'Just the truth,' said Alish, cutting off Rolf Thelemite's verbating.
Then Rolf controlled himself, and gave a plain account of his doings.
'I was engaged in this diplomacy business,' said Rolf. 'There was a mission, a mission from the Greaters to Ork.'
'So I've heard,' said Alish.
'There was a sea-wreck,' said Rolf.
'Is there any other kind of wreck?' said Alish.
Rolf Thelemite was about to answer in the affirmative. Rolf Thelemite was about to say that a person could be air-wrecked as easily as they could be sea-wrecked. But then Guest Gulkan caught Rolf Thelemite's eye, and conveyed a warning by the grimness of his expression.
Only then did Rolf Thelemite catch himself. He was in the presence of Elkor Alish, the scourge of the Confederation of Wizards. It might well be death for Rolf if he was to confess his long association with the notorious Hostaja Torsen Sken-Pitilkin, wizard of Drum, wizard of the order of Skatzabratzumon, and master of controlled flight. Much has been written about the hazards of the battlefield, and the dangers of the sea, but the terrors of a court can be worse than storm and battle put together; and Rolf, realizing how dangerous his long association with Sken-Pitilkin might yet prove to the integrity of his liver, was hard put to know what to say next.
'You were saying?' said Alish.
'There's, ah, carts,' said Rolf Thelemite. 'Carts can be wrecked, yes, wheels came off, Drake told me once, a cart, it was Cam, there was coal, a whole building demolished, there – '
'Just the facts,' said Alish. 'The facts of your journey.
Briefly. Not the whole of your life in vomiting detail.'
'Ah,' said Rolf, relieved that this dangerous business of wrecking was done with. 'I was diplomat, then. But wrecked.
Wrecked on Penvash. There was capture and battle beforehand, a big ship, a metal ship, but the wrecking was the end of it, and, ah – inland, we went inland, north was the start and the south to be the finish, and the Old City in the middle.'
'Tell on,' said Alish.
'We reached this Old City,' said Rolf, 'and it was Drake,
Drake Douay, you've met him, I'm told. He found the globe, it was full of stars, he put in this hole, and then this Door opened, a Door between countries.'
'Then?' said Alish.
'We closed it,' said Rolf. 'Because it was, ah, there were crocodiles, there were big lizards, a battle, all kinds of stuff, giant centipedes, a mountainside. So we got back to the Old City, we closed it, that was enough. But then there was a fight.'
'I'm sure there was,' said Alish. 'So?'
'The, the globe,' said Rolf, 'it got lost in the river.
Because of the fight, I mean.'
'Then?' said Alish.
'Then we came back,' said Rolf, lamely. 'Back home. Back to the Greaters, I mean.'
'And that's it?' said Alish.
'That's it,' said Rolf.
And that was the end of the interview. Guest Gulkan then expected Elkor Alish to rush an army to Penvash to filter that region's rivers for the star-globe. But Alish remained singularly unmoved by Rolf Thelemite's revelations.
And, on mature reflection, Guest Gulkan realized the reason why.
Elkor Alish desired to conquer Argan. The Door in the Old City started in no place in which he wanted to be, and went to no place to which he wanted to go. Ultimately, he desired to make war on the wizards of Drangsturm, true – but there was no point whatsoever in opening a Door which debouched into the territory of the Swarms on the wrong side of Drangsturm. Alish was searching for devices, yes, but he wanted things he could use immediately as weapons of war.
Unlike Guest Gulkan, Alish did not know of the existence of the far more valuable Circle of the Partnership Banks. Unlike Guest Gulkan, Alish did not have a father who ruled Alozay, where one of the Doors of the Banks was located. Unlike Guest Gulkan,
Alish did not have the hope of eventually making an alliance with gigantic and invulnerable jade-green demons like Ko of Chi'ash-lan and Italis of Alozay.
So Guest Gulkan began to plan an expedition into Penvash on his own account, and to this end he renewed his acquaintance with Rolf Thelemite, and tried to meet and covertly interrogate all those who had been in Penvash when the star-globe was lost to the river. For Guest had already realized that the difficulties of finding a small star-globe in a large river could well be extreme; and that he could easily exhaust his life in futile search unless he could pin down the location of loss with some degree of exactitude.
In the end, Guest realized that research would not be sufficient in itself. To have any hope of success, he would have to take Rolf Thelemite or one of Thelemite's companions to Penvash, together with several hundred people equipped to rigorously search whatever stretch of river Thelemite indicated as the site of star-globe's loss.
To this end, Guest Gulkan began to sound out the temper of some of the other chieftains on the Greaters, concentrating in particular on the most lordly of the pirates.
When Guest was not thus engaged, he spent much of his time in a green bottle which had fallen to Elkor Alish's possession. In the secrecy of that bottle – the commanding ring of which was retained in Alish's possession – Guest spent most of his time writing a detailed account of the fortifications of Drangsturm, and of the Castle of Controlling Power in particular. Since Guest had studied those fortifications in detail, he was well-equipped for the task; and, since he still held a grudge against the Confederation, and against its ethnologists in particular, he had no hesitation in honorably discharging that duty.
Thus Guest was hard at work in the green bottle when that treasure of treasures was stolen from Elkor Alish by a sneak-thief named Togura Poulaan; and Guest was still helplessly imprisoned in the same bottle when that Poulaan carried it away from the Greater Teeth in a small boat which was shortly struck by storm.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Togura Poulaan: a would-be questing hero from Sung who became one of Sken-Pitilkin's proteges at a time when Sken-Pitilkin was living alone on Drum (Guest Gulkan having disappeared through a Door in the Old City of Penvash).
Now Guest Gulkan was a questing hero, a survivor of encounters with Crabs and with therapists, a mighty swordsman whose daring had defeated both the murkbeast and the crocodile.
Yet being such a person is no defense against ignominious disaster, for the world's greatest warlord may yet step by accident in a dogturd, or have a chamber pot emptied on his head by a careless chambermaid at work in the upper storeys of a building which overshadows the route of his promenade.
So it was that Guest, he who had confronted the dreaded Ethnologists in their lair yet had lived to tell the tale, he who had suborned the imperial strength of Plandruk Qinplaqus to his service, he who had dueled with the Great God Jocasta and had survived the treachery of the demon Italis, fell victim to the lowest and meanest specimen of scuttling cowardice to be found west of Galsh Ebrek and east of Chi'ash-lan.
The vile and villainous Togura Poulaan, a native of the porkeating nation of Sung, stole the bottle in which Guest was hard at work on his self-interrogation; and, by the time Poulaan had managed to carry the bottle home to his lair in Sung, he had succeeded in damaging the bottle so badly by long abuse that it ultimately broke, liberating Guest Gulkan from its interior.
That, at least, is the story as told by the Weaponmaster. It must be admitted that the above-mentioned Poulaan has given a different account of the matter, and claims that Guest destroyed the bottle from within by
