by Hugh Cook
Alagrace stated Khmar's terms simply.
Khmar would surrender up both Eljuk and Ontario Nol in exchange for the Witchlord's surrender of all claims to the Collosnon Empire.
"And," said Lord Alagrace, who was not yet finished. "And – "
Here he hesitated.
"And what?" said Lord Onosh sarcastically. "My head, perhaps?"
"No, my lord," said Lord Alagrace. "The only other thing which Khmar requires is the services of Thodric Jarl."
"Well!" said Lord Onosh. "He's out of luck! For Jarl is a free man! Were Jarl a slave, I could sell him or trade him, but it is an oath of fealty which binds us. Undo such an oath, and I undo my every claim to be fit for the rule of an empire."
"Jarl is a free man, as you say," said Lord Alagrace, "and Khmar does not seek him as a slave. Let us summon Jarl, and see what he says in his freedom, and it may be that he thinks alike with Khmar."
Lord Onosh thought this unlikely, but nevertheless had Jarl brought before them – and was somewhat distressed by the outcome.
For the Rovac warrior did not hesitate. On hearing that Khmar wanted him, the gray-bearded Jarl decided without hesitation that he would gladly return to the Collosnon Empire to fight for Khmar in Khmar's wars. Here we remember that Jarl, despite the gray of his beard, was aged but 26, and hence far too young to contemplate with equanimity the prospect of a lifetime's retirement on Alozay.
But, on interrogating Jarl, Lord Onosh discovered that the
Rovac warrior's chief concern was the woman Yerzerdayla, who was still resident in Gendormargensis. Offended to find his chiefest general deserting him for a woman's favors, Lord Onosh then arranged, by covert treaty, for Alagrace to arrange for Yerzerdayla to be covertly conveyed to Alozay, and for Thodric Jarl to be told that she had died.
"I have another Rovac warrior if you would like him," said Lord Onosh. "One Rolf Thelemite by name. Do you want him?"
"No thank you my lord," said Alagrace. "His name came up in conference, and Khmar said you could keep him."
"But he is a mighty warrior," said Lord Onosh, endeavoring to be persuasive. "So mighty in valor that I trusted him to be the bodyguard to my best-loved son, Guest Gulkan."
"Then that hardly speaks in his favor," said Lord Alagrace,
"for I have heard that Guest Gulkan is missing, and rumor holds him to be dead. In any case, Khmar distinctly said that he wished for Rolf Thelemite to remain in your service, to be a comfort to you in your old age."
"That was very generous of him," muttered Lord Onosh. "Very well! Let's draw up a treaty, then."
So a treaty was drafted, and bickered over. The last thing to be settled was its title: the Treaty of Eternal Friendship Between the Collosnon Empire and the Islands of Safrak. With the title confirmed, the thing was signed, and witnessed by everyone from the dwarf Glambrax to Edlard of the Guardians.
The treaty consigned the Collosnon Empire to the rule of Khmar and his heirs; it called on all those still resisting Khmar to surrender to his rule; it secured the Safrak Islands and the Swelaway Sea for Lord Onosh and his heirs; and it specified that there should be a peace between the Empire and the Islands:
"… until the last Rider be unseated from the Horse; or all horses lose their hair; or the wind cease its riding; or blood be milk and cheese be water; or the dogs be unheard by the campfires; or no child be born to any of the tents of the Yarglat; or Drangsturm fall and the Swarms claw all established order to an end."
That last bit about Drangsturm and the Swarms had been inserted into the language of the treaty by the wizard Sken-Pitilkin, who felt that the bits about wind, horses and hair were too vaguely unspecific for a legal document. (And who felt, too, that the language of a formal treaty should be suitably remote from that of a smoky barbarian campsite and the ethnological curiosities of a shaman's chant).
This treaty was signed at the end of spring in the year Alliance 4307. Come Midsummer's Day, when the year Alliance 4308 began, the conqueror Khmar formally proclaimed himself emperor, and that day was the first day of the year Khmar 1.
The lord emperor Khmar then began to plan the conquest of all of Tameran, excepting Safrak alone – the exception being an honest one, for Khmar was great in honor, and fully intended to be true to his treaty. But that was of small consequence to the Witchlord Onosh, who had resigned himself to living out his years in the circumscribed kingdom which had fallen to him by conquest.
