The Wazir and the Witch

by Hugh Cook

  ‘That’s better.’

  Then Odolo reached into one of his capacious sleeves and withdrew a rusty iron ball.

  ‘OK,’ said Odolo. ‘That’s it.’

  The ball quivered.

  It became a spherical watermelon.

  A gleaming golden orb.

  A mirror.

  A miniature sun.

  A globe webbed all over with delicate patterns of brown and green.

  Then a silver-bright bubble of light, which squeaked in

  ‘Did I do well?’ said Shabble.

  ‘Oh, you did very, very well,’ said Odolo. ‘Did I give you the cues at the right time?’

  ‘I didn’t really need them,’ said Shabble. ‘I remembered what to do when. But you told them right, you did, if I’d forgotten something I’d have remembered when you told me.’

  ‘The best bit was the water,’ said Odolo. ‘The water steaming. Was that hard to do? To go from cool to hot?’ ‘Not when you’re a shabble,’ said Shabble. ‘I’m really a sun, you know. That’s how I do it.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Odolo. ‘You know I know. You know why I know.’

  ‘Of course I do,’ said Shabble.

  ‘You did do very well,’ said Odolo, knowing that Shabble loved praise. Then: ‘Shabble, we need your help. You could help us again.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Shabble. ‘I explained about that already. This was the last time. For old time’s sake. I have to go now. I have to get back to the temple.’

  ‘I could send you to a—’

  ‘You said you wouldn’t!’ said Shabble. ‘You promised. You swore!’

  ‘I know,’ said Odolo, an unfamiliar note of tension and regret in his voice. ‘So I did. But, while I’d like to think of myself as a man of honour—’

  Shabble abruptly grew red hot and spun, spitting out a dozen fireballs. Odolo dodged and ducked, and ended up flat on his face on the floor. And Shabble, with unexpected anger in Shabbleself s voice, said:

  ‘I wargamed this with Uckermark. He told me you’d try to make me your slave.’

  ‘What else did he tell you?’ said Odolo, shocked and shaken. ‘What else?’ And here the conjuror picked himself up off the floor. ‘To kill me?’

  ‘If necessary,’ said Shabble. ‘You were going to say it, weren’t you? You were going to say the words. You were going to make me do things. Weren’t you?’

  ‘I . . . I . . . Shabble, my . . . could we . . . can we . . . could we still be friends?’

  A silence.

  Then Shabble spoke:

  ‘Yes. We could still be friends.’

  ‘Very well, Shabble my friend,’ said Odolo. ‘Thank you for your help tonight. I’m sorry I . . . I’m sorry I almost gave way to temptation. Go back to your temple, Shabble my friend, and go with my good wishes. But do bear us in mind. I don’t say you could solve all of our problems, but you might help us to save some of them.’

  ‘I have, I have,’ said Shabble, sounding hurt.

  From Shabble’s point of view, a good deal of the last twenty thousand years had been spent doing very little but helping people. Shabble had taught them and counselled them, had played music for them and kept them company in prisons and elsewhere, had designed machines for them, had translated foreign languages for them, had told them stories and had worked out their income tax.

  But people seemed to be in as much of a mess as they ever were, and they were still as full of demands as ever.

  After twenty thousand years, Shabble had had enough. Shabble was a priest now, the High Priest of the Temple of the Holy Cockroach, with Shabbleselfs own life to lead, so people would just have to get on with the job of helping themselves. And if they didn’t, if they continued to make importunate demands upon poor old overworked Shabble - why, then Shabble would burn some of them up, and Shabbleselfs lawyers would have something to say to any who were left unburnt!

  ‘You did very, very well,’ said Odolo, laying on the praise for one last time. ‘And I’m very proud of you.’ ‘And you’re going to kiss me goodnight,’ said Shabble. ‘You promised.’

  ‘And I’m as good as my word,’ said Odolo.

  And the conjuror kissed dear Shabble, who thereafter took Shabbleself off to Xtokobrokotok in Marthandorthan, and spent the rest of the night leading the congregation of the Cult of the Holy Cockroach in rituals of worship and praise.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  As the banquet continued, Jean Froissart rapidly got drunk and slid beneath the table. Manthandros Trasilika drank just as much, but had a greater ability to hold his liquor, and managed to stay in his chair. Juliet Idaho, another big drinker, vomited thrice and fell off his chair more times than one could easily account for, but stayed conscious and semi-capable.

  Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek drank not at all, but smoked furiously, looking a very dragon in his rage. In due course, Aath Nau Das returned with the iron ball, which he had anatomized into three main fragments and seven smaller ones, plus a great many flakes of rust and a liberal sprinkling of iron dust.

  ‘There’s no trick here,’ said acolyte Nau Das.

  ‘But there’s a trick somewhere,’ said Master Ek.

  ‘You mean - you mean you think we didn’t see a genuine miracle?’

  ‘Oh, grow up!’said Ek.

  ‘If not a miracle,’ persisted Nau Das, ‘then what?’

  An acolyte does not - should not - blatantly question a High Priest in this manner. But Master Ek kept his temper and gave a reasoned answer:

  ‘Injiltaprajura has a Cabal House, has it not? And the Cabal House is packed with wonder-workers, is it not? And have not the wonder-workers powers magical? And does it not follow that such a sorcerer could easily have intervened tonight on Froissart’s behalf?’

