habitually intercommunicated. Rather, it commanded Guest Gulkan in the Eparget of the horse tribes – just as Banker Sod had done when briefing Guest on his duties.
'You!' said Iva-Italis. 'Yes, you, hair-of-a-horse! Come here!'Guest hesitated. With the jade-green monolith revealed as a demon for real, the Weaponmaster found himself healthily afraid of the thing. The rock's proven demonhood gave substance to the breath-bating horror stories told about its temperament. Many a drunken Guardian had denounced it as a very vampire in its humors – a monster of deceit which would plead one close with pleasantries then snap away one's head to satisfy anthropophagous passions.
Yet -
Yet Safrak trusted the demon, for Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis was Guardian Prime of Safrak and Keeper of the Inner Sanctum, that most secret of all abditories. Did that say something of the falsity of rumor? Or did it, rather, say something rather unpleasant about the Bank itself?
'I do not wish to repeat myself,' said Iva-Italis. 'Nor do I wish to have to raise my voice. Come here!'Guest Gulkan advanced, though – remembering tales of the demon's head-biting displeasure – he did not venture too close. Though Guest thought himself momentarily innocent of any wrongdoing, he had learnt long ago that a child's subjectivity is no guide to the judgments of adults. And, truly, the trembling Weaponmaster felt a very child in the presence of the thunderous patriarchal authority of the Hall of Time.
'Halt!' said Iva-Italis, when Guest was just a half-pace short of being as close as he wanted to be.
The tone was so sharp, the order so sudden, that Guest tried to halt with one foot in mid-air and a footstep's momentum still carrying his body forward, the result being that he almost fell over. He was still pawing at the air for non-existent handholds when the demon spoke again.
'What am I?' said Iva-Italis. Then, before Guest had a chance to answer: 'Well? What's this? Defiance? Defiance, is it?
Defiance in silence! Defiance! We know it well!'
'My lord,' said Guest, struggling mightily to master an apologetic eloquence to his tongue. 'My lord, I – I – '
'You! You!' said Iva-Italis, mocking his efforts with an adroitness which made Guest's tongue's stumbling become a regular stammer. 'Y-y-y-y-you!' said Iva-Italis. 'Your name, stumbleblock!
No, too slow. Failed that one. Failed. None to know, nothing to answer. Know my nature? Know? No?'
'M-m-m-my lord!' said Guest, abacked and baffled, snowballshattered and seastorm-shaken.
At times in the past, the boy Guest had thought his tutor Sken-Pitilkin to be a sadistically sarcastic interrogator, but he had been wrong: and now, face to face with the real thing, Guest found himself quite unprepared to cope with it.
'Who am I?' said Iva-Italis, thundering at the shout. 'Who am I?'
'My lord,' said Guest. 'The commander of my sword.'
'Your sword!' sneered Iva-Italis. 'Do I need a bodkin-prick or a needle? Sword! Hah! I think you an apple-slicer, but I no apple, nor connoisseur neither.'
'Well I think you exceedingly rude,' said Guest, who had been pushed too far for awe of authority to further compel his politeness. 'I think you – '
'Think!' said Iva-Italis. 'Since when had you the art of thinking?'
'I have suffered the tutoring of a wizard yet survived,' said Guest with bravado, seeking to extract at least some small shred of self-respect from this confrontation.
Immediately he regretted his show of pride, thinking the demon's discipline might be death. But Iva-Italis, having seen how far Guest could be pushed, changed tack entirely.
'I am a keeper of acroamatical knowledge,' said Iva-Italis portentously. Guest Gulkan, whose greatest appetites were culinary and amatory rather than scholarly, was not sure whether this cryptic declaration was meant to leave him frightened, impressed or sympathetic. He decided that a show of generalized respect would not be out of place, both to acknowledge the powers of Iva-Italis and to do penance for his earlier show of resistance.
'My lord,' said Guest, going down on one knee.
This was a standard token of respect on Safrak, where there was always good clean stone to kneel on. Amongst other peoples – the Yarglat, for example, who traditionally live out their lives on endless plains of liquid mud – the customs of respect are otherwise.
'I am your lord indeed,' said Iva-Italis, with what sounded very much like self-satisfaction.
'The greatest lord,' said Guest Gulkan, who had learnt from Sken-Pitilkin that flattery is seldom wasted except on the dead.
'Not the greatest lord, for I serve one greater yet,' said Iva-Italis.
'Who?' said Guest Gulkan.
'I am Demon By Appointment to the Great God Jocasta, the Great God in question being a prisoner of the evil Stogirov, High Priestess of the Temple of Blood in the city of Obooloo in the heartland of the Izdimir Empire.'
This declaration meant little to Guest Gulkan since he knew less geography than a hedgehog, despite all the efforts expended on his education by the sagacious Sken-Pitilkin. He knew nothing of the continent of Yestron; of the Izdimir Empire he was ignorant; the city of Obooloo was to him but one more closed book in the library of scholarship; and he had not heard so much as the merest breath of a whisper of the name of the fearsome Stogirov.
'You say nothing,' said Iva-Italis, mistaking the burden of ignorance for the vigor of insolence.
'Your hearing is very good,' said Guest, endeavoring to be polite but quite failing to find anything polite to say.
'Are you being sarcastic?' said Iva-Italis sharply.
'No, I wasn't at all,' said Guest, his temper coming quickly back to the boil. He thought of several things he could rightly say, and indeed longed to, but suppressed his impudence and said:
'No. No. I – my lord, I, that is, I tried, ah, I meant – '
'Perish the thing!' said Iva-Italis. 'It's lunatic!'
'I was but taken aback a trifle,' said Guest, trying to recover his dignity. 'Now – now tell me how I can be of service to you.'
This was said in a singularly ungracious manner, so much so that it sounded almost like a threat. Indeed, an implicit threat was latent in Guest Gulkan's words, the threat being this: get down to business or it'll be my turn to lose my temper!
Fortunately for diplomacy, the demon was through with its boybaiting.
'The Great God Jocasta wants something from you,' said Iva Italis.
'What?' said Guest Gulkan.
'Guess,' said the demon. Guest Gulkan, who had rather more acquaintance of barkeepers, fisherfolk and rough-neck mercenaries than of demons and the Great Gods they served, was rather at a loss to know what any Great God might want from him. Some lurid and entirely inappropriate images flirted briefly through his brain, then he recovered himself and said, cautiously:
'Does the Great God Jocasta seek a worshipper?'
The boy might never have made the acquaintance of a Great God, but he had heard that Great Gods (and Lesser Gods, for that matter) liked (or were said to like) temples, priests, incense, sacrifices and worshippers.
'No,' said Iva-Italis. 'The Great God needs no worshippers.
Rather, he seeks a hero.'
This was news to Guest. He had never yet heard of a god that wanted or needed a hero.
'A hero,' said Guest, cautiously. 'You mean, someone good with a sword. A killer of giants. Dealing death to dragons and all that. Something along those lines, is that what you mean?'
'Yes,' said Iva-Italis. 'The Great God Jocasta wants you to strive for him as just such a hero.'
'To strive for what reward?' said Guest Gulkan promptly.
Here we recall that Guest Gulkan was as yet immature, and over-acquainted with mercenaries. Therefore it was natural that he should think in terms of questing for personal reward rather than, say, questing to save the world, or to abolish hunger, or end crime, or to otherwise improve the lot of humanity.
'The reward,' said Iva-Italis, 'is that the Great God Jocasta will make you a wizard.'
