"So I hiked to Othomae and joined the Grand Bastard's pikemen. For a year I marched back and forth on the drill ground while officers bawled: 'Slant pikes! Forward, 'arch/' We had one battle, with a Free Company that thought to sack Othomae. But the Grand Bastard routed them with a charge of his newfangled lobster-plated knights on their great, puffing plowhorses, so that no foe came within bowshot of us foot. At the end of my enlistment I agreed with my father that the mercenary's life was not for me.
"When my time was up, I wandered into Xylar. I arrived on the day they were executing the king and choosing his successor. I suppose I had heard of this curious custom from my schoolmaster, years before; but I had never been to Xylar and hence had forgotten it. So, when a round, dark thing the size of a football came hurtling through the air at my face, I caught it. Then I found to my horror that I held a human head, freshly severed so that the blood ran up my arms. Ugh! And I learnt that I was the new king of Xylar.
"At first, I was in a daze as they clad me in shining raiment, plied me with delicious food and drink, and chose beautiful wives for me. But it did not take me long to learn what the catch was—that after five years I, too, should lose my head.
"Well, there are always more garments and food and drink and women to be had, but if a man loses his head he cannot grow another. After a year of going through the motions of kingship, as old Grallon and Turonus instructed me, I resolved to escape from this gin by fair means or foul.
"The first method I tried was simply to sneak out and run for it. But the Xylarians were used to this and easily caught me; a whole company of the army—the so-called Royal Guard—is made up of men expert with the net and the lariat, whose task it is to see that the king escape not. I tried to enlist confederates; they betrayed me. I tried to bribe my guards; they pocketed my money and betrayed me.
"The third year, I essayed to be so good a king that the Xylarians would relent and change their custom. I made many reforms. I studied the law and strove to see justice done. I studied finance and learnt to lower taxes without weakening the kingdom. I studied the military art and put down the brigands who had gathered around Dol and the pirates that had been raiding our coast. I don't mind admitting that battles fill me with trepidation—
"But the thought of the ax dismayed me even more, so that I ended by making these evildoers fear me even more than I feared them."
"Whose verse did you quote?" asked Rhithos.
"A certain obscure poetaster, bight Jorian of Ardamai. But to continue: At the end of the year, all agreed that King Jorian, despite his youth, was the best ruler they had had in many a reign.
"But would the Xylarians change their stupid law? Not for anything. In fact, they posted extra guards to make sure that I did not escape. I couldn't go for a ride, to hunt or to chase bandits or just for pleasure, without a squad of lariat-men from the steppes of Shven surrounding me lest I make a break for freedom.
"For a time I was in despair. I abandoned myself to the pleasures of the flesh—to food, drink, women, and all-night revels. Hence, by the end of my fourth year, I was a fat, flabby wreck.
"I caught cold that winter, and the cold grew into a fever that well-nigh slew me. Whilst I was raving in a delirium, a man appeared unto me in a vision. Sometimes he looked like my father, who had died that year. I had been sending my parents ample money for their comfort but durst not invite them to Xylar, lest I have a chance to escape but be unable to take it lest my parents be held as hostages for my return.
"Sometimes the man in the vision seemed to be one of the great gods: Heryx, or Psaan, or even old Zevatas himself. Whoever he was, he said: 'Jorian, lad, I am ashamed of thee, with all thy gifts of mind and body, giving up in the face of a little threat like the loss of thy head. Up and at them, boy! Thou mayst or mayst not escape if thou try, but thou wilt certainly not if thou try not. So what hast thou to lose?'
"When I got well, I took the vision's words to heart. I sent away all the women save my four legal wives, to whom I added a fifth of my own choice. I trained in the gymnasium and the tilt yard until I was more fit than ever. And I read everything in the royal library that might possibly help me to escape. I spent a year in training and study. And 'tis easier for an eel to play the bagpipes than for a man to train and study at the same time. When you train, you're too spent to study of evens; and when you study, you find you lack the requisite time for training. I could only do my best.
"Reasoning that, if the gods had in sooth condemned me to the life of a wandering adventurer, I had best be a good one, I studied whatever might be useful for that career. I learnt to speak Mulvani and Feridi and Shvenic. I practised not only with the conventional arms but also with the implements of men beyond the law: the sandbag, the knuckle duster, the strangler's cord, the poison ring, and so on. I hired Merlois the actor to teach me the arts of disguise, impersonation, and dialectical speech.
"During the last year of my reign, also, I gathered a squad of the most unsavory rogues in the Twelve Cities: a cutpurse, a swindler, a forger, a bandit, a founder of cults and secret societies, a smuggler, a blackmailer, and two burglars. I kept them in luxury whilst they taught me all their tricks. Now I can scale the front of a building, force a window, pick a lock, open a strongbox, and—if caught in the act— convince the householder that I am a good spirit sent by the gods to report on his conduct.
"As a result of these studies, I have become, one might say, a good second-rater in a variety of fields. Thus I am not so deadly a fencer as Tartonio, my former master-at-arms; nor so skilled a rider as Korkuin, my master of the horse; nor so adept a burglar as the master thief Enas; nor so learned in the law as Justice Grallon; nor so efficient an administrator as Chancellor Turonus; nor so fluent a linguist as Stimber, my librarian. But I can beat all of them save Tartonio with sword and buckler, and out-ride all save Korkuin, and speak more tongues than any save Stimber, and so on.
"Through my readings, I learnt of the Forces of Progress. One of my predecessors had closed the College of Magical Arts and banished all magicians from Xylar, and his successors had maintained this prohibition—"
"I know that," growled Rhithos. "Why think you I dwell up here in the wilds? To escape the net of laws and regulations that the Cities fling about the student of the higher wisdom. True, in none of the other Twelve Cities is the law so stringent as in Xylar; but in all of 'em are rules and licenses and inspectors to cope with. To the forty-nine Mulvanian hells with 'em! Go on."
Jorian: "Hence the only such practitioners in Xylar are mere witches and hedge-wizards—furtive lawbreakers, eking out a shadowy existence by amulets and potions and predictions, half of 'em fake. After I had tried several local witches of both sexes, with unpleasing results, I got in touch with Doctor Karadur, who came to Xylar as a holy man and as such beyond reach of our law. My escape from the scaffold was his doing."