AustLit

'Seldom was the Mediterranean Sea so very calm that the wavelets were barely visible at the entrance to the Canal of Erythraea, gateway to the orient. In the western sky the moon hung as a thin crescent, and beside it Venus gleamed like burning silver. The sorceress Xarial stood on the wharf of green granite, tall, svelte, crowned by cascades of pale hair, gazing west through a tube of polished brass. Two figures approached, the smaller of them not half the height of his master. Xarial's swarthy Iberian guard. Grattan, looked on warily. ' (Introduction)