Safrak Islands: group of islands in the Swelaway Sea, the
inland sea of the continent of Tameran. The chiefest of the
Safrak Islands is Alozay, long the headquarters of the Safrak
Bank. The Safrak Islands have long lived by trade, having
commercial intercourse with the free city of Port Domax (on the
shores of the Great Ocean of Moana) and with the Collosnon Empire.
The great city of Gendormargensis, the capital of the Collosnon
Empire, lies to the north of the Swelaway Sea.

                                                 * * *

        This book has concerned itself primarily with the life of the
Yarglat barbarian known to the world as Guest Gulkan, the self-
styled Weaponmaster.
        Now Guest, in his confrontation with the ethnologist Brother
Fern Feathers, was hot to deny his barbarous disabilities. Yet,
whatever one thinks of the science of ethnology and its sundry
stupidities and iniquities, it must be admitted that Guest was
very much a prisoner of his barbarous upbringing.
        Guest Gulkan was born into the household of a warlord, and
received the upbringing appropriate to a warlord's son, and
therefore lived and thought as a warlord. His imagination revolved
around power; and struggle; and swords; and horses; and the clash
of armies. And, as he butchered his way from one disaster to
another, Guest comported himself very much like the archetypical
swordsman. He dared his caverns; he slew his monsters; he
slaughtered his crocodiles; he bedded his women; and he did
grievous damage to the irregular verbs wherever he encountered
them.
        So it was that the Weaponmaster lived in ignorance of his
true historical significance - which was, to be an instrument to
unlock the power which lay latent in the city of Dalar ken Halvar.
        It was Guest, after all, who decided that the world should be
conquered by the militant religion of Nu-chala-nuth rather than by
the Swarms. When the wisdom of wizards could see no way into the
future, it was Guest who bethought himself of Plandruk Qinplaqus,
and of Asodo Hatch - so diligently supervising the construction of
a machine designed to tame the x-x-zix and bring effective weather
control to Dalar ken Halvar - and of the wealth of knowledge
protected and preserved by Paraban Senk in the caves of Cap Foz
Para Lash.
        Only when Guest had unlocked the Circle of the Partnership
Banks did he really realize what he had done. Only then did he
realize that he had put an end to the old and ancient cyclic
dynamic of feudal history which had for so long dominated the
world.
        It is a new world now.
        Precisely what kind of world?
        It is hard to say.
        It is early days yet, and we cannot tell what shape the
future will take. But this we know: the forges of Stokos, matched
to the knowledge of Dalar ken Halvar, looks in its own right to be
a combination which will prove potent against the Swarms.
        As for Guest Gulkan's story, that has been told, at least to
the extent which it can be told. There may be more yet to come,
for Guest has declared his intention of venturing once more to the
Shackle Mountains, and there entering the Cave of the Warp for a
second time, and passing again through the Veils of Fire,
protected by the mazadath which he yet wears around his neck. For
Guest wishes to have further knowledge with the Lobos, a thing
which does not figure in the writings of wizards, a thing which is
unknown to demons such as Iva-Italis, and of which Paraban Senk
can give no explanation.
        As to the rest of Guest's life, why, no account need be given
of it. For, as soon as Guest had opened the Circle of the
Partnership Banks, he had initiated a new phase of history - a
phase in which a dynastic struggle between father and son is of
little consequence.
        Still, for the sake of mere completeness, let us spare a few
words to sketch out an account of events which seekers of
sensation have elsewhere dealt with at weary length.
        On opening the Circle of the Doors of the Partnership Banks,
Guest Gulkan returned to Alozay, as has been recounted; and on
Alozay he learnt of the doings of his father.
        While Guest and his allies had been preparing for the
reopening of the Circle, a rabble of pirates and Rovac warriors
had been preparing to invade the Collosnon Empire from the south.
Dim rumors of this impending invasion had reached as far as
Gendormargensis, a city then in some considerable disorder as a
consequence of the brawling disorder of its Yarglat rulers, who
had been making coups and counter-coups against each other for the
better part of half a year.
        Hearing of the disorder in Gendormargensis, and of the threat
of invasion from the south, the Witchlord Onosh thought the moment
ripe for his return.
        This may be thought presumptuous.
