unrestrained intrusion, Guest Gulkan swiftly caught up with Asodo Hatch, and the pair hunted down the mountain tunnels in the wake of the Great God Jocasta.
The Great God made its way to Forum Three, a lecture theater with a roof layered thickly with kaleidoscope. The Yarglat barbarian Guest Gulkan and the purple-skinned Frangoni warrior Asodo Hatch followed in hot pursuit.
'Halt!' said Guest, doing his best to imitate the wrathfulness of a dorgi or a Stogirov.
But the Great God paid him no heed.
Instead, it rose to the roof, buried itself in the kaleidoscope above their heads, and disappeared.
'Senk!' roared Asodo Hatch.
There was a pause, then Senk's features appeared on the screen which dominated Forum Three. Guest noticed that Paraban Senk, the demon who ruled the mountain of Cap Foz Para Lash, chose to paint that magical screen with a face of features olive-skinned. On their first encounter, when Guest had been a legless and armless patient of the demon's clinic, Guest had thought how very unusual those olive-skinned features will.
Now, on reacquaintance, that skin-shade reminded Guest very much of two individuals he had encountered on Untunchilamon: Ivan Pokrov (the master of an analytical engine which had been housed on a minor island in the harbor of Injiltaprajura) and Odolo (a conjurer in the service of one Justina Thrug, who had been Untunchilamon's de facto ruler at the time when Guest had been questing in that territory). Guest was inclined to think there might be some more than spurious relationship linking the olive- skinned Senk to the equally olive-skinned Pokrov and Odolo.
But a relationship of what kind?
Somehow, this hardly seemed to be the time to ask.
'Greetings, Guest Gulkan,' said Senk.
While Guest had been away from Dalar ken Halvar long enough to have had trouble recognizing such a personage as Asodo Hatch,
Paraban Senk instantly recognized Guest Gulkan. Like Yubi Das Finger and other such sharp-minded personages, Senk never forgot.
Senk addressed the Weaponmaster in the Galish. On this occasion, Senk's linguistic mastery reminded the Weaponmaster uncomfortably of Schoptomov, the therapist based Downstairs in Injiltaprajura. Just like that therapist, Paraban Senk had dwelt underground for generation upon generation, gathering wisdom – and gathering evil with it? Guest's long prejudice against scholarship had been reinforced by his encounter with the therapist Schoptomov, and made him cautious in his renewed dealings with Paraban Senk.
'And to you, greetings,' said Guest formally. 'I am here in pursuit of my enemy, who has violated your neutrality by taking refuge here.'
As he spoke, Guest was aware of an unobtrusive sound-source speaking in a language which he took to be Frangoni. Paraban Senk was giving Asodo Hatch a simultaneous translation of Guest's comments. Guest was familiar with Senk's tricks, since a similar convenience had allowed the Weaponmaster to argue with his wife
Penelope when they lacked all common language. Still, on this occasion he found such facility positively sinister.
'I have noticed the intrusion of your enemy,' said Senk, 'but think you owe me a full explanation.'
Then Guest Gulkan and Asodo Hatch collaborated on that full explanation. So Senk learnt that Guest Gulkan had assaulted the Mutilator of Yestron, thus winning the specialized knife needed to cut the Great God Jocasta free from imprisonment; that Guest had duly freed the Great God; that the Great God had tried to take possession of the Guest's mind; that the intrusion of Anaconda Stogirov had saved Guest from possession; that the Great God had fled through the Circle of the Partnership Banks, leaving Obooloo to come to Dalar ken Halvar; and that both Guest and Hatch wanted Senk to collaborate in the thing's destruction.
'I would gladly help you,' said Senk, 'but help is beyond my power.'
'But you are the ruler here!' said Guest, with explosive anger.
'Ruler?' said Senk. 'I long ago had to concede true mastery here to Asodo Hatch. For all my functions are failing. I need the help of human agency if I am to fulfill the most basic of my missions.'
'But,' said Asodo Hatch, 'you can at least cause this ceiling of kaleidoscope to dissolve itself. I recall you doing just that during a riot.'
'I could,' said Senk. 'But it would not help you. The thickness of the ceiling's kaleidoscope conceals privileged tunnels likewise packed with kaleidoscope. Jocasta has fled down those tunnels, penetrating to the innards of the mountain.'
Then Senk explained to Guest that the realms within the mountain were only partly given over to human domination. Large parts of those underground domains were reserved for mobile artefacts such as Jocasta. Without the aid of allied artefacts,
Senk could not hunt Jocasta out of hiding.
'The thing will shelter there,' said Senk, 'repairing the damage done to it by Stogirov. Only then will it venture forth again.'
'Only then?' said Guest. 'But when will that be? A day? Two days? Three?'
'Twenty or thirty days, perhaps,' said Senk. 'Or twenty or thirty years. Or maybe longer. The thing has been grievously injured, otherwise you would not have been able to force it to run.'
So spoke Senk.
Naturally, neither Guest Gulkan not Asodo Hatch were easily satisfied, for both found this outcome of their conflict with Jocasta to be intensely unsatisfying. But Senk had no cure for their dissatisfaction, so in the end there was no help for it. They had to concede defeat, and to leave the Great God Jocasta uncaught and unkilled.
'Then,' said Guest, 'if we can leave aside the question of Jocasta's fate, perhaps you can tell me the fate of my wife. Where is Penelope?'
'Penelope?' said Senk. 'Oh, her! No, I can't tell you what happened to her. She left here a year ago, and I've had no news of her since.'
Meanwhile…
While Guest Gulkan was pursing the Great God through the tunnels inside Cap Foz Para Lash, his father allowed himself to be seated in the kinema and tended to by Yubi Das Finger. Lord Onosh was feeling his age, and was feeling the effects of the battering of disorientations and disconcertments which he had so recently endured.
So Lord Onosh seated himself, and was fed by Yubi Das Finger, who had bowls of soup and polyps brought for him, and fried locusts as well, and curried worms served on thin slices of unleavened bread, and other things that were likewise good for the belly and comforting to the psyche.
While the Witchlord ate his soup, his polyps, his locusts, his curried worms and his unleavened bread, he watched the entertainments being shown on the Eye of Delusions. That great Eye, set above the lockway, was proof that the Nexus (presuming it to have truly existed) must have known of one or more barbarian tribes very like the Yarglat. For the Eye showed repeated scenes of scalping, of disembowelling, of axe-blade battles and outright cannibalism.
Watching such familiar scenes, Lord Onosh was comforted, for they reminded him of his youth, his homeland, his people. He began muttering to himself in Eparget for the sheer pleasure of hearing the Yarglat tongue, and he was muttering still when Guest Gulkan at last emerged from the mountain to rejoin him.
Asodo Hatch came forth from the mountain with Guest Gulkan, and hustled Witchlord and Weaponmaster away from the kinema.
'Where are we going?' asked Guest of Yubi Das Finger, who was keeping pace with them so he could do duty as an interpreter.
'To the palace,' said Yubi. 'To Na Sashimoko.'
'Then,' said Guest, 'I would like to know who rules from that palace.'
So Guest began an interrogation of Yubi Das Finger, trying to get a grip on what had happened in Dalar ken Halvar during the years in which he had been adventuring in Untunchilamon or enduring imprisonment in Obooloo.
'Things are much as they were,' said Yubi, 'except that Nuchala-nuth gathers strength by the year.'
'That,' said Guest, 'is nothing to me. So much for Dalar ken Halvar. What of Safrak?'
'Bao Gahai rules it still in the Witchlord's absence,' said Yubi Das Finger. 'Or so I have heard.'Guest had learnt
