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he had to avoid grew too long to remember.
    And he persevered in his stealing, thereby committing the double sin, making enemies on both sides of the law.
    It caught up with him in Necremnos.
    Mornings and evenings he did the usual phony sorcerer spiel.
    "Hai! Great Lady! Before eyes of woman renown for beauty and wisdom sits student of famed Grand Master Istwan of Matayanga, self, working way west at Master's command, to seek knowledge of great minds beyond Mountains of M'Hand. Am young, true, but trained in all manner of secrets beauteous. Am also Divinator Primus. Can show how to win love, or tell if man loves already. Have in hand certain rare and secret beauty potions hitherto concocted for wives of Monitor of Escalon only, ladies known across nethermost east for teenlike beauty unto fiftieth year."
    The appeal went on and on, tailored to any woman who showed interest. He sold a lot of swamp water and odiferous juices and ichors.
    Between his morning and evening shifts he prowled the marketplaces, picking pockets.
    And by night he squandered his take.
    Then a pickpocket victim recognized him while he was at his more innocent trade.
    He tried bluffing it out, packing his gear and loading the donkey while he argued. But when a policeman showed signs of believing his accuser, he fled.
    He was no more agile or fleet than he had been in Argon. He relied on cunning. Cunning was his edge on the rest of the world.
    Cunning betrayed him.
    The place he chose to go to ground was an outpost of a gambler he had bilked the autumn before.
    "Seize him!" was his first intimation of disaster.
    A pair of hoodlums, one lank and scarred, the other fat and scarred, piled on.
    Beyond their flailing limbs the youth spied a man who had promised him a slow flaying at their parting.
    He panicked.
    From his sleeve he slipped the knife he used to cut pursestrings.
    And an instant later his lean attacker wore a second, scarlet-gushing mouth below one opened in a silent scream.
    Blood drenched the fat boy. It was hot and salty. He lost his breakfast as he writhed to get away from the other man.
    This was nothing like getting an old fool to jump off a wall.
    The gambler stared with wide, angry eyes as the fat boy charged him.
    The fat hoodlum tripped the boy. The gambler scuttled out the back door. The youth bounced up, discovered that his antagonist had produced a knife of his own.
    A crowd had begun gathering. It was time for him to leave.
    His opponent would not let him.
    He wanted to delay the fat boy till his employer brought reinforcements.
    The youth feigned a rush, whipped to one side. He darted out the back door while the fat man was off balance.
    It became a hell night. He scrambled across rooftops and crawled through sewers. Half the city was after him. Watchmen were everywhere. Hoodlums turned out by the hundred, lured by a bounty the gambler posted.
    It was time to seek greener pastures. But only one direction lay open now. The west to which he had so long claimed to be bound.
    He had not yet learned his lessons. He fully intended to pursue his habitual lifestyle once he crossed the mountains.
    Even there he would be pursued by a doom of his own devising.
    From a safely distant hilltop he laughed at, and hurled mockeries at, Necremnos.
    Grinning, he told himself, "Am fine mocker. Finest mocker. Greatest mocker. Is good idea. Henceforth, sir," and he pounded his chest with his fist, "I dub thee Mocker."
    It was the nearest thing to a name he would ever have.
    He travelled south by remote trails till he reached a staging town on the outskirts of Throyes, where he wrangled a waterboy's job with a caravan bound for Vorgreberg, in Kavelin, in the Lesser Kingdoms, west of the Mountains of M'Hand.
    The caravan crossed vast, uninhabited plains, rounded the ruins of Gog-Ahlan, then climbed into mountains more tall and inhospitable than any Mocker had seen in the far east. The trail snaked through the narrow confines of the Savernake Gap, past its