The strappadoes were set up in the courtyard of the Rod-Master of Kine Gather. This was a place as big as a town square, for the Rod-Master was a man of vast wealth. In this he was like his city, which was why we had come there. As for the foundation of that wealth, it was obvious to anyone with a nose. Even within those mosaicked walls, among those flagstoned promenades with their potted cedars and urns of flowers, you could smell the dung and horses' stale that laced the morning air. The aroma might have come from any of the corrals and stockyards around the city, or it might have come from the thousands of citizens themselves who waited in the courtyard, chatting pleasantly, to see us die.

Frankly, I was in a rotten mood. I saw no way out of this. The order would be given at the first rays of sun that entered the courtyard, and the east was already well ablaze. The bailiff climbed onto the platform we were strung up on. He undid a scroll, and read aloud from it in a mellow voice, which the crowd fell silent to hear: "The good and great lord Kamin, Rod-Master of Kine Gather, conveys herewith his judgment to Nifft the Northron, known also as Nifft the Lean and Nifft the Nimble, and to Barnar the Chilite, called Barnar Ox-back and Barnar Hammer-hand. This is the judgment of lord Kamin: that you are both egregious felons, remorseless reprobates, and sneaking thieves; that you have entered the city of Kine Gather, and moved through the bailiwicks thereof, in pursuit of criminal aims; that you were taken in possession of a tool of criminal thaumaturgy; that you have merited death. You are permitted final remarks. Do you wish to say something?"

"I wish to say three things," I answered.

"Speak them," said the bailiff.

"First," I cried, "I wish to express my regret that I did not have more than a week in this city, for then I could have given all you Kine-men bigger horns than your cattle have. Alas, I have cuckolded scarcely more than a dozen of you. I would have worked faster, but you Kine-women smell so much like stockyards that I could only stand to serve two or three of you a day."

Nobody in the audience seemed to like this much, but on the other hand, they didn't get very excited either.

Justice is harsh there, and they're probably old hands at hearing last remarks.

"Secondly," I said, "I want to share with you all my conviction that the good and great lord Kamin is a wart-- peckered, dung-munching cretin whose great wealth is a ludicrous accident, whose only talent is for vigorous self-abuse (with either hand), and all of whose living relatives resemble toads so strongly that I wonder they can look at each other with straight faces."

They seemed to enjoy this somewhat more. Here and there, amplifications were gleefully shouted. They are a tough folk, law-abiding, but not overawed by authority. In fact, they're not hard to like-for somebody in freer circumstances, that is.

"Thirdly," I said, "let me convey my fascination with Kine Gather as a whole. I would not have believed so large a city could be built up from nothing more than cow-flop and clods!"

This made some of them mad. The town has great municipal spirit. I had the sour satisfaction of rasping some of them, however slightly. It was small comfort but I made the most of it. Barnar said he wished to make two last remarks. The Bailiff told him to proceed. My friend produced an epic flatulence, after which he spat on the stage voluminously, making the bailiff hop to save his boots. The edge of the sun topped the courtyard wall, and flung its rays like lances in our faces. The bailiff raised his hand. At just that moment a herald burst from the big two- va1ved door in Kamin's manse at the farthest end of the courtyard. The timing told me the whole tale in a heartbeat. That the herald should burst out at precisely the last instant, crying, "Hold! Kamin bids their death be stayed!"-it was just too stagy. It was theatrics, and for whose benefit but our own? Kamin required some service, hard and dangerous, which we were intended to welcome in - preference to this harrowing alternative.

II.

Rod-Master Kamin was a big, florid man. He surely did like theatrics. He was sitting on the chair of office in his receiving chamber, wearing a brocaded robe and several fillets of braided gold whose ends, trailing on his shoulders, made me think of the relaxed ruff on a fighting cock. He sat, grand and awful, till enough of the townsfolk had filtered in to provide an audience sufficient to witness the majesty of his rising up. Then Kamin, Rod-Master of Kine Gather, stood.

