Confederation of Wizards: the organization which represents
the interests of the eight orders of wizards. The strongholds of
the Confederation are the strongholds of Drangsturm, the flame
trench which divides Argan North from Argan South. The
Confederation dedicates itself to guarding that flame trench,
which protects the lands of the north from the Swarms - monsters
of the southern terror-lands which are controlled by an entity
known as the Skull. The Confederation looks upon the maintenance
of Drangsturm as a holy trust. And a very profitable holy trust it
is, too, since the Drangsturm Road is an important trade route,
and the wizards tax every scrap of merchandise which moves along
it.

                                           * * *

        So Sken-Pitilkin's stickbird tore apart, leaving the
sagacious wizard of Skatzabratzumon and his passengers hanging in
midair - with nothing between them and the rocks below but the
clear blue sky.
        Much to Sken-Pitilkin's surprise, they did not fall.
        "Are you keeping us up?" yelled Guest.
        "No!" said Sken-Pitilkin, clutching the star-globe tight to
his chest and keeping a firm grip on his country crook.
        Sken-Pitilkin's powers of levitation were by no means equal
to the task of supporting so many in midair so far above the
ground.
        "If you're not keeping us up here," said Sod, kicking his
legs in midair, "then how about getting us down?"
        "I'll think about it," said Sken-Pitilkin.
        But he had not the slightest idea of where to start. Usually,
to descend after levitating, a wizard of Skatzabratzumon simply
eased off the application of Power, and gravity (that force of
universal suction exerted by the planet on which we live) then
secured a certain descent.
        "Get us down!" yelled Sod, kicking his legs in fury.
        At which - without Sken-Pitilkin doing anything about it at
all - they began to rotate. Swiftly they grew dizzy, and in their
dizziness they were sucked downward through the air, which
thickened to an impenetrable white fog, which hardened to
something as cold as glass.
        They ceased rotating, and found themselves sitting in a small
teardrop-shaped chamber which glowed with its own cold white
light. The light was that of sunstruck snow.
        "Where are we?" demanded Sod.
        Sken-Pitilkin made no response to this demand, for he had not
the slightest idea where they might be. He was disorientated - and
more than a little frightened.
        Then the opacity of the walls began to clear, easing away to
a lucid transparency, and Sken-Pitilkin and his erstwhile
passengers found themselves sitting inside a tiny teardrop in the
center of a three-legged table. Abruptly, the teardrop was ceased,
and hoisted skywards. Eljuk screamed in involuntary terror, and
Sken-Pitilkin almost joined him in that scream.
        A giant - it was a giant, wasn't it? - was holding the
teardrop on the palm of his hand. The giant brought the teardrop
close to his face so he could peer inside. He grinned. Sken-
Pitilkin stared at the vastness of the giant's slab of a face, at
the stalks of his stubble poking through his skin, at the
yellowness of his gravestone teeth and the white fur of unscrubbed
detritus between the top of those teeth and the gums, and the
whale-flank rubberiness of the giant's lips and the snarling
crevices by his nose. In the wet overlay of reflections which
slicked across the giant's nearest eye, Sken-Pitilkin saw the
teardrop and its captives caught in reflection.
        Then the giant began to move, jolting the teardrop severely.
Eljuk Zala was sick, spewing vomit all over Sod, who swore at him.
In response, Guest Gulkan braced himself in the swaying teardrop
then bloodied Sod's nose with a blow from his fist. Nothing
daunted, the Banker struck back, and the two of them began to
fight in earnest. Thayer Levant and Ontario Nol fell on the
fighters, struggling to separate them, while Sken-Pitilkin lashed
out at knees and elbows with his country crook.
        All the frustrations of a long season of confinement in Lex
Chalis came out in that fight, which left all of them panting,
besmirched by blood and vomit, stinking of bile and digestive
juices. At which point the teardrop was set down on another table,
this one being inside -
        "Why," said Sken-Pitilkin in amazement, looking at the vastly
enlarged geography outside the teardrop. "This is my living room!
My very own living room inside my very own castle!"
        Thus did Sken-Pitilkin belatedly come to realize that he had
not fallen to the possession of giants. Rather, he and his
companions had been shrunk.
