The Wazir and the Witch

by Hugh Cook

  Why then had she remained in power for so long?

  On Untunchilamon, the Family Thrug came to power at the beginning of Talonsklavara. Lonstantine Thrug seized his opportunity and overthrew Wazir Sin in a move which owed everything to bloody ferocity and political opportunism; and such were the initial uncertainties of civil war that none wished to be the first to oppose him. For any wazir of Untunchilamon must necessarily support one side or another in Talonsklavara or else incur the wrath of both - and who could say which side would triumph?

  When Lonstantine was incarcerated in the Dromdanjerie as a consequence of his mounting insanity, his daughter Justina inherited his throne and the very uncertainties which supported it. Later, when the victory of Aldarch Three became a probability, her position weakened, to the point where Aquitaine Varazchavardan had dared to coup against her.

  Thereafter she had stayed alive (and in power) by bluff, luck, the loyalty of friends, and her own audacious skills at political manoeuvring.

  But, now that Aldarch Three was known to have triumphed in Yestron (Manthandros Trasilika had been a fraud, and his priest Jean Froissart no better, but interrogation of sailors from the Oktobdoj had proved much of their news to be true), there was no rational basis for believing that Justina’s power would continue much longer.

  While Master Ek belonged to that multitude which actually believed the Crab to be temporarily ruling Injiltaprajura (with Chegory Guy and Olivia Qasaba as secretary-couriers), Ek nevertheless saw that as a temporary aberration, and quite reasonably believed (on the basis of the patterns of centuries of recorded history) that the Crab would shortly lose interest in political endeavour.

  Ek therefore had no long-term worries about the Crab, though he believed that dignitary must be treated with the greatest caution in the short term. Rather, he saw his true enemy as being Justina Thrug; and saw her murder as being the best way to return the island to rightful rule.

  Only:

  The first person to rise against the Thrug would most surely die.

  Thus Master Ek stirred up the mob, knowing his mob would eventually (later if not sooner) storm the pink palace and lynch the Empress Justina, for every mob is a hero. And if the Crab then chose to kill mobsters by the hundreds, what of it?

  ‘People die by thousands every day,’ said Ek. ‘A human life is worth nothing.’

  Adding a mental note to say: except my own.

  Thanks to her spies, the Empress Justina was fully aware of Ek’s intentions. And, to her great frustration, she durst not have him killed; for his murder would be immediately attributed to her by the mob, thus precipitating the riot she hoped to forestall as long as possible.

  Justina’s temper was not improved when she heard alarming rumours about her reluctant ally, Aquitaine Varazchavardan. According to rumour, Varazchavardan was trying to bargain with Master Ek. The terms proposed were simple: Varazchavardan would give Ek his full and unstinting cooperation in overthrowing the empress if Ek promised to use his influence to obtain a full pardon for Varazcharvardan from Aldarch Three.

  Ek refused.

  As far as Master Ek was concerned, Varazchavardan would make a most welcome addition to the pile of corpses which Aldarch III would surely demand once Untunchilamon was firmly within his grasp. Aldarch Three had a special liking for eminent corpses.

  Furthermore, as Ek knew full well, Varazchavardan had profited for years from the illegal trade in liquor; but Varazchavardan had always denied Ek the very modest tithe which the High Priest had asked be paid to the Temple of Zoz the Ancestral. Now Justina’s Master of Law was going to suffer for his impiety.

  Justina was most relieved when she learnt that Ek had rejected Varazchavardan as an ally. If there was to be war on Untunchilamon, she wanted Varazchavardan to be with her, not against her. She also took a certain grim satisfaction in the thought that, if she went down, Varazchavardan would fall in turn. He deserved it. In the not-so-distant past, he had caused an enormous amount of trouble by trying to coup against her. More recently, Justina’s much-loved albinotic ape, the irrepressible Vazzy, had been murdered by unknown assassins; and, while Justina could prove nothing, her dark suspicions led her to believe that Varazchavardan was responsible.

