Moana: the Great Ocean bounded by the continents of Tameran
(to the north), Parengarenga (to the south), Yestron (to the east)
and Argan (to the west). The southern shallows of Moana are known
as the Green Sea, and local names have been given to several of
its smaller fractions, so that for example the cold and stormy
whale wastes of the north are known in Galsh Ebrek as the Winter
Sea, and the more tropical waters east of the Stepping Stone
Islands are commonly known as the Ocean of Cambria.

                                                 * * *

        Injiltaprajura's riots saw the ships in its harbor flee -
though most fled slowly, for they were heavily burdened by loot.
        Guest Gulkan fled initially on a ship commanded by one
Troldot "Heavy-Fist" Turbothot, who had personally looted from
Injiltaprajura a female creature named Theodora, and who was
intent on taking her home with him to the distant island of
Hexagon. Since Hexagon was not on Guest's itinerary, both the
Weaponmaster and Thayer Levant soon transferred to another ship,
one which was making for Galsh Ebrek.
        Guest had fond memories of Galsh Ebrek, that city in Wen
Endex where he had once worked for Anna Blaume as a barman. In
Galsh Ebrek stood one of the Banks, the Flesh Traders Financial
Association. By rights, Guest should be able to win admission to
that Bank, and venture through its Circle of Doors to his home on
Alozay.
        If the Bank denied him the Door, well, even that would not be
a disaster, for ships traveled intermittently between Galsh Ebrek
and the Port Domax. Once at Port Domax, Guest could take the
overland trade route which led from there to the Swelaway Sea;
and, once he had reached the shores of the Swelaway Sea, a short
journey by boat would take him home to Alozay.
        One way or another, he would get there.
        Once Guest was safely home in the Safrak Islands, he would be
able to bend his mind to the important tasks: to rescue his father
from a time pod in the Temple of Blood; to liberate the Great God
Jocasta; and to reclaim his wife Penelope from the tunnels of Cap
Foz Para Lash in the city of Dalar ken Halvar.
        But what of Pelagius Zozimus? And what of Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin?
Truth to tell, Guest Gulkan did not trouble his head about either
of those dignitaries. They were wizards, were they not? Of course
they were! Therefore it followed - did it not? - that they would
be able to find their own way back to Alozay without any help from
the Weaponmaster.
        Thus thinking, Guest relaxed, and repeatedly congratulated
himself on his success. He had dared himself to Injiltaprajura,
and had wrested the x-x-zix from the treasury of that most
perilous of cities. And he had got away scot-free!
        Or so he thought.
        Actually, he had not got away at all.
        Though he did not know it, he was irrevocably trapped, and
his doom was almost upon him.
        Guest was trapped because the fleet of which his ship was a
part was making its way northward between the reefs of
Untunchilamon's narrow lagoon; and, simultaneously, a fleet of
ships loyal to the Mutilator of Yestron was making its way
southward between those same reefs. It therefore followed that a
collision was inevitable between the ships bearing the looters and
those which were carrying the Mutilator's soldiers; and, in the
fullness of time, this collision duly occurred.
        As Guest was one day sunbathing himself - he was no fan of
washing, but this business of bathing in the sun was much to his
liking - the lookout of his current ship announced the sighting of
ships coming from the north.
        Those oncoming ships soon proved to be ships of war, ships
which were flying banners which marked and identified them as the
ships of Aldarch the Third, the dreaded Mutilator of Yestron.
        Before venturing to Untunchilamon, Guest Gulkan had not been
very clear as to the identity of Aldarch the Third. But the
Mutilator had so dominated the imagination of the inhabitants of
Injiltaprajura that Guest now felt he knew the fellow as a
brother. Aldarch had initiated Talonsklavara, a seven-year civil
war which had devastated the Izdimir Empire. The general
presumption was that Aldarch had proved victorious in that civil
war, and that he was going to celebrate his victory with an orgy
of sanguinary destruction.
        So Guest was not exactly happy when the lookout announced the
approach of the Mutilator's ships. Indeed, he was so unhappy that
he felt as if the world itself had been upset.
        The sky above was the same blue sky as ever, and the sea the
same green and coral-spiked sea. There was no change in the chop
of the light which came brisking from the quick-flick waves which
slapped and sundered against the ship's creaking sails. Yet all of
existence had been subjected to an abrupt reversal; and, in token
of this, the sails of Guest Gulkan's ship shuddered as the vessel
hove to.
        As the ships of the dreaded Mutilator closed with Guest
Gulkan's barque, that ship remained hove to. Over its silence
there soared a seabird, a white flash briefing away to the life of
its own purpose.
