Safrak Bank: organization which rules the Safrak Islands of
the Swelaway Sea. Its ostensible business is to fatten on trade
passing between Port Domax and the heartland of Tameran.

                                                 * * *

        Guest Gulkan's birthday was in spring, and it was in spring
of Alliance 4305 that he turned 15. His birthday was ill-omened,
for it found him afflicted by influenza.
        While leprosy, cholera and bubonic plague have names to rival
nightmare, for swift and sudden devastation nothing can match the
more lethal strains of influenza. This epidemic had claimed a
tenth of Safrak's population in barely thirty days, and looked fit
to claim Guest as well. He was fevered and awash with sweat, so
weak in his ague's anguish that he lacked the strength to crack a
flee.
        In the end, the boy only survived because a guardian named
Hrothgar took him home to his wife Una, who had just lost her baby
to the epidemic, and so was able to wetnurse the patient. Guest
was far too sick to derive any erotic satisfaction from this
privilege, but Una's help saw him through his crisis, and shortly
he was tottering around in the spring sunshine, feeling more like
a ghost of himself than an actual boy of flesh and blood.
        "You're no ghost," said Una, pulling on one of his big ears.
"There's no ghost here! There's an elephant!"
        Guest, who had begun to grow infatuated with the gray-eyed
Una, promptly lost all sympathy with the woman. If there was one
thing the young Weaponmaster absolutely hated, it was a woman who
pulled on his ears. And, sooner or later, every woman of his
acquaintance seemed to end up doing exactly that. Those ears, it
seemed, had a fatal attraction for the entire female sex.
        With his infatuation thus abruptly terminated, Guest was glad
to flee from Hrothgar's house - a ramshackle wooden building in
the ramshackle city of Molothair - and return to his own quarters
in the mainrock Pinnacle.
        On his return to the mainrock, he was promptly nobbled for
guard duty. He was weak in the aftermath of his sickness, but
weakness was no disqualification for work at such a time.
        Guest Gulkan was technically resident upon Alozay as a
hostage, but this was a mere legalism. The Safrak Bank trusted him
- as much as it trusted any boy of 15 - and so readily employed
his brutality. It set him to guard the time prison, a large hall
with a series of transparent pods set around its walls.
        Mark the layout of the Hall of Time!
        The mainrock Pinnacle stands at the northern end of the long
and narrow island of Alozay. It is a mighty upthrust of granite, a
misshapen tube of rock which bulbs outward at its middlemost
point.
        To win admission to the mainrock, one must come to its docks,
which lie in the cold and guttural shadows of the mainrock's
wave-slapped northern shore. One is then hauled upwards to Gud
Obo, the Winch Stratum, the lowest of the seven inhabited levels
of the mainrock. Gud Obo houses the winch-works, the servant
quarters, and the storerooms.
        Multiple stairways connect Gud Obo with Dolce Obo, the Pillow
Stratum. This is given over to the business of life, for it is a
place of sleeping quarters, kitchens and eateries; and here one
finds the mainrock's banqueting hall. Here Guest Gulkan and Sken-
Pitilkin had their customary quarters, and a classroom in which
they could prosecute the dissection of the irregular verbs.
        A dozen stairways climb from Dolce Obo to Inic Obo, the Quill
Stratum, which is given over to the offices of the Safrak Bank. A
mighty stratum, this, for it dominates the bulbing middlemost
girthswell of the mainrock Pinnacle.
        Yet another dozen stairways lead upward to Brondon Obo, the
Steel Stratum, the fourth level of the mainrock, which houses
prisons, guardhouse and armories.
        By now, the mainrock is starting to taper as it buffets
upward toward the rough-hewn ridge which helmets its crest. In
consequence of the tapering, only four stairways lead upward from
the fourth level to the fifth, from Brondon Obo to Trilip Obo, the
Archive Stratum.
        The Archive Stratum is just that - dead rooms of silent
paper, of ancient book-chests sealed with lead. As one goes upward
in the mainrock, so the labor of supplying water from below
becomes greater, and for this reason Trilip Obo was uninhabited by
human flesh.
