Shackle Mountains: a range of mountains on Argan's eastern seaboard, inland from the Breach and the Bitterwater Coast. In these mountains is the Warp which apprentice wizards enter to endure the Trials which will decided whether they graduate (or whether they die). In the Warp itself lie the Veils of Fire, and no person has ever penetrated beyond those Veils and returned to tell the tale. Accordingly, the wizards of the Confederation believe that the enigmatic but doubtlessly dangerous Shabble can be destroyed by being taken beyond those Veils.
It would be a long and weary business to give an account of the process of appeal whereby Sken-Pitilkin sought to challenge his conviction for high treason. The case dragged on for years.
During that time, Ontario Nol was at liberty, since no crime could be proved out against him. He had led a blameless life, first at the monastery of Qonsajara in the mountains of Ibsen-Iktus, and later on the island of Alozay. His long but voluntary exile was regarded as eccentric, but not criminal. So Nol was assigned quarters in the Castle of Controlling Power, the great stronghold at the western end of the flame trench Drangsturm, and was allotted that portion of the Confederation's profits to which he was rightfully entitled.
Sheltered and sustained by Nol's benevolent patronage, Guest Gulkan, Thayer Levant and Eljuk Zala lived out the years in the same Castle. There was yet a hope that Sken-Pitilkin might win his case and be set at liberty; and, sustained by that hope, Guest Gulkan was reluctant to venture to Chi'ash-lan on his own account to mount a solitary challenge against Banker Sod and the might of the Partnership Banks.
But at last Sken-Pitilkin's final appeal failed, and the effective death sentence against him was confirmed.
By this time, Eljuk Zala Gulkan had progressed so far in his studies under Ontario Nol that he was ready to enter the Warp and endure the Trials which would see him graduate as a full-fledged wizard (if he survived!)
So it was that Eljuk Zala and his master Ontario Nol joined Sken-Pitilkin on the journey eastward from the Castle of Controlling Power. With them went Guest Gulkan and Thayer Levant; for Guest still hoped to somehow liberate Sken-Pitilkin during the journey, even though Ontario Nol had warned him that in all probability this would be impossible.
At the eastern end of the flame trench Drangsturm, the party took passage on a ship which set forth from the Castle of Ultimate Peace and began to cruise eastward in the direction of the Stepping Stone Islands and the Ocean of Cambria.
Once the ship was past the Stepping Stone Islands, its eastward course took it into the waters of the Ocean of Cambria.
On that voyage, Guest Gulkan was granted a second look at the Chameleon's Tongue, that hook of beach-fringed land on which he had once made a landing when Sken-Pitilkin had botched the job of navigating to Untunchilamon.
To Guest's disappointment, nobody was much interested in the view. Sken-Pitilkin was incarcerated in the yellow bottle, brooding on the certainty of his death, and was in no mood to trifle with memories. Thayer Levant had taken up residence in that same bottle, where he passed his time by practicing knife fighting, and proved uninterested in reminiscence. As for Shabble – why, to Shabble, flight was a way of life, so the bouncing bubble could scarcely be expected to be impressed by Guest's recollections of his aerial voyage across Moana. Meantime, Ontario Nol was busy soothing Eljuk's nerves, and giving him some last- ditch tutoring, and had no time to play tourist.
This might seem a small matter, but it left Guest singularly disgruntled to find himself reduced to such a marginal role that he could find nobody willing to take an interest in his reminiscences of the past.
Once the ship was eastward of the Elbow, it turned for the north, taking care to stand well off shore.
As the ship sailed north, the west was landmarked by the jagged stubble of the Lizard Crest Rises, blue-toned by distance.
The ship was so far from shore that it was impossible for uninitiated landlubbers to tell when they were passing Seagate, the entrance to the Sponge Sea. But thereafter the mountains to the west became more formidable – great slab-sided thunderbolts of rock rising to crags which were peaked with patent snow.
The eastern coast of Argan – that coast which now lay to the west of the ship – is a mix of the lightly populated and the entirely desolate. Even from a distance, and even to such a poor geographer as the Yarglat barbarian Guest Gulkan, those mountains effortlessly clarified the demographical dynamics which had populated the west while leaving the east to the woodlouse and the bumble bee.
It is commonly said that the great geographical determinant is water, and by and large this is true. Any large city must be built by water; and those rulers who have commanded construction in defiance of this imperative are usually forced to abandon the works of their ego shortly thereafter. But, while water is the one great essential, the lie of the land must not be overlooked.
