Ul-donlok: valley in the Ibsen-Iktus mountains and site of
the ancient monastery of Qonsajara, which is home to a wizard of
Yarglat breeding named Ontario Nol. The valley of Ul-donlok, which
is high and narrow at its western end, slopes downward to the
east, opening out as it nears the Swelaway Sea.

                                  * * *

        Hostaja Torsen Sken-Pitilkin did his best to make Thodric
Jarl apologize for his foolish attack on Ontario Nol. Jarl
refused.
        "Dogs will hatch from eggs and pigs be born of pigeons
before I say sorry to a wizard," said Jarl, intransigent as any
monster of the nursery.
        Jarl was sure Nol would kill him in any case, and no Rovac
warrior wishes to die with an apology to a wizard on his lips.
        "What are we to do with this rune-warrior?" said Sken-
Pitilkin, shaking his head in disgust.
        "Let's not worry about it," said Nol, shrugging off Jarl's
insolent unrepentance. "After all, what matters a trifle like
attempted murder when dinner is waiting? Come, friends. Let's seat
ourselves and sup. For dinner cools monstrous fast in weather like
this."
        "Dinner?" said Pelagius Zozimus, who had a chef's highly-
developed consciousness of the passage of time. "Dinner? My dear
sir, dinner can hardly cool before it's cooked, and we've only
just arrived! How can you possibly have dinner ready already?"
        "I saw you from afar," said Ontario Nol gravely, "even if my
servant did not."
        "So!" said Sken-Pitilkin, taking this to be a confession of
the possession of Powers. "The wizards of Itch have powers of
sight, do they?"
        "They do indeed," said Ontario Nol. "Such powers are
consequent upon the possession of those ocular organs known as
eyes, of which I have two. With my own two eyes I have long had
you under observation from the heights of Qonsajara, in
consequence of which I have been able to have a dinner prepared
for you."
        Upon which both Zozimus and Sken-Pitilkin felt foolish, and
made no further comment as the hospitable wizard of Itch led the
party of air adventurers into his dining room. It was a small room
dominated by a large stone table, and though Nol had threatened
them with a chilled dinner the room was in fact kept comfortably
warm by a small but efficient fire.
        "May we not wash, first?" said Sken-Pitilkin, conscious of
the fact that all of them smelt somewhat of vomit, and that the
half-digested eyes of two or three of the dogs of Ema-Urk still
clung to Guest Gulkan's outer clothing.
        "Wash?" said Nol, in patent surprise. "But why?"
        "To please me," said Zelafona, coming to Sken-Pitilkin's
rescue. "As a woman, I am particular of the company I keep,
therefore would have these men washed if bowl, sponge and water to
spare."
        "I have no objection to a sponging of my face and my jacket,"
said Thodric Jarl, who was perfectly ready to make concessions to
the witch Zelafona, though he was ever reluctant to give aid to a
wizard. "Rolf will help me with the sponging."
        So spoke Jarl, and spoke bravely. But his speech was badly
slurred, for pain, altitude, fatigue, fear and a wizard's
whirlwind battery had told heavily on his resources.
        "If Jarl's so sick he needs a nursemaid," said Rolf
Thelemite, his own fatigue displaying itself in his singularly
ungracious manner, "then I suppose I can sponge him down."
        "And Guest will wash himself," said Sken-Pitilkin in tones of
warning, as the Weaponmaster advanced upon Ontario Nol's big stone
table.
        "Will I?" said Guest, rebelliously. "I don't think I will,
you know. I'm not due for a bath for two or three years at least,
and I'm not going to delay dinner for any such eccentricity."
        Sken-Pitilkin did not see how Guest could possibly be ready
to eat again after having been so prodigiously sick earlier in the
day. But the boy was as good as his word. He sat himself down at
the dinner table - half-digested eyes and all - and was two-thirds
of the way through a second helping of everything by the time his
companions returned from their washing.
        For dinner they had lentil soup, boiled potatoes and the eggs
of several chickens, with a serving of roast soy beans on the
side. Ontario Nol apologized for the sparceness of his table.
        "Unfortunately," said Nol, "we have only the eggs of a
chicken, and not the meat. I would have killed you a chicken, only
I have none at Qonsajara. The eggs are paid to me in way of
tribute by one of the villages further down the valley."
        "You are a ruler, then," said Guest Gulkan.
