Jocasta: an alleged Great God held prisoner in Obooloo by
Anaconda Stogirov, high priestess of the Temple of Blood. This
entity has faithfully promised to make the Weaponmaster Guest
Gulkan a wizard should Guest secure its liberation.

                                  * * *

        Now during his time inside Cap Foz Para Lash, Guest Gulkan
had heard from the demon Paraban Senk many wild and wonderful
tales of the worlds which were alleged to exist in other
universes. He had heard of the rollercoaster, and the bungi jump,
both devices of terror unimaginable to anyone who had led the
sheltered life of a Yarglat barbarian.
        Though Guest was no scholar, he had been trained in ethnology
by Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, and so had diligently set himself the
task of discovering whether the rollercoaster and the bungi jump
had been instituted as initiation rites - fearsome tests of
manhood to be undertaken as part of the rites of passage marking
the transition from childhood - or whether these outrageous forms
of horrorshock were looked upon as a form of fun.
        After long research, Guest concluded that the peoples of the
high civilizations known to Paraban Senk routinely plunged down
artificial mountains in rickety carts, or hurled themselves from
the heights with elasticated ropes tied to their ankles, purely
for their own pleasure. He was most frightfully glad that he had
not been born into any world where pleasure itself had the taste
of torture, and looked upon Sken-Pitilkin's airship as a device
better fit for such a world than for his own.
        Ever since the precipitous flight which had seen Guest
and his companions flung from the Swelaway Sea to an air-wrecking
in the Ibsen-Iktus mountains, Guest had entirely ceased to envy
the birds; and it was only with the greatest reluctance imaginable
that he allowed himself to be cajoled into Sken-Pitilkin's airship
to partake of its second flight.
        In the end, thinking himself doomed to reduced to a mess of
fractured chicken bones, Guest Gulkan climbed into the gigantic
nest of sticks which Sken-Pitilkin declared to be an airship.
        To his amazement, it flew.
        And Guest, dazzled and bewildered by the wonders of
controlled flight (which was entirely different from the
absolutely uncontrolled flights which he had previously endured),
was returned to the ground in one piece, amazed to find his skull
and skeleton intact.
        "Now," said Sken-Pitilkin, "since you have recovered your
strength, and since I have a functional airship, we can start to
plan our campaign."
        "Our campaign?" said Guest.
        "Our quest," said Sken-Pitilkin.
        "Quest?"
        "For the x-x-zix," said Sken-Pitilkin.
        "It would seem," said Guest, "that I have a lot to learn."
        "So you have," said Sken-Pitilkin. "So you have. Very well!
        Let us start the explanations!"
        Then, in tedious detail, Sken-Pitilkin took Guest Gulkan
through the tortuous details of the Witchlord's slow and painful
negotiations with the Partnership Banks. Since Lord Onosh had
suffered so badly from the Banks' deceits, he had not easily been
able to bring himself to trust Sod.
        But Banker Sod had been given great incentive to make
agreement with Lord Onosh, for the Partnership Banks as a whole
were unhappy with Sod. It was agreed amongst the Banks that Sod
should never have incarcerated Ulix of the Drum in his timeprison;
and the Banks were alarmed at the ambition Sod had shown by
arranging this incarceration, for it appeared that Sod had
imprisoned the rightful ruler of Dalar ken Halvar because he had
entertained notions of seizing that city and ruling it himself.
        Furthermore, the Partnership Banks were distressed that Sod
had used ineffective treacheries in his dealings with the
Witchlord Onosh. Effective treacheries against non-Bankers were
acceptable, but the price of failure was ....
        Sod had a lively sense of what the price of failure might be,
and so exerted himself strenuously to negotiate an agreement with
the Witchlord Onosh. Finally, under dire pressure from the
Partnership Banks, Sod surrendered Eljuk Zala Gulkan to his
father, and then surrendered himself to the Witchlord as a
hostage.
        Once his son Eljuk had been restored to him, and once he had
Sod as a hostage, Lord Onosh at last consented to negotiate with
the Partnership Banks in earnest, as a result of which the Doors
of the Circle of the Banks were open again.
