"A lot of what you told me about the book seems so familiar to me, as if I already know about it," Vrenli revealed.
"But I would really like to know how I got here, why you know my name and why you told me so much about the book."
Nagulaj did not answer.
He slipped his chain over his head and opened it. Slowly, the small, weathered animal bones and teeth slid onto the floor, where Nagulaj gazed in silence.
"I have to go back to Astinhod. I'm sure my friends are worried about me," said Vrenli.
The sage got up without saying anything and went into his tent, from where he returned to the fire a little later with a long-stemmed pipe made of dark wood. Vrenli looked at the pipe shaped like a bull’s head with red eyes made of two fiery rubies.
"The concern for a friend should never be as great as the concern for your own destiny, which life has given you and which each of us follows, even the simplest man," Nagulaj explained to him, taking a brown ball of dried mataii tree resin from a small pouch and putting a piece of it into the round opening of the pipe.
"Can't I travel back to Astinhod with the bowl?" Vrenli wanted to know.
"That's not possible! As far as I know, the portal bowls can only be used by the mages of Horunguth Island," Nagulaj replied as he pressed the resin more firmly into the bowl with his thumb.
"I don't understand. The bowl brought me here, why shouldn't it take me back to Master Drobal's Tower?" Vrenli wondered, got up and went into the tent, where he stood in the bowl and waited anxiously to be taken back to Astinhod.
Nothing happened.
Vrenli sadly went back outside the tent and sat down by the fire.
"I don't understand all this. You say that only the mages of Horunguth Island can travel with the bowl, but then why is it in your tent?" he groaned and questioningly looked at Nagulaj.
"You'll have to ask Master Drobal that, not me. I don't use the bowl; it was in this place long before I pitched my tent here. A very long time ago," Nagulaj replied.
He pulled a thin, burning branch out of the fire and lit the pipe with it.
That's strange. The most unusual things have been happening since I met Gorathdin in Abketh, mused Vrenli.
"How am I ever supposed to get to Horunguth Island alone or find my way back to Astinhod? Can't you come with me, Nagulaj? Please!" begged Vrenli with a pleading look.