Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis: a demon incarnate in a square-cut
jade-green pillar standing twice man-height, a pillar which glows
with its own cold inner light. The demon has served the Safrak
Bank for generations as Guardian Prime - ruler of the Bank's
mercenaries - and Keeper of the Inner Sanctum.

                                                 * * *

        This was an emergency. And all were helpless in the face of
that emergency. But for Sken-Pitilkin!
        The sagacious wizard of Skatzabratzumon lacked the power to
send any foreign body hop-skipping over the demon's head. For his
powers were subject to the laws of leverage, viciously restrictive
laws which made it difficult for any wizard of Skatzabratzumon to
support a weight at a distance.
        But - there was himself!
        Sken-Pitilkin could levitate himself without losing anything
to the laws of leverage.
        In the first flush of the possession of Powers, every fresh-
made wizard of the order of Skatzabratzumon inevitably tries his
hand at auto-levitation, that process which the unwashed peasantry
vulgarly refers to as "flying". With equal inevitability, such a
wizard soon knocks himself out against a ceiling, or the roof of a
cave, or the eaves of a house, or a branch of a tree - thereby
learning the virtues of dignity.
        However - this was a crisis!
        Sken-Pitilkin raised his country crook and shouted a Word.
        He began to float upwards.
        Lord Onosh roared with shocked surprise - roared so loud that
Banker Sod turned in alarm. What Sod saw alarmed him even more.
His jaw dropped as he gaped in horror-struck amazement. The jade-
green demon lashed at Sken-Pitilkin, whipping the air to a frenzy
with its tentacles.
        Serenely unperturbed, Sken-Pitilkin floated overhead, just a
hair away from the demon's lashwork. Sod started to back away as
Sken-Pitilkin drifted towards him.
        "Keep back!" said Sod, menacing Sken-Pitilkin with his sword.
        At which, Sken-Pitilkin was tempted beyond endurance, and
essayed that supremely difficult feat known to the initiated as
the Reversed Looped Power Transfer, whereby levitational force is
swapped from one object to another with the speed of a quick-
blinking eye, with one object being forced upwards while the other
sinks.
        Sken-Pitilkin levitated Sod's sword while simultaneously
causing himself to sink. But Sod held grimly to his weapon, and so
was dragged upward.
        Neatly, Sken-Pitilkin touched down. Simultaneously, he ceased
his Reversed Looped Power Transference. Deprived of levitational
energies, Sod's sword fell. Not surprisingly, Sod fell with it. As
Sod fell, Sken-Pitilkin whacked him with his country crook.
        "Bravo!" cried Lord Onosh.
        Sod hit the tiles. Inspired by the enthusiasms of battle,
Sken-Pitilkin whacked him again.
        "Enough!" shouted Lord Onosh, seriously alarmed. "No! No! We
need him! He's our hostage!"
        But Sken-Pitilkin, who had no taste for dueling, went on
whacking until he was quite sure that Sod was unbattleworthy, and
would remain so for some considerable time to come.
        As Guest and Glambrax got groggily to their feet, Lord Onosh
whooped with jubilation. But, for his part, Sken-Pitilkin was far
from being elated. True, the Witchlord's son had been freed from
the demon's grasp, but that was a trivial and temporary victory.
Witchlord and Weaponmaster remained besieged in the uppermost
parts of the mainrock Pinnacle, outnumbered by the Guardians who
assailed their position from below, and meagerly provisioned (if
they were provisioned at all).
        "Well," said Guest, endeavoring to sound undaunted and
doughty. "The next thing is to explore upstairs."
        So saying, the Weaponmaster endeavored to climb the stairs
in question, and promptly tottered and fell over.
        Sken-Pitilkin counseled Guest Gulkan to rest.
        "You stay here," said Sken-Pitilkin. "Glambrax and I will go
upstairs, taking Sod as our prisoner."
        "But why?" said Guest.
        "Because he is a danger to us here at the feet of the demon,"
said Sken-Pitilkin. "For one moment's lapse in caution could see
Sod act in league with that demon to ensure our destruction. We'll
take him above, and bind him. You stay here. Stay and rest."
        With that, the wizard Sken-Pitilkin and the dwarf Glambrax
secured Sod and dragged the groaning Banker upstairs, leaving
Guest alone on the stairs near the feet of the demon.
        As there was no way for the Weaponmaster to join his father
the Witchlord - since the demon would surely have killed him or
captured him had he essayed the passage past its greenblock
heights - father and son could but exchange verbal tokens of their
love and their mutual concern.
