Thus it was that Khmar learnt early of the Witchlord's success, and set in train the actions necessary to neutralize his enemies.
The winter of the year Alliance 4307 came to an end; and in the spring, emissaries from the Yarglat barbarian Khmar came to parley with the Witchlord Onosh. Khmar's embassy was led by one Lord Alagrace, who had been in Gendormargensis when Khmar invaded, and had chosen to give his loyalty to that invader. Lord Alagrace and his fellows presented the Witchlord with an offer from Khmar.
The usurper Khmar would grant Lord Onosh a peace if the Witchlord would order all parts of his empire to surrender to Khmar.
For it happened that some parts of the empire had yet to surrender to Khmar; and Khmar, who was great in ambition, wanted to consolidate his rule without further bloodshed. For Khmar wanted to save his soldiers for the great invasions and conquests which he planned to make in the future.
Lord Onosh was initially reluctant to agree to Khmar's demands.
'This implies,' said Lord Onosh coldly, 'that I am to surrender my empire to Khmar.'
'As I see it,' said Lord Alagrace, who was possessed of uncommon wisdom, even though he was a mere man, and no wizard, and had no especial command of the irregular verbs, 'you do not have an empire to surrender. You have merely some poor and unsupportable claims to an empire. All Khmar asks you to do is to give up those claims.'
'The claims and the empire are one,' said the Witchlord stoutly.
The sagacious Sken-Pitilkin, who had the privilege of following this dialog, doubted that this claim was tenable in logic. But Lord Alagrace was too wise to argue with the barbarous Witchlord on the grounds of logical consistence.
Instead, the mighty Lord Alagrace, Khmar's calm and intelligent ambassador, explained to the Witchlord that some of Khmar's men had dared to Ibsen-Iktus in winter. They had struck, had conquered, had imprisoned – and now held as prisoners both the Witchlord's son Eljuk Zala and the wizard Ontario Nol.
Now it was proved of a certainty that Eljuk was a prisoner, for Eljuk himself had written a letter confirming this, and had written that letter in foreign verbs of such pronounced irregularity that they were known to only two people on the entire continent of Tameran, those two being Eljuk himself and his former tutor Sken-Pitilkin. Furthermore, Ontario Nol had drafted a collaborative letter in the High Speech of wizards; and both these letters were beyond the power of Khmar to fake.
Then Lord Onosh was sorely oppressed.
For Khmar held his son as a prisoner, and -
If one's son be placed in the scales and weighed against an empire, then it will invariably be found that the empire is heavier. However, the Witchlord Onosh had personally seen the mountains of Ibsen-Iktus, and believed those heights to be surely impassable by winter. Khmar, by exercise of invincible will, had successfully commanded men into those mountains in the coldest of seasons. Driven by Khmar's will, those men had subdued a wizard, and had tamed him to accept his chains.
It was Khmar's defeat of the abbot of Qonsajara, rather than any over-tender concern for his son, which at last made Lord Onosh despair of defeating his enemy. In the short term, he lacked the strength to wrest the Collosnon Empire from Khmar's grasp. And, though future dealings with the Circle of the Banks might increase the Witchlord's strength, he might not be permitted time for such dealings – for the Khmar who could successfully organize the storming of the heights of Ibsen-Iktus could surely break the strength of a mere pin-spike like Alozay, and break it ten times over between breakfast and lunch.
'What are your terms?' said Lord Onosh to Lord Alagrace.
Alagrace stated Khmar's terms simply.
Khmar would surrender up both Eljuk and Ontario Nol in exchange for the Witchlord's surrender of all claims to the Collosnon Empire.
'And,' said Lord Alagrace, who was not yet finished. 'And – '
Here he hesitated.
'And what?' said Lord Onosh sarcastically. 'My head, perhaps?'
'No, my lord,' said Lord Alagrace. 'The only other thing which Khmar requires is the services of Thodric Jarl.'
