupola, yawning and grumbling and rubbing the slumber from his eyes.
I directed his attention to the foreign city, which by now was clearly visible on the horizon, although the regions beyond and about it were still hidden beneath an impenetrable layer of clouds. I inquired if the city could be Ganatol; he replied quite firmly in the negative.
“Not a chance of it, lad,” he said. “Ganatol is built on the shores of the River Iquon, and you can clearly see there is no river about yonder town.”
I mused over the charts.
“It hardly seems possible we could have gone farther than Ganatol,” I said. “But beyond Ganatol lies the city of Narouk, on the shores of the Corund Laj. Could that possibly be Narouk, do you think?”
He chewed his lower lip, fiercely eyeing the distant buildings.
“Well, I have visited Narouk in my time, but I cannot say as how I am so intimately acquainted with the city as to instantly recognize it from the air. However, if that is Narouk, then where is the Corund Laj, my boy?”
Still hidden beneath the cloudbanks, perhaps,” I hazarded. He shrugged, obviously uncertain. And indeed it did seem highly unlikely that we could possibly have traveled such a great distance during the night―unless our wind had increased very considerably, which was not at all impossible, and could well have gone unnoticed, due to our unfamiliarity with the Zanadarian techniques of measuring wind velocity.
The Corund Laj, I should perhaps explain, is a great freshwater inland sea, the nearest thing to an ocean that is to be found upon the surface of Callisto. Callisto’s surface is one continuous extent of dry land, broken only by two bodies of water. The smaller of these, which is called the Sanmur Laj, or the Lesser Sea, is located far south and west of the Plains of Haratha, where the Yathoon Horde rules the grass lands below the Grand Kumala, stretching, I assume, to the unexplored regions of the south pole.
The larger of the twin seas of Callisto is called the Corund Laj, or the Greater Sea, and it occupies the extreme northeastern portion of Thanatorian maps. It is the center of a maritime civilization that has little contact with Shondakor and boasts of several powerful cities, of which Narouk and easterly Soraba are among the less prominent. Farz, on the ultimate northern coast of the Corund Laj, is the northernmost of all the cities of Thanator, and directly in our path, if indeed we had diverged in an easterly direction.
But the city visible to us could not possibly be Farz. It was most likely Narouk.
An hour or two of steady flying brought us within the vicinity of the unknown city, and by that point we became convinced it was indeed Narouk. For the clouds encircling the mysterious walled town had broken at last, dispersing before the uneven gusts of a freshening morning wind. And beyond the city could now be clearly seen the glittering waters of a considerable expanse of sea that could only be the Corund Laj.
Now that we could be more or less certain about our position, and knew the extent to which we had been blown off course during the night, we could orient ourselves. To reach Zanadar we now had to fly due west, traversing the entirety of the White Mountains. This would add considerably to the length of our voyage, which was no short distance anyway. As the crow flies, the distance from Golden Shondakor to the mountaintop fortress-city of the Sky Pirates was some 310 korads―or twenty-two hundred miles, more or less, in Earth measurement. Due to the shifting headwinds, we had diverged off course by about seventy-five korads during the night.
In other words, to continue our voyage to Zanadar was possible, but our inadvertent detour had added something like five hundred miles to the distance we had to travel.
We discussed the new course in the control cupola.
The officer in charge of stores, a young noble named Amthar, shook his head doubtfully.
“We do not have a sufficient supply of drinking water for so great an additional distance,” he said. I nodded―weight is a vital factor in the operation of the flying galleons of Zanadar, and our stores of foodstuffs and drinkables had been calculated to the last ounce before we left the city of the Ku Thad.
“Nor can we count on finding mountain lakes or springs, once we have entered the White Mountains,” Amthar pointed out. “The territory is under the domination of the Sky Pirates, and our charts of the mountain country are but cursory.”
“Surely, gentlemen, restocking your water supply should afford you no problem, since we are approaching the shores of the Corund Laj,” a suave voice commented. I glanced up, more than a little surprised, for it was our Zanadarian captive, Ulthar, who had contributed this suggestion. He generally kept aloof from our councils, and had thus far been careful to avoid making any contributions to our discussions. Why he had volunteered a helpful. comment on this problem I could not hazard a guess. However, his suggestion was a simple one of pointing out the obvious―for, as I have already remarked, the navigable waterways of Thanator, including her two immense landlocked seas, are composed of fresh water―so I dismissed my instant suspicions and did not give him any further thought.