        Then, realizing his helplessness - for the power of his
wizards was exhausted, and the power of his warriors was a nullity
in the face of the strength of the demon Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis
- Lord Onosh made his excuses and withdrew. For he saw it as being
his duty to go to the down-leading stairway to fight shoulder-to-
shoulder with those of his men who were guarding that stairway
against the assaults of the Guardians.
        That left Guest alone, quite alone, utterly alone in the
presence of the cold and unwavering green-burning light of the
demon.
        Guest sat on the steps, counting his bruises, and feeling
quite sorry for himself. He had been hideously terrified by the
demon, which had chewed up Hrothgar, which had splattered him with
blood, which had held him prisoner with its invincible strength,
and which hurled him at Glambrax.
        And he felt abandoned.
        Sken-Pitilkin had left him, and his father too. With good
reason, doubtless. But even so. Guest felt uncommonly vulnerable,
and forlorn.
        With some considerable resentment, Guest gazed upon the man-
eating jade-green monolith which he knew as Icaria Scaria Iva-
Italis, Demon By Appointment to the Great God Jocasta.
        "I thought you'd help me," said Guest, feeling that he had to
vent his resentment, even though he did not necessarily expect a
reply. "You told me I could be made a wizard. For questing, I
mean. A reward. I was to quest to the Temple of Blood in the city
of Obooloo. I was to rescue the Great God, the Great God Jocasta.
Stogirov, wasn't it? Yes, that was it. The evil Stogirov holds the
Great God Jocasta as a prisoner in the Temple of Blood in the city
of Obooloo. You see? I remember perfectly."
        Guest paused.
        In response, the demon displayed the image of a head: a human
head, dark-haired and bloodless, the eyes sucked out from the
sockets and the ears eaten away from the skull. As this delusional
image slowly revolved, the brute at last consented to speak.
        "Thus you will end," said Iva-Italis. "You will end thus, for
you have displeased me."
        "A geek," said Guest Gulkan, mastering scorn to his tongue.
        "I beg your pardon?" said Iva-Italis.
        "A geek."
        "I know not that word. Explain yourself."
        "I was explaining you," said Guest Gulkan. "You're a geek. A
thing which rips the heads off chickens for the joy of drunkards
and the entertainment of whores."
        Though Guest Gulkan spoke thus with scorn, it must be
admitted that in truth the young Weaponmaster himself was not
averse to occasional indulgence in the squaloring entertainments
devised and enacted by geeks.
        "So," said Iva-Italis, "it thinks to insult me."
        "Why not?" said Guest. "For you are a mere demon. I am a
hero, and as such I deal with none less than other heroes, or with
the gods themselves. I have it in mind to speak to your own Great
God, to Jocasta - though your mediumship."
        "You would, would you?" said Iva-Italis. "To what end?"
        "To make a bargain," said Guest. "When I was here last, that
same Great God was of the opinion that it wished to be released
from Obooloo. If I can bargain to my advantage today, then I will
pledge myself to its rescue."
        "You have come too late," said Iva-Italis.
        "Too late!" said Guest.
        "Do you think it is a pleasure for me to wait here at your
convenience?" said Iva-Italis in fury. "You were offered the
opportunity to quest in the service of the Great God. But did you
so quest? No! You went whoring after the devices of your own
heart. A god commanded you! But you paid that god no heed. No. It
was your own squaloring wars which held your concern. But you
lost. You were defeated. Don't deny it! So in defeat your thought
yourself of the Great God Jocasta. Are we supposed to be honored?
Are we supposed to be honored at being the last and least of all
your choices?"
        Guest found it hard to answer this scathing anger, for the
plain and simple truth was that the anger was well-founded. Still,
he was in no mood for apologies.
        "I will make no excuses," said Guest boldly. "Still, I can
make amends. If we can make a bargain, you and I, then I will
venture to Obooloo in truth, and there will liberate the Great God
Jocasta."
        "Bargain!" said the demon. "I will have no bargains!"
        "Then what will you have?" said Guest.
        "You," said the demon. "You. As my slave. The slave of my
flesh. If you choose to live, then you must live as my slave. The
slave of myself and the slave of my god."
        "I will join you in an alliance of equals," said Guest, "but
I will make no pact that condemns me to slavery."
        "You will, you know," said the demon.
        "I would rather die," said Guest staunchly.