When this imposing spectacle had transpired, and a suitable pause had been allowed for a hush to fall on the assembly, Kamin spoke to Barnar and me-or rather, spoke down upon us in a ringing voice that addressed - everyone: "Outlanders, hear me! Your guilt remains, and yet your lives are spared. This decision is not motivated by spinsterish sentiment. Your treacherous skills, your skulking cunning are needed to save a life far worthier than both of yours combined. Are you prepared to purchase your lives with your daring?"

Oh, he mouthed us roundly indeed! I wondered if my remarks about him had been conveyed to his sanctum.

Surely not, I decided. Underlings are not so frank with a self-loving master. I made him an impeccable bow, which caused my chains to rattle.

"As for daring, Rod-Master, we dare such things as poor, foolish mortals must to make their way in the world.

Concerning purchases, a man may ask to hear the price before he says yes or no-whatever he may be buying."

Oddly, Kamin seemed caught off guard by this demand. Could he have expected anyone to be so cowed by his dramatics that they'd take his deal without hearing it? A man too ignorant to know that there are many things in the world worse than death on the strappadoe is not likely to be a very useful man on a difficult exploit.

But Kamin's jaw made a brief, dazed movement when he heard my answer, and I read a quick, unmistakable fear in his eyes that he was going to fail to enlist us. He recovered himself by scowling.

"You will be instructed in this tragedy by one whose hands are red with the guilt of it. He is one who will pay a dreadful price if . . . if this is not made well. Go to Charnall now! You will be brought back to Council to give your answer."

As we were marched down a corridor that led to a staircase, Barnar murmured to me: "He was afraid we'd turn him down. It's an ugly job he wants done, Nifft."

There seemed little doubt of that. We were led into a wing of the manse. We mounted to the third floor, and were passed through a stout door with a double guard outside and another inside. A gaunt, balding man nodded at us from a table where he sat devouring breakfast. This was surely he of the guilt-red hands, though all he had on them at the moment was fish grease and breadcrumbs. There were a lot of these on the table too. Charnall was narrow all the way down, and ate like two men. The type is not uncommon. He had on a costly but untidy and very well worn tunic. His short beard, and the grey hair on the back of his head, had a tattered, plucked-at look.

His eyes were intelligent, but with a tendency to go out of focus. He struck me as bookish, somehow.

The leader of our guard told Charnall to stop eating.

"Just finishing!" he gasped. He swept the rest of the bread and fish into his face. Then he stood up licking his lips, dusting his hands. The thin comfort of breakfast was behind him now, and regretfully he focused on his situation, and us. He was a man profoundly depressed by his situation-you could see it in the way his shoulders sank as his mind ran over the information he was commanded to give us. Withal, he had the self-possession to recall what our morning had been. He pulled out his stool from the table for me, and motioned Barnar to sit on his cot. He dusted off his table and sat on this, his long legs almost reaching the floor. He folded his hands on his lap and scowled at them for a moment. Then he looked up and said: "You are Nifft the Lean, of Karkhman-Ra.

You are Barnar Ox-back, a Chilite. I am Charnall of Farther Kornuvia.

"You are men at the top of your profession, and in all natural skills of wit and hand you are known masters throughout the Sea of Agon, and even in the western waters. I am a man mediocre in his profession, though it is a greater one. I am a student of the lore of Power. I have encompassed certain tracts of dark knowledge. I know enough to buy wisely from true sorcerers. So much for our resources, gentlemen. They would be considerable for any sane task. Our task is not sane. Our task is impossible. And yet, I will tell you that I have conceived a glimmering of hope. Can you believe it? So intractable is human folly, so . . ."

"I beg your pardon, Lore-Master Charnall," my friend said. "You've had a chance to get used to the facts of the case, and we'd like to get past the shock of them too. It's been a racking morning. Can't you begin with the gist?" Charnall bowed ironically to Barnar. "You're right of course. You two will be bearing the brunt of it, after all.