'Well!' said Lord Onosh. 'He's out of luck! For Jarl is a free man! Were Jarl a slave, I could sell him or trade him, but it is an oath of fealty which binds us. Undo such an oath, and I undo my every claim to be fit for the rule of an empire.'
'Jarl is a free man, as you say,' said Lord Alagrace, 'and Khmar does not seek him as a slave. Let us summon Jarl, and see what he says in his freedom, and it may be that he thinks alike with Khmar.'
Lord Onosh thought this unlikely, but nevertheless had Jarl brought before them – and was somewhat distressed by the outcome.
For the Rovac warrior did not hesitate. On hearing that Khmar wanted him, the gray-bearded Jarl decided without hesitation that he would gladly return to the Collosnon Empire to fight for Khmar in Khmar's wars. Here we remember that Jarl, despite the gray of his beard, was aged but 26, and hence far too young to contemplate with equanimity the prospect of a lifetime's retirement on Alozay.
But, on interrogating Jarl, Lord Onosh discovered that the
Rovac warrior's chief concern was the woman Yerzerdayla, who was still resident in Gendormargensis. Offended to find his chiefest general deserting him for a woman's favors, Lord Onosh then arranged, by covert treaty, for Alagrace to arrange for Yerzerdayla to be covertly conveyed to Alozay, and for Thodric Jarl to be told that she had died.
'I have another Rovac warrior if you would like him,' said Lord Onosh. 'One Rolf Thelemite by name. Do you want him?'
'No thank you my lord,' said Alagrace. 'His name came up in conference, and Khmar said you could keep him.'
'But he is a mighty warrior,' said Lord Onosh, endeavoring to be persuasive. 'So mighty in valor that I trusted him to be the bodyguard to my best-loved son, Guest Gulkan.'
'Then that hardly speaks in his favor,' said Lord Alagrace,
'for I have heard that Guest Gulkan is missing, and rumor holds him to be dead. In any case, Khmar distinctly said that he wished for Rolf Thelemite to remain in your service, to be a comfort to you in your old age.'
'That was very generous of him,' muttered Lord Onosh. 'Very well! Let's draw up a treaty, then.'
So a treaty was drafted, and bickered over. The last thing to be settled was its title: the Treaty of Eternal Friendship Between the Collosnon Empire and the Islands of Safrak. With the title confirmed, the thing was signed, and witnessed by everyone from the dwarf Glambrax to Edlard of the Guardians.
The treaty consigned the Collosnon Empire to the rule of Khmar and his heirs; it called on all those still resisting Khmar to surrender to his rule; it secured the Safrak Islands and the Swelaway Sea for Lord Onosh and his heirs; and it specified that there should be a peace between the Empire and the Islands:
'… until the last Rider be unseated from the Horse; or all horses lose their hair; or the wind cease its riding; or blood be milk and cheese be water; or the dogs be unheard by the campfires; or no child be born to any of the tents of the Yarglat; or Drangsturm fall and the Swarms claw all established order to an end.'
That last bit about Drangsturm and the Swarms had been inserted into the language of the treaty by the wizard Sken-Pitilkin, who felt that the bits about wind, horses and hair were too vaguely unspecific for a legal document. (And who felt, too, that the language of a formal treaty should be suitably remote from that of a smoky barbarian campsite and the ethnological curiosities of a shaman's chant).
This treaty was signed at the end of spring in the year Alliance 4307. Come Midsummer's Day, when the year Alliance 4308 began, the conqueror Khmar formally proclaimed himself emperor, and that day was the first day of the year Khmar 1.
The lord emperor Khmar then began to plan the conquest of all of Tameran, excepting Safrak alone – the exception being an honest one, for Khmar was great in honor, and fully intended to be true to his treaty. But that was of small consequence to the Witchlord Onosh, who had resigned himself to living out his years in the circumscribed kingdom which had fallen to him by conquest.
The main event which did concern the Witchlord Onosh was the arrival of his son Eljuk Zala, who came to Safrak in the company of the wizard Ontario Nol on Midsummer's Day, the first day of the year Khmar 1; and Lord
