Drum: Sken-Pitilkin's home island in the Penvash Channel
(otherwise known as the Penvash Strait) from which he has long
been exiled. In spring of the year Alliance 4293, the peace of
Drum was disturbed by the arrival of fugitives, these being
Pelagius Zozimus, the dralkosh Zelafona and the dwarf Glambrax.
All three were running from the wrath of the Confederation of
Wizards. Sken-Pitilkin gave them shelter, only to find that
pursuit was hot on their heels. Fearing for his life, Sken-
Pitilkin fled from Drum with the others, and after two years of
wandering all four arrived in Gendormargensis, in spring of the
year Alliance 4295, at which time Guest Gulkan was only five years
of age. It is now Alliance 4315, but Sken-Pitilkin has not
returned to Drum in the 22 years since he first fled from that
island.

                                                 * * *

        To make a swift transit to Drum, Shabble soared high above
fog and clouds, then navigated by the stars. But Sken-Pitilkin
kept his stickbird firmly in the mist, and flew throughout the
night in those realms of obscurity.
        In the gray of dawn, the exhausted wizard of Skatzabratzumon
set his stickbird down in a swampy clearing somewhere in the
woods. Which woods? Sken-Pitilkin and his passengers could not tell.
        "We don't know where to find ourselves," said Sken-Pitilkin,
"so it's most unlikely that Shabble can hunt us. Therefore I
pronounce us safe. Guest. Look to our security. For I must sleep."
        Sken-Pitilkin was as good as his word. He curled up in the
bottom of his stickbird, shrouded himself with a solskin horse
blanket, and in moments was as dead to the world as a hedgehog
wrapped in clay.
        Whereupon Guest marched across the soft and yielding turf,
making for the nearest tree. The over-bright luxuriant green went
squidge-slush-slurk beneath his boots. He grasped the lowest
branch of the nearest tree then began to climb, forcing his way
upward to the heights which rustled with the dry rasp of leaves
growing brittle-brown as their autumn change beset them.
        Guest expected his survey to reveal a clutch of bloodthirsty
saurian monsters, or mayhap a crocodile. But all he saw was
swampland and the glimmer-glip of water clipped by the sun.
        In such a setting, it was hard to take seriously the
possibility of pursuit. But of course there would be pursuit.
Shabble would hunt for the star-globe, because if there was one
thing Shabble loved it was a toy, and the Door of the Partnership
Banks was surely the greatest toy of all.
        Guest, then, was doomed to be hunted by an immortal bubble.
And how exactly could one hide from such a bubble for three years,
particularly when rumor's sweep tracks out a radius measured in
leagues by the hundred? Shabble would be monitoring rumor. And so
too might the various demons such as Italis of Alozay and Ko of
Chi'ash-lan.
        If the demons conspired with Shabble, and dedicated
themselves to sifting the news which filtered through cities such
as Obooloo and Chi'ash-lan, then Guest and his companions would
have to shun all of civilization for fear of discovery. And,
speaking of demons - how many of the things were there exactly?
There were two of the jade-green monsters in Obooloo alone: the
demon Lob in the precincts of the Bondsmans Guild and the demon
Ungular Scarth in the Temple of Blood.
        Demons and Shabble.
        A dire combination, if it ever came to pass.
        Meantime, Shabble alone was formidable enough.
        Human pursuit is constrained by time, weather, money and
mortality, but Shabble acknowledged none of those. Only boredom
would bring Shabble's hunting to an end - and would a three year
hiatus be long enough to guarantee such boredom?
        What if Shabble found the very hunt itself to be an eternally
rewarding game?
        So thinking, Guest tried to rouse himself to a state of
concern. But all was autumn drowsiness.
        Sunlight.
        Shadow.
        Peace.
        Somewhere a bird called:
        "Kil-klop! Kil-klop!"
        Its song was bright-metallic, a slither of sharpness needling
through the utter relaxation of the day.
        After his ravaging journeys, the Weaponmaster had at last
entered upon a phase of utter peace and oozing time. He felt
strangely at a loss; and then, in his idleness, gradually became
conscious of his overwhelming fatigue. So he descended from his
tree and joined Sken-Pitilkin in sleep; and he slept like a baby
until roused for a conference.
        Sken-Pitilkin kicked off that conference.
