Warp: the rift in reality into which apprentice wizards
venture to pact with creatures of the World Beyond. All such
apprentices know there is one thing they must never do: they must
never ever tread beyond the Veils of Fire. What lies beyond
the Veils of Fire, nobody knows, but this much is for certain:
nobody has ever returned alive from an inspection of its
mysteries.

                                                 * * *

        With all the insouciant ease of a drunken man stepping off
the top of a cliff, Guest Gulkan stepped backwards through the
Veils of Fire. Cold-burning rainbow leapt around the Weaponmaster
as he stepped backwards. On the third step of his retreat, his
back bumped against a wall.
        Since he was safely out of sight of the wizards - there was
nothing to be seen in front of him but veil upon veil of impetuous
rainbow - Guest turned to face the wall. It was a dark, velvety,
purple-black wall which yielded slightly beneath his touch.
        Guest, being the Yarglat barbarian he was, responded to this
mystery by subjecting it to an exercise of brute force. He pushed.
Hard. And shouldered right through that purple-black wall.
        The world plunged to black.
        The world plunged to black as Guest's feet plunged to water,
with something fragile smashing and shifting underfoot as he
sought for his balance.
        He was -
        He was standing ankle-deep in cold water in a place which was
very dark, very cold and very quiet. He could no longer see the
slightest trace of rainbow fire. In fact, he could hardly see
anything at all. The largest sound was his own harsh breathing.
        Since he was temporarily blind, or near enough to blind,
Guest stood absolutely still and listened. As he listened -
hearing nothing of consequence - he closed his eyes. A long moment
later, he opened them.
        Then looked around.
        As Guest's eyes began to acclimatize to the gloom, he began
to see ... shapes. What kind of shapes? Not ghouls, ghosts,
werewolf, vampires, sorcerers or necromancers. Not armored
marauders armed with weighted lead and bloody iron. No. These were
strange shapes - and their totally unprecedented nature told Guest
Gulkan that he was very much out of his depth.
        In the dim and half-formed netherworld which confronted the
Weaponmaster, he saw fluid obfuscations of liquid dark, saw
glowing hoops and senile suns, saw twisted helix-shapes and
toroidal follies. At first blush, it looked like the kind of place
that would in the very nature of things be singularly unproductive
of beds and bawds, of horses and kitchens, or anything else which
would make it a worthy refuge for an emperor in exile.
        "Grief of a bitch," said Guest. "What have I got myself into
now?"
        For once, the Weaponmaster thought he might have gone a
little bit too far. Having seen what was here, he quite wished he
could go back where he came from.
        But where was the wall through which he had pushed?
        Guest turned, looked back, and saw no wall. Instead, he saw a
prospect of - of -
        He groped for words, then decided he was looking at dimly
shadowed free-floating versions of some of the more abstract
paperwork creations which Shabble had taught Eljuk to conjure to
life. Certainly there was no sign of any kind of wall, door, or
other exitway which would take him back to the Cave of the Warp -
a cave for which he now felt a considerable nostalgia.
        Meantime, he was standing in water, and the water was leaking
into his boots, and his feet were getting exceedingly cold. A
faint trace of violet light gentled round Guest Gulkan's feet as
the current teased around his battered leather.
        Guest shuddered.
        At least he still had the yellow bottle. Inside that bottle
was food, bedding, shelter, comfort. Sken-Pitilkin was inside that
bottle. And Thayer Levant. And Shabble.
        Well.
        Was that really a matter for comfort?
        Were the companions of his death to be a mad wizard addicted
to opium and the irregular verbs, a servant lately grown sullen,
and a childish bubble which played with equal happiness with
cockroaches and bits of folding paper?
        Still, he did have the bottle. He did have the ring. The ring
was comforting in its rigidity. And the bottle - best to make the
bottle safe.
        So thinking, Guest tied the bottle to his belt with a thong
designed for the secure retention of scalps - a moligok, to use a
word from the Eparget.
        Now.
        Where was he?
        At second and third blush, the place to which the
Weaponmaster had ventured looked ever bit as uncomfortable and
uncomforting as it had from the start. It was a cold place, a
quiet place, a place without smells. Bone would be at home here.
