Name: Paraban Senk (aka the Teacher of Control).
Birthplace: Charabanc.
Occupation: teacher.
Status: head of the Combat College of Dalar ken Halvar.
Description: disembodied entity which typically manifests itself as an olive-skinned face, male and of middle years.
Age: Senk claims an age in excess of 20,000 years.
Hobby: Senk personally schedules the entertainments which appear on the Eye of Delusions at Dalar ken Halvar, and this voluntary activity may be the nearest thing which Senk has to a hobby.
Quote: "The Stormforce exists for the controlled application of force."
"No!" shouted Guest Gulkan.
His voice was a wing-broken squawk of protest.
But it was too late for protest, for the Great God Jocasta was bent on taking over the Weaponmaster's mind, and was in no mood to argue about it. Yet Jocasta did not find the act of possession as effortlessly easy as before, since this time Guest was forewarned and fighting – and the Great God itself had been damaged in its battle with Stogirov.
There in the hot sun, Guest Gulkan felt bright-spark slivers of memory sharping out of his mind's darkness as Jocasta probed for a hold, a grip, a secure possession of the Weaponmaster's will. Cold. That was what Guest felt. Despite the heat of the day, he shivered, for Jocasta's probing had recalled to mind the frozen heights of the mountains of Ibsen-Iktus. Guest remembered -
The impossible clarity of the mountain heights. Breathless heights where every step is a staircase. Blue transparencies of sky. A drift of snow grown gray with wind-blown grit. A bridge of ice, humped across a river. The chickling trickle of melt-water sheeking and sharking beneath sheets of ice. A windless day with an unfelt wind high, high above blasting dragon-licks of snow from sky-scarp heights.
And he remembered -
Avalanche!
A roiling roll-roar of rocks went toiling in spuming plummets from the heights, causing the ground to shake beneath his feet. A real memory, this. Caught by the living life of that memory, Guest saw the wizard Sken-Pitilkin. There was blood on the wizard's forehead – blood beaded in drops. The wizard Sken-Pitilkin was literally sweating blood, and his face was pallid as unbaked dough. Guest remembered.
Under a swordpoint's compulsion, Sken-Pitilkin had sent an avalanche rolling downhill, and then had retched violently, bringing up green bile from an empty stomach.
"But I had to!" protested Guest.
And with that protest, the Weaponmaster was free from the Great God's efforts at possession.
The Great God Jocasta had tried to sound out Guest Gulkan's most potent memories, seeking thus to make an accurate index of the Weaponmaster's mind, and so to facilitate his possession. But Guest's most potent memories were memories of shameful deeds which he had later repudiated. Guest had invested a lifetime's effort in protecting himself from his own memories by suppressing them, justifying them or minimizing them. So when Jocasta probed Guest's deepest memories, the unfortunate Great God ran into defensive structures built up by a lifetime's effort. And so, weakened as it was by Stogirov's onslaughts, the Great God was unable to possess the Weaponmaster.
"You will yield," said Jocasta, trying to sound convincing.
"Yield!" said Guest. "The hell I will!"
Then the wrathful Weaponmaster grabbed a sword from a vacillating soldier who was trying – and failing – to figure out just what was going on here.
Having grabbed that sword (and accidentally breaking several of the soldier's teeth in the haste of his grabbing) Guest Gulkan attacked the Great God with that weapon. Guest attacked with all the vigor of a musician of Sung assailing that elephant-sized metal drum which is known as a klambakora. Steel clanged uselessly against the Great God's flanks. But Guest's defiance served to convince the Great God Jocasta that possessing the Weaponmaster was not a possibility, at least not for a shaken and battle- weakened Great God. Accordingly, Jocasta decided upon retreat.
Jocasta lurched through the air, bumped the Weaponmaster, hit him hard. Guest went down. Jocasta hesitated. Having been hit so heartily, might the Weaponmaster perhaps be weaker than before?
The Great God hung over its fallen prey, humming.
And Guest felt cold again.
Very cold.
The coldness solidified to actual ice, and he found himself back in the arena of Chi'ash-lan where once the Great Mink had torn off his arms and legs at the behest of Banker Sod. Once upon a time. But once upon a time was now! He screamed as the mauling strength savaged his perfections. The glunching bones broke slick and wet, smunch and crunch. Flesh to pulp, bone to slivers.
Then the image faded, and Guest found himself being bounced along the dirt under the harsh sun of Dalar ken Halvar. His father had him by the hair, and was dragging him away from the Great God Jocasta.
"Enough!" yelled Guest, as the pain of being hauled by his hair washed away the pain of the waking nightmare he had just endured. "Let me go!"
So the Witchlord let go of the Weaponmaster, and Guest slumped to the ground. He felt a twinge of cold, a touch of frost, an insinuation of ice, as the Great God Jocasta again made a determined effort to seize control of his mind.
