Lesser Teeth: a group of sandy, low-lying islands north of
the Greaters, south of the Ravlish Lands, and an eyeshot or so
east of the continent of Argan.

                                                 * * *

        So Guest Gulkan raided Carawell, chiefest of the islands of
the Lesser Teeth. He came from the sky, swooping down from above
in a stickbird piloted by Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, and he brought
with him a half-dozen fighting men and two sea dragons.
        Guest Gulkan expected war, battle, screams and terror. His
thoughts had been focused on the star-globe for so long that he
automatically imagined that the whole world shared his lust for
the thing. But of course to the people on Carawell the star-globe
was nothing but a useless bauble. Suppose a gang of bloodthirsty
cut-throats broke into your house, and proclaimed their intention
to make off with your deceased grandmother's teeth. It is not
likely that you would risk murder, rape and arson to defend this
dubious treasure - and, similarly, the people of Carawell put up
no fight to defend the star-globe.
        Quite apart from everything else, the chiefest warlord of
Carawell, a Rovac warrior named Morgan Hearst, had taken himself
and his gang of cut-throats to Estar, where he had embroiled
himself in some dubious provincial power-struggle, the details of
which were of no interest to Guest Gulkan.
        On Carawell, Guest Gulkan interrogated a young Rovac warrior
named Altol Stokpol, and learnt from this source rather more than
he cared to know about the affairs of Morgan Hearst. From this
interrogation, Guest learnt only one thing of interest: there was
a Yarglat barbarian named Nan Nualador in Hearst's dungeons.
        Guest naturally rescued his fellow countryman, and asked him
why he had been persecuted by Morgan Hearst.
        "We quarreled over a woman," said Nan Nualador.
        Guest readily accepted this, for, like many another man who
has outgrown the age when lust is dominant, he had come to think
of the female sex as being little more than an endless source of
trouble and provocation.
        It would be wrong to say that the Weaponmaster had an ascetic
temperament. Nevertheless, he had led a life which had made
ruthless demands on his resources; and, concentrating on the needs
of raw survival and the pursuit of power, he had quite gotten out
of the habit of sensual relaxation. If he was hungry, then he ate;
but, if one of his appetites needed appeasing, then he satisfied
that appetite merely to free himself for undistracted action.
        Guest Gulkan, then, had become a more limited creature as he
had grown into his full maturity. He had lost sight of certain
possibilities and potentialities. In his lustful youth, he had
been prepared to fight to the death to secure the prideful
possession of the woman Yerzerdayla. Later, during four long years
of convalescence in Dalar ken Halvar, he had been faithful to the
woman Penelope, exchanging the satisfactions of unbridled lust for
those of domesticity.
        But now, in the years of his maturity, the Weaponmaster
thought little of either lust or domesticity. The rigors of his
life - its many defeats, setbacks, disappointments and assorted
traumas - had pruned away many possibilities. In maturity, he had
focused his life on one great task: to reopen the Circle of the
Doors of the Partnership Banks.
        Thinking like a soldier, Guest Gulkan invited Nan Nualador to
come with him to the island of Drum, for Nan Nualador looked like
the kind of person who would be handy in a battle.
        But Nan Nualador refused.
        "Why?" said Guest Gulkan in surprise.
        "I have other business," muttered Nan Nualador.
        "That's not good enough!" said Guest.
        Then the Weaponmaster interrogated Nan Nualador at length, at
last coming to understand that the Yarglat barbarian's refusal was
made up of one part of defiance to nine parts of stark terror. Nan
Nualador had a positive horror of Guest, this mighty warlock who
had descended from the sky with dragons at his feet.
        At last, despairing of the man, Guest Gulkan turned Nan
Nualador loose, then rounded up the sea dragons (with difficulty,
for those delinquent beasts had become engrossed in the hunting of
chickens, which they thought to be great sport) then flew back to
the island of Drum (taking with him some 275 dead chickens which
his sea dragons had incontinently slaughtered).