        "I had thought to run to Drum," said Sken-Pitilkin, "but on
mature reflection that seems too obvious. After all, I am known to
all of Safrak as the wizard of Drum."
        "You are?" said Guest, by no means certain that Sken-Pitilkin
was as famous as he thought.
        "At the very least," said Sken-Pitilkin, "the demon Italis
knows me as such, and it may well be that the demon will tell
Shabble where to look for me. So we must not go to Drum. At least,
we must not go there directly. As we know, the bubble's weakness
is its capacity for boredom. It lacks persistence. If it does not
find us in a season, then, having searched Drum and found it
empty, it is unlikely to return."
        "We hope," said Sod.
        "We hope, yes," said Sken-Pitilkin. "In any case, we know
that we must at a minimum secure our disappearance for our season.
Therefore we must choose some place which is less than obvious."
        "Ema-Urk," said Guest, naming the island on which his brother
Morsh Bataar had wife, children and sheep farm.
        "You jest, I hope," said Sken-Pitilkin, "for Ema-Urk is far
too close to Alozay."
        Then the wizard of Skatzabratzumon pulled out a map of
Tameran, a weathered map of parchment which had dirt seamed in its
folds.
        "As you can guess from the condition of this document," said
Sken-Pitilkin, "it is no map of mine. I abstracted from a room of
maps in Trilip Obo, the Archive Stratum of the mainrock Pinnacle."
        Then Sken-Pitilkin pulled out a handful of coins.
        "What's this?" said Guest. "Divination?"
        "In a manner of speaking," said Sken-Pitilkin. "We must each
write down the name of one of the destinations shown on this map,
then choose a destination by the tossing of coins."
        "Why?" said Guest.
        "Because," said Sken-Pitilkin, "Shabble is smart enough to
out-guess us if we work by logic. Therefore we must call chance to
our assistance."
        Then Sken-Pitilkin demanded that they each choose a
destination.
        Guest Gulkan vacillated between Stranagor - the place of his
birth - and Gendormargensis. He settled on Gendormargensis. His
brother Eljuk opted for Qonsajara, high in the mountains of Ibsen-
Iktus. Thayer Levant decided upon Favanosin, while Ontario Nol
chose the uplands of the Balardade Massif. Sken-Pitilkin himself
then chose Stranagor.
        "And you?" said Sken-Pitilkin to Sod.
        "I," said Banker Sod, "choose Alozay itself."
        "Alozay!" said Sken-Pitilkin. "Why, but that's impossible!"
        "Why?" said Sod. "Shabble will surely have left Alozay to
seek us elsewhere. If we return, then we can revenge ourselves
upon Shabble's creatures. Furthermore, we can glut our pockets
with gold, which would see us better prepared for a journey than
we are at present."
        Sod's plan was extremely dangerous, but Sken-Pitilkin, though
he thought Sod over-audacious, nevertheless accepted that plan as
one possible option.
        Then Sken-Pitilkin tossed the coins that the coins might
decide which plan they would opt for.
        The coins directed them to Guest Gulkan's choice:
Gendormargensis.
        This occasioned uneasiness amongst all of them, even Guest
Gulkan himself, for Gendormargensis was ruled by the Red Emperor
Khmar, who had won his name by slaughtering so many of his enemies
that the rivers ran red with their blood.
        "I have another plan," said Nol. "It lacks the virtue of
being randomly chosen. But, even so, I do not think that Shabble
will divine this plan."
        Then the wizard of Itch pointed at Sken-Pitilkin's map. He
pointed at the south-west of Tameran. He pointed at a tongue of
land which sprinted out into the sea, terminating in a bulb of
rock. He pointed at the bulb itself
        "There," said Ontario Nol, softly. "The bubble will not seek
us there."
        "There!?" said Sken-Pitilkin, in patent alarm.
        While thoughts of venturing to Gendormargensis had made Sken-
Pitilkin uneasy, this new suggestion made him positively alarmed.
        "What place is that?" said Guest Gulkan.
        Sken-Pitilkin looked around, then said, albeit with some
reluctance:
        "We will not speak its name. Not here. But Nol is right. It
is a good destination."
        So Sken-Pitilkin flew his stickbird to Lex Chalis, a place of
caverns where the rock is fluid and warm beneath the touch. It is
a place of ghosts, a place of hallucinatory dreams and waking
delusions. Do you wish to hear more? Then you must seek elsewhere
for the telling. For Lex Chalis awakens things which the mind has
deliberately put to sleep. It stirs the old things to life, cracks
the inner coffers of the psyche, incarnates the dead.
