Name: Eljuk Zala Gulkan
        Birthplace: Gendormargensis.
        Occupation: apprentice wizard.
        Status: heir of Safrak.
        Description: a mild-mannered Yarglat youth who has from
earliest youth shown an unfortunate tendency to flinch at the
sight of rearing horses, naked swords and hot decapitations.
        Hobbies: lyric poetry, collecting the shells of snails and
flying kites (these last two hobbies inspired by his new tutor,
the wizard Ontario Nol).
        Quote: "I am but one and once but often and many shall be"
(taken from Yo Bo's mystical magnum opus, "On the Immortality of
Scholarship").

                                                 * * *

        So Eljuk Zala Gulkan came to the island of Alozay in the
company of the wizard Ontario Nol, and the Witchlord Onosh ordered
that a great banquet be held to celebrate the arrival of his son.
The city of Molothair was lit with lanterns and the mainrock
Pinnacle likewise. To the Grand Palace of Alozay came fish fresh
from the Swelaway Sea, sheepmeat from Ema-Urk, the flesh of bears
and pigs which had been hunted to their deaths in mainland
wilderness, and - ever the greatest luxury to the Yarglat palate
- the meat of horses.
        Upon this bounty the Yarglat feasted, and while they feasted
they were entertained by a troupe of wandering musicians from the
far and distant land of Sung. The musicians of Sung are famous for
their traveling. Some say this is because they are not mortal men
at all, but, rather, belong to a class of spirits forever doomed
to wander the world until they have appeased their former sins.
This of course is a nonsense, for the music of Sung owes nothing
to appeasement: rather, it is but one extended exercise in patent
affront.
        Before retreating to Tameran to escape the wrath of the
Confederation of Wizards, the sagacious Sken-Pitilkin had dwelt
for generations on the island of Drum (which of course has nothing
whatsoever to do with Ulix of the Drum), and while living on that
island the noble wizard of Skatzabratzumon had often been
embroiled in the affairs of the people of Sung (usually against
his better judgment, but it cannot be denied that he was sometimes
well-rewarded for his troubles, since Sung is the source of the
best smoked ham to be had in all the world).
        In consequence of his past experiences, the wizard Sken-
Pitilkin realized what they were in for as soon as the Sung
musicians first entered the banquet hall, variously rolling,
pushing, kicking, dragging, hauling or chasing their ill-willed
instruments of delinquency.
        Sken-Pitilkin realized, and groaned.
        But the Yarglat did not realize.
        To them, it all came as fresh revelation.
        Throughout the banquet, the Sung musicians played. They
filled the air with the galloping vigor of the thrum, an
instrument which makes a sound like that of butter and bones being
churned together in a waterlogged coffin. They played too the
kloo, which makes a sound like the strenuous protest of a water
buffalo which is resentful of being heartily kicked. The krymbol,
the skittling nook, the plea whistle and the vang - of all these
those musicians had mastery, and proved their mastery amply.
        Many of the Yarglat were much taken with the vang, which
struck them as the most remarkable device they had ever seen in
their lives. And truly the vang is a mighty instrument indeed,
consisting as it does of a series of huge tubs from which fluids
thick and thin are disgorged by a series of vents and holes,
making sounds imitative of urination and of vomiting. But in its
noise-making capacity the poor vang was entirely outclassed by the
skavamareen, a demon-wailing machine which makes a sound like a
burnt cat screaming in a sewer-pipe.
        All of which was a matter of amazement to the Witchlord
Onosh.
        For he had never heard anything like it in his life.
        The Witchlord Onosh, after all, was a Yarglat barbarian, the
scion of one of those horsetribes of the far north of Tameran; and
despite the fact that he had spent much of his life in the great
city of Gendormargensis, he had never been exposed to much in the
way of musical culture.
        The Yarglat in their dogbone encampments are much given to
chanting and wailing, accompanied by a certain amount of beating
upon drums, but no greater orchestration is known to them. In
the fullness of their power, the Yarglat had come to dominate other
peoples, such as the Sharla, who were mightily learned in music.