        While Sken-Pitilkin was still savoring this discovery,
another giant picked up the teardrop, then fiddled with a ring on
his finger. Even as the giant twisted the ring, Sken-Pitilkin
caught sight of a small yellow bottle on a nearby table, and
guessed that the giant, the teardrop and the people trapped inside
that teardrop would shortly be sucked inside that bottle.
        And so it came to pass.
        By now, both Sken-Pitilkin and Ontario Nol realized - more or
less - what had happened. The stickbird had been destroyed by a
subtle act of wizardry. And, caught by some new and unprecedented
advanced in the wizardly arts, the stickbird's passengers had been
sucked down from the sky and encapsulated in miniature in a small
teardrop of some kind of imitation crystal. And now they were
inside a bottle - and the nature of such bottles is well known to
all wizards.
        So Sken-Pitilkin and Ontario Nol, being orientated to their
surroundings, tried to calm and reassure their bewildered
companions. But they had barely begun this labor when the
teardrop began to expand. Then, with dizzying velocity, Sken-
Pitilkin and his companions expanded likewise - upon which the
teardrop abruptly dissolved away to nothing.
        So it was that Sken-Pitilkin and his companions were caught
by a device of some description when their stickbird challenged
the skies above the island of Drum; were sucked into a teardrop;
were carried into the castle on Drum; were transported into the
interior of a yellow bottle; and were then restored to their full
size.
        They found themselves the prisoners of a force of some five
dozen of their enemies. There were a handful of the
Confederation's wizards, who were in charge of the operation, and
these were backed by a strong force of the mercenary soldiers of
the Landguard which served the Confederation in the realms of
Drangsturm.
        Ever since Sken-Pitilkin had fled from Drum - which was a
mighty long time ago - a force from the Confederation had been
waiting for his return. Sken-Pitilkin was at first hard put to
believe this, as he had been gone for 22 years; but it was
explained to him that those who were keeping guard on Drum had
been relieved every three years.
        What had compelled the Confederation to make such strenuous
and unprecedented exertions? Sken-Pitilkin did not know. His only
recent crime against the confederation was the assistance he had
given to the wizard Zozimus, the witch Zelafona and the dwarf
Glambrax. Some 22 years ago, he had helped them escape the
Confederation's wrath.
        Obviously, that trio must have committed some truly appalling
crime against the Confederation. But as Sken-Pitilkin's captors
refused to say exactly what it was that Zozimus and company had
done, Sken-Pitilkin was denied the satisfaction of knowing the
true reasons for the state of arrest in which he found himself.
Sken-Pitilkin and his companions were not the only ones to be
imprisoned in the yellow bottle, for in that same bottle was
Shabble, held captive inside a restraining net which was woven
from a white-glittering substance which Sken-Pitilkin could not
identify.
        The yellow bottle, by virtue of the way in which it was
fabricated, quelled all powers of magic. Sken-Pitilkin could not
work his magic in that bottle, and neither could Ontario Nol. But
Shabble was not a magical device: Shabble was a technic, a
machine. That being so, additional precautions had to be taken to
restrain Shabble, who (when unrestrained) was capable of spitting
forth fire in great quantity. So Shabble was caught in a net, and
the net restrained by a tethering rope; and, though Shabble could
still play bubble, floating like a balloon, the imitator of suns
could spit fire no more.
        Once Sken-Pitilkin and his companions had been caught, they
were swiftly interrogated.
        On interrogation, Banker Sod claimed himself to be a Banker
from Chi'ash-lan, a Banker who had traveled to the Safrak Islands
to buy the star-globe. He claimed to thing to now be his rightful
property.
        "What, then," said an interrogating wizard, "is this star-
globe?"
        "Why," said Sod, "it is a globe into which one can look and
reach the future."
        The interrogator was unimpressed by this, and attributed
Sod's claim to sheer superstition. For, though witches and others
have often demonstrated Gifts of Seeing, wizards are reluctant to
believe in the validity of such. For all wizards of all the eight
orders believe that the will is free - and, consequently, believe
that the future is beyond prediction.
        Having satisfied themselves that Sod was nothing but a fool
of a traveler with more money than sense, the wizards said he
could go, and take his star-globe with him.
        At this, Sken-Pitilkin and his companions seethed. But they
did not betray Sod, or the secret of the star-globe - and neither
did Shabble. For it was clear to one and all that, supposing their
escape to be ultimately obtained, it would be easier to wrest the
star-globe from Sod than it would be to wrest the same device from
the Confederation of Wizards.
