Then came the day.
In the Bralsh, Plandruk Qinplaqus ceremonially placed the star-globe in its niche in the base of the marble plinth which supported the steel arch of the Door. Immediately, there came a hum as of wasps or of bees. The seductive silver shimmer of the screen of the Door came to life, filling the arch. And Guest Gulkan – accompanied by Asodo Hatch, by Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin and by a dozen spearheading heroes – was gone through that screen in moments.
A single footfall took Guest from the Bralsh in Dalar ken Halvar to the Singing Dove Pensions Trust of Tang. He found himself in a well-remembered conical chamber hung with silken ropes and scented with incense. It was utterly empty.
Onward!
Back through the Door went Guest, his onslaught taking him to the Taniwha Guarantee Corporation of Quilth. Here was a similar conical chamber, but this one had been sealed with doors of steel.
It was lit – but dimly – by small barred windows high overhead.
No time to linger! Guest went through the Door again, this time stepping to the Orsay Bank of Stokos. He found the Orsay Bank's Door unattended but for the fresh-made corpse of an elderly Banker who had dropped stone dead at the shock of seeing the Door so unexpectedly reactivated.
Press on! Guest plunged through the Door again, this time stepping through to the Morgrim Bank of Chi'ash- lan. He found the chamber of Chi'ash-lan's Door to be in utter darkness but for the unearthly green light emitted by the demon Ko. The glowing green shone sick and wet on the skeletons which hung from the ceiling of Chi'ash-lan's weirding room. By that same light, Guest saw that the entrance to the room had been bricked up.
The demon Ko said nothing, but Guest supposed the thing saw him, and supposed too that it would immediately communicate its knowledge to every other demon in the Circle of the Partnership Banks.
Time to go! Guest dared through the Door again, to Alozay. He arrived in Alozay's weirding room in the highest level of the mainrock
Pinnacle. It was bright with sun, and it was empty.
That high and airy chamber was not empty for long, for Asodo Hatch and Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin came pushing through the Door in Guest's wake, with armed men following. As Guest lingered – for he had given himself the task of introducing Alozay to the new realities of the renascent Circle – Hatch and Sken-Pitilkin pushed onward. More and more men came pouring through the Door, stepping into Alozay then stepping back through the silver screen so they could push through to the ruins of the Monastic Treasury of Inner Adeer, where a Door opened to the ruins of the city of Voice.
They would hold Voice in strength, and fortify it against the Swarms.
Once this great press of men had hastened in and out of Alozay, Guest Gulkan was left alone in the weirding room in the mainrock Pinnacle. He had thought it best that he confront his father alone, rather than with armed men at his back, for he wanted the Witchlord Onosh as an ally rather than a slave. He wanted no taint of coercion to contaminate their relationship. He sought an alliance of equals: himself and his father, united against the world.
So Guest was alone when he ventured to the outer stairway which led downward from the Sky Stratum of Jezel Obo to the Archive Stratum of Trilip – bypassing the Hall of Time where the demon Italis maintained its vigil. But he found that outer stairway hanging in tatters, splinters of sky interpolated into its shattered fabric.
Then Guest ventured out onto the living rock of the mainrock
Pinnacle, and scanned the view to north and south. To south was the city of Molothair, which was inhabited still, for smoke was rising from its chimneys. To the north, the broad expanse of the Swelaway Sea was dotted with fishing boats. So. The island of Alozay, the ruling rock of the Safrak Islands, was still inhabited. Was still at peace. That knowledge canceled one of Guest's fears: for in recent days he had endured a nightmare in which the Swarms had made a covert invasion of the Safrak Islands.
There had been no such invasion.
Alozay still maintained its integrity.
But the outer stairs had fallen to ruin, so Guest had no choice but to descend the inner stairs, and thus to precipitate a confrontation with the demon Italis – a confrontation which he had wished to defer until after he had met his father in conference.
So down Guest went, descending the inner stairs until he came in sight of that monolithic block of rock, twice his own height, which was as green as jade, that smoothest and hardest of stones, which the Ngati Moana call -
What is the word?
Pounamu.
Remembering that word, Guest remembered Untunchilamon. And so, as he looked around the Hall of Time – trying to see past the demon Italis – the Weaponmaster's head was alive with incongruous memories of tropical heat, of monkeys and of and coconut palms.
There was nobody in the Hall of Time.
Not as far as Guest could see.
The Hall was empty. Its walls were terribly scarred by fire, and its tiles, which had once been patterned with skull-shaped designs, were scarred and blistered. Turning his attention back to Italis, Guest realized that there was a spark of brightness moving within the demon. A spark? Watching the lurid light which flashed and pulsed inside the demon, Guest realized it was a sphere about the size of a fist, and realized this was Shabble. That explained why nothing had been heard of the shining one since it had left Guest on his desert island.
'Greetings,' said Guest, addressing himself to Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis, the jade-green monolith which stood before him.
The demon did not respond. It heard him, surely. It saw him, surely. But it said nothing. Within its substance, Shabble batted from side to side, trapped, caged, irrevocably imprisoned. And Guest, his memories of Untunchilamon fading fast, remembered instead the night when he and his father had fought against Banker Sod, striving for control of the mainrock Pinnacle. It was an alliance with Italis which had allowed Guest to win that battle and make himself master of Safrak. Guest waited.
He refused to be intimidate by this thing, or by its silence.
It could say nothing to disturb him, nothing to upset him, nothing to make him afraid. He was past all that.
So thought Guest.
Then the demon spoke.
'So,' said Italis. 'You have come to kill your father.'
The words had weight. They were backed by an infinity of perception, of thought, of analysis, of years of study and of silent interrogation of probability.
And Guest, absorbing the words, felt his eyes become hot with tears. Then his mouth was wrenched open, and he found himself gasping for air. In huge, heaving gasps, he dragged in the air as his grief claimed him. For he had seen his doom, and had seen his father's doom, and had seen that there was no avoiding it.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Safrak Islands: group of islands in the Swelaway Sea, the inland sea of the continent of Tameran. The chiefest of the Safrak Islands is Alozay, long the headquarters of the Safrak
Bank. The Safrak Islands have long lived by trade, having commercial intercourse with the free city of Port Domax (on the shores of the Great Ocean of Moana) and with the Collosnon Empire.
The great city of Gendormargensis, the capital of the Collosnon Empire, lies to the north of the Swelaway Sea.
This book has concerned itself primarily with the life of the Yarglat barbarian known to the world as Guest Gulkan, the self- styled Weaponmaster.
Now Guest, in his confrontation with the ethnologist Brother Fern Feathers, was hot to deny his barbarous disabilities. Yet, whatever one thinks of the science of ethnology and its sundry stupidities and iniquities, it must be