        Shortly thereafter (after the greatest chicken-meat banquet
ever held upon Drum) Guest Gulkan and Sken-Pitilkin convened a
conference of all Drum's resident wizards.
        Sken-Pitilkin was first to address that council of war. He
gave his address in the Galish Trading Tongue, for, even after all
these years, Guest Gulkan had yet to master even a smattering of
the High Speech of wizards to his tongue (and, despite his desert
island maroonment in the company of a copy of Strogloth's
Compendium of Delights, remained lamentably ignorant of all the
other great scholarly languages, such as Janjuladoola and
Slandolin ).
        "We have the star-globe," said Sken-Pitilkin, once he had
given a detailed account of Guest's latest exploits. "Therefore,
it follows that we can open up the Circle of the Doors of the
Partnership Bank."
        Then Sken-Pitilkin produced a map, a composite map which he
had drawn himself, working partly from documents, partly from
conjecture, partly from logical surmise, and (in great part) from
his wealth of personal experience. He pointed out the location of
the nine Doors of the Circle. These were:-

        - the Safrak Bank of the Safrak Islands;
        - the Monastic Treasury of Inner Adeer, in Voice;
        - the Flesh Trader's Financial Association of Galsh Ebrek;
        - the Bondsman's Guild of Obooloo, capital of Aldarch III;
        - the Bralsh, of Dalar ken Halvar;
        - the Singing Dove Pensions Trust of Tang;
        - the Taniwha Guarantee Corporation of Quilth.
        - the Orsay Bank of Stokos;
        - the Morgrim Bank of Chi'ash-lan.

        "Unfortunately," said Sken-Pitilkin, "Voice has been overrun
by the Swarms. It therefore follows that to open the Circle will
mean confronting the Swarms. This we can do, because we need but
defend a single Door. Still, we will need to have an army to back
us before we dare open the Door."
        "Perhaps," ventured Brother Fern Feathers, one of the mildest
wizards of Guest Gulkan's acquaintance, "it would be unwise to
open the Door at all. Why provoke a war with the Swarms when we've
no need for such a war?"
        "Being intelligent people," said Sken-Pitilkin, "we will
fight no wars ourselves. We will get warriors to fight them for
us. Furthermore, the Swarms are sure to force us to the point of
war in any case. The Swarms are not settled in Argan. Rather, they
are singularly unsettled. They are hot upon the borders of Estar.
Furthermore, numbers are rumored to have been washed up on the
shores of the Ravlish Lands, and Guest has lately brought me fresh
news of an invasion of the Lessers."
        Then Guest Gulkan related a third-hand tale which he had had
from the Rovac warrior Altol Stokpol, concerning a number of baby
monsters which had made a landing on the beaches of Carawell.
        "As you see," said Sken-Pitilkin, "regardless of our pacific
intentions, we are sure to find ourselves at war with the Swarms,
later if not sooner. If Estar falls to the Swarms, then so too
will Penvash. Penvash, gentlemen, is but an eyeshot from the
shores of Drum. Attack will come from the sea, from the sky.
Doubtless we have the strength to resist such attack, but make no
mistake about it - it will be war."
        This sobered his audience, because most of them chose not to
think about the Swarms unless they absolutely had to. As the
ordinary citizen of Obooloo shuns and suppresses all knowledge of
the temperament of the Mutilator, so too the wizards resident upon
Drum chose to be wilfully ignorant of the menace upon their
doorstep.
        This initiated a long debate. And the debates of wizards are
of a length and complexity which cannot easily be imagined by
those who have not had personal experience of such deliberations.
Indeed, the debate went on for so long that, before it was over,
Drum had news of the latest developments to the south.
