A personage of such marked cerebral bent as the thaumaturge of Goimr could not, of course, afford to be troubled by the vulgar exigencies of attending his own person. Accordingly, Zulkeh had taken for the purpose an apprentice. This individual, one Shelyid, was evidently an orphan, for he had been discovered one evening by the wizard in a crude basket placed before the door to the death house. Zulkeh had at once taken in the wretch, not, it must be admitted, as an act of kindness, but rather in the pursuit of science. For the unfortunate Shelyid had been cursed with a most disgusting physiognomy. The victim of dwarfdom, the wretched Shelyid’s runtish body was ill served and thus doubly cursed by bad nerves, the slightest agitation of which would produce the most indecorous results: pox, palsy, jitters, quivers, tremors, convulsions, paroxysms, fevers, the staggers, the jerks, shortness of breath, frequent and uncontrolled excretion, irregularities of the pulse, lock-jaw, ague, fidgets, timorousness, and a general feeling of social inferiority. These, of course, the classic symptoms of that most dread of nervous conditions, hysteria follicularia, the uncontrolled growth and spread of hair upon the body.
The sorcerer had taken in the much-afflicted Shelyid in the belief that the dwarf was unnaturally wrought, the creature of some puissant though unknown power in the universe. For many years did the wizard peruse his scrolls and tomes, searching for some clue to the dwarf’s provenance. Finding nothing, he turned to a consideration of events in the world at large which might be relevant to Shelyid’s origin. But in truth the year of the gnome’s discovery was a remarkably quiescent year, at least by the standards of the modern turmoil. Only two events of general historic interest had occurred: the publication—much to the outrage of the Ecclesiarchs—of Father Cosmo Sfondrati-Piccolomini’s infamous letter from the Sssuj, and the mysterious disappearance of the Colossus of Ozarae. As both these events occurred in lands far distant from Goimr, and as no connection with Shelyid’s arrival was discernible, the wizard dismissed these coincidences from his mind.
The time came when Zulkeh drew his conclusions and summoned the dwarf to his chambers.
“Shelyid,” spoke the mage, “I have determined the source of your squalidness.”
“Oh, master!” cried Shelyid, fairly fainting from joy and expectation. “You are the wisest and most powerful of wizards!”
“Indeed,” concurred Zulkeh. “The truth was most trickily hidden from my powers, most cunningly disguised from my perceptions.”
“Yes, yes!” quivered the dwarf.
“I perceive now that my error lay in my too great wisdom, for it was natural that I should assume that your affliction lay in some supernatural source, whereas it is in fact purely commonplace. Thus I tell you that you are in truth not an occult but a genetic specimen. And though the world in its ignorance perceives in you nothing but an odious eyesore—scrofulous, repulsive and loathsome—that behind this veneer my genius has penetrated to the truth. To wit, that you are in fact nothing but an odious eyesore—scrofulous, repulsive and loathsome.”
The wizard continued in this vein, opening up to Shelyid’s understanding the wondrous and tortured path of logic whereby Zulkeh had arrived at the essence beneath the appearance. But it must be admitted that his labor was in vain, for the dwarf had long since fainted dead away, whether in awe of such deep and profound thoughts or in horror at the now-revealed permanence of his fate, it is difficult to say. Fortunately for the dwarf, his years of service to the wizard had reconciled this latter to Shelyid’s limitations, and Zulkeh concluded that he would retain the runt as his apprentice, despite Shelyid’s now-demonstrated lack of worth.
Thus, at this the beginning of our tale, do we find our principal dramatis personae ensconced at Goimr, the sorcerer earning an irregular income by his knowledge of physic, or, on those all too frequent occasions when none sought his services, by dispatching Shelyid into the tombs to scratch over the possessions of the long dead, extract the occasional gold tooth, and whatnot.
* * *
And now it is time to introduce myself, for I am your narrator; and, though I subscribe to the ancient wisdom that a tale’s narrator should be as unobtrusive as possible, yet it is mete that the gentle reader should know somewhat of the provenance of this tale, lest he become afflicted with false doubts concerning its veracity and authenticity.