The sagacious Sken-Pitilkin, though doomed to death, was still a compulsive pedagog. Therefore, when Guest Gulkan entered the yellow bottle in which Sken-Pitilkin was held captive, and there reported on the view, Sken-Pitilkin took advantage of the report to lecture Guest Gulkan on the Demographic Theory of Contours, and was lecturing still when their ship sailed into the Breach, ending its voyage by the Shores of Glass which lie on the dawnside of the Shackle Mountains.
The shore was made of billows of glass in blue and yellow.
Hard glass it was, and great heat was required to melt it, and sundry scratchings near the shore gave evidence of the efforts of generations of over-optimistic entrepreneurs who had bankrupted themselves by trying to mine the stuff.
It is true that a profit could be made from the Shores of Glass were they to be located near any center of civilization, despite the hardness of the substance and the difficulties of smelting it. But the dangers, isolation and barrenness of the Breach increased all expenses unreasonably.
There was no water, hence all must be imported; there was no food, and the waters of the Breach were unaccountably impoverished from a fisherman's point of view; there were storms in winter; there was a danger of dragons all through the year; and the Malud marauders from Asral were so rapacious in their plunderings of the sea-trade that no ship that made passage through the Ocean of Cambria could possibly get insurance for its voyage.
Hence the wizards of the Confederation naturally expected to find the Shores of Glass deserted, and were disconcerted to find a small colony of purple-skinned Frangoni warriors established by the sea. These Frangoni were from the Ebrell Islands, and to a man they were sages who had chosen to devote themselves to dith-zora- ka-mako, the Mystical Way of the Nu-chala-nuth.
In any religion there is typically a triple dynamic at work.
There is the dynamic of political power, which attracts those who infiltrate religious organizations with the motives of cold- blooded careerists. These will typically be found advising Banks,
Bankers, emperors, warlords and kings. Then there is the pastoral dynamic, which attracts those who, as a solution to their personal inadequacies, seek to bring into their own lives (or into the lives of men in general – and, sometimes, the lives of women also, although this is usually optional) – the light of such Living Gods as the Great Frog, the Holy Goat-Rapist, the Smock-Smock and the Vodo Man.
Then there is religion of the third kind.
Religion of the third kind is the mystical religion which concerns itself with the burning moment when heart and mind are consumed by an incandescence which cannot be captured in words – or when, in the peace of a raindrop, a rock becomes a rock and a tree becomes a tree, each known in the fullness of its own nature.
The Frangoni from the Ebrells were bent on practicing that third kind of religion, but their theory and praxis meant but little to the wizards. The entire religion of Nu-chala-nuth counted as nothing as far as the Confederation of Wizards was concerned.
Still, the traveling wizards admired the dedication with which these ascetic Frangoni mystics were building their colony.
They had made small hutches for themselves by gluing together fragments of glass. With enormous labors, they were wresting further fragments from the local terrain, with a view to constructing an enormous monastery; and, judging by the size of the foundation-lines which had been scratched out on the ground, if ever completed this monastery would be one of the wonders of the world.
By cunning employment of solar stills, the religious colonists provided themselves with fresh, clean, potable water.
Already they had piled up great heaps of byproduct salt; and, since the Confederation of Wizards is, amongst other things, a commercial operation, it was entirely natural for the travelers to dicker with the mystics, trading olives and oranges for sacks of salt which could be sold elsewhere for enormous profit. Thus a dozen days passed in preparations and barter. But at last trade was finished and the expedition was ready to set forth.
This business of trade was entirely logical, moral and unobjectionable, yet it infuriated Guest Gulkan beyond measure. He believed (this was the rationalization by which he sustained his own ego against the buffeting of misfortune) that his life was heading toward some culminating crisis; and he took it as a personal affront to find the wizards so casual as to postpone this crisis by a whole twelve days of mercantile dickering.
At last, leaving behind a strong contingent to guard their ship, the wizards went inland on foot, bearing great stocks of food, water and firewood in the yellow bottle in which both Shabble and Sken-Pitilkin were still held as prisoners. Thayer Levant chose to keep Shabble and Sken-Pitilkin company, for the knifeman had absolutely no interest in tramping at great length through the mountains. But, compelled by pride, and by a rational soldierly interest in maintaining his own fitness, Guest Gulkan chose to march the long leagues rather than ride them out in the bottle.
The wizards marched to the north-west corner of the Breach, where the blue and yellow billows of the Shores of Glass gave way to honest rock. From there, they followed a steep and ancient train marked with cairns and with ancient gray-white banners mounted on bamboo poles.
The trail climbed precipitous slopes by means of stairways a league or more in height. They crossed engulfing gorges by ancient bridges. In places, Eljuk had to be blindfolded and led with a piece of rope, for he was too terror-stricken to proceed with his eyes open. Some of the paths, after all, consisted of nothing up flags of rock inserted into man-made slots in a sheer cliff face.
Eljuk's brother Guest was more disturbed by the long tunnels which pierced entire mountains, and which were a necessary and unavoidable part of the route. In those sometimes-humming sometimes-hot wormways through the living rock, Guest experienced grim intimations of doom, particularly when passing certain great iron doors which were sealed against intrusion.
The more lengthy and many-branched tunnels reminded Guest of the mazeways Downstairs, the labyrinth beneath the city of Injiltaprajura on the far-distant island of Untunchilamon. At times – when black grass was growing underfoot and cold green lights were burning overhead – the resemblance was so close that he more than half-expected to encounter a dorgi or a therapist.
But every venture through the long succession of such complexes delivered them again to the sky, and each time the sky was higher, and colder, and more beset by wind.
In the dry and wind-ravaged heights of the Shackle Mountains, environmental stress – the height, the dryness, the grinding wind, the poor food and the labor of travel – began to take their toll on Eljuk Zala. Under the influence of that stress, cold sores broke out, and their crusted presence added a further disfigurement to the purple birthstains which marred his lips.
Spreading beyond those lips, the sores took hold on his cheeks.
Eljuk had to be reminded not to touch those sores, with Sken-Pitilkin doing the reminding repeatedly when Eljuk entered the yellow bottle in the evenings to study irregular verbs and origami. If the hands wander from lips to eyes, then the disease can endanger the sight, as Sken-Pitilkin had learnt during those years of his youth in which he had practiced as a pox doctor.
"He saved our brother Morsh," said Guest Gulkan, reminding Eljuk of the manner in which Sken-Pitilkin had secured a cure for Morsh Bataar when that young man's leg had been grievously broken,
"so you should trust to his counsel." Guest was solicitous of Eljuk's health, and tried to convince him that he should travel inside the yellow bottle. But Eljuk would not. Since his brother Guest chose to march the mountains,
Eljuk was determined to do likewise. Besides, the bottle was claustrophobic, and from previous confinement Eljuk had grown to hate the thing.
Once, when Shabble was busy chasing shadows in the depths of the yellow bottle, and when Eljuk had fallen asleep in the middle of construing a particularly irregular verb – the verb trizon, which varies according to astrological influences – Guest ventured to share with Sken-Pitilkin his concerns for Eljuk's safety.
"He's – he's got these Trials to face, hasn't he?" said Guest. "He has to go into this, this Warp thing. Maybe he'll die."
"Maybe he will," said Sken-Pitilkin.
"Well," said Guest, "isn't there any way I can help him?
Maybe I could persuade him to rest, you know, to gather his strength."
"I didn't know you to be so tender of your brother," said Sken-Pitilkin.
"Why," said Guest in surprise, "but I saved him from drowning at the risk of my own life."
"Eljuk?" said Sken-Pitilkin.
"You remember!" said Guest. "The battle, you know, down by the Yolantarath. Oh, but you weren't there. It was Zozimus, that's right, he was all dressed up in his armor, he had a falcon, you were back in Gendormargensis. Anyway. Eljuk was in the water, he was crying out for help, so I raced down to the river, I jumped in and pulled him out."Guest was emphatic in his account. Clearly the Weaponmaster believed himself to be telling the truth. But Sken-Pitilkin, even though he had not been there on the day, knew otherwise. For Guest had confessed the full story in drunken reminiscence with the
Rovac warrior Rolf Thelemite and the dwarf Glambrax, and Sken-Pitilkin had overheard some of those drunken confessions.
True, Guest had jumped into the Yolantarath River to save a man. But – Eljuk? Sken-Pitilkin had a very distinct memory of Guest saying:
"Eljuk! I'd not so much as sponge my face for Eljuk!"
Furthermore, though Guest plainly retained no memory of the occasion, the Weaponmaster had once made a sober confession to Sken-Pitilkin, admitting to a precognitive vision in which he had seen his father drown in the Yolantarath. In consequence of that vision, when Guest had seen someone floundering in the river he had naturally thought it to be his father – and, identifying the man thus on the strength of his vision, had risked his life to save the poor fellow who was in difficulties, only to find to his disgust that it was actually Eljuk. Guest Gulkan had confessed the whole truth of the matter to Sken-Pitilkin on an evening when he had sat at the confluence of the Pig and the Yolantarath, waxing sentimental about the fate of some men he had hung some days earlier. Sken-Pitilkin was interested to observe how systematically Guest misremembered his own past – not wilfully, but entirely unconsciously. We are often the least reliable witnesses to our own lives, for so much in memory later changes as we reconfigure ourselves in the light of future experience.
"You saved your brother once," said Sken-Pitilkin, who saw no point in challenging Guest's misremembering of the past, "but now he must save himself. There is nothing you can do to help your brother face his Trials. The Trials are as much a test of will as anything. Your brotherly solicitude can scarcely help strengthen his will."
"I'm afraid he's going to die," said Guest.
"I know for a fact that I am most definitely going to die," said Sken-Pitilkin pointedly.
This forced Guest to face up to a fact which he was most reluctant to acknowledge: the fact that he was in the presence of one who had been sentenced to death.
"Couldn't you escape?" said Guest. "I mean, they've got to let you out of this bottle when we get to this Warp. You can't take the bottle into the Warp if you're still inside it."
"Some of these wizards are wizards of Arl," said Sken-Pitilkin. "When I'm let out of this bottle, they'll be watching me. One false move, and I'll be crisped to a cinder."Guest Gulkan accepted this.
In the arrogance of his early youth, the Weaponmaster would never have accepted such a gloomy prognosis. For, in his extreme youth, the Weaponmaster had thought himself equal of anything the world could bring about him. But, ever since being mauled by the Great Mink, Guest had been unable to muster up the same invincible confidence.
So the trek continued, with each day taking Guest Gulkan and his traveling companions higher and higher into the Shackle Mountains. The heights were cold, and silent. The lichen of long centuries grew on cairns where dirt-gray banners hung from gray bamboo. The path crossed slopes where rock had once run liquid.
Eljuk began to turn inward, no longer responding to his brother. In the face of his silence, Guest sought advice from Ontario Nol.
"Is he sick?" said Guest Gulkan.
"Sick?" said Nol.
"You know," said Guest. "Like all of us were at Ibsen-Iktus, you know, the first night in Qonsajara."
"Your sickness was caused by climbing too high too fast," said Nol. "Here we have gone slowly, hence height is not a problem."
"But Eljuk's so quiet," said Guest.
"What would you expect?" said Nol somberly. "Of course he's quiet! He's preparing himself for tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?" said Guest.
"We should be there tomorrow!" said Nol. "At the Warp. At the Place of Testing. Then – Guest, many try, but few succeed."
"Why?" said Guest. "What happens? These, these Tests, what makes them kill people?"
"That is not for you to know," said Nol.
And the eminent wizard of Itch quite refused to talk about it any further.
That evening, Guest Gulkan tried to discuss the matter of Eljuk's Tests with Sken-Pitilkin.
"It's those – those Mahendo Mahunduk things," said Guest.
"That's what it is, isn't it? They'll kill him!"
"Quiet!" said Sken-Pitilkin, in shock. "Quiet, lest a wizard hear, and kill you!"
It had now been so long since Sken-Pitilkin had heard Guest speak of the Mahendo Mahunduk that he had hoped the Weaponmaster to have forgotten all about them. The Mahendo Mahunduk, the sometime soldiers of the Revisionary Gods, were creatures of destruction who were half-demon and half-deity. Their old masters were dead, or else had evolved, since evolution is one of the fatal flaws to which the gods are prone; and so the Mahendo Mahunduk were at liberty to make alliances with wizards.
As a slave can enter the service of an emperor, and gain a measure of power and protection from his association with such a dignitary, so too can a wizard make an alliance with one of the Mahendo Mahunduk. But, just as a cruel and demanding emperor may subject a candidate slave to a potentially destructive test of will, so too do the Mahendo Mahunduk test all candidate wizards.
To make contact with the Mahendo Mahunduk, a candidate wizard must enter the Warp in the Shackle Mountains; and this, as Sken-Pitilkin painstakingly explained to Guest, exposed the Confederation to danger.
"For," said Sken-Pitilkin, "to maintain its strength, the Confederation needs an infusion of new blood. Were anyone to use armed force to close the road to the Place of Testing, then the Confederation would have no means to replenish its strength. Hence the secrets of the Warp are exceptionally sensitive."
"But," objected Guest, "it is widely known that wizards make pilgrimage to the Shackle Mountains."
"Perhaps," said Sken-Pitilkin. "But further publicity will be less than welcome. If you preach to the world of the Mahendo Mahunduk then the Confederation will kill you."
"I was hardly preaching!" protested Guest.
"Be deaf, dumb and mute," said Sken-Pitilkin. "Else you will be die in these mountains, and soon." Guest Gulkan obeyed.
But the Weaponmaster was far from happy at being told to shut up and do nothing. While Guest Gulkan had stoically endured the long journey from Drum to Drangsturm, his subsequent interrogation by ethnologists and the longeurs of Sken-Pitilkin's trial, the cumulative effects of these insults to his autonomy had bred in his breast a savage frustration. Guest Gulkan had desired to make himself the conqueror of the Circle of the Partnership Banks, or at least of some small portion of that Circle. To that end, he had quested for the x-x-zix, had dared himself into the Stench Caves, had gone head-to-head with
Aldarch the Third and Anaconda Stogirov, had contended against Great Gods and demons, and had put himself through more torment than most people endure in a lifetime.
And what was the end result of all this?
Why, the end result of this was the total perversion of all his expectations – so that, rather than ruling an empire, he found himself tagging along behind a band of wizards, a refugee dependent on the charity of Ontario Nol, a ragged swordsman without power or authority or status or recognition.
And now, as a crisis neared, as his brother Eljuk looked likely to die, as Sken-Pitilkin looked certain to die, as Shabble was to be wastefully consigned to whatever destruction waited behind the Veils of Fire, why, Guest Gulkan's sole role was apparently to be a gawking spectator.
Now Guest no longer had the confidence to believe that he could successfully challenge the strength of a parcel of wizards armed and ready for action – but, as his frustration mounted to a head, he began to think himself ready to take on the world regardless, even if his certain doom was to be the result.
The next day, with Guest still brooding darkly on the collapse of his hopes and the many insults which had been done to his dignity, the travelers labored to the top of a sharp ridge, and found themselves looking across a steep but narrow valley.
"On the other side of this valley," said Ontario Nol, "is the Cave of the Warp." Guest Gulkan looked across the valley and saw not one cave but an array of gaping holes opening to realms of darkest shadow.
"It looks like a perfect lair for dragons," said the Weaponmaster.
"Dragons would not live here," said Ontario Nol. "They must live near their food. Hence you will find them near the sea, where they can fish for the whale; or close to our cities, where their food runs two-legged; or else living near volcanoes or similar, for they can diet upon sulphur at a pinch."
Having received that intelligence, Guest Gulkan studied the prospect further, then said:
"These caves have been artificed by the hands of men."
"What makes you think that?" said Ontario Nol.
"The spacing is regular," said Guest, holding out his hand and measuring the gap between each cavemouth with his fingers.
"Nothing in nature is so regular of formation."
"The caves were made," acknowledged Ontario Nol. "But I would not say that they were necessarily made by men."
"By who, then?" said Guest. "Gods? Demons?"
"I cannot say," said Nol.
"Why not?" said Guest.
"Because," said Nol, "I do not know."
And, with that, the wizard of Itch headed downward into the valley.
By evening, the travelers had reached the cave of the Warp, which proved singularly disappointing. It was a big cave, true, but no monsters lurked in the velvety blue-black of its shadows.
Instead, at the far end of the cave – some fifty paces from the opening, in Guest's judgment – there was a wall of interwoven rainbow. This twisted slowly, sinuously, throwing off occasional sprays of lights.
"That," said Ontario Nol, in portentous tones, "is the Veils of Fire. Many have ventured beyond those Veils, but none have returned to tell the tale. Tomorrow, Sken-Pitilkin will take Shabble beyond those Veils, and both will die."
"So you say," said Guest, who was effortlessly unimpressed by this cave and its Veils.