        Morgan Hearst, the greatest warlord of Carawell, had made an
alliance with a southron barbarian named Watashi, and with a
number of pirates, and with those forces of the Collosnon Empire
which currently occupied Estar. The long and the short of it was
that a southern alliance was bent on installing upon the throne of
Gendormargensis a child named Monogail, a female child who was
alleged to be the offspring of the Red Emperor Khmar (he who was
said to have died so long ago in the forests of Penvash).
        The greater number of the wizards on Drum were inclined to
treat this news as a happy coincidence. They needed an army. Very
well! Here was an army! An army organizing for invasion!
        "They have ships," said Brother Fern Feathers. "They have
ships, swords and men. They have leaders who are mighty in war.
They have this child to be a figurehead for an invasion of
Tameran. Very well. We can make an alliance. We can use this army
to liberate the Circle of the Doors."
        But, to Guest, the fact that an army was preparing for
invasion on their very doorstep was but idle coincidence.
        Since Sken-Pitilkin had an airship, and since Guest Gulkan
was in possession of a yellow bottle sufficient for the carriage
of an army, and since their goal was not (oh vulgar ambition!) to
conquer a continent but, rather (the future beckons!) to reopen
the Circle of the Partnership Banks, any Door on that Circle could
(potentially) serve as a base for action.
        To most of the wizards, the Circle was but a theory. But, to
the Weaponmaster, that Circle was a living reality. In particular,
he had the most lively memories of Dalar ken Halvar, the city
where he had once spent four long years in convalescence.
        "It is said that the Rovac are mighty in war," said Guest.
"But our war for the Circle will not be as other wars. We have no
use for the slowness of ships or the slow ooze of infantry. We
have the rule of the air and the capacity of the yellow bottle.
The wind's reach is ours. We need no strategy of mud, and of
stone, and of wood, and of water. Rather, we must think as the
wind, as the sun."
        "Very pretty poetry," said Brother Fern Feathers,
interrupting Guest Gulkan as he was winding himself up for
revelation. "But you have no soldiers."
        "I have allies," said Guest, displeased to be interrupted in
his rhetoric.
        "What allies?" said Fern Feathers. "You are but a homeless
barbarian."
        "What makes you say so?" said Guest.
        "Why!" said Fern Feathers, "I say so because I know so! I
know your curriculum vitae in depth and in detail."
        "Do you?" said Guest.
        As the Weaponmaster had never lately found time for any
detailed biographical revelations, he thought it exceedingly
bizarre for any wizard to be claiming a knowledge of his past.
        "Don't you remember?" said Brother Fern Feathers. "I was head
of the Ethnological Commission which interrogated you all those
years ago when you were fresh-arrived at Drangsturm."
        "Ah!" said Guest, in the tones of a man who has stepped
barefooted on a wasp. "Now I remember!"
        Now Guest remembered with a vengeance!
        Though Brother Fern Feathers was mild (as wizards went) and
not arrogant (or not at least by wizardly standards) and politely
spoken (or as polite as could be reasonably expected) Guest Gulkan
had never been able to bring himself to like the fellow. For some
inexplicable reason, Guest had always found himself possessed of a
mysterious but ineradicable dislike for Fern Feathers.
        Now the inexplicable was explained, the mysterious was made
bare and plain. Fern Feathers was an ethnologist! Worse, he was
the very ethnologist who had led Guest Gulkan's interrogation in
the Castle of Controlling Power!
        "Sex customs!" said Guest, slamming his hand on the table.
"That's what it was! You had sex on the brain, like all
ethnologists!"
        "Have I somehow offended you?" said Brother Fern Feathers.
        "Somehow!" said Guest. "Where does somehow come into it? My
scrotum, my foreskin, the hairs of my arse - are these not meant
to be private? Yet - you and your committee!"
        "We did but ask a few questions," said Fern Feathers,
starting to get defensive.
        "Yes," said Guest, "but what questions?"
        "Scientific questions!" said Fern Feathers.
        "Oh, so it is science, is it?" said Guest. "When I hear
someone talk of science, then I reach for my sword!"
        So saying, Guest suited action to words.