My life will ride on yours, so our risk is equal, but you will be the ones below-ah! Forgive me. The task is this: to bring a demon's captive back from where he lies, down in the primary subworld. The captive is a youth, Wimfort. He is the Rod-Master's only son, and my own erstwhile . . . employer. It happens we know, very generally, where the boy lies. We are lucky in the certainty, but unlucky in the place. You see, Wimfort summoned a bonshad. That's what took him. Bonshads are aquatic entities you see. . . ."

Charnall looked at us with raised brows. Barnar nodded slowly.

"I think I do see. The boy lies somewhere in the Demon-Sea."

III.

Charnall showed us a miniature portrait of Wimfort which belonged to his father. The Rod-Master's son was a handsome lad of sixteen. The artist's rendering of his bright, scornful eyes, and saucy tilt of chin, harmonized with the story Charnall gave us of him. The box of wrought gold that contained the picture supported another part of the tale-discreetly touched on, since Kamin's men were in the room-namely, the doting indulgence of the father toward the son.

For the past three years, young Wimfort had enjoyed so ample a competence from his parent, that he'd been able to buy his way deep into the mysteries of the arts of Power. He purchased no real understanding, of course, for that's bought by the coin of toil and thought. But he hired Charnall, and read smatteringly such texts as the scholar directed him to. He also employed his "tutor" in obtaining texts which he knew of from other sources.

Many of these Charnall would not have recommended to one so young and light of will, but he was as compliant as his principles allowed him to be. He couldn't have earned half so much in the Kornuvian academy where Wimfort's agents had found him. Nonetheless, he had repeatedly to throw the boy into a tantrum by flat refusals of his aid in various dangerous directions.

Wimfort always yielded the point after such clashes. He would tolerate no program or plan of study, but he had gained some sense of the endless interlinkages connecting all aspects of the wizardly art. He was stubborn.

Charnall guessed that when he gave in, he made an inward vow to find his way back to his goals by some other route. In the meanwhi le he l ived wi th his mentor 's scruples because he had to.

His debut performance was a compromise that Charnall had agreed to as the least perilous of several projects.

The boy was ambitious to awe the populace, and this he did. His head was steeped in cheap ballads of the wild old days of Kine Gather when boisterous herds stormed through a town of mud streets and corrals, and his thaumaturgy was meant to be a commemoration of this era. With Charnall, therefore, he went to the slaughter- house district of the city on a night of the full moon. He intoned a very potent spell of regathered vitalities. They raised, in an endless surging forth from the bloody earth, the spirit of every animal that had ever died in those precincts. And as they raised them, they sent them stampeding into the streets of the town.

All night long the shadow-cattle with their blazing eyes panicked through the streets, raising a boil of dust and thunder with their shadow-hooves. The boy had flair, all right. The people woke. In their first horror, some dozen or so died in the poorer quarters, falling downstairs, or trampled by their tenement neighbors. But as the stampede thickened, and people understood its immateriality, more and more of them dressed and came into the streets. Kamin ordered the street-lamps relighted, and several of the city's magnates were persuaded to open their cellars. An eerie, impromptu festival was the result, with knots of staggering revelers run through by the endless bellowing herds. At dawn the spirit horde poured streaming back into the slaughtering yards. There the beasts plunged back into the earth, each reiterating its death cry as it dove.

The success intoxicated the youth. Moderation vanished from his schemes; he proposed one heroic folly after another and fought Charnall bitterly. Then he stopped proposing schemes altogether, and settled down to mining Charnall for texts, references, and instruction in the pronunciation of various tongues. The scholar could guess the direction but not the specifics of his charge's intentions. As he feared, the boy finally sprang his next miracle on the city all by himself. It was a dreadful fiasco. Its only lasting result was that it left an entire pasturing slope to the west infested with vampire grass. The incident was four months old when Barnar and I came to town, but the hillside decorated with bleached skeletons of stock were still a landmark for travelers approaching Kine Gather.

The boy was formally reprimanded by his father in the presence of the full council. This was a wrist-slap in the popular opinion. Many of the council men wanted other parts of the boy's anatomy involved in the rebuke.

Yet still Wimfort was mortally affronted. At that age you invent extravagant compensations for bruises to your dignity.

The scheme he turned to was one of long-standing in his dreams, but he now put a really coordinated effort into the realizing of it, and Charnall did not guess his direction in time. He was determined to obtain some of the Elixir of Sazmazm from the primary subworld.

"Imagine it," Charnall said to us with a kind of awe. "A callow, headstrong boy in possession of the powers of a being from the tertiary subworld! May Almighty Chance prevent anyone from ever retrieving that elixir . . . But for that boy to have it? Imagination boggles and averts its eyes from the prospect!

"He worked harder than I'd ever have thought was in him, I'll credit him for that. He spaced and mixed the sequence of his requests. He wormed out of me some of the intonation patterns for High Archaic, and only after a long interval, asked for Undle Nine-fingers' Thaumaturgicon. Only after the disaster did I realize that Undle's work includes a selection from the Kairnish Aguademoniad. These are spells for water-demons, and Undle provides a key for transliteration using High Archaic.

"The short of it is he had me summoned to our study in the basement of this house, and he was well prepared for whatever I might do. He said he was giving me a last chance to share in his glory, which meant he would have been glad of my guidance in the actual speaking of the spell he had uncovered. He did well to wish guidance, and ill to go on without it!

"He described the spell of incorporation, which was now active within his body, and which would allow him, with a swallow, to make himself the vessel of the elixir. Indeed this is the securest way of holding something like the elixir, whose aura of potency must be so strong as to attract incessant theft spells from other wizards. He had also determined the probable truth of the belief that bonshads are unique among the marine demons in being able to obtain the elixir, whose source lies outside the sea, and thus out of their sphere of power. I urged him to consider why the water demons are never called, though the spells for it are quickly come by. It's because no one wants to call them. Not even the greatest Mages report the fruitful employment of these entities. The limit had been reached. I commanded him to come with me to his father, and render a report of his intentions. The lad- that . . . pup-threw a paralytic powder in my face, I was a powerless witness of the very brief sequel.

"He made the classic error of the amateur; he barely managed the summoning spell adequately, and he made a grave mispronunciation in the spell of control that is woven into the formula of summons. The control spells are always by far the most difficult portion of the whole. It is even said that many entities will overlook slight errors in the summons if they sense that there are also flaws in the control. These latter mistakes they do not overlook.

The boy stood forth boldly and spoke out loudly, and the thing came.

"The slurring of the intonations must have confused its course, for it came up within the wall. The masonry is twelve feet thick down there, and it wrenched itself out of the rock like a drenched cat clawing its way out of water. It was a thing of fur and hooks-tarantula's fur, and hooks to hold you with. Its head was a bouquet of three great spikes, all beaded with the knobs of its eyes. It boomed out of the wall, spraying gravel and dust.

Wimfort's jaw dropped and swung like a tavern sign in the breeze." Here one of our guards made a choking sound, and coughed at some length. Charnall looked demurely at his hands for a moment. Then he went on evenly: "The lad didn't produce another syllable. The thing sprang on him. By the Crack, gentlemen-it had the - quickness of a . . . a stupendous flea. It seized him, spun him, sank its spikes into his back, neck and skull, and sank through the floor with him. They're still shoring up the hole it left in the wall, but the floor shows not the smallest chip or crack."

IV.

There was silence for a moment. "You mentioned hope," I said. Charnall looked at me, and acknowledged the irony with a thin smile. Slowly he rubbed his palms together.

"It sounds unlikely, does it not? As for getting down there we have, as you surely know, our own lit t le hel lmouth not twelve leagues distant, near the ruins of Westforge in the foothills of the Smelt Mountain range. But once down there, you will be without maps of that terrain, and no one knows the size or whereabouts of that sea. And yet, hope we do undeniably have, however slight." As he turned to this topic, he brightened considerably. His gaunt body trembled, I thought, with a scholar's suppressed glee over a rare discovery. He looked at us, probably gauging what we could understand of literary matters.

"I'll spare you details," he went on. "But I began with a faint recollection of a figure generally called the Privateer who had done some exploit, or suffered something, in the Demon Sea long ago."

"But that's-" Barnar said. Charnall begged silence with a gesture. "Patience, good thief-legends, I know, but still relevant. Luckily, so far I have been the most advanced mage that Kamin has found available, as well as being the most intimately acquainted with the boy's plight. For a month now Kamin's funded my efforts to find a solution. Last week I found a poem written about a century ago. Listen to these lines,

gentlemen."

He dragged a chest out from under the table he'd been sitting on, and took a parchment from it. What he read us was nothing more nor less than a garbled version of the third and fourth quatrains of Parple's "Meditation." His men-tion of the Privateer had half prepared us for this. When he was done I said to Barnar, "Do you recall the rest of it, my friend? He's just read us the middle of it, hasn't he?"

Occasionally Barnar can be brought to display his reading. Soon after joining with him, I knew he was fluent in three tongues, but even I was long in learning that he could read High Archaic every bit as well as I. And it's - always a treat at such exhibitions to watch his hearer's bewilderment at the erudition flowing from the mouth of that gruff, battered giant.

Barnar cocked an eyebrow and bowed slightly. " 'A Meditation on Man and Demon,' by Curtus Parple," he intoned, Then he recited it:

Man, for the million million years He's shared the earth with demonkind, Has asked why they, in their ageless lairs So lust for his frail soul and mind.

Whatever hands set the clock of stars Wheeling and wheeling down through time Also sundered those two empires With barriers both now over-climb.

That men should go down to those sunless moors Where Horror and Harm breed deathless forms, Or to the Demon-Sea's littered shores, Or its depths, where riches breed like worms-

That men do this (as the Privateer Gildmirth of Sordon did in his pride) Is no surprise, save that they dare To sail that shape-tormented tide.

But why are netherworld nets flung here, And men snagged out of their mortal terms- Trawled kicking down from life in the air To immortal drowning in monstrous arms?

Early on in the recitation, Charnall had stopped grimacing and started correcting his text to Barnar's version.

Now he looked at us ruefully. "Courage, Charnall," I said. "No one can read everything. Parple's work is highly - esteemed in Karkhmahn-Ra. Moreover, Gildmirth's name is prominent in children's tales thereabouts."

"No doubt you know all I've dug up and more," he said. "Still I won't believe that I've followed a fool's trail, no matter what you may have heard of the legend."

"I won't try to tell you that you have been wrong," I answered. "For all we know, it's one of those tales with a true core. The tradition is not highly specific, after all. Gildmirth is depicted as a master entrepreneur and swindler. His exploits are variously reported, but all the stories agree as to his last feat. He swindled the city of Sordon-Head-his home town-out of a fortune, which he used to finance an expedition down to the Dead Sea.

He did not return. Some sources say he endures in bondage, like so many thousands of lesser souls in that place."

Charnall was much consoled by this. "Splendid! This chimes with my further discovery, and it seems I can tell you something after all. For no more than three generations ago, a man descended to the sea and returned alive, and he returned with gold which Gildmirth the Privateer had gathered for him from the depths. The Swindler of Sordon-Head does indeed endure, gentlemen. He lives, and moves freely in those waters, and yet bound he surely is-time without end. He's held by a ghoulish disease of the will that some being, slipping through his ingenious spells, infected him with. But as he was a man of powers, so he continues to be in his - captivity."

Barnar nodded. "It's said he was a shape-shifter, and that he had five metamorphoses-one for fire, ice, earth, air, and water."

"He has far more than five now," Charnall answered grimly. "I will tell you of that. The source of the information is the merchant Shalla-hedron of Lower Adelfi. It was he who went down to the sea and retrieved some of its wealth. His son recorded Shalla-hedron's experiences in this."

Charnall showed us a massive leather-bound book entitled: "The Life and Personal Recollections, as well as Many pointed Observations, of Grahna-Shalla, son of Shalla-hedron of Lower Adelfi, who Fished in the Demonsea and Returned with Booty Marvelous to Tell."

The scholar threw the book on the table. "Almost every line is about him-the son, an intolerable, vapid ninny with a turgid and interminable style. But there are among the rest two brief pages of priceless information.

The essential thing is that the Privateer's aid can be purchased. What the price is, Shalla-hedron did not report, or his sprout did not remember. All we learn is that 'it is a price easy of the paying, and not missed after.'

"Well now-I didn't say a great hope, did I? It is something at least, to have such an ally, if once you can find him in that place. . . ."

V.

We talked a good deal longer before we told our guards that we were ready with our answer. It was one of the most discouraging conversations I've ever had.

It had seemed unavoidable that we should make the descent to the subworld. But there are, of course, a number of portals, and we'd heard one of them was in Torvaal Canyon, scarcely forty leagues from Darkvent in the Smelt Mountains, where we'd be going down. So there had been some hope that, while we couldn't evade entering that hell, we could at least spare ourselves the soak in the Demon Sea, and make straight for the nearest way out.

But it turned out that Charnall wasn't so mediocre in his craft that he couldn't command Undle Nine-fingers'

Life-Hook. The spell was the great bibliophile's only original creation in thaumaturgy-he used it to secure the loyalty of the slaves who worked in his vast archives. It puts your life in the spellcaster's hand, and until it's removed he can jerk the heart out of you at any time. It also lets him visualize where you are-quite vaguely, but enough to distinguish between sunlight and the subworld's lurid sky. Charnall told us regretfully that he must guard his own life by governing ours very strictly through this means.

It was mortifying! We'd come to the city intending a theft, of course, but were guilty of no more than a week's general reconnoitering when we were taken. It was clear to us now that the order to plant goods in our inn-chamber, and ambush us by night, had come straight from Kamin. The man, after desperate efforts, had faced the fact that wizards great enough to retrieve his son by spells alone were rare; the few he'd managed to approach made it clear what the attitude of the rest would be-that amateurs played with Power at their own risk. Thus we were such things as the stones a soldier flings at some enemy who's just shattered his lance and sword. We were scarcely likely to make a dent on the problem, but Kamin seized us and used us because we lay to hand, and he had nothing else. There was a certain pathos in this, I suppose, but my eyes remained dry. The ignominy! That Nifft the Lean, and Barnar Hammer-hand, should be snared like a pair of wood-hens, trussed with magic, and booted below to fight demons with swords! As we were marched to the councilroom, Barnar and I needed only a few murmurs to agree on our course. Our dignity was going to be salved with Rod-Master Kamin's gold.

That impressive individual was on his feet when we were brought into the chamber, and he turned an august scowl on us that was supposed to strike us like a wintry blast. The man had wide cheeks and small no-nonsense eyes, but he didn't scowl well. It made his neck bunch up on the collar of his gold-brocaded tunic, and made you think of a pig's head on a plate in a grocer's stall.

The councillors were mostly older men, and their silence reflected not Kamin's power, but their own neutrality. We'd gleaned enough of the political picture during our week in town, to know that they were all powerful property-holders. Because Kamin was the son of the city's most beloved Rod-Master, he could usually count on a vital minimum of popular acceptance, and was, within limits, deferred to by the magnates. They would not follow him into disgrace, however, and some of them were said to dislike the prospect of a three- generation dynasty in a post that was traditionally elective. Wimfort's past and his predicament were thus queasy ground for the Rod-Master, and his arrogance with us showed he knew this. He wanted the business done, without protracted discussions aggravating the council's sense of what a burden the boy had recently been on the community. Kamin meant to ram it down our throats and trundle us off quick.

"Now you understand the terms," he said. "If you bring the boy back, your sentences are transmuted. The council has affirmed this measure. Give us your answer: Death, or the journey."