        For, surely, Lord Onosh had been defeated; and disgraced; and
discredited. Lord Onosh had lost his empire to Khmar, and had been
reduced to the rule of the Safrak Islands, paltry pieces of rock
in the wash of the Swelaway Sea. How then could he aspire to
reconquer the Collosnon Empire?
        The answer is simple.
        During the long years in which he had lived in exile on the
Safrak Islands, Lord Onosh - ever counseled by the wisdom of Bao
Gahai, the steadfast companion of his defeat - had prepared for
his return.
        Preparation had been difficult during the reign of the Red
Emperor Khmar, whose rule of terror had restricted speech, thought
and movement. But, under the rule of Khmar's son Celadric, the
Collosnon Empire had become a milder place; and the Witchlord's
agents had taken advantage of freedoms of speech, assembly and
movement to sound out inclinations, to spy, to suborn, to bribe
and to subvert.
        In particular - ever remembering the cause of the disorder
which had precipitated his overthrow! - Lord Onosh had cultivated
the leaders of Stranagor and Locontareth. He had studied in great
length the question of taxation, and had covertly promised the
provinces a just share of fertilization.
        Regarding the question of taxation, it must be admitted that
Khmar's son Celadric had been no better than any of the rulers who
had preceded him. There were many good things which could be said
of Celadric - one notes in particular his scholarship, and the
courageous manner in which he subdued even the most wickedly
barbed of the irregular verbs - but it has to be admitted that he
had one or two exceedingly vicious vices.
        The most vicious of all Celadric's vices was that of
architecture. Much has been made of the manner in which so many
great men have destroyed themselves with strong drink, or with
opium, or with gambling, or with an over-indulgence in orgasmic
pursuits - but the great vice of architecture is potentially as
ruinous as all of these put together.
        There are many individuals, families, companies and cities
which have come to ruin through over-indulgence in oak, cedar,
granite, marble and mortar; and, though Celadric had not exactly
ruined the Collosnon Empire through such indulgence, it must be
allowed that he had grievously over-taxed such provincial centers
as Locontareth and Stranagor to pay for the aggrandizement of his
capital.
        Furthermore, the very length of time which Lord Onosh had
been away from his former empire had worked to his advantage.
Memories had mellowed and softened to his advantage. Compared to
Khmar, he was a golden saint, and his reign a time of peace and
plenty. Those who were threatening the invasion of Tameran from
the south had made Khmar's daughter Monogail their figurehead -
which meant, in effect, that they were proposing the conquer in
the name of Khmar. However rational and reasonable that may have
seemed in Estar, it met with little favor in the empire's
heartland.
        So, with Gendormargensis disordered by coup and countercoup,
and with a bloodthirsty invasion threatened from the south, Lord
Onosh decided to make his move.
        Locontareth declared for Lord Onosh, and raised an army for
him; and, by the time Guest Gulkan reopened the Circle of the
Partnership Banks and made his way to Alozay, Lord Onosh was once
more ruling the Collosnon Empire from Gendormargensis.
        Had Bao Gahai survived to see the Witchlord's triumph, things
might thereafter have turned out differently. But Bao Gahai died
within sight of the walls of Gendormargensis. Years earlier, she
had made a terrible sacrifice to fulfill the greatest desire of
her heart; and this sacrifice had so aged and weakened her that it
is a wonder that she had survived for so long.
        In sight of the walls of Gendormargensis, Bao Gahai perished,
falling victim to one of those contagious fevers which are so much
a part and parcel of campaigning. Therefore, when Lord Onosh
learnt that his son Guest was upon Alozay, Lord Onosh lacked Bao
Gahai's counsel.
        As was noted at the outset of this history, the Witchlord
Onosh had been at odds with the world for so long that he had
quite lost the art of showing the world kindness and affection.
This was the flaw which doomed him to destruction.
        For, when Lord Onosh heard that Guest was on Alozay, and was
leagued with wizards, and was often in conference with the demon
Iva-Italis, and was in discourse with the Shabble whom Italis held
as a prisoner, and was arming the soldiers of Parengarenga with
the swords of Stokos, why, Lord Onosh did not think to praise his
son, or congratulate him on his success, or make him a gift of
some of the more transportable pieces of Celadric's architecture.
        No.
        When Lord Onosh heard that Guest had arrived upon Alozay, he
interpreted this arrival as invasion, and feared the conquest of
Alozay to be but the opening move of the conquest of Tameran. And,
once Lord Onosh began assembling an army to strike against Alozay,
what option was then left to his son?