        "Then die, then," said the demon.
        With that, it caused the delusionary image of a head which it
was displaying to abruptly twist, distort and crumple. Then it
flushed from green to red and roared:
        "Die, then!"
        The roar battered the Weaponmaster like the wind-blast of a
hurricane. He was so surprised that he fell over backwards. Then
the demon laughed. Distantly, someone shouted:
        "Guest! Are you all right?"
        Guest sucked on his finger to moisten his throat, then
shouted:
        "I live!"
        Then, focusing his attention on the demon, Guest renewed his
negotiations with the jade-green beast.
        "I will make a bargain with you," said Guest, speaking with
care. "This is the bargain. You will save the day for me. You will
command the Guardians to my service. With the days saved, I in
turn will save the Great God Jocasta. I will liberate Jocasta from
captivity in Obooloo. That is the bargain."
        "I will give you no bargain," said the demon. "You will live
as my slave, or you will die. You will knuckle to my command,"
said Iva-Italis, "or you will surely die of a certainty."
        A certainty. A known thing. Knowing. Knowledge. It occurred
to Guest that during his former exile on Safrak he had never heard
anyone speak of the Great God Jocasta. Everyone on the island of
Alozay knew of the demon Iva-Italis, but to Guest's knowledge
nobody knew of the Great God which languished in Obooloo. It was a
secret, then. But how much of a secret?
        "Perhaps I will die," said Guest. "But before I go down to
destruction, I will reveal to the world your secrets."
        "I have no secrets," said Iva-Italis. "I stand here naked,
and all of Alozay knows me."
        "Your Great God is a secret," said Guest. "The Guardians
don't know about your Great God, and - and - and these temple
people, these people in Obooloo, how much do they know? I'll tell
Sod, that's what, then Sod will tell Obooloo. Oh yes, and once
Obooloo knows it has a Great God in its midst, well, who wants
something like that lurking in the closet? Obooloo won't be very
happy, no, and your Great God neither. The temple. The Temple of
Blood. The Great God. Imprisoned by the Stog, the Stogirov. That's
all they need to know. I'll tell Sod, then Sod will tell, Obooloo
will know, then it's doom for your Great God, or maybe for you
too."
        "An empty threat," sneered Iva-Italis. "For how would you or
Sod say anything such to Obooloo when Obooloo is so far away from
here?"
        Now as it has been earlier remarked, Guest Gulkan knew no
more geography than a hedgehog. If anything, he knew less.
Therefore he had no true conception of the distance between Safrak
and Obooloo, and no untrue conception of that same distance
either. But, since Witchlord and Weaponmaster had recently
performed prodigies of geographical excursion, venturing over
unmapped lands with no more than sun and stars to guide them,
Guest was inclined to sneer at distance, and to think no prodigies
of sea or mountain sufficient to bar the distances to the brave.
Hence he answered easily:
        "Why, it will be no great difficulty for Sod to get news to
Obooloo, for Obooloo is but a step from Safrak."
        Now when Guest spoke of that "step" between Safrak and
Obooloo, he was speaking in the poetic manner, in which a "step"
can mean any distance less than a lifetime. But Iva-Italis took
this throwaway remark for a statement of literal truth, and was
enraged.
        "Who told you of that?" said Iva-Italis in fury.
        "Ha!" said Guest, realizing he had struck on something,
though he did not know what. "It is a step, yes, a single step!"
        "Who told you?" roared the demon, with renewed rage.
        The roar was sufficient to refocus the attention of everyone
in the Hall of Time on Guest Gulkan's dealings with the demon.
        "Hush down," said Guest softly. "Or do you want them all to
know the secret."
        "Come closer," said Iva-Italis, "and I will hush in truth."
        "Ha!" said Guest. "Closer! If you want us closer, then you
must come to me."
        "Then stay where you are," said Iva-Italis. "But if you wish
to have dealings with me, then you must tell what you know of the
passage between Safrak and Ang."
        Ang? Now where was Ang? Guest Gulkan was adrift already, for
though he had been told a thousand times that Ang is a province of
the Izdimir Empire, and that the city of Obooloo stands fair and
square in the center of that province, he had neglected to commit
these facts to memory. Hence the name of Ang came to him as if he
and it were both just fresh-born. But Guest bluffed it out
bravely.
        "I am the Weaponmaster," said Guest staunchly, "and the
greatest of my weapons are those of the intellect. I was born to
power and then raised in the wisdom of wizards. I have walked in
the sun and have walked at the feet of the dead. I have spoken
with Those Who Are Not and have slept alongside Those Who Will Be.