But the instruments of the Sharla are typified by the klon, a
fine-stringed device which is plucked but one note at a time, with
that note being allowed to die away before another is added to the
air. The music of the Sharla is delicate; and tentative; and
refined; and consequently adds nothing of consequence to the
savor of burnt horsemeat or roast fish-dung.
        But this music of Sung!
        "There is more to music than I had thought," said Lord Onosh
contentedly.
        And he resolved himself to have Sung musicians play for him
nightly thereafter, and maybe even to obtain mastery of a musical
instrument himself - maybe one of the percussive kind, built to
take a strenuous hammering.
        In the strength of his musical contentment, Lord Onosh paid
little heed to the manner of his favorite son's banqueting, and
it was not until the banquet had been stripped to the bones that
the Witchlord noticed that Eljuk had eaten virtually nothing.
        "Where is your appetite?" said Lord Onosh.
        But the Sung musicians interrupted his question with a
crescendo; and a joyfully appreciative audience demanded an
encore; and an encore was duly provided; and, as one thing led to
another, the Witchlord took his favored son by the elbow and led
him from the banqueting table, thus quitting a scene which was
fast disintegrating into outright orgy.
        Once safe in the peace of his private quarters, Lord Onosh
sat his son down in a chair most cunningly made from interwoven
canes and the skins of several fishes. With Eljuk thus seated, the
Witchlord asked him:
        "Eljuk. What's wrong? You ate nothing tonight. Do you
distrust the competence of my food tasters? Or what?"
        "My sorrow," said Eljuk, "leaves me with but little
appetite."
        "Sorrow!" said a bewildered Witchlord. "What's there to be
sorry about? Why aren't you happy?"
        Eljuk looked his father in the face, looked away, hesitated,
bit his lip, then said in a blurt -
        "How can I be happy in the house of my brother's murderer?"
        "Murderer!" said Lord Onosh in astonishment. "Since when am I
your brother's murderer?"
        "Why, Guest is dead, is he not? He can hardly have flown from
this island, can he? Yet Rolf Thelemite has told me - "
        "Thelemite!" said Lord Onosh, as if the word were obscene.
        "Thelemite, yes," said Eljuk. "The good Rolf Thelemite told
me as clear as anything that he saw Guest alive and jumping in
the Hall of Time, well after any fighting was over. Furthermore,
he was led away by your wizards, by Zozimus and Sken-Pitilkin, and
now you say he's dead, he's - "
        "He's missing," said Lord Onosh.
        "He's dead!" said Eljuk. "Missing, that's a nonsense, he
wouldn't go missing in the company of wizards, they'd know where
he went at least, and he wouldn't go anywhere without Rolf, which
means that you killed him. You murdered him! And so I renounce
you!"
        With that, Eljuk rose abruptly, overturning his chair in his
impetuosity, and made as if to flee. But Lord Onosh grabbed his
son by the sleeve, restraining him from flight.
        "You renounce me?" said Lord Onosh. "For what?"
        "For killing Guest."
        "But I've told you already - "
        "You killed him!"
        "Supposing I did, then," said Lord Onosh. "Even if I did -
and I swear by my blood that I didn't - why should his death count
as anything to you?"
        "He was my brother," said Eljuk. "The brother of my blood. He
saved my life when I would have died in the Yolantarath. He saved
me from drowning. At risk to his own life - he never knew how to
swim. Now he'll never learn."
        Such was Eljuk's distress that, in the end, Lord Onosh felt
he had no choice. Gently, the Witchlord constrained Eljuk to set
his chair upright, then to seat himself in that chair; and, with
Eljuk thus seated, the Witchlord began to explain the true fate of
the Weaponmaster Guest Gulkan.
        And the upshot of a long debate between father and son was
that the Witchlord at last agreed to open the Door in the
uppermost chamber of the mainrock Pinnacle; and to precipitate the
confrontation of the Banks of the Circle for which he had been
preparing himself; and, if it was possible, to initiate the rescue
of the missing Weaponmaster.