Ul-donlok: valley in the Ibsen-Iktus mountains and site of the ancient monastery of Qonsajara, which is home to a wizard of Yarglat breeding named Ontario Nol. The valley of Ul-donlok, which is high and narrow at its western end, slopes downward to the east, opening out as it nears the Swelaway Sea.
Hostaja Torsen Sken-Pitilkin did his best to make Thodric Jarl apologize for his foolish attack on Ontario Nol. Jarl refused.
"Dogs will hatch from eggs and pigs be born of pigeons before I say sorry to a wizard," said Jarl, intransigent as any monster of the nursery.
Jarl was sure Nol would kill him in any case, and no Rovac warrior wishes to die with an apology to a wizard on his lips.
"What are we to do with this rune-warrior?" said Sken-Pitilkin, shaking his head in disgust.
"Let's not worry about it," said Nol, shrugging off Jarl's insolent unrepentance. "After all, what matters a trifle like attempted murder when dinner is waiting? Come, friends. Let's seat ourselves and sup. For dinner cools monstrous fast in weather like this."
"Dinner?" said Pelagius Zozimus, who had a chef's highlydeveloped consciousness of the passage of time. "Dinner? My dear sir, dinner can hardly cool before it's cooked, and we've only just arrived! How can you possibly have dinner ready already?"
"I saw you from afar," said Ontario Nol gravely, "even if my servant did not."
"So!" said Sken-Pitilkin, taking this to be a confession of the possession of Powers. "The wizards of Itch have powers of sight, do they?"
"They do indeed," said Ontario Nol. "Such powers are consequent upon the possession of those ocular organs known as eyes, of which I have two. With my own two eyes I have long had you under observation from the heights of Qonsajara, in consequence of which I have been able to have a dinner prepared for you."
Upon which both Zozimus and Sken-Pitilkin felt foolish, and made no further comment as the hospitable wizard of Itch led the party of air adventurers into his dining room. It was a small room dominated by a large stone table, and though Nol had threatened them with a chilled dinner the room was in fact kept comfortably warm by a small but efficient fire.
"May we not wash, first?" said Sken-Pitilkin, conscious of the fact that all of them smelt somewhat of vomit, and that the half-digested eyes of two or three of the dogs of Ema-Urk still clung to Guest Gulkan's outer clothing.
"Wash?" said Nol, in patent surprise. "But why?"
"To please me," said Zelafona, coming to Sken-Pitilkin's rescue. "As a woman, I am particular of the company I keep, therefore would have these men washed if bowl, sponge and water to spare."
"I have no objection to a sponging of my face and my jacket," said Thodric Jarl, who was perfectly ready to make concessions to the witch Zelafona, though he was ever reluctant to give aid to a wizard. "Rolf will help me with the sponging."
So spoke Jarl, and spoke bravely. But his speech was badly slurred, for pain, altitude, fatigue, fear and a wizard's whirlwind battery had told heavily on his resources.
"If Jarl's so sick he needs a nursemaid," said Rolf Thelemite, his own fatigue displaying itself in his singularly ungracious manner, "then I suppose I can sponge him down."
"And Guest will wash himself," said Sken-Pitilkin in tones of warning, as the Weaponmaster advanced upon Ontario Nol's big stone table.
"Will I?" said Guest, rebelliously. "I don't think I will, you know. I'm not due for a bath for two or three years at least, and I'm not going to delay dinner for any such eccentricity." Sken-Pitilkin did not see how Guest could possibly be ready to eat again after having been so prodigiously sick earlier in the day. But the boy was as good as his word. He sat himself down at the dinner table – half-digested eyes and all – and was two-thirds of the way through a second helping of everything by the time his companions returned from their washing.
For dinner they had lentil soup, boiled potatoes and the eggs of several chickens, with a serving of roast soy beans on the side. Ontario Nol apologized for the sparceness of his table.
"Unfortunately," said Nol, "we have only the eggs of a chicken, and not the meat. I would have killed you a chicken, only I have none at Qonsajara. The eggs are paid to me in way of tribute by one of the villages further down the valley."
"You are a ruler, then," said Guest Gulkan.
