interpretation by his brain.
The beauty of the song suggested to Guest that a beautiful woman was responsible for its generation. This was not the case.
Rather, the day was bright with the golden song of one of the imperial dragons of Yestron – creatures of gentle nature and spectacular musical talent.
'Who is the woman?' said Guest, hearing the dragon, and thinking from its song that it must be a woman at least as beautiful as his long-lost Yerzerdayla.
'Hush,' said the translator who accompanied him. 'We are entering the Presence.'
With that, they left the courtyard's sun behind them, venturing into the airy shadows of a series of chambers interconnected by arched doorways. They walked across hexagonal tiles, each of which was decorated with a representation of one of the body's internal organs. By contrast, the tapestries which adorned the walls were devoted to abstraction, to interweaving glyphs and helixes utterly removed from all realities of the flesh.
While passing through these chambers, Guest smelt camphor.
Camphor. What did that remind him of? It reminded him of the tunnel which had led him into the depths of Obooloo's Temple of Blood. He had smelt camphor there, along with other things.
But -
There was some other memory, older, deeper, more compelling.
It was – it was -
Camphor, camphor and the bright spires of golden song… a supremely evocative combination… so evocative that, somehow, Guest was certain that he had been here before. Here! In these very same chambers! Walking over these very same tiles! But this was his first visit to this palace. Surely. Guest Gulkan had no absolute index to his past, for his memory had been jumbled by the many shocks of his life, by his rending at the hands of the Great Mink, by the displacements of war and exile, and by the sheer complexity of the press of ever- changing faces which had been a feature of his journeying. Yet, even though he could not unscramble every detail of his past with any certainty, Guest Gulkan was sure that this was his very first visit to the palace of Ubazakura.
And yet…
And yet!
The golden song of the imperial dragon soared skywards with increasing passion, and again Guest Gulkan was assailed by the smell of camphor. Smells are the great memory-triggers, for smell is the most primitive of all the senses, the sense which is closest to animal existence.
Camphor.
Camphor! Guest halted, for his skin prickled, and his very hair stood on end. He shuddered, and his heart pounded, and hot blood flushed through his veins.
For he remembered!
The Weaponmaster remembered a distant day on which he and his father had conquered the mainrock Pinnacle, and had secured admission to the abditory which housed the Door of the Safrak
Bank. Plandruk Qinplaqus, the Silver Emperor of Dalar ken Halvar, he who had then been concealing his true identity by calling himself Ulix of the Drum, had told Witchlord and Weaponmaster that a globe of stars must be procured if that Door in the mainrock
Pinnacle was to be open.
Suspecting that Banker Sod had fed just such an artefact to Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis, Guest Gulkan had challenged the demon Italis, at last persuading it to give him the star-globe.
But on taking that globe into his possession, Guest Gulkan had been plunged into a visionary world in which he had heard a woman's soaring song, in which he had smelt camphor, and in which he had met a man who had back-knuckled him across the face. That back-knuckling had precipitated Guest's return to the Hall of Time, where he had then been put to the trouble of staunching a nose made bloody by the back-knuckle blow delivered to him during his visionary adventuring.
'Come on!' said the Janjuladoola interpreter who had been assigned to Guest Gulkan. 'Come on! We've no time to linger!'
But Guest still stood, staring at all around him, taking in the details with a heightened awareness close to that of hallucination. This was the very place! He was sure of it! This was the very place to which his vision had taken him when he had first seized control of the star-globe!
In the time since that visionary experience, Guest had deliberately strived to forget all that unsettling displacement, for he had been truly terrified by that displacement, and so had sought to suppress all memories relating to it.
But -
Here he was!
Here he was in a place identical to that which he had seen in that long-ago vision which he had endured in the mainrock
Pinnacle!
'You,' said his Janjuladoola interpreter, poking him.
'Weren't you listening? Come on!'
On being poked, Guest at last bestirred himself, and allowed himself to be hurried into the next chamber, where the interpreter encouraged him to kneel. Guest was a little slow in reacting to the encouragement.
'I said kneel!' said the interpreter, who was starting to get flustered. 'Now! Now! I say it again! Kneel! Kneel! Down on your knees!'
'Why?' said Guest. 'Is this my execution?'
'It will be, if you don't find your manners, and fast. He's almost upon us!'
The interpreter's panic managed to communicate a sense of urgency to Guest, and so the Yarglat barbarian went down on his knees, and had no sooner got down on those frugally padded lumps of bone when Aldarch the Third entered upon the audience chamber.
Aldarch proved to be a small man of the Skin who increased his apparent height by wearing shoes with platform soles. It is traditional for the emperors of Yestron to walk on stilts, thus demonstrating their social superiority in an even more pronounced fashion. But Aldarch had been methodically tortured by his father while he was still a child, and the damage then done to his legs made it unwise for him to attempt any feats of stilt-walking as an adult.
Aldarch spoke; Guest's translator interpreted; and Guest, in conformity with the Mutilator's orders, seated himself in the visitor's well. This square-cut recess in the floor contained a stool padded with a goose-feather cushion, and when seated upon that cushion Guest found nothing but his head and shoulders above floor level. The Mutilator took his own seat upon a modest throne set back from the visitor's well, and the dignity of this throne set the Mutilator's knees at a height greater than that of Guest's head.
This cunning arrangement neatly indicated the social gap between Mutilator and prisoner, while making it virtually impossible for Guest to launch a surprise attack upon his captor.
'You have lately come from Untunchilamon, I hear,' said
Aldarch the Third.
'It is so,' said Guest.
'You know,' said Aldarch, 'I have heard that they were walking on stilts.' Guest Gulkan, who did not know precisely how he was supposed to respond to this intelligence, assumed a grave demeanor.
'Well?' said Aldarch. 'Is it true, or is it not? I have heard that the one called Pokrov was particularly noticeable for getting above himself.'
'For getting above himself?' said Guest.
'For elevating himself above the height appropriate to his class!' said the translator to Guest. 'For walking on stilts!'
'Well,' said Guest, who was properly confused by now, 'it may have happened. I can't say that it didn't.'
'What does he say?' said Aldarch.
'My lord,' said the translator to Aldarch, 'He confesses that with his own eyes he saw such people as Pokrov walking on stilts.'
'You saw,' said Aldarch, 'yet you made no move to stop it?'
This accusation was translated to Guest. The Yarglat barbarian was so ignorant of the customs of the civilized