        Now, on overflying Drum, Sken-Pitilkin had seen no sign of
ships or boats, so was at a loss to know how the force currently
in occupation of his island proposed to leave it. He was told that
they were visited monthly by a fishing boat from the port of
D'Waith, and would take advantage of that boat's next call to
arrange transit to D'Waith.
        "And from there?" said Sken-Pitilkin. "I think it difficult
for you to make any swift passage from D'Waith to Drangsturm.
Therefore I propose to build a stickbird, and fly us all to
Drangsturm in a few short days."
        But this generous offer was turned down, for the wizards who
had caught Sken-Pitilkin had no plans to let him out of the yellow
bottle in which he was caught.
        So they did things the slow way.
        When next they were visited by a boat from D'Waith - a small
town at the eastern end of the Ravlish Lands - they arranged for a
shuttle service to take one and all to that port. There, Banker
Sod was liberated, and was allowed to leave for the west. A long
and chancy journey, that march to the west! But, supposing Sod to
ultimately be able to complete that journey, why, he would find
himself in his home city of Chi'ash-lan.
        With Sod went the star-globe, its secret still unbetrayed.
Then those who held Sken-Pitilkin and his companions captive
settled down to wait until they were able to arrange to leave by
sea.
        Now any sea voyage out of D'Waith is a chancy procedure, for
the waters are made dangerous by sea serpents, and by the shoals
of the Lesser Teeth and the pirates of the Greaters.
        But the journey overland was generally considered
impractical. True, convoys of Galish merchants routinely traveled
the overland trading route known as the Salt Road, and that led
all the way south from Larbster Bay down to the Castle of
Controlling Power at the western end of Drangsturm.
        But in those days - and of course, while we are here talking
about recent history, the world has changed out of all recognition
since then - the Galish had their own agents in every town of
substance. So supposing one of the Galish were to break a leg, or
suffer some other misfortune, why, it would be the easiest thing
in the world for shelter to be arranged, and for the victim to be
left to heal, in the certainty of being able to join another
Galish band at some time in the future.
        A combination of armed strength, willing agents, assured
credit and sustained goodwill made it possible for the Galish to
hazard overland journeys which others would blanch at. Thus
blanching, the wizards who had caught Sken-Pitilkin and his
companions patiently waited until they were able to procure
passage by sea from D'Waith to the city of Runcorn, a free port to
the north of the Harvest Plains.
        From Runcorn, another sea voyage took them to Androlmarphos,
a port which serves the Harvest Plains. From there, it was easy to
arrange passage to Cam, the ruling city of the island of Stokos.
All this time, Sken-Pitilkin and his companions were trapped
in the bottle, and found their imprisonment to be exceedingly
wearying.
        Sken-Pitilkin busied himself with the revision of some of the
more intricate irregular verbs, but his companions lacked the same
intellectual resources. Even Ontario Nol swiftly grew restless in
his prison, and swore a great revenge on his jailors. And even
Sken-Pitilkin had to admit that a diet of siege dust and water -
for on such the prisoners were typically fed - was less than
satisfactory.
        In the days of their confinement, the prisoners made
elaborate plans for tricking, deceiving, bluffing, ambushing and
overpowering their jailors, for seizing the ring which commanded
the bottle, and for wrecking their revenge on those who had so
unjustly deprived them of their liberty.
        But these plans came to nothing, for the jailors treated
their prisoners with the greatest of caution, and never came near
them unless it was absolutely necessary, and then only approached
them in force.
        Denied all possibility of escape, the prisoners began to use
the undisturbed possession of their peace to co-ordinate stories
which would protect the secret of the Door - a secret which they
none of them wished to yield to the Confederation of Wizards.
        "What will we say, then?" said Guest. "How will we explain
away Shabble?"
        "Why," said Sken-Pitilkin, "we will say that we were living
on Safrak when in a demon in globular form rose unexpectedly from
the depths of the Swelaway Sea and began burning and raping
everything on the islands. The Confederation will take this
Shabble to be a demon, and destroy it."
        "That's hardly credible," said Guest.
        "Of course it is!" said Sken-Pitilkin. "That's what demons
do, you know. They arise when they're least expected. As for their
depredations - boy, a very Yarglat barbarian would blanch at
them."
        Guest ignored the implicit accusations of boyhood and
barbarism, for he had long since grown out of taking either
seriously. Instead, Guest said:
        "Stories are all very well, but Shabble will give the lie to
them if challenged in interrogation."
