‘Did the generals ever try to go back into the Melcene Empire?’ Belmakor asked.

‘Not after that first time, no,’ Beldin replied. ‘Once you’ve seen a few battalions trampled by elephants, you start to get the picture. There’s a bit of trade between the Angaraks and Melcenes, but that’s about as far as their contacts go.’

‘You said you’d met Urvon,’ Belkira said. ‘Was that in Cthol Mishrak or Mal Yaska?’

‘Mal Yaska. I stay clear of Cthol Mishrak because of the Chandim.’

‘Who are the Chandim?’ I asked him.

‘They used to be Grolims. Now they’re dogs - as big as horses. Some people call them “The Hounds of Torak”. They patrol the area around Cthol Mishrak, sniffing out intruders. They’d have probably picked me out rather quickly. I was on the outskirts of Mal Yaska, and I happened to see a Grolim coming in from the east. I cut his throat, stole his robe, and slipped into the city. I was snooping around in the temple when Urvon surprised me. He knew right off that I wasn’t a Grolim - recognizin’ me unspeakable talent almost immediately, don’t y’ know.’ For some unaccountable reason he lapsed into a brogue that was common among Wacite serfs in northern Arendia. Maybe he did it because he knew it would irritate me, and Beldin never misses an opportunity to tweak my nose.

Never mind. It’d take far too long to explain.

‘I was a bit startled by the man’s appearance,’ my dwarfed brother continued. ‘He’s one of those splotchy people you see now and then. Angaraks are an olive-skinned race - sort of like Tolnedrans are - but Urvon’s got big patches of dead-white skin all over him. He looks like a piebald horse. He blustered at me a bit, threatening to call the guards, but I could almost smell the fear on him. Our training is much more extensive than the training Torak gave his disciples, and Urvon knew that I outweighed him - metaphorically speaking, of course. I didn’t like him very much, so I overwhelmed him with my charm - and with the fact that I picked him up bodily and slammed him against the wall a few times. Then, while he was trying to get his breath, I told him that if he made a sound or even so much as moved, I’d yank out his guts with a white-hot hook. Then, to make my point, I showed him the hook.’

‘Where did you get a hook?’ Beltira asked.

‘Right here.’ Beldin held out his gnarled hand, snapped his fingers, and a glowing hook appeared in his fist. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ He shook his fingers and the hook disappeared. ‘Urvon evidently believed me - although it’s a bit hard to say for sure, since he fainted right there on the spot. I gave some thought to hanging him from the rafters on my hook, but I decided that I was there to observe, not to desecrate temples, so I left him sprawled on the floor and went back out into the countryside where the air was cleaner. Grolim temples have a peculiar stink about them.’ He paused and scratched vigorously at one armpit. ‘I think I’d better stay out of Mallorea for a while. Urvon’s got my description posted on every tree. The size of the reward he’s offering is flattering, but I guess I’ll let things cool down a bit before I go back.’

‘Good thinking,’ Belmakor murmured, and then he collapsed in helpless laughter.

My life changed rather profoundly a few weeks later. I was bent over my work-table when my companion swooped in through the window she’d finally convinced me to leave open for her, perched sedately on her favorite chair, and shimmered back into her proper wolf-shape. ‘I think I will go away for a while,’ she announced.

‘Oh?’ I said cautiously.

She stared at me, her golden eyes unblinking. ‘I think I would like to look at the world again.’

‘I see.’

‘The world has changed much, I think.’

‘It is possible.’

‘I might come back some day.’

‘I would hope so.’

‘Good bye, then,’ she said, blurred into the form of an owl again, and with a single thrust of her great wings she was gone.

Her presence during those long years had been a trial to me sometimes, but I found that I missed her very much. I often turned to show her something, only to realize that she was no longer with me. I always felt strangely empty and sad when that happened. She’d been a part of my life for so long that it had seemed that she’d always be there.

Then, about a dozen years later, my Master summoned me and instructed me to go to the far north to look in on the Morindim. Their practice of raising demons had always concerned him, and he very definitely didn’t want them to get too proficient at it.