"The absolute monarch of all I survey," acknowledged Ontario Nol. "I estimate the population of my kingdom as some three thousand people in all. It is sufficient."
"Your kingdom," said Guest, chewing against the resistance of some soy beans as he spoke. "How do you name your kingdom?"
"It is named Qonsajara," said Ontario Nol, "taking its name from this monastery, which once was consecrated to the rites of Zozo Darjidan, the tantric strain of Qa Marika. Do you know what is meant by tantrism?"
"Dorking," said Guest, remembering certain lessons in ethnology. "That's what it means. The tantric arts are the arts of dorking. Lotham and yargam, sagit and mok. That's what the pictures are all about."
"True," said Ontario Nol with a thin smile. "But there was more to it than that. The tantric rites have catharsis as their goal. One frees the spirit of the flesh by purging the flesh through excess. There is more to it, then, than… how did you put it?"
"Dorking," said Guest again, unabashed and unashamed.
"One hopes," said the witch Zelafona, "that the boy has not offended your religion. If he has, then my dwarf will be happy to beat him for you."
At that, Glambrax jumped onto the table and struck a beating pose. Guest Gulkan's hand went to his sword.
"Peace," said Ontario Nol, as Sken-Pitilkin swept Glambrax from the table with his country crook. "I own to no religion.
Though I name myself as abbot of this monastery, that is just for form's sake. In truth, this temple's rites are a thousand years dead, and the worshippers died with the rites."
By now, Ontario Nol had the full attention of all his auditors, and they listened in after-dinner leisure as he told what he knew of Zozo Darjidan and the religion of Qa Marika. He lacked the full story, but still knew the most amazing fragments of the much-dislocated history of times long past. He mentioned the Technic Renaissance and the Genetic Mutiny, and told strange stories of a planet named Olo Malan, which – depending on which tradition one adhered to – either was or was not the very ball of dirt on which they were presently standing.
Then Sken-Pitilkin had stories of his own to tell, and
Pelagius Zozimus followed him, after which the dralkosh Zelafona was persuaded to speak.
Never before had Guest heard Zelafona tell of the past. The boy listened, fascinated, as the old woman's shriveled voice spun tales of full-fleshed maidens and desiring heroes, of creatures which lived in mountains and fed themselves on time, of cities of singing glass and streets of liquid fire, of incubus and succubus knotted together in shadows of turbulent desire, of vampires in their cavern-realms, and of ghostly dragons hunting ghosts through realms of living men.
That night, when Guest Gulkan finally got to sleep, he dreamt dreams of hallucinatory vividness. He dreamt of spheres of light which sang and spoke; of armies collapsing in maggot-plague and blood-drench deliquescence; of snoring mountains and sneezing skeletons; of kings dressed in the dazzle of hammered rainbow; of the Dawn Songs of Kalatanastral and the battlements of Stronghold Handfast; of books which conjured cities, and cities which conjured gods. Guest woke in the night with a pounding headache. Such was his pain that he woke Sken-Pitilkin, fearing himself on the verge of death. Sken-Pitilkin told him to go back to sleep, but by then Ontario Nol had already been disturbed.
"It is the height," said Nol. "It is the suddenness of the height which causes the headache. Men can damage themselves to the point of death simply by walking to the heights too quickly, and you – you've flown! I should have thought of that. We should check your companions."
Then, on Ontario Nol's instructions, all the air adventurers were roused from sleep, saving Rolf Thelemite alone, who proved quite impossible to wake.
"He's sleeping solidly," said Guest.
"There's more to it than that," said Ontario Nol. "He's unconscious. His brain has swollen in the high thin air."
"His brain!" said Guest.
"It is true," said Nol. Guest Gulkan took some persuading, claiming indeed that he doubted his comrade Rolf to be in possession of any organ so delicate as a brain. But Nol disputed Guest's pretensions to anatomical wisdom, insisting that even warriors of Rovac had brains, although admittedly it was hard to find one who could demonstrate the proper use of such an asset. Then the wizard of Itch detailed the ways in which height itself could kill, concluding by saying:
"So. To safeguard your friend's health, we must take him lower down the valley."