        "Furthermore," said Sken-Pitilkin, "Ontario Nol has recently
returned to Alozay through those Doors, there to resume his
training of Eljuk Zala."
        "I am pleased for my brother," said Guest Gulkan, mightily
wearied by the laborious detail in which Sken-Pitilkin had told
the tale of the negotiations for the reopening of the Circle.
        "There is more pleasure yet to come," said Sken-Pitilkin.
"The high point of my story is that we are to be privileged to
travel the Circle, just as Plandruk Qinplaqus was in former times
when he traveled that Circle as Ulix of the Drum."
        "We?" said Guest. "Who are you talking of?"
        "Myself," said Sken-Pitilkin, "and yourself, and Thayer
Levant, and Pelagius Zozimus."
        "And Qinplaqus himself?" said Guest.
        "He no longer wishes to risk the Circle," said Sken-Pitilkin.
"For after having been once betrayed and imprisoned, he cannot
bring himself to trust the Banks. He blames the Partnership Banks
as a whole for Sod's delinquencies, and will assist us against
them."
        "What are we planning?" said Guest. "War?"
        "We are seeking leverage," said Sken-Pitilkin. "And once we
have it, we will see how much of the Circle we can win. We already
rule the Door at Alozay, and Plandruk Qinplaqus is our ally here
in Dalar ken Halvar. If we could but win Chi'ash-lan, then we
would be well placed to coerce the Partnership Banks as a whole to
obedience to our will."
        This was a new Sken-Pitilkin, a Sken-Pitilkin whom Guest
Gulkan had not previously seen. The Sken-Pitilkin who had been the
companion of Guest's childhood had been a broken-down exponent of
the irregular verbs, a ragged refugee scraping his living in
exile, an irascible master of the classroom.
        But Sken-Pitilkin's true history was far greater and grander
than anything Guest had guessed at. Sken-Pitilkin had known power;
and fame; and glory; and mightiness; and mastery; and the appetite
for such things had been rekindled during the long manoeuverings
of the past four years.
        While Guest had been concerning himself with the exercise of
his limbs, the eating of his meals and the rigors of his marital
bed, Sken-Pitilkin had been exercising himself mightily in
politics, embroiling himself in the affairs of the Witchlord Onosh
and the Partnership Banks, acting as translator, as advisor, as
diplomat, as interrogator, and as a professional practitioner of
international law.
        So it was that, for four long years, as Guest had turned
inward in the manner of the invalid, his world shrinking till it
took account of little outside his own skin, Sken-Pitilkin's world
had been enlarging to a point where its complexity could not be
compressed into anything less than a volume of ten thousand pages
or more.
        (Oh, Time! Strength! Cash! Patience!)
        So Guest was uncommonly sluggish in responding to Sken-
Pitilkin's enraptured enthusiasm for the embroilments of a quest
and its consequences. Sken-Pitilkin perceived this sluggishness,
but, presuming it would be transitory, he said:
        "We were talking of the x-x-zix. The subject of our quest.
Have you by chance heard of this device?"
        Then Guest Gulkan thought, and by a miracle of memory he
recalled an early mention of the thing. (In truth, Sken-Pitilkin
must have spoken of the x-x-zix a thousand times in Guest Gulkan's
youth, but the Yarglat barbarian was such a poor scholar that it
was a very miracle that he remembered so much as a single of these
mentions).
        "The Untunchilamons!" said Guest. "That was it! The
Untunchilamons! When you were young, you quested for the x-x-zix.
You quested on all twenty-six of the Untunchilamon, and you - "
        "There is but one Untunchilamon," said Sken-Pitilkin.
        "No," said Guest. "There are twenty-six. I remember that
distinctly. If you told me that once you told it to me a hundred
times."
        "No, no," said Sken-Pitilkin, who had long been out of the
habit of tutoring young Guest, and so had started to forget how
difficult it was. "It was you who told me the number twenty-six,
which you got from confusing Untunchilamon with the islands of
Rovac. There is but one Untunchilamon, and I can state it as a
certainty since I have been there."