I have looked through time and space and I have seen much, aye,
even the Untunchilamons."
        A nice froth of nonsense, this! But Guest had heard
sufficient legends, stories and fairy-tales to know how a Master
of Knowledge and Power should speak, so spoke accordingly. And
with remarkable effect.
        "Untunchilamon!" said Jocasta.
        "Why, yes," said Guest, surprised to see that he had enraged
the demon yet further, but concealing his surprise with bland
insouciance. "No secret is there concealed from me, for I know - "
        Then Guest halted himself. He had been about to say that the
Untunchilamons were a group of twenty-seven islands where the
Rovac had long dwelt in power, but he dimly and distantly
remembered the wizard Sken-Pitilkin correcting him on this. For
some reason, Guest connected that correction with Strogloth,
author of Strogloth's Compendium of Delights. So was Untunchilamon
the birthplace of that infamous author? Perhaps. But Guest could
not be sure of this.
        "You were saying," said Iva-Italis, observing Guest's
confusion.
        Guest shook his head to free it from confusion.
        "You have been addling my wits," said Guest, turning on Iva-
Italis with a note of accusation.
        "I?" said Iva-Italis in surprise. "I've been doing no such
thing!"
        "Of course you have," said Guest. "You know what I know and
you know you must yield, but you have been negotiating in bad
faith, seeking to probe me out of my secrets, and seeking also to
delay decision in the hope that the Guardians may swamp my
father's men and hack me before I can betray your truth to Sod.
You think me patient? Patient I am not, not when I am hard up
against the wall of my death. Very well! I must go call out Sod,
for it is time for me to confess to him my secrets."
        With that, Guest turned to go, making as if to head up the
stairs to the abditory to which Sken-Pitilkin and Glambrax had
conveyed the captive Banker.
        "No!" said Iva-Italis. "Wait! I have a message."
        "What message?" said Guest, turning.
        "A message from Jocasta," said Iva-Italis. "Jocasta says you
can have my help. If. If you will swear. If you will swear
yourself to venture to Obooloo. Yes, and to rescue. To free the
Great God Jocasta from the clutches of the evil Stogirov, High
Priestess of the Temple of Blood. Do that, and Jocasta in
gratitude will make you a wizard, yes, and you will live forever."
        Guest hesitated.
        "You realize what I need?" said Guest. "You realize what your
offer of help implies?"
        "Tell me," said Jocasta.
        "It implies, amongst other things, that you must call off the
Guardians. They have sworn oaths of fealty to you, therefore you
can tell them to pledge their allegiance to me and my father."
        "I will do it," said Iva-Italis.
        "Then I will put you to the test," said Guest. Then again
moistened his throat by sucking on his finger, and, having thus
eased his throat for shouting, bellowed: "Father! Here!"
        The Witchlord Onosh did not respond to this call, for he was
out of earshot, having left the Hall of Time, descending to a
lower landing where Thodric Jarl and others were in hot dispute
with the Guardians. But the witch Zelafona and the wizard Zozimus
approached the demon in response to Guest's shout, and, halting a
safe distance from the beast, heard his requirements.
        Guest required his father to ask that one of the Guardians
come to the Hall of Time under flag of truce, to receive
instruction from the demon of Safrak, Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis,
Keeper of the Inner Sanctum and Guardian Prime.
        A truce was procured, and a Guardian was allowed into the
Hall of Time to hear the demon's diktat.
        "Edlard," said the demon, identifying the Guardian by name.
"You know me."
        "You are my lord," said Edlard
        "Then hear," said Iva-Italis. "And obey."
        Then Guest knew it was going to be all right.
        The denouement was swift.
        Long had the Bankers of Safrak trusted the demon Iva-Italis,
relying on that demon to guard their greatest secrets, and using
that demon as the supreme commander of the Guardians. But now that
trust was betrayed. Edlard was commanded to give his allegiance to
the Weaponmaster Guest, and to command the rest of the Guardians
to present themselves to the Hall of Time to receive the same
instruction.
        In the end, the greatest impediment to the conquest of the
mainrock Pinnacle was the Witchlord Onosh himself, for, being
distrustful of the demon, Lord Onosh would only permit the
Guardians to enter the Hall of Time in groups of three or four.