"Well," said Guest, "doubtless when dawn comes – "
"No," said Nol. "Not at dawn. Now. We must take him lower, and now, otherwise he dies."
"Can't we wait until morning?" said Guest.
"By morning," said Nol, "one of the minor demons of the Lesser Pit of Idleness will be using your friend's head as a footstool. I counsel you not to delay – not unless you have mastered the fine art of the resurrection of the dead."
Urged thus by Ontario Nol, the air adventurers dressed themselves in coats provided by their host, heavy coats of wool, coats thick with the smell of generations of woodsmoke. Then they ventured into the night, the cold of which had sharpened to a razor.
There was no moon, but there were stars, clipped chips of needle-prick brightness. Under those stars they began their descent, rock and stone scraping and sliding underfoot as they ventured through the brittleness of the frozen night.
Soon, they were sweating in their heavy coats, sweating despite the cold, for they were carrying the unconscious Rolf Thelemite on a litter, and Rolf proved a brutal burden – even though Nol had roused out a couple of servants to help with the labor, and even though he added his own muscle to the carrying.
To Guest, the stumblestone nightpath through unfamiliar territory seemed an ideal place for an ambush. If Nol planned murder, then maybe ambushers were waiting to take them on a ravinous section of the path, waiting to smash them with landsliding stones or snatch them from the night with garrotes.
For once, Guest Gulkan wanted the counsel of Thodric Jarl, so when the group was resting he shared his thoughts with the Rovac warrior, and found Jarl had similar suspicions. The two of them then returned to the circle of lamplight where Ontario Nol sat cleaning his fingernails, and they challenged that wizard of Itch, who heard out their fears.
"Well, my man," said Ontario Nol, addressing himself to Thodric Jarl in the Eparget tongue. "You have a headache, do you not?"
"As if kicked by a horse," said Jarl, speaking the Eparget with the idiomatic fluency of a very Yarglat barbarian.
"Next question," said Ontario Nol. "Can you walk like this?"
With that, the wizard of Itch got to his feet and demonstrated. He demonstrated with great deliberation, like a dancing master showing off a difficult step. He walked heel to toe, first forwards then backwards.
"Such games are meant for childhoods first and second," said Jarl. "You in your second childhood can indulge yourself with such, but I am a man, and grown beyond such folly."
"Try it," said Nol.
"I have spoken," said Jarl, speaking with the finality of a rune-warrior standing in defiance to a dragon.
"It is but a trifle," said Nol, coaxing Jarl with the wheedling cajolery with which a nursemaid seeks to subvert the will of a bad-tempered baby. "A trifle if you can do it, but a world of significance if you cannot. Come, man! I've done as much myself! Zozimus! Sken-Pitilkin! Will you set examples?"
First Zozimus did, then Sken-Pitilkin, and both succeeded in walking heel to toe, first forwards then backwards. At last, succumbing to sweet persuasion, Thodric Jarl consented to essay this simplicity. He failed. His feet were simply not sufficiently coordinated, and those feet disobeyed him as if he were drunk.
"You see," said Nol. "You cannot walk a straight line. That, my friend, is a sure sign of the swelling of the brain. The swelling is consequent upon rapid ascent to great altitude, and you must descend to cure it, or reconcile yourself to your death."
"My stumbling feet are a sure sign that I'm drunk," said Jarl. "Or that I'm poisoned."
As Jarl had not recently been drinking to any great extent, he was inclined to suspect poison.
Thodric Jarl's suspicion was natural, for Jarl was of the
Rovac, and so since earliest childhood had nourished a fearful suspicion of wizards. Furthermore, when Jarl thought of death he most naturally thought of poison. For, though the Rovac have a great reputation as sword-slaughters, poison is ever one of their favorite instruments of murder. It is used in particular by the
Rovac womenfolk, who typically prefer the swift simplicities of poison to the intricate longeurs of divorce proceedings. But, though it is the women who have the true mastery of the art, the men will not flinch from such expedients when the spirit moves them.
"Hush down," said Zelafona, as Jarl began to launch himself into accusations of conspiracy and of general poisoning.
