see ever again in his entire life. Guest handed over the ring of ever-ice, the ring which could open and close time pods.
Yilda slipped it on her own finger. Guest then expected Shabble to ask for the mazadath, the silver-gleaming amulet which hung round Guest's neck, against his skin and hidden from the world.
'Guest,' said Shabble, singing the name with lilting sweetness. 'Guest. There is something else.'
'Is there?' said Guest.
He was very conscious of the mazadath's weight. He did not want to give it up. Why? He knew of no certain use for it. But if he could only retain its possession, concealing it from this Shabble, then he would feel he had won a victory of a kind, if only a moral victory.
'Guest, Guest,' crooned Shabble. 'My dear friend Guest. The wishstone. You had it. Where is it?'
'Did I have it?' said Guest.
'You did!' said Shabble. 'And the Cockroach has need of it!'
'Then,' said Guest, 'you'll have to ask Thayer Levant where it got to, because he was the one who had it last!'
'Levant?' said Shabble. Guest indicated the ever-faithful Thayer Levant. Shabble sang out for guards, and Levant was taken away for interrogation – while Witchlord and Weaponmaster were escorted to the lower depths of the mainrock Pinnacle. Guest and his father fully expected to be promptly thrown into a prison cell. But, instead, they were shown to the best of all available quarters, and were told that they were to be guests of honor at a banquet.
And, that very evening, Guest Gulkan and his father dined in the banquet hall which was such a prominent feature of Dolce Obo, the Pillow Stratum of the Grand Palace of Alozay. Guest was surprised to find the bounty of the autumn harvest gracing the banquet table, for the Weaponmaster had been chronologically disorientated by the pressure of recent events, and by his rapid translation between the differing climates of Obooloo, Dalar ken Halvar and Alozay.
But autumn it was. Guest Gulkan had spent so much time adventuring in Untunchilamon and counting the shadows in a dungeon in Obooloo that the Witchlord Onosh had not been liberated from his time pod in the Temple of Blood until that Midsummer's Day which had been the first day of the Third Year of Peace in the Izdimir Empire.
That day was now three months in the past; the season had turned from summer to autumn; and Alozay was feeding on all which came to the Safrak archipelago from the lands surrounding the Swelaway Sea. Plums, pumpkin, apples, cucumber… Guest lost track of the number of fresh good things laid out to eat.
Yet the Weaponmaster found he wished to satisfy his appetite for conversation more urgently than he wished to appease any demands made by his belly.
At the banquet table he could see his brother Eljuk, and after their long separation Guest found himself longing to talk with Eljuk. Eljuk had stayed on Alozay when Witchlord and Weaponmaster had departed, meaning to raid Obooloo and rescue the Great God Jocasta from Anaconda Stogirov's Temple of Blood.
While Guest had been adventuring, Eljuk had remained on Alozay, studying under the tutelage of Ontario Nol, the wizard of Itch to whom he was apprenticed. Guest found the thought of such a quiet, steady and uneventful life quite incredible, for it seemed to him that the whole world had been the scene of unrelenting alarums for years on end.
Yet the truth is that the world had been a fairly peaceful place in the last few years. At least, the part of the world inhabited by Eljuk had been peaceful. After the departure of Witchlord and Weaponmaster, Bao Gahai had ruled Alozay with an iron hand, managing the affairs of the Safrak Bank efficiently, and managing too the matter of Alozay's relationships with the other Partnership Banks.
To Guest, Eljuk represented – amongst other things – the confidence and security of the life he had enjoyed before becoming entangled in the world of gods and demons. So he longed to talked with his brother. But he was denied opportunity for such conversation, for he was seated between the wizard Sken-Pitilkin and Sod's daughter Damsel. Damsel, who had once perched upon the Weaponmaster, squealing like a wounded mouse as she crested to her ecstasy, spent the whole meal practicing her seductive wiles on the corpse master Uckermark, who was seated on her left. So Guest was left at the mercy of Sken-Pitilkin.