        Of course, Guest defeated his father with ease.
        For, as has been made plain by this history, the greatest and
most difficult part of the art of war is the manoeuver of armies.
But Guest Gulkan had a yellow bottle which was equal to the
accommodation of an army; and Sken-Pitilkin had an airship which
was equal to the transport of the bottle.
        I remember.
        It was in spring that Guest Gulkan shattered the Witchlord's
forces in the Battle of Sipping Cross, and marched on
Gendormargensis.
        Since the slow and weary business of loading an army into and
out of the yellow bottle was one which could take days to
accomplish, Guest Gulkan did not dare try such a stratagem when he
was so closely engaged with his father's forces. He expected his
father to leave men in ambush; or to turn and meet him in force;
or, at the very least, to stand at Gendormargensis and fight.
So, shunning air transport, Guest Gulkan took his army
overland for the last few leagues which stood between himself and
the city.
        On reaching Gendormargensis, Guest found that Lord Onosh had
fled, taking his army with him. The city was in no stage to stand
in siege against the invaders, for it was in the grip of a cholera
epidemic, cholera being one of the recurrent scourges of the
Collosnon Empire. And here it must be admitted that, regardless of
Celadric's great expenditure on architecture, Gendormargensis
remained a city in which sewage disposal was of a very rudimentary
nature.
        On account of the epidemic, the victorious Weaponmaster did
not enter the city, but pitched his tents on the mudlands beyond
the walls. On Sken-Pitilkin's advice, those tents were pitched a
good half-league upriver from the city.
        "Cholera," said Sken-Pitilkin, "is spread by filth within
water. it would be far less common if you could train your people
to boil their drinking water and wash their hands after going to
the toilet."
        "Are my people babies that I should be teaching them how to
piss and dung?" growled Guest.
        "Why," said Sken-Pitilkin, staring at Guest as if the Yarglat
warrior was a new and remarkable species of frog, "it is a
barbarian! It growls in the face of science and bares its fangs at
wisdom."
        "I," said Guest, with dignity, "lack a pox doctor's perverted
interest in the functions of the anus."
        "Ah," said Sken-Pitilkin, "then you renounce all claims to
civilization. For civilization is essentially a device for the
tidy disposal of bodily excretions."
        "Really!" said Guest. "I thought the name for such a device
was a brothel!"
        Thus Guest and Sken-Pitilkin debated outside the walls of
Gendormargensis. They continued the debate long into the night,
for Guest was too tense to sleep, and too much the professional to
drown his tensions with drink.
        The next morning, Guest Gulkan pursued his father's
retreating army, and at noon he came upon his father's baggage
train. It was an incredible scene of spilt rubbish, mud, mired
wagons, slaughtered oxen, bonfires, drunks and deserters. Guest
Gulkan knew at once that his father's army had given up, for many
of the bonfires were made from bunched spears, from arrows, and
from other gear of war. It is difficult to accept the surrender of
men who can simply snatch weapons from the battlefield, and in
consequence of this difficulty it is common to murder those who
surrender. By making sure that not one whole weapon remain to
them, the Witchlord's men were endeavoring to have their
surrender accepted.
        "They have disarmed themselves," said Guest, surveying the
scene.
        "Yes," said Sken-Pitilkin. "As your father disarmed himself
before venturing to Alozay."
        "I remember," said Guest.
        Of course he remembered. His father had caused weapons to be
hidden in treasure chests, then had used those weapons against his
hosts. But where were the treasure chests now?
        "It would be most economical of time," said Guest, "if we
were to slaughter these prisoners."
        "Doubtless," said Sken-Pitilkin. "But you have cholera in
your capital, and an invasion yet threatens from the south. Have
you soldiers so many that you can be murdering them?"
        "True," said Guest.
        Then took the trouble to accept the surrender of those who
sought his mercy. Having accepted their surrender, he then went to
the much greater trouble of searching them for weapons, and
digging in the mud, and launching great interrogations.
        At last, Guest declared himself satisfied.
        "There are no weapons here," said Guest. "I've looked. I've
looked everywhere."
        "There are the bonfires," said Sken-Pitilkin.
        "Fires?" said Guest. "Fires, yes, doubtless, but - what can
one hide in a fire?"