  Did Varazchavardan’s discomfort give her sweet dreams? Did she delight in the thought of the terrors of torture besetting her would-be traitor? In answer to these questions it need only be said that the Empress Justina was the daughter of a Yudonic Knight. Sweet dreams became her well.

  Yet, while she slept, others lay wakeful.

  Those who slept least were those born amidst the rocklands of Ang, high in the purity of the cold mountains in the heart of the Izdimir Empire. There men build with rough rock and order the world with the laws of grey stone, and women kneel before men in the name of Zoz the Ancestral and take into their mouths the strength of men, and a great contentment is within the hearts of men.

  And they lifted up their eyes and beheld the dark mass of Justina’s palace, a place built of shameful pink like that a woman hides within her naos. And there, it was known, the Thrug disported itself in a pool of water, swimming in her nakedness beneath the swollen moon; and the Thrug was of flesh, yet without shame; and a great loathing was within the hearts of the men who beheld it.

  They knew they must do something about it.

  And, by the light of day, many spoke openly of this.

  When Justina realized how rapidly the crisis was approaching, is it any wonder that she began to contemplate desperate measures?

  It was at this time that a band of sober citizens came to Justina with a petition asking for her to exert herself womanfully to suppress the ‘drumming’ cult which was so vexing many of the earnest inhabitants of Injiltaprajura. It would have been sufficient for her to direct them to take their petition to the Crab. Unfortunately, Justina did nothing so sensible. For once, she lost her patience -something she did not do often - and said a great many rash and intemperate things which were later remembered against her.

  Justina has been much maligned in many superficial histories on account of her failure to suppress the drummers at this crucial stage of the power struggle. However, the historian believes it would have made no difference to the outcome of Untunchilamon’s power struggle had Justina beaten every drummer on the island to death. For the drummers were totally irrelevant to politics, the ‘cult’ consisting as it did of the bored and idle young; and the historian trusts that the reader can, without further explanation, see the absurdity of attempting to write Injiltaprajura’s history from a drummer-centred perspective.

  With that stated, let us now turn our attention to our next chapter.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Night.

  And we open to a scene of hot copulation, for the Princess Sabitha is indulging her passions with one of her seafaring friends. Elsewhere, the dreams which rule the sleep of the Empress Justina have changed from fair to foul, but of them more later. For the moment, let us attend to the elegant Sabitha Winolathon Taskinjathura, she of the xanthic eyes and the delicate tongue.

  She is bonking (there are many other words for it, but this one will do) in a much-shadowed scorpion wasteland between Ganthorgruk and the neighbouring slaughterhouse; and as she bonks she screams with delight, sounding for all the world as if her intestines were being wrenched from her gut a fingerlength at a time. These ravaged cries arouse the ire of the conjuror Odolo, a man whose good humour has lately been eroded because his long history of alliance with the Empress Justina now threatens his life.

  Odolo scrambles out of bed.

  He throws open the shutters of his window.

  He takes his water jug and hurls it into the night, intending thereby to secure the death of the Princess Sabitha.

  She remains undead; and, in her ecstasy, screams like a vampire.

  Whereupon Odolo picks up a bowl, a baked yam and a boot, and hurls these objects in turn into the night. It is the boot which makes contact. It scores a direct hit on
the Princess Sabitha and her ardent swain. In moments, both are in flight, scarpering in separate directions.

  The Princess Sabitha flees down Skindik Way, shortly vanishing into the stews of Lubos. A dangerous slum-land, this; but she knows it intimately, and knows also how to take care of herself. Or so she in her youth and innocence supposes.

  Her lover, a lusty seafarer named Hunk, absconds in a different direction. Unfortunately, this takes him into the Dog Worshipper’s Temple at the back of the Dromdanjerie; and, before he realizes his danger, he is attacked by a dozen of his most deadly foes. Hunk was born in Wen Endex; and, though he is of lowly birth, we may nevertheless enroll him (on an honorary basis) in the ranks of the Yudonic Knights. Certainly his fighting prowess deserves to win him such enrolment, for he disables two dogs and nearly kills a third. This represents a considerable accomplishment, particularly since the smallest of these dogs is twice Hunk’s weight. Nevertheless, courage and combative prowess do not suffice. Hunk is pulled down, savaged, killed, then torn to bits. Thus a hero dies, and then is eaten; and shortly nothing is left of him but a scrap of his skull and the final third of his tail.

  And the Princess Sabitha?

  Let the shameful truth be told!

  She has already forgotten him.

  Yes, it is true. Sabitha Winolathon Taskinjathura has encountered another lover, and the pair are singing a passionate duet as a preliminary to the consummation of their fresh-found relationship. In the stews of Lubos they sing, while the drums of the drummers beat thus:

  Blab-mup blab-mup blab-mub blab!

  Rub-thump rub-thump rub-thump rub . . . !

  While the drums beat, the night deepens to ‘those dragon depths in which swim the darker monsters of dreams’, to quote the estimable Mabin Lab Ev.

  Look! Savour the moment. Midnight has arrived. Or (to translate from the Dub) the night’s last half is raping the first out of the way. Or, as the periphrastical Janjuladoola tongue would have it, by the many breathings of a bat’s wing beating has the heat of undokondra been fanned away that now the cool of bardardornootha may begin. (Poetic, perhaps, though bloated poetry; but unfortunately inaccurate, as the watch from midnight to dawn is scarcely a fraction cooler than the stretch which leads to the apotheosis of the ghost bells - bells lately unsounded, unglorified in deference to the harmonic prejudices of the Crab.) The Toxteth is simplest: owl rests, half home.

  Midnight, then.

  Hot is the night in its deepening, hot as virginity surrendering, sweaty as an orgy’s armpit.

  In the docklands of Marthandorthan, in Xtokobrokotok (the big warehouse owned by the drug dealer Firfat Labrat), people are yet awake. For Shabble is conducting a marriage guidance counselling session. The young couple who have sought advice from the High Priest of the Holy Cockroach are of Janjuladoola breed. They are trying to breed but are encountering considerable difficulty in managing the mechanics of that which books of etiquette refer to as ‘the initiating process’.

  Shabble hears their tale.

  What, you may ask, does Shabble know of breeding?

  Enough.

  For when the couple have finished, Shabble asks a very astute question, then says:

  ‘Try doing it lying down.’

  The couple look at him incredulously.

  You must remember that they are of the Janjuladoola people: and, as has been stated elsewhere, the Janjuladoola folk shun the ground. Their very furniture they build top-heavy to show their contempt for gravity and all its works; though the possession of such furniture is a matter much governed by class and caste. Let us note also that, throughout the Izdimir Empire, the use of stilts is reserved for the imperial family; and, in Obooloo, sumptuary codes forbid the wearing of platform shoes to all but those of the highest castes and classes. All of which serves to emphasize the contempt in which gravity and ground alike are held.

  This prejudice against yielding to the demands of planetary physics has contaminated all areas of Janjuladoola culture, including sexuality - and, in particular, pornography. Now it is a feature of pornography that it caters to fantastic desire rather than to the dictates of reality; consequently, the bawdry of Janjuladoola, whether it be verbal, sculptural or delineative in expression, is characterized by one extraordinary but predictable peculiarity, inasmuch as the conjugation of bodies is invariably shown as an activity that takes place either standing up or (more often) while suspended in mid air.

  The pervasive influence of such pornography is demonstrated by a survey of one thousand virgins in the province of Ang, which showed that a full 64 per cent believed that the human body becomes weightless during copulation. Naturally, such expectations often lead to marital difficulties for those amorous but inexperienced couples who fall back upon literary or artistic role models in their pursuit of earthly delights.

  But is Shabble the right person to advise such unfortunates in their search for a practical sexual mechanics?

  What, for example, does Shabble know of orgasm?

  Answer: nothing.