While both Witchlord and Weaponmaster had come to Alozay with the idea of administering a degree of discipline to that wizard of Skatzabratzumon (with Lord Onosh being determined to remove his head, while Guest was more inclined to think the cropping of his ears would be sufficient) they had both now set aside thoughts of such punishment. For both had focused their thoughts firmly on their true enemy: Shabble.
Shabble the usurper!
In any case, it soon became clear that the suspicions of Witchlord and Weaponmaster were unfounded, and that Sken-Pitilkin had not wilfully conspired to bring Shabble to Alozay. This became particularly clear to Guest at that banquet, for, speaking with all the zeal of a born lecturer, Sken-Pitilkin took the Weaponmaster through a full account of the vicissitudes of his recent life.
After fleeing from Untunchilamon, the sagacious Sken-Pitilkin had eventually arrived at Port Domax with Shabble. No easy journey, that! For, just as Guest had suffered unanticipated complications to his journey from Injiltaprajura to Dalar ken Halvar, so too had Sken-Pitilkin endured a number of the most perilous and extraordinary embroilments imaginable. And the wizard told the Weaponmaster of all of these embroilments – and told of them at full length.
At last, however, Sken-Pitilkin had reached Port Domax, the famous free port on the southern shores of Tameran. There, Shabble had founded a Temple of Cockroach, a temple to be presided over by two natives of Untunchilamon, a young man named Chegory Guy and a young woman named Olivia Qasaba.
Thereafter, Shabble had taken to exploring the surroundings, eventually venturing as far as Safrak.
'It may well be,' said Sken-Pitilkin, 'that Shabble knew of this place from earlier encounter. But in any case, little can be hidden from a bubble so versatile in its curiosity. The fact is that Shabble won every secret of the Safrak Bank, and then prevailed upon Bao Gahai to establish a branch of the Cult of Cockroach upon Alozay.'
Adroitly blackmailed by Shabble – who threatened to expose the secret of the Doors of the Circle of the Partnership Banks to the whole world – Bao Gahai had conceded the Cockroach a temple.
The dralkosh had hoped that Shabble would be content with that, but by slow and remorseless degrees Shabble had built up an organization on Alozay and had taken all power on that island into (so to speak) its own hands.
'Well,' said Guest, when Sken-Pitilkin's story was finished.
'This is all much different than what we were led to expect by Plandruk Qinplaqus.'
'Dalar ken Halvar cannot hope to have any certain knowledge of Safrak,' said Sken-Pitilkin, 'for Shabble has not allowed the Banks any unrestricted use of the Door. The bouncing bubble is feckless when its attention wanders, but right now it is flushed with the first enthusiasm of a new toy. I think the Circle will hold its full attention for some time to come, and it will be hard for anyone to distract it. These days, Shabble spends the daylight with the Door, examining all those who come through it, and sleeps by night with the star-globe on the floor beside it.'
'You mean,' said Guest, 'that the Door is closed by night?'
'I do,' said Sken-Pitilkin.
The wizard needed to say no more on that subject, because Guest could imagine how such nightly closure would distress the Banks, which were accustomed to make full and never-ceasing use of the Circle of Doors to shift their merchandise from one place to another.
'Have you more to tell?' said Guest, still unclear as to whether or not Sken-Pitilkin had thrown in his lot with Shabble.
'No,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'That's it. That's the story of our lives since last we met. Your own story, I hazard, is more of a saga in its shaping.'
'So it is,' said Guest. 'But before I tell it, pray tell me this – where is our friend Zozimus?'
'Why,' said Sken-Pitilkin, 'he is still in Port Domax, still the pet of the sweet Olivia, since he is still incarcerated in the flesh of a hamster.'
'Still!' said Guest.
'I fear,' said Sken-Pitilkin solemnly, 'that his transformation may be permanent.'
'So,' said Guest Gulkan, 'Zozimus is doomed to serve a hamster's flesh, and we in our turn are doomed to be