"You won't," said Guest grimly, recovering his fallen sword and getting to his feet. "You can't."
But before Guest Gulkan could mount yet another fatuous attack on the Great god Jocasta, Yubi Das Finger came out of the Bralsh. A striking figure was Yubi Das Finger! For this Banker was dressed in motley, with the motley being rigorously littered with shiny ceramic animals, his whole outfit being topped off by a damaged face and a golden skullcap fringed with tiny glass beads.
Yet Guest spared him only the briefest of glances – for he had encountered the man before in his various sparse yet informative dealings with the Banks. Rather, Guest concentrated his attention on those who were following on behind Yubi.
The honorable Das Finger was leading a dozen sweating slaves who were carrying a huge black cauldron, a cauldron which looked to be one of the orking pots of Galsh Ebrek. On Yubi's command, they upended the pot and dropped it over the Great God.
"We have it," said Yubi, with satisfaction. Guest gaped.
It had never occurred to the Weaponmaster that something as mighty as a Great God could be secured and imprisoned by any expedient so simple as dropping a pot on top of it. But of course the Great God Jocasta had been direly injured by the firebolt weapon so generously employed against it by Anaconda Stogirov, and Yubi Das Finger's tactic appeared to be working.
For Jocasta strove against the pot, trying to lift it directly upwards. But the Great God could not raise it from the ground by more than a fingerlength. Next, Jocasta tried to burn a hole in the black iron. The metal grew red hot, but it did not melt or yield.
Yubi Das Finger spat on the glowing iron. His saliva sizzled into silence.
"Let me out!" roared Jocasta, using the Galish Trading Tongue.
Yubi knew that language, but made no reply. Instead, the scar-faced Banker giggled manically.
Thwarted, Jocasta lifted the iron pot clear of the ground – only a fingerlength clear, but a fingerlength was sufficient – and began to carry that burden on an erratic course of retreat which sent the iron pot caroming into a succession of ox carts and bamboo huts.
"It's getting away!" said Guest in alarm.
"Yes, my friend," said Yubi Das Finger. "The thing is getting away from us. So tell us, little friend – what is it, exactly? A friend of yours? You brought it through the Door, didn't you?"
Yubi Das Finger had spoken of the Door! Admittedly, he had spoken in the Galish, which few people in Dalar ken Halvar were likely to know. But even so! A Banker does not speak of Doors or of Circles in public, and Yubi was a Banker born and bred. The error was a measure of the extreme stress of the moment.
"The – the thing is a god," said Guest. "A Great God, that's, that's what it says, it alleges. But we didn't bring it here, it, it followed us!"
"A god, is it?" said Yubi dubiously.
Yubi Das Finger was no theologian, but he thought it most unlikely that any god of any description could be confined under an upturned orking pot for even as short a time as half a heartbeat. He presumed, therefore, that the thing under the pot was an artefact of some description, possibly a weapon of war left over from the Days of Wrath or from some conflict more ancient yet. That then was how Yubi described it to the public.
"It's a mad machine," said Yubi, to all who wanted to know.
"A mad machine, which we'll have to destroy."
Whereupon assorted heroes did their best to kill the thing, or at least to disconcert it. They beat its iron pot with the butts of spears, setting up a great racket. The pot lurched, crushing a soldier against an ox cart. As he screamed piteously, the pot continued on its way, navigating hazard by hazard through the streets of Childa Go.
Childa Go, Dalar ken Halvar's fishing-shack quarter, was heavy with the smell of drying fish. As Guest plodded along behind the iron pot, keeping at a respectful distance – for he had no wish to be burnt or crushed himself – the smells awakened strong memories of his past adventures in Dalar ken Halvar. He heard a sharp explosion as a piece of bamboo burst in a cooking fire, and remembered the excited hubbub of Dog Day festivities, when the city was one uproarious turmoil of competitive confusion.
He remembered other things, too.
His legs kept remembering the injuries they had suffered on that terrible day in Chi'ash-lan: the day of the Great Mink. Those memories were idle folly, for Guest's legs were new legs, grown for him in the minor mountain known as Cap Foz Para Lash. Still, he remembered what he remember. He could not deny it.
The procession of people trooping after the Great God steadily swelled. Guest realized they were skirting the slopes of Cap Ogo Botch, the minor mountain atop which stood the palace of Na Sashimoko. The imperial palace – for Dalar ken Halvar was the capital of the Empire of Greater Parengarenga. Who ruled now in Dalar ken Halvar? Thanks to his embroilment in the affairs of Untunchilamon and Obooloo, Guest's knowledge of current affairs was years out of date – a failing which could be potentially fatal.
As Guest was worrying about it, the Great God Jocasta slipped through the streets, making its way between the Grand Arena and Cap Uba. It gained Scuffling Road. The broad avenue was just as Guest remembered it – still lined for the most part with the impoverished bamboo buildings which typified Dalar ken Halvar. It was still unpaved, surfaced with the soft red dust of the Plain of Jars. Guest remembered often, often making his way through red dust rutted with cart tracks, going on crutches to the Yamoda River or to Lake Shalasheen to swim, back in those long-ago days when his new-growing legs had been too weak to sustain him.
In those years, his home base had been the underground stronghold within the minor mountain known as Cap Foz Para Lash, so after his swim he had always returned to that place. And Guest realized that – whether by accident or design – the Great God Jocasta was making a similar journey.
At the end of Scuffling Road was the kinema, the natural amphitheater outside the lockway. The lockway, with its twin doors of kaleidoscope, guarded the way into Cap Foz Para Lash. Guest had the uneasy suspicion that the Great God knew where it was going, and intended to link up with Paraban Senk, the formidable demon who ruled the depths Cap Foz Para Lash.
Was Senk then a friend of Jocasta?
Certainly the demons of Guest's acquaintance seemed to have the ability to talk to each other at a distance, silently communicating across oceans and continents. The demon Iva-Italis on Alozay maintained relationships with Lob in Obooloo and Ko in Chi'ash-lan. So – was Paraban Senk a member of this strange and long-enduring partnership?
By now, a very considerable procession was trailing after the Great God Jocasta. It was joined by a company of armed and armored men moving at a pace which had them gasping in the heat of the day. The leader of those men was a Frangoni giant who challenged the Weaponmaster by name:
"Guest Gulkan!"
"My lord," said Guest, speaking in the Galish.
Yubi Das Finger, who had been keeping pace with Guest, translated and elaborated that courtesy.
Meantime, Guest summed the stranger, who had muscles of a hugeness indicative of a fondness for pumping iron rather than water, who wore robes of flowing purple, and whose uncut hair was most curiously heaped on top of his head to further amplify his height. A Frangoni warrior. A tall, big, purple-skinned Frangoni warrior. An impressive figure, certainly, but to Guest they all looked alike, these Frangoni.
Then the Frangoni warrior said – and Yubi Das Finger translated, for Guest and the purple-skinned stranger had no language in common:
"What's going on here?"
"My lord," said Guest. "We're chasing a Great God."
This Yubi Das Finger translated, deadpan.
The Frangoni was more learned in theology than was Guest Gulkan, and so, like others before him, the purple-skinned warrior decided that whatever was lurching along under the iron orking pot was most definitely not a god. Possibly it was a turtle, or a large crab, or an injured Shabble, or a low-powered Sword, or a bad-tempered dwarf of prodigious strength. But a god? Never!
"Stop it!" said the Frangoni.
In response to his order, his men surrounded the orking pot, and braced their shields against it, and tried to sweat it to a halt in a scrum. While they sweated and strained, Guest used his Galish to ask a discrete question of Yubi Das Finger:
"Who is the – the big one?"
"The big one, as you so nicely put it," said Yubi Das Finger,
"why, that is Asodo Hatch. If memory serves, you were once married to his sister Joma."
Now that Hatch had been named, Guest felt foolish for not having recognized him, for they had met often enough in the past. Guest's failure to recognize the Frangoni was surely an index of his fatigue, his disorientation, and the pounding he had suffered during his long wanderings. But Guest was not troubled by this hint of mental deterioration. Rather, he was troubled to hear Yubi say that he had been "once married". For was he not married now?
"Joma?" said Guest. "Why, I have a wife, big, yes, tall and purple, but her name – "
"Penelope," said Das Finger. "That was the other name. You may have known here as that, but now we call her Joma, for she – but never mind that."
"What?" said Guest. "Never mind what? Why? And – and where is she?" Guest was sorely alarmed, for during his entire absence – which had involved him in a trip to Alozay, a preliminary raid on Obooloo, a journey across Moana, prolonged difficulties on Untunchilamon, imprisonment in Obooloo and the hazards of his venture into the Stench Caves – he had imagined Penelope to be faithfully waiting for his return. It had never occurred to him that the woman might have an independent existence, a life which could be separated from his own wants and desires. So he was shocked to hear Yubi use a form of words which suggested the possibility that his long-anticipated reunification with his purple-skinned true-heart might not proceed with automatic ease.
"There is no time for the first question," said Das Finger, who was unwilling to waste time on lecturing Guest in ethnology.
"And as for the second question, why, I suspect it one better answered by Asodo Hatch himself."
But the Frangoni warrior Asodo Hatch was too busy to be free for such questions, since he was playing referee, overseeing the duel between his soldiers and the runaway orking pot. The pot, which had once more grown red-hot as Jocasta filled it with flames of wrath, was driven into a bamboo house. The house caught fire, and Hatch's men were driven back, leaving the pot to blunder blindly in the flames.
Asodo Hatch had the house surrounded. His men tore down its pitiful bamboo fence, giving access to the back yard. Guest Gulkan was close to the fore, and almost accidentally buried himself in the yard's copious rubbish pit, which was mired with festering unpleasantness.