The Morindim were - still are, I guess - far more primitive than their cousins, the Karands. They both worship demons, but the Karands have evolved to the point where they’re able to live in at least a semblance of a normal life. The Morindim can’t - or won’t. The clans and tribes of Karanda smooth over their differences for the common good, largely because the chieftains have more power than the magicians. The reverse is true among the Morindim, and each magician is a sublime egomaniac who views the very existence of other magicians as a personal insult. The Morindim live in nomadic, primitive tribalism, and the magicians keep their lives circumscribed by rituals and mystic visions. To put it bluntly, a Morind lives in more or less perpetual terror.

I journeyed through Aloria to the north range of mountains in what is now Gar og Nadrak. Belsambar had filled us all in on the customs of those savages after his long ago survey of the area, so I knew more or less how to make myself look like a Morind. Since I wanted to discover what I could about their practice of raising demons, I decided that the most efficient way to do it was to apprentice myself to one of the magicians.

I paused long enough at the verge of their vast, marshy plain to disguise myself, darkening my skin and decorating it with imitation tattoos. Then, after I’d garbed myself in furs and ornamented myself with feathers, I went looking for a magician.

I’d been careful to include quest-markings - the white fur headband and the red-painted spear with feathers dangling from it - as a part of my disguise, since the Morindim usually consider it unlucky to interfere with a quester. On one or two occasions, though, I had to fall back on my own particular form of magic to persuade the curious - or the belligerent - to leave me alone.

I happened across a likely teacher after about a week in those barren wastes. A quester is usually an aspiring magician anyway, and a burly fellow wearing a skull-surmounted headdress accosted me while I was crossing one of the innumerable streams that wander through that waste. ‘You wear the marks of a quester,’ he said in a challenging sort of way as the two of us stood hip-deep in the middle of an icy stream.

‘Yes,’ I replied in a resigned sort of way. ‘I didn’t ask for it. It just sort of came over me.’ Humility and reluctance are becoming traits in the young, I suppose.

‘Tell me of your vision.’

I rather quickly evaluated this big-shouldered, hairy, and somewhat odorous magician. There wasn’t really all that much to evaluate. ‘All in a dream,’ I said, ‘I saw the King of Hell squatting on the coals of infernity, and he spoke to me and told me to go forth across the length and breadth of Morindicum and to seek out that which has always been hidden. This is my quest.’ It was pure gibberish, of course, but I think the word ‘infernity’-which I made up on the spur of the moment - got his attention.

I’ve always had this way with words.

‘Should you survive this quest of yours, I will accept you as my apprentice - and my slave.’

I’ve had better offers, but I decided not to negotiate. I was here to learn, not to correct bad manners.

‘You seem reluctant,’ he observed.

‘I’m not the wisest of men, Master,’ I confessed, ‘and I have little skill with magic. I would be more happy if this burden had been placed on another.’

‘It is yours to bear, however,’ he roared at me. ‘Behold the gift which is mine to give.’ He quickly sizzled out a design on the top of the water with a burning forefinger, evidently not observing that the swift current of the stream carried it off before he’d even finished his drawing.

He raised a Demon Lord, one of the Disciples of the King of Hell. Now that I think back on it, I believe it was Mordja. I met Mordja many years later, and he did look a bit familiar to me. ‘What is this thou hast done?’ Mordja demanded in that awful voice of his.

‘I have summoned thee to obey me,’ my prospective tutor declared, ignoring the fact that his protective design was a half-mile downstream by now.

Mordja - if it was Mordja - laughed. ‘Behold the face of the water, fool,’ he said. ‘There is no longer protection for thee. And, therefore -’ He reached out one huge, scaly hand, picked up my prospective ‘master’, and bit off his head. ‘A bit thin,’ he observed, crushing the skull and brains with those awful teeth. He negligently tossed away the still-quivering carcass and turned those baleful eyes on me.

I left rather hurriedly at that point.

I eventually found a less demonstrative magician who was willing to take me on. He was very old, which was an advantage, since the apprentice to a magician is required to become his ‘master’s’ slave for life. He lived alone in a dome-shaped tent made of musk-ox hides on a gravel bar beside one of those streams. His tent was surrounded by a kitchen midden, since he had the habit of throwing his garbage out the front door of his tent rather than burying it. The bar was backed by a thicket of stunted bushes that were enveloped by clouds of mosquitoes in the summertime.