Paul didn’t know this, of course, but while hiding he saw a gworl open a gate to one of the tiers on this planet with the Horn. Paul pushed the gworl into a pool and dived through the gate with the Horn in his hand.
In the years that passed, as he traveled from level to level, the gworl trailing him, he became well acquainted with many sectors of this planet. On the Dracheland level he took the disguise of Baron Horst von Horstmann. But it was on the Amerind level that he was Kickaha, the name he preferred to be known by. Paul Janus Finnegan was someone in his distant past. Memories of Earth grew dim. He made no effort to go back to his home universe. This was a world he loved, though its dangers were many.
Then an Earthman, Robert Wolff, retired in Phoenix, Arizona, was inspecting the basement of a house for sale when the wall opened. He looked into another world and saw Kickaha surrounded by some gworl who’d finally caught up with him. Kickaha couldn’t escape through the gate, but he did throw the Horn through so that the gworl couldn’t have it. Wolff might have thought he was crazy or hallucinating, but the Horn was physical evidence that he wasn’t.
Wolff was unhappy; he didn’t like his Earthly situation. So he blew the Horn, pressing on the buttons to make notes, and he went through the gate. He found himself on the lowest level of the planet, which looked at first like Eden. As time passed, he became rejuvenated, eventually attaining the body he had had when he was twenty-five.
He also fell in love with a woman called Chryseis. Pursued by the gworl, they fled to the next level, meeting Kickaha on the way. Finally, after many adventures, Wolff reached the palace on top of the world, and he discovered that he was Jadawin, the Lord who’d made this little universe.
Later, he and Chryseis were precipitated into a series of adventures in which he met a number of the Lords. He also had to pass through a series of pocket worlds, all of which were traps designed to catch and kill other Lords.
Meanwhile, Kickaha was engaged in a battle with the Bellers, creatures of artificial origin which could transfer their minds to the bodies of human beings. He also met and fell in love with Anana, a female Lord.
While chasing the last survivor of the Bellers, Kickaha and Anana were gated through to Earth. Kickaha liked Earth even less than he remembered liking it. It was getting overcrowded and polluted. Most of the changes in the twenty years since he’d left it were, in his opinion, for the worse.
Red Ore, the secret Lord of the Two Earths, found out that he and Anana were in his domain. Urthona, another Lord, stranded on Earth for some time, also became Kickaha deadly enemy. Kickaha found out that Wolff, or Jadawin, and Chryseis were prisoners of Red Ore. But they’d escaped through a gate to the lavalite world. Now Jadawin and Chryseis were roaming somewhere on its everchanging surface, if they were still alive. And he, Kickaha, had lost the Horn of Shambarimen and Anana. He’d never get out of this unpleasant nerve-stretching world unless he somehow found a gate. Finding it wasn’t going to do him any good unless he had some open-sesame to activate the gate, though. And he couldn’t leave then unless he found Anana alive or dead.
For that matter, he couldn’t leave until he found Wolff and Chryseis. Kickaha was a very bad enemy but a very good friend.
He had also always been extremely independent, self-assured, and adaptable. He’d lived for over twenty years without any roots, though he had been a warrior in the tribe of Hrowakas and thought of them as his people. But they were all gone now, slaughtered by the Bellers. He was in love with the beautiful Anana, who, though a Lord, had become more humane because of his influence.
For some time now he’d been wanting to quit this wandering always-changing-identities life. He wanted to establish himself and Anana some place, among a people who’d respect and maybe even love him. There he and Anana would settle down, perhaps adopt some children. Make a home and a family.