"I say it because it is the truth," said Nol. "Now come away.
And stay well away from this cave, for sometimes the denizens of these shadows have reached out to kill those who idly outside by the entrance."
"Is that so?" said Guest.
"It is so," affirmed Nol, and drew Guest away from the cave, and compelled him to the campsite which the wizards were setting up a stone's throw distant from that cavern.
By this time, Guest was more than half-convinced that the wizards were the victims of a communal hallucination; and that, if anyone had truly died inside that cave, then their deaths had more to do with autosuggestion than with the Mahendo Mahunduk or any similar creatures.
That night, Guest Gulkan did not sleep. Neither did most of the rest of the adventurers. The wizards for the most part sat muttering through their Meditations. For them, the Cave of the Warp was a place of the utmost significance, whatever Guest might think of it, and to be in its presence awakened old dedications, old ambitions, so that the most slovenly amongst them was compelled to fresh endeavor.
Eljuk sat apart, keeping a solitary vigil, and when Guest approached him Ontario Nol was quick to head him off.
"Eljuk needs to be by himself tonight," said Nol.
"But I'm his brother!" protested Guest.
"Eljuk is a wizard now," said Nol. "Or will be if he survives tomorrow."
After this uncompromising brush-off, Guest wandered away from the campsite and sat sulking in the dark of the upland night. But it was too cold to sit sulking for long, so he was soon on his feet again.
Natural curiosity, combined with a childish desire to defy Ontario Nol, soon drew guest back to the Cave of the Warp. In that Cave, the rainbow-flickering Veils of Fire still burnt in silence. Guest stood outside, looking in.
Inside this cave, or so he was told, apprentice wizards struggled with the Mahendo Mahunduk, and died if they were not equal to the struggle. To step over the threshold of that cave was to precipitate such a struggle.
So he was told. Guest was strongly inclined to doubt the truth of any of this. The cave simply did not look dangerous. Rather, it looked spectacularly empty.
"I am the Weaponmaster, am I not?"
So muttered Guest. Then he hesitated.
Then -
Then stepped inside.
Once inside, Guest shuddered at his own audacity. But, with shuddering done, he felt no different. He ventured another step.
Where was the danger? Where was the challenge? This was but an empty cave. There was no murkbeast inside, no simulcrum of the Great Mink, no dorgi, no therapist.
"Anyone home?" said Guest.
Not even an echo answered him.
Gaining confidence, Guest boldly ventured all the way to the Veils of Fire, where he again hesitated. Now this, this wall of cold-burning rainbow, this was most definitely something new. But was it dangerous?
As Guest was wondering, the rainbow lashed out. It coiled around his feet and spun in threads of kaleidoscopic lightning, accelerating upward in wreathing coils until his whole body was alive with multicolored light. Wreathed in that light, he felt buoyant, exhilarated – even a little drunk.
Alarmed to find himself growing slightly lightheaded, Guest backed off, and the coils of light relinquished their grip and sank back.
"So," muttered Guest.
So what? What was he to make of this? Guest had dared himself into a cave which wizards thought of a place of death and terror. And inside he had found – well, really, precisely nothing.
"Weirdness," said Guest.
Then made his way back to the cavemouth, and made his exit. Guest had barely exited when he was challenged by Ontario Nol, who was advancing on the cave from the direction of the campsite.
"What are you doing here?" said Nol, when he recognized Guest, whose face was lit by the cold-burning veils of rainbow located fifty paces away, deep in the depths of the cave.
"Investigating," said Guest.
"Investigating?" said Nol. "What are you talking about?"
"Investigating these caves of yours," said Guest. "I don't think much of them. I went right inside, but – "
"Inside!" said Nol. "Enough of your nonsense!"
"It is not nonsense," insisted Guest. "I went inside! Look,
I'll show you, I – "
With that, Guest made as if to enter the cave. But Ontario Nol gripped him with fingers which could have demolished stone, and, trapped by Nol's invincible strength, Guest had no option but to bend to the wizard's will.
"Go back to bed!" said Nol.
"I don't have a bed to go to," said Guest.
"There's comfort sufficient inside the yellow bottle," said Nol. "Come. We'll go there."
