Favanosin: a town which geographers believe to lie some 640 leagues from Locontareth along a southbound trade route which passes through territory long regarded by the Witchlord's regime as being hostile.
Immediately after the dramatic wreckfall of Sken-Pitilkin's flying roof, all was confusion, and the rest of the night was not much better. But, as day dawned, the Witchlord's forces began to fall into some kind of order.
"Grief of a dog!" said Rolf Thelemite. "My ear is torn!"
And indeed the Rovac warrior's left ear had been damaged, and his golden snake-serpent earring had been torn away altogether.
As Rolf Thelemite was lamenting the loss, the gray-bearded Thodric Jarl came up to him and addressed him in the Rovac tongue.
Rolf turned pale, and thereafter ceased his moaning.
"What did he say?" said Guest, a little later.
"I cannot tell you," said Rolf Thelemite despairingly.
But Guest was able to deduce Rolf Thelemite's plight for himself. The unfortunate Rolf had sworn to kill Guest if Guest made war on his father – but had been untrue to his oath.
Doubtless Thodric Jarl had told Rolf that he had more than a torn ear to worry about – and Rolf, an oath-breaker accursed of Rovac, had feared his imminent demise. Guest shared his perceptions with the dwarf Glambrax, who agreed that Rolf was doubtlessly doomed.
"While we held the ascendancy," said Glambrax cheerfully,
"Thodric Jarl would do nothing to disturb the peace between Witchlord and Weaponmaster. But now we are defeated, so there is no reason why he shouldn't disturb the peace as much as he wants."
So it was that the young Guest Gulkan and the dwarf Glambrax deduced that their good friend Rolf Thelemite stood in danger of immediate murder.
"What can we do about it?" said Guest.
"Well, we could place bets," said Glambrax.
"An excellent idea!" said Guest. "I wager that Rolf lasts a week!"
"What then is a week?" said Glambrax.
"It is an uncouth measurement of days," said Guest. "A measurement devised by wizards, and arcanely used in their most secret histories."
"How many days?" said Glambrax.
"Why," said Guest, finding himself at a loss, "fewer than twenty, I think."
"You think!" said Glambrax. "For a wager, we have to know! I wager that Rolf lasts three days, not more."
"Then my money will see him alive for six," said Guest.
"What money?" said Glambrax. "Name a sum. And show me you have that sum in your pockets!"
Thus did the valorous Guest Gulkan and the sturdy dwarf Glambrax address the threat which faced the unfortunate Rolf Thelemite; and Rolf was never far from their thoughts in the days that followed.
As the Weaponmaster and the dwarf wagered on Rolf Thelemite's fate, the army from the air-wrecked roof made its way south, accompanied by an uncouth assemblage of baggage animals which were heavily burdened by the imperial treasure chests.
Of course, at the outset, that force numbered scarcely a half a thousand men; but whereas retreating armies are normally diminished by deaths, stragglings and desertions, this one grew – albeit not by much.
Everyone in Locontareth's defending army had known at least this much of the Witchlord's plan: that he intended to retreat south toward Favanosin. And Khmar, launched as he was upon a furious and unparalleled course of slaughter, gave every surviving defender the strongest of all possible incentives to join that retreat. For Khmar was making an example of Locontareth, brutally punishing resistance to deter other cities (Stranagor in particular) from resisting him likewise.
Fearing the knives of the example-maker, those who escaped from Locontareth on foot or on hoof soon quested south, and some of these – inspired by an entirely reasonable terror of Khmar – managed to catch up with those who had escaped from the beleaguered city on a flying roof. So it was that, as they moved south, Witchlord and Weaponmaster enlarged their small army, until the balance between recruitment and desertions saw its numbers level out at just short of 600 men.
In the anxiety of the retreat, Lord Onosh found his son Guest uncommonly buoyant, and was hard put to place the reason. For had they not been defeated? Had they not been driven from the city?
Had they not just lost a great empire? Did they not stand in fear of losing their lives? So was the boy drunk, or was he mad? Or had Sken-Pitilkin or some other been maliciously feeding him strong drugs unfit for human consumption?
On brief enquiry, the Witchlord soon discovered that the young Guest Gulkan was in high spirits because he had made himself the lord of a great gambling pool, and in concert with the dwarf Glambrax was fleecing lesser gamblers, winning wine, and money, and the favors of the army's few ragged camp followers, and extra rations into the bargain.
And the gambling did not concern the running of horses or the jumping of frogs – no, it concerned the date of Rolf Thelemite's murder!
Lord Onosh promptly summoned his wizards, the sagacious Sken-Pitilkin and the slug-chef Pelagius Zozimus. He explained what was happening.
"Why, my lord, it is all true," said Zozimus. "I myself am betting that Jarl will murder Rolf when we get to Favanosin."
"I think that optimistic," said Sken-Pitilkin. "I don't think
Rolf will be murdered at all, at least not this year. I've bet that he won't be murdered till Midsummer's Day at the earliest."
"I will not have anyone murdered in my army!" said Lord Onosh, outraged. "You will halt this business of murder right away!"
"But, my lord," said Sken-Pitilkin. "Both Rolf and Jarl are
Rovac warriors, and all such warriors are the natural enemies of wizards. Why should we then care if they kill each other off?"
"And besides," said Zozimus, "if we interfere in their mutual murders, it will give them excuse to band together and murder us."