        "But who would believe anything Shabble says?" said Sken-
Pitilkin. "If Shabble tells the truth of what happened on
Untunchilamon, and of all that has happened since, why, nobody
will believe so much as the smallest fraction of it, since it is
all so frankly incredible."
        "Perhaps," said Guest. "But there yet remains the problem of
how we are going to escape from the Confederation ourselves."
        "I think," said Sken-Pitilkin, "you will find escape to be no
problem at all. I think you are merely being held as a witness."
        "A witness?" said Guest.
        "Yes!" said Sken-Pitilkin. "Have you not understood? We are
heading toward Drangsturm for a trial. My trial! I am to be put on
trial for crimes against the Confederation. For sheltering Zozimus
and Zelafona when they came to me for help. You will be but a
witness at that trial, and then, doubtless, you will be released."
        "And Eljuk?" said Guest. "And Levant?"
        "The same," said Sken-Pitilkin. "And, unless he has somehow
offended the Confederation in some way which is not known to me,
Ontario Nol will also be released. Be of good cheer, boy! The
problem is mine, and mine alone!"
        A few days after Guest Gulkan had been given this
intelligence, the jailors got passage out of Cam. And thus began
the final stages of the journey down to Drangsturm.
        By now, Shabble was getting on famously with Eljuk. Eljuk was
a born student, and Shabble, when all else failed, was a patient
teacher. Shabble taught Eljuk origami, and, before the bubble was
through with his teaching, Eljuk's nimble fingers could shape
paper dragons, or configure a scrap of paper to an imitation of a
Neversh.
        The Neversh is the greatest of the brutes of the Swarms, the
monsters which then dominated the lands south of Drangsturm. The
Neversh has two spikes which can suck the juices from a man or a
water buffalo, and both Sken-Pitilkin and Guest Gulkan had bad
dreams about those spikes.
Drangsturm was now close.
        From Cam, the jailors took the yellow bottle south to Narba,
then traveled down through Provincial Endergeneer to the realms
of the Far South, the realms of Drangsturm.
        "Right!" said Guest, who longed for their arrival and for his
release from the bottle. "Just wait! As soon as I'm out of here,
heads will roll!"
        But, when Guest Gulkan reached Drangsturm, he was dismayed to
find that he was not to be liberated from the yellow bottle.
Instead, there was to be (eventually) a trial. The renegade wizard
Hostaja Torsen Sken-Pitilkin would be put on trial for high
treason. As Sken-Pitilkin had predicted, Guest Gulkan would be a
witness at that trial, and both the trial and the pre-trial
interrogations would be held in the yellow bottle itself.
        Sken-Pitilkin, who did not want to see Guest Gulkan put to
death for perjury, advised him to tell the truth in his pre-trial
interrogation.
        "But what should I say about Shabble?" said Guest. "And about
the star-globe? And about Doors?"
        "Of Shabble you need merely say that you are ignorant," said
Sken-Pitilkin. "This will be readily accepted."
        "But, but what about Doors?" said Guest. "What about when
they ask me about Doors?"
        "Will they ask if you've got a dragon in your pocket?" said
Sken-Pitilkin. Then, when Guest looked at him blankly: "They've no
reason to suspect we've a Door on Safrak, so won't ask after such.
Anyway, if they ask you any question too sensitive, just say you
don't remember."
        "But I do remember!" said Guest.
        "I'm not sure that you do," said Sken-Pitilkin, who, in long
conversation with the Weaponmaster, had found that Guest's
memories of the past were selective in the extreme. "Tell them you
were tortured. Tell them about your time in the dungeons of
Obooloo. Tell them you were driven into the Stench Caves and
washed out in a great Flood. Once they know the number of your
traumas, they'll not expect you to remember much."
        Such was Sken-Pitilkin's counsel.
        But Guest Gulkan was still greatly worried about his pre-
trial interrogation until that interrogation actually began. Then
he found he had no problems at all.
        For Guest was a barbarian, was he not? Of course he was! And
does one ask a barbarian a question of any complexity? Of course
one does not! For a barbarian's brain is small, and his intellect
is slow, and his wit is sufficient for nothing more than the
riding of horses and the skinning of his enemies.
