by Hugh Cook
Quite apart from everything else, the chiefest warlord of Carawell, a Rovac warrior named Morgan Hearst, had taken himself and his gang of cut-throats to Estar, where he had embroiled himself in some dubious provincial power-struggle, the details of which were of no interest to Guest Gulkan.
On Carawell, Guest Gulkan interrogated a young Rovac warrior named Altol Stokpol, and learnt from this source rather more than he cared to know about the affairs of Morgan Hearst. From this interrogation, Guest learnt only one thing of interest: there was a Yarglat barbarian named Nan Nualador in Hearst's dungeons. Guest naturally rescued his fellow countryman, and asked him why he had been persecuted by Morgan Hearst.
"We quarreled over a woman," said Nan Nualador. Guest readily accepted this, for, like many another man who has outgrown the age when lust is dominant, he had come to think of the female sex as being little more than an endless source of trouble and provocation.
It would be wrong to say that the Weaponmaster had an ascetic temperament. Nevertheless, he had led a life which had made ruthless demands on his resources; and, concentrating on the needs of raw survival and the pursuit of power, he had quite gotten out of the habit of sensual relaxation. If he was hungry, then he ate; but, if one of his appetites needed appeasing, then he satisfied that appetite merely to free himself for undistracted action. Guest Gulkan, then, had become a more limited creature as he had grown into his full maturity. He had lost sight of certain possibilities and potentialities. In his lustful youth, he had been prepared to fight to the death to secure the prideful possession of the woman Yerzerdayla. Later, during four long years of convalescence in Dalar ken Halvar, he had been faithful to the woman Penelope, exchanging the satisfactions of unbridled lust for those of domesticity.
But now, in the years of his maturity, the Weaponmaster thought little of either lust or domesticity. The rigors of his life – its many defeats, setbacks, disappointments and assorted traumas – had pruned away many possibilities. In maturity, he had focused his life on one great task: to reopen the Circle of the Doors of the Partnership Banks.
Thinking like a soldier, Guest Gulkan invited Nan Nualador to come with him to the island of Drum, for Nan Nualador looked like the kind of person who would be handy in a battle.
But Nan Nualador refused.
"Why?" said Guest Gulkan in surprise.
"I have other business," muttered Nan Nualador.
"That's not good enough!" said Guest.
Then the Weaponmaster interrogated Nan Nualador at length, at last coming to understand that the Yarglat barbarian's refusal was made up of one part of defiance to nine parts of stark terror. Nan Nualador had a positive horror of Guest, this mighty warlock who had descended from the sky with dragons at his feet.
At last, despairing of the man, Guest Gulkan turned Nan Nualador loose, then rounded up the sea dragons (with difficulty, for those delinquent beasts had become engrossed in the hunting of chickens, which they thought to be great sport) then flew back to the island of Drum (taking with him some 275 dead chickens which his sea dragons had incontinently slaughtered).
Shortly thereafter (after the greatest chicken-meat banquet ever held upon Drum) Guest Gulkan and Sken-Pitilkin convened a conference of all Drum's resident wizards. Sken-Pitilkin was first to address that council of war. He gave his address in the Galish Trading Tongue, for, even after all these years, Guest Gulkan had yet to master even a smattering of the High Speech of wizards to his tongue (and, despite his desert island maroonment in the company of a copy of Strogloth's Compendium of Delights, remained lamentably ignorant of all the other great scholarly languages, such as Janjuladoola and Slandolin).
"We have the star-globe," said Sken-Pitilkin, once he had given a detailed account of Guest's latest exploits. "Therefore, it follows that we can open up the Circle of the Doors of the Partnership Bank."
Then Sken-Pitilkin produced a map, a composite map which he had drawn himself, working partly from documents, partly from conjecture, partly from logical surmise, and (in great part) from his wealth of personal experience. He pointed out the location of the nine Doors of the Circle. These were: – 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.