"Which would be a great loss," added Sken-Pitilkin, "for, if rumor is true, my cousin Zozimus has just designed a new and delicious recipe for slugs, a recipe most pleasing to your palate."
"It is true," said Lord Onosh heavily.
Then the Witchlord dismissed his wizards and called for the witches Zelafona and Bao Gahai. After short discussion with the Witchlord, that pair of females took Thodric Jarl aside and had a long discussion with him. After which Thodric Jarl was seen to be looking uncommonly queasy for the next three or four days; Rolf Thelemite's spirits rose; and Guest Gulkan's ebullience ebbed as his gambling syndicate broke up, rumor having established that the fine sport of Rolf Thelemite's murder had been effectively terminated by a killjoy Witchlord.
Thus did the valorous Guest Gulkan and the sturdy dwarf Glambrax save their friend Rolf Thelemite from a certain death at the hands of the murderous Thodric Jarl; for it is certain that, had Guest and Glambrax not been so keenly apprehensive of their friend's impending murder as to encourage an entire army into gambling on the event, then Lord Onosh would not have been so swiftly and so decisively moved into terminating that threat.
With Guest and Glambrax thus entered into the ranks of friend-saving heroes, the lords of Locontareth escaped from the marauding Khmar and retreated with their army down the road to Favanosin, at first in disarray, but later in warlike formation, with vanguard ahead and rearguard behind, with scouts on the flanks and sentries posted nightly to vigil out the dark. They feared pursuit; and, as they distanced themselves from Locontareth, they also began to fear the violence of the south.
The south was hostile to the Collosnon Empire, and there was no safe refuge there for a former ruler of Gendormargensis.
However, since the Witchlord Onosh had wisely extracted his treasure from Locontareth, his fugitive army had good gold to buy its necessities – or most of them, for the locals either did not have spare clothes to sell, or had them but refused to sell them.
So the army rapidly grew ragged; for the speed with which the barbarity of thorns and the lubricity of mud can reduce a splendid army to a horde of ragged beggars is nothing short of amazing.
Though the army could not replace its increasingly tattered clothing, it was able to feed itself through purchase, hence had no need to pillage – and so was able to march far south without being forced to bring the natives to battle. But Lord Onosh soon realized that the southrons were arming in his wake; that a force of indeterminate strength was dogging his rearguard; and that the country ahead was being roused and wakened.
In the face of this uncomfortable knowledge, Lord Onosh held a council of war.
They were then in a forest which was heavy with the smoke of an army's campfires. They had halted early, because ahead of them was a small river. To continue, they must cross it: and people had been seen moving furtively on the other side. Thodric Jarl deemed it a good place for an ambush, for the far bank was steep. Hence they had halted for their council of war.
As they would go no further that day whatever the council's decision, Pelagius Zozimus had set himself to turn out a meal, and was presiding over a simmering cauldron from which there rose the most delicious smell imaginable. Near that cauldron, as if drawn there by the potency of its aromas, was a ragged assembly seated on fallen logs.
There was the Witchlord Onosh, dressed like a beggar in his refugee rags. The dralkosh Bao Gahai. The old but elegant witch Zelafona. The dwarf Glambrax, a belt of fifty scalps around his waist, whittling a flute from a human thigh bone with a wicked little knife. Guest Gulkan himself, the Weaponmaster in his glory.
The Rovac warrior Rolf Thelemite and his murderous compatriot Thodric Jarl. The sagacious Sken-Pitilkin. And, of course, the slug-chef Zozimus himself.
"We have not troops sufficient to pursue our original plan," said the Witchlord.
"To get to Favanosin, you mean?" said Guest.
"No!" said his father. "Favanosin was but a ploy! Remember?
Our original plan was to make a great arc to Gendormargensis, and seize that city while Khmar pursued us in the south."
"That was not our plan," said Guest. "That was Jarl's plan.
Or your plan too, maybe, but never mine."
This was provocative, and Lord Onosh had to struggle mightily to control his temper. By then, the reversion of authority from son to father was more or less complete. By imperceptible degrees, Guest Gulkan had lost all authority, since he had proved lacking in the necessary skill, drive, diplomacy and decisiveness required to rule a crisis. While the Witchlord Onosh had busied himself with the organization of an army, his son the Weaponmaster had been embroiled in the ever-increasing complexities of institutionalized gambling, thus permanently discrediting himself in the eyes of hard-bitten veterans such as Thodric Jarl.
Ever since the hanging at Ink, Guest Gulkan had shown a tendency to shy away from absolute adult responsibility. And, after Witchlord and Weaponmaster had made an alliance at Babaroth,
Lord Onosh had accelerated this tendency by deliberately minimizing Guest's involvement in all decisions – even those which might well have been within the young man's competence. As adult authority had passed from his hands, Guest had increasingly reverted to a childish irresponsibility which vexed his father sorely; and Lord Onosh showed unexpected strength of character in being able to control his temper in the face of his son's many provocations.
Avoiding the easy opportunity for uproarious argument, Lord Onosh now said:
"The plan, the original plan, was a feint toward Favanosin, followed by an eastward arc to Gendormargensis. We are now too weak to do any such thing. Yet even if we abandon hope of capturing Gendormargensis, I believe we must still turn east to have hope of safety. Let us make for the shores of the Swelaway Sea. Let us take passage to Safrak's islands. Let us there settle – or, if denied refuge by Safrak, let us take the trading route to the free city of Port Domax. So say I. Now what say you?"
