And it was all his father's fault!
To Guest, then, it was entirely right, logical and just that he should have thrown in his lot with the tax revolutionaries led by Sham Cham, for Guest had grievances to avenge, grievances which were well worth killing for. The theft of the flesh of the woman Yerzerdayla, for example! Not to mention such matters as the inheritance of the empire.
Consequently, Guest prided himself on the magnanimous greatness of heart which he showed by not killing his father, or torturing him either, or spitting in his face, or cutting off his hair, or grinding his nose into the mud, or doing any of those other things which the ingenious Rolf Thelemite suggested with such unrestrained enthusiasm.
So when Guest looked on his father, he thought:
'Here is the foolish old man who cheated me of my woman, who exiled me unfairly, who waged war against me rather than share his manure with Locontareth, and who is living proof of my own greatness of heart, for I have almost forgiven him, in proof of which I have greeted him with the full abundance of this mountain palace of mine, and have extended to him the use of all things which are good in this my mountain kingdom.'
Thus Guest thought, for as far as he was concerned he had conquered the valley of Ul-donlok by the simple expedient of marching his small army into it; and, as the wizard Ontario Nol wisely offered Guest everything in the valley which was there for the taking, the valley was indeed a kingdom, at least for the practical purposes of the moment.
Thus Guest.
But the Witchlord Onosh inhabited a different world entirely – a situation which has plenty of precedent, for parents and children are often so remote from each other as to be, in effect, members of different tribes, or different races, or different species altogether. Hence there is often more love, trust and mutual understanding between a man and his dog than a man and his son.
As far as Lord Onosh was concerned, Guest Gulkan was a wild and witless boy who had disgraced himself and had brought the imperial family into disrepute by quarreling with a low-born foreign mercenary over the possession of a woman. After attempting the unjust seizure of the woman, the boy had then risked his life against the mercenary, and had almost got himself killed.
Lord Onosh knew full well that Thodric Jarl would have killed Guest in Enskandalon Square had Lord Onosh not intervened by persuading the wizard Sken-Pitilkin to use his magic to trick Jarl out of his balance. After saving his son, the Witchlord had thereafter demonstrated his concerned love for the boy by sending him to safety in the Safrak Islands, which were renowned as a zone of peace and tranquility.
Furthermore, Lord Onosh had deprived himself of the benefits of the cooking of Pelagius Zozimus, the greatest chef in the Collosnon Empire, for the Witchlord Onosh had sent the wizard-chef Zozimus to Safrak to provide extra security for his son. Meantime,
Lord Onosh had tried hard to put down the tax revolt based on Locontareth, to secure the empire which was surely destined to be Guest's inheritance.
So when Lord Onosh looked at Guest, he thought:
'Here is the wicked, witless, mindless, stubborn, stupid, ungrateful, scheming, treacherous boy whom I have tried for so long to preserve, protect and educate so that he might one day be fit to govern the empire which I have ever expected to fall inevitably to his possession. To protect him in battle, I have risked losing the loyalty of my greatest bodyguard; and I have deprived myself of the services of my greatest chef in order to help preserve and protect his worthless life, and for all this he has proved entirely ungrateful.'
Thus the son was confused and the father bitter; and, in the extremity of his bitterness, Lord Onosh began to reconfigure the past, without realizing that he was doing so.
Lord Onosh had always seen that his own death would be followed by murder. Eljuk Zala Gulkan lacked the strength to hold an empire as his own. Therefore, on the Witchlord's death, Guest Gulkan must necessarily murder Eljuk, slaughtering down his brother then mastering the Collosnon Empire to his own will. This Lord Onosh had always seen.
But now, rather than attributing Eljuk's inevitable fate to Eljuk's deficiencies, Lord Onosh convinced himself that the certainty of Eljuk's destruction was a consequence of the demonic evil of the boy Guest.
So when Eljuk unexpectedly announced that he was going to stay in the mountains with the wizard Ontario Nol, Lord Onosh was convinced that Guest had terrorized poor Eljuk, and had threatened him with murder or worse.
'What has he said to you?' said Lord Onosh.
'He has said,' said Eljuk, 'that he will make me his apprentice.'
'No,' said Lord Onosh irritably. 'Not the wizard. It's Guest, Guest I'm talking about. What has Guest said to you? About staying, I mean?'
'Why,' said Eljuk, 'he said that Nol wanted me, asked for me.
And he says, ah, it's a good idea, that's what he says.'
'You mean he threatened you?'
'Threatened?' said Eljuk, looking puzzled. 'Why should he threaten me?'
'Because he wants the empire.'
'Well,' said Eljuk, 'if I'm going to be a wizard, then he can have it.'
'But you can't be a wizard!' said Lord Onosh. 'You're of the Yarglat, and no man of the Yarglat was ever a wizard! It's foreign stuff, stuff for the people of Toxteth and places like that.'
Eljuk Zala, resisting the temptation to remind his father that Toxteth was not a place but a language, reminded him instead that Ontario Nol was of the Yarglat.
'So he says, so he says,' said Lord Onosh. 'But I'm sure he was never the heir to an empire.'
'What's that got to do with it?' said Eljuk.
At this, Lord Onosh looked fit to overheat and explode, in the manner of one of those notorious pressure cookers with which Pelagius Zozimus once experimented.
'You can't just throw away an empire,' said Lord Onosh in great distress. 'You can't just throw it away, just like that!'
But Eljuk could, and did, and had. For Ontario Nol, the great wizard of Itch who had lived for so long as abbot of Qonsajara and as ruler of the uplands of Ul-donlok, had tempted young Eljuk with prospects of knowledge, and insight, and arcane power, and life prolonged for millennia. This temptation had proved potent, for the scholarly Eljuk had no desire to be the lord of the sweat of ten thousand horses or the grease of an equal number of virginal vaginas, or to possess any of those other most useless and uncouth material goods which typically appeal to your average Yarglat barbarian.
So Eljuk abandoned an empire, choosing wizardry instead.
And Eljuk could not be dissuaded from his choice.
Lord Onosh had little time in which to attempt dissuasion, for Guest was conscious of the passage of time, and knew that he was growing short of this commodity. The Battle of Babaroth had been fought in the heat of high summer, and it had been hot summer still when Guest had defeated his father at Volvo Marp by making an ally out of an avalanche; but the season was rapidly advancing, and soon it would be autumn. Guest Gulkan remembered the winter journey which had seen him journey from Gendormargensis to an unwelcome exile on the island of Alozay. For a few people, well-equipped and well-clad, that winter passage had proved feasible. But Guest fancied that a thousand spears would be hard-put to scavenge a bare living for themselves on such a passage through snow and ice.
The rations which Guest had earlier looted from his father's baggage train and portaged into the mountains were running short; by no stretch of imagination could the mountains themselves feed his army; and so he was determined to be back in Gendormargensis before winter set in.
Being so determined, Guest Gulkan said a fond farewell to his brother Eljuk, and ordered his army to prepare for a march to the lowlands, the lowlands where the sun was exercising its strength in one last bravado display of luxurious heat.
Lord Onosh begged for leave to stay in Qonsajara, swearing that he would live out his life peacefully in the mountains of Ibsen-Iktus. But Guest was not fool enough to believe his father, so took the man with him, that man being still symbolically imprisoned with golden chains. Jarl likewise went as a prisoner.
Eljuk stayed. The text-master Eldegen Terzanagel wanted to stay, but Ontario Nol refused him house room.