        "In your youth."
        "Yes, in my youth."
        "Questing," said Guest Gulkan.
        "Verily," said Sken-Pitilkin.
        "And now," said Guest Gulkan, "as you launch yourself upon
the years of your senility, you wish to take up that quest again."
        "Of senility I know not," said Sken-Pitilkin. "But my resolve
is certain, and certainly a quest is a part of it."
        Then Sken-Pitilkin explained the nature of the x-x-zix, which
was a device capable of controlling the Breathings of the Cold
West, which were the ancient weather machines which made that
region so abominably cold.
        "Our good friend Plandruk Qinplaqus desires the use of the x-
x-zix also," said Sken-Pitilkin, "and long has he sought it, for
Dalar ken Halvar has Breathings of its own, these Breathings being
those which make the climate hereabouts so infernally hot."
        Then Sken-Pitilkin tutored Guest Gulkan further, explaining
that use of the x-x-zix would allow the climates of both Dalar ken
Halvar and Chi'ash-lan to be moderated to something close enough
to the sensible.
        Therefore Sken-Pitilkin proposed that Guest Gulkan join him
in questing to Untunchilamon in alliance with the wizard Zozimus,
then return with that treasure to Dalar ken Halvar. There the
wizard Plandruk Qinplaqus, he who was otherwise known as Ulix of
the Drum, would make use of the x-x-zix to remedy the climate of
his own city.
        "And then," said Sken-Pitilkin, "he will help us bring the
Circle of the Partnership Banks to heel."
        "How?" said Guest.
        "Why, it is obvious," said Sken-Pitilkin. "The Banks exist to
make money, and a greening of the icelands of Chi'ash-lan would
make more money than you could shake a stick at. If you have the
strength of the x-x-zix in your hand and the wisdom of wizards to
support you, then you can make yourself master of the Circle of
the Partnership Banks. Or so I believe."
        "It would help me also," said Guest, shaking off his
sluggishness with a rapidity which was consequent upon his
upbringing in the household of a ruling warlord, "if I could make
myself a wizard in my own right."
        "Why, doubtless it would so help you," said Sken-Pitilkin.
"But to make you a wizard would take a lifetime."
        "Not so," said Guest. "For there is in the city of Obooloo
the Great God Jocasta, who has sworn to make me a wizard, powerful
and immortal, if I do but liberate the thing from cruel
imprisonment at the hands of one Anaconda Stogirov, priestess of
the Temple of Blood."
        "So you have told me you have been told," said Sken-Pitilkin,
"but it is a nonsense."
        And it was a nonsense.
        Of this Sken-Pitilkin was certain.
        Nevertheless, the sagacious wizard of Skatzabratzumon was
hard put to dissuade the Emperor in Exile from this folly, and so
called for assistance from Paraban Senk, the Teacher of Control
who ruled the Combat College in which Guest had been so long a
patient.
        "Is this going to be a short lecture or a long one?" said
Guest, once he was settled with Sken-Pitilkin in front of one of
the screens which Senk used to communicate with mere mortals such
as wizards and warriors.
        "That depends on you," said Paraban Senk, manifesting his
chosen face upon the screen. "Tell me, Guest Gulkan, what on earth
has persuaded you to this foolishness."
        "Foolishness?" said Guest. "What foolishness?"
        "Your intended quest to Obooloo," said the olive-skinned
Teacher of Control. "That is what I refer to when I speak of
foolishness. Explain yourself!"
        By now, Guest had long been accustomed to treating this face-
on-a-screen with the dignity due to a person-in-the-flesh, and so
responded to this command with due gravity.
        "When I was 14," said Guest, "My father went hunting bandits
in the mountains near Gendormargensis."
        This was ever the Yarglat way of telling a tale - to start
way back in the distant past with the egg of its genesis. The
Teacher of Control was lucky that the Yarglat barbarian had not
started earlier still - with a detailed account of his family's
genealogy, say, or with a founding reference to the Yarglat
creation myths.