Rock would be content. But a Yarglat barbarian?
        Guest was more and more inclined to think he had made an
irretrievable mistake, for the place looked uncommonly like a
prison, and a prison from which escape was likely to prove
impossible. It was cold; it was gloomy; and there was nothing to
eat, not even a mushroom or a lump of fungus or such. The crunchy
things underfoot were snail shells. Were they edible? They glowed
faintly - glowed variously red and green.
        While there is nothing written in the Book of Survival
concerning the edibility of things that glow in the dark, Guest
was inclined to the opinion that the consumption of such things is
unadvisable. He presumed, therefore, that he was going to starve,
or die from eating poisoned monstrosities. After all, even if he
retreated to the yellow bottle, the food inside that bottle was
bound to run out in due course, and probably sooner rather than
later.
        All in all, the hole to which he had fled was a singularly
useless place, good for no purpose whatsoever, unless one wished
to retire from life for a couple of thousand years to study the
intricacies of the irregular verbs - something impossible for
Guest, who as ever was traveling without the companionship of a
copy of Strogloth's Compendium of Delights.
        "But," muttered Guest, "Sken-Pitilkin will surely have such a
book."
        Then he checked himself.
        Verbs? Irregular verbs? He must be growing mad to think of
reducing his life to the study of such!
        "I am the Weaponmaster," said Guest, more to cheer himself up
than anything else. "An emperor in exile! Rightful lord of the
Collosnon Empire!"
        So said Guest, then felt uncommonly silly for having said it,
for this was a place where the greatest of his pretensions was
likely to count for absolutely nothing.
        Meantime, his feet were growing ever more chill thanks to the
cold water which was leaking into his boots. As he was slowly
beginning to recover from the shock of his abrupt precipitation
into this den of strangeness, he was ready to do something
sensible, and so began to wade toward the nearest rock.
        Guest Gulkan had almost reached the safety of the rock when
someone spoke to him. Someone spoke to him, using the High Speech
of wizards.
        Once he had assured himself that he had not actually leapt
right out of his skin, Guest cleared his throat - which was
exceedingly dry - and spoke into the darkness.
        "Who's that?" said Guest, using the Galish.
        Nobody answered, so Guest presumed the voice to have been but
a figment of his imagination. He made as if to sit on the rock.
But the voice forestalled him, saying - and this time it used the
Galish -
        "You're not going to sit on me, are you?"
        It was the rock that was talking.
        Now the Weaponmaster Guest was in no mood to be lectured by a
rock. He had been tramping through the mountains for an
unconscionable length of time, enduring all manner of hardship as
a consequence of geology's heaping up of great stoneworks, and saw
no reason why he should suffer a lecture on top of the other
insults and injuries done to him by rock, stone and mountain.
        "Sit on you?" said Guest, with a boldness which suggested
that holding converse with rocks was nothing but a commonplace of
life, "why shouldn't I sit on you?"
        "You should not sit on me," said the rock, with a sorrowful
heaviness, "because I would be upset if you were to prove yourself
so thoroughly impertinent."
        "And what do you do when upset?" said Guest. "Do you bite?"
        "No," said the rock. "I do not bite. But I do get unhappy.
You would not like me if I were to be unhappy."
        "This implies," said Guest, "that you think yourself happy
right now."
        "Of course I am," said the rock. "Nobody is sitting on me,
therefore I am happy."
        It struck Guest that the rock was uncommonly easy to satisfy.
Naturally, Guest himself was unhappy when someone was sitting on
him, or standing on his head, or jumping up and down on his
ribcage, as the case might be. But for positive happiness he
required rather more than mere freedom from unwelcome encumbrance.
        "Some people," said Guest, hinting heavily, "increase their
own happiness considerably by helping others. I'm standing in the
water, and the water is exceedingly cold."
        "Then the cold," said the rock, "is something you will just
have to endure."
        "Who are you to tell me what I will or won't?" said Guest,
starting to become a trifle truculent.
        "I," said the rock, "am the Lobos."
        "Then know that I am Guest Gulkan, the Weaponmaster in
person, lord of war and rightful heir to the mastery of the
Collosnon Empire and the rule of Tameran."
