scalp.
There was supreme art in that studied deflection, but not one person in the audience understood that art. To the audience, it seemed merely that Jarl had slipped, and that Guest had blundered away his chance to decapitate the fallen Rovac warrior.
Thodric Jarl was down on the ground, bleeding profusely from the cut in his scalp. Blood poured from his head, sluiced through his hair, teemed down his face in rivulets then clogged in the gray of his beard. The Witchlord Onosh promptly declared that Jarl had been defeated, and that Yerzerdayla was therefore Guest Gulkan's prize.
'But,' said Lord Onosh, 'as the boy Guest has recently been guilty of a scandalizing delinquency, it is fitting that his possession of Yerzerdayla be tied to his punishment for that delinquency.'
Then the Witchlord Onosh publicly denounced the boy Guest on account of the fact that he had seen fit to dunk one of Sken Pitilkin's codicological treasures in a chamber pot. The emperor announced Guest's punishment:
'On account of his delinquency, the boy is not be permitted to take possession of the woman Yerzerdayla until he is 18 years of age.'
Lord Onosh declared that Yerzerdayla would meanwhile 'reside in chastity' under his own roof.
The Witchlord Onosh felt that he had resolved things rather nicely, winning a margin of four years or so in which to arrange for Guest to discretely surrender Yerzerdayla to Thodric Jarl. But in the interim, he must move quickly to separate Guest and Jarl, lest they find some excuse for a rematch.
Accordingly, that evening the young Guest Gulkan was summoned into his father's presence. There he found Zelafona, the aged but elegant sister of Bao Gahai, and her dwarf-son Glambrax.
'Guest,' said Lord Onosh. 'You are leaving Gendormargensis.
Tonight. Glambrax and Zelafona are going with you.'
'Leaving?' said Guest. 'But why?'
'Because,' said Lord Onosh, 'Thodric Jarl has sworn a bloody oath to kill both you and Sken-Pitilkin. In fact, unless my spies misheard him, he swore to butcher every wizard in the world.'
'Then,' said Guest calmly, 'you would be well within your rights to chop him into dogmeat, for every wizard in Gendormargensis lives in your protection.'
'So they do, so they do,' said Lord Onosh. 'So, for their protection, my wizards are joining you in exile.'
'Exile?' said Guest in alarm. 'What are you talking about?'
'I'm sending you out of the empire,' said Lord Onosh. 'Have you heard of a place called Alozay? Have you heard of Molothair?'
'No,' said Guest.
'Sken-Pitilkin swears he has taught you of both,' said Lord Onosh. 'And in detail. Molothair is a city, and Alozay an island.
The city of Molothair sits on the island of Alozay, and serves as the capital of that archipelago known as Safrak. You can place Safrak on a map, I trust?'
'I can place anything on a map,' said Guest. 'A cup, a plate, a pot or a branding iron. Give Molothair or Safrak into my hand and I will place them on any map of your choosing.'
'Come,' said Lord Onosh impatiently, 'you must know the places which we're talking of, for Safrak – oh, never mind! Sken Pitilkin's the geographer, let him then lesson you. You'll have plenty of time for lessons on your journey.'
And with that Guest Gulkan was dismissed, and was sent away to pack up for his journey into exile.
Name: Guest Gulkan.
Birthplace: Stranagor.
Occupation: student.
Status: barbarian-in-training.
Description: aggressive Yarglat male who lives his life as if determined to play the role of barbarian to the bloody hilt.
Hobby: the tasting of beer (often, and in bulk).
Quote: 'It wasn't me and I didn't really mean to do it, and anyway the bitch bit me.' (Said at the age of eleven, when he was caught barbecuing Viranessa, the silky-haired lap-dog which had long been the prize possession of his brother Eljuk Zala.)
So it was that Guest Gulkan departed from Gendormargensis in the depths of winter and made the arduous journey to the islands of Safrak. He did not go alone but was accompanied by two wizards, a witch, a dwarf and a bodyguard – the people in question being the wizard of Xluzu named Pelagius Zozimus, the wizard of Skatzabratzumon named Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, the aged but elegant dralkosh named Zelafona, the dwarf Glambrax and the doughty Rovac warrior named Rolf Thelemite.
Though Rolf was not properly recovered from his attack of scarlet fever, they nevertheless made good time on their journey out of the Collosnon Empire.
From Gendormargensis they traveled, making the journey down the frozen Yolantarath River on a sleigh drawn by the fur-dogs known as ubeks. Some 200 leagues south-west of Gendormargensis, and just downstream from the trading town of Babaroth, the Yolantarath is intersected by the Pig River. Guest Gulkan and his companions pushed their way up the Pig. 'Push' is very much the operative word, for the winter-frozen river was pocked with tree trunks and derelict rocks, and the clearness of its ice was rutted by the journeying of many traders.
Yet the difficulties of the journey did not depress the Weaponmaster. Rather, Guest Gulkan began to lighten up, his mood becoming buoyant – then weightless. The elevation of his spirits was scarcely surprising when one considers the claustrophobic tensions the boy had long endured in the imperial court of Gendormargensis.
The family history was not a happy one.
To seize power and secure it, the Witchlord Onosh had been put to the trouble of killing his father, his mother, his paternal grandfather, his twin sisters and his solitary brother, two uncles, four cousins, an aunt and five imperial concubines; and he had also secured the death of a nephew and the nephew's favorite horse.
All this was par for the course as far as the Yarglat were concerned – except for the gratuitous murder of the horse, which was generally considered to be excessive, and indicative of a streak of mean-spirited vindictiveness unbecoming in a warrior.
But Guest -
Perhaps there was an unexpected streak of mercy in Guest Gulkan's soul, for he had long been troubled by the possibility that he might one day be forced to inherit his father's bloody responsibilities, and to secure the empire yet again with a fresh set of blood-slaughter murders.
The journey the Weaponmaster was presently making was steadily taking him away from all possibility of any such conflicts, and so he was full of jokes and levity as he and his companions traveled up the Pig, arriving at last at the village of Ink on the shores of the Swelaway Sea.
There Guest gazed to his full upon the Swelaway Sea. He took so long about it that you might have thought him busy trying to drink it entire, rather than merely look at it.
At last he knelt by the waters, tasted them, then rose with a regretful sigh.
'What is it?' said Rolf Thelemite.
'It is but water,' said Guest regretfully. 'If only it were liquor, then there might be some use for it.'Guest was trying to deny the obvious effect that the sight of this massive body of water had had on him. For Guest at that age was very full of himself, and held in very poor esteem those minor parts of the universe which lay outside his own hard-striving corpus. Yet the Swelaway Sea, by the very act of its own existence, indicated by its vast indifference that there was more to the cosmic order than the blood and bones of one Guest Gulkan, and was uncomfortably suggestive of the possibility that the boy Guest might ultimately be but one utterly trifling and inconsequential part of a larger whole too vast to be comfortably contemplated.
With the Swelaway Sea having thus been encountered (yes, and do you remember the first time that you in your own person encountered the immensity of the sea, whether salt sea or fresh?) the travelers walked into Ink and addressed themselves to the question of the acquisition of a boat.
At Ink, a place much to be noted for the barking of its dogs and the smell of its dead fish, for the multiplicity of its turds and the squaloring of its five billion trouserless children, the adventurers were (this at least was the plan) to trade their sleigh, their fur-dogs and their gold for a small fishing boat.