        So those who interrogated Guest Gulkan were careful only to
ask him small questions, easy questions, questions which would not
confuse and jumble his poor and untutored brain.
        Was he a Yarglat barbarian? Yes, he was. Was he acquainted
with Hostaja Torsen Sken-Pitilkin? Yes, he was. And with the
wizard Pelagius Zozimus? Again, yes. And the witch Zelafona? Yes,
without a doubt. And her son Glambrax? Yes. And had he seen these
three in company? Why, yes. And where was that? In the city of
Gendormargensis. And when? Why, during the final years of the
reign of the Witchlord Onosh.
        That was all the interrogators really wanted to know from
Guest Gulkan. It was sufficient to tie Sken-Pitilkin to the
criminals Zozimus, Zelafona and Glambrax. It was sufficient,
therefore, to damn Sken-Pitilkin and ensure his execution.
With Guest Gulkan, Ontario Nol, Eljuk Zala and Thayer Levant
having been interrogated, the trial did not immediately start, for
Sken-Pitilkin had demanded to be given time in which to prepare
for that trial.
        So Guest, being of no further interest to the Confederation's
prosecutors, was turned over to the wizards of the Ethnological
Commission, who were delighted at having a real live Yarglat
barbarian to interrogate.
        Much the ethnologists asked, and much Guest told - though he
did not tell all. In particular, Guest in his shyness preserved in
secrecy some of the sex customs of the Yarglat. For example, he
did not confess that the woman in her ecstasy will often haul upon
the ears of the man, and leave those ears a mass of bruises on the
following day.
        "No sex customs?" said his interrogators, when Guest tried to
stonewall them on that point. "But you must have sex customs!
Everyone has sex customs!"
        This is the thing about ethnology. It is very much a science
of the bedroom, for your average ethnologist is nothing but a
thwarted pornographer. Since the ethnologists were so insistent,
Guest at last found he had no alternative but to invent new sex
customs for their delectation. So he described louche orgies in
which a great congress of men, women, dogs and horses took place
in a gigantic bowl of strawberries and cream.
        "From where are so many strawberries obtained?" said one of
the more sceptical wizards.
        "Well | | " said Guest.
        Frankly, though the Weaponmaster had long had the image of a
strawberry-and-cream orgy in mind, and was determined to stage
such an event at least once before he died, he still had
absolutely no idea as to how one could come by so many
strawberries and so much cream - even supposing that the resources
of an empire were placed at one's disposal.
        Guest proving unforthcoming on this subject, the
interrogators turned their attention to Eljuk Zala.
        "You were of the Yarglat in your youth, were you not?" said
they.
        "So I am told," said Eljuk. Then, venturing on a blatant lie
to preserve himself from dissection: "But I was taken from those
barbarous realms when I was but a baby, hence have no memory of
them. But - but some little I have heard. When Guest spoke of
strawberries and such, he spoke by way of euphemism. For cream
read blood, and for strawberries read the organs of sacrificial
victims."
        "Brother!" said Guest, evincing shock. "These things are not
to be spoken of in the presence of the unclean!"
        The ethnologists were delighted, and in particular they were
exceedingly pleased by Guest Gulkan's shock. For it is counted a
great feat of ethnology to penetrate to the most secret, sensitive
part of an alien culture, then display the intimacies of those
secrets for public view, like the organs of a dead chicken.
        Finally, the ethnologists compelled Guest Gulkan to undress
for him, so that his physique might be sketched. For they had
observed the largeness of his flap-handle ears, and wondered
whether other organs might be similarly distended.
        The undressing of the Weaponmaster - a grievous breach of the
taboos of the Yarglat, but one which he was past caring about -
proved him to be uncommonly battered and scarred. It also proved
him to be in possession of an amulet, the mazadath which he had
come by in Dalar ken Halvar.
        "What is that?" said Brother Fern Feathers, the wizard who
headed the Ethnological Commission.
        "It is the liver of a dog," said Guest.
        "A dog!?" said Fern Feathers.
        "Yes, yes, a dog," said Guest. "An iron dog, a dog of a kind
known as a dorgi. I slaughtered the thing in Dalar ken Halvar,
hacked it with my sword then gulleted its ruins with my
fingernails. It is from that corpse which I have this prize of
mine."
        Naturally the wizards did not believed this farraginous mix of
fact and fantasy, so examined Guest's amulet. But they dismissed
it as a trinketing piece of silverwork, though a proper
Investigation would have proved its metal to be much, much harder
than silver.