        "We were but inquiring after knowledge," said Fern Feathers,
starting to grow fearful of his life.
        "Then if you truly wish to receive knowledge," said Guest, in
his coldest and grandest tones, "then hearken to me mightily, and
perhaps you will live. Or perhaps not. For I am the Emperor in
Exile."
        Then Guest began to rant - a strong word, true, but the word
is apt - about his greatness, his mightiness and his
superlativeness. He inflicted upon that gathering a veritable
catalog of the exploits of his steel. He itemized the battles he
had won, not neglecting to mention even his boyhood battle against
Thodric Jarl in Enskandalon Square. He named the monsters he had
faced or fought - the Great Mink of Gendormargensis, the murkbeast
of Logthok Norgos, two therapists and a certain Crab of
Untunchilamon, a dorgi of the depths Downstairs beneath the city
of Injiltaprajura, a giant centipede, a number of crocodiles, and
the bright-burning Shabble.
        Guest grew positively hoarse from boasting. Down through the
long years, the memories of all the provocations he had endured at
the hands of the Ethnological Commission had festered in the
darkness of his mind, unacknowledged and unaddressed, and now
their poison was spurting forth with a vengeance.
        "All this I have done!" said Guest, in the fullness of his
hoarseness, "yet it is not enough for an ethnologist, no, not
battles, not monsters, not travels, not the mastery of languages,
not the braving of prisons and the survival of torture chambers.
All this I have done, yet he calls me barbarian and doubts my
fitness to rule. So my question is this. What must I do to win his
esteem? When so many feats have been accomplished already, what
yet remains to my sword? I have asked myself this question, and
have decided that only one task yet awaits me: the slaughter of an
ethnologist!"
        Seldom in the course of history has a barbarian been able to
turn the tables on an ethnologist! Believe me, it is most
uncomfortable for the ethnologist, particularly when the barbarian
in question has a sword in his hand, and looks more than half-
minded to use it!
        Brother Fern Feathers positively groveled before the
Weaponmaster, and assured the gathering that he believed Guest
Gulkan to be the most accomplished and civilized of gentlemen,
yes, a winner of battles, a slayer of monsters, and (in all
probability) a master of the irregular verbs.
        "I have no need of the verbs," said Guest, glowering at the
mention of these the most ancient and intractable of his enemies.
"I have no need of the verbs, no, nor of grammars neither, nor of
dictionaries. You can burn your verbs and have done with them!"
        Whereupon Brother Fern Feathers declared himself to be of
identical opinion. He denounced the High Speech, yes, and
Slandolin, and Janjuladoola, and all other tongues not regular to
a nicety in their formation.
        "They are but twisted toys for sapless pedants," said Fern
Feathers, growing passionate in his denunciation. "They should be
burnt, cindered, reduced to ashes, grammars and dictionaries
together."
        "Good," said Guest, somewhat mollified by the whole-
heartedness of this capitulation. "Good, good. It is good to see
that at least one person has won enlightenment today!"
        Then the Weaponmaster shot a meaningful look at Hostaja Sken-
Pitilkin, who, of course, did not (and would not! not ever!
regardless of the threat or provocation!) denounce the verbs, no,
nor any of the other parts of speech.
        With Brother Fern Feathers thus having capitulated before the
Weaponmaster (but with the sagacious Sken-Pitilkin remaining as
staunch in his scholarship as ever) Guest Gulkan then wound up his
speech by making a brief recapitulation of all his exploits, then
said:-
        "So you see, I am well talented enough to undertake the tasks
which lie before me. Furthermore, I am a personal friend of
Plandruk Qinplaqus, the Silver Emperor who rules the Empire of
Greater Parengarenga. In the past, he has received me in the
palace of Na Sashimoko, the ruling palace of Dalar ken Halvar.