As the burning house collapsed, the god-driven orking pot emerged from it uncertainly. Somewhere a woman was screaming. The pot wobbled, then thrust its way toward the waiting soldiers. They made a wall of shields and stood ready to receive the pot.
But the rubbish pit lay between the soldiers and the pot.
The pot hovered over the pit -
Then halted.
It settled.
It was half-over and half-off the rubbish pit.
The Great God Jocasta promptly dropped down into the bottom of the pit and escaped upward through the uncovered portion of that pit.
Asodo Hatch gave a curt order, and a hail of spears assailed the Great God. Most missed, and sent murder hurtling into the crowd of over-eager spectators. Some clanged home, bouncing off the Great God in a demonstration of futility.
The Great God hung in the air, humming.
Asodo Hatch held his ground, and challenged the thing in all the languages he spoke. Guest Gulkan understood none of them, and had to tug at Yubi Das Finger's sleeve to get a translation. Had the Weaponmaster been more diligent in his linguistic studies, he would have known most of those languages – such as the Code Seven of the Nexus.
It is widely believed in Dalar ken Halvar that many of the greatest artefacts available to our own age were sourced in the Nexus. This "Nexus" is said to have been a grouping of interlinked worlds, an association comprised of more worlds than this world has fingers to count. It is believed in Dalar ken Halvar that the stars of those worlds are not green, red, blue and yellow like the stars of our own sky, but, rather, burn with a cold and uncanny ice-chip white. Under such stars – this at least is Dalar ken Halvar's ruling superstition – metal beasts such as the dorgi were once made.
Asodo Hatch, presuming the Great God Jocasta to be a creature from just such a world, challenged Jocasta in the Code Seven which Dalar ken Halvar believes to have been spoken by the Nexus.
"You!" said Asodo Hatch, bellowing like a water buffalo as he endeavored to imitate that dreaded Nexus monster known as a dorgi. "You! You! Halt! Halt right there! Or I will eliminate you!"
"You have no idea who I am, or what," said the Great God Jocasta, responding to Asodo Hatch in the same Code Seven in which Hatch's challenge had been phrased. "Know that I am a god, and a Great God at that. Many are my servants. Their number is legion. I command heavens of ice and hells of living needles. You will bow down and worship me. Here! Now! Or you will end up in hell, where you will be constrained to burn your own liver as a sacrifice to the Lesser Slime Toad."
"I know precisely who you are, and what," said Hatch, who had no patience with such nonsense. "You are a delinquent asma from Gorbograd. If you are who I think you are, then you were employed in Gorbograd as a person in charge of cart parks."
This is what Hatch said, or at least the sense of what he said, for his words cannot be translated precisely into any of the languages of our world. For example, the "carts" of which he spoke were not precisely carts as we understand them, for they had no wheels. Rather, they hovered. But in their hovering they were not like birds or butterflies. The "carts" of which Hatch spoke were more like ghosts than vehicles made of actual wood and actual leather, for these "carts" could dissolve themselves, and could travel in a state of dissolution through stone and through steel, later coagulating themselves out of the thin smoke of their ghosthood to come to rest in the ordinary domains of the physical world. Even so, they could carry humans, or take water from place to place, just like the carts of our world.
This at least is what was believed by Asodo Hatch, and by many others in Dalar ken Halvar. And it was believed, too, that the Nexus had so many of these carts that, even though they could not jam the roads as do the carts of our own world, they caused appalling city-blighting traffic jams whenever a great number of them tried to simultaneously come to rest in the same place.
Hatch's slander was that Jocasta's function in the world of the Nexus had been to supervise the "parking" of these "carts". At least, one gathers that it was a slander, though why this should be so is not clear. After all, in our own world we think the pilot's art to be a great and worthy one. A ship's pilot who supervises the docking of ships is surely discharging a function similar to that of one who is in the cart-parking business; and the pilot has ever been saluted as one of civilization's most useful minor functionaries.
Yet on being likened to such a pilot, Jocasta declared:
"Slander! Slander!"
Then spat fire at Asodo Hatch – though weakly, for the Great God had exhausted its strength in the struggle with the orking pot.
Seeing the weakness of the flame spat by the Great God, Hatch ordered his men to seize clothing from civilians, and to use it to manhandle the still-hot orking pot. But even as those futile efforts at capture got underway, the Great God Jocasta began to escape by air, and all Hatch's efforts to hold it firm by engaging it in debate were ignored.
Jocasta fled down Scuffling Road, reached the doors of kaleidoscope which led into Cap Foz Para Lash, and uttered a highpitched command which caused those doors to dissolve away to nothing. With the way thus clear, Jocasta fled into the tunnels of the mountain, with the barriers of kaleidoscope reforming in its wake.
Asodo Hatch came to those doors. They opened for him. Hatch entered, and the doors closed behind him. Guest Gulkan did not know whether he himself still retained any right to enter that mountain, the place which had sheltered him during four long years of convalescence. Would the doors open for him? Hard on the heels of Asodo Hatch, Guest approached the first of the barriers of kaleidoscope. It dissolved away to nothing, admitting him to the interior of the mountain. The inner door then followed suit.
Once past the double doors of kaleidoscope which guarded the interior of Cap Foz Para Lash against unrestrained intrusion, Guest Gulkan swiftly caught up with Asodo Hatch, and the pair hunted down the mountain tunnels in the wake of the Great God Jocasta.
The Great God made its way to Forum Three, a lecture theater with a roof layered thickly with kaleidoscope. The Yarglat barbarian Guest Gulkan and the purple-skinned Frangoni warrior Asodo Hatch followed in hot pursuit.
"Halt!" said Guest, doing his best to imitate the wrathfulness of a dorgi or a Stogirov.
But the Great God paid him no heed.
Instead, it rose to the roof, buried itself in the kaleidoscope above their heads, and disappeared.
"Senk!" roared Asodo Hatch.
There was a pause, then Senk's features appeared on the screen which dominated Forum Three. Guest noticed that Paraban Senk, the demon who ruled the mountain of Cap Foz Para Lash, chose to paint that magical screen with a face of features olive-skinned. On their first encounter, when Guest had been a legless and armless patient of the demon's clinic, Guest had thought how very unusual those olive-skinned features will.
Now, on reacquaintance, that skin-shade reminded Guest very much of two individuals he had encountered on Untunchilamon: Ivan Pokrov (the master of an analytical engine which had been housed on a minor island in the harbor of Injiltaprajura) and Odolo (a conjurer in the service of one Justina Thrug, who had been Untunchilamon's de facto ruler at the time when Guest had been questing in that territory). Guest was inclined to think there might be some more than spurious relationship linking the olive- skinned Senk to the equally olive-skinned Pokrov and Odolo.
But a relationship of what kind?
Somehow, this hardly seemed to be the time to ask.
"Greetings, Guest Gulkan," said Senk.
While Guest had been away from Dalar ken Halvar long enough to have had trouble recognizing such a personage as Asodo Hatch,
Paraban Senk instantly recognized Guest Gulkan. Like Yubi Das Finger and other such sharp-minded personages, Senk never forgot.
Senk addressed the Weaponmaster in the Galish. On this occasion, Senk's linguistic mastery reminded the Weaponmaster uncomfortably of Schoptomov, the therapist based Downstairs in Injiltaprajura. Just like that therapist, Paraban Senk had dwelt underground for generation upon generation, gathering wisdom – and gathering evil with it? Guest's long prejudice against scholarship had been reinforced by his encounter with the therapist Schoptomov, and made him cautious in his renewed dealings with Paraban Senk.
"And to you, greetings," said Guest formally. "I am here in pursuit of my enemy, who has violated your neutrality by taking refuge here."
As he spoke, Guest was aware of an unobtrusive sound-source speaking in a language which he took to be Frangoni. Paraban Senk was giving Asodo Hatch a simultaneous translation of Guest's comments. Guest was familiar with Senk's tricks, since a similar convenience had allowed the Weaponmaster to argue with his wife
Penelope when they lacked all common language. Still, on this occasion he found such facility positively sinister.
"I have noticed the intrusion of your enemy," said Senk, "but think you owe me a full explanation."
Then Guest Gulkan and Asodo Hatch collaborated on that full explanation. So Senk learnt that Guest Gulkan had assaulted the Mutilator of Yestron, thus winning the specialized knife needed to cut the Great God Jocasta free from imprisonment; that Guest had duly freed the Great God; that the Great God had tried to take possession of the Guest's mind; that the intrusion of Anaconda Stogirov had saved Guest from possession; that the Great God had fled through the Circle of the Partnership Banks, leaving Obooloo to come to Dalar ken Halvar; and that both Guest and Hatch wanted Senk to collaborate in the thing's destruction.
"I would gladly help you," said Senk, "but help is beyond my power."
"But you are the ruler here!" said Guest, with explosive anger.
"Ruler?" said Senk. "I long ago had to concede true mastery here to Asodo Hatch. For all my functions are failing. I need the help of human agency if I am to fulfill the most basic of my missions."
"But," said Asodo Hatch, "you can at least cause this ceiling of kaleidoscope to dissolve itself. I recall you doing just that during a riot."
"I could," said Senk. "But it would not help you. The thickness of the ceiling's kaleidoscope conceals privileged tunnels likewise packed with kaleidoscope. Jocasta has fled down those tunnels, penetrating to the innards of the mountain."
Then Senk explained to Guest that the realms within the mountain were only partly given over to human domination. Large parts of those underground domains were reserved for mobile artefacts such as Jocasta. Without the aid of allied artefacts,
Senk could not hunt Jocasta out of hiding.
"The thing will shelter there," said Senk, "repairing the damage done to it by Stogirov. Only then will it venture forth again."
"Only then?" said Guest. "But when will that be? A day? Two days? Three?"
"Twenty or thirty days, perhaps," said Senk. "Or twenty or thirty years. Or maybe longer. The thing has been grievously injured, otherwise you would not have been able to force it to run."
So spoke Senk.
Naturally, neither Guest Gulkan not Asodo Hatch were easily satisfied, for both found this outcome of their conflict with Jocasta to be intensely unsatisfying. But Senk had no cure for their dissatisfaction, so in the end there was no help for it. They had to concede defeat, and to leave the Great God Jocasta uncaught and unkilled.
"Then," said Guest, "if we can leave aside the question of Jocasta's fate, perhaps you can tell me the fate of my wife. Where is Penelope?"
"Penelope?" said Senk. "Oh, her! No, I can't tell you what happened to her. She left here a year ago, and I've had no news of her since."
Meanwhile…
While Guest Gulkan was pursing the Great God through the tunnels inside Cap Foz Para Lash, his father allowed himself to be seated in the kinema and tended to by Yubi Das Finger. Lord Onosh was feeling his age, and was feeling the effects of the battering of disorientations and disconcertments which he had so recently endured.
So Lord Onosh seated himself, and was fed by Yubi Das Finger, who had bowls of soup and polyps brought for him, and fried locusts as well, and curried worms served on thin slices of unleavened bread, and other things that were likewise good for the belly and comforting to the psyche.
While the Witchlord ate his soup, his polyps, his locusts, his curried worms and his unleavened bread, he watched the entertainments being shown on the Eye of Delusions. That great Eye, set above the lockway, was proof that the Nexus (presuming it to have truly existed) must have known of one or more barbarian tribes very like the Yarglat. For the Eye showed repeated scenes of scalping, of disembowelling, of axe-blade battles and outright cannibalism.
Watching such familiar scenes, Lord Onosh was comforted, for they reminded him of his youth, his homeland, his people. He began muttering to himself in Eparget for the sheer pleasure of hearing the Yarglat tongue, and he was muttering still when Guest Gulkan at last emerged from the mountain to rejoin him.
Asodo Hatch came forth from the mountain with Guest Gulkan, and hustled Witchlord and Weaponmaster away from the kinema.
"Where are we going?" asked Guest of Yubi Das Finger, who was keeping pace with them so he could do duty as an interpreter.
"To the palace," said Yubi. "To Na Sashimoko."
"Then," said Guest, "I would like to know who rules from that palace."
So Guest began an interrogation of Yubi Das Finger, trying to get a grip on what had happened in Dalar ken Halvar during the years in which he had been adventuring in Untunchilamon or enduring imprisonment in Obooloo.
"Things are much as they were," said Yubi, "except that Nuchala-nuth gathers strength by the year."
"That," said Guest, "is nothing to me. So much for Dalar ken Halvar. What of Safrak?"
"Bao Gahai rules it still in the Witchlord's absence," said Yubi Das Finger. "Or so I have heard."Guest had learnt little more by the time they reached Na Sashimoko and were shown into the presence of Plandruk Qinplaqus.
Though Guest had at first had trouble in recognizing Asodo Hatch, he had no such trouble in identifying Qinplaqus. For, after all, Qinplaqus was firmly seated on his throne with the Princess Nuboltipon upon his knees, hence the elderly Ashdan could scarcely be mistaken for one of his own servants.
Besides, the Silver Emperor still had at his side the same pelican-headed walking stick which he had been carrying when Guest had first met him, back in the days when Plandruk Qinplaqus had been in the habit of traveling the Circle of the Doors of the Partnership Banks, his identity disguised by his traveling name:
Ulix of the Drum.
(Ulix of what Drum? After all these years, Guest finally realized that the name had been designed simply to mislead, and that there was no literal drum to be identified with the name. A small discovery, but a certain one – and the Yarglat barbarian felt quite pleased at working it out).
"Greetings, Guest," said Qinplaqus.
"Greetings, my lord," said Guest, pleased to be recognized.
But, just as Guest Gulkan had no trouble in recognizing Plandruk Qinplaqus, so Qinplaqus had no trouble in turn in recognizing him. For, after all, how many Yarglat barbarians were there in Dalar ken Halvar? A definitive answer to this question cannot be given, but it is reasonable to presume that precious few such savages soiled their feet with the red dust of the Plain of Jars from one generation to the next. And, besides that, there was the matter of Guest's ears. Even amongst the Yarglat, his ears were of such a largeness that they would have been considered unique had not his father been similarly disfigured.