        "You are a young thing, then," said the Lobos.
        "Young?" said Guest. "I'm - I'm - "
        But, to his dismay, the Weaponmaster found he had quite lost
track of his birthdays. He was shocked. How could he possibly have
come to such a pass? Obviously the world had rejected him, had
ignored him, had overlooked his needs, his celebrations, his
festivals.
        So thinking, Guest began to feel very sorry for himself. But
he was not willing to confess to a rock either his distress or the
source of that distress.
        "I'm old enough," said Guest. "I've reached a, an age of
maturity."
        "Maturity!" said the rock, positively snorting with derisive
amusement. "Why, you are but a toothpick to a tree, a lump of last
year's ice boasting to the mountain of its antiquity."
        "You are older, then," said Guest.
        "Older!" said the Lobos. "Why, I was here before the
Experimenters!"
        Here Guest was at a loss, for he had forgotten what he had
been told at Lex Chalis. Had Guest Gulkan been in the possession
of a disciplined and scholarly memory, then he would have recalled
that the Experimenters are a hypothetical race of creatures,
lesser than gods but greater than anything human, who are thought
by some to have influenced the shaping and the populating of
worlds.
        "So you're old," said Guest, accepting this assertion without
proof since he saw no point in arguing about it. "Even so, old
man, you should acknowledge authority when you find it. You stand
in the presence of Guest Gulkan, the Weaponmaster himself, the
conqueror of Safrak, the lord of the Collosnon Empire!"
        This was the windiest of all possible rant, and, as the sound
of his own voice died away to nothing, Guest became uncomfortably
aware of that fact. For once, he felt embarrassed by his own empty
boastfulness.
        "So," said the Lobos, speaking into the silence. "You are
like all of your kind. You are a most vulgar race of trivial
creatures. A vulgar race of murderers."
        "Murder!" said Guest, seizing upon this unjust accusation.
        "You speak of murder, do you? Well, know this. It was me who
almost got murdered! It was wizards, you see, they were set to
kill me. That's why I ran."
        "So," said the Lobos. "You came here for the most vulgar of
all possible purposes. To preserve your miserable skin."
        "Why else would I come here?" said Guest.
        "Most people," said the Lobos heavily, "come here in search
of wisdom. Usually they have deep questions to ask of me. I do my
best to answer them before they die."
        Guest did not like this talk of death at all. He was about to
ask how the rock's inquisitive visitors usually met their deaths,
and why. But the rock was still talking.
        "Even though you have proved yourself a vulgar and ignorant
barbarian," said the Lobos, "I will still extend to you the
customary courtesy. All is known to me. All things in the earth
and under the earth. If you wish to know, then ask!"
        Guest Gulkan thought about it. He was not sure that there was
really any question he needed to have answered. He had learnt much
from his own experience; Sken-Pitilkin had ever been at pains to
teach him more than he really wanted to know; and encounters with
such knowledgeable creatures as Paraban Senk and Shabble had
allowed him to answer just about every question he really wanted
to have answered.
        "Well?" said the Lobos. "Do you have a question?"
        "Okay," said Guest, "let's try this for size. I've got this
ambition, a big one. I want to stage an orgy, okay, with, let's
see, maybe a thousand women, men to match, some horses, and a few
dead sheep for those who are truly perverted. I can see my way
clear to getting hold of the flesh, but there's just one
complication. I want the whole thing to take place in a big bowl
of strawberries and cream. How do I go about that?"
        The Lobos gave a very heavy sigh. Its every prejudice had
been confirmed. Guest was just the barbarian he seemed to be.
        "If you really wish to stage such an orgy," said the Lobos,
"then you must begin by recruiting a caterer."
        "A what?" said Guest.
        "A caterer," said the Lobos. "Don't you understand the word?
A caterer is someone whose profession is the provisioning of
parties."
        Guest Gulkan grappled with this concept, which was a new one
to him. So far, the Weaponmaster had gone through his entire life
without meeting a caterer, an interior designer or a hairdresser.
But the Lobos was quite patient, and explained the business of
catering in detail.
