Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

"Yes," said Rolf, visually reacquainting himself with that tattoo, "this is indeed the Rovac warrior Thodric Jarl."

"You," said Jarl, speaking to Rolf in the Rovac tongue, "I'll deal with you later!"

Then Jarl was consigned to a winch-basket, together with a sack of fish fillets, a woman with a teething baby, the Banker with breath so bad it could scare a dog, and with five heroically unscared dogs which had been for a constitutional walkabout on the docks.

When they were half-way up, the winch-rope jammed, and Jarl was left swinging for an eternity. Then the basket was at last hauled to its full height, and Jarl stepped out into the tunnel system of the mainrock Pinnacle. Having thus entered the Grand Palace of Alozay, Jarl waited until a number of his traveling companions had been winched up to join him, and then they went in force to seek out Guest Gulkan.

The mainrock Pinnacle: the spike of rock which rises from the Swelaway Sea on the island of Alozay, and which overlooks the city of Molothair. The mainrock is pierced and hollowed by the stairs and chambers of the Grand Palace of Alozay, in which is found the administrative machinery of Safrak and the precincts of the Safrak

Bank. In the same Grand Palace are the quarters occupied by Guest Gulkan and those who came with him from Gendormargensis.

It was then spring in the year Alliance 4306, as has been already stated, and Guest Gulkan had just recently celebrated his sixteenth birthday. At age 16, Guest was no wiser than he had been at birth, but the wizard Sken-Pitilkin was still relentlessly continuing those pedagogical labors which he had begun when Guest was aged but five.

Though Guest had acquired no one iota of wisdom in a full eleven years of instruction, he had won some knowledge of geography – he could tell the Pig from the Yolantarath, and Molothair from Gendormargensis – and was an enthusiastic student of ethnology. He had also made progress with some of the simpler languages, such as Toxteth – the language of beer-and-dice companions such as Hrothgar – and Galish.

Now Galish is of course but a poor toy for the intellect, being dismally deficient in the more complex irregularities, so Sken-Pitilkin took no joy in his pupil's growing proficiency in that tongue. Nor did he rejoice in Guest's accomplishments in Toxteth, since its mastery was linked with Guest's dangerous ambition to be a Guardian. Sken-Pitilkin endeavored to steer Guest in a safer direction – that of the largely academic challenges of Strogloth's Compendium of Delights. But Guest rejected the book, refusing, for example, to learn even one of the intricately irregular verbs of Slandolin, the elegant literary language of Ashmolea. So Sken Pitilkin tempted him by offering to teach the High Speech of wizards – a necessary adjunct, surely, to Guest's ambition to become a wizard! Guest then stabbed at the High Speech, but his stabs were wide of the mark, and so far he could not bring a word of it to his tongue. Sken-Pitilkin sometimes found it a great relief to abandon the intricacies of linguistic instruction for the comparative simplicities of geography.

Pedagog and pupil were hard at work on geography when Thodric Jarl arrived at the docks which served the mainrock

Pinnacle; they were still hard at it when Rolf Thelemite exposed Jarl's cute-cow tattoo; and they had not yet exhausted the subject when the dwarf Glambrax intruded upon their lessons.

They were discussing the Untunchilamons.

There is of course only one Untunchilamon, but Guest Gulkan had got it into his head that there were 27, thus making it obvious that he had mixed them up with the islands of Rovac, which are a different pot of frogs and grasshoppers entirely. Sken-Pitilkin was busy enlightening him when Glambrax intruded, and kicked Sken-Pitilkin in the shins.

"My lord," said Glambrax, formally advising them of his presence.

"What did you say?" said Sken-Pitilkin, attempting to swat

Glambrax with his country crook, but missing.

"I said," said Glambrax, "that someone wants to see Guest Gulkan."

The dwarf had in fact said no such thing, and in any case Sken-Pitilkin believed it extremely unlikely that anyone had any requirement for the boy's presence. The scholar suspected, rather, that the dwarf had arrived by preconcerted plan to liberate the boy for larrikinism.

"Guest Gulkan is busy," said Sken-Pitilkin.

"But there are people to see him," said Glambrax.

"Then," said Sken-Pitilkin, at last succeeding in landing a retaliatory blow upon the quick-leaping dwarf, "they can see him later."

"They will see him now," said Glambrax, unchastened by his chastisement. "They insist."

"Then let them insist," said Sken-Pitilkin, raising his country crook as if for fresh assault.

"They insist they'll boil me alive unless I let them in to see him."

"Then boiled you will be, so you'd better get used to the idea," said Sken-Pitilkin. "You could use a bath in any case."

"They'll boil you too," said Glambrax. "These you can't keep waiting. Thodric Jarl's out there, Lord Alagrace with him."

"Really," said Sken-Pitilkin, in a manner which made quite clear his opinion of dwarves, Jarls and Alagraces.

"Truly and really," said Glambrax. "They want the boy Guest for a purpose too foul for my tongue, and in their fervor they'll boil you in oil if you hold them to no."

"I'll do all the oil-boiling round here," said Sken-Pitilkin warmly. "Get off with you!"

"I can't tell that to Jarl!" said Glambrax. "He'd spit me and split me. You know what he's like."

"Then, that being the case," said Sken-Pitilkin, "he can get on with the spitting of you immediately. But as for seeing young Guest, why, he can see young Guest when I'm through with him."

"Is that your final answer?" said Glambrax.

"My first and my final," said Sken-Pitilkin. "Go tell them, whoever them may be, that Guest is much too ugly to be seen. Tell them to come back later, after I've cut his ears off."

Then he turned to his pupil, who was engaged in the studious dissection of a flea.

"Untunchilamon," said Sken-Pitilkin.

"What?" said Guest Gulkan, looking up from his anatomising.

"We were talking of Untunchilamon," said Sken-Pitilkin. "Have you forgotten?"

"No, no, not at all," said Guest. "Untunchilamon. Well. It has fleas, probably. Most places have fleas, especially this one.

As well as fleas, Untunchilamon has 27 islands, and lots of people, who one and all consume the staunch, which is cream and water curdled, and makes you drunk."

"No!" said Sken-Pitilkin. "That is not Untunchilamon, that is

Rovac, as I just told you."

"You just told me nothing," said Guest. "You just told Glambrax something about baths, that was what you just told."

"Then never mind what I said," said Sken-Pitilkin. "And let go of that flea, boy, it's far too small to eat. Come, boy, settle. And let us return to our dragons."

"Our dragons?"

"I meant," said Sken-Pitilkin, "let us get on with our business. And did we not cover that very precise idiom only a week ago?"

"What's a week?"

"You've asked me that question already, and I believe you've already had a perfectly good answer. Anyway. Our lesson.

Untunchilamon. Where was I? Oh, bloodrock, that's it.

Untunchilamon has bloodrock – "

"And women."

"And women, yes. Also torturers, and I wish I had one such on hand to restore a little discipline. And it has jellyfish, flying fish, parrots – "

"Parrots?"

"A type of bird."

"Like a vulture?"

"Approximately. Anyway, it has parrots. Parrots, then. And monkeys. A monkey being, before you ask, a creature in the form of a dwarf, only it has fur, and climbs trees, and has no speech but a chatter of anger."

"You're making that up!" said Guest.