The shadowy figures of travelers, who might bring either rain or harm to the community, always seemed portentous. So they consulted the diviner about the newcomer’s intentions, even before concern spread through the oasis, but the diviner – in a way typical of this miserable fraternity who are unable to satisfy people’s curiosity, even though people cannot dispense with them – merely sparked more curiosity with his murky sayings, which resembled riddles and puzzles.
The inhabitants of the oasis would not have been skeptical about the stranger’s doings, had he not aroused their suspicions with his conduct, for normally they hastened to welcome visitors and to shower them with displays of generosity, commencing with the slaughter of livestock, continuing with evening festivities, and concluding by shackling them with marriage to their daughters. They had attempted to employ the same ruses with this suspect wayfarer. Eventually they dispatched the fool, in the hope of obtaining a reading on the situation, since they had adopted the ancient tradition of utilizing a fool as their trusted messenger. They were convinced that strangers are by nature mysterious, secretive individuals, who conceal more than they reveal. Otherwise, they would never have set out across the deserts and would never have chosen to join the ranks of foreigners. Whenever their fools failed, they sent a sage. If he failed as well, they dispatched to the cunning fellow the scion of all the cunning of the oasis and perhaps of the entire desert: the diviner.
The stranger outwitted the entire string of investigators this time, however, thus increasing the apprehensions of the people and the anxieties of the elders. When the nobles consulted the diviner, he volunteered a cryptic statement of the sort that diviners favor: “Each day I grow ever more certain that not for no reason at all does a man travel great distances to seek what a mirage conceals.” Then Elelli added a clearer summary of the encounter: “There’s more here than meets the eye; so, beware!” The fool Edahi said what no one else did, although his remark disgusted both the elders and the common folk: “I’ll tell you the truth. The best thing you can do is to kill him tonight.”