        Worse, in the caverns of Lex Chalis, the thoughts of one
person's mind create half-perceived shadows in the minds of that
person's companions. Assume, then, that you are in Lex Chalis in
the company of Guest Gulkan, he who was once mauled by the Great
Mink in an arena in Chi'ash-lan. Assume that Guest is asleep, and
dreaming, and that you are dreaming too. Can you imagine what your
condition will be when you finally wake, heart pounding, eyes
bulging, skin drenched with sweat?
        In the great days of the Empire of Wizards, when all of Argan
was ruled by the eight orders of the Confederation, then many
wizards ventured north to Tameran, and dared their way to the
caverns of Lex Chalis. But it is not recorded that any of them had
any profit from such venture. For the place is beyond the
understanding of wizardry; and, as far as history can tell, there
has never been anything made of flesh or blood or stone or steel
which has been able to grapple with its mysteries.
        During the season in which the travelers sojourned in Lex
Chalis, Ontario Nol was once moved to theorize on the nature of
the caverns of Lex Chalis. He claimed those caverns to be the work
of a theoretical breed of Experimenters.
        "It is said by those who claim to know," said Ontario Nol,
"that Probability is a single sheet of fabric pockmarked here and
there by those patches of embroidery which mortal creatures know
as the Realms of Time.
        "It is further said that Probability is the great Enablement
which permits the existence of the gods. Enabled by Probability, a
god such as the Horn may master a small patch of this great fabric
to its own purposes, just as a woman may master a small patch of a
great bedsheet for her own embroidery."
        Listening to this theorizing, Guest Gulkan thought it
disgraceful that a Yarglat male as mighty as Ontario Nol should
use reference to a woman's work to describe things so weighty.
Nevertheless, he followed the metaphor.
        "If the gods, then, are those who embroider worlds on the raw
fabric of Probability," said Ontario Nol, "then the Experimenters
are those who move from patch to patch to rearrange each piece of
embroidery to something closer to their own liking."
        At which, Guest Gulkan began to lose track of Nol's
explanation, finding the metaphor to be growing obscure. So Nol
switched metaphors.
        "Supposing we talk of the soil as a great Enablement which
permits life," said Nol. "Suppose we then think of a god as an
entity which can create a seed - an entity which can create life.
This is a mighty act, and it takes a god to do it. But what then
do we call the farmer who takes the seed and breeds it down
through the generations to a plant reshaped to his own
requirements. Is the farmer a god? No. He is but a technician,
albeit great in his field. And those who claim to know of such
things construe their theoretical Experimenters as just such a
breed of technicians."
        Guest Gulkan had difficulty following this metaphor, too,
since it was an agricultural metaphor, and the Yarglat have
precious little understanding of farming. So Ontario Nol was put
to the labor of explaining that farmers can selectively breed
plants to reshape them to their own requirements - a datum which
was new to Guest, and one which he was inclined to regard with
great scepticism.
        Yet that was the best metaphor which Ontario Nol could
provide, so, whether Guest could understand it or not, he had to
put up with it.
        "We have, then," said Ontario Nol, "three levels of Power.
There is the original Enablement, which some call Probability.
Then there are the gods, the creators-of-life, those who shape
spheres of existence from raw Probability. Then there are the
technicians, those who do but remold that which the gods have
created."
        "What of demons?" said Guest. "And ghosts?"
        "They are the creatures of the sub-categories," said Nol,
using one of those airy generalizations which a teacher employs
when he is in no mood to plunge into complexities. "Let us not
bother with sub-categories. Let us stick to our main division,
which is the Enablement, the gods and the technicians. The
Experimenters, then, are a theoretical race of technicians much
given to wholesale remolding."
        "And," said Guest, "you claim these caverns of Lex Chalis to
be a part of their work?"
        "I claim nothing," said Ontario Nol. "I merely retail the
theories of others. Those others claim the very configuration of
our world to be the result of a wholesale remolding undertaken by
the Experimenters. It is said by these theorists that Lex Chalis
is a communicator of sorts - an artefact which the Experimenters
once used to communicate from world to world."
        So said Ontario Nol.
