“I understand thou hast some questions,” he says, pausing to gasp between several words.

“You understand correctly. I've three.”

“Only three, Holy Horus? That means one set of entrails will doubtless do for all. Surely, a god as wise as thyself could think of more questions. Since we have the necessary materials it is a shame to waste them. It's been so long…”

“Three, nevertheless, are all the questions I have for the entrail-oracle."

“Very well, then,” sighs Freydag. “In that case, we shall use his,” and he indicates with his blade one gray-bearded man whose dark eyes are fixed upon his own. “Boltag is the name.”

“You know him?”

“He is a distant cousin of mine. Also, he is the Lord Uiskeagh's chief scrier-a charlatan, of course. It is good fortune that has finally delivered him into my hands.”

The one called Boltag spits upon the Times obituary section when this is spoken. “Thou are the fraud, oh mighty misreader of innards!” says he.

“Liar!” cries Freydag, scrambling to his side and seizing him by the beard. “This ends thy infamous career!” and he slits the other’s belly. Reaching in, he draws forth a handful of entrails and spreads them upon the floor. Boltag cries, moans, lies still. Freydag slashes along the bending length of the intestines, spreading their contents with his fingers. He crouches low and leans far forward. “Now, what be thy questions, son of Osiris?” he inquires.

“First,” says Horus, “where may I find the Prince Who Was A Thousand? Second, who is the emissary of Anubis? Third, where is he now?”

Freydag mumbles and prods at the steaming stuff upon the floor. Boltag moans once again and stirs.

Horus attempts to read the thoughts of the scrier, but they tumble about so that finally it is as if he were staring out the room’s one window. Then Freydag speaks:

“In the Citadel of Marachek,” he says, “at Midworlds’ Center, there shalt thou meet with one who can take thee into the presence thou seekest.”

“… Strangely,” mutters Boltag, gesturing with his head, “thou hast read that part aright. But thy failing vision-was clouded-by that bit of mesentery thou hast erroneously mixed-into things…” With a mighty effort Boltag rolls nearer, gasps, “And thou-dost not tell-Great Horus-that he will meet with mighty peril-and, ultimately-failure…”

“Silence!” cries Freydag. “I did not call thee in for a consultation!”

“They are my innards! I will not have them misread by a poseur!”

“The next two answers are not yet come clear, dear Horus,” says Freydag, slashing at another length of entrail.

“False seer!” sobs Boltag. "Marachek will also lead him to the emissary of Anubis-whose name is spelt out in my blood-there-on the editorial page! That name-being-Wakim…”

“Oh false!” cries Freydag, slashing further.

“Hold!” says Horus, his hand falling upon the man’s shoulder. “Your colleague speaks truly in one respect, for I know his present name to be Wakim.”

Freydag pauses, considers the editorial page.

“Amen,” he agrees. “Even an amateur may suffer an occasional flash of insight”

“… So it seems I am destined to meet with Wakim after all, if I go to the place called Marachek-and go there I must. But as to my second question: Beyond the name of Wakim, I wish to know his true identity. Who was he before Lord Anubis renamed him and sent him forth from the House of the Dead?”

Freydag moves his head nearer the floor, stirs the stuff before him, hacks at another length.

“This thing, Glorious Horus, is hidden from me. The oracle will not reveal it-“

“Dotard…!” gasps Boltag. “… It is there, so-plain- to see…”

Horus reaches after the gutless seer’s dying thought, and the hackles rise upon his neck as he pursues it. But no fearsome name is framed within his mind, for the other has expired.

Horus covers his eyes and shudders, as a thing so very near to the edge of comprehension suddenly fades away and is gone.

When Horus lowers his hand, Freydag is standing once more and smiling down upon his cousin’s corpse.

“Mountebank!” he says, sniffing, and wipes his hands upon his apron.

A strange, small, beastly shadow stirs upon the wall.

ARMS AND THE STEEL MAN

Diamond hooves striking the ground, rising, falling again.

Rising…

Wakim and the Steel General face one another, unmoving.

A minute goes by, then three, and now the falling hooves of the beast called Bronze come down with a sound like thunder upon the fairground of Blis, for, each time that they strike, the force of their falling is doubled.

It is said that a fugue battle is actually settled in these first racking moments of regard, before the initial temporal phase is executed, in these moments which will be wiped from the face of Time by the outcome of the striving, never to have actually existed.

The ground shakes now as Bronze strikes it, and blue fires come forth from his nostrils, burning downward into Blis.

Wakim glistens with perspiration now; and the Steel General's finger twitches, the one upon which he wears his humanity-ring.

Eleven minutes pass.

Wakim vanishes.

The Steel General vanishes.

Bronze descends again, and tents fall down, buildings shatter, cracks appear within the ground.

Thirty seconds ago, Wakim is standing behind the General and Wakim is standing before the General, and the Wakim who stands behind, who has just arrived is that instant, clasps his hands together and raises them for a mighty blow upon that metal helm-

–while thirty-five seconds ago, the Steel General appears behind the Wakim of that moment of Time draws back his hand and swings it-

–while the Wakim of thirty seconds ago, seeing himself in fugue, delivering his two-handed blow, is released to vanish, which he does, into a time ten seconds before, when he prepares to emulate his future image observed-

–as the General of thirty-five seconds before the point of attack sees himself draw back his hand, and vanishes to a time twelve seconds previously…

All of these, because a foreguard in Time is necessary to preserve one’s future existence…

… And a rearguard, one’s back…

… While all the while, somewhere/when/perhaps, now, Bronze is rearing and descending, and a probable city trembles upon its foundation.

… And the Wakim of forty seconds before the point of attack, seeing his arrival, departs twenty seconds backward-one minute of probable time therefore being blurred by the fugue battle, and so subject to alteration.

… The General of forty-seven seconds before the point of attack retreats fifteen to strike again, as his self of that moment observes him and drops back eight-

… The Wakim of one minute before goes back ten seconds-

Fugue!

Wakim behind the Steel General, attacking, at minus seventy seconds sees the General behind Wakim, attacking, as both see him and his other see both.

All four vanish, at a pace of eleven, fifteen, nineteen and twenty-five seconds.

… And all the while, somewhere/when/perhaps, Bronze rears, falls, and shock waves go forth.

The point of initial encounter draws on, as General before General and Wakim before Wakim face and fugue.

Five minutes and seven seconds of the future stand in abeyance as twelve Generals and nine Wakims look upon one another.

… Five minutes and twenty-one seconds, as nineteen Wakims and fourteen Generals glare in frozen striking-stances.

Eight minutes and sixteen seconds before the point of attack, one hundred twenty-three Wakims and one hundred thirty-one Generals assess one another and decide upon the moment…

… To attack en masse, within that instant of time, leaving their past selves to shift for themselves in defense-perhaps, if this instant be the wrong one, to fall, and so end this encounter, also. But things must end somewhere. Depending upon the lightning calculations and guesses, each has picked this point as the best for purposes of determining the future and holding the focus. And as the armies of Wakims and the General clash together, the ground begins to rumble beneath their feet and the fabric of Time itself protests this use which has been made of its dispositions. A wind begins to blow and things become unreal about them, wavering between being and becoming and after-being. And somewhere Bronze smashes his diamonds into the continent and spews forth gouts of blue fire upon it. Corpses of bloodied and broken Wakims and fragments of shattered Generals drift through the twisting places beyond the focus of their struggles and are buffeted by the winds. These be the dead of probability, for there can be no past slaying now, and the future is being remade. The focus of the fugue has become this moment of intensity, and they clash with a force that sends widening ripples of change outward through the universe, rising, diminishing, gone by, as Time once more tricks history around events.