Expanded from 'The Door to the Garden', Fantasy Crosswinds #2, 1977.
John O'Dare lived the "savage" life of an adventurer, then settled down and became a writer of adventure novels. Good-selling ones, too, it seems. Now he's sitting in an easy chair in his home, enjoying the good life, a good book, and staring at the big-ass ring he inherited from his ancestor, Lord Donal O'Dare, witha big-ass stone and weird writing no one can decipher or identify.
His reverie is interrupted when he starts to have an acid flashback - except acid hadn't been invented yet so WTF. After several hallucinogenic moments a skinny guy in a tunic and sandals suddenly climbs through his window. Then apologizes for climbing through the wrong window. O'Dare figures this guy is an escaped lunatic, but he soon finds out his visitor is named Xatha. And he comes from somewhere else. Like way else.
It seems Xatha was farting around in some gorgeous garden at "the rim of the world" that is entered by portals or gates. Everything was going just ducky until he got attacked by a bat-winged hamburger snatcher he calls "Begog". He escaped through one of the gates, into our world, but Begog clawd him and sure enough, he's got the wounds to prove it. Oh and by the way that's his ring, thank you very much! At that moment, Begog himself shows up, so O'Dare and Xatha flee through another portal and end up back in Xatha's homeland. (Here Pulver picks up the story).
Xatha's homeland is straight out of Lord Dunsany which means its pretty, verdant, wondrous, lovely, charming blah blah blah in a pile of superlative adjectives (don't get me wrong, I like Dunsany).
Xatha takes him to his home city and introduces him to local hot chick Elethia, The Esteemed Father - their Grand Pooba, and his own pops, Zaga - who's way more manly than Xatha. T.E.F. explains that Begog and his armies of orc-y things have been assailing them for centuries, due to screw-ups their ancestors made. Oh and yes, it eas Donal O'Dare who crossed the worlds and took the ring off of them. The gem in the ring (and other pieces of jewelry) are what keep Begog at bay. But they're running low on juice and need to be recharged. They're suddenly attacked by baddies but O'Dare, Xatha and Zaga chop them all up into hamburger. Off they go to recharge the gems. Riding on the back of pretty dragons.
All goes well till they reach their destination of Ssian-ho, another city, which they find has been reduced to rubble, and Xatha's brother killed in the conflict. They're attacked again, and start piling up bodies of baddies until Begog hisself shows up. It looks like curtains for our heroes until an orb of light suddenly shows up and makes Begog vanish.
Back home, Elethia, now enaged to O'Dare, elects to go with him and Xatha to find more gems. They find them, but are attacked again by Begog, who knocks O'Dare into a portal and back to Earth. Where people think he's nuts. But he's gonna get back there. And he has a plan...
Well this one at least is different, insofar as Pulver takes it in directions I can't even imagine Howard going. I mean Dunsanian fruit salad just wasn't R.E.H.'s style.
In any other respects this is routine Burroughs+Dunsany+Lovecraft stuff. Begog is kinda cool though.
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