The main event which did concern the Witchlord Onosh was the arrival of his son Eljuk Zala, who came to Safrak in the company of the wizard Ontario Nol on Midsummer's Day, the first day of the year Khmar 1; and Lord Onosh received Ontario Nol with every mark of respect, and declared Eljuk to be the heir of Safrak, and ordered a great celebration to mark the event.
"But where," said Eljuk, "is Guest?"
"He is missing," said Lord Onosh. "Missing, believed dead. He vanished shortly after our battle for the mainrock Pinnacle, and has never been seen or heard of since."
But actually, of course, as the Witchlord Onosh knew full well, the Weaponmaster Guest was somewhere in the Circle of the Banks, and there was no telling what fate might by now have befallen him.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Name: Eljuk Zala Gulkan Birthplace: Gendormargensis.
Occupation: apprentice wizard.
Status: heir of Safrak.
Description: a mild-mannered Yarglat youth who has from earliest youth shown an unfortunate tendency to flinch at the sight of rearing horses, naked swords and hot decapitations.
Hobbies: lyric poetry, collecting the shells of snails and flying kites (these last two hobbies inspired by his new tutor, the wizard Ontario Nol).
Quote: "I am but one and once but often and many shall be"
(taken from Yo Bo's mystical magnum opus, "On the Immortality of Scholarship").
So Eljuk Zala Gulkan came to the island of Alozay in the company of the wizard Ontario Nol, and the Witchlord Onosh ordered that a great banquet be held to celebrate the arrival of his son.
The city of Molothair was lit with lanterns and the mainrock
Pinnacle likewise. To the Grand Palace of Alozay came fish fresh from the Swelaway Sea, sheepmeat from Ema-Urk, the flesh of bears and pigs which had been hunted to their deaths in mainland wilderness, and – ever the greatest luxury to the Yarglat palate – the meat of horses.
Upon this bounty the Yarglat feasted, and while they feasted they were entertained by a troupe of wandering musicians from the far and distant land of Sung. The musicians of Sung are famous for their traveling. Some say this is because they are not mortal men at all, but, rather, belong to a class of spirits forever doomed to wander the world until they have appeased their former sins.
This of course is a nonsense, for the music of Sung owes nothing to appeasement: rather, it is but one extended exercise in patent affront.
Before retreating to Tameran to escape the wrath of the Confederation of Wizards, the sagacious Sken-Pitilkin had dwelt for generations on the island of Drum (which of course has nothing whatsoever to do with Ulix of the Drum), and while living on that island the noble wizard of Skatzabratzumon had often been embroiled in the affairs of the people of Sung (usually against his better judgment, but it cannot be denied that he was sometimes well-rewarded for his troubles, since Sung is the source of the best smoked ham to be had in all the world).
In consequence of his past experiences, the wizard Sken-Pitilkin realized what they were in for as soon as the Sung musicians first entered the banquet hall, variously rolling, pushing, kicking, dragging, hauling or chasing their ill-willed instruments of delinquency. Sken-Pitilkin realized, and groaned.
But the Yarglat did not realize.
To them, it all came as fresh revelation.
Throughout the banquet, the Sung musicians played. They filled the air with the galloping vigor of the thrum, an instrument which makes a sound like that of butter and bones being churned together in a waterlogged coffin. They played too the kloo, which ma
kes a sound like the strenuous protest of a water buffalo which is resentful of being heartily kicked. The krymbol, the skittling nook, the plea whistle and the vang – of all these those musicians had mastery, and proved their mastery amply.
Many of the Yarglat were much taken with the vang, which struck them as the most remarkable device they had ever seen in their lives. And truly the vang is a mighty instrument indeed, consisting as it does of a series of huge tubs from which fluids thick and thin are disgorged by a series of vents and holes, making sounds imitative of urination and of vomiting. But in its noise-making capacity the poor vang was entirely outclassed by the skavamareen, a demon-wailing machine which makes a sound like a burnt cat screaming in a sewer-pipe.
All of which was a matter of amazement to the Witchlord Onosh.
For he had never heard anything like it in his life.
The Witchlord Onosh, after all, was a Yarglat barbarian, the scion of one of those horsetribes of the far north of Tameran; and despite the fact that he had spent much of his life in the great city of Gendormargensis, he had never been exposed to much in the way of musical culture.