Then, when all the Guardians in the mainrock had been sworn to
Guest Gulkan's service, Lord Onosh banned all the Guardians from
the Hall of Time, and commanded Thodric Jarl to guard the entrance
to that Hall against all intruders.
        Having thus ensured that Iva-Italis could not command the
Guardians to betray the oaths so freshly given, Lord Onosh at last
consented to venture past the demon to join his son. The wizard
Zozimus went with him, and they took themselves up the stairs to
pierce the mystery of the abditory above - the place to which
Sken-Pitilkin and Glambrax had retreated with Sod as their
prisoner.
        At the top of the stairs, in the weirding room in the
uppermost stratum of the mainrock Pinnacle, the abditory awaited.
But in it was no great treasure, no mystery, no wonder, no
splendor. Instead, the stairway debouched into a room which was
large but plain, an airy room with multiple widespan windows,
pleasantly lit but bereft of adornment. In the midst of this room
there stood a plinth, and from that plinth there arose an archway
of what appeared to be steel.
        It was cold in that room, for the chill breeze of a winter's
morning came wafting through those widespan window-ways. The
grayest, chilliest, coldest light of dawn lit the room with a kind
of gray liquidity. This was the light before the sun, the light
which is too gray to sustain color, the cold and disillusioning
light which drains away the manic pretensions of the night.
        By that light, Witchlord and Weaponmaster examined the
disappointments of the abditory, its marble plinth, and its steel
arch. Banker Sod had been firmly tied to that arch. He was asleep.
The dwarf Glambrax appeared to be standing on guard, but on
examination he proved to be asleep on his feet. The wizard Sken-
Pitilkin was huddled on the floor, snoring.
        "Sod," said Guest, waking the Banker by pricking him in the
nose with a knifeblade.
        Sod woke with a start.
        "Your ring," said Guest, as Sod tried to blink away the
confusions of sleep. "Give it! Or must I cut it from your finger?
Your ring, man! And, mind - if you swallow it, I'll cut it out of
you!"
        In the face of Guest's threat - a threat which owed nothing
to bluff - Sod surrendered up the ring of which the Weaponmaster
spoke. This ring was adorned with a chip of ever-ice which, as
Guest knew well, had the power to open and close the timeprison
pods of the Hall of Time.
        Once Guest had the ring, he woke Sken-Pitilkin. The wizard
proved difficult to rouse, so much so that Guest suspected he had
been drugged. But he was merely exhausted. When roused from sleep,
and persuaded that the demon Iva-Italis truly had betrayed the
mainrock Pinnacle to the invaders, Sken-Pitilkin watched while
Witchlord and Weaponmaster examined the plinth and the arch.
        The search proved singularly disappointing.
        "I had thought," said Guest, after long examination, "that
there was some great secret here. But this is nothing."
        "It is something indeed," said Sod. "It is a shrine, holy to
the God of Money."
        "Shrine!" said Guest. "I spit on your shrine!"
        And he suited words to action.
        "Come," said Lord Onosh. "There's nothing for us here. Come.
The mainrock awaits. First the rock, then Molothair. That gives us
Alozay. Let's take Sod and go below."
        "No!" said Guest. "Not Sod! He stays here! I don't want him
anywhere near the demon!"
        Lord Onosh considered.
        "That's reasonable," said the Witchlord. "By my judgment, we
can't trust either in isolation, far less in combination. Sod!
We'll keep you happy here! A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, a
chamber pot - what else could you want?"
        "A blanket," said Sod.
        "Done!" said Lord Onosh, jovial in victory.
        With blanket promised, Witchlord and Weaponmaster went below,
accompanied by Zozimus and Sken-Pitilkin. Lord Onosh was impatient
to be gone, but Guest paused in the Hall of Time, insisting on
inspecting the timeprison pods. For, in the course of descending
from the abditory, he had become convinced that the woman
Yerzerdayla stood frozen in one of those pods.
        But a rigorous inspection of the time pods yielded up no
trace of the woman, nor of any woman like her. This is the thing
about visions, premonitions and such - even when a person does
actually possess a Gift, their interpretation of the future is
likely to be wrong as often as it is right. Lord Onosh, for
example, most definitely had the Gift of Seeing; yet he was apt to
mistake his own hopes and fears for the preaching of that Gift. So
Lord Onosh, on a hunt in the mountains near Gendormargensis, had
once thought himself doomed to die in those mountains, struck down
by his son Guest - yet this had not happened, and, despite the
strength of his convictions, the Witchlord had returned alive to
his capital city.