        "The absolute monarch of all I survey," acknowledged Ontario
Nol. "I estimate the population of my kingdom as some three
thousand people in all. It is sufficient."
        "Your kingdom," said Guest, chewing against the resistance of
some soy beans as he spoke. "How do you name your kingdom?"
        "It is named Qonsajara," said Ontario Nol, "taking its name
from this monastery, which once was consecrated to the rites of
Zozo Darjidan, the tantric strain of Qa Marika. Do you know what
is meant by tantrism?"
        "Dorking," said Guest, remembering certain lessons in
ethnology. "That's what it means. The tantric arts are the arts of
dorking. Lotham and yargam, sagit and mok. That's what the
pictures are all about."
        "True," said Ontario Nol with a thin smile. "But there was
more to it than that. The tantric rites have catharsis as their
goal. One frees the spirit of the flesh by purging the flesh
through excess. There is more to it, then, than ... how did you
put it?"
        "Dorking," said Guest again, unabashed and unashamed.
        "One hopes," said the witch Zelafona, "that the boy has not
offended your religion. If he has, then my dwarf will be happy to
beat him for you."
        At that, Glambrax jumped onto the table and struck a beating
pose. Guest Gulkan's hand went to his sword.
        "Peace," said Ontario Nol, as Sken-Pitilkin swept Glambrax
from the table with his country crook. "I own to no religion.
Though I name myself as abbot of this monastery, that is just for
form's sake. In truth, this temple's rites are a thousand years
dead, and the worshippers died with the rites."
        By now, Ontario Nol had the full attention of all his
auditors, and they listened in after-dinner leisure as he told
what he knew of Zozo Darjidan and the religion of Qa Marika. He
lacked the full story, but still knew the most amazing fragments
of the much-dislocated history of times long past. He mentioned
the Technic Renaissance and the Genetic Mutiny, and told strange
stories of a planet named Olo Malan, which - depending on which
tradition one adhered to - either was or was not the very ball of
dirt on which they were presently standing.
        Then Sken-Pitilkin had stories of his own to tell, and
Pelagius Zozimus followed him, after which the dralkosh Zelafona
was persuaded to speak.
        Never before had Guest heard Zelafona tell of the past. The
boy listened, fascinated, as the old woman's shriveled voice spun
tales of full-fleshed maidens and desiring heroes, of creatures
which lived in mountains and fed themselves on time, of cities of
singing glass and streets of liquid fire, of incubus and succubus
knotted together in shadows of turbulent desire, of vampires in
their cavern-realms, and of ghostly dragons hunting ghosts through
realms of living men.
        That night, when Guest Gulkan finally got to sleep, he dreamt
dreams of hallucinatory vividness. He dreamt of spheres of light
which sang and spoke; of armies collapsing in maggot-plague and
blood-drench deliquescence; of snoring mountains and sneezing
skeletons; of kings dressed in the dazzle of hammered rainbow; of
the Dawn Songs of Kalatanastral and the battlements of Stronghold
Handfast; of books which conjured cities, and cities which
conjured gods.
        Guest woke in the night with a pounding headache. Such was
his pain that he woke Sken-Pitilkin, fearing himself on the verge
of death. Sken-Pitilkin told him to go back to sleep, but by then
Ontario Nol had already been disturbed.
        "It is the height," said Nol. "It is the suddenness of the
height which causes the headache. Men can damage themselves to the
point of death simply by walking to the heights too quickly, and
you - you've flown! I should have thought of that. We should check
your companions."
        Then, on Ontario Nol's instructions, all the air adventurers
were roused from sleep, saving Rolf Thelemite alone, who proved
quite impossible to wake.
        "He's sleeping solidly," said Guest.
        "There's more to it than that," said Ontario Nol. "He's
unconscious. His brain has swollen in the high thin air."
        "His brain!" said Guest.
        "It is true," said Nol.
        Guest Gulkan took some persuading, claiming indeed that he
doubted his comrade Rolf to be in possession of any organ so
delicate as a brain. But Nol disputed Guest's pretensions to
anatomical wisdom, insisting that even warriors of Rovac had
brains, although admittedly it was hard to find one who could
demonstrate the proper use of such an asset. Then the wizard of
Itch detailed the ways in which height itself could kill,
concluding by saying:
        "So. To safeguard your friend's health, we must take him
lower down the valley."
