Onosh received Ontario Nol with every mark of respect, and declared Eljuk to be the heir of Safrak, and ordered a great celebration to mark the event.
'But where,' said Eljuk, 'is Guest?'
'He is missing,' said Lord Onosh. 'Missing, believed dead. He vanished shortly after our battle for the mainrock Pinnacle, and has never been seen or heard of since.'
But actually, of course, as the Witchlord Onosh knew full well, the Weaponmaster Guest was somewhere in the Circle of the Banks, and there was no telling what fate might by now have befallen him.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Name: Eljuk Zala Gulkan Birthplace: Gendormargensis.
Occupation: apprentice wizard.
Status: heir of Safrak.
Description: a mild-mannered Yarglat youth who has from earliest youth shown an unfortunate tendency to flinch at the sight of rearing horses, naked swords and hot decapitations.
Hobbies: lyric poetry, collecting the shells of snails and flying kites (these last two hobbies inspired by his new tutor, the wizard Ontario Nol).
Quote: 'I am but one and once but often and many shall be'
(taken from Yo Bo's mystical magnum opus, 'On the Immortality of Scholarship').
So Eljuk Zala Gulkan came to the island of Alozay in the company of the wizard Ontario Nol, and the Witchlord Onosh ordered that a great banquet be held to celebrate the arrival of his son.
The city of Molothair was lit with lanterns and the mainrock
Pinnacle likewise. To the Grand Palace of Alozay came fish fresh from the Swelaway Sea, sheepmeat from Ema-Urk, the flesh of bears and pigs which had been hunted to their deaths in mainland wilderness, and – ever the greatest luxury to the Yarglat palate – the meat of horses.
Upon this bounty the Yarglat feasted, and while they feasted they were entertained by a troupe of wandering musicians from the far and distant land of Sung. The musicians of Sung are famous for their traveling. Some say this is because they are not mortal men at all, but, rather, belong to a class of spirits forever doomed to wander the world until they have appeased their former sins.
This of course is a nonsense, for the music of Sung owes nothing to appeasement: rather, it is but one extended exercise in patent affront.
Before retreating to Tameran to escape the wrath of the Confederation of Wizards, the sagacious Sken-Pitilkin had dwelt for generations on the island of Drum (which of course has nothing whatsoever to do with Ulix of the Drum), and while living on that island the noble wizard of Skatzabratzumon had often been embroiled in the affairs of the people of Sung (usually against his better judgment, but it cannot be denied that he was sometimes well- rewarded for his troubles, since Sung is the source of the best smoked ham to be had in all the world).
In consequence of his past experiences, the wizard Sken-Pitilkin realized what they were in for as soon as the Sung musicians first entered the banquet hall, variously rolling, pushing, kicking, dragging, hauling or chasing their ill-willed instruments of delinquency. Sken-Pitilkin realized, and groaned.
But the Yarglat did not realize.
To them, it all came as fresh revelation.
Throughout the banquet, the Sung musicians played. They filled the air with the galloping vigor of the thrum, an instrument which makes a sound like that of butter and bones being churned together in a waterlogged coffin. They played too the kloo, which makes a sound like the strenuous protest of a water buffalo which is resentful of being heartily kicked. The krymbol, the skittling nook, the plea whistle and the vang – of all these those musicians had mastery, and proved their mastery amply.
Many of the Yarglat were much taken with the vang, which struck them as the most remarkable device they had ever seen in their lives. And truly the vang is a mighty instrument indeed, consisting as it does of a series of huge tubs from which fluids thick and thin are disgorged by a series of vents and holes, making sounds imitative of urination and of vomiting. But in its noise-making capacity the poor vang was entirely outclassed by the skavamareen, a demon-wailing machine which makes a sound like a burnt cat screaming in a sewer-pipe.
All of which was a matter of amazement to the Witchlord Onosh.
For he had never heard anything like it in his life.
The Witchlord Onosh, after all, was a Yarglat barbarian, the scion of one of those horsetribes of the far north of Tameran; and despite the fact that he had spent much of his life in the great city of Gendormargensis, he had never been exposed to much in the way of musical culture.
The Yarglat in their dogbone encampments are much given to chanting and wailing, accompanied by a certain amount of beating upon drums, but no greater orchestration is known to them. In the fullness of their power, the Yarglat had come to dominate other peoples, such as the Sharla, who were mightily learned in music.
But the instruments of the Sharla are typified by the klon, a fine-stringed device which is plucked but one note at a time, with that note being allowed to die away before another is added to the air. The music of the Sharla is delicate; and tentative; and refined; and consequently adds nothing of consequence to the savor of burnt horsemeat or roast fish-dung.
But this music of Sung!
'There is more to music than I had thought,' said Lord Onosh contentedly.
And he resolved himself to have Sung musicians play for him nightly thereafter, and maybe even to obtain mastery of a musical instrument himself – maybe one of the percussive kind, built to take a strenuous hammering.
In the strength of his musical contentment, Lord Onosh paid little heed to the manner of his favorite son's banqueting, and it was not until the banquet had been stripped to the bones that the Witchlord noticed that Eljuk had eaten virtually nothing.
'Where is your appetite?' said Lord Onosh.
But the Sung musicians interrupted his question with a crescendo; and a joyfully appreciative audience demanded an encore; and an encore was duly provided; and, as one thing led to another, the Witchlord took his favored son by the elbow and led him from the banqueting table, thus quitting a scene which was fast disintegrating into outright orgy.
Once safe in the peace of his private quarters, Lord Onosh sat his son down in a chair most cunningly made from interwoven canes and the skins of several fishes. With Eljuk thus seated, the Witchlord asked him:
'Eljuk. What's wrong? You ate nothing tonight. Do you distrust the competence of my food tasters? Or what?'
'My sorrow,' said Eljuk, 'leaves me with but little appetite.'
'Sorrow!' said a bewildered Witchlord. 'What's there to be sorry about? Why aren't you happy?'
Eljuk looked his father in the face, looked away, hesitated, bit his lip, then said in a blurt -
'How can I be happy in the house of my brother's murderer?'
'Murderer!' said Lord Onosh in astonishment. 'Since when am I your brother's murderer?'
'Why, Guest is dead, is he not? He can hardly have flown from this island, can he? Yet Rolf Thelemite has told me – '
'Thelemite!' said Lord Onosh, as if the word were obscene.
'Thelemite, yes,' said Eljuk. 'The good Rolf Thelemite told me as clear as anything that he saw Guest alive and jumping in the Hall of Time, well after any fighting was over. Furthermore, he was led away by your wizards, by Zozimus and Sken-Pitilkin, and now you say he's dead, he's – '
'He's missing,' said Lord Onosh.
'He's dead!' said Eljuk. 'Missing, that's a nonsense, he wouldn't go missing in the company of wizards, they'd know where he went at least, and he wouldn't go anywhere without Rolf, which means that you killed him. You murdered him! And so I renounce you!'
With that, Eljuk rose abruptly, overturning his chair in his impetuosity, and made as if to flee. But Lord Onosh grabbed his son by the sleeve, restraining him from flight.