There was silence, as if one and all were so battered by the successive shock of events as to have lost all powers of initiative and self-determination.
"Well," said Lord Onosh, with some impatience, and with a harshness which betrayed the stress he was under. "You have heard me speak. Must I parrot out the whole business three times over?
Or have you opinions to submit? What is your counsel?"
As a child may sometimes feel over-burdened by adult responsibilites, so too may an adult; and, though Lord Onosh had long sought absolute power, in the difficulties of defeat he was finding the solitary burden of such power to be a weight most uncommonly difficult to bear.
"I say," said Thodric Jarl, speaking first since he thought all duties of battle were primarily his, "that we are in no state to fight our way to the south. Furthermore, what we know of Favanosin is written in smoke. None amongst our number has been there. Some say that ships from that harbor venture to Argan, to Ork, to Ashmolea, but nobody can vouch for this of a certainty. I believe more is known of Port Domax, though the knowledge belongs to others, not to me." Sken-Pitilkin cleared his throat.
"Mighty is the wisdom of the Rovac," said Sken-Pitilkin, "and Jarl has truthed of Favanosin of a verity. All we know of Favanosin is that it clutches the sea's shore like a very whore's egg. But Port Domax – why, I've been there myself."
"Port Domax exists, certainly," said Pelagius Zozimus, denying Sken-Pitilkin the fullness of his intended oratory. "Sken-Pitilkin has seen it, and as for me – why, I once ran a small eatery in that very city. That was half a thousand years ago, true, but I've been there often enough since then. Its language is Toxteth; its business is trade; and the city is well-connected in enterprise with Safrak and Ashmolea, with Wen Endex and with the more southron parts of Yestron. I vote for Port Domax."
"If a witch can agree with a wizard," said Zelafona, who had the shortest voice of any in that council, "then I vote likewise."
"And I – " said Glambrax.
"Hush yourself!" said Jarl. "Nobody here asked opinion of a dwarf."Guest Gulkan and Rolf Thelemite took that as a cue for violence, and so grabbed the dwarf and sat on him, though not without difficulty, for Glambrax was prodigiously strong for his size, and could have mastered either one of them in single combat.
"My sister speaks with reason," said Bao Gahai; and, though she had nothing new to add to the discourse, she reinforced the dignity of her own authority by rehashing at length all the arguments which had been so far presented.
"Well," said Guest, seated panting atop a struggling dwarf,
"now we're talking sense, though I hope we find footing on Safrak.
I've no wish to run to the Sea of Salt, assuming the thing to exist, so I'd far more happily settle on Alozay, or some such similar island. Khmar can't bring his horse against us, not there, whereas we, why, with time to spare we can – Glambrax! – we can – grief of gods, the thing's biting! – we can plan – Rolf! Get his head, man! – we can plan Khmar's destruction and – ya! – and think to brute back the empire. Gods! The thing's biting!"
"Obviously," said Lord Onosh, observing the course of Guest Gulkan's oratory, "the energy of the young and of the dwarves who play with them is truly prodigious in its optimism. Yet I think
Khmar secure, and doubt that the empire's reclamation lies within our power."
"But the journey to Safrak does," said Thodric Jarl, rising to his feet, and so bringing their council to an end.
Thus on the following day the Witchlord's army turned east, making for the Swelaway Sea. And a hard going they had of it, what with the difficulties of the terrain, the lack of provisions, the squalor of mud, and the frosts and snows.
For they had all seriously underestimated the derelictions of the wilderness which lay between the road to Favanosin and the shores of the Swelaway Sea. In that wilderness, there was nothing to buy and there was nothing to pillage. There was frost, mire, muck, swamp and weather-hardened thorn. Now the army saw desertions in truth, and it had been reduced to a bare 400 men by the time it arrived at the Swelaway Sea in the snow-shod bleakness of a season of withered sun.
Ah, that winter! That snow! Even now, the mere memory of it tempts the chronicler toward an exercise in self-pity. Even now, the worst of dreams recall the bite of that season. The army had become a rat-rag troupe of beggars, of cripples and convalescents, of blank-staring refugees and muttering derelicts. The bellies of the greatest lords amongst them were sick with the desolations of hunger. Numb fingers and bone-poke ribs. Fumbling dreams. Hope- wreck and delusion. They were all in, finished, exhausted, their last resources gone.
Yet they reached the freshwater sea.
Here a memory, very clear and sharp. The Witchlord Onosh, seated on a lakeside boulder, with his knees to its flanks as if he were seated upon a horse. The dirt of unwashed fatigue crusted in the big, fat, deep and inexplicable gouges which track their way down his slanting forehead. The black of his eyes catching the gray depressions of the everstretch waters of that horizon- exceeding inland lake. He sits; and watches; and breathes; and the smoke of his breath dissipates in a silence unbroken by any sound saving that of the rasping fatigue of his lungs.
It is the silence which stands out in memory: the silence which oppressed that army as it first absorbed the stare-stretch impact of the presence of so much water. For his own part, the Witchlord thought that everstretch of gray a very monstrosity in its insolence. Surely there should not be so much water in the world.