Furthermore, I am a boon companion of Asodo Hatch, the greatest of
the emperor's warlords. Upon him I bestowed the woman Penelope,
who is now his wife. As a token of their friendship, Plandruk
Qinplaqus and Asodo Hatch have kept safe for me the x-x-zix, the
mighty wishstone which I won from Untunchilamon. Likewise they
have preserved for my benefit the mighty mazadath, a charm of
protection which makes a warrior immortal in battle."
        This last comment about the mazadath was made by Guest in a
spirit of outright deceit, for, since he did not entirely trust
the wizards who were assembled on Drum, he thought it best to
conceal some of his subtler resources under a camouflaging layer
of braggarting barbarism. So, while denying primitive barbarism,
Guest yet deliberately aped it; and wizards such as Fern Feathers,
who were not equipped to be theater critics, accepted his gaudier
performances as the inner truth of his nature, and thus were led
to underestimate the Weaponmaster.
        Naturally, Ontario Nol did not underestimate Guest Gulkan,
for the wizard of Itch had known the Weaponmaster long enough to
form a proper opinion of his abilities. But, even so, Nol did not
know Guest well enough to realize that his boastful arrogance was,
in part, a self-protective reaction to long defeat and
disappointment. So, after listening to Guest boast at length of
the high regard in which he was held in the city of Dalar ken
Halvar, and the manner in which he planned to overthrow his
enemies and rectify the world, Nol said:
        "Brave words for a man who cannot even tell us who his mother
was."
        This was a low blow. It is usually one's father who cannot be
known of a certainty. But, since Guest's gigantic bat-wing ears
marked him as his father's son, it was only his mother's identity
which remained a mystery. Guest knew he had been born in
Stranagor, but all questions as to his mother's identity had been
met with evasions.
        But, over the years, Guest had had time in plenty to puzzle
out this problem. In the tunnels of Cap Foz Para Lash, in the
dungeons of Obooloo, in the Stench Caves of Logthok Norgos, in
Drangsturm's Castle of Controlling Power, he had pondered the
problem. And he thought he had solved it.
        "I know who my mother is," said Guest, with equanimity. "And
if in this company you choose to declare her, why, I will not
disown her, for I am no wizard, hence do not share the prejudices
of wizards."
        Upon which Nol, impressed for once by the Weaponmaster's
performance, gave the slightest of bows and made no further
objections.
        "So," said another wizard, "our Yarglat friend knows his
mother. If his boast is to be believed, he also knows the emperor
of Parengarenga and the greatest of Dalar ken Halvar's warlords.
The question then arises. Why is he living here in exile upon
Drum? Why is he not living as a prince in Dalar ken Halvar, as the
governor of one of Parengarenga's provinces, or perhaps as heir to
the very Empire of Greater Parengarenga as a whole?"
        Guest did not like the tone of this address. There were
several responses he could have made. He could, for example, have
mentioned the fact that most of Parengarenga is uninhabitable
wasteland, and to be made governor of one of Parengarenga's
provinces is not by any means a fate to be greatly desired.
        But instead he said:-
        "Until now, my thoughts have been all for the recovery of the
star-globe. To encompass the search for this globe, I have needed
to have mastery of the skies, hence I have of necessity been based
upon Drum. For, of all the wizards in the world, only Sken-
Pitilkin has mastered the secret of controlled flight, therefore
it is natural that he should be the greatest of my allies.
Plandruk Qinplaqus is mighty in power, but his power is that over
the mind and that over the body politic. Of the skies he knows
nothing, hence I count Sken-Pitilkin the greater wizard."
        At this, Sken-Pitilkin could not help but feel a wine-smooth
warmth envelop his soul; and it occurred to the sagacious wizard
of Skatzabratzumon that, however delinquent Guest's scholarship,
the Yarglat barbarian had learnt at least the bare essentials of
the great art of politics.
        "So," said Guest, who was not finished with his speechifying,
"till now I have been engrossed with the search for the star-
globe. Now I have won that globe. Therefore I turn my attention
toward Dalar ken Halvar, seeking help to aid me in the conquest of
the circle."
        "But what," said another wizard, "makes you think that Dalar
ken Halvar will want to participate in such a conquest?"
        Guest looked at the wizard in amazement. To the Weaponmaster
it was a self-obvious truth that any nation will naturally and
inevitably seize any opportunity for conquest which presents
itself. However, rather than drawing attention to this truism,
Guest said:
        "There is in Dalar ken Halvar the militant religion known as
Nu-chala-nuth. It preaches the equality of all men and the
inferiority of all women. It worships but one god, and is utterly
intolerant of all others."
        "For what purpose do you lecture us on theology?" said
Brother Fern Feathers, who had at last plucked up the courage to
match his wits again with Guest.
        "Because," said Guest, "Nu-chala-nuth is a militant religion.
One of its basic tenets is the righteous necessity for the
conquest of all Unbelievers. A religion possessed of such a
religion is a potent weapon for conquest."
        "Then why will the believers of a religion so intolerant have
anything to do with you?" said Brother Fern Feathers.
        "Because," said Guest, "while I was living in Dalar ken
Halvar I made a nominal conversion to Nu-chala-nuth. I will be a
Believer leading other Believers. Here note that each Believer is
thought to be the equal of all the others, presuming his sex to be
male."
        Brother Fern Feathers wrinkled his nose, trying to grasp this
notion. The idea of a god who was equally accessible to all
people was something of a novelty to the wizard. Take for example
the deity known as Zoz the Ancestral, the ruling god of the
Janjuladoola. Anyone can worship Zoz the Ancestral, but it is
commonly accepted that Zoz is essentially a racial god, the god of
the gray-skinned Janjuladoola people, and that worshippers of
other races must therefore be second-class worshippers.
        "Are you trying to tell me," said Brother Fern Feathers,
"that the god of the Nu-chala-nuth has no natural racial or
cultural constituency? Are you trying to tell me that this god is
so thoroughly deracinated that anyone can be a leader of its
Believers?"
        "Deracinated," said Guest, puzzling over the word. "Oh! You
mean, exiled. Yes. The god of the Nu-chala-nuth is most thoroughly
exiled, for it comes not from this world but from another."
        "That, one might have thought, is part and parcel of the
definition of the nature of a god," said Brother Fern Feathers.
        Whereupon Guest did his best to explain that the god of the
Nu-chala-nuth was a god of the Nexus, and that the Nexus was a
confederation of worlds existing in a series of inter-linked
universes where the stars were (for the most part) an alien white
rather than the familiar red, green, blue, yellow and gold of the
stars of our world.
        With much labor, Guest tried to explain all this, but
Brother Fern Feathers plainly thought him wildly deluded in
entertaining any notion so improbable.
        "So," said Fern Feathers, when Guest was finished, "our
Yarglat general is prepared to put his trust in the unifying
onslaught of religious war. I think this a very dangerous
strategy. True, we must have an army, but why not seek alliance
with the army which is on our very doorstep? In the Greaters, in
the Lessers, in Estar, in Garabatoon, in Androlmarphos and in
Stokos, a great alliance is forming, uniting for invasion. We have
heard of this Morgan Hearst, of this Watashi, of the woman
Ampadara and the child Monogail. Since they are arming for
invasion, why not match our airpower to their swordpower?"
        This was so patently logical that the proposal was met with a
smattering of applause. But Guest flatly declared:-
        "I do not trust them."
        This was but the smallest fragment of a great and terrifying
truth to which Guest did not dare give voice. There were two parts
to this truth, one small, one great. The small and secret
revelation was that Guest, in his own right, did not have power
sufficient to match the potential treachery of the demon Italis
and its kin. As for the great revelation -
        What Guest did not, could not, would not say was that forces
of change were being liberated in Dalar ken Halvar - forces so
enormous that all powers of wizardry would be an irrelevance
beside them.