        "Think," said Sken-Pitilkin.
        Guest Gulkan obeyed, and, after due consideration, ordered
that the ruins of the bonfires be raked apart. His subsequent
excavations discovered swords; and spears; and helmets, shields,
chain mail, knives, clubs, throwing stars, caltrops, battle axes.
        Enough for an army.
        Once Guest's inevitable reprisals had added another field of
blood and butchery to history's scenery, the Weaponmaster pursued
his father, and the pursuit soon took him into the hills.
        I remember.
        It was cold in the hills.
        By now, Lord Onosh was running in earnest. But however he
ran, he could not escape from his son. In desperation, the
Witchlord Onosh split his forces, sending parties in five
different directions in the hope of evading pursuit. But the
Witchlord's doom was so patent that some of his people deserted
with the express intention of betraying him.
        Guest Gulkan accepted the intelligence which was brought to
him by the deserters, then had them put to death.
        "For," said Guest, "treason is a capital crime, and, besides,
it is these deserters who are putting me to the necessity of
killing my father."
        In the face of these judicial murders, Sken-Pitilkin said
nothing, for Guest's mood had become changeable, and the wizard
thought it unwise to challenge him when he had entered into one of
his sanguinary phases.
        And you think you would have done otherwise?
        Well, perhaps you would have. But perhaps you would have died
on account of your attempted diplomacy. In any case, this is not
the tale of what might have been. This is the story of that which
was. I remember.
        I remember it was cold.
        It was cold in the hills, cold in those days of spring, and
colder yet by night. In the weariness of the long pursuit, men
slept in the saddle. The pursuit went on by day and night, until
bad weather set in, bringing abolishing rain, and clouds which
reduced the night to an utter darkness.
        I remember.
        The trees, by night, wrathed by the rending winds. The
campfires, driven and shriven by the bone-bleak wind. The muttered
discontents of the fingerjoints, old bones protesting against the
cold, against the unrelenting rigors of campaigning. Bao Gahai
had died in the course of the Witchlord's war with the
Weaponmaster, and was there any guarantee that a wizard would
prevail in health where a witch had failed and perished?
        Dawn, at last.
        Dawn, and the rain dying away, and a weak light filtering
through the breaking clouds. The ground mired with mud, and wet
with petals, the petals of spring blossom brought down to earth by
the drenching rains of the night.
        Then Guest Gulkan took the saddle and led his people in
pursuit. And many men marveled to see the confidence with which
he led the way, wasting no time on spying for tracks.
        But of course Guest Gulkan had often hunted in these hills.
He had hunted with his father, back in the days when Lord Onosh
had sported after bandits. Guest knew the habits of the hunted,
and knew too the lie of the land. Lord Onosh had fled through the
hills in a great arc, and that arc had taken him into a valley
which led down toward the Yolantarath River. The steep scarps of
the valley's rocky sides meant that Lord Onosh would now be
inevitably channeled down toward the flatlands, like many parties
of bandits before him.
        So Guest pursued, leading his men with a certainty which the
ignorant attributed to precognitive powers - powers which came, or
so said a wild rumor, from the fact that he had been mothered by
a witch.
        But, as they drew nearer and nearer the Yolantarath, Guest
allowed the pace to slacken; and Sken-Pitilkin, deducing from this
slackening a lessening of Guest's wrathfulness, ventured to open a
conversation.
        "You remember this," said Sken-Pitilkin, opening a
conversation with the Weaponmaster in the hope of later being able
to raise the matter of his execution of the men who had betrayed
his father.
        "Perhaps," said Guest carelessly. "Or perhaps I dreamt of
it. Have you ever thought this might be a dream, and you but a
dream in a dream?"
        It goes without saying that Sken-Pitilkin had heard of this
tired old philosophical conceit some twice times ten thousand
times in the past.
        "A dream has a purpose," said Sken-Pitilkin. "It's purpose is
the cleansing of the mind. Having a purpose, it is simple. Since
life is both complex and disordered, we can say of a certainty
that it has no purpose, hence is no dream."
        "So you say," said Guest, "but your philosophy opens you to
deception. If the world were a dream, perhaps it might have been
designed for your own deceiving, in which case it would have been
purposely designed to be complex and confusing, in order to
convince you that it had no purpose."