Though the vastness of the Swelaway Sea was but a commonplace matter to Guest, since he had grown well acquainted with it during the time of his exile on Alozay, never in all his life had Lord Onosh seen either this freshwater sea or the far greater Sea of Salt which was said to exist on the borders of the continent which contained his empire. For, though Lord Onosh had supervised the enforcement of law and taxes in the seaport city of Stranagor, he had always done so from Gendormargensis. And, though the Weaponmaster was said to have been born in Stranagor, the Witchlord had never been to that seaport, and knew no more of the Hauma Sea than he did of the Sea of Salt or this present freshwater sea.
"It is a dream," said Lord Onosh.
Who was so fatigued that fragments of dream were ever spilling into his reality. Unpleasant fragments, for the most part. The heads of horses. Bloody blades. And -
Even as Lord Onosh sat there upon his horse, a dream reconfigured the world in fancy's fashion. Bloodred hairs sprouted from the glabrous glaciations of the lake. Oozing and creaming, a slow-headed slug in the fullness of its monstrosity -
The Witchlord dismounted from his rock.
"Wa," said Lord Onosh, shaking the dreams out of his head.
Then, bootstep by bootstep, he crunched across the thin and narrow lakeside beach, his weight bearing down on smallstone and shellbreak. He kicked a stone into the lake, and was splashed for his pains.
"It is real," said Lord Onosh.
It was real, and it was cold. The entire Swelaway Sea seemed one vast sink of cold. The lake was fringed with a lacing of frozen ice; and, indeed, knowledgeable geographers aver that only the underground upspout of hot volcanic water keeps the lake in its entirety from freezing to a single block of ice in the rigors of Tameran's continental winter.
The Witchlord Onosh took off the battle-gauntlets which he had worn for days. With his bare fingers, he picked up a fragment of ice. He held it up to the watery sun then discarded it to the water. The ice sliced into the water with a clean-slick splash.
Plunged. Then upfloated. Lord Onosh stooped to the water, cupped his hand, dipped for water, and drank.
"It is sweet," said Lord Onosh. "It is bitter cold, but it is sweet."
Then the Witchlord filled a drinking horn with water and jangling ice, and passed it round that others might drink thereof.
The horn came last to Sken-Pitilkin.
"It is sweet," said Lord Onosh, watching as Sken-Pitilkin drank. "Sweet. Is it not?"
"It is, my lord," said Sken-Pitilkin.
"Yet you have told me a thousand times if you have told it me once that the sea is not sweet but salt."
"I meant not this sea, my lord."
"Then what sea?" said Lord Onosh.
"He meant the true sea," said Bao Gahai.
"The true sea?" said Lord Onosh.
"He meant that real sea of salt which girdles the entire world," said Bao Gahai. "This is not that true sea."
"No?" said Lord Onosh. "Then what is it? Something I have conjured from dream for my own self-delusion?"
"The Swelaway Sea is but an over-large lake, my lord," said Bao Gahai.
"Lake!" said Lord Onosh. He looked across the waters. The distant horizon promised nothing but an eternity of water. "This so large yet you call it a lake?"
He knew it, he had heard it, he had been told it a thousand times, yet in the face of the fact he found it hard to believe.
"The true sea is larger yet," said Bao Gahai. "In the true sea, my lord, there are storms which maul the shores and tear from the cliffs rocks which are larger than houses. In the true sea, my lord, the kraken uprises from the lurching depths, and swallows down ships in their entirety. In the true sea, my lord, there live birds which never rest but which fly eternally, born and dying on the wing. That is the true sea, compared to which this is but a little cup of nothing."
Lord Onosh closed his eyes, squeezed hard, dismissed the visions Bao Gahai had conjured, then opened his eyes again. There lay the Swelaway Sea, gray and placid, a pool of ominous quiescence. Lord Onosh felt the gray eternities of water sapping his will, and had a premonition that he would die here. Not quick death clean, not death made battle-axe, but death made slow, death made a bone-picker, death dragged out over years. The Witchlord envisioned himself picking his way along the beach in his rags, picking his way in the wind and the rain, eating spoilt eggs half- formed into birds, eating the udders of rats and the bellies of worms, his very name in time forgotten by his own tongue.
He shuddered.
Upon the beach of that bleak and barren lake in the heartland of Tameran, there were shells of a bleached blue fringed with the last traces of violet. Lord Onosh had no name to specify the particularity of these shells, just as he had no name for the foreign waterbird which he saw briefing its way across the sky.
This was a place without language, a place of utter desolation.
"Yet rock is still rock and water still water," said Lord Onosh.
"My lord," said Thodric Jarl, interrupting the Witchlord's extended personal confrontation with the realities of the freshwater sea. "My lord!" gray beard, gray hair, gray eyes – Jarl, unkempt and derelict after the rigors of the march, his features seamed with dirt and his eyes shot through with blood, why, Thodric Jarl right then looked like a very prophet in the grip of revelation. It was then the winter of the year Alliance 4307, and Thodric Jarl was but 27 years of age, yet such was the battering which this warrior had taken that he could easily have passed for 50.
"My lord!" said Jarl.
"Yes?" said Lord Onosh, squaring off against this fevered prophet, and bracing himself to receive commands from the gods, or a great diktat concerning the conduct of affairs amidst that living death which we call life.
"My lord," said Jarl, "I have for my lord's inspection the first spoils of our latest conquest."
So spoke the Rovac warrior, solemnly displaying a double handful of water-snails for his liege lord's inspection.
For, after the initial silence which had struck the army as it contemplated the lake, Jarl had got busy with practical investigations while his emperor was still indulging himself in metaphysical despairs.
"We can eat these?" said Lord Onosh, making a dubious inspection of Jarl's wet and somewhat slimy trophies.
The Witchlord Onosh, disturbed in his moody philosophizing, tried to sound enthusiastic about the dripping molluscs heaped in the swordsman's calloused hands, though in truth he resented the brusque commonsense intrusion of this Rovac mercenary.
"Can we eat them?" said Jarl, half-echoing his emperor. "One would presume so." Then, as Lord Onosh turned back to the lake:
"One would presume they might make a very good meal, my lord."
Lord Onosh saw that he was not going to be left alone to meditate on the derelictions of his fate. He was a lord of men, after all, albeit a lord of defeat, and such a luminary has certain responsibilities, even in the dampness of his extinguishment. Lord Onosh noted that Guest had made no move to give any orders.
"Zozimus!" said Lord Onosh, rousing his voice to the challenge. "Come here! Come here, and pronounce upon on our scavenging!"
His chef came hurrying over to examine the spoils of Jarl's lake-plundering.
"This is the water snail Mabarakorabantibus Dontharpis," said Zozimus, holding a sample to the light. "Or so the beast is named in the Ilapatarginath system of taxonomy, though it is known elsewhere as the edible helmet. It is of wide distribution, and even occurs on the shores of the Araconch Waters, where Barglan of the Empire once made a notable feast of the things."
Such was the loquacity of Pelagius Zozimus when he was showing off. It was truly amazing that the Witchlord Onosh stood still for such nonsense; and, indeed, to move from specifics to generalities, it is amazing how a mere slug-chef can always and ever so easily and so impudently command so much of the time of his lord and master, when a scholar can scarcely get a hearing at all. Zozimus commanded the Witchlord's time as if it was his by right; and Lord Onosh listened to Zozimus with the patience of a very rock.
Then:
"So," said Lord Onosh, weighing one of Jarl's lake-morsels in his hand, "we can eat these."
"We can, my lord," said Zozimus. "Furthermore, the water weed which grows from the rocks is also edible."
And you can bet all the gold in your pockets, and bet your favorite slave as well, and your wife, and your mother-in-law's walking stick, that Zozimus went on to name that weed, and to mention five or six occasions on which the cookery of that weed had been well received, and to state a dozen recipes for its preparation – for when the show-off mood was upon Zozimus there was no stopping him.
"So far, so good," said Lord Onosh, when he had absorbed great quantities of this advice. "Snails and water weed. Very well. But I warrant it would still make a thin meal."
"True, my lord," said Zozimus, grabbing Glambrax by the ear,
"but it would go very well with some dwarf."
At that, the dwarf kicked and struggled so much that Zozimus had to let him go. But such was the cunning of the slug-chef's timing that the dwarf, impelled by the violence of his own efforts to escape, rolled over and over and plunged into the crackle-ice sweetwaters of the Swelaway Sea. He struggled out, cursing, and immediately went on the attack with tinder and flint, striving to make himself a fire.
"As you can see," said Zozimus, observing the dwarf's prompt success, "we have fire already. We will shortly also have fish."
Then Zozimus produced from his robes a vial of something he claimed to be fish poison.
"Do you always travel with such?" said Lord Onosh in astonishment.
"But of course, my lord," said Zozimus blandly.
And poured the stuff upon the waters, where it worked as smoothly as a miracle, for very shortly there were any number of dead fish belly-up and gaping.
Thus the Witchlord Onosh came to the shores of the Swelaway Sea with the ragtag remnants of his army, and the sea provided for him fish, and waterweed, and the snails to flesh out the meal, and so a banquet was had.
When the banqueting was done, talk turned to the future.
"The question now," said Thodric Jarl, "is how we conquer the Safrak Islands."
"Pardon?" said Lord Onosh.
"My lord means conquest, does he not?" said Jarl. "Surely he did not bring us all this way just for the pleasure of poisoning a few fish and watching a dwarf make vomit of them."
So spoke Jarl, casually dismissing their dead, their defeats, their retreats, the pangs being suffered by Glambrax (who had grossly over-indulged himself by eating the eyes from the head of each and every fish which had gone toward the feeding of an entire army) and all the sundry embroilments of the catastrophic nightmare which they had so recently and so strenuously lived through.
"One considers," said Lord Onosh, choosing his words carefully, "one considers that the wetness of the Swelaway Sea has certain implications for our future actions. I scarcely think to ride to battle across the waves, nor do I think the seizure of a few boats would do us much good beneath the invincible cliffs of Alozay."
"My father has spoken well," said Guest Gulkan. "The Safrak
Islands are defended beyond all possibility of conquest."
"Then what does my lord intend?" said Jarl. "Are we to retreat to Port Domax, as was earlier suggested? Or what?"
"It is said that the Safrak Islands are but scantily populated," said Lord Onosh, "and that Molothair is a city largely deserted. I will treat with the lords of Alozay, and will seek to hold one of the minor islands in fief, paying for the privilege.
There we will house our people and make our future."
"I think," said Thodric Jarl, with a suggestion of a growl giving a hard edge to his wisdom, "that such privileges will not be lightly bought."
"The wealth of Gendormargensis is with us," said Lord Onosh.
"We do not come empty handed, and our embassy will say as much."
Then Lord Onosh despatched scouts to seek along the shores of the lake for a boat, and when the scouts had been successful the Witchlord then sent ambassadors to Safrak, their mission being to negotiate the purchase of an island where the Witchlord might settle with the remnants of his army. The ambassadors were Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, the witch Zelafona, and Guest Gulkan, for these three had a knowledge of the Galish, which tongue was alien to the Witchlord's lips.
All through the journey to Alozay, Sken-Pitilkin drilled Guest Gulkan ruthlessly in the Galish tongue, seeking to awaken that learning which had been hammered into the boy's head in earlier days. But the task was difficult, for the approach to Alozay saw Guest ever slipping away into dreams of glory.
For Alozay, of course, was the home of Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis, a demon incarnate in a huge block of jade-green stone.
During Guest's earlier exile on Alozay, that demon had tempted the boy, promising that he would be granted the powers of a wizard if he would only consent to quest to the far-distant city of Obooloo, and in Obooloo to liberate the Great God Jocasta from the Temple of Blood.
Thus, while journeying to Safrak's ruling island, Guest Gulkan dreamt mightily of demons, and of Great Gods, and of wizardhood, and of future glory. Sken-Pitilkin, Zelafona and Guest Gulkan were received at Alozay by Banker Sod, the Governor of the Safrak Bank, who allowed them into the mainrock Pinnacle. The pale-skinned iceman chose to interrogate them in his office, which was adorned with the shields of the Toxteth-speaking mercenaries of the Guardians. Upon those shields were painted glowing scenes of bloody decapitations – and worse.
A very miracle of luxury was that office, warmed with braziers and furs, and in their reduced condition the Witchlord's ambassadors were at first hesitant even to seat themselves. But Sod commanded them into chairs; and set mulled wine before them; and had hot chestnuts served to them; and then, seeing the gnawing hunger which obsessed them, saw to it that they were served with hot bread, and soup thick with onions and garlic.
"Well," said Sod, when his visitors were done with their eating. "Are we pleasured? Are we sated?"
"My lord has been most hospitable," said Sken-Pitilkin.
"Yes," said Sod. "Particularly considering that you have given me cause for hostility rather than hospitality." Then the pale-skinned iceman endeavored to skewer Sken-Pitilkin with the bright-staring gaze of his yellow eyes, and bared his yellow teeth in something reminiscent of a dog's aggression, and said:
"Hostility, yes, for when you were last in the precincts of my Bank, you caused considerable distress. You precipitated a fight.
Or was it you?"
With that, Sod turned his skewering attention from Sken-Pitilkin to Guest Gulkan.
"That was no precipitation of mine," said Guest. "That was Jarl, Jarl did the fighting, on account of some precipitation between himself and yourself."
"Yes, well," said Sod. "What did he tell you of that?"Guest searched his memory, for it was long since he had discussed that subject with Jarl.
"Jarl says," said Guest, slowly, "that he saw you last in Chi'ash-lan. He presumes you to be hiding here with a mighty price upon your head, which would explain the violence of your reaction to his recognition of you."
"Has it occurred to you," said Sod, "that if I do truly wish to keep my presence here a secret, I might do well to encompass your death, and to send out agents to slaughter down Thodric Jarl as well."
"I think you not so stupid," said Guest. "Since last we left this place, why, Jarl and myself, we've been to Ema-urk and the Ibsen-Iktus, the mountains, we've been to Babaroth, to Locontareth, to half the places in between. Even as we sit here, the story of our travels echoes down the roadway. We in our courage have entered into epic, and the sagas will sing us famously a thousand years from hence."
"The boy speaks in truth," said the dralkosh Zelafona. "My sister Bao Gahai herself interrogated the warrior Jarl in depth, and heard from him all that is known of your history. It is a mighty great mystery, you being here, given the vastness of space which separates Chi'ash-lan from Safrak. Still, here you are, and all the world knows it, and if you had hoped to keep the matter a secret then you are far, far too late."
"If a wizard may agree with a witch," said Sken-Pitilkin,
"then let me speak in support of Zelafona. For I myself discussed this mystery with Ontario Nol."
"I know him not," said Banker Sod.
"Ontario Nol," said Sken-Pitilkin, slipping effortlessly into his lecturing mode, "is the abbot of the monastery of Qonsajara.
He dwells in the heights of those mountains known as Ibsen-Iktus, and Guest Gulkan's brother Eljuk dwells there likewise, living as apprentice to the master. The pair of them have had your story in detail, and will keep it fresh in memory for a generation or more.
Thus has your privacy been betrayed, and permanently."
Sod sighed.
"So," said Sod. "It has happened. We must hope that no harm comes of it. Very well. To return to our muttons | | "
Then Banker Sod, the Governor of the Safrak Bank, negotiated with the emissaries who had come to speak for the Witchlord Onosh.
The negotiations proved surprisingly easy.
The final agreement was that Safrak would allow Lord Onosh to hold in fief the minor island of Im-skim-patorta, providing he paid for the privilege. Lord Onosh was invited to bring his men to the hot springs at Spradley Rock, and there to prepare himself and his men for a banquet, and then to proceed to the island of Alozay for that self-same banquet and the formal signing of a treaty which would enshrine the terms of this agreement. Guest and the other ambassadors gladly took this agreement back to the Witchlord Onosh. A fleet of fishing boats accompanied them, for Sod had decided to be generous in providing transport; and he was generous also with the dispensing of bread, and onions, and garlic, and sacks of barley. So it was that, some days and several excellent meals later, the Witchlord and his men found themselves upon Spradley Rock.
Spradley Rock was the least of the Safrak Islands, excepting for a few nameless rocks, and it was a place of no great consequence, being as it was no more than a low-lying and industriously rockgardened outcrop of geology featuring much sand and many hot springs.
It was then deep winter, and on most days the cold and blighting winds were sweeping the Swelaway Sea with the bitterness of sleet, yet the winter weather was fine and blue when the Witchlord Onosh and his company came to the hotspring waters of Spradley Rock, and those hotspring waters were unstinting in their welcome. Green were the pools of those waters, green fringed with iron-brown and yellow, and the smell of sulphur was heavy on the air as luxuriating steam uprose in clouds so plentiful that they suggested the island to be in the process of volcanic eruption.
The witches Zelafona and Bao Gahai were allowed a small and isolated pool of their own, while the men piled into the greater waters, where they washed away the blood of battles, the muck of the horseplains, fishscales and cockroaches, beetles and slugs.
Bulked huge within their heapings of wool, of furs, and of sundry rags, the men had looked like great bears, but once stripped down to their skins they proved painfully thin and meager.
Now the Yarglat do not usually take baths, considering the womb's nine-month bloodbath to be washing sufficient to last any man for a lifetime; and, furthermore, there is amongst the Yarglat a strenuous taboo which forbids one man to be seen naked by another. Yet when the Witchlord Onosh commanded universal bathing, he was not disobeyed; for the Yarglat had largely deserted his army, leaving him with a force comprised of the Rovac, of the Sharla, and of representatives of sundry other peoples.
Besides, the men of that company were so far from their former lives that they might as well have found themselves in a different world entirely, and so they adapted to new customs with the ease of those who have been killed and reincarnated.
Many strange things were revealed in those pools, such as scars, and boils, and ulcers, and Rolf Thelemite's third nipple, and the fact that Morsh Bataar had not one omphalos but two.
Revealed too were a great many tatoos, most of them being of uncompromising obscenity. But the most obscene and grotesque sight you ever did see in your life was Pelagius Zozimus, he of the withered neck and the spindly shanks, he with the skin clinging close to his ribs and a revolting little slug-pot of a beer belly bulging from his abdomen, he with his stick-thin arms from which the muscles stood out like knobbly tumors.
In the deepest and hottest of the pools of Spradley Rock, Guest Gulkan scrubbed his father's back with sand, while listening to the cackling laughter from the pool where the two witches soaked themselves. From somewhere came a shout of male outrage followed by the evil chuckle of the dwarf Glambrax – then by a riotous whooping pursuit, and then at length a very cold splash as expedient justice was administer to a delinquent mannikin.
Then arose a very strange sound, much like a drunken dog serenading in competition with a wildcat. This curious sound was that of Pelagius Zozimus in the act of singing. At least, Zozimus thought he was singing: though in that he was doubtlessly in a minority of one. This bravura performance by the slug-chef Zozimus can only be compared to that of the skavamareen; and if you know not what a skavamareen might be, then please note that it is best compared to a wizard of Xluzu in his musical passages.
An army of Yarglat barbarians would have lynched Zozimus immediately, but lesser peoples such as the Sharla and the Rovac are more tolerant. While Zozimus was thus caterwauling not one word of singe word of complaint came from anywhere amongst that whale-lazy multitude of simmering barbarians; and from this it may be known of a certainty that the Witchlord's army had entirely lost its fighting spirit.
Though he was of Yarglat birth, Guest Gulkan shared in this general tolerance, and so instead of rushing for his sword and decapitating the delinquent Zozimus, Guest kneaded the bones of his father's vertebrae with handfuls of sand, while the bloodflush heat soothed away the rigors of the long retreat from Locontareth.
Thus it was that the last rigors of the winter-weather retreat were eased away on Spradley Rock. On that island, a great langour came upon the Witchlord's warriors as they relaxed in the balm of the great heat, while clouds of steam ascended to those greater clouds of white which hung suspended in the clear and limitless blue of a clearwind winter's day.
Yet, as Guest soothed away the horrors of the past and prepared for the future, he could not suppress a certain unease about that future. For, under the terms which Safrak had imposed upon Lord Onosh, his company must surrender its weapons before taking itself and its treasure to the mainrock Pinnacle to indulge in the banquet which would precede the signing of a treaty and the handing over of that treasure; and Guest did not at all like the idea of being without his sword.
Still.
With bathing done, he got out from the water and dressed himself in the clean linen which Safrak had so kindly provided for the Witchlord and his men. How Safrak had come up with clothing for so many at such short notice was a mystery, but the feat had been managed.
As Guest and the other warriors rose from their bath, the sagacious wizard Sken-Pitilkin descended to the waters, hoping to have a private bath in the luxury of undisturbed peace. Only now did he realize that, by waiting, he had made a grievous error – for it would be quite some time before the fair island of Spradley recovered from this invasion. The pools which had formerly been clear and clean were now stewpots of murk topped with generous heapings of foaming scum, and layered at the bottom with a thick sediment of dead lice, parboiled fleas and other wildlife. Indeed, the water had turned the most putridly bilious mix of blue and green, for all the world as if a battalion of drunkards had taken turns at vomiting into it.