        "Well," said Guest, "doubtless when dawn comes - "
        "No," said Nol. "Not at dawn. Now. We must take him lower,
and now, otherwise he dies."
        "Can't we wait until morning?" said Guest.
        "By morning," said Nol, "one of the minor demons of the
Lesser Pit of Idleness will be using your friend's head as a
footstool. I counsel you not to delay - not unless you have
mastered the fine art of the resurrection of the dead."
        Urged thus by Ontario Nol, the air adventurers dressed
themselves in coats provided by their host, heavy coats of wool,
coats thick with the smell of generations of woodsmoke. Then they
ventured into the night, the cold of which had sharpened to a
razor.
        There was no moon, but there were stars, clipped chips of
needle-prick brightness. Under those stars they began their
descent, rock and stone scraping and sliding underfoot as they
ventured through the brittleness of the frozen night.
        Soon, they were sweating in their heavy coats, sweating
despite the cold, for they were carrying the unconscious Rolf
Thelemite on a litter, and Rolf proved a brutal burden - even
though Nol had roused out a couple of servants to help with the
labor, and even though he added his own muscle to the carrying.
        To Guest, the stumblestone nightpath through unfamiliar
territory seemed an ideal place for an ambush. If Nol planned
murder, then maybe ambushers were waiting to take them on a
ravinous section of the path, waiting to smash them with
landsliding stones or snatch them from the night with garrotes.
        For once, Guest Gulkan wanted the counsel of Thodric Jarl, so
when the group was resting he shared his thoughts with the Rovac
warrior, and found Jarl had similar suspicions. The two of them
then returned to the circle of lamplight where Ontario Nol sat
cleaning his fingernails, and they challenged that wizard of Itch,
who heard out their fears.
        "Well, my man," said Ontario Nol, addressing himself to
Thodric Jarl in the Eparget tongue. "You have a headache, do you
not?"
        "As if kicked by a horse," said Jarl, speaking the Eparget
with the idiomatic fluency of a very Yarglat barbarian.
        "Next question," said Ontario Nol. "Can you walk like this?"
With that, the wizard of Itch got to his feet and
demonstrated. He demonstrated with great deliberation, like a
dancing master showing off a difficult step. He walked heel to
toe, first forwards then backwards.
        "Such games are meant for childhoods first and second," said
Jarl. "You in your second childhood can indulge yourself with
such, but I am a man, and grown beyond such folly."
        "Try it," said Nol.
        "I have spoken," said Jarl, speaking with the finality of a
rune-warrior standing in defiance to a dragon.
        "It is but a trifle," said Nol, coaxing Jarl with the
wheedling cajolery with which a nursemaid seeks to subvert the
will of a bad-tempered baby. "A trifle if you can do it, but a
world of significance if you cannot. Come, man! I've done as much
myself! Zozimus! Sken-Pitilkin! Will you set examples?"
        First Zozimus did, then Sken-Pitilkin, and both succeeded in
walking heel to toe, first forwards then backwards. At last,
succumbing to sweet persuasion, Thodric Jarl consented to essay
this simplicity. He failed. His feet were simply not sufficiently
coordinated, and those feet disobeyed him as if he were drunk.
        "You see," said Nol. "You cannot walk a straight line. That,
my friend, is a sure sign of the swelling of the brain. The
swelling is consequent upon rapid ascent to great altitude, and
you must descend to cure it, or reconcile yourself to your death."
        "My stumbling feet are a sure sign that I'm drunk," said
Jarl. "Or that I'm poisoned."
        As Jarl had not recently been drinking to any great extent,
he was inclined to suspect poison.
        Thodric Jarl's suspicion was natural, for Jarl was of the
Rovac, and so since earliest childhood had nourished a fearful
suspicion of wizards. Furthermore, when Jarl thought of death he
most naturally thought of poison. For, though the Rovac have a
great reputation as sword-slaughters, poison is ever one of their
favorite instruments of murder. It is used in particular by the
Rovac womenfolk, who typically prefer the swift simplicities of
poison to the intricate longeurs of divorce proceedings. But,
though it is the women who have the true mastery of the art, the
men will not flinch from such expedients when the spirit moves
them.
        "Hush down," said Zelafona, as Jarl began to launch himself
into accusations of conspiracy and of general poisoning.
        Then the wise witch Zelafona took Guest Gulkan and Thodric
Jarl aside and advised them to place their trust in Ontario Nol.