        Only one stairway climbs upward from Trilip Obo to Zi Obo,
the Pod Stratum, the sixth level of the mainrock Pinnacle. Zi Obo
holds one single and solitary chamber, an oval hall a hundred
paces in length and three dozen paces in width. This chamber is
the Hall of Time, and it was in this hall that Guest Gulkan was to
stand guard duty.
        The single stairway from below enters the Hall of Time at its
western end. From there, the hall stretches away for its full
length of a hundred paces to the ascending stairway at its eastern
end. When Guest was brought there to do guard duty, the entrance
to that ascending stairway was guarded by a monumental block of
jade-green stone.
        "So," said Banker Sod, who had taken it upon himself to brief
Guest Gulkan on his guard duties. "Where are we?"
        Guest looked around.
        "We are in the Hall of Time," said Guest Gulkan, who had
received a guided tour of the mainrock shortly after his first
arrival on Alozay, and who remembered this room well. Set in
niches around its northern and southern walls were many
transparent pods, some empty, others holding Safrak's time
prisoners. Between the niches were deep-cut slit windows, the
northern ones looking out across the Swelaway Sea, the southern
ones allowing a partial view of the longstretch of Alozay and the
ramshackle city of Molothair.
        "Which level is this?" said Sod.
        "The fifth," said Guest. "No, the sixth, that's it. The
sixth. There's one more. The seventh."
        "Jezel Obo," said Sod, naming it. "The Sky Stratum. What lies
in the sky, boy?"
        "It is a sacred place," said Guest. "A shrine denied to all
but the initiated. It's called, uh, a sanctum. The Inner Sanctum."
        "That is so," said Sod. "Jezel Obo, the Sky Stratum, is the
site of the Inner Sanctum, the holy of holies of the Safrak Bank.
Are you a priest, boy?"
        "No," said Guest.
        "Do you have any ambition to be a priest?"
        "No."
        "Then don't worry your head about sacred places. Understood?"
        "Understood," said Guest, who, thanks to his studies in
ethnology with Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, knew that many peoples did
not like to have the secrets of their faith questioned.
        "Well then," said Sod, "if that's understood, then let us go
and meet the demon."
        With that, Banker Sod led the Yarglat barbarian Guest Gulkan
from the western end of the Hall of Time to the stairway at its
eastern end.
        It was then evening, and the light was dying in the Hall of
Time. Sod and Guest cast no shadows as they walked through that
gray light toward the jade-green block of stone at the far end of
the hall. Their boots clicked over the skull-pattern tiles - many
of which were broken - which paved the native granite of the hall.
The roof was high above, and the sound of their boots was cold and
sharp in the vaulting emptiness.
        An odd pair they made, for Banker Sod, the Governor of the
Safrak Bank, was a pale-skinned male of iceman race, with the
black fingernails and thick white bodyhair so typical of that
breed. His hair was bright gold, his eyes yellow and his teeth of
like color.
        Upon Sod's ringfinger there was a steel ring in which there
was set a gemstone. That stone was of ever-ice, and in the
gathering gloom of evening a ghost-cloud of light surrounded it.
Guest knew that chipstone of ever-ice to be the key which opened
and closed the pods of the time prison.
        They halted at the eastern end of the Hall of Time. They
halted in the presence of the hall's resident demon - the jade-
green block of stone which guarded the single stairway which led
upwards to the seventh and highest level of the mainrock Pinnacle.
        Though Sod was accustomed to do business in the Galish
Trading Tongue, and though Guest had learnt Galish from Sken-
Pitilkin, the language of the briefing was Guest's native tongue,
the Eparget of the Yarglat, in which Sod was uncommonly fluent.
Apparently the demon understood the same language, for Sod still
spoke in Eparget when addressing that dignitary directly.
        "Iva-Italis," said Banker Sod. "This is Guest Gulkan, the son
of the emperor of Tameran, and a student of the wizard Hostaja
Sken-Pitilkin."
        The demon received this news in silence. It was a monolithic
block of green stone which was twice Guest Gulkan's height; and,
like the other rocks of the world, it seemed singularly indisposed
to entertaining mere humans in conversation.
