then I will venture to Obooloo in truth, and there will liberate the Great God Jocasta.'
'Bargain!' said the demon. 'I will have no bargains!'
'Then what will you have?' said Guest.
'You,' said the demon. 'You. As my slave. The slave of my flesh. If you choose to live, then you must live as my slave. The slave of myself and the slave of my god.'
'I will join you in an alliance of equals,' said Guest, 'but I will make no pact that condemns me to slavery.'
'You will, you know,' said the demon.
'I would rather die,' said Guest staunchly.
'Then die, then,' said the demon.
With that, it caused the delusionary image of a head which it was displaying to abruptly twist, distort and crumple. Then it flushed from green to red and roared:
'Die, then!'
The roar battered the Weaponmaster like the wind-blast of a hurricane. He was so surprised that he fell over backwards. Then the demon laughed. Distantly, someone shouted:
'Guest! Are you all right?'Guest sucked on his finger to moisten his throat, then shouted:
'I live!'
Then, focusing his attention on the demon, Guest renewed his negotiations with the jade-green beast.
'I will make a bargain with you,' said Guest, speaking with care. 'This is the bargain. You will save the day for me. You will command the Guardians to my service. With the days saved, I in turn will save the Great God Jocasta. I will liberate Jocasta from captivity in Obooloo. That is the bargain.'
'I will give you no bargain,' said the demon. 'You will live as my slave, or you will die. You will knuckle to my command,' said Iva-Italis, 'or you will surely die of a certainty.'
A certainty. A known thing. Knowing. Knowledge. It occurred to Guest that during his former exile on Safrak he had never heard anyone speak of the Great God Jocasta. Everyone on the island of Alozay knew of the demon Iva- Italis, but to Guest's knowledge nobody knew of the Great God which languished in Obooloo. It was a secret, then. But how much of a secret?
'Perhaps I will die,' said Guest. 'But before I go down to destruction, I will reveal to the world your secrets.'
'I have no secrets,' said Iva-Italis. 'I stand here naked, and all of Alozay knows me.'
'Your Great God is a secret,' said Guest. 'The Guardians don't know about your Great God, and – and – and these temple people, these people in Obooloo, how much do they know? I'll tell Sod, that's what, then Sod will tell Obooloo. Oh yes, and once Obooloo knows it has a Great God in its midst, well, who wants something like that lurking in the closet? Obooloo won't be very happy, no, and your Great God neither. The temple. The Temple of Blood. The Great God. Imprisoned by the Stog, the Stogirov. That's all they need to know. I'll tell Sod, then Sod will tell, Obooloo will know, then it's doom for your Great God, or maybe for you too.'
'An empty threat,' sneered Iva-Italis. 'For how would you or Sod say anything such to Obooloo when Obooloo is so far away from here?'
Now as it has been earlier remarked, Guest Gulkan knew no more geography than a hedgehog. If anything, he knew less.
Therefore he had no true conception of the distance between Safrak and Obooloo, and no untrue conception of that same distance either. But, since Witchlord and Weaponmaster had recently performed prodigies of geographical excursion, venturing over unmapped lands with no more than sun and stars to guide them, Guest was inclined to sneer at distance, and to think no prodigies of sea or mountain sufficient to bar the distances to the brave.
Hence he answered easily:
'Why, it will be no great difficulty for Sod to get news to Obooloo, for Obooloo is but a step from Safrak.'
Now when Guest spoke of that 'step' between Safrak and Obooloo, he was speaking in the poetic manner, in which a 'step' can mean any distance less than a lifetime. But Iva-Italis took this throwaway remark for a statement of literal truth, and was enraged.
'Who told you of that?' said Iva-Italis in fury.
'Ha!' said Guest, realizing he had struck on something, though he did not know what. 'It is a step, yes, a single step!'
'Who told you?' roared the demon, with renewed rage.
The roar was sufficient to refocus the attention of everyone in the Hall of Time on Guest Gulkan's dealings with the demon.
'Hush down,' said Guest softly. 'Or do you want them all to know the secret.'
'Come closer,' said Iva-Italis, 'and I will hush in truth.'
'Ha!' said Guest. 'Closer! If you want us closer, then you must come to me.'
'Then stay where you are,' said Iva-Italis. 'But if you wish to have dealings with me, then you must tell what you know of the passage between Safrak and Ang.'
Ang? Now where was Ang? Guest Gulkan was adrift already, for though he had been told a thousand times that Ang is a province of the Izdimir Empire, and that the city of Obooloo stands fair and square in the center of that province, he had neglected to commit these facts to memory. Hence the name of Ang came to him as if he and it were both just fresh-born. But Guest bluffed it out bravely.
'I am the Weaponmaster,' said Guest staunchly, 'and the greatest of my weapons are those of the intellect. I was born to power and then raised in the wisdom of wizards. I have walked in the sun and have walked at the feet of the dead. I have spoken with Those Who Are Not and have slept alongside Those Who Will Be.
I have looked through time and space and I have seen much, aye, even the Untunchilamons.'
A nice froth of nonsense, this! But Guest had heard sufficient legends, stories and fairy-tales to know how a Master of Knowledge and Power should speak, so spoke accordingly. And with remarkable effect.
'Untunchilamon!' said Jocasta.
'Why, yes,' said Guest, surprised to see that he had enraged the demon yet further, but concealing his surprise with bland insouciance. 'No secret is there concealed from me, for I know – '
Then Guest halted himself. He had been about to say that the Untunchilamons were a group of twenty-seven islands where the
Rovac had long dwelt in power, but he dimly and distantly remembered the wizard Sken-Pitilkin correcting him on this. For some reason, Guest connected that correction with Strogloth, author of Strogloth's Compendium of Delights. So was Untunchilamon the birthplace of that infamous author? Perhaps. But Guest could not be sure of this.
'You were saying,' said Iva-Italis, observing Guest's confusion. Guest shook his head to free it from confusion.
'You have been addling my wits,' said Guest, turning on Iva-Italis with a note of accusation.
'I?' said Iva-Italis in surprise. 'I've been doing no such thing!'
'Of course you have,' said Guest. 'You know what I know and you know you must yield, but you have been negotiating in bad faith, seeking to probe me out of my secrets, and seeking also to delay decision in the hope that the Guardians may swamp my father's men and hack me before I can betray your truth to Sod.
You think me patient? Patient I am not, not when I am hard up against the wall of my death. Very well! I must go call out Sod, for it is time for me to confess to him my secrets.'
With that, Guest turned to go, making as if to head up the stairs to the abditory to which Sken-Pitilkin and Glambrax had conveyed the captive Banker.
'No!' said Iva-Italis. 'Wait! I have a message.'
'What message?' said Guest, turning.
'A message from Jocasta,' said Iva-Italis. 'Jocasta says you can have my help. If. If you will swear. If you will swear yourself to venture to Obooloo. Yes, and to rescue. To free the Great God Jocasta from the clutches of the evil Stogirov, High Priestess of the Temple of Blood. Do that, and Jocasta in gratitude will make you a wizard, yes, and you will live forever.' Guest hesitated.
'You realize what I need?' said Guest. 'You realize what your offer of help implies?'
'Tell me,' said Jocasta.
'It implies, amongst other things, that you must call off the Guardians. They have sworn oaths of fealty to you,