        Betrayed likewise by the workings of his own unconscious
mind, Guest hunted for Yerzerdayla in the Hall of Time, but found
her not.
        The young Weaponmaster did, however, find two time prisoners
whom he recognized from the past. One of these was the elderly
Ashdan who had once introduced himself as Ulix of the Drum; and
the other was that Ashdan's servant.
        The small and antiquated Ashdan was frozen in an expression
of anger. He held in his fist a crooked walking stick, the head of
which was a pelican cast in silver, and appeared to be using it to
menace the world. Guest had no idea how long that Ashdan might
have been imprisoned there, but decided to release him.
        But first the young Weaponmaster consulted with Hostaja Sken-
Pitilkin.
        "You know this Ulix, don't you?" said Guest. "The pair of you
were here that night, that night when the demon first talked of
the Great God."
        "It is true," said Sken-Pitilkin.
        "Then what I want to know," said Guest, "is whether you think
it's a good idea for me to let this Ashdan out."
        Sken-Pitilkin considered, then said that the release of the
Ashdan might have its merits. So Guest placed the chipstone of
ever-ice against the surface of the Ashdan's time pod; and drew a
line vertically on the transparent surface of that pod; and the
pod opened sweetly, just as rumor had always said it would.
        And out boiled the Ashdan, in the worst of tempers
imaginable.
        Fortunately, Zozimus and Sken-Pitilkin were able to placate
that withered ancient, and ease his temper before he did an injury
to himself while attempting to injure others. Much heated
discussion followed, at the end of which it was proved that Ulix
of the Drum had been in the time prison for upwards of a year.
        "Though it was but an eyeblink for me," said Ulix. "And will
have been an eyeblink likewise for my servant. Speaking of whom -
I would be very pleased if you would release the fellow."
        Now the Ashdan's servant was one Thayer Levant, who had the
face of a rat and the eyes of a vulture. He wore a rag-tatter
patchwork cloak with was weighted with lead so it could be used in
a knife-fight; and the cloak was grimy; and his face was grimy
likewise; and the eyes set in that face were bloodshot; and the
teeth of that face were broken and brown; and his hair was brown
likewise, and was thin, revealing the fungus which grew in green
patches on his scalp.
        But Guest was tolerant, therefore consented to release this
miserable specimen into his palace. Upon release, Levant was soon
orientated to his changed situation, and took up a position of
watchful obedience a pace behind his master and a half-pace to his
master's right.
        "Very well," said Ulix of the Drum to Guest Gulkan. "Now you
will pledge yourself to preserve my life, and in return I will do
you a great favor."
        "What great favor?" said Guest, who did not think that he
had any cause to pledge anything whatsoever to this Ulix.
        "Swear to him," said the wizard Zozimus. "Swear to him, for
he is trustworthy."
        "He is?" said Guest. "How would you know?"
        "Trust me," said Zozimus. "Have I ever betrayed you in the
past?"
        "Have you ever had the opportunity?" retorted Guest.
        Then Sken-Pitilkin intervened.
        "Guest," said Sken-Pitilkin, "my cousin Zozimus is but a
slug-chef, it is true, but even a slug-chef may have his honor,
and Zozimus has his. Take his advice. I trust him, and so may
you."
        Then Guest Gulkan at last consented to be advised by Zozimus,
and so swore that he would preserve the life of the ancient
Ashdan, the pelican-bearing Ulix of the Drum. Whereupon Ulix said
unto him:
        "Come. Let us ascend to the uppermost chamber of the mainrock
Pinnacle, and there I will explicate to you the greatest of the
world's secrets, and its most powerful."
        "We've been," said Guest. "We've seen. There's nothing
there."
        "On the contrary," said Ulix. "There is a great secret
upstairs from here."
        "An acroamatical secret, I suppose," said Guest.
        "Precisely," said the Ashdan Ulix, raising an eyebrow. "How
did you know that?"
        "Because," said Guest, "I have long been in the company of
wizards, and have enjoyed the full advantages of their tutoring."
        And this Ulix believed, though the truth of it was that Guest
did not know an acroamatical secret from a stench pit; and, while
he used the word "acroamatical," and liked its flavor, he was
completely ignorant of its proper meaning.
        Lord Onosh was reluctant to be dragged upstairs, for a great
weariness was upon him. Yet Guest insisted, for he was sure that
Ulix of the Drum had something utterly fantastic to reveal to
them.
        And so it shortly proved.