        "I asked nothing about you at the age of 14," said Senk, who
came from a culture which lacked all fireside patience, and thus
restricted its storytelling to an account of proximate cause,
crisis and consequence.
        By brute interrogation, Paraban Senk extracted the meat of
Guest Gulkan's story in record time. In a time of crisis, a time
when Witchlord and Weaponmaster were fighting for their lives on
Safrak, Guest Gulkan had parleyed with the Great God Jocasta
through the mediumship of the demon Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis, had
won a victory against his enemies thanks to the Great God's
intervention, and so was bound to fulfill his pledge to the Great
God.
        "In proof of my honor," said Guest, "I must quest to Obooloo
to liberate the Great God. Besides - without Jocasta's help, how
can I win a wizard's powers?"
        Paraban Senk heard this out to the finish then said:
        "I think you bound to no quest, for I think Jocasta has lied
to you. There are many kinds of god and many kinds of demon, but
Jocasta is no god, demon, devil or hero. Jocasta is only a
machine, and Iva-Italis likewise. Iva-Italis is a farspeaker
designed for use in war, and Jocasta is a thinking machine which
once proved delinquent in the exercise of its will. Both are
devices of delinquency - fraudulent, scheming, power-crazed and
treacherous."
        "I think," said Guest, his response so instantaneous as to
make it very improbable that any thinking had gone into the
framing of it, "that you don't like me and you don't want me to be
a wizard."
        "The wizards of this world," said Paraban Senk, "have gained
their powers by making an alliance with entities of the World
Beyond. Since the machine which calls itself Jocasta is no such
entity, it cannot make you a wizard. It can however make you a
slave. Jocasta can build a web through your body, a web through
your brain. With such a web once built, Jocasta can control you,
body and brain alike, and project power through you, albeit at a
risk to your health."
        Guest frowned.
        "What web do you speak of?" said Guest. "Is Jocasta a kind of
spider?"
        "Jocasta," said Senk, "could conjure in your flesh and bone a
web of nerves of cunning design. With your body thus adapted to a
new pattern, Jocasta could make you flesh of its flesh, mind of
its mind. At a distance you would be safe, but if ever near the
Great God then you would be its slave. It could control you
likewise if you were ever near a farspeaker such as the demon Iva-
Italis."
        "I don't understand," said Guest, still frowning. "I don't
understand this - this web."
        "Do you expect to understand?" said Senk, who really thought
it over-optimistic to expect a Yarglat barbarian like Guest to
understand so much as basic arithmetic, far less the greater
mysteries of the world.
        "If you'd stop talking in riddles and talk sense for once,"
said Guest, "then I'd understand soon enough."
        "All right, then," said Senk. "Supposing you have a ball of
string which is knotted and raveled. Can you talk to it? Or with
it?"
        "That's a nonsense question," said Guest. "String can't talk.
It's not in the nature of string to talk."
        "Isn't it?" said Senk.
        "Of course it isn't!" said Guest.
        "Have the Yarglat no music? Have you never seen a harp?"
        Since the making of music was not one of the strong points of
Yarglat culture, harpists had not exactly been thick on the ground
in Gendormargensis. But Guest knew of the instrument, and, sensing
that for some obscure reason any denial of harp knowledge might be
though of as a demerit, he staunchly said:
        "We Yarglat are mighty in harpwork. We are famous for it."
        "So," said Senk. "What is the harp if not a string which
talks?"
        "But that's a trick!" said Guest. "The riddle wasn't fair!"
        "Whoever said we were playing at riddles?" said Senk. "I
speak of no riddles but of facts. String in combination with the
simplest of devices can talk as a harp, or hear the wind as a
windchime, or pull a fish from the sea, or kill a man by
triggering a trap, or weave itself to art in the game of cat's
cradle. Your body is one knotted, raveled, snarled-up ball of
string, and Jocasta is the weaver who can shape it to a new
pattern, then play that pattern with the skills of harpist and
fisherman."