  ‘It could be,’ conceded Nau Das. ‘But who?’ ‘Varazchavardan,’ said Master Ek. ‘To name but one possibility. Dolglin Chin Xter is another. I have long thought him to be in alliance with the Thrug.’

  ‘Xter?’ said Nau Das. ‘But he’s sick in bed. Sick to the point of death with hepatitis and malaria in combination.’

  ‘So our spies tell us,’ said Master Ek grimly. ‘But I no longer believe we can trust our spies. They led us to believe a false wazir would be produced tonight.’

  ‘And there won’t be?’

  ‘Use your eyes! Look! The Thrug’s as merry as a pickled gherkin. She’s sozzled. Juliet Idaho’s no better. There’s no risk of swords going to war tonight. If the Thrug has a false wazir in hiding, she means to hide the thing still.’

  ‘But our spies were so confident!’ said Nau Das.

  ‘So maybe the Thrug is deliberately feeding them false information,’ said Master Ek.

  ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘We grab someone we can trust to have reliable information,’ said Master Ek. ‘Juliet Idaho. The ideal choice.’

  ‘Why?’ said Nau Das. ‘Why ideal?’

  ‘For obvious reasons,’ said Ek in irritation. ‘Work it out for yourself.’

  Juliet Idaho had the confidence of the Empress and so would know what was going on. He had few administrative responsibilities, so would not be swiftly missed. And, by the end of the night’s celebrations, the much-befuddled Yudonic Knight would be in no state to put up any resistance whatsoever.

  As Ek was so thinking, his thoughts were distracted by a pair of spoons which had started drumming their way along the tabletop. They were porcelain spoons brightly painted with green and yellow dragons shown breathing out red flame and purple smoke. Now the spoons were dancing, and drumming as they danced.

  The spoons jumped up on to a big platter. It was an elegant piece of pottery in the most dignified Janjuladoola grey, and it held great discards of sucked bones and fish scales, of fruit pips and banana peels, of the flaccid skin of papaya, the flexible armour of pineapple and the obstinate wood of clean-picked coconut.

  There danced the spoons.

  Click - clack - sklakkety clack!

  Clo
k - clok - cluckety tuckety cluckety skluk!

  As the spoons thus amused themselves, tatters of meat and splatters of fruit discarded in all directions. A waiter tried to restrain these irresponsible culinary instruments, but they slipped from his grasp and fled down the table.

  Plat - mat - blattatarat!

  Sklip - blip - tukatatot!

  So rhythmed the spoons as they drummed on the tabletop, chimed against steel and porcelain, upset glasses of sherbet and wine alike, and at last started dancing right in front of Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek himself.

  The High Priest of Zoz the Ancestral glared at the spoons in fury, then looked around the table. He saw half a dozen wonder-workers sitting together and laughing uproariously. Master Ek fastened his gaze upon them. As the sorcerers felt the sharp talons of that gaze digging into their flesh, their laughter ceased abruptly, and the spoons fell dead on the table. Shortly thereafter, the miscreants made their excuses and took themselves off to their Cabal House.

  Many people were leaving now, for the debauch really had entered its final stages. Fuddled drinkers spilt their brandy, stumbled with their wine and slid beneath the table. In disregarded bowls, intoxicated pyramids of icecream melted to muddled puddles. Candles shickered and swayed in subtle draughts of sweating air. A dizzy mosquito cannoned cockeyed through wreaths of insect-destroying smoke, then, half-seas-over, plunged to its own destruction in a jug of vinegar.

  At the head of the table, the Empress Justina turned to Olivia and said:

  ‘Enough. Our duty tonight is done.’

  Justina left the table in company with the Ashdan lass;

  and shortly both were in bed and asleep.

  The departure of the Empress was the signal for everyone else to leave, which they did. Master Ek departed in the company of his acolytes and other companions. Juliet Idaho was not so quick to leave, but at last the Yudonic Knight got to his feet and stumbled down Lak Street towards the grand mansion he shared with his wife Harold.

  Idaho never got there.

  As he was walking down Lak Street, a group of men surrounded him. He was seized by the strength of six. A hood was dragged down over his head. A gag was stuffed into his mouth. Then he was thrown on to a dung cart and taken to Goldhammer Rise and the Temple of Torture. There he was ungagged and, after a preliminary beating, was brought into the presence of Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek.

  ‘Good evening,’ said Master Ek.

  Juliet Idaho spat out a little blood then said:

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘Oh, just a little talk,’ said Ek. ‘Come, I mean you no ill. Here, have a drink.’

  Idaho accepted this invitation, and swallowed the drink Ek proffered him.

  A mistake!

  Immediately Idaho’s head began to spin. The room swelled, stretched, blurred and hummed. Phantasmagoric dragons flickered across his field of vision then collapsed into tinkling rainbows.

  Ek had fed Idaho a drink containing a carefully measured dose of oola, that truth drug also known as babble tongue. This is made from opium and alcohol mixed with a special extract obtained from the scorpion fish, and mixed also with zen, a dissociative drug which has devastating effects on the mind.

  ‘Now,’ said Ek, ‘speak to me.’

  ‘I speak to you,’ said Idaho.

  ‘Tell me all,’ said Ek. ‘All that I shouldn’t know.’

  Thus spoke Ek; and, with very little further prompting, the Yudonic Knight began to blabbermