'Yes!' said Guest. 'To get out of here!'
'That you will not be doing for some years,' said Qinplaqus.
'Years!' said Guest in dismay.
'It will take that long for your arms and legs to regrow,' said Qinplaqus.
Then Guest was greatly distressed, for he had not realized that his confinement was to be thus extended.
In truth, the young Weaponmaster Guest was prodigiously lucky to have the favor of Plandruk Qinplaqus, and to have the demon of the mountain of Cap Foz Para Lash dedicated to his cure, for it was only in that one mountain of Dalar ken Halvar that the arms and legs of a multiple amputee could possibly be restored to their strength.
But Guest was a poor invalid, and became increasingly importunate and demanding, saying that at least one of his limbs was still in perfect working order, and hence he should surely – if it was at all possible, and surely it was – be provided with some suitable terrain in which that single limb could be exercised.
Upon which the venerable Plandruk Qinplaqus indulgently declared that he would choose out a wife for the boy Guest.
'A wife!' said Guest in alarm. 'I said nothing about getting married!'
'But you were talking of a woman, were you not?' said Plandruk Qinplaqus.
'Why, yes,' said Guest. 'But a woman is not a wife, or need not be. Get me a woman, that's all that I want.'
'Am I a pimp, that I should get you a whore?' said Plandruk
Qinplaqus.
'As I am the son of an emperor,' said Guest warmly, 'it should be an honor for you to pimp for me.'
At which sally, Qinplaqus shook with laughter until his belly almost burst; for it had been several centuries since the venerable Ashdan had encountered anyone with Guest's degree of impudence.
And after some negotiation it was at last agreed between them that Qinplaqus would not pimp out a whore for young Guest, since pimping was beneath the dignity of an emperor; but that Qinplaqus would diligently quest out a wife for Guest, and (with luck) find him a woman who would be happy to take him to bed even though his arms were but buds peeping from stumps.
A tall order, one might think!
But Plandruk Qinplaqus was great in power and knowledge, and knew his people well, and already had a wifely candidate in mind.
Chapter Thirty
Name: Penelope Flute.
Birthplace: Dalar ken Halvar.
Occupation: priestess of an Evolutionary cult.
Status: large-scale debtor.
Description: woman of Frangoni race, built to a truly magnificent scale.
Hobby: macrame Quote: 'Why do men always get the good things?'
During his sojourn inside the minor mountain of Cap Foz Para Lash, Guest Gulkan was often in contact with the demon which ran the place, the demon which went by the name of Paraban Senk. This demon never manifested itself in the flesh, preferring to restrict its manifestations to a face on a screen.
While the Weaponmaster Guest Gulkan was in no great hurry to learn the Secret of Secrets and the Wisdom of Wisdom from a face on a screen which called itself Paraban Senk, the wizard Sken-Pitilkin was much more forward in having dealings with this entity. Sken-Pitilkin was long in discourse with Paraban Senk; allowed himself to be interrogated by Senk; and did some intense and detailed questioning of his own. To Sken-Pitilkin, Paraban Senk explained many things, including the secret of the Chasm Gates and the nature of the Nexus; though most of what Senk said was so frankly incredible that Sken-Pitilkin gave it precious little credence.
Nevertheless, while Sken-Pitilkin thought Senk to be for the most part a deluded confabulator, the wizard of Skatzabratzumon still thought it worthwhile to appraise Paraban Senk of a suggestion once made by the Great God Jocasta – namely, that airflight could be made a possibility through management of the sustained destruction of abnormal artefacts exposed to the normalizing effects of the universe. Sken-Pitilkin then told Senk of the long and danger-fraught process of experimentation which had resulted from this suggestion.
'So you actually got airborne?' said Senk.
'Twice,' said Sken-Pitilkin.
'And lived to tell the tale?' said Senk in amazement.
'Unless I died and was casually reincarnated without noticing the fact,' said Sken-Pitilkin.
'Tell me the details,' said Senk.
'The first flight was from the island of Ema-Urk,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'That's an island in the Swelaway Sea. We flew to the mountains of Ibsen-Iktus, where Guest's brother Eljuk Zala met the wizard Ontario Nol, to whom he is now apprenticed.'
'And the second?'
'The second flight was from Locontareth,' said Sken-Pitilkin.
'We didn't get as far that time. I levitated the roof of a hall and flew it to the outskirts of the city where I, ah, landed it.
Crashed it, to be honest.'
Then Senk took Sken-Pitilkin through a jolt-by-jolt recapitulation of those flights, after which Senk did a great many calculations, ultimately working out how Sken-Pitilkin could harness the powers of destructive magic to make a functional airship.
'This is how,' said Paraban Senk, at last displaying upon a screen an illustration of something that looked like an overgrown bird's nest.
'Why,' said Sken-Pitilkin, 'it looks like a bird's nest.'
'So it does, so it does,' said Senk. 'But I think it will work regardless.'
Then, acting on Senk's detailed instructions, the sagacious wizard Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin began to build a functional airship on some flat land by the Yamoda River.
While Sken-Pitilkin went to work on the airship problem,
Plandruk Qinplaqus was exerting his talents to resolve Guest Gulkan's woman shortage, with the result that the Frangoni warrior Asodo Hatch shortly introduced his sister Penelope to young Guest, and suggested that they would make a good match in marriage.
Since the woman Penelope was a handsome wench built to generous specifications Guest promptly agreed that marriage would be a very good idea.
So it was that Guest Gulkan was wed to Penelope Flute, to the general satisfaction of all concerned.
Some women might have had reservations about marrying a man whose arms and legs were currently no larger than those of a baby, but Asodo Hatch explained to his sister that Guest Gulkan's condition was due to the fact that he had been born as a fish, and had only lately begun to evolve into a human being. Since Penelope was a dedicated Evolutionist, she believed this without reservation, and was excited and fascinated to be presented with living proof of the Evolutionary theory which had long been preached to her by her personal guru.
Of course the story of Guest Gulkan's fish-to-man transition was a patent tissue of nonsense, as indeed is the whole of the Evolutionary heresy. As everyone with the faintest acquaintance with human history knows full well, there has never been any firm historical evidence to indicate that spontaneous organic transmogrification takes place, for all that tens of thousands of Evolutionists believe in it fervently. In the whole of human history there has never been so much as one single Evolutionist who has ever been able to produce either a grandparent or a grandchild or any other relative who has spontaneously made the transformation to fish, lizard, dog, cat, cow or budgerigar.
Furthermore, it can be stated with confidence that no Evolutionist ever will be able to thus match proof to theory.
Admittedly, a change in organic form can be effected by the application of sufficient Power, and this can be