        "Does the demon speak?" said Guest.
        "When it chooses to," said Sod. "It is the head of our force
of mercenaries, those men who belong to that body we call the
Guardians. If you were to join the Guardians then Iva-Italis would
be your master."
        "Ha-hmm," said Guest, pretending that this was new to him,
and that he was absorbing this information with the greatest of
interest.
        In fact, Guest already knew all about Safrak's Guardians, the
Toxteth-speaking mercenaries recruited from Port Domax and Wen
Endex. Guest had even struck up a dice-and-beer friendship with
some few of those worthy warriors - most notably the mighty
Hrothgar - and had a little of their native argot at the command
of his tongue. Surely Banker Sod had been appraised of the
development of these relationships - but, if so, then the rigors
of influenza had stripped that knowledge from the Banker's mind.
        "Iva-Italis guards these stairs," said Banker Sod, continuing
his lecture about Safrak's guardian demon. "No unauthorized person
can come up or down the stairway - and that means you. If any
unauthorized person tries to pass, then the demon will eat them."
        "Eat them?" said Guest. "But it has no mouth, and - well,
claws, arms, tentacles, things to grab with. Besides, the stairs
are wide."
        "When it eats, it eats," said Sod. "So don't worry about the
stairs. The time prison is your concern. You know about it?"
        "I know," said Guest, who had heard all about Safrak's
time prison.
        "Very well," said Sod, obviously relieved that he did not
have to explain. "Your duty is simple. If anyone tries to
interfere with the time prisoners, then you kill them."
        "How could anyone interfere?" said Guest, who knew very well
that there was but one ring which could free the time prisoners
from their pods, and that that ring was ever in Banker Sod's
possession.
        "They could interfere," said Banker Sod, "by trying to
physically carry away one of the prison pods. They could - never
mind. If something goes wrong, Iva-Italis will tell you who to
kill and when."
        Banker Sod was in no mood for extended explanations because
he was even sicker than Guest Gulkan. Yet there was more to do
before Sod could depart. He had to accompany Guest Gulkan back to
the head of the western stairway, and point out the things placed
in niches in the western wall.
        "Lanterns," said Sod. "They must be filled with this oil.
There is a bracket by each and every time pod. Light as many
lanterns as you need. You can use a tinder box, I suppose."
        "I have never mastered such a device," said Guest, lying
through his teeth.
        A tinder box is a tricky thing to use, and by pleading
ignorance Guest Gulkan got Sod to conjure the first lantern into
life.
        Then Sod picked up a rod of hardwood. A dozen short lengths
of chain dangled from the rod, and each chain ended in a barbed
hook.
        "What is this?" said Sod.
        Guest squinted at the thing, then declared it to be an
instrument of torture, or perhaps some device designed to be used
in a fishing boat.
        "No!" said Sod. "It is a bablobrokmadorni stick."
        "A - a bab - baba - bablob?"
        "A bablobrokmadorni stick," said Sod. "I thought you were a
scholar!"
        "Well," said Guest. "I study."
        "But obviously not hard enough," said Sod. "For a command of
the Janjuladoola seems to be lacking from your tongue."
        "It is so," conceded Guest.
        "Then learn at least a word of it," said Sod. "This is a
bablobrokmadorni stick, a device used in the Izdimir Empire for
the carriage of lanterns. Look! You can put it on your shoulder
and carry six lanterns without a risk of fire."
        "A lantern stick, then," said Guest, making no attempt to
pronounce the Janjuladoola name of the thing, since he feared that
any such exercise in applied linguistics would precipitate the
rupture of his jaw.
        Then Sod showed him the water jug, which was half-full. The
bread box, which held some lumps of black peasant bread so hard
they could have been used as missiles for a catapult. The chamber
pot - which was unclean, and smelt accordingly.
        "Empty it from that northern window," said Sod, gesturing at
the nearest slit window. "You'll find it by its smell, even if you
can't find it otherwise."
