A Time of Changes

55

The days became mere vacant rooms, separating one journey with the drug from the next. I drifted idle and detached through all my responsibilities, seeing nothing of what was around me, living only for my next communion. The real world dissolved; I lost interest in sex, wine, food, the doings of the Port Justiciary, the friction between neighboring provinces of Velada Borthan, and all other such things, which to me now Were only the shadows of shadows. Possibly I was using the drug too frequently. I lost weight and existed in a perpetual haze of blurred white light. I had difficulties in sleeping, and for hours found myself twisting and shifting, a blanket of muggy tropical air clamping me to my mattress, a haggard insomniac with an ache in his eyeballs and grittiness under his lids. I walked tired through my days and blinking through my evenings. Rarely did I speak with Loimel, nor did I touch her, and hardly ever did I touch any other woman. I fell asleep at midday once while lunching with Halum. I scandalized High Justice Kalimol by replying to one of his questions with the phrase “It seems to me -” Old Segvord Helalam told me I looked ill, and suggested I go hunting with my sons in the Burnt Lowlands. Nevertheless the drug had the power of bringing me alive. I sought out new sharers, and found it ever more easy to make contact with them, for often now they were brought to me by those who had already made the inner voyage. An odd group they were: two dukes, a marquis, a whore, a keeper of the royal archives, a seacaptain in from Glin, a septarch’s mistress, a director of the Commercial and Seafarers Bank of Manneran, a poet, a lawyer from Velis here to confer with Captain Khrisch, and many more. The circle of selfbarers was widening. My supply of the drug was nearly consumed, but now there was talk among some of my new friends of outfitting a new expedition to Sumara Borthan. There were fifty of us by this time. Change was becoming infectious; there was an epidemic of it in Manneran.