  While Shabble has participated in many orgies (let your mind boggle in its own time, for time and space will not be wasted here in any description of such low and shameful occasions, or in any enumeration of the gleeful rogues and ladies who were therein involved) Shabble has no appreciation of orgasm. While willing partners have in the past endeavoured to remedy this lack of experience, the most cunning exploitation of Shabble’s tactile receptors has succeeded merely in demonstrating that the imitator of suns is ever so slightly ticklish. The ingenuity of experimenters has been somewhat frustrated by the fact that the shining bubble has very limited facilities for physical intercourse with the world; for Shabble has neither outlets nor inlets for anything apart from heat; and the throwing of fire or the absorbing of the same gives Shabble a pleasure as innocent as that which children take in the variously flaring or exploding fireworks of the Dungeon Feast of Obooloo.

  Nevertheless, Shabble is a canny mathematician with a firm grounding in physics both basic and advanced. As this free-floating sphere has moved through human societies with near perfect freedom for the last twenty millennia, it has been given (and has taken) many opportunities to observe human flesh accommodating itself to the demands posited by such physics. And therefore gives advice as good as any which unfortunate young couples would be likely to receive from a doctor.

  ‘Yes,’ says Shabble. ‘Do it lying down. Oh, and use dikle.’

  ‘Eat it, you mean?’ says the boy.

  ‘As an aphrodisiac?’says the girl.

  ‘No, no,’ says Shabble, squeaking in excitement; the excitement in question being not prurient interest but an instructor’s zeal. ‘As a lubricant, that’s how you use it. You—’

  But here we must leave them, for Shabble will shortly proceed to give contraceptive advice. And this must not be set down in print, for if it is then this chronicle will most surely be outlawed in the historian’s homeland lest knowledge relating to the prevention of pregnancy fall into the hands of people aged less than sixteen.

  (As the disasters of time may some day separate these writings from their bibliographical context, let it here be noted that the native heath of the volumist responsible for this paper-staining is Quilth, land of the taniwha; and, furthermore, that in the absence of any prospect of substantial pecuniary reward for the historian, the writing of the tract you have now to hand has been sponsored by the genereous gentlemen of the Taniwha Guarantee Corporation. Thanks to such generosity, the historian is able to eat twice a day, instead of once every twiceday; and, moreover, to eat offal - the guts of seagulls and such - instead of taro and seaweed as formerly. For this bounteous charity he is duly grateful.)

  Now it happens that, in the historian’s homeland, girls from the age of eleven go courting; and many are the pregnancies, abortions and diseases that befall them. Furthermore, the most highly paid persuaders of commerce labour by night and day alike to persuade young girls that courtship is the ultimate trial of their
value; and to sell them all manner of fripperies on that account. Thus those of female gender are propagandized by the subtle arts of their elders, beset on all sides by suggestions and allurements; the entire thrust of this informal education being to persuade them that a complete hymen means an incomplete woman. Women, of course, they most desperately wish to be, as boys wish to be men.

  But, in the face of unstinting publicity designed to impel (if not compel) the female young into the arms of their coevals of opposite sex, the government of the above-mentioned land has, in its wisdom, chosen to censor all sources of contraceptive advice which threaten to contaminate the minds of people of such tender years with knowledge of techniques which might save them from a good many diseases and despairs.

  This censorship is carried out at the bidding of a stem Religion, which preaches the theoretical benefits of a universal chastity, a chastity which (if one is to judge from generations of practical experience) is not to be obtained in practice, not even when the sanctions of law enforce it. Thus a nation legislates ignorance for its young, preferring frequent abortion, endemic disease and the occasional suicide to the revelations of a rational system of sexual hygiene.

  What is more, the nation which thus oppresses a part of its population thinks itself free; and, indeed, many voices are raised within that nation, calling for further censorships and greater oppressions with a view to enhancing the freedoms of the citizens. Absurd, yes, but true; the truth of the matter being the unfortunate part of the story, for were it a fiction it would be mildly amusing, whereas given flesh and fact it becomes tragic.

  This minor tragedy is mentioned here because its substance examples one of those paradigmatic proposals which the political historian uses to make sense of his subject: the thesis in question being that citizens of the State seek not just freedom from oppression but also (and equally importantly) the freedom to oppress all those whom they fear and hate; and, furthermore, that most are blind to the difference between these two freedoms, though it must be acknowledged that often such blindness is wilful.