        "But," said Guest, when he understood, "there's a problem.
We, ah, we don't have caterers, not in Gendormargensis. Not that
we're short of people, it's a big city, a hundred thousand people
or more."
        "A hundred thousand," said the Lobos. "Is that your biggest
city?"
        "It's the biggest I know of," said Guest.
        "Then," said the Lobos, "if you are in search of that
material wealth which a civilization requires to sustain a
vigorous catering industry, I would earnestly suggest that you
increase your population base."
        "Get more people, you mean," said Guest.
        "Yes."
        "How would I do that?"
        "To begin with," said the Lobos, "make sure that all your
people boil all their water and wash their hands every time they
go to the toilet."
        Guest Gulkan considered this eccentric advice, but was quite
unable to make the connection between washing one's hands and
staging a mass orgy with cream and strawberries. He concluded that
the rock was quite mad.
        "Is there anything else you want to know?" said the Lobos.
        "Well," said Guest, "what do people usually ask?"
        "They commonly ask how they can come by great wealth," said
the Lobos.
        "That's easy," said Guest. "I can pick up my sword and take
it."
        "You do not seem to be in possession of a sword," said the
Lobos.
        "A temporary problem," said Guest. "What else do they ask?"
        "They ask the secret of satisfaction," said the Lobos.
        "That's easy," said Guest. "Any pimp can help you."
        "For a wizard," said the Lobos, "things are not quite so - so
impromptu."
        "I'm not a wizard," said Guest.
        "So I'd noticed," said the Lobos. "Most wizards ask after the
secret of immortality."
        "Oh!" said Guest, "Immortality! Well, now you mention it,
what is the secret of immortality?"
        "There is no true immortality," said the Lobos. "This is
because of the inevitability of entropy. Do you wish me to
explain entropy for you?"
        "Not if it will delay my next meal unduly," said Guest.
        "It might delay your next meal considerably," said the Lobos.
"If we leave aside the question of entropy in the interests of
your stomach, know that you can make yourself temporarily immortal
by putting yourself through an organic rectifier. That is a
machine which can extend life indefinitely by inserting self-
correcting codes into the genetic material. That is how you make
yourself immortal. Of course, you would not have the slightest
idea what an organic rectifier is, or where to find one."
        Guest Gulkan, rather offended to have a rock speak to him in
tones of insufferable intellectual superiority, was quick to rebut
this claim.
        "Yes I would," said Guest. "There was an organic rectifier on
Untunchilamon."
        "There was?" said the Lobos dubiously.
        "There was!" said Guest. "It rectified a Crab."
        "A crab?" said the Lobos.
        "Yes, yes, a crab," said Guest. "You know, one of those
things that lives by the sea, it's got two claws and six legs, no,
eight legs, eight legs and a pair of pinchers, there was a big one
of Untunchilamon but the organic rectifier made it into an Ashdan,
it called itself Codlugarthia."
        "You," said the Lobos, on hearing this disjointed story, "are
quite mad."
        And the more Guest told, the more the Lobos thought him to be
quite insane.
        "Mad and a murderer," said the Lobos sadly.
        "A murderer?" said Guest. "How so?"
        "Why," said the Lobos, "the evidence of the murder is at your
neck."
        Then Guest was moved to put a hand to his neck. He felt the
dry warmth of his own skin, the lumpiness of his thyroid
cartilage, and the thin chain which sustained the weight of the
amulet he wore.
        The amulet.
        Of course.
        "Are you talking about - about the mazadath?" said Guest.
        "You see!" said the Lobos. "You play ignorant, but you know
the thing, and know it by its proper name."
        Now Guest began to understand. Slowly. Dimly. Partially.
Guest Gulkan had always supposed his heavyweight silver
amulet to be a device of Power, but until now he had never known
what it might possibly be good for. It had proved useless in a
confrontation with the therapist Schoptomov, and no wizard had
recognized its virtue. Yet, now his attention was drawn to the
thing, the obvious conclusion was that it was the mazadath which
had preserved his life when he ventured into the Cave of the Warp.
For all he knew, it might well be preserving his life right now.
