wounded by a bamboo spike, how then would he have been able to valorously prosecute his later battles? If he had not been able to subdue the memories of a mighty avalanche which he had used to crush, grind and pulverise his father's army during the course of Tameran's civil war, how then would he have been able to sleep at nights? Guest had forced himself to suppress his memories of the mauling he had endured in an arena of Chi'ash-lan, when the Great Mink itself had shredded his arms and legs, sentencing him to four long years of humiliating convalescence.
So.
To remember was terror. To be aware was to suffer. And, after a lifetime of blunting self-awareness and suppressing memory, Guest was entirely shut off from those wild and undeveloped Powers which (given the tutelage of a shaman or similar) he might potentially have developed into something useful.
So it was that that Guest was forced to fall back on routine method for his interrogation of the world; and, year after year, he was often to be found in D'Waith, or in Favanosin, or in Port Domax, or in the other cities to which he persuaded Sken-Pitilkin to fly him.
And, at last, Guest learnt of the location of the star-globe.
It had been uplifted from a river in Penvash by one Yen Olass Ampadara, and was presently said to be on the island of Carawell.
And Carawell, the chiefest island of the Lesser Teeth, was virtually on Guest Gulkan's doorstep.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Lesser Teeth: a group of sandy, low-lying islands north of the Greaters, south of the Ravlish Lands, and an eyeshot or so east of the continent of Argan.
So Guest Gulkan raided Carawell, chiefest of the islands of the Lesser Teeth. He came from the sky, swooping down from above in a stickbird piloted by Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, and he brought with him a half-dozen fighting men and two sea dragons. Guest Gulkan expected war, battle, screams and terror. His thoughts had been focused on the star-globe for so long that he automatically imagined that the whole world shared his lust for the thing. But of course to the people on Carawell the star-globe was nothing but a useless bauble. Suppose a gang of bloodthirsty cut-throats broke into your house, and proclaimed their intention to make off with your deceased grandmother's teeth. It is not likely that you would risk murder, rape and arson to defend this dubious treasure – and, similarly, the people of Carawell put up no fight to defend the star-globe.
Quite apart from everything else, the chiefest warlord of Carawell, a Rovac warrior named Morgan Hearst, had taken himself and his gang of cut-throats to Estar, where he had embroiled himself in some dubious provincial power-struggle, the details of which were of no interest to Guest Gulkan.
On Carawell, Guest Gulkan interrogated a young Rovac warrior named Altol Stokpol, and learnt from this source rather more than he cared to know about the affairs of Morgan Hearst. From this interrogation, Guest learnt only one thing of interest: there was a Yarglat barbarian named Nan Nualador in Hearst's dungeons. Guest naturally rescued his fellow countryman, and asked him why he had been persecuted by Morgan Hearst.
'We quarreled over a woman,' said Nan Nualador. Guest readily accepted this, for, like many another man who has outgrown the age when lust is dominant, he had come to think of the female sex as being little more than an endless source of trouble and provocation.
It would be wrong to say that the Weaponmaster had an ascetic temperament. Nevertheless, he had led a life which had made ruthless demands on his resources; and, concentrating on the needs of raw survival and the pursuit of power, he had quite gotten out of the habit of sensual relaxation. If he was hungry, then he ate; but, if one of his appetites needed appeasing, then he satisfied that appetite merely to free himself for undistracted action. Guest Gulkan, then, had become a more limited creature as he had grown into his full maturity. He had lost sight of certain possibilities and potentialities. In his lustful youth, he had been prepared to fight to the death to secure the prideful possession of the woman Yerzerdayla. Later, during four long years of convalescence in Dalar ken Halvar, he had been faithful to the woman Penelope, exchanging the satisfactions of unbridled lust for those of domesticity.
But now, in the years of his maturity, the Weaponmaster thought little of either lust or domesticity. The rigors of his life – its many defeats, setbacks, disappointments and assorted traumas – had pruned away many possibilities. In maturity, he had focused his life on one great task: to reopen the Circle of the Doors of the Partnership Banks.
Thinking like a soldier, Guest Gulkan invited Nan Nualador to come with him to the island of Drum, for Nan Nualador looked like the kind of person who would be handy in a battle.
But Nan Nualador refused.
'Why?' said Guest Gulkan in surprise.
'I have other business,' muttered Nan Nualador.
'That's not good enough!' said Guest.
Then the Weaponmaster interrogated Nan Nualador at length, at last coming to understand that the Yarglat barbarian's refusal was made up of one part of defiance to nine parts of stark terror. Nan Nualador had a positive horror of Guest, this mighty warlock who had descended from the sky with dragons at his feet.
At last, despairing of the man, Guest Gulkan turned Nan Nualador loose, then rounded up the sea dragons (with difficulty, for those delinquent beasts had become engrossed in the hunting of chickens, which they thought to be great sport) then flew back to the island of Drum (taking with him some 275 dead chickens which his sea dragons had incontinently slaughtered).
Shortly thereafter (after the greatest chicken-meat banquet ever held upon Drum) Guest Gulkan and Sken- Pitilkin convened a conference of all Drum's resident wizards. Sken-Pitilkin was first to address that council of war. He gave his address in the Galish Trading Tongue, for, even after all these years, Guest Gulkan had yet to master even a smattering of the High Speech of wizards to his tongue (and, despite his desert island maroonment in the company of a copy of Strogloth's Compendium of Delights, remained lamentably ignorant of all the other great scholarly languages, such as Janjuladoola and Slandolin).
'We have the star-globe,' said Sken-Pitilkin, once he had given a detailed account of Guest's latest exploits. 'Therefore, it follows that we can open up the Circle of the Doors of the Partnership Bank.'
Then Sken-Pitilkin produced a map, a composite map which he had drawn himself, working partly from documents, partly from conjecture, partly from logical surmise, and (in great part) from his wealth of personal experience. He pointed out the location of the nine Doors of the Circle. These were: – the Safrak Bank of the Safrak Islands;
– the Monastic Treasury of Inner Adeer, in Voice;
– the Flesh Trader's Financial Association of Galsh Ebrek;
– the Bondsman's Guild of Obooloo, capital of Aldarch III;
– the Bralsh, of Dalar ken Halvar;
– the Singing Dove Pensions Trust of Tang;
– the Taniwha Guarantee Corporation of Quilth.
– the Orsay Bank of Stokos;
– the Morgrim Bank of Chi'ash-lan.
'Unfortunately,' said Sken-Pitilkin, 'Voice has been overrun by the Swarms. It therefore follows that to open the Circle will mean confronting the Swarms. This we can do, because we need but defend a single Door. Still, we will need to have an army to back us before we dare open the Door.'
'Perhaps,' ventured Brother Fern Feathers, one of the mildest wizards of Guest Gulkan's acquaintance, 'it would be unwise to open the Door at all. Why provoke a war with the Swarms when we've no need for such a war?'
'Being intelligent people,' said Sken-Pitilkin, 'we will fight no wars ourselves. We will get warriors to fight them for us. Furthermore, the Swarms are sure to force us to the point of war in any case. The Swarms are not settled in Argan. Rather, they are singularly unsettled. They are hot upon the borders of Estar.
Furthermore, numbers are rumored to have been washed up on the shores of the Ravlish Lands, and Guest has lately brought me fresh news of an invasion of the Lessers.'