"Unfortunately," said Sken-Pitilkin, "Voice has been overrun by the Swarms. It therefore follows that to open the Circle will mean confronting the Swarms. This we can do, because we need but defend a single Door. Still, we will need to have an army to back us before we dare open the Door."
"Perhaps," ventured Brother Fern Feathers, one of the mildest wizards of Guest Gulkan's acquaintance, "it would be unwise to open the Door at all. Why provoke a war with the Swarms when we've no need for such a war?"
"Being intelligent people," said Sken-Pitilkin, "we will fight no wars ourselves. We will get warriors to fight them for us. Furthermore, the Swarms are sure to force us to the point of war in any case. The Swarms are not settled in Argan. Rather, they are singularly unsettled. They are hot upon the borders of Estar.
Furthermore, numbers are rumored to have been washed up on the shores of the Ravlish Lands, and Guest has lately brought me fresh news of an invasion of the Lessers."
Then Guest Gulkan related a third-hand tale which he had had from the Rovac warrior Altol Stokpol, concerning a number of baby monsters which had made a landing on the beaches of Carawell.
"As you see," said Sken-Pitilkin, "regardless of our pacific intentions, we are sure to find ourselves at war with the Swarms, later if not sooner. If Estar falls to the Swarms, then so too will Penvash. Penvash, gentlemen, is but an eyeshot from the shores of Drum. Attack will come from the sea, from the sky.
Doubtless we have the strength to resist such attack, but make no mistake about it – it will be war."
This sobered his audience, because most of them chose not to think about the Swarms unless they absolutely had to. As the ordinary citizen of Obooloo shuns and suppresses all knowledge of the temperament of the Mutilator, so too the wizards resident upon Drum chose to be wilfully ignorant of the menace upon their doorstep.
This initiated a long debate. And the debates of wizards are of a length and complexity which cannot easily be imagined by those who have not had personal experience of such deliberations.
Indeed, the debate went on for so long that, before it was over,
Drum had news of the latest developments to the south.
Morgan Hearst, the greatest warlord of Carawell, had made an alliance with a southron barbarian named Watashi, and with a number of pirates, and with those forces of the Collosnon Empire which currently occupied Estar. The long and the short of it was that a southern alliance was bent on installing upon the throne of Gendormargensis a child named Monogail, a female child who was alleged to be the offspring of the Red Emperor Khmar (he who was said to have died so long ago in the forests of Penvash).
The greater number of the wizards on Drum were inclined to treat this news as a happy coincidence. They needed an army. Very well! Here was an army! An army organizing for invasion!
"They have ships," said Brother Fern Feathers. "They have ships, swords and men. They have leaders who are mighty in war.
They have this child to be a figurehead for an invasion of Tameran. Very well. We can make an alliance. We can use this army to liberate the Circle of the Doors."
But, to Guest, the fact that an army was preparing for invasion on their very doorstep was but idle coincidence.
Since Sken-Pitilkin had an airship, and since Guest Gulkan was in possession of a yellow bottle sufficient for the carriage of an army
, and since their goal was not (oh vulgar ambition!) to conquer a continent but, rather (the future beckons!) to reopen the Circle of the Partnership Banks, any Door on that Circle could (potentially) serve as a base for action.
To most of the wizards, the Circle was but a theory. But, to the Weaponmaster, that Circle was a living reality. In particular, he had the most lively memories of Dalar ken Halvar, the city where he had once spent four long years in convalescence.
"It is said that the Rovac are mighty in war," said Guest.
"But our war for the Circle will not be as other wars. We have no use for the slowness of ships or the slow ooze of infantry. We have the rule of the air and the capacity of the yellow bottle.
The wind's reach is ours. We need no strategy of mud, and of stone, and of wood, and of water. Rather, we must think as the wind, as the sun."
"Very pretty poetry," said Brother Fern Feathers, interrupting Guest Gulkan as he was winding himself up for revelation. "But you have no soldiers."