Nevertheless, Hostaja Torsen Sken-Pitilkin made the best of it, and washed his pallor (natural to one born in Galsh Ebrek, where the Yudonic Knights tend to be pale in the absence of sun, their native color being if anything the pink of their blood), and found himself flushed to an uncommon red by the heat of the water, for all the world as if he were a very Ebrell Islander in his breeding.
Then Sken-Pitilkin joined the others in putting on clean linen. He found the company changed to a truly imperial splendor.
Each of its members looking a good ten years younger now that the muck, filth and stale battle-sweat had at last been washed from their faces.
Then that great company took itself off to the island of Alozay in a fleet of boats, most of which had been provided by the Safrak Bank. When they reached that island, they ascended the mainrock Pinnacle by great winch-baskets of creaking wickerwork, which were hauled up from the docks by ropes.
Lord Onosh had found five mountaineers to survey the mainrock
Pinnacle, though he had found them with difficulty, for the sport of mountaineering had long been outlawed in the Collosnon Empire as a reckless abomination – and quite rightly so, for it is entirely unnatural, this business of crawling like a beetle up great mounds of rock, and kicking down boulders to bash in the skulls of one's fellows (which amusement is one of the principal attractions of mountain climbing as practiced by the Yarglat, for they climb in a competitive fashion, and count themselves unsatisfied if they finish their mountain without nine in ten of their number having met their deaths upon its slopes). The mountaineers pronounced the approach to the mainrock Pinnacle to be difficult in the extreme, for the heights overhung the docks, and there were no chimneys by means of which a climber could easily ascend to those heights.
Lord Onosh chose to be winched upwards in the company of his mountaineers, so their reports were delivered to him privily while he and his climbers were safe in the isolation of their creaking wickerwork.
Then they got to the top, and found that the great winch- baskets had been dragged to the heights by bluff and hearty washerwomen working a windlass. Lord Onosh was dismayed to realize that his life had been entrusted to something as weak as a woman.
But these women were like unto bears, for in truth the strength of your average washerwoman is nothing short of marvelous, for she spends all day thumping and pummelling, and hefting great burdens of wet and dripping wool. Thus some washerwomen of prodigious strength feature nobly in the myth-cycle concerning the ancient war between men and women, and the greatest of these washerwomen was Bilch.
According to legend, the washerwoman Bilch was of such great strength that she once split the skull of an apprentice boy with a single blow from her open hand, and split it with such violence that his eyes flew a full seventy paces in different directions, and his upper teeth were propelled downward into the rock where they buried themselves to the depth of a spear, and his upper teeth were hurled upwards with such a great velocity that they slaughtered a flight of sparrows, so that Bilch stood victorious over the apprentice boy with a great rain of dead birds falling all about her.
Whether this is true or not – one suspects some slight degree of exaggeration may have colored the facts – it is nevertheless a firm fact that the strength of washerwomen has become legendary for the best of all possible reasons. Each of them has the muscles of a very bear-wrestler, and a man may trust himself to the strength of those muscles in good conscience, whether in bed or out of it.
But we recall that Lord Onosh was but a Yarglat barbarian, and hence he was ignorant of the world's great literature, and in particular he was ignorant of the story of Bilch, and so was dismayed to find himself being hauled to the heights by mere women, and washerwomen at that.
Nevertheless, the Witchlord's anxieties passed once he reached those heights.
But the anxieties of his son were redoubled, for the Toxtethspeaking Guardians were everywhere, and their weapons were sharp, and Guest sensed them to be in a mood for war, and he was more uneasy than ever to find himself in such company with his own weapons lacking.
Still, all began well. Rooms had been prepared for the guests, including a big strongroom in which they could store their treasure chests. A guardroom adjoined that strongroom, so the Witchlord's most trusted boxers, wrestlers and bone-breakers could sit in guardianship of that treasure. With gold thus secured, the banquet began, and began well, and went along swimmingly till late into the night.
By which time Pelagius Zozimus had got very drunk, and was regaling all and sundry with a number of stories which he found intensely amusing, such as the tale of how he had once accidentally poisoned his companions with an ill-chosen fungus – a story which was not by any means amusing to those who had had to live through that near-catastrophe!
Nevertheless, the assembly received such stories in the best of all possible humors possible.
And, late in the night, as the banquet began to break up, all who were still sober enough to display any emotion whatsoever seemed still in excellent humor. Lord Onosh left early, saying he must check on his treasure then get to bed, for he was not as young as he used to be; but Guest sat long at the table with Zozimus and Sken-Pitilkin, and with the witches Zelafona and Bao Gahai.
And it seemed to Sken-Pitilkin – who had not joined the incautious Zozimus in overindulgence – that their hosts were uncommonly attentive in watching over wizards and witches alike, as if fearing that Lord Onosh might use these practitioners of power to make some move against the security of the mainrock
Pinnacle and the integrity of the Safrak Bank; and Sken-Pitilkin began to feel increasingly uneasy himself, and hoped that he would not find himself falling a victim to the paranoia of Bankers.