        With these instructions given, Sod warned Guest not to leave
his post before he was relieved at dawn. Then the Banker took
himself off to his bed, descending the darkened stairs without
bothering himself with a light - for Sod knew every shadow in the
mainrock by its heights, its depth, its heat, its cold, its timbre
or its smell.
        Once left alone, Guest immediately busied himself with the
lighting of lanterns. The boy Guest was not zealously industrious
by nature, but night was setting in. The ominous darkness -
scarcely relieved by the cold green glow which emanated from the
distant flanks of the demon Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis - beset the
boy with fears. This was a high place, a cold place, a barren
place, and he did not like it.
        Lanterns swayed from the chains of the bablobrokmadorni
stick, sending a dozen shadows of Guest Gulkan lurching across the
skull-pattern tiles of the Hall of Time. When hung by the time
pods, they seemed merely to enlarge the darkness rather than to
light the hall. The unlit gulf of the western staircase became a
funnel descending into the nether depths, and Guest, made uneasy
by that plunging chasm of blackness, placed his armchair up
against the northern wall.
        Yet even with the armchair so placed, Guest found it
impossible to settle. Instead, he began to perambulate around the
room, checking the oil levels in the lanterns, testing the room's
acoustics by hawking and spitting, and amusing himself by
examining the people so firmly frozen in the timestasis of the
pods of the time prison. A motley bunch they were, those
prisoners, a good many of them showing signs of extreme age, of
disease, or of wounds or torture.
        Rumor claimed - and Guest had heard the rumor, for ears as
big as his were singularly well adapted for the capture of gossip
- that time prisoners almost inevitably died upon release. The
process of being frozen within a block of unchanging time was held
to be harmless in itself, but the psychic shock of being displaced
from one's own time by days, years or generations was held to be
inevitably fatal.
        Hence the Safrak Bank used the time pods as instruments of
execution. After two or three generations of incarceration, a
prisoner would be abruptly released into a future in which
friends, lovers and relatives were dead, or reduced to decrepit
spiderwebbed ghosts of their former selves, old-aged skeletons
thinly cloaked by arthritic mottlestone flesh. From the prisoner's
point of view, an eyeblink aged the world. The shock of such
change was sufficient to kill - though one rumor claimed that a
quick-acting poison was covertly administered to supplement that
shock.
        Guest Gulkan, growing disturbed by the unblinking stares of
those imprisoned in the time pods, ceased his scrutiny of the
same. Though the hall was very large, it was nevertheless becoming
increasingly claustrophobic. The shadows weighed heavily on Guest
Gulkan's shoulders. He topped up the oil in each and every
lantern, and trimmed the wicks to maxi mise their light-producing
efficiency, yet the heavy burden of shadow seemed scarcely
relieved.
        As if seeking escape from the hall, Guest Gulkan eased
himself into a north-facing slit window. It was easily tall enough
to accommodate his height, but narrowed sharply, its sides
arrowheading inward as the window pierced its way through the wall
to the outer air. The outermost aperture of this defensive
fenestra was just large enough for Guest to stick his head
outside. He did so. He warped his head around to look up at the
sharp-slash stars, then looked down at the sightless gulfs of the
Swelaway Sea far below.
        "Sa!" said Guest, pulling his head in, then rubbing his ears
to warm them against the cold.
        The young Yarglat barbarian jumped down from the slit window
and returned to his armchair. But it was growing increasingly cold
- far too cold for him to stay seated slumped and sleep. So he
resumed his perambulations.
        Guest was far from the demon when he heard someone coming
down the stairs. Guest geared himself up for action instantly. His
blood began to pulse in his ears. A warm flush of battle-readiness
surged through his body. Then - then Guest belatedly remembered
that the stairs were not his concern. The stairs were guarded by
the demon, or so Banker Sod most earnestly believed, and the
guardianship of those stairs was the demon's concern, with Guest
Gulkan's duty being merely to prevent interference with the
prisoners of the time prison.
        Down came a single person, who paused by the demon, who spoke
- or appeared to speak, for Guest heard the whispering ghost of a
comment across a distance greater than eighty paces - then tramped
toward the downward stairway in the west.