"I have allies," said Guest, displeased to be interrupted in his rhetoric.
"What allies?" said Fern Feathers. "You are but a homeless barbarian."
"What makes you say so?" said Guest.
"Why!" said Fern Feathers, "I say so because I know so! I know your curriculum vitae in depth and in detail."
"Do you?" said Guest.
As the Weaponmaster had never lately found time for any detailed biographical revelations, he thought it exceedingly bizarre for any wizard to be claiming a knowledge of his past.
"Don't you remember?" said Brother Fern Feathers. "I was head of the Ethnological Commission which interrogated you all those years ago when you were fresh-arrived at Drangsturm."
"Ah!" said Guest, in the tones of a man who has stepped barefooted on a wasp. "Now I remember!"
Now Guest remembered with a vengeance!
Though Brother Fern Feathers was mild (as wizards went) and not arrogant (or not at least by wizardly standards) and politely spoken (or as polite as could be reasonably expected) Guest Gulkan had never been able to bring himself to like the fellow. For some inexplicable reason, Guest had always found himself possessed of a mysterious but ineradicable dislike for Fern Feathers.
Now the inexplicable was explained, the mysterious was made bare and plain. Fern Feathers was an ethnologist! Worse, he was the very ethnologist who had led Guest Gulkan's interrogation in the Castle of Controlling Power!
"Sex customs!" said Guest, slamming his hand on the table.
"That's what it was! You had sex on the brain, like all ethnologists!"
"Have I somehow offended you?" said Brother Fern Feathers.
"Somehow!" said Guest. "Where does somehow come into it? My scrotum, my foreskin, the hairs of my arse – are these not meant to be private? Yet – you and your committee!"
"We did but ask a few questions," said Fern Feathers, starting to get defensive.
"Yes," said Guest, "but what questions?"
"Scientific questions!" said Fern Feathers.
"Oh, so it is science, is it?" said Guest. "When I hear someone talk of science, then I reach for my sword!"
So saying, Guest suited action to words.
"We were but inquiring after knowledge," said Fern Feathers, starting to grow fearful of his life.
"Then if you truly wish to receive knowledge," said Guest, in his coldest and grandest tones, "then hearken to me mightily, and perhaps you will live. Or perhaps not. For I am the Emperor in Exile."
Then Guest began to rant – a strong word, true, but the word is apt – about his greatness, his mightiness and his superlativeness. He inflicted upon that gathering a veritable catalog of the exploits of his steel. He itemized the battles he had won, not neglecting to mention even his boyhood battle against Thodric Jarl in Enskandalon Square. He named the monsters he had faced or fought – the Great Mink of Gendormargensis, the murkbeast of Logthok Norgos, two therapists and a certain Crab of Untunchilamon, a dorgi of the depths Downstairs beneath the city of Injiltaprajura, a giant centipede, a number of crocodiles, and the bright-burning Shabble. Guest grew positively hoarse from boasting. Down through the long years, the memories of all the provocations he had endured at the hands of the Ethnological Commission had festered in the darkness of his mind, unacknowledged and unaddressed, and now their poison was spurting forth with a vengeance.
"All this I have done!" said Guest, in the fullness of his hoarseness, "yet it is not enough for an ethnologist, no, not battles, not monsters, not travels, not the mastery of languages, not the braving of prisons and the survival of torture chambers.
All this I have done, yet he calls me barbarian and doubts my fitness to rule. So my question is this. What must I do to win his esteem? When so many feats have been accomplished already, what yet remains to my sword? I have asked myself this question, and have decided that only one task yet awaits me: the slaughter of an ethnologist!"
Seldom in the course of history has a barbarian been able to turn the tables on an ethnologist! Believe me, it is most uncomfortable for the ethnologist, particularly when the barbarian in question has a sword in his hand, and looks more than half- minded to use it!
