Multiple stairways connect Gud Obo with Dolce Obo, the Pillow Stratum. This is given over to the business of life, for it is a place of sleeping quarters, kitchens and eateries; and here one finds the mainrock's banqueting hall. Here Guest Gulkan and Sken-Pitilkin had their customary quarters, and a classroom in which they could prosecute the dissection of the irregular verbs.
A dozen stairways climb from Dolce Obo to Inic Obo, the Quill Stratum, which is given over to the offices of the Safrak Bank. A mighty stratum, this, for it dominates the bulbing middlemost girthswell of the mainrock Pinnacle.
Yet another dozen stairways lead upward to Brondon Obo, the Steel Stratum, the fourth level of the mainrock, which houses prisons, guardhouse and armories.
By now, the mainrock is starting to taper as it buffets upward toward the rough-hewn ridge which helmets its crest. In consequence of the tapering, only four stairways lead upward from the fourth level to the fifth, from Brondon Obo to Trilip Obo, the Archive Stratum.
The Archive Stratum is just that – dead rooms of silent paper, of ancient book-chests sealed with lead. As one goes upward in the mainrock, so the labor of supplying water from below becomes greater, and for this reason Trilip Obo was uninhabited by human flesh.
Only one stairway climbs upward from Trilip Obo to Zi Obo, the Pod Stratum, the sixth level of the mainrock Pinnacle. Zi Obo holds one single and solitary chamber, an oval hall a hundred paces in length and three dozen paces in width. This chamber is the Hall of Time, and it was in this hall that Guest Gulkan was to stand guard duty.
The single stairway from below enters the Hall of Time at its western end. From there, the hall stretches away for its full length of a hundred paces to the ascending stairway at its eastern end. When Guest was brought there to do guard duty, the entrance to that ascending stairway was guarded by a monumental block of jade-green stone.
'So,' said Banker Sod, who had taken it upon himself to brief Guest Gulkan on his guard duties. 'Where are we?' Guest looked around.
'We are in the Hall of Time,' said Guest Gulkan, who had received a guided tour of the mainrock shortly after his first arrival on Alozay, and who remembered this room well. Set in niches around its northern and southern walls were many transparent pods, some empty, others holding Safrak's time prisoners. Between the niches were deep-cut slit windows, the northern ones looking out across the Swelaway Sea, the southern ones allowing a partial view of the longstretch of Alozay and the ramshackle city of Molothair.
'Which level is this?' said Sod.
'The fifth,' said Guest. 'No, the sixth, that's it. The sixth. There's one more. The seventh.'
'Jezel Obo,' said Sod, naming it. 'The Sky Stratum. What lies in the sky, boy?'
'It is a sacred place,' said Guest. 'A shrine denied to all but the initiated. It's called, uh, a sanctum. The Inner Sanctum.'
'That is so,' said Sod. 'Jezel Obo, the Sky Stratum, is the site of the Inner Sanctum, the holy of holies of the Safrak Bank.
Are you a priest, boy?'
'No,' said Guest.
'Do you have any ambition to be a priest?'
'No.'
'Then don't worry your head about sacred places. Understood?'
'Understood,' said Guest, who, thanks to his studies in ethnology with Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, knew that many peoples did not like to have the secrets of their faith questioned.
'Well then,' said Sod, 'if that's understood, then let us go and meet the demon.'
With that, Banker Sod led the Yarglat barbarian Guest Gulkan from the western end of the Hall of Time to the stairway at its eastern end.
It was then evening, and the light was dying in the Hall of Time. Sod and Guest cast no shadows as they walked through that gray light toward the jade-green block of stone at the far end of the hall. Their boots clicked over the skull-pattern tiles – many of which were broken – which paved the native granite of the hall.
The roof was high above, and the sound of their boots was cold and sharp in the vaulting emptiness.
An odd pair they made, for Banker Sod, the Governor of the Safrak Bank, was a pale-skinned male of iceman race, with the black fingernails and thick white bodyhair so typical of that breed. His hair was bright gold, his eyes yellow and his teeth of like color.
Upon Sod's ringfinger there was a steel ring in which there was set a gemstone. That stone was of ever-ice, and in the gathering gloom of evening a ghost-cloud of light surrounded it. Guest knew that chipstone of ever-ice to be the key which opened and closed the pods of the time prison.
They halted at the eastern end of the Hall of Time. They halted in the presence of the hall's resident demon – the jade- green block of stone which guarded the single stairway which led upwards to the seventh and highest level of the mainrock Pinnacle.
Though Sod was accustomed to do business in the Galish Trading Tongue, and though Guest had learnt Galish from Sken Pitilkin, the language of the briefing was Guest's native tongue, the Eparget of the Yarglat, in which Sod was uncommonly fluent.
Apparently the demon understood the same language, for Sod still spoke in Eparget when addressing that dignitary directly.
'Iva-Italis,' said Banker Sod. 'This is Guest Gulkan, the son of the emperor of Tameran, and a student of the wizard Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin.'
The demon received this news in silence. It was a monolithic block of green stone which was twice Guest Gulkan's height; and, like the other rocks of the world, it seemed singularly indisposed to entertaining mere humans in conversation.
'Does the demon speak?' said Guest.
'When it chooses to,' said Sod. 'It is the head of our force of mercenaries, those men who belong to that body we call the Guardians. If you were to join the Guardians then Iva-Italis would be your master.'
'Ha-hmm,' said Guest, pretending that this was new to him, and that he was absorbing this information with the greatest of interest.
In fact, Guest already knew all about Safrak's Guardians, the Toxteth-speaking mercenaries recruited from Port Domax and Wen Endex. Guest had even struck up a dice-and-beer friendship with some few of those worthy warriors – most notably the mighty Hrothgar – and had a little of their native argot at the command of his tongue. Surely Banker Sod had been appraised of the development of these relationships – but, if so, then the rigors of influenza had stripped that knowledge from the Banker's mind.
'Iva-Italis guards these stairs,' said Banker Sod, continuing his lecture about Safrak's guardian demon. 'No unauthorized person can come up or down the stairway – and that means you. If any unauthorized person tries to pass, then the demon will eat them.'
'Eat them?' said Guest. 'But it has no mouth, and – well, claws, arms, tentacles, things to grab with. Besides, the stairs are wide.'
'When it eats, it eats,' said Sod. 'So don't worry about the stairs. The time prison is your concern. You know about it?'
'I know,' said Guest, who had heard all about Safrak's time prison.
'Very well,' said Sod, obviously relieved that he did not have to explain. 'Your duty is simple. If anyone tries to interfere with the time prisoners, then you kill them.'
'How could anyone interfere?' said Guest, who knew very well that there was but one ring which could free the time prisoners from their pods, and that that ring was ever in Banker Sod's possession.
'They could interfere,' said Banker Sod, 'by trying to physically carry away one of the prison pods. They could – never mind. If something goes wrong, Iva-Italis will tell you who to kill and when.'
Banker Sod was in no mood for extended explanations because he was even sicker than Guest Gulkan. Yet there was more to do before Sod could depart. He had to accompany Guest Gulkan back to the head of the western stairway, and point out the things placed in niches in the western wall.
'Lanterns,' said Sod. 'They must be filled with this oil.
There is a bracket by each and every time pod. Light as many lanterns as you need. You can use a tinder box,