        Thus argued Guest Gulkan and his erstwhile tutor as they made
their way down toward the Yolantarath River. Sken-Pitilkin,
naturally, was able to easily and adroitly defeat his every
argument; but Guest in his ignorance was unable to realize that he
had been defeated, and repeatedly declared that a world
undreamlike might yet be a dream, assuming it to have been
designed for deception.
        "That much you've said some three times already," said Sken-
Pitilkin, when Guest had said it for the seventh time.
        "Which makes it true," said Guest.
        "No, not at all," said Sken-Pitilkin. "A thing said thrice is
no more true than a thing said once, and to propose otherwise is a
nonsense."
        "On the contrary," said Guest Gulkan. "Words are the shaping
of the world. You told me that yourself. It follows that to say is
to shape, and a thing thrice-said gains truth by repetition."
        This is typical of the Weaponmaster's erratic style of
debate, which, for all it owed to formal logic and systematic
learning, resembled nothing so much as an energetic washerwoman
trying to hammer home a nail by flailing at it with a wet eel.
        "You are confounding a theorem of Practical Politics with a
theorem of Axiomatic Philosophy," said Sken-Pitilkin. "And thus it
is proved that you are talking nonsense, whether you know it or
not."
        "Knowledge is unitary," said Guest. "You told me so
yourself."
        Knowledge is unitary. What does that mean? Guest Gulkan was
not sure. But his tutor had often used this grand-sounding phrase
to win their debates (or at least bring them to a conclusion) and
Guest thought there was no harm in trying it.
        "Knowledge is unitary, yes," said Sken-Pitilkin, "but even
so, books are not fishes, songs are not sums, and politics is not
philosophy, nor did I ever tell you it was."
        "On the contrary," said Guest. "You have several times named
philosophy as the very heart of politics, which is a nonsense, but
is still what you told me."
        "The nonsense is not mine but yours," said Sken-Pitilkin,
striving with imperfect success to preserve an amiable tolerance
in the face of such intellectual folly. "Political method is not
philosophical truth, and I never said it was."
        "The heart," said Guest, stubborn in dissent. "You claimed
philosophy to be the heart of politics."
        "One thing becomes not another simply by being placed inside
it, whether at the heart or elsewhere," said Sken-Pitilkin. "A
stone ditched in the river does not become water. Likewise, your
sword would win no degree of equinity by being thrust the fullness
of its length into the flesh of a horse, even if it should
penetrate to the very heart."
        "But that heart itself would be horse," persisted Guest.
"Heart, kernel, pith, gist, essence. The heart of a thing is the
essence of a thing, and you claimed philosophy as the heart of
politics."
        "That is sophistry, and you know it, or should know it, or
will know it by the time I'm finished with you," said Sken-
Pitilkin. "In any case, I never said that philosophy is at the
heart of politics, merely that it should be, which is quite a
different matter entirely. I am a philosopher. Am I ruling
Tameran? Am I so much as listened to when I venture political
advice?"
        "You'll be listened to ardently," said Guest, "if you can
tell me how to make a peace with my father."
        "If we are in luck," said Sken-Pitilkin, "then your father
will out-distance you, and you will have no need to worry about
either war or peace."
        So spoke Sken-Pitilkin, for he was sure by now that Guest was
deliberately easing off the pace of the pursuit in the hope that
his father would run, and would make his escape, and would not
force father and son to a final confrontation.
        But, when Guest and his forces eventually reached the
Yolantarath, there was Lord Onosh, braced for a final stand. And
as for the course of that final stand - why, we have seen that
already.
        Years earlier, when Guest had been but a boy, the Witchlord
Onosh had hunted bandits from the hills, and had encompassed their
slaughter on the banks of the Yolantarath. As Lord Onosh had
hunted, so he now was doomed to be hunted in his turn.
        The Witchlord Onosh was possessed of the Gift of Seeing, and
though it was a small gift, and one which was erratic in
operation, he had been right in thinking himself doomed to die,
and had been right in thinking his son Guest Gulkan was the man
who would encompass his death.
        And so our history comes full circle, and we end as we began,
with a battle by the river, and with a death. But, of course,
between the first battle and the last, the world has changed
entirely; and I cannot read the future, or know where the changes
will end. I know only that one Age is finished, and we are
launched into an uncertain future, the perplexities of which are
beyond the foresight of man, or woman, or wizard.

                                                The End
                                                   #