Brother Fern Feathers positively groveled before the Weaponmaster, and assured the gathering that he believed Guest Gulkan to be the most accomplished and civilized of gentlemen, yes, a winner of battles, a slayer of monsters, and (in all probability) a master of the irregular verbs.
"I have no need of the verbs," said Guest, glowering at the mention of these the most ancient and intractable of his enemies.
"I have no need of the verbs, no, nor of grammars neither, nor of dictionaries. You can burn your verbs and have done with them!"
Whereupon Brother Fern Feathers declared himself to be of identical opinion. He denounced the High Speech, yes, and Slandolin, and Janjuladoola, and all other tongues not regular to a nicety in their formation.
"They are but twisted toys for sapless pedants," said Fern Feathers, growing passionate in his denunciation. "They should be burnt, cindered, reduced to ashes, grammars and dictionaries together."
"Good," said Guest, somewhat mollified by the whole- heartedness of this capitulation. "Good, good. It is good to see that at least one person has won enlightenment today!"
Then the Weaponmaster shot a meaningful look at Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, who, of course, did not (and would not! not ever! regardless of the threat or provocation!) denounce the verbs, no, nor any of the other parts of speech.
With Brother Fern Feathers thus having capitulated before the Weaponmaster (but with the sagacious Sken-Pitilkin remaining as staunch in his scholarship as ever) Guest Gulkan then wound up his speech by making a brief recapitulation of all his exploits, then said: "So you see, I am well talented enough to undertake the tasks which lie before me. Furthermore, I am a personal friend of Plandruk Qinplaqus, the Silver Emperor who rules the Empire of Greater Parengarenga. In the past, he has received me in the palace of Na Sashimoko, the ruling palace of Dalar ken Halvar.
Furthermore, I am a boon companion of Asodo Hatch, the greatest of the emperor's warlords. Upon him I bestowed the woman Penelope, who is now his wife. As a token of their friendship, Plandruk
Qinplaqus and Asodo Hatch have kept safe for me the x-x-zix, the mighty wishstone which I won from Untunchilamon. Likewise they have preserved for my benefit the mighty mazadath, a charm of protection which makes a warrior immortal in battle."
This last comment about the mazadath was made by Guest in a spirit of outright deceit, for, since he did not entirely trust the wizards who were assembled on Drum, he thought it best to conceal some of his subtler resources under a camouflaging layer of braggarting barbarism. So, while denying primitive barbarism, Guest yet deliberately aped it; and wizards such as Fern Feathers, who were not equipped to be theater critics, accepted his gaudier performances as the inner truth of his nature, and thus were led to underestimate the Weaponmaster.
Naturally, Ontario Nol did not underestimate
Guest Gulkan, for the wizard of Itch had known the Weaponmaster long enough to form a proper opinion of his abilities. But, even so, Nol did not know Guest well enough to realize that his boastful arrogance was, in part, a self-protective reaction to long defeat and disappointment. So, after listening to Guest boast at length of the high regard in which he was held in the city of Dalar ken Halvar, and the manner in which he planned to overthrow his enemies and rectify the world, Nol said:
"Brave words for a man who cannot even tell us who his mother was."
This was a low blow. It is usually one's father who cannot be known of a certainty. But, since Guest's gigantic bat-wing ears marked him as his father's son, it was only his mother's identity which remained a mystery. Guest knew he had been born in Stranagor, but all questions as to his mother's identity had been met with evasions.
But, over the years, Guest had had time in plenty to puzzle out this problem. In the tunnels of Cap Foz Para Lash, in the dungeons of Obooloo, in the Stench Caves of Logthok Norgos, in Drangsturm's Castle of Controlling Power, he had pondered the problem. And he thought he had solved it.
"I know who my mother is," said Guest, with equanimity. "And if in this company you choose to declare her, why, I will not disown her, for I am no wizard, hence do not share the prejudices of wizards."
Upon which Nol, impressed for once by the Weaponmaster's performance, gave the slightest of bows and made no further objections.