And such was the insistence of the wizard of Itch that Guest Gulkan was compelled to enter the yellow bottle, where he found that Sken-Pitilkin was already soundly asleep, dreaming opium dreams thanks to the chemical benediction which had been provided to him by a fellow wizard. Guest was much disgusted by Sken-Pitilkin's stuporous state, and found he could not sleep. In the end, he spent the night talking with Shabble, who seemed unfussed at the prospect of imminent destruction. The truth was, Shabble quite frankly did not believe in the existence of this Warp, or its Veils of Fire, and was perfectly confident of surviving the morrow.
"Perhaps you will," said Guest. "But, one way or another, these wizards will destroy you, because they've set their hearts on your destruction."
"No they won't," said Shabble. "They like me too much."
"They like you!" said Guest.
"Eljuk likes me," said Shabble. "I taught him paper dragons, he likes that. Oh, and the ethnologists like me. I was months and months teaching them sex customs."
"Ethnologists are always in the market for sex customs," said Guest grimly. "But that doesn't stop them being a bunch of coldblooded vivisectionists."
But Shabble would not believe a word of it.
As for Levant, he was asleep, and protested strenuously when Guest tried to wake him for a tactical discussion.
All in all, Guest Gulkan began to get the impression that he was the only person who was capable of making a sane and rational response to the demands of the moment. Sken-Pitilkin, who had retreated to the unpardonable comfort of a drug-stupor, had resigned himself to death with disgraceful ease. Eljuk, with his uninterruptable vigil, had chosen a like-minded retreat into mystical silence. Shabble was fecklessly unconcerned with the future, and Ontario Nol quite flatly refused to accept the results of Guest's Investigations into the Cave of the Warp.
And Levant! Well, Levant had proved his nature with a vengeance. Useless, useless, dead weight and ballast.
So thinking, Guest at last got to sleep, and endured a few brief and troubled dreams before he was roused for the morning's ceremonies.
On the rocky ground outside the Cave of the Warp, those who had made the pilgrimage to these inland heights assembled, with a fair amount of coughing, scratching, hawking and yawning. Guest looked around, and saw that Levant was missing. Thayer Levant, who had no interest whatsoever in Eljuk's Trials or Sken-Pitilkin's execution, had chosen to stay in the depths of the yellow bottle and sleep in late.
But everyone else was there. Sken-Pitilkin was most definitely there, looking much the worse for wear. Indeed, the sagacious wizard of Skatzabratzumon looked almost as shattered as he had at times on Untunchilamon – particularly after the encounter with the therapist Schoptomov, in which Sken-Pitilkin had almost killed himself by over-exertion.
Seeing the state Sken-Pitilkin was in, Guest saw at once that the wizard would be no use in a battle.
As for Shabble, why, given freedom, Shabble could have incinerated all the wizards with a single blast of fire. But the bubble of bounce was still caught in a web of silver, and tethered by a chain of silver, and whatever the nature of this restraint it most certainly prevented Shabble from throwing any fire whatsoever.
In the cold light of morning, Shabble hummed softly, doing a gentle imitation of the skavamareen.
As Guest surveyed the scene, one of the wizards began to speak. Unfortunately, his entire discourse was in the High Speech of wizards, of which Guest knew not a word; and nobody was in the mood to provide the Weaponmaster with a translation.
After a long and supremely tedious speech, the wizard beckoned to Eljuk, who stepped toward the Cave of the Warp. Eljuk stumbled even before he entered the cave. But enter he did. He took one step, two, three – and Guest began to feel faint.
Realizing he was holding his breath, Guest Gulkan forced himself to breathe. Even as he did so, Eljuk shrieked. Eljuk screamed as if he was being nailed with needles. He collapsed.
Then, to Guest's belief, Eljuk's body began to float upward from the floor of the cave. White fire began to flicker around Eljuk's limbs.
From the somber, funereal silence of the watching wizards, Guest deduced that Eljuk had failed his Trials, and was going to die.
"Well," said Guest staunchly. "That's what you think, but – "
Then, abandoning speech for action, the Weaponmaster pushed through the wizards and strode into the cave.
"Guest!" yelled Nol.
Heedless on the cry from Ontario Nol, Guest Gulkan walked right into the cave. As he touched his brother, the white fire which had been flickering along Eljuk's limbs abruptly died away to nothing. Whatever force had been levitating Eljuk's body ceased to operate, and the full weight of it fell into Guest's arms. Guest grunted as he took the weight.
"Eljuk?" he said.
Eljuk was still breathing, but he was unconscious.
