yes! – it was her! Yerzerdayla! Yerzerdayla, yes, the woman whom he had won from Thodric Jarl in combat! Yerzerdayla the fair, locked in her timeprison! Guest Gulkan thought this the greatest of all imaginable mysteries, for he had long been under the impression that Yerzerdayla had been left in Gendormargensis when Witchlord and Weaponmaster had gone to war with each other. As the interloper Khmar had taken advantage of that civil war to conquer first Gendormargensis then the entire Collosnon Empire, Guest believed that Yerzerdayla had surely fallen to Khmar's possession. He had heard, after all, that Thodric Jarl had chosen to enter Khmar's service specifically so he could reclaim the luscious Yerzerdayla.
So how had Yerzerdayla come to be on Alozay?
A great, great mystery!
Of course it was really no mystery at all. For the simple fact was that the Witchlord Onosh, insulted to find Thodric Jarl leaving his service on account of a woman, had arranged by secret treaty for Yerzerdayla to be covertly brought to Safrak.
The Weaponmaster – who had entirely forgotten about his beloved Penelope now that he had sight of Yerzerdayla – caught himself licking his lips.
He broke away from the time prison pod, since staring at the stasis-frozen woman was getting him nowhere. From past experience he knew full well that the pods could not be broken by brute force – they could only be opened or closed by application of ever-ice.
And the sole chip of ever-ice on Alozay was in the ring which had fallen to Yilda's possession!
Well. Guest Gulkan was not about to confess his need for that ring, since such confession would give Yilda a hold over him, and give Shabble a hold too.
As Guest turned away from Yerzerdayla, a thought occurred to him. He returned to the ever-patient block of jade which represented the corporeal form of Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis.
'My good lord Italis,' said Guest.
'Iva-Italis,' said the demon, as fond of its proper name as any person-in-the-flesh.
'Iva-Italis,' said Guest. 'Can you… have you any idea how long Shabble usually maintains an interest in… in a new sport?'
'Shabble,' said Iva-Italis, 'never maintains an interest in anything for more than half a thousand years at a time.'
Half a thousand years!
That prospect was enough to push Guest into swift and decisive action, and soon afterwards a gathering of seven met in conspiracy. Those seven were Vernon Brigadoon Sod, Onosh Gulkan, Guest Gulkan, Eljuk Zala Gulkan, Thayer Levant, Ontario Nol and Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin.
'Half a thousand years!' said Sod, when he knew the worst.
'One suspects,' said Lord Onosh, 'that it is but the blink of an eye to a demon.'
'An eyeblink!' said Sod. 'I have been on Alozay far too long to suffer another eyelash of it!'
Banker Sod had of course been taken hostage before Witchlord and Weaponmaster went questing for the x- x-zix. Sod had expected his hostagehood to be brief, but instead it had stretched out almost to eternity.
'So the demon will wait,' said Ontario Nol. 'It will wait rather than help us. Very well. Then we must wait likewise. Or else we must steel ourselves to action, and tackle this Shabble on our own. However
… do we have the power to destroy this Shabble?
One doubts it.'
'The thing can be broken,' said Sken-Pitilkin.
'Surely,' said Guest Gulkan, remembering back to his adventures on Untunchilamon, and a crisis of combat in the wormways deep beneath the equatorial city of Injiltaprajura. 'It can be broken, and knows it, and fears its own breakage.'
'How do you know that?' said Eljuk Zala, he who in his prideful days as a wizard's apprentice was inclined to doubt very much that his warworthy but ignorant brother Guest could be an authority on anything as arcane as a Shabble.
'We fought this Shabble on Untunchilamon,' said Guest. 'There was an iron dog, underneath the city. A dorgi. The iron dog, the dorgi, the dorgi made the bubble run. Later, there was a demon.'
'Like Iva-Italis?' said Eljuk.
'No,' said Guest, glad to be able to lecture his scholarly brother for once, instead of enduring the reverse position. 'The demon on Untunchilamon was greater by far. Not a rock but a spirit. It's name was Binchinminfin.'
Then Guest indulged himself by giving his wide-mouthed brother Eljuk a terse but melodramatic account of the doings of the demon Binchinminfin on the island of Untunchilamon.
'We were underground when the demon raided Untunchilamon,' said Guest. 'We were held prisoner by Shabble. But by the time Shabble got us to the surface, why, this demon Binchinminfin had seized the island's ruling palace. So we decided to attack it.
Shabble set us at liberty, and we launched ourselves on an assault of the palace.'
'And?' said Eljuk.
'And we were lucky not to be killed!' said Guest. 'The demon was mightier than any of us! It almost killed Shabble! There was a firefight, Shabble and the demon. Then Shabble ran, because the bubble was too scare to fight with Binchinminfin any further.'
'So what did you do then?' said Eljuk.
'Why,' said Guest, 'we left the demon in possession of the palace. Then we went downhill and we all got drunk.'
This was the truth, but it was not at all what Eljuk had expected to hear. He had expected to hear that his warworthy brother had somehow challenged the demon and defeated it – though the sorry truth was that the mastery of Binchinminfin had proved beyond Guest Gulkan's means, and in the end it the task of getting rid of it had been accomplished by an Ebrell Islander named Chegory Guy, whose later destiny had been to serve the Cockroach in a temple in Port Domax.
Seeing that he was in danger of losing some large fraction of his brother's esteem, Guest hurried past the subject of getting drunk in the face of a demon's danger.
'Anyway,' said Guest, 'enough of Binchinminfin! Suffice it to say that the demon, why, it could take people in possession then change their form to whatever monstrosity suited its purposes.
That demon – why, that one made Shabble run.'
'How?' said Eljuk, wishing that he himself had been privileged to see the doings of Binchinminfin on Untunchilamon.
'I don't know,' said Guest. 'Maybe Iva-Italis could tell us, after all, Italis is a demon of sorts, but Italis doesn't want to help.'
With a brute force confrontation being eventually ruled out by careful debate, the conspiracy then discussed the character of Shabble's trusted associates, and in particular the character of Yilda and Uckermark.
'Uckermark is a corpse master,' said the Weaponmaster. 'He's a pillager and a pirate to boot. A booty-hunter with the morals of a mosquito. If we can bribe him to our purpose, then he'll turn from Shabble's service sharply enough.'
'But Shabble is bent on world conquest,' said Lord Onosh.
'What could we offer Uckermark which would over-shadow the potential rewards of association with a world- conqueror?'
'I think,' said Eljuk Zala. 'I think – '
'About time, young man,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'I always thought you had some thinking in you, if you would but give yourself a chance. Tell us now, what do you think?'
'We may perhaps lack the slaughtering of this Shabble,' said Eljuk. 'But I think its displacement still within our power.'
'Displacement?' said Guest, who knew not that word in its Galish incarnation.
'Maybe he means we could kick it,' said Thayer Levant.
'I have,' said Eljuk Zala carefully, 'something very close to that in mind.'
Then Eljuk explained what he had in mind.