Then the wise witch Zelafona took Guest Gulkan and Thodric Jarl aside and advised them to place their trust in Ontario Nol.
"If he was going to kill us," said Zelafona, "he'd have poisoned the lot of us at dinner time."
"Haven't you got the message?" said Jarl. "I think that's exactly what he did. Either he's poisoned us, or else he's going to ambush us."
"If poison," said Zelafona, "then it's surely a slow poison, for as yet we're all alert. Since wizards have no love for witches, I'd be as likely a victim of any such poison as you are.
Let us then watch our own condition, and gather for a lethal decision should that communal condition deteriorate. As for ambush – why, let Guest walk with Nol to kill the wizard if we spring an ambush."
Thus it was agreed – though at first it was quite impossible for Guest to be spared from the labor of supporting the burden of the unconscious Rolf Thelemite.
But, after a long and steeply downhill walk, Rolf Thelemite came to, emerging groggily from the depths of his unconsciousness.
Shortly, Rolf found himself able to stumble downhill under his own steam. Thereafter, Guest kept close to the wizard Ontario Nol.
Naturally, the two fell into conversation, and Guest found himself telling Nol much about Gendormargensis, about the imperial family, and about his brothers Morsh Bataar and Eljuk Zala.
"My father has written to me not at all," said Guest, making no effort to conceal his resentment at his father's neglect, "but Bao Gahai has pestered me with letters as often as once every three months. She says that Morsh has taken to swimming, though I think it perilous strange for a man to play fish."
"A leg as badly broken as his will be slow in the cure," said Ontario Nol. "So swimming may help."
"But he's walking!" said Guest. "He's riding! The bone is fixed!"
"The bone may be fixed," said Nol, "but the muscle may be badly wasted."
"But," protested Guest, "we're talking ancient history! It's spring. Go back through winter, autumn, summer. Go back a year! A year ago I had a letter from Bao Gahai, she said him walking.
Walking, yes, and riding. A year, man!"
"So his cure may be close to completeness," conceded Nol.
"But even so, you should not sneer at his swimming, for swimming is a very healthful exercise."
"I thought you of the Yarglat!" said Guest in astonishment.
"Yet you think a man should be fish!"
"I am true to my heritage," said the Yarglat-born wizard of Itch. "I have not denied it. I have merely broadened it. But, anyway – enough of your brothers. Tell me of Locontareth. There was mention made of a tax revolt."
So the subject of Morsh Bataar's broken leg and his slow recovery from the same was dropped, and Guest launched himself on the tale of the tax revolt in Locontareth, or what he knew of it – the revolt said to be led by an insurrectionist by the name of Sham Cham.
As Guest was deep in conversation, the path passed beneath great rocks, and in the shadow of those rocks the path suddenly crumbled beneath Guest's feet. Guest slipped – with a cry.
And Nol grabbed him.
Ontario Nol grabbed Guest Gulkan, fingers gripping the boy's arm like a set of pliars.
"Careful," said Nol, hauling Guest back from the brink of destruction. "Steady yourself. There now. Are you all right?"
"Yes," said Guest.
Who was shaken by the strength of the old man, by the walnutcrunching power of those fingers. He was reminded of dim legends concerning mighty masters of combat who were said to live in the mountains. (Which mountains? The legends were never specific, but mountains like these looked near enough to the stuff of legends as far as Guest was concerned). Those combat masters were said to be able to perform prodigious feats. To kill without touching. To kill with a shout. To crush stones. To tear the heart from the flesh without benefit of steel.
"Have you lived in the mountains long?" said Guest.
"Oh, long indeed," said Ontario Nol. "I know this path well.
It gets easier from here on."
And so it did, and it had become wide, flat and stable by the time dawn brought them a sharp-edged breeze to brisk away the stillness of the night, and brought them too to a village, a place of drystone buildings roofed with slate, a place where people came out and greeted them.
"Do you rule the entire valley?" said Guest, as the people gathered around them.
"No," said Nol. "I thought I told you of that earlier. King Igpatan rules the lower reaches of the valley."
"I have never heard of this king," said Guest, uncertain in his weariness as to whether Nol had in fact earlier explicated the nature of the king. "How great are his realms?"