        With a pang of regret, Guest compared the bird's freedom to
his own blighted state. The bird could wish itself away on a wing,
free-flighting to anywhere the winds might take it, but Guest was
hopelessly embroiled in the toils of his ambition. And after all
he had been through, his father was still stranded in a time pod
in Obooloo's Temple of Blood. And, if Guest was to be captured and
stripped of the x-x-zix, then what profit would he have to show
for his adventures in Injiltaprajura? Its horrors were still fresh
in memory, and those horrors looked set to be his only reward for
his pains.
        With all sincerity, Guest wished he had settled for a quiet
life - assuming such a thing as a quiet life to be truly possible
in a world as disordered as the one we are doomed to live in.
        As Guest was thus wishing, Thayer Levant came up to him, and
addressed him thus:
        "Master."
        "What do you want?" said Guest.
        He strongly suspected that Levant wanted something which
Guest would be in no mood to give, for Levant usually shunned
formalities such as "master", preferring an independent
taciturnity to anything which might be construed as servility.
        "Well?" said Guest.
        "I want to help you," said Levant.
        "How?" said Guest, further disturbed by this prolonged
indirectness.
        "I have it in mind to protect your mazadath," said Levant.
"That and the x-x-zix."
        "Protect!" said Guest. "How could you protect them?"
        "By hiding them," said Levant. "I believe myself equal to the
task of concealment. I believe I could work my way back to Obooloo
then take those treasures through the Door."
        "And?" said Guest.
        "I could take them to Dalar ken Halvar," said Levant. "There,
Plandruk Qinplaqus could put the x-x-zix to work, to modify the
weather of his capital city. Furthermore, he could hold in custody
your mazadath, keeping it safe for your return."
        "If I return," said Guest, who had no certainty of survival.
        "Well," said Levant, "if you don't return, then the mazadath
could go to your heirs."
        "I have no heirs!" said Guest, with some bitterness.
        "Your brother Morsh has sons, has he not?" said Levant. "If
memory serves, he has sons in duplicate. Yurt and Iragana. May
they not serve as your heirs? After all, they're your nephews."
        "That is true," conceded Guest, somewhat comforted to think
that he was an uncle even if he was not a father, and that he
would always have a place in family tradition, even if he was
doomed to be slaughtered by the mutilator's men.
        Guest considered Levant's plan.
        It was true that Levant had a better chance of hiding the
mazadath and the x-x-zix than did Guest Gulkan. For Guest had been
too loud-mouthed and open in his dealings with the world. He had
led something of a high-profile existence, so that there must by
now be a thousand people on Untunchilamon who knew Guest Gulkan to
be an emperor in exile. Within the fleet which was trying to
escape from Injiltaprajura, and which looked to shortly fall
prisoner to the Mutilator's men, there might be ten dozen people
or more who knew Guest by face, name and mission, and who knew him
to have seized control of the x-x-zix.
        But Levant ....
        To Guest's knowledge, Thayer Levant spoke no language other
than Galish, and so restricted his dealings with strangers to the
business of sharping them at cards. Thayer Levant had the lowest
of profiles imaginable; and, though many men must have marked him
as Guest Gulkan's companion, he might escape attention thanks to
his lowly status - for, after all, Levant was in all truth nothing
but a ragged serving man.
        "Why do you hesitate?" said Levant, as Guest puzzled thus
through his options. "The x-x-zix is no weapon of war."
        "That is true," conceded Guest.
        It was true indeed. The x-x-zix, the famous wishstone of
Untunchilamon, granted no wishes to anyone, despite what rumor
might say. It was but a heap of cubes and pyramids conglomerated
into something approximating the dimensions of an orange; and, on
Untunchilamon, its sole use had been ornamental, for it had long
been reserved as a bauble set aside for the enhancement of the
scepter wielded by whoever temporarily governed that island.
        "As for your mazadath," said Levant, "what use is that?"
        Guest thought about it.
        His mazadath had sentimental value, for it had been given to
him by his purple-skinned Penelope, and in his exiled condition he
found he missed the woman. Furthermore, the mazadath was doubtless
a thing of Power. But what Power? Guest had tried to use the
mazadath as a weapon against the therapist Schoptomov, but the
therapist had simply laughed at the shining silver, and had
knocked it from Guest Gulkan's hand. The wizards Sken-Pitilkin
and Pelagius Zozimus had never thereafter remarked on the thing, a
circumstance which suggested that, even if the mazadath were
assumed to be possessed of Power, its Power was nothing which
could be diagnosed by a wizard.
        "I'm not sure," said Guest.
        "Of what do you lack certainty?" said Thayer Levant.
        "I'm not sure you have wit enough to hide these things from
the search which will surely befall us," said Guest. "There are
plenty of men in this fleet who know me to be possessed of these
toys, and nine in ten of those men will surely be ready to betray
my possession to the Mutilator's soldiers. So. We will be
searched."
        "Then you must show the world you have already hidden the
things," said Levant, "and hidden them where nobody can find
them."
        "What are you talking about?" said Guest, who had ever been
irritated by riddling.
        In response, Thayer Levant smiled, and gestured at the sea.
        "What are you on about?" said Guest.
        "Come down below decks," said Levant, "and I'll tell you."
        So the Weaponmaster and his servant disappeared below decks.
When Guest Gulkan shortly thereafter manifested himself on deck,
he was possessed of a purposeful air. After glancing at the
oncoming fleet of ships which was loyal to the Mutilator, Guest
Gulkan dived to the waters of the sea.
        This sparked an uproar on the ship he had quit. For that ship
had hove to as an act of submission, thus declaring its loyalty to
the Mutilator. Hence Guest's rebellion was not to the taste of the
ship's crew, which promptly launched a boat and pursued him.
        But Guest Gulkan, after the long exercise which had marked
his years of convalescence in Dalar ken Halvar, could swim with
the fluency of a fish. Indeed, swimming was now as natural to him
as the act of riding (an act which is ever far more natural to a
Yarglat barbarian than the tedious business of walking). So Guest
had gained the shores of Untunchilamon before he was caught.
        Thus it was that Guest Gulkan was taken prisoner by a fleet
of ships loyal to the Mutilator of Yestron, a fleet of ships which
had been sent to return the rebellious island of Untunchilamon to
the Izdimir Empire. In due course, Guest was interrogated; and
confessed himself to be the Guest Gulkan who was notorious for
having stolen the wishstone from Injiltaprajura's treasury during
a riot; and confessed further that he had ditched this treasure in
Untunchilamon's reef-waters when pursuit was close upon him.
        As to what really might have happened to the wishstone and to
the mazadath - why, since Guest was parted from Thayer Levant, and
had no news of him, he had no way of telling whether that shifty
master of devices had successfully concealed these treasures, and
no way of telling whether Levant might ultimately make good his
promise to deliver those things to Dalar ken Halvar.
        Thus the Weaponmaster fell to the forces of the Izdimir
Empire. He was returned to the city of Injiltaprajura, there to
endure a weary confinement, a muchness of interrogation, several
beatings and a wastefulness of impossible requests. To Guest's
dismay, rumor had marked him as a wizard, and so he found himself
asked to serve his new masters with his wizardry, and beaten anew
in consequence of his failure to serve.
        With the Mutilator's men at last convinced that Guest was no
wizard, and convinced that he would be of no further use to them
on the island of Untunchilamon, he was consigned to a ship that
was traveling eastwards, and so was conveyed across the vastness
of the oceans as a prisoner in the company of other prisoners.
        Thus the Weaponmaster Guest Gulkan voyaged to the continent
of Yestron as a prisoner.
        Since his ship was no seagull's wing, it was a long time
before Guest was landed at Bolfrigalaskaptiko, that city which
lies upon the shores of the river Ka, just upstream from the great
lagoon of Manamalargo. From there, he was taken inland to the
mountainous region of Ang, where he arrived at last at Obooloo,
capital city of the Izdimir Empire and home of Aldarch the Third.
        Such were the rigors of this journey that Guest was
suffering from both dengue fever and dysentery by the time he was
brought into the notorious prison known as the Fulch, and his
condition was such that it was a full six months before he was in
a fit state to be presented to Aldarch the Third, the Mutilator of
Yestron.
        The day before Guest was due to be so presented, a kindly
jailor who spoke a little Toxteth exercised his skills in that
language to advise the Weaponmaster that it would be best advised
to commit suicide rather than to endure such presentation. But
Guest distrusted the jailor, and so rejected this perfectly sound
advice, and so on the morrow was conveyed uphill to the knoll
which sustained the Mutilator's palace, that building known as
Ubazakura.
        Guest was checked through the gates of Ubazakura, and thus
passed from the world of men, entering the lair of a demon-beast
best fitted for a life in an otherworld hell.
        But, as yet, the Weaponmaster was still far from despair.
For, as yet, the Weaponmaster Guest Gulkan had not met the
Mutilator, and so was inclined to discount nine tenths of that
which rumor had conveyed to his ears - whereas the truth of the
matter was that Guest, rather than discounting rumor, should
rightly have amplified it.
        As he was soon to find out.