Even though Plandruk Qinplaqus these days allowed Asodo Hatch to have practical day-to-day control over the management of the Empire of Greater Parengarenga, Qinplaqus remained the ultimate power in Dalar ken Halvar. He dismissed Hatch, and Hatch went, departing without complaint.
Qinplaqus similarly dismissed Yubi Das Finger, sent Lord Onosh away to a bedroom for some much-needed rest, then set about interrogating Guest Gulkan.
For Guest to tell of his adventures was no easy matter, and it was evening before he was finished even a fraction of it.
"You have not mentioned Untunchilamon," said Qinplaqus at length.
"Haven't I?" said Guest. "I must have!"
"Well," said Qinplaqus, "you may have said one or two words about it, but I think there's more to tell. Still. It grows late.
The rest can wait till tomorrow. Meanwhile – have you any pressing questions of your own?"
"The x-x-zix," said Guest. "I left it with Thayer Levant.
Have you had word of him?"
"Yes," said Qinplaqus. "He reached my palace with that very device barely three months ago."
Then Plandruk Qinplaqus explained that all the skill of Dalar ken Halvar had not yet proved able to compel the x-x-zix to its proper purpose, which was to control the Breathings which made the weather of Parengarenga so fearsomely hot.
"But," said Qinplaqus, "Hatch has some people working on the problem, and we hope to crack it within the year. Once we have our own Breathings under control, the device will be yours to use against the Cold West."
"I'm glad to hear it," said Guest cordially, doing his best to conceal his mounting distress. Guest Gulkan had always presumed that the x-x-zix, the fabled wishstone of Untunchilamon, was a magical device of some description which could merely be waved at a Breathing to change its weather. The idea that ancillary machinery was necessary, and would take a year to build, was upsetting. Guest hoped to use the x-x-zix to persuade the Partnership Banks to his will – or, at a minimum, to win control of the city of Chi'ash-lan. After his long exile and the many difficulties of his wandering, he was in no mood to wait.
"I would do things quicker," said Qinplaqus, seeing something of Guest's distress, "but speed is not in my power. Unfortunately there is, ah, a shortage of people apt for the construction of the devices which Hatch is supervising."
What Plandruk Qinplaqus did not say was that he himself had for generations compelled the murder of all "mad scientists", that is to say all people who were prepared to put to some practical use the knowledge they won from Paraban Senk and the mountain of Cap Foz Para Lash. After long generations of diligent murder,
Qinplaqus was at last prepared to admit that he might have made a mistake – but the effects of his bloodthirsty predations could not be easily reversed.
"It can't be faster?" said Guest.
"It can't," said Qinplaqus.
Now Plandruk Qinplaqus was a wizard of Ebber, and there are many men who will not trust such a wizard, fearing any hint of trust to be a proof that the wizard himself is dabbling with the contents of their minds. But, to Guest's knowledge, this wizard had never played him false. So the Weaponmaster said:
"I trust you."
"Any more questions?" said Plandruk Qinplaqus.
"One," said Guest. "Where is Penelope?"
"Penelope?" said Qinplaqus blankly.
"Yes," said Guest, "Penelope, Penelope, you remember! A Frangoni woman. Tall. Purple. She was married to me. She was my wife. Where is she?"
"I would presume that she is where you left her," said Qinplaqus. Guest was offended at this bland dismissal of his concerns.
True, Plandruk Qinplaqus was an emperor, so the domestic affairs of a wandering swordsman were unlikely to be prominent amongst his concerns. Yet Guest – who felt himself a ranking emperor in his own right, albeit an emperor temporarily displaced from his realms – considered that he was being slighted.
"I left her here," said Guest. "I left her here in Dalar ken Halvar when I went questing to Untunchilamon. Yet Senk tells me she's gone."
"But you went away ages ago!" said Qinplaqus. "A woman isn't something you can leave like a lump of gold you buried in a dungheap, charting its burials with maps and plans. In any case, the governance of an empire is our concern, not matters of marriage and such."
With this rebuke, Qinplaqus dismissed the Weaponmaster. Guest's sole consolation was that the mazadath was delivered to his quarters in the evening. It was delivered by a servant who spoke no language which Guest could understand, but, in the absence of explanations, Guest supposed that Thayer Levant had brought that amulet to Dalar ken Halvar just as he had brought the x-x-zix.
So thinking, Guest put on the mazadath, vowing never to take it off again, for it had been given to him by his wife Penelope – whose perceived value had been increased tenfold by their long separation. But where was Penelope? This was all most unsatisfactory!
We need but turn our backs and the world changes. Guest had done far more than turn his back, and he passed a night in nightmares, for the distress of the world's transitions came home to him in full force during the night.
The next day, Guest was reunited with his father, who proved to be in possession of the cornucopia – which Guest had succeeded in forgetting about during the upsets of the previous day.
"Where did you get that?" said Guest.
"You dropped it," said his father, making no move to give it back. "Your dropped it in the dust."