        Resting on the stranger's left shoulder was a
bablobrokmadorni stick from which two lanterns depended, and these
lit him as he approached. A remarkable figure! He was dressed in
brightly-colored patchwork motley. A multitude of small ceramic
animals were attacked to his trousers and his jacket. On his feet
were slippers, which curved upward at the toes, terminating in
pink pom-poms. He wore a golden skullcap fringed with tiny glass
bells, which rang out in a rain of music as he stepped lightly,
briskly, across the cracked and broken tiles of the Hall of Time.
        A bright and briskful figure, this.
        But the face!
        As the man drew near, Guest Gulkan saw his face was hideously
disfigured by burns. Twisted welts and lava-field fluxes had
warped that face until its age and race were beyond determination.
On his right hand, the man wore a glove puppet in the form of
a green-skinned dragon with red dewlaps. As he drew level with
Guest, the man's right hand moved. The dragon snapped at Guest's
ear. And it had teeth! Yes, there were miniature teeth built into
the mouth of the glove puppet, teeth sharp as razors!
        Guest's hand went to his sword.
        But the stranger laughed, laughed like a bell, laughed with
such penetrating clarity that one might imagine him to be heard
from one side of the Swelaway Sea to another. He had a singer's
voice, trained to carry, and the laugh was a song of sorts, so
penetrating that Guest felt its vibrations in his bones.
Disarmed and made dumbstruck by that laugh, Guest stood like
a scarecrow, gawking at the stranger. Who sniffed him. Smelt him.
Sucked sweat, dust and dinner into his nostrils. Sampled him.
Memorized him. Then snorted, hummed, winked, and went tripping
down the western stairs, the light of his lanterns swaying from
the walls in a warmglow wash as he descended.
        Such was Guest Gulkan's first encounter with Yubi Das Finger,
a citizen of the Empire of Greater Parengarenga, and a resident of
the far-distant city of Dalar ken Halvar.
        Descending the stairs, the stranger began to sing. Abruptly,
his song was cut off by a lurching cry. There was a pause. A
scream! In panic, Guest sprinted to the head of the stairs, his
sword already in his hand.
        Then upward from the depths below there came a bright and
bell-clear laugh, a laugh both generous and mocking at the same
time, and Guest knew himself to have been the victim of a joke.
Sweating and blood-pounding - in the aftermath of his
influenza, he was far too weak to enjoy such a joke! - Guest
seated himself in his armchair. But no sooner had he settled
himself than he heard more footsteps descending in the east.
        Though the Hall of Time was a full hundred paces in length,
though Guest Gulkan was seated near its western end, he clearly
heard two people descending the stairs in the east. He got the
disconcerting impression that the jade-green demon of the east was
amplifying the sound of those descending footsteps. He tried to
dismiss the thought, but the thought proved reluctant to be
dismissed.
        - It is but a stone.
        Thus thought Guest, who had been seriously disconcerted by
his encounter with Yubi Das Finger, and did not think himself up
to the stress of facing further shocks.
        Down came two people. They passed on either side of the cold-
glowing demon and proceeded toward Guest Gulkan at a measured
pace, the lattermost carrying a bablobrokmadorni stick bright with
twin lanterns.
        As they came near, Guest saw the foremost was an ancient
featherweight of an Ashdan, who was followed by a ragged servant.
More strangers. Guest braced himself for jokes, threats or
revelations, but the pair gave him only the most cursory of
glances before exiting from the hall, taking the stairs which led
downwards.
        Guest was relieved that the passage of the dwarf-statured
Ashdan and his lowbrowed bablobrokmadorni servant had gone off so
smoothly.
        Then:-
        More footsteps!
        Coming down!
        And there were many of them!
        Yes, there was no mistaking it!
        A great body of armed men was coming down the eastern stairs,
their armor clanking, boots tramping, horns blowing, shields
clashing. Horses! They had horses! Guest heard hoofs on stone,
heard an animal whinny. And - barrels! They were rolling barrels
as they came! The barrels were thumping on the steps! And - one
burst! Guest heard it shatter to a gust of liquid, heard curses,
guttural swearing.