        Guest had seen machines. He had seen two therapists in their
might. He had met with a dorgi in its rampaging wrath. He had seen
Shabble. And Shabble, though a mere toy to its makers, could fly,
and spit fire, and sing, and calculate income tax, and imitate
demons, and tell jokes, and do a dozen other things besides.
        Guest knew that a machine culture was on the rise in Dalar
ken Halvar. In that city, Asodo Hatch had long been at work,
supervising a machine which could command the x-x-zix which Guest
had won from Untunchilamon. Guest knew that things would not stop
there. The old order was passing, and the rule of wizards was but
a passing quirk of the old order.
        This Guest knew.
        Unlike any wizard, Guest Gulkan had the advantage of having
endured four years of convalescence in the tunnels of Cap Foz Para
Lash, in the heart of Dalar ken Halvar, where he had enjoyed the
company of Paraban Senk, a thing versed in the ways of an
anciently powerful machine culture. Later, he had had long
acquaintance of Shabble, sharing incarceration with Shabble in a
yellow bottle which had been taken by a laborious route from Drum
to Drangsturm. Adding stories of the past to his own experience,
Guest believed he could see something of the future, though he saw
through a glass darkly.
        Guest had praised Sken-Pitilkin, the master of the skies. But
a machine culture would bring machines which could out-perform a
wizard a thousand times over, so that Sken-Pitilkin's stickbird
would seem but a ludicrous eccentricity beside the huge ships of
the air which circumnavigated the planet, which flew between
planets, and which crossed the gulfs between the very stars
himself.
        So thinking, Guest realized Sken-Pitilkin was watching him.
        "There is much which Guest is leaving unsaid," said Sken-
Pitilkin. "In Dalar ken Halvar, they have - potentially - the
power to unlock the greatest secrets of the past."
        "You mean," ventured Brother Fern Feathers, "to subject us to
a repeat performance of the wars of the Days of Wrath?"
        "That is part of it," said Sken-Pitilkin, making no attempt
to shy away from that possibility. "But what is the alternative?
Are we to bow to the Swarms and thus to condemn all unborn
generations to a life of skulking terror? And even if we somehow
defeat the Swarms by our own devices, what then? The world is a
place comfortable enough for wizards, but is it paradise? Perhaps
more power will simply see us better armed for our own
destruction, but are we on that basis to deliberately choose to
see ourselves defeated by the Swarms? With the Swarms upon our
borders, I think it reasonable for us to make an alliance with
Dalar ken Halvar, and use first its militant religion and later its
more secret strengths to right the world to something closer to
our hearts' desire."
        "We can right the world by making an alliance with these
people to the south of us," said Brother Fern Feathers. "With this
Rovac warrior Morgan Hearst and his cohorts."
        "Yes," said Sken-Pitilkin. "We can do that, but in two or
three generations a greater power will arise in Dalar ken Halvar
and sweep away everything we have made."
        So said Sken-Pitilkin.
        There then followed a full three days of sometimes disorderly
debate, during which Guest wished most heartily that he had had
Shabble to aid him. The bubble was but a toy, but it had actually
lived through the years of the Nexus. It had seen at first hand
the wonders of a machine civilization, and it could be most
persuasive in describing wonders of which Guest could give but
faltering second-hand accounts.
        However, at the end of three days of debate, it was formally
agreed that Sken-Pitilkin and Guest Gulkan could take themselves
off to Dalar ken Halvar to seek an alliance with Plandruk
Qinplaqus and the militant religion of Nu-chala-nuth - the purpose
of this alliance being to reopen the Circle of the Doors of the
Partnership Banks and wage a destructive war against the Swarms.
        So, this having been decided, Sken-Pitilkin set forth for
Dalar ken Halvar, with the Weaponmaster as his sole companion -
and with the rest of the wizards more than half-convinced that
these two would get themselves killed either during the journey or
shortly after their arrival in Parengarenga.