The Yarglat in their dogbone encampments are much given to chanting and wailing, accompanied by a certain amount of beating upon drums, but no greater orchestration is known to them. In the fullness of their power, the Yarglat had come to dominate other peoples, such as the Sharla, who were mightily learned in music.
But the instruments of the Sharla are typified by the klon, a fine-stringed device which is plucked but one note at a time, with that note being allowed to die away before another is added to the air. The music of the Sharla is delicate; and tentative; and refined; and consequently adds nothing of consequence to the savor of burnt horsemeat or roast fish-dung.
But this music of Sung!
"There is more to music than I had thought," said Lord Onosh contentedly.
And he resolved himself to have Sung musicians play for him nightly thereafter, and maybe even to obtain mastery of a musical instrument himself – maybe one of the percussive kind, built to take a strenuous hammering.
In the strength of his musical contentment, Lord Onosh paid little heed to the manner of his favorite son's banqueting, and it was not until the banquet had been stripped to the bones that the Witchlord noticed that Eljuk had eaten virtually nothing.
"Where is your appetite?" said Lord Onosh.
But the Sung musicians interrupted his question with a crescendo; and a joyfully appreciative audience demanded an encore; and an encore was duly provided; and, as one thing led to another, the Witchlord took his favored son by the elbow and led him from the banqueting table, thus quitting a scene which was fast disintegrating into outright orgy.
Once safe in the peace of his private quarters, Lord Onosh sat his son down in a chair most cunningly made from interwoven canes and the skins of several fishes. With Eljuk thus seated, the Witchlord asked him:
"Eljuk. What's wrong? You ate nothing tonight. Do you distrust the competence of my food tasters? Or what?"
"My sorrow," said Eljuk, "leaves me with but little appetite."
"Sorrow!" said a bewildered Witchlord. "What's there to be sorry about? Why aren't you happy?"
Eljuk looked his father in the face, looked away, hesitated, bit his lip, then said in a blurt -
"How can I be happy in the house of my brother's murderer?"
"Murderer!" said Lord Onosh in astonishment. "Since when am I your brother's murderer?"
"Why, Guest is dead, is he not? He can hardly have flown from this island, can he? Yet Rolf Thelemite has told me – "
"Thelemite!" said Lord Onosh, as if the word were obscene.
"Thelemite, yes," said Eljuk. "The good Rolf Thelemite told me as clear as anything that he saw Guest alive and jumping in the Hall of Time, well after any fighting was over. Furthermore, he was led away by your wizards, by Zozimus and Sken-Pitilkin, and now you say he's dead, he's – "
"He's missing," said Lord Onosh.
"He's dead!" said Eljuk. "Missing, that's a nonsense, he wouldn't go missing in the company of wizards, they'd know where he went at least, and he wouldn't go anywhere without Rolf, which means that you killed him. You murdered him! And so I renounce you!"
With that, Eljuk rose abruptly, overturning his chair in his impetuosity, and made as if to flee. But Lord Onosh grabbed his son by the sleeve, restraining him from flight.
"You renounce me?" said Lord Onosh. "For what?"
"For killing Guest."
"But I've told you already – "
"You killed him!"
"Supposing I did, then," said Lord Onosh. "Even if I did – and I swear by my blood that I didn't – why should his death count as anything to you?"
"He was my brother," said Eljuk. "The brother of my blood. He saved my life when I would have died in the Yolantarath. He saved me from drowning. At risk to his own life – he never knew how to swim. Now he'll never learn."
Such was Eljuk's distress that, in the end, Lord Onosh felt he had no choice. Gently, the Witchlord constrained Eljuk to set his chair upright, then to seat himself in that chair; and, with Eljuk thus seated, the Witchlord began to explain the true fate of the Weaponmaster Guest Gulkan.
And the upshot of a long debate between father and son was that the Witchlord at last agreed to open the Door in the uppermost chamber of the mainrock Pinnacle; and to precipitate the confrontation of the Banks of the Circle for which he had been preparing himself; and, if it was possible, to initiate the rescue of the missing Weaponmaster.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Partnership Banks: those Banks which have long exploited the Circle for secret profit. On Alozay, the Safrak Bank has ever been the government; but governments elsewhere have usually been ignorant of the secret of the Circle. Since the Banks are immortal bureaucracies they have managed to outlast kingdoms, empires and dynasties. Starting from Safrak, the Banks of the Circle are these:
– the Safrak Bank of the Safrak Islands;
– the Monastic Treasury of Inner Adeer, in Voice;
– the Flesh Trader's Financial Association of Galsh Ebrek;
– the Bondsman's Guild of Obooloo, capital of Aldarch III;
– the Bralsh, of Dalar ken Halvar;
– the Singing Dove Pensions Trust of Tang;
– the Taniwha Guarantee Corporation of Quilth.
– the Orsay Bank of Stokos;
– the Morgrim Bank of Chi'ash-lan.
Three men had left Alozay by way of the Door, and these three were the Weaponmaster Guest Gulkan, the iceman Sod, and the rough and ragged Thayer Levant.
Sod had leapt through that portal to escape from his captivity; Guest Gulkan had pursued him; and the unheroic Levant had fled after them to escape from a perceived threat to his own life.
Upon raging through the Door to the Monastic Treasury of Inner Adeer, Guest had been confronted by armed force in great superiority. And so, realizing he might have made an error, he had promptly jumped back through that Door, thinking in his confusion that by this means he could return to Alozay. But of course the Door was part of a Circle, so instead of returning to his point of departure, Guest had found himself advanced around that Circle, to Galsh Ebrek.
Sod had arrived in Galsh Ebrek fractionally before Guest Gulkan, for Sod had hoped to get as far as Chi'ash-lan (if that should prove at all possible) before someone in the mainrock
Pinnacle had wit sufficient to close the Door. Thayer Levant had fled after Guest. Levant had used Doors often, hence knew their nature well. Like Sod, Levant had a specific destination in mind.
He had hoped to get as far as the Bralsh of Dalar ken Halvar before the Circle was closed.
But the star-globe had been removed from its niche when these three adventurers had got no further than Galsh Ebrek, and so it came to pass that all three were stuck there. Guest was nimble-witted enough to realize in short order that he was truly trapped, and to swallow a certain ring before anyone thought to search him.
This ring sustained a chipstone of ever- ice, and was the sole tool capable of opening and closing the time pods of Safrak's time prison. Later, when Sod happened to ask after that ring, Guest Gulkan averred that it had been torn from his possession during a brief scuffle in the Monastic Treasury of Inner Adeer – and Sod did not disbelieve this.
Thereafter, the Doors of the Circle were closed for a long passage, as Lord Onosh devoted himself to consolidating his command of Safrak – and, later, to dickering with Khmar's ambassadors.
For Banks and Bankers alike, the long closure of the Door was an agony. Particularly for Banker Sod – who was marooned in Galsh Ebrek with no better company than that of the barbarous Weaponmaster Guest Gulkan and the profoundly treacherous and untrustworthy knifeman Thayer Levant.
Galsh Ebrek, of course, is the ruling city of Wen Endex, homeland of the Yudonic Knights. It is notable also as the birthplace of the slug-chef Zozimus and the scholarly Sken-Pitilkin; and a telling commentary on the demerits of the place is that both slug-chef and scholar departed from its shores in early life, and never thereafter suffered nostalgia for the place.
The Bank of Galsh Ebrek was the Flesh Trader's Financial Association, so Sod, Levant and the Weaponmaster Guest found themselves in the precincts of this organization when the Doors of the Circle closed. The Flesh Trader's Financial Association quite refused to hold Guest and Levant as prisoners, since Sod had no cash with which to pay for their keep (and was refused credit by the local Bankers, who feared that any money lent to him would be lost forever if the Door refused to open again).
The local Bankers proposed the slaughter of Guest and Levant, thinking murder to be cheaper than imprisonment, and thinking too that such people could not be let loose in the world with the secret of the Doors.
But Sod was at pains to point out that these prisoners might be of great future importance. After all, Thayer Levant was a servant of Ulix of the Drum, and everyone knew how important he was! And Guest, why, he was the son of the Witchlord Onosh.
"And this Witchlord," said Sod, "he currently commands the star-globe which rules the Circle, so we may need his son as a hostage for future negotiations."