        But it must be clearly stated that there are well over a
thousand different theories which purport to explain Lex Chalis,
and that all of these theories are in conflict. The only thing
which all theories are agreed upon is that Lex Chalis is a
singularly unpleasant place in which to take up residence.
        In that singularly unpleasant place, Sken-Pitilkin and his
companions passed the winter season, grubbing a living from the
seashore and studying the irregular verbs. Yes! Let it be stated
as a fact! Before that season had run its course, Guest Gulkan had
grown so desperately bored by the tedium of his refugee existence
that he had permitted Sken-Pitilkin to tutor him in one or two of
the milder of the foreign irregular verbs.
        So passed a season of hardship, in which the refugees often
Shabble searching the continents for their shadows, interrogating
the buttercups of X-zox Kalada and the humming birds in the
southern jungles, bathing in the red dust of Dalar ken Halvar or
rolling in the snows of Chi'ash-lan
        Then, in the spring, Sken-Pitilkin at last declared that he
was ready to fly them to Drum.
        "Will that be any improvement?" said Guest, who knew of Sken-
Pitilkin's island only that it was rocky and infested by sea
dragons.
        "A great improvement," said Sken-Pitilkin. "For we will be
able to sleep in peace, without alien intrusions vexing our
nights."
        "You mean, then," said Guest, "that your island has no
ghosts."
        "That is not all I meant, but it is part of it," said Sken-
Pitilkin. "Yes, take it from me, there are no ghosts on Drum."
        That was a lie, for Drum was haunted by a number of ghosts,
and Sken-Pitilkin knew at least seven of them by name. But, since
their visitations were infrequent, Sken-Pitilkin thought he could
get away with this lie.
        Then Sod declared that, ghosts or no ghosts, he was in no
mood to fly to Drum, and thought it would be far better for them
to make for Chi'ash-lan.
        "Impossible," said Sken-Pitilkin flatly. "For once you have
been in Chi'ash-lan for a day or less, the demon Ko will know of
it. And once Ko knows of it, then so too will every other such
demon, and Shabble may well be in alliance with these demons by
now even if Shabble was not in alliance with them before."
        At last, Sod was persuaded - coerced is perhaps a better word
for it - into Sken-Pitilkin stickbird. Then Sken-Pitilkin sent
this airship whirling skywards, and headed south.
        Guest Gulkan, who had grim memories of a traumatic journey
across the wastewaters of Moana, predicted of a certainty that
Sken-Pitilkin would lose them somewhere over the sea. But in this
the Weaponmaster was entirely mistaken, for Sken-Pitilkin knew
Drum and its surrounding geography to a nicety. Thanks to his
intimate knowledge of the area's geography, the wizard had already
worked out a failsafe method of finding his way to Drum by air.
        The sagacious wizard of Skatzabratzumon flew south,
navigating by the sun alone. Since Lex Chalis is barely a hundred
leagues north of Argan, Sken-Pitilkin soon picked up the coast of
that continent. Then it was a simple matter to continue down the
coastline, keeping a lookout to the west.
        As Drum lies barely thirty leagues west of Argan, and as it
is a considerable island (for an ant must walk for twenty leagues
to cross from its northern coast to its southern), the island is
easily seen from the air on a clear day.
        Had Sken-Pitilkin gone too far south, he would have realized
his error as soon as he reached Larbster Bay, an unmistakable
landmark which should serve to safeguard the aerial navigator
against error. That at least was the theory - but there was no
need to put theory to the test.
        For, as Sken-Pitilkin flew south, he sighted Drum to the
west, and headed in that direction.
        On reaching the island, Sken-Pitilkin did not immediately
land at his castle, but ventured on a circumnavigation of the
shore. From the heights, Sken-Pitilkin and his companions checked
the rocky shores for boats, ships, rafts, canoes and wreckage, but
saw none such. All they saw was a number of sea dragons, variously
sea bathing and sun bathing.
        "It is safe," said Sken-Pitilkin with satisfaction, "at least
as far as I can see."
        Then the wizard sent his stickbird scudding downwards toward
his castle. But, while the airship was still high in the air, it
began to shake, as if seized in the grip of an enormously powerful
invisible monster.
        As the air adventurers clutched at the sticks of the airship
in outright panic, it tore apart entirely - leaving them hanging
in the air with nothing between them and the rocks below but the
clear blue sky.