So Guest quite naturally carried him out of the cave.
As Guest exited from the Cave of the Warp, the wizards fell back before him, regarding him with horror. He was no wizard, but he had ventured into the Warp! He had ventured, and had emerged unscathed! Could he then be human? Guest stood before them, an inscrutable Yarglat barbarian, a creature with huge ears and painfully high cheekbones, the embodiment of alien mystery. He had done what nobody else in recorded history had ever succeeded in doing: he had ventured into the Cave of the Warp without a wizard's training to support him, and had come out alive.
As Guest stood there, a voice of thunder boomed:
"I am Lorzunduk, lord of the Mahendo Mahunduk! Behold! And know your doom!"
The voice cried thus in the High Speech of wizards. On hearing the cry, Sken-Pitilkin promptly collapsed.
"See!" said the thunder. "The evil Sken-Pitilkin has been killed! You likewise will die!"
Under the circumstances, this seemed so probable, so easily believable, that the wizards broke and ran. Even Ontario Nol fell back before this combination of inexplicable mystery and patent threat.
One wizard ran too slowly, for Guest grabbed and smashed the wizard who was carrying the yellow bottle – knocked him senseless with fist and elbow, tore the bottle from his possession, then wrested from his finger the ring which allowed one to enter and leave the bottle. Guest lowered Eljuk to the ground.
"Shabble!" said Guest.
The bubble of bounce, which had so recently scattered the wizards with a threat couched in the High Speech of wizards – for of course it was Shabble, the world's most reckless ventriloquist, who had breached the morning with a voice of thunder – came drifting toward Guest Gulkan.
Shabble was free-floating in the air, the silver-braided tethering rope having been dropped by the wizard who had been holding it. Shabble responded to the Weaponmaster's summons because long and amicable acquaintance had led the shining bubble to think of Guest Gulkan as a friend. Guest promptly grabbed the tethering rope. Then he strode to Sken-Pitilkin and seized the wizard by the scruff of the neck. The wizard was not dead at all – merely unconscious. Guest twisted the ring on his finger, and was carried into the yellow bottle in company with Sken-Pitilkin and Shabble. With no time to waste, the Weaponmaster released the bubble and let the wizard fall, then used the ring to make a solo return to the outside air.
In that outside air, the wizards were already beginning to rally, with Ontario Nol shouting:
"It was Shabble! It was Shabble who shouted! There's no god, no demon, just Shabble!"
Seeing the wizards were no longer running, Guest did a swift calculation. He had hoped to bundle his brother Eljuk into the yellow bottle then head for the hills. But the wizards were no longer running in panic, so Guest could not help to flee across the mountains.
And he had no time to pick up Eljuk.
"Guest!" yelled Nol. "Drop the bottle! Drop the bottle, or you're a dead man!"
So.
So Nol had chosen to throw in his lot with the Confederation.
Well.
He'd have to try something better than threats if he wanted to catch Guest Gulkan!
So thinking, Guest began to back into the Cave of the Warp, carrying with him the yellow bottle which contained Sken-Pitilkin and Shabble (and, presumably, the shamefully oversleeping Thayer Levant).
"Guest," said Nol, advancing to the mouth of the cave. "Come out of there. I don't know why you're still alive, but I don't expect you to live much longer. It's dangerous in there!"
Guest thought this a singularly futile threat, since he was surely a dead man if he came out of that cave to face the wrath of the wizards.
So thinking, Guest retreated to the very end of the cave, to the rainbow wall which the wizards knew as the Veils of Fire.
"Guest!" yelled Nol, as rainbow-weaving coils of cold fire began to weave around Guest Gulkan's limbs. "Guest! Guest! Come out of there!"
But, instead, Guest took a single step backwards.
And vanished right through the Veils of Fire.
"Blood of a goat," said Ontario Nol in disbelief. "Now I've seen everything."
Those wizards who had been quick enough in the recovery of their courage to have witnessed Guest Gulkan's departure joined him in his disbelief.
Then one, at last accepting the evidence of his eyes, hawked, and spat, and said:
"Well. It's over. He's dead of a certainty."
And, the destruction of Guest Gulkan, Sken-Pitilkin, Shabble and the bottle now being entirely assured, nothing remained for the wizards but to pack up and make their return to Drangsturm – and there to report the death of the inscrutable Shabble and the terminal disposition of the renegade wizard Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin.