"Ask yourself!" raged Pinny Penny, shaking the scepter threateningly. "Everything was quiet and peaceful till you and your necklaces arrived at this palace; there's some magic trickery about them and about you. Don't think I was fooled by that horse story, a horse does not appear out of the air. Well, now the King's gone--the horse is gone and unless you are gone in ten seconds I'll have you thrown out of the window. Ten seconds--do you hear? This crown and scepter came to me through no wish or choice of my own, but since they did come to me I AM THE KING! And I intend to rule this country. My first official act will be to rid myself of your filthy presence. Now, then, start walking, merchant, and don't stop till you reach the border. Twenty guards will follow to see you safely out of the country." "You wait till Skamperoo hears about this!" blustered Matiah, backing away in alarm from the determined little Prime Minister. "I'm more important to him than anyone else." "Then why aren't you with him?" inquired Pinny Penny shrewdly. "No, wherever he's gone he has gone without you. I am the King and I do not need you, so be off!" Clapping his hands, Pinny gave a sharp command to the guards, who came hurrying in answer to his summons. Retiring rapidly to escape the tips of their sharp spikes, Matiah sullenly began his long march. It was nightfall by the time the little company reached the edge of Skampavia. Here, in a wilderness of rock and rubble, the guardsmen left him with food enough for a couple of days and stern warnings never to return to Skampavia. Far to the west the miserable merchant could see the comforting lights of Merryland, but he had no desire to go there or east to the Kingdom of Ix. Instead, he stared hopelessly across the wilderness to where the heaving sands of the Deadly Desert gleamed like molten silver in the moonlight. "How had that rascally monarch ever escaped without his seeing him? How could he ever safely cross the Deadly Desert and hope to reach Oz? How had Skamperoo, who seemed so dumb and foolish, ever discovered the secret of using the magic emeralds when he himself had failed to do so? How? How? How?" Crouched on a flat rock, munching one of the sandwiches left by the guards, Matiah scowled evilly across the grim desert, his thoughts as treacherous and shifting as its deadly sands. CHAPTER 15 The Dooners! All day, with only a short pause for lunch, Pigasus had flown north, Dorothy keeping a sharp lookout for Thunder Mountain or mountains of any sort, but the wild, desolate country through which they were flying was flat, desert-like and apparently perfectly uninhabited.