"They are of no great extent," said Nol. "For King Igpatan rules over no greater distance than one could comfortably walk between sunrise and sunset. But – come now! This is no time for geopolitical discussion. This is time for breakfast!"Guest was surprised to learn that he had been engaged in geopolitical discussion, because he had merely thought himself to be asking a couple of very obvious questions. Nevertheless, he allowed himself to be led big stone table set outdoors in the morning sun. Placed around that table were three-legged stools in numbers sufficient for the seating of Nol's company, and waiting on that table were finger-bowls of warm water fragrant with bruised mint, and plates heaped with eggs, with hot chicken-meat, with potatoes, with soy beans, with dried fish and with roasted frogs.
"Magnificent!" said Jarl. Then, turning to Nol: "But perhaps the feast could be improved by the butchery of one of your villagers."
During the descent, Thodric Jarl's headache had diminished away to nothing. His broken ribs still gave him pain, but his morale had perked up amazingly, to the point where he had almost become a welcome traveling companion – and let the mention of this fact be taken as a clear proof of the objective clarity of this history, which makes no idle propaganda against the Rovac, but simply records the facts as they happened.
"An excellent suggestion, friend Rovac!" said Nol, taking Jarl's jest in the spirit in which it was meant. "But things grow slow in the mountains, so each of these villagers has taken a thousand years to grow meat sufficient for a cannibal feast. That being so, we cannot waste them casually, but must content ourselves with chickens."
"That contentment will be more than sufficient," said the elf-armored Pelagius Zozimus, surveying the feast with a professional eye, and asking himself fresh questions as to timing.
How had such a formidable meal been prepared at such short notice? One thing is for certain: a village of such manifest poverty never killed chickens except for the most especial occasions. It has been Written that wizards of Itch can build bells which can be rung thereafter from a distance of several leagues. So perhaps Nol had covertly used such a bell to signal the approach of himself and his guests; though, as Sken-Pitilkin and Zozimus were both exhausted, neither asked him about this, and neither thought to ask of it thereafter. Instead, they sat themselves down and set themselves to eat.
Over breakfast, Ontario Nol discussed in detail and depth the problems which Lord Onosh had experienced in collecting taxes from Locontareth, and suggested that the Witchlord Onosh was experiencing such difficulties because the people of that city and region derived no benefit from the taxes.
"You must give them something back," said Nol, "just as a farmer gives back something to his fields when he plows manure into the soil."
"I don't think they'd thank us for dumping them in manure," said Guest, meaning the revolutionaries of Locontareth.
"No, no," said Nol. "You misunderstand me."
Then Nol explained the matter all over again, in depth and in detail, though Sken-Pitilkin could have told him that the effort was futile.
"Well," said Guest, when he thought he understood as much of this theory as he was ever going to understand, "that's very nice of you, I mean, the ideas and all, and, ah, hospitality. Maybe my father can thank you for helping us."
"I need no thanks from your father," said Nol. "You yourself can help me."
"How?" said Guest.
"By sending me your brother."
"Morsh?" said Guest, remembering their conversation about Morsh Bataar's recently acquired habit of swimming. "You want Morsh? What on earth for? To teach you the art of the fish, is it?"
"It's not Morsh Bataar that I want," said Nol. "I want the other one. Eljuk Zala."
"But what would you want him for?" said Guest, who lacked the wit to guess.
"Eljuk will know," said Nol. "If he matches your description of him, he'll know immediately. Bring him to me!"
"Well, I would," said Guest, not particularly caring whether Ontario Nol wanted his brother for purposes of buggery or as sacrificial banquet-meat. "But it's a bit difficult. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, you can have him. But my father wouldn't like the idea at all. Eljuk's the imperial heir, that's his business, he's supposed to inherit."
"Put it to your father," said Nol. "Speak to Eljuk, then to your father, then tell me what the pair of them decide."
And, once Guest Gulkan had agreed to do that, Ontario Nol began to discuss the route which would allow Guest and his fellow air adventurers to exchange the unfamiliar dangers of the valley of Ul-donlok for the comforting certainties of the Collosnon Empire and its large-looming civil war.