In the dim and half-formed netherworld which confronted the Weaponmaster, he saw fluid obfuscations of liquid dark, saw glowing hoops and senile suns, saw twisted helix-shapes and toroidal follies. At first blush, it looked like the kind of place that would in the very nature of things be singularly unproductive of beds and bawds, of horses and kitchens, or anything else which would make it a worthy refuge for an emperor in exile.
'Grief of a bitch,' said Guest. 'What have I got myself into now?'
For once, the Weaponmaster thought he might have gone a little bit too far. Having seen what was here, he quite wished he could go back where he came from.
But where was the wall through which he had pushed? Guest turned, looked back, and saw no wall. Instead, he saw a prospect of – of -
He groped for words, then decided he was looking at dimly shadowed free-floating versions of some of the more abstract paperwork creations which Shabble had taught Eljuk to conjure to life. Certainly there was no sign of any kind of wall, door, or other exitway which would take him back to the Cave of the Warp – a cave for which he now felt a considerable nostalgia.
Meantime, he was standing in water, and the water was leaking into his boots, and his feet were getting exceedingly cold. A faint trace of violet light gentled round Guest Gulkan's feet as the current teased around his battered leather. Guest shuddered.
At least he still had the yellow bottle. Inside that bottle was food, bedding, shelter, comfort. Sken-Pitilkin was inside that bottle. And Thayer Levant. And Shabble.
Well.
Was that really a matter for comfort?
Were the companions of his death to be a mad wizard addicted to opium and the irregular verbs, a servant lately grown sullen, and a childish bubble which played with equal happiness with cockroaches and bits of folding paper?
Still, he did have the bottle. He did have the ring. The ring was comforting in its rigidity. And the bottle – best to make the bottle safe.
So thinking, Guest tied the bottle to his belt with a thong designed for the secure retention of scalps – a moligok, to use a word from the Eparget.
Now.
Where was he?
At second and third blush, the place to which the Weaponmaster had ventured looked ever bit as uncomfortable and uncomforting as it had from the start. It was a cold place, a quiet place, a place without smells. Bone would be at home here.
Rock would be content. But a Yarglat barbarian? Guest was more and more inclined to think he had made an irretrievable mistake, for the place looked uncommonly like a prison, and a prison from which escape was likely to prove impossible. It was cold; it was gloomy; and there was nothing to eat, not even a mushroom or a lump of fungus or such. The crunchy things underfoot were snail shells. Were they edible? They glowed faintly – glowed variously red and green.
While there is nothing written in the Book of Survival concerning the edibility of things that glow in the dark, Guest was inclined to the opinion that the consumption of such things is unadvisable. He presumed, therefore, that he was going to starve, or die from eating poisoned monstrosities. After all, even if he retreated to the yellow bottle, the food inside that bottle was bound to run out in due course, and probably sooner rather than later.
All in all, the hole to which he had fled was a singularly useless place, good for no purpose whatsoever, unless one wished to retire from life for a couple of thousand years to study the intricacies of the irregular verbs – something impossible for Guest, who as ever was traveling without the companionship of a copy of Strogloth's Compendium of Delights.
'But,' muttered Guest, 'Sken-Pitilkin will surely have such a book.'
Then he checked himself.
Verbs? Irregular verbs? He must be growing mad to think of reducing his life to the study of such!
'I am the Weaponmaster,' said Guest, more to cheer himself up than anything else. 'An emperor in exile! Rightful lord of the Collosnon Empire!'
So said Guest, then felt uncommonly silly for having said it, for this was a place where the greatest of his pretensions was likely to count for absolutely nothing.
Meantime, his feet were growing ever more chill thanks to the cold water which was leaking into his boots. As he was slowly beginning to recover from the shock of his abrupt precipitation into this den of strangeness, he was ready to do something sensible, and so began to wade toward the nearest rock. Guest Gulkan had almost reached the safety of the rock when someone spoke to him. Someone spoke to him, using the High Speech of wizards.
Once he had assured himself that he had not actually leapt right out of his skin, Guest cleared his throat – which was exceedingly dry – and spoke into the darkness.
'Who's that?' said Guest, using the Galish.
Nobody answered, so Guest presumed the voice to have been but a figment of his imagination. He made as if to sit on the rock.
But the voice forestalled him, saying – and this time it used the Galish -
'You're not going to sit on me, are you?'
It was the rock that was talking.
Now the Weaponmaster Guest was in no mood to be lectured by a rock. He had been tramping through the mountains for an unconscionable length of time, enduring all manner of hardship as a consequence of geology's heaping up of great stoneworks, and saw no reason why he should suffer a lecture on top of the other insults and injuries done to him by rock, stone and mountain.
'Sit on you?' said Guest, with a boldness which suggested that holding converse with rocks was nothing but a commonplace of life, 'why shouldn't I sit on you?'
'You should not sit on me,' said the rock, with a sorrowful heaviness, 'because I would be upset if you were to prove yourself so thoroughly impertinent.'
'And what do you do when upset?' said Guest. 'Do you bite?'
'No,' said the rock. 'I do not bite. But I do get unhappy.
You would not like me if I were to be unhappy.'
'This implies,' said Guest, 'that you think yourself happy right now.'
'Of course I am,' said the rock. 'Nobody is sitting on me, therefore I am happy.'
It struck Guest that the rock was uncommonly easy to satisfy.
Naturally, Guest himself was unhappy when someone was sitting on him, or standing on his head, or jumping up and down on his ribcage, as the case might be. But for positive happiness he required rather more than mere freedom from unwelcome encumbrance.
'Some people,' said Guest, hinting heavily, 'increase their own happiness considerably by helping others. I'm standing in the water, and the water is exceedingly cold.'
'Then the cold,' said the rock, 'is something you will just have to endure.'
'Who are you to tell me what I will or won't?' said Guest, starting to become a trifle truculent.
'I,' said the rock, 'am the Lobos.'
'Then know that I am Guest Gulkan, the Weaponmaster in person, lord of war and rightful heir to the mastery of the Collosnon Empire and the rule of Tameran.'
'You are a young thing, then,' said the Lobos.
'Young?' said Guest. 'I'm – I'm – '
But, to his dismay, the Weaponmaster found he had quite lost track of his birthdays. He was shocked. How could he possibly have come to such a pass? Obviously the world had rejected him, had ignored him, had overlooked his needs, his celebrations, his festivals.
So thinking, Guest began to feel very sorry for himself. But he was not willing to confess to a rock either his distress or the source of that distress.
'I'm old enough,' said Guest. 'I've reached a, an age of maturity.'
'Maturity!' said the rock, positively snorting with derisive amusement. 'Why, you are but a toothpick to a tree, a lump of last year's ice boasting to the mountain of its antiquity.'