"But where?"
"Outside the Bank."
"Dalar ken Halvar's Bank?" said Guest.
"The same," said the Witchlord. Guest had indeed dropped the horn of plenty in the dust outside the Bralsh while dueling with the Great God Jocasta. But he had been so badly upset by attempted possession, by battle, by a disconcerting adventure into Cap Foz Para Lash and by Penelope's disappearance that – surprising as it seemed to him in the calm of the new day – he had entirely overlooked the cornucopia's loss.
"What about the ring?" said the Witchlord.
"The ring?" said Guest. "Oh, the ring!"
The ring of ever-ice which Guest had taken from the Mutilator was still on his finger. But the knife -
There was no sign of the Mutilator's knife. After thinking about it, Witchlord and Weaponmaster realized that Guest must have lost it in the inner courtyard of the Temple of Blood when grappling with the saliva-spitting cornucopia. Guest counted this a sore loss. Still, better to lose such a knife than suffer the loss of the entire world to a great Flood of his father's digesting spittle. Guest said exactly that to Plandruk Qinplaqus when that wizard put in his appearance, and suggested that the cornucopia might make a potent weapon.
"For," said Guest, "were we to threaten to digest the whole world with spittle, or, better still, with hot acids taken direct from the stomach itself, might we not compel the whole world to obedience to our power?"
"One suspects," said Plandruk Qinplaqus, "that the world is larger than has been computed by your mathematics. One would take longer than a lifetime to flood the world, even with such a thing as a cornucopia. Besides, there may be a limit to its production.
And, further, just as there exists something which can produce, so too may there be something which can swallow."
As the wizard was thus denting Guest's pretensions to Power, Thayer Levant arrived, expecting to be overwhelmed by the Weaponmaster's gratitude. For, in obedience to his master, Levant had ventured all the way from Untunchilamon to Dalar ken Halvar – in the face of hardship, danger and difficulty – and had brought both the wishstone and the mazadath safely to the palace of Na Sashimoko.
"Now that we are all here," said Plandruk Qinplaqus, who took more cognisance of Levant's arrival than did Witchlord and Weaponmaster, "let us turn to the problem which confronts us."
"Yes," said Guest, "Penelope."
"Penelope?" said his father.
"My wife!" said Guest. "She's missing!"
"Your wife?" said his father.
"Yes, wife, wife," said Guest. "We were married, in love, we were – "
"In love?" said Lord Onosh. "I think it lust."
But the Witchlord was wrong. Guest Gulkan's concern for
Penelope's whereabouts was no mere matter of lust. After the rigors of his journeys, his imprisonments, his battles and his knife-edge struggles, the young Weaponmaster was not feeling particularly lustful. Rather, he was feeling lonely, isolated, and nostalgic for the past.
Penelope was very much a part of the Weaponmaster's past, for she had comforted him over four long years of convalescence. She had been his woman when he had been scarcely a man, having no arms and no legs. He had plans for her, plans which involved a proper life – family, home, security, stability, and an end to this mad and maddening wandering.
Hence Guest was very much concerned to find out where
Penelope was, and what had happened to her. But Plandruk Qinplaqus was entirely unmoved by Guest's concerns.
"Penelope is of no account," said Qinplaqus. "We have greater matters to worry about."
"Yes!" said Guest, with a flash of animation. "The business of the Banks! Now that we have the x-x-zix – "
"We're not yet ready to take on the Banks," said Qinplaqus.
"But," protested Guest, "you said, you promised – "
"Guest," said his father, trying to shut him up.
"No," said Qinplaqus. "Our young friend is right to press his case. The Banks have sorely offended him, just as they have offended me."Guest was momentarily hard put to think what offence the Banks might have given Qinplaqus. Then he recalled that Banker Sod had imprisoned Qinplaqus in a time pod on Alozay, meantime fomenting revolution in Dalar ken Halvar in the hope of adding that city to his own possessions. But – what was a trifling matter of imprisonment compared to the far greater damage which Guest had suffered?
"You acknowledge my rights," said Guest, "but I'm not sure that you acknowledge my impatience."
"In this case," said Qinplaqus, "remedy may not lie in my province, even if acknowledgement does."
"What are you riddling about?" said Guest.
"Have you heard," said Qinplaqus, "of an entity known as Shabble?"
"Shabble?" said Guest. "Why, yes, I have heard of, uh,
Shabble. But – here? Is Shabble here, here in – in – "
In his stumble-tongued confusion, Guest found he had temporarily mislaid the very name of the city in which he was presently stationed. An unlikely mishap, one might think! But when one travels the Doors of a Circle, one can skip continents in an instant, and it sometimes happens that the mind is left behind in one city while the body is in another.
"No," said Qinplaqus. "Shabble is not here in Dalar ken Halvar. Shabble is on Alozay."
And Guest almost fell from his chair with the shock of sheer surprise.