        "I know the thing by its name," said Guest slowly, "but I
know no reason why I should be called a murderer on account of
being in its possession."
        "You know where it came from!" said the Lobos.
        In the face of this accusation, Guest bravely acknowledged
the truth.
        "Why, yes, I do," said Guest. "The mazadath is a thing taken
from the body of a dorgi. But a dorgi is nothing but an iron dog.
It is a machine, a technic, a device. That's all."
        "A dorgi!" said the Lobos, with invincible scorn. "Is that
where you think that thing came from? Do you really expect me to
believe that for so much as half a heartbeat?"
        "Why, yes, I do," said Guest, with some heat, "for it is the
truth."
        "The truth!" said the Lobos. "Is that really what you
believe? Well, bless my toes! I think you do!"
        "It is the truth as I have been told it," said Guest
stubbornly. "This - this trifle is a piece of a dorgi. I got it as
a present. A wedding present. A present from my wife."
        "A wedding present!" said the Lobos in fury. "You chop up
bodies then make presents of their pieces!"
        "I chopped up nothing!" protested Guest. "There was a dorgi,
an old one, it fell to pieces, and this was what was left."
        The Lobos chewed over that claim in silence, then said:
        "So. You really don't know."
        "I am but a poor barbarian from the north of Tameran," said
Guest bitterly. "I know scalping and killing and fighting and
torturing. Oh, and sex customs, any ethnologist could tell you
that, us barbarians have got plenty of sex customs. But as for
what you're on about, why, I couldn't begin to understand it. This
is a bit of a dorgi, that's all I know, and I don't know why you
should be so upset about it."
        "I was upset," said the Lobos, now sounding sad rather than
angry, "because the thing which you have about your neck is a
thing stolen from one of the Zelamith. Know you the Zelamith?"
        "I have never heard of them," said Guest.
        "The Zelamith," said the Lobos, "were a race of whispering
dragons which lived in the places which do not exist, the places
which lie between cosmos and cosmos. For each of the Zelamith
there was a mazadath. And a mazadath, dear child of man, a
mazadath is a token of identity. In vulgar parlance, a mazadath is
a soul. It is like a harp: as the harp is nothing on its own, yet
comes to life when in concord with the harpist, so the mazadath is
nothing on its own, yet comes to life when in a synergetic
relationship with one of the Zelamith. The Zelamith were
slaughtered by the Shining Ones, the Vangelis, who butchered them,
then sold their souls to humankind for trifles."
        "For what purpose?" said Guest. "I mean, why would people buy
these things?"
        "To allow people and machines to survive in zones of
instability," said the Lobos. "Were you not in possession of the
mazadath, then the Mahendo Mahunduk would have taken you in the
Cave of the Warp. Were you not in possession of the mazadath, then
you would have smoked away to nothing right in front of me."
        "Is that - is that what usually happens to the people who
come here?" said Guest.
        "Usually," said the Lobos.
        "And, uh, the unusual people?" said Guest.
        "There is a way out of here," said the Lobos. "I take it you
do have some idea where you are?"
        "Why, yes," said Guest. "I'm at the back of a cave in the
Shackle Mountains."
        "No!" said the Lobos, obviously distressed. "Don't you know
anything?"
        "It seems not," said Guest. "If I'm not in the Shackle
Mountains, then where am I?"
        "You," said the Lobos, with heavy emphasis, "are very much in
the World Beyond."
        Guest tried to absorb this. Did it mean he was dead? He
certainly didn't feel dead.
        "You don't understand," said the Lobos.
        "What makes you say that?" said Guest.
        "Your silence says it all," said the Lobos. "Listen. The
world in which you live is but a bubble of invention afloat in the
great seas of Probability. Now you are outside that bubble. You
have entered a much greater realm of existence where, technically
speaking, you are not equipped to exist."
        "Then, uh, how do I leave?" said Guest.
        "Look around you," said the Lobos. "Some of the things of
your world have a partial existence of sorts even here in the
World Beyond. You see that violet light over there? No, no, to
your left, look to your left!"
        Guest looked, and did make out a dull violet light place half
a league or so in the distance, and said as much.
        "That," said the Lobos, "is the local star which lights your
home planet. I would, by the way, strongly advise you against
interfering with it. Now. Watch."
        "Watch what?" said Guest.
        In response, several dozen dull red hoops began to glow in
the dark. They were scattered in all directions, none close enough
to touch, but none further than a slingshot's distance from where
he stood.
        "How did you do that?" said Guest.
        "Ah," said the Lobos, sounding very pleased with itself. "A
slight rearrangement of the nature of time and space, that's all."
        "Then," said Guest, "are you a god, that you should be
playing tricks with time and space?"
        "I'm not a god," said the Lobos. "I'm a Lobos. The Lobos.
I've told you that all ready. A Lobos is not a man, god, devil or
demon. It's a category in its own right."
        "But - "
        "Is a cow a cuttlefish?" said the Lobos. "Well?"
        "No," said Guest.
        "So," said the Lobos, "when you go to the seashore, will you
start calling the cuttlefish a cow simply because you haven't any
other word for it?"
        "What do you know of the sea?" said Guest.
        "I know most things about most things," said Lobos, "though
you are something new in my experience, because in all my life
I've never met anyone as ignorant as you before."
        Very much stung by this, Guest started to lose his temper. He
struggled to control himself, suspecting that this was no time to
be playing the beserker.
        "All right," said Guest. "So you're a Lobos, I'll concede
that much gladly. Not a cow nor a cuttlefish, but a Lobos. So. So
what are those hoop-things?"
        "Those," said the Lobos, "are the Doors of the Circles of
your world."
        "Doors?" said Guest. "You mean, like the Doors of the
Partnership Banks?"
        "Ah!" said the Lobos. "So it does know something! It's not as
ignorant as it acts! Yes, those are the Doors."
        "But," protested Guest, "there's, there's uh, maybe a
hundred, maybe more."
        "Yes," said the Lobos. "And you can exit through any of
them."
        "But, uh, how will I know which one to choose?" said Guest.
        "You can look through them," said the Lobos. "Or, if you have
a special one in mind, I can pick it out for you."
        Guest thought about it.
        Thinking made him feel more than a little bit dizzy.
        "If I leave," said Guest, "can I come back again?"
        "Only by again venturing through the Veils of Fire in the
Cave of the Warp," said the Lobos.
        "So," said Guest. "So I've got to choose. Uh. Well. There's
Dalar ken Halvar. Uh. I've got a wife there. Or I did have, but
where she's got to I've no idea. Then. Safrak. Alozay, I mean.
There's a Door there. I suppose my father's still in charge. But,
really, it's the star-globe, that's what I really want."
        "Star-globe?" said the Lobos.
        Guest explained.
        "The device which controls the Doors of the Circle of the
Partnership Banks is currently in Chi'ash-lan," said the Lobos.
        "How do you know that?" said Guest. "I mean, you can you look
through the Doors, or what?"
        "I see as if through a glass darkly," said the Lobos. "I hear
as if through a wall. It is enough. If Chi'ash-lan is your
destination, then there is your Door."
        As the Lobos was so saying, the light of all but one of the
red hoops died away to nothing. Guest waded through the wet, cold
water to that last remaining hoop. When he peered through it, he
seemed to see - as if through thick mist - the weirding room of
the Morgrim Bank in Chi'ash-lan. It was identifiable on account of
the skeletons which hung from the ceiling.
        "Go ahead," said the Lobos, as Guest hesitated. "It's
perfectly safe."
        "Maybe I should think about this a little longer," said
Guest.
        "Then, then," said the Lobos. "But don't spend too long about
it. You've been here too long already."
        "What do you mean?" said Guest.
        "Look at yourself!" said the Lobos. "Look at your hands!"
        Guest did look at himself. He looked at his hands. And saw,
to his horror, that they had grown transparent. He could see right
through them.
        "Don't worry," said the Lobos. "The condition's not
irreversible. As long as you leave now! Go! Go! Quick! Quick! Or
you're doomed to be ghost forever, mazadath or no!"
        Compelled by this command, Guest took one last look around,
then stepped through the red hoop, leaving the world of the Lobos
and entering the weirding room of the Morgrim Bank in Chi'ash-lan.