        Now Guest was under the impression that the seventh and last
stratum of the mainrock Pinnacle - Jezel Obo, the Sky Stratum -
was a small place. No place, then, where one could hide a bootshod
army with its horses, its shields, its barrels.
        Yet they were coming downstairs!
        From where?
        From the sky!?
        In something of a panic, Guest hastened across the skull-
pattern tiles of the Hall of Time, his heart swift-hammering, his
sword in his hand.
        The sounds of the descending army grew louder and louder as
he hurried to the eastern stairs. Would he have to challenge him?
No, they had leave to pass. Unless the demon said otherwise! Would
it say? And if it did - would Guest have to hold an army single-
handed? But the demon could bite! Sod said so. It could bite, it
could kill, it could gullet down men. Men? Well, a man. Maybe. But
- an army?
        In a boil of fearful anticipating, Guest braved himself to
the eastern stairs ... only to have the noise of the onslaughting
army fade, melt, diminish, then echo away to nothing, vanishing
into silence even as he reached the eastern end of the hall.
        Guest stood sweating, his heart pounding. He shook his head,
half-convinced he had suddenly lost the power of hearing. But his
hearing was clear enough. He could hear his own breathing, could
hear a subtle wind-whine as a draught from the Swelaway Sea
penetrated the Hall of Time through the high-vented slit windows.
        Despite the cold of the night air, a bead of hot sweat rolled
down Guest's forehead.
        He thought he heard - faintly, distantly - a cold and
desolate laugh.
        "What is going on here?" said Guest, harshly, addressing the
demon Jocasta in the Eparget of the Yarglat.
        But the demon made no reply.
        The demon in question was, as previously indicated, an entity
firmly incarnated in a square-cut jade-green pillar, this pillar
being an imposing monolith which stood twice the height of a man.
The pillar glowed with its own cold inner light - not a white
light like that of ever-ice, but a green light hinting of
deepwater depths. The demon, Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis by name, was
Guardian Prime and Keeper of the Inner Sanctum, the holy of holies
of the Bank. Iva-Italis had been in the service of the Safrak Bank
for generations, and had long had charge of the Guardians.
        The Weaponmaster Guest should by rights have been intimidated
by such an august personage, but was not. Unfortunately, Guest had
yet to acquire a mature respect for the Holy and the Unholy, the
Hallowed and the Unhallowed, and as far as he was concerned the
demon was just a hunk of rock. In truth, the young Weaponmaster in
his ignorance thought this lump of rock to be incapable of speech,
thought and action, believing rather that the powers attributed to
the glowing stone were but idle tales fabricated to intimidate the
ignorant.
        Yet -
        Yet something had made that noise of an army.
        "What is it?" said Guest, questioning the rock. "What was it?
Ghosts?"
        But nobody answered him.
        He started to feel foolish.
        He had been sick, had he not? He had. Even now he was weak in
the aftermath of his fever. He was alone, and a man alone hears
voices. So ... well ....
        Guest turned away from the demon and started the long trek
back to his armchair.
        Then someone spoke his name.
        "Guest Gulkan."
        The voice was deep, dark, cavernous. A voice of roiling stone
and flensing steel. A voice of sulphurous flames and bone-grinding
appetites. At the sound of it, Guest halted. His flaring nostrils
endeavored to gape still wider. His hair, that part of it which
was not firmly matted to his skull by the dedicated accumulation
of filth, endeavored to stand on end.
        With eyes wild, with the agitated whip-crack intemperance of
a highly-strung horse about to panic and bolt, Guest turned to
face the demon.
        "You!" said Guest, challenging the jade-green block of
glowing stone. "Is it you?"
        "Who else?" said the voice.
        This time there was no mistaking the source of that voice.
The jade-green monolith was speaking to him. Guest Gulkan was
being directly addressed by a demon - by Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis,
Keeper of the Inner Sanctum and Guardian Prime.
        "What do you want?" said Guest, trembling on the edge of a
one-man stampede.
        "I want you," said the demon. "Come here!"