        "If he was going to kill us," said Zelafona, "he'd have
poisoned the lot of us at dinner time."
        "Haven't you got the message?" said Jarl. "I think that's
exactly what he did. Either he's poisoned us, or else he's going
to ambush us."
        "If poison," said Zelafona, "then it's surely a slow poison,
for as yet we're all alert. Since wizards have no love for
witches, I'd be as likely a victim of any such poison as you are.
Let us then watch our own condition, and gather for a lethal
decision should that communal condition deteriorate. As for ambush
- why, let Guest walk with Nol to kill the wizard if we spring an
ambush."
        Thus it was agreed - though at first it was quite impossible
for Guest to be spared from the labor of supporting the burden of
the unconscious Rolf Thelemite.
        But, after a long and steeply downhill walk, Rolf Thelemite
came to, emerging groggily from the depths of his unconsciousness.
Shortly, Rolf found himself able to stumble downhill under his own
steam. Thereafter, Guest kept close to the wizard Ontario Nol.
Naturally, the two fell into conversation, and Guest found
himself telling Nol much about Gendormargensis, about the imperial
family, and about his brothers Morsh Bataar and Eljuk Zala.
        "My father has written to me not at all," said Guest, making
no effort to conceal his resentment at his father's neglect, "but
Bao Gahai has pestered me with letters as often as once every
three months. She says that Morsh has taken to swimming, though I
think it perilous strange for a man to play fish."
        "A leg as badly broken as his will be slow in the cure," said
Ontario Nol. "So swimming may help."
        "But he's walking!" said Guest. "He's riding! The bone is
fixed!"
        "The bone may be fixed," said Nol, "but the muscle may be
badly wasted."
        "But," protested Guest, "we're talking ancient history! It's
spring. Go back through winter, autumn, summer. Go back a year! A
year ago I had a letter from Bao Gahai, she said him walking.
Walking, yes, and riding. A year, man!"
        "So his cure may be close to completeness," conceded Nol.
"But even so, you should not sneer at his swimming, for swimming
is a very healthful exercise."
        "I thought you of the Yarglat!" said Guest in astonishment.
"Yet you think a man should be fish!"
        "I am true to my heritage," said the Yarglat-born wizard of
Itch. "I have not denied it. I have merely broadened it. But,
anyway - enough of your brothers. Tell me of Locontareth. There
was mention made of a tax revolt."
        So the subject of Morsh Bataar's broken leg and his slow
recovery from the same was dropped, and Guest launched himself on
the tale of the tax revolt in Locontareth, or what he knew of it -
the revolt said to be led by an insurrectionist by the name of
Sham Cham.
        As Guest was deep in conversation, the path passed beneath
great rocks, and in the shadow of those rocks the path suddenly
crumbled beneath Guest's feet.
        Guest slipped - with a cry.
        And Nol grabbed him.
        Ontario Nol grabbed Guest Gulkan, fingers gripping the boy's
arm like a set of pliars.
        "Careful," said Nol, hauling Guest back from the brink of
destruction. "Steady yourself. There now. Are you all right?"
        "Yes," said Guest.
        Who was shaken by the strength of the old man, by the walnut-
crunching power of those fingers. He was reminded of dim legends
concerning mighty masters of combat who were said to live in the
mountains. (Which mountains? The legends were never specific, but
mountains like these looked near enough to the stuff of legends as
far as Guest was concerned). Those combat masters were said to be
able to perform prodigious feats. To kill without touching. To
kill with a shout. To crush stones. To tear the heart from the
flesh without benefit of steel.
        "Have you lived in the mountains long?" said Guest.
        "Oh, long indeed," said Ontario Nol. "I know this path well.
It gets easier from here on."
        And so it did, and it had become wide, flat and stable by the
time dawn brought them a sharp-edged breeze to brisk away the
stillness of the night, and brought them too to a village, a place
of drystone buildings roofed with slate, a place where people came
out and greeted them.
        "Do you rule the entire valley?" said Guest, as the people
gathered around them.
        "No," said Nol. "I thought I told you of that earlier. King
Igpatan rules the lower reaches of the valley."
        "I have never heard of this king," said Guest, uncertain in
his weariness as to whether Nol had in fact earlier explicated the
nature of the king. "How great are his realms?"
