dancing master showing off a difficult step. He walked heel to toe, first forwards then backwards.
'Such games are meant for childhoods first and second,' said Jarl. 'You in your second childhood can indulge yourself with such, but I am a man, and grown beyond such folly.'
'Try it,' said Nol.
'I have spoken,' said Jarl, speaking with the finality of a rune-warrior standing in defiance to a dragon.
'It is but a trifle,' said Nol, coaxing Jarl with the wheedling cajolery with which a nursemaid seeks to subvert the will of a bad-tempered baby. 'A trifle if you can do it, but a world of significance if you cannot. Come, man! I've done as much myself! Zozimus! Sken-Pitilkin! Will you set examples?'
First Zozimus did, then Sken-Pitilkin, and both succeeded in walking heel to toe, first forwards then backwards. At last, succumbing to sweet persuasion, Thodric Jarl consented to essay this simplicity. He failed. His feet were simply not sufficiently coordinated, and those feet disobeyed him as if he were drunk.
'You see,' said Nol. 'You cannot walk a straight line. That, my friend, is a sure sign of the swelling of the brain. The swelling is consequent upon rapid ascent to great altitude, and you must descend to cure it, or reconcile yourself to your death.'
'My stumbling feet are a sure sign that I'm drunk,' said Jarl. 'Or that I'm poisoned.'
As Jarl had not recently been drinking to any great extent, he was inclined to suspect poison.
Thodric Jarl's suspicion was natural, for Jarl was of the
Rovac, and so since earliest childhood had nourished a fearful suspicion of wizards. Furthermore, when Jarl thought of death he most naturally thought of poison. For, though the Rovac have a great reputation as sword- slaughters, poison is ever one of their favorite instruments of murder. It is used in particular by the
Rovac womenfolk, who typically prefer the swift simplicities of poison to the intricate longeurs of divorce proceedings. But, though it is the women who have the true mastery of the art, the men will not flinch from such expedients when the spirit moves them.
'Hush down,' said Zelafona, as Jarl began to launch himself into accusations of conspiracy and of general poisoning.
Then the wise witch Zelafona took Guest Gulkan and Thodric Jarl aside and advised them to place their trust in Ontario Nol.
'If he was going to kill us,' said Zelafona, 'he'd have poisoned the lot of us at dinner time.'
'Haven't you got the message?' said Jarl. 'I think that's exactly what he did. Either he's poisoned us, or else he's going to ambush us.'
'If poison,' said Zelafona, 'then it's surely a slow poison, for as yet we're all alert. Since wizards have no love for witches, I'd be as likely a victim of any such poison as you are.
Let us then watch our own condition, and gather for a lethal decision should that communal condition deteriorate. As for ambush – why, let Guest walk with Nol to kill the wizard if we spring an ambush.'
Thus it was agreed – though at first it was quite impossible for Guest to be spared from the labor of supporting the burden of the unconscious Rolf Thelemite.
But, after a long and steeply downhill walk, Rolf Thelemite came to, emerging groggily from the depths of his unconsciousness.
Shortly, Rolf found himself able to stumble downhill under his own steam. Thereafter, Guest kept close to the wizard Ontario Nol.
Naturally, the two fell into conversation, and Guest found himself telling Nol much about Gendormargensis, about the imperial family, and about his brothers Morsh Bataar and Eljuk Zala.
'My father has written to me not at all,' said Guest, making no effort to conceal his resentment at his father's neglect, 'but Bao Gahai has pestered me with letters as often as once every three months. She says that Morsh has taken to swimming, though I think it perilous strange for a man to play fish.'
'A leg as badly broken as his will be slow in the cure,' said Ontario Nol. 'So swimming may help.'
'But he's walking!' said Guest. 'He's riding! The bone is fixed!'
'The bone may be fixed,' said Nol, 'but the muscle may be badly wasted.'
'But,' protested Guest, 'we're talking ancient history! It's spring. Go back through winter, autumn, summer. Go back a year! A year ago I had a letter from Bao Gahai, she said him walking.
Walking, yes, and riding. A year, man!'
'So his cure may be close to completeness,' conceded Nol.
'But even so, you should not sneer at his swimming, for swimming is a very healthful exercise.'
'I thought you of the Yarglat!' said Guest in astonishment.
'Yet you think a man should be fish!'
'I am true to my heritage,' said the Yarglat-born wizard of Itch. 'I have not denied it. I have merely broadened it. But, anyway – enough of your brothers. Tell me of Locontareth. There was mention made of a tax revolt.'
So the subject of Morsh Bataar's broken leg and his slow recovery from the same was dropped, and Guest launched himself on the tale of the tax revolt in Locontareth, or what he knew of it – the revolt said to be led by an insurrectionist by the name of Sham Cham.
As Guest was deep in conversation, the path passed beneath great rocks, and in the shadow of those rocks the path suddenly crumbled beneath Guest's feet. Guest slipped – with a cry.
And Nol grabbed him.
Ontario Nol grabbed Guest Gulkan, fingers gripping the boy's arm like a set of pliars.
'Careful,' said Nol, hauling Guest back from the brink of destruction. 'Steady yourself. There now. Are you all right?'
'Yes,' said Guest.
Who was shaken by the strength of the old man, by the walnutcrunching power of those fingers. He was reminded of dim legends concerning mighty masters of combat who were said to live in the mountains. (Which mountains? The legends were never specific, but mountains like these looked near enough to the stuff of legends as far as Guest was concerned). Those combat masters were said to be able to perform prodigious feats. To kill without touching. To kill with a shout. To crush stones. To tear the heart from the flesh without benefit of steel.
'Have you lived in the mountains long?' said Guest.
'Oh, long indeed,' said Ontario Nol. 'I know this path well.
It gets easier from here on.'
And so it did, and it had become wide, flat and stable by the time dawn brought them a sharp-edged breeze to brisk away the stillness of the night, and brought them too to a village, a place of drystone buildings roofed with slate, a place where people came out and greeted them.
'Do you rule the entire valley?' said Guest, as the people gathered around them.
'No,' said Nol. 'I thought I told you of that earlier. King Igpatan rules the lower reaches of the valley.'
'I have never heard of this king,' said Guest, uncertain in his weariness as to whether Nol had in fact earlier explicated the nature of the king. 'How great are his realms?'
'They are of no great extent,' said Nol. 'For King Igpatan rules over no greater distance than one could comfortably walk between sunrise and sunset. But – come now! This is no time for geopolitical discussion. This is time for breakfast!'Guest was surprised to learn that he had been engaged in geopolitical discussion, because he had merely thought himself to be asking a couple of very obvious questions. Nevertheless, he allowed himself to be led big stone table set outdoors in the morning sun. Placed around that table were three-legged stools in numbers sufficient for the seating of Nol's company, and waiting on that table were finger-bowls of warm water fragrant with bruised mint, and plates heaped with eggs, with hot chicken-meat, with potatoes, with soy beans, with dried fish and with roasted frogs.
'Magnificent!' said Jarl. Then, turning to Nol: 'But perhaps the feast could be improved by the butchery of one of your villagers.'
During the descent, Thodric Jarl's headache had diminished away to nothing. His broken ribs still gave him pain, but his morale had perked up amazingly, to the point where he had almost become a welcome traveling companion – and let the mention of this fact be taken as a clear proof of the objective clarity of this history, which makes no idle propaganda against the Rovac, but simply records the facts as they happened.
'An excellent suggestion, friend Rovac!' said Nol, taking Jarl's jest in the spirit in which it was meant. 'But things grow slow in the mountains, so each of these villagers has taken a thousand years to grow meat sufficient
