mind to visions. Let us try instead this precious door with this precious bit of rock.'
So saying, Guest advanced upon the marble plinth which supported the steel arch.
As Guest advanced, he held the star-globe in front of him. It gleamed with a steady inner light, and its heaviness again made him think it more like stone than glass. It was transparent, its interior fogged with a motionless smoke of underseas mystery, and in the green of that fog there hung the motionless firefly sparks of stars of all colors, some inspired in their solitude, others hanging close in their massed groupings of their galaxies.
'Where do I put it?' said Guest.
'There is a pocket of sorts in the marble base,' said the Ashdan ancient, Ulix of the Drum. 'See it?'
'Yes,' said Guest.
The 'pocket' was a gilded hole about twice the size of the star-globe.
'Put the globe into the pocket,' said Ulix. 'Do that, and you will open the Door.'
Gingerly, Guest eased the globe into the pocket. And let it go. It rolled home with a slight clunk. Immediately, the steel archway filled with a humming curtain of silver-gray, which looked to Guest like a vertical sheet of that slippery metal known as mercury.
'There,' said Ulix. 'It is open. Now you can go through it, if you dare.'
At which Banker Sod swore at Ulix, swore fluently and potently in Galish. Ulix ignored the captive Banker, as did the others.
'So,' said Lord Onosh, looking speculatively at the door. He was starting to realize that this thing was no ordinary door but a Door of major significance. 'A Door, is it? Then where does it go to?'Guest was of the opinion that the lord of the pelican had explained all this already. And so he had! But Guest was more ready to absorb explanation than was his father, since Guest had been rigorously tutored by the wizard Sken-Pitilkin since the age of five, whereas it is doubtful whether Lord Onosh was ever tutored by anyone in his entire life.
Ulix of the Drum, who knew that Lord Onosh was but a poor and ignorant Yarglat barbarian, ventured on a further full and complete explanation.
'Enough!' said Lord Onosh, when he thought his head had suffered injury sufficient for a single day. 'This thing cannot be understood, that much I see clearly. But what it does, ah, that's simple enough. With a Door like this – well, enough of that! The important thing is to keep this secret, is it not? For with this – with this we can conquer the world, if we go about it softly.'
'Softly, yes,' said Guest, 'for we would not wish to spoil our chances. I think to use this to conquer the world indeed, then to win back my empire in Tameran from Khmar.'
'Your empire?' said Lord Onosh in astonishment.
'Why, yes,' said Guest. 'The demon made the Guardians swear their fealty to me, did it not? Does it not therefore follow that I am their lord? And does it not equally follow that the mainrock is mine, yes, and Alozay as a whole, and the Safrak Islands likewise mind?'
'You have an enormous and arrogant conceit about you today,' said Lord Onosh coldly. 'That you happened to accept the surrender of some prisoners, why, that is but one of the commonplace incidents of war.'
'Commonplace incidents!' said Guest, with explosive force.
'Yes!' said Lord Onosh. 'A commonplace! A nothing!'
Now all this time, Banker Sod had been keenly watching Witchlord and Weaponmaster, and eyeing the disposition of the others. As father and son squared up to each other, looking as if they would be hacking at each other in moments, Sod abruptly moved.
Sod grabbed the dwarf Glambrax.
And threw him.
It may be that Sod had previously had some opportunity to practice the ancient and noble art of dwarf-tossing, for he threw Glambrax with uncommon force and accuracy, skittling both Witchlord and Weaponmaster. Then Sod threw himself onto the plinth, flung himself into a forward roll, and vanished through the Door.
Hot with rage, Guest scrambled up from the floor and leapt onto the plinth.
'No!' cried Ulix. 'You – '
But it was too late.
For Guest plunged through the Door in hot pursuit of Banker Sod.
'My son!' cried Lord Onosh, in anguish. 'My son!'
And with that cry the Witchlord drew his sword, as if intending to immediately revenge himself for the loss of his son.
Fearing the temper of this stranger, Thayer Levant nimbled onto the plinth and bolted toward the Door.
'Levant!' said Ulix of the Drum. 'You – '
But Levant was gone.
'Get him back!' said Lord Onosh. 'Now! Now! You! Zozimus! Sken-Pitilkin! My son! He's – '
Then Lord Onosh broke off, for a barrage of fighting men came shouldering through the Door. They were men dressed in the most sinister suits of black, their faces masked so that nothing showed but the whites of their eyes. They were Zenjingu killers, and they were bent on murder.
Immediately, Ulix of the Drum grabbed for the star-globe, yanking it from its socket. The Door closed. As the Door scissored shut, one of the Zenjingu killers was sliced clean in half by its abrupt closure.
'Cha-thara!' cried Ulix of the Drum, raising his pelican- headed walking stick.
At this Word, the Zenjingu killers began to stumble in blind disorientation, for Ulix of the Drum had neatly disabled their sanity. The Lord of the Silver Pelican was a wizard of Ebber, and his were powers over the mind.
Taking advantage of the disorientation of his enemies, Lord Onosh hacked and cut, slaughtering every last one of them. But that did not alter the facts. Guest Gulkan was gone, missing, vanished, wandering amidst the perils of some unknown foreign land, and there was no way for his father to get him back.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Door: an archway of what appears to be steel, set on a plinth of what appears to be marble. When activated by a star-globe, the Door fills with a humming silver screen. Each such Door typically forms part of a Circle, the separate parts of which can be continents apart. To physically interfere with such a screen is, in effect, to open a one-way valve to the next Door of the Circle.
To step through such a valve is to find oneself Elsewhere.
With Sod having followed Guest Gulkan through the Door, and with Ulix of the Drum having closed down that Door, Lord Onosh took personal possession of the Door's controlling star-globe.
Setting aside all questions of the fate of the Weaponmaster and the potential of the Door, he then set about consolidating his conquest.
At the command of the demon of Safrak, the Guardians had sworn themselves to Guest Gulkan's service. By isolating the demon, setting guards to prevent anyone from entering the Hall of Time, Lord Onosh ensured that the demon of Safrak did not give anyone leave to retract such an oath of fealty. By blurring the question of Guest's whereabouts – initially the world was led to believe that both Guest and Sod were still in residence in the heights of the mainrock – Lord Onosh neatly circumvented the possibility of any legalistic nitpicker pointing out that an oath to the Weaponmaster did not compel loyalty to the Witchlord.
Having thus temporarily shored up his position, Lord Onosh swiftly moved to reorganize the Guardians, combining his own men into that force, extracting personal oaths of loyalty from all and sundry, and diluting the old blood with new recruits.
In all of this, the Witchlord was advised by the dralkosh Bao Gahai, and, to a lesser extent, by the wizards Pelagius Zozimus and Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin.
So it was that Lord Onosh came to the Swelaway Sea in the winter of the year Alliance 4307, and, through a combination of courage, luck and studied brutality, made himself the undisputed lord of Alozay.
Notwithstanding all the reversals of the past, the Witchlord Onosh still claimed himself ruler of the Collosnon Empire. He hoped to use the islands of Safrak as a base from which to recover his empire. So he labored mightily