        "They are of no great extent," said Nol. "For King Igpatan
rules over no greater distance than one could comfortably walk
between sunrise and sunset. But - come now! This is no time for
geopolitical discussion. This is time for breakfast!"
        Guest was surprised to learn that he had been engaged in
geopolitical discussion, because he had merely thought himself to
be asking a couple of very obvious questions. Nevertheless, he
allowed himself to be led big stone table set outdoors in the
morning sun. Placed around that table were three-legged stools in
numbers sufficient for the seating of Nol's company, and waiting
on that table were finger-bowls of warm water fragrant with
bruised mint, and plates heaped with eggs, with hot chicken-meat,
with potatoes, with soy beans, with dried fish and with roasted
frogs.
        "Magnificent!" said Jarl. Then, turning to Nol: "But perhaps
the feast could be improved by the butchery of one of your
villagers."
        During the descent, Thodric Jarl's headache had diminished
away to nothing. His broken ribs still gave him pain, but his
morale had perked up amazingly, to the point where he had almost
become a welcome traveling companion - and let the mention of
this fact be taken as a clear proof of the objective clarity of
this history, which makes no idle propaganda against the Rovac,
but simply records the facts as they happened.
        "An excellent suggestion, friend Rovac!" said Nol, taking
Jarl's jest in the spirit in which it was meant. "But things grow
slow in the mountains, so each of these villagers has taken a
thousand years to grow meat sufficient for a cannibal feast. That
being so, we cannot waste them casually, but must content
ourselves with chickens."
        "That contentment will be more than sufficient," said the
elf-armored Pelagius Zozimus, surveying the feast with a
professional eye, and asking himself fresh questions as to timing.
        How had such a formidable meal been prepared at such short
notice? One thing is for certain: a village of such manifest
poverty never killed chickens except for the most especial
occasions. It has been Written that wizards of Itch can build
bells which can be rung thereafter from a distance of several
leagues. So perhaps Nol had covertly used such a bell to signal
the approach of himself and his guests; though, as Sken-Pitilkin
and Zozimus were both exhausted, neither asked him about this, and
neither thought to ask of it thereafter. Instead, they sat
themselves down and set themselves to eat.
        Over breakfast, Ontario Nol discussed in detail and depth the
problems which Lord Onosh had experienced in collecting taxes from
Locontareth, and suggested that the Witchlord Onosh was
experiencing such difficulties because the people of that city and
region derived no benefit from the taxes.
        "You must give them something back," said Nol, "just as a
farmer gives back something to his fields when he plows manure
into the soil."
        "I don't think they'd thank us for dumping them in manure,"
said Guest, meaning the revolutionaries of Locontareth.
        "No, no," said Nol. "You misunderstand me."
        Then Nol explained the matter all over again, in depth and in
detail, though Sken-Pitilkin could have told him that the effort
was futile.
        "Well," said Guest, when he thought he understood as much of
this theory as he was ever going to understand, "that's very nice
of you, I mean, the ideas and all, and, ah, hospitality. Maybe my
father can thank you for helping us."
        "I need no thanks from your father," said Nol. "You yourself
can help me."
        "How?" said Guest.
        "By sending me your brother."
        "Morsh?" said Guest, remembering their conversation about
Morsh Bataar's recently acquired habit of swimming. "You want
Morsh? What on earth for? To teach you the art of the fish, is
it?"
        "It's not Morsh Bataar that I want," said Nol. "I want the
other one. Eljuk Zala."
        "But what would you want him for?" said Guest, who lacked the
wit to guess.
        "Eljuk will know," said Nol. "If he matches your description
of him, he'll know immediately. Bring him to me!"
        "Well, I would," said Guest, not particularly caring whether
Ontario Nol wanted his brother for purposes of buggery or as
sacrificial banquet-meat. "But it's a bit difficult. I mean, as
far as I'm concerned, you can have him. But my father wouldn't
like the idea at all. Eljuk's the imperial heir, that's his
business, he's supposed to inherit."
        "Put it to your father," said Nol. "Speak to Eljuk, then
to your father, then tell me what the pair of them decide."
        And, once Guest Gulkan had agreed to do that, Ontario Nol
began to discuss the route which would allow Guest and his fellow
air adventurers to exchange the unfamiliar dangers of the valley
of Ul-donlok for the comforting certainties of the Collosnon
Empire and its large-looming civil war.