Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

Sheltered and sustained by Nol's benevolent patronage, Guest Gulkan, Thayer Levant and Eljuk Zala lived out the years in the same Castle. There was yet a hope that Sken-Pitilkin might win his case and be set at liberty; and, sustained by that hope, Guest Gulkan was reluctant to venture to Chi'ash-lan on his own account to mount a solitary challenge against Banker Sod and the might of the Partnership Banks.

But at last Sken-Pitilkin's final appeal failed, and the effective death sentence against him was confirmed.

By this time, Eljuk Zala Gulkan had progressed so far in his studies under Ontario Nol that he was ready to enter the Warp and endure the Trials which would see him graduate as a full-fledged wizard (if he survived!)

So it was that Eljuk Zala and his master Ontario Nol joined Sken-Pitilkin on the journey eastward from the Castle of Controlling Power. With them went Guest Gulkan and Thayer Levant; for Guest still hoped to somehow liberate Sken-Pitilkin during the journey, even though Ontario Nol had warned him that in all probability this would be impossible.

At the eastern end of the flame trench Drangsturm, the party took passage on a ship which set forth from the Castle of Ultimate Peace and began to cruise eastward in the direction of the Stepping Stone Islands and the Ocean of Cambria.

Once the ship was past the Stepping Stone Islands, its eastward course took it into the waters of the Ocean of Cambria.

On that voyage, Guest Gulkan was granted a second look at the Chameleon's Tongue, that hook of beach-fringed land on which he had once made a landing when Sken-Pitilkin had botched the job of navigating to Untunchilamon.

To Guest's disappointment, nobody was much interested in the view. Sken-Pitilkin was incarcerated in the yellow bottle, brooding on the certainty of his death, and was in no mood to trifle with memories. Thayer Levant had taken up residence in that same bottle, where he passed his time by practicing knife fighting, and proved uninterested in reminiscence. As for Shabble – why, to Shabble, flight was a way of life, so the bouncing bubble could scarcely be expected to be impressed by Guest's recollections of his aerial voyage across Moana. Meantime, Ontario Nol was busy soothing Eljuk's nerves, and giving him some last- ditch tutoring, and had no time to play tourist.

This might seem a small matter, but it left Guest singularly disgruntled to find himself reduced to such a marginal role that he could find nobody willing to take an interest in his reminiscences of the past.

Once the ship was eastward of the Elbow, it turned for the north, taking care to stand well off shore.

As the ship sailed north, the west was landmarked by the jagged stubble of the Lizard Crest Rises, blue-toned by distance.

The ship was so far from shore that it was impossible for uninitiated landlubbers to tell when they were passing Seagate, the entrance to the Sponge Sea. But thereafter the mountains to the west became more formidable – great slab-sided thunderbolts of rock rising to crags which were peaked with patent snow.

The eastern coast of Argan – that coast which now lay to the west of the ship – is a mix of the lightly populated and the entirely desolate. Even from a distance, and even to such a poor geographer as the Yarglat barbarian Guest Gulkan, those mountains effortlessly clarified the demographical dynamics which had populated the west while leaving the east to the woodlouse and the bumble bee.

It is commonly said that the great geographical determinant is water, and by and large this is true. Any large city must be built by water; and those rulers who have commanded construction in defiance of this imperative are usually forced to abandon the works of their ego shortly thereafter. But, while water is the one great essential, the lie of the land must not be overlooked.

The sagacious Sken-Pitilkin, though doomed to death, was still a compulsive pedagog. Therefore, when Guest Gulkan entered the yellow bottle in which Sken-Pitilkin was held captive, and there reported on the view, Sken-Pitilkin took advantage of the report to lecture Guest Gulkan on the Demographic Theory of Contours, and was lecturing still when their ship sailed into the Breach, ending its voyage by the Shores of Glass which lie on the dawnside of the Shackle Mountains.

The shore was made of billows of glass in blue and yellow.

Hard glass it was, and great heat was required to melt it, and sundry scratchings near the shore gave evidence of the efforts of generations of over-optimistic entrepreneurs who had bankrupted themselves by trying to mine the stuff.

It is true that a profit could be made from the Shores of Glass were they to be located near any center of civilization, despite the hardness of the substance and the difficulties of smelting it. But the dangers, isolation and barrenness of the Breach increased all expenses unreasonably.

There was no water, hence all must be imported; there was no food, and the waters of the Breach were unaccountably impoverished from a fisherman's point of view; there were storms in winter; there was a danger of dragons all through the year; and the Malud marauders from Asral were so rapacious in their plunderings of the sea-trade that no ship that made passage through the Ocean of Cambria could possibly get insurance for its voyage.

Hence the wizards of the Confederation naturally expected to find the Shores of Glass deserted, and were disconcerted to find a small colony of purple-skinned Frangoni warriors established by the sea. These Frangoni were from the Ebrell Islands, and to a man they were sages who had chosen to devote themselves to dith-zora- ka-mako, the Mystical Way of the Nu-chala-nuth.

In any religion there is typically a triple dynamic at work.

There is the dynamic of political power, which attracts those who infiltrate religious organizations with the motives of cold- blooded careerists. These will typically be found advising Banks,

Bankers, emperors, warlords and kings. Then there is the pastoral dynamic, which attracts those who, as a solution to their personal inadequacies, seek to bring into their own lives (or into the lives of men in general – and, sometimes, the lives of women also, although this is usually optional) – the light of such Living Gods as the Great Frog, the Holy Goat-Rapist, the Smock-Smock and the Vodo Man.

Then there is religion of the third kind.

Religion of the third kind is the mystical religion which concerns itself with the burning moment when heart and mind are consumed by an incandescence which cannot be captured in words – or when, in the peace of a raindrop, a rock becomes a rock and a tree becomes a tree, each known in the fullness of its own nature.

The Frangoni from the Ebrells were bent on practicing that third kind of religion, but their theory and praxis meant but little to the wizards. The entire religion of Nu-chala-nuth counted as nothing as far as the Confederation of Wizards was concerned.

Still, the traveling wizards admired the dedication with which these ascetic Frangoni mystics were building their colony.

They had made small hutches for themselves by gluing together fragments of glass. With enormous labors, they were wresting further fragments from the local terrain, with a view to constructing an enormous monastery; and, judging by the size of the foundation-lines which had been scratched out on the ground, if ever completed this monastery would be one of the wonders of the world.

By cunning employment of solar stills, the religious colonists provided themselves with fresh, clean, potable water.

Already they had piled up great heaps of byproduct salt; and, since the Confederation of Wizards is, amongst other things, a commercial operation, it was entirely natural for the travelers to dicker with the mystics, trading olives and oranges for sacks of salt which could be sold elsewhere for enormous profit. Thus a dozen days passed in preparations and barter. But at last trade was finished and the expedition was ready to set forth.