At first, a passage to Hok seemed impossible to arrange. And Sarazin certainly did not wish to dare the long trek along the coast – not with monsters of the Swarms on the loose. However, in due course Lord Regan brought him the good news. A ship would be made available and Sean Sarazin would be landed on the southern coast of Hok. 'Where precisely?' said Sarazin.
'On the shores of the Willow Vale,' said Lord Regan. That, I understand, is the only sensible place for a visitor to Hok to land.' And Sarazin could but agree.
Nine days after their arrival in Androlmarphos, Sean Sarazin and his dwarf Glambrax set to sea on a barque known as the Green Swan (a name which Sarazin frankly thought better suited to a tavern than to a ship).
Lord Regan was nominally the commander of the ship. Though it was the sea captain who was his subordinate who actually supervised the running of the barque, Lord Regan got the only decent cabin aboard. There he slept at night with his darling Jaluba. And there, during the day, he entertained Sean Sarazin.
Sarazin had been told that the journey from 'Marphos to Hok would probably take them four or five days, or a little longer if they had unfavourable winds. Certainly there was plenty of time for him to talk with Lord Regan and Jaluba.
And talk he did, positively bubbling. He was alert and alive, enthusiastic about life, delighted with the thought of reunion with his father, his mother and the tutors of his youth. So Hok was at war with Stokos. So what? As he looked back over his life, it seemed he had never been much more than a swordstroke away from danger. War in Hok would be no worse than what he had endured already.
And the present was sweet, for he had an admiring audience more than ready to hear all his tales. Once he had exhausted his accounts of hair-raising encounters with tyrants and monsters, he told and retold stories of his past.
Lord Regan, of course, knew that Sarazin had well and truly enjoyed Jaluba in the past. But Lord Regan showed not the slightest sign of jealousy as Jaluba praised Sean Sarazin's skill, bravery and daring.
In time, Sarazin found himself once more telling in detail of his campaign in Hok. In truth, the whole thing had been a shambling disaster. But, as Sarazin told it, the events in Hok had been a true test of heroes.
He told yet again of the storming of the Eagle Pass, the pursuit of the enemy into the Willow Vale, the near-mutiny of his troops when the enemy cut off their retreat, his escape up an arm of the Willow Vale, the long journey underground from the Eastern Passage Gate to the Western Passage Gate.
Then the encounter in X-zox with the madwoman Miss Inch, and the retreat to the Lesser Tower of X-n'dix, where eventually Epelthin Elkin had stayed.
'Tell me again about X-zox,' said Lord Regan. 'Is this underground tunnel the only way into the place?' The enclave is surrounded by mountains,' said Sarazin,
'and the locals allege that the cliffs of the coast permit no landing. I suspect an unknown path leads into the valley, but the only way to X-zox which I know is through the Passage Gates.'
'Then what will you do,' said Lord Regan, 'if you find those Passage Gates closed against you?'
'I'll open them, of course,' said Sarazin. 'It takes but a Word to open such a Gate, and but a Word to close it.' 'What Word is that?' said Lord Regan.
But Sarazin, to his horror, found he had forgotten how to control the Passage Gates. Fortunately, Glambrax remembered the Words to command both the Passage Gates and the door into the Lesser Tower of X-n'dix. Lord Regan and Jaluba paid special attention to the memorising of both.
Suggesting to Sarazin that perhaps they meant to accom- pany him to Hok after all.