'Eljuk needs to be by himself tonight,' said Nol.
'But I'm his brother!' protested Guest.
'Eljuk is a wizard now,' said Nol. 'Or will be if he survives tomorrow.'
After this uncompromising brush-off, Guest wandered away from the campsite and sat sulking in the dark of the upland night. But it was too cold to sit sulking for long, so he was soon on his feet again.
Natural curiosity, combined with a childish desire to defy Ontario Nol, soon drew guest back to the Cave of the Warp. In that Cave, the rainbow-flickering Veils of Fire still burnt in silence. Guest stood outside, looking in.
Inside this cave, or so he was told, apprentice wizards struggled with the Mahendo Mahunduk, and died if they were not equal to the struggle. To step over the threshold of that cave was to precipitate such a struggle.
So he was told. Guest was strongly inclined to doubt the truth of any of this. The cave simply did not look dangerous. Rather, it looked spectacularly empty.
'I am the Weaponmaster, am I not?'
So muttered Guest. Then he hesitated.
Then -
Then stepped inside.
Once inside, Guest shuddered at his own audacity. But, with shuddering done, he felt no different. He ventured another step.
Where was the danger? Where was the challenge? This was but an empty cave. There was no murkbeast inside, no simulcrum of the Great Mink, no dorgi, no therapist.
'Anyone home?' said Guest.
Not even an echo answered him.
Gaining confidence, Guest boldly ventured all the way to the Veils of Fire, where he again hesitated. Now this, this wall of cold-burning rainbow, this was most definitely something new. But was it dangerous?
As Guest was wondering, the rainbow lashed out. It coiled around his feet and spun in threads of kaleidoscopic lightning, accelerating upward in wreathing coils until his whole body was alive with multicolored light. Wreathed in that light, he felt buoyant, exhilarated – even a little drunk.
Alarmed to find himself growing slightly lightheaded, Guest backed off, and the coils of light relinquished their grip and sank back.
'So,' muttered Guest.
So what? What was he to make of this? Guest had dared himself into a cave which wizards thought of a place of death and terror. And inside he had found – well, really, precisely nothing.
'Weirdness,' said Guest.
Then made his way back to the cavemouth, and made his exit. Guest had barely exited when he was challenged by Ontario Nol, who was advancing on the cave from the direction of the campsite.
'What are you doing here?' said Nol, when he recognized Guest, whose face was lit by the cold-burning veils of rainbow located fifty paces away, deep in the depths of the cave.
'Investigating,' said Guest.
'Investigating?' said Nol. 'What are you talking about?'
'Investigating these caves of yours,' said Guest. 'I don't think much of them. I went right inside, but – '
'Inside!' said Nol. 'Enough of your nonsense!'
'It is not nonsense,' insisted Guest. 'I went inside! Look,
I'll show you, I – '
With that, Guest made as if to enter the cave. But Ontario Nol gripped him with fingers which could have demolished stone, and, trapped by Nol's invincible strength, Guest had no option but to bend to the wizard's will.
'Go back to bed!' said Nol.
'I don't have a bed to go to,' said Guest.
'There's comfort sufficient inside the yellow bottle,' said Nol. 'Come. We'll go there.'
And such was the insistence of the wizard of Itch that Guest Gulkan was compelled to enter the yellow bottle, where he found that Sken-Pitilkin was already soundly asleep, dreaming opium dreams thanks to the chemical benediction which had been provided to him by a fellow wizard. Guest was much disgusted by Sken-Pitilkin's stuporous state, and found he could not sleep. In the end, he spent the night talking with Shabble, who seemed unfussed at the prospect of imminent destruction. The truth was, Shabble quite frankly did not believe in the existence of this Warp, or its Veils of Fire, and was perfectly confident of surviving the morrow.
'Perhaps you will,' said Guest. 'But, one way or another, these wizards will destroy you, because they've set their hearts on your destruction.'
'No they won't,' said Shabble. 'They like me too much.'
'They like you!' said Guest.
'Eljuk likes me,' said Shabble. 'I taught him paper dragons, he likes that. Oh, and the ethnologists like me. I was months and months teaching them sex customs.'
'Ethnologists are always in the market for sex customs,' said Guest grimly. 'But that doesn't stop them being a bunch of coldblooded vivisectionists.'
But Shabble would not believe a word of it.
As for Levant, he was asleep, and protested strenuously when Guest tried to wake him for a tactical discussion.
All in all, Guest Gulkan began to get the impression that he was the only person who was capable of making a sane and rational response to the demands of the moment. Sken-Pitilkin, who had retreated to the unpardonable comfort of a drug-stupor, had resigned himself to death with disgraceful ease. Eljuk, with his uninterruptable vigil, had chosen a like-minded retreat into mystical silence. Shabble was fecklessly unconcerned with the future, and Ontario Nol quite flatly refused to accept the results of Guest's Investigations into the Cave of the Warp.
And Levant! Well, Levant had proved his nature with a vengeance. Useless, useless, dead weight and ballast.
So thinking, Guest at last got to sleep, and endured a few brief and troubled dreams before he was roused for the morning's ceremonies.
On the rocky ground outside the Cave of the Warp, those who had made the pilgrimage to these inland heights assembled, with a fair amount of coughing, scratching, hawking and yawning. Guest looked around, and saw that Levant was missing. Thayer Levant, who had no interest whatsoever in Eljuk's Trials or Sken-Pitilkin's execution, had chosen to stay in the depths of the yellow bottle and sleep in late.
But everyone else was there. Sken-Pitilkin was most definitely there, looking much the worse for wear. Indeed, the sagacious wizard of Skatzabratzumon looked almost as shattered as he had at times on Untunchilamon – particularly after the encounter with the therapist Schoptomov, in which Sken-Pitilkin had almost killed himself by over-exertion.
Seeing the state Sken-Pitilkin was in, Guest saw at once that the wizard would be no use in a battle.
As for Shabble, why, given freedom, Shabble could have incinerated all the wizards with a single blast of fire. But the bubble of bounce was still caught in a web of silver, and tethered by a chain of silver, and whatever the nature of this restraint it most certainly prevented Shabble from throwing any fire whatsoever.
In the cold light of morning, Shabble hummed softly, doing a gentle imitation of the skavamareen.
As Guest surveyed the scene, one of the wizards began to speak. Unfortunately, his entire discourse was in the High Speech of wizards, of which Guest knew not a word; and nobody was in the mood to provide the Weaponmaster with a translation.
After a long and supremely tedious speech, the wizard beckoned to Eljuk, who stepped toward the Cave of the Warp. Eljuk stumbled even before he entered the cave. But enter he did. He took one step, two, three – and Guest began to feel faint.
Realizing he was holding his breath, Guest Gulkan forced himself to breathe. Even as he did so, Eljuk shrieked. Eljuk screamed as if he was being nailed with needles. He collapsed.
Then, to Guest's belief, Eljuk's body began to float upward from the floor of the cave. White fire began to flicker around Eljuk's limbs.
From the somber, funereal silence of the watching wizards, Guest deduced that Eljuk had failed his Trials, and was going to die.