        "Jocasta is then a thing mighty in power, then," said Guest.
"You admit it!"
        "Is there no sense to be got out of this thing?" said Senk,
in an exasperation which echoed that of the learned Sken-Pitilkin
in one of his more frustrated moments.
        "I'll take no talk of sense from a schoolteacher, which is
all you are," said Guest. "I'm an emperor's son and heir to an
empire myself. I'm oath-bound to rescue Jocasta, and so I will."
        "You are not oath-bound at all," said Senk. "You are not
oath-bound because Jocasta lied to you. The thing cannot make you
a wizard. It can only control you, possess you, seize you, subject
you. Use you as a tool, a thing."
        "But it bound itself to me in honor," said Guest.
        "It has no honor!" said Senk. "honor is - how can I put
this? You're mortal, you die, you seek significance in the face of
mortality, you seek a meaning. The oath-culture is quest for
precisely that: significance in the face of mortality. The honor
of a man's death is the meaning of that death. Jocasta shares no
such fear of death, hence needs the support of no such culture,
hence cannot be trusted to hold to an oath. Do you understand?"
        "You are a schoolmaster," said Guest, "hence have an
ethnological temperament. But a thing - you're like Sken-Pitilkin.
What's it all about, that's what you say. Then you riddle out a
meaning, then you say because it's got a meaning it's got no
meaning. First you shape the thing in words, then you say the
thing's only words so it's nothing. But things are things despite
any number of words, and a thing is good in itself. My horse, my
woman, my honor, my sword. My honor - "
        "Your honor is not a thing," said Senk, with crushing force.
"You confuse categories. You confuse your horse with your honor
when your horse is a flesh-and-blood animal with mass, weight and
an appetite for hay, whereas your honor is a cultural construct,
which is something quite different."
        "Yes, well," said Guest, not appreciating that he had just
been crushed under one of the heavier hammers in the intellectual
toolbox, "you're talking categories, but that's just like breaking
up a bit of bread, you get big bits and small bits but it's all
bread when you're finished with it."
        Though Guest had been tutored by the wizard Sken-Pitilkin
since the age of five, he had nevertheless ever preserved a sturdy
independence of intellect, reinforced by a close observation of a
world in which brightsparking intellects (such as that of Eljuk
Zala) tended to lose out to solid-muscled swordarms (such as that
of Guest Gulkan).
        Paraban Senk protracted the argument for another three days,
until at last in the despair of reason he recognized the
Weaponmaster's implacable resolve, and began to counsel Guest as
to how he might (just possibly) be able to bring his mission to a
successful conclusion.
        This complicated Sken-Pitilkin's plan to quest to the island
of Untunchilamon to rescue the x-x-zix: for Guest was determined
to first dare to Obooloo, penetrate the Temple of Blood, rescue
the Great God Jocasta, and (by way of reward) win the powers of a
full-fledged wizard.
        "We could manage such a mission," said Sken-Pitilkin at last,
"but there is one thing which must be done first."
        "What?" said Guest.
        "First we must recover the ring of ever-ice which you won
from Banker Sod," said Sken-Pitilkin. "For, if you die in Obooloo
without revealing its whereabouts, then it will be lost to the
world forever."
        Guest, who had preserved the secret of this ring's
whereabouts as much as an act of independence as anything else -
for, as an invalid, what other sphere of independent action had
been left to him? - declared the thing to be in the care of one
Anna Blaume, proprietor of the Green Parrot, an establishment in
Galsh Ebrek. Sken-Pitilkin then undertook the tricky business of
recovering this ring, which he handed over to the Witchlord Onosh.
Lord Onosh then used the ring to open one of the pods in Alozay's
Hall of Time, and to incarcerate within that pod the woman
Yerzerdayla.
        Lord Onosh then directed Sken-Pitilkin to make one last
attempt to dissuade Guest Gulkan from the folly of his planned
onslaught on Obooloo: and Sken-Pitilkin reluctantly accepted this
commission.