A great flapping buffeted the air; a black shape with a hideous visage peered down. It lowered a talon; Cugel was lifted and carried off to the north, betrayed a second time by a misplaced pervulsion.

For a day and a night the demon dew, grumbling and moaning. Somewhat after dawn Cugel was cast down on a beach and the demon thundered off through the sky.

There was silence. To right and left spread the gray beach. Behind rose the foreshore with a few clumps of salt-grass and spinifex. A few yards up the beach lay the splintered cage in which once before Cugel had been delivered to this same spot. With head bowed and arms clasped around his knees, Cugel sat looking out across the sea.

— The End —

Cugels Saga

1. FROM SHANGLESTONE STRAND TO SASKERVOY
   1. Flutic
   2. The Inn Of Blue Lamps
2. FROM SASKERVOY TO THE TUSTVOLD MUD-FLATS
   1. Aboard the Galante
   2. Lausicaa
   3. The Ocean of Sighs
3. FROM TUSTVOLD TO PORT PERDUSZ
   1. The Columns
   2. Faucelme
4. FROM PORT PERDUSZ TO KASPARA VITATUS
   1. On the Docks
   2. The Caravan
5. FROM KASPARA VITATUS TO CUIRNIF
   1. The Seventeen Virgins
   2. The Bagful of Dreams
6. FROM CUIRNIF TO PERGOLO
   1. The Four Wizards
   2. Spatterlight

Cugels Saga

CHAPTER I FROM SHANGLESTONE STRAND TO SASKERVOY

1 FLUTIC

IUCOUNU (known across Almery as 'the Laughing Magician') had worked one of his most mordant jokes upon Cugel. For the second time Cugel had been snatched up, carried north across the Ocean of Sighs, dropped upon that melancholy beach known as Shanglestone Strand.

Rising to his feet, Cugel brushed sand from his cloak and adjusted his hat. He stood not twenty yards from that spot upon which he had been dropped before, also at the behest of Iucounu. He carried no sword and his pouch contained no terces.

The solitude was absolute. No sound could be heard but the sigh of the wind along the dunes. Far to the east a dim headland thrust into the water, as did another, equally remote, to the west. To the south spread the sea, empty except for the reflection of the old red sun.

Cugel's frozen faculties began to thaw, and a whole set of emotions, one after the other, made themselves felt, with fury taking precedence over all.

Iucounu would now be enjoying his joke to the fullest. Cugel raised his fist high and shook it toward the south, "Iucounu, at last you have exceeded yourself! This time you will pay the price! I, Cugel, appoint myself your nemesis!"

For a period Cugel strode back and forth, shouting and cursing: a person long of arm and leg, with lank black hair, gaunt cheeks, and a crooked mouth of great flexibility. The time was middle afternoon, and the sun, already half-way into the west, tottered down the sky like a sick animal. Cugel, who was nothing if not practical, decided to postpone the remainder of his tirade; more urgent was lodging for the night. Cugel called down a final curse of pulsing carbuncles upon Iucounu, then, picking his way across the shingle, he climbed to the crest of a dune and looked in all directions.