        "It is a pretty thing," said Fern Feathers, giving a final
verdict on the mazadath, "but it has no potency."
        This was true, at least as far as wizards were concerned, and
so they left the thing in Guest Gulkan's possession, having done
no more than sketch it for their ethnological records.
        With his interrogation at last at an end, Guest Gulkan was
able to exercise his own ethnological curiosity by first
participating in and then spectating at the trial of Hostaja
Torsen Sken-Pitilkin, which was presided over by three judges.
Those judges were all wizards of Arl: being Heenmor, Phyphor and
Garash. It may be argued that the last-named was still technically
an apprentice. However, though Garash had not yet been released
from the service of his master Phyphor, he still commanded a
wizard's full powers.
        It would be a grievous labor to recount in full the
laborious processes of a trial of a wizard by wizards. It was a
trial of truly historical length, and most of it was spent arguing
points of law.
        The bare facts of the case may be stated with the utmost
simplicity. Sken-Pitilkin was accused of high treason, in that he
had aided and abetted certain enemies of the Empire of Wizards,
those enemies being things belonging to or allied with the
Sisterhood of Witches. It was said that the witch Zelafona had
fled from the justice of the Empire of Wizards. Fleeing in company
with the dwarf Glambrax and the wizard Zozimus, the witch had
sheltered upon Sken-Pitilkin's home island of Drum. Shortly
afterwards, Sken-Pitilkin had departed from Drum with witch,
wizard and dwarf, fleeing to the northern continent of Tameran,
where he made his home in the city of Gendormargensis, and earned
his living as a tutor.
        Those were the facts, at least as the Confederation's lawyers
stated them. But Sken-Pitilkin accepted none of it, and disputed
vigorously on each and every point. He was accused, was he, of
aiding and abetting enemies of the Empire of Wizards? Then surely
it was logical to ask - what Empire?
        Running along the track of this logic, Sken-Pitilkin argued
that the Empire of Wizards had fallen to ruin long generations
previously, which was undeniably true as a matter of literal fact.
But the lawyers representing the Confederation argued, rather,
that the Empire still existed as a legal entity, even if the
Empire had entirely vanished from the world of the flesh and the
fact.
        With the judges deciding for the Confederation on that point,
Sken-Pitilkin tried another tack. Sken-Pitilkin claimed the
Confederation must prove that he had known Zozimus, Zelafona and
Glambrax to have been in flight from justice.
        "For," said Sken-Pitilkin, "the law does not allow you to
assume me to have had such knowledge. On the contrary. You must
summon your witnesses and prove it."
        "We need do nothing of the kind," said the lawyers in
opposition to him. "For common sense does all the proving the law
requires."
        "Common sense!" said Sken-Pitilkin, scandalized. "Since when
has common sense had anything to do with the operation of the law?
Ten thousand years of legal tradition deny the legitimacy of
common sense! Will your set yourself against such tradition?"
        But his enemies were unmoved. They claimed that the mere
application of common sense was sufficient to prove that Sken-
Pitilkin - whom all of them knew of old - would never have left
Drum except under dire pressure. Sken-Pitilkin was a creature of
habit, known to be very fond of his home island; and, furthermore,
no wizard would willingly go to a place so barbarous as Tameran
unless driven by extreme necessity. It followed that Sken-Pitilkin
had known his guests - Zozimus, Zelafona and Glambrax - to have
been criminals. By rights, he should have chopped off their feet
and handed them over to the Confederation. Since he had not done
so, he was guilty of treason.
        "Common sense proves as much," said the chiefests of the
prosecutors.
        Sken-Pitilkin thought this a low and scurrilous blow. To
allow common sense into a case before the courts! Surely there was
no precedent for such a thing! Not in all the annals of legal
infamy!
        But, condemned by no evidence saving that of common sense
alone, Sken-Pitilkin was ultimately found guilty of high treason,
and was sentenced to death.
        The manner of his sentence was this: he was to seek his death
by taking the thing called Shabble, and by disposing of it in the
depths of the Warp, the depths beyond the Veils of Fire.
        For, after long interrogation of Shabble, the wizards of the
Confederation had decided that this thing was dangerous; and, not
being sure as to how it might otherwise be disposed of, they had
decided to consign Shabble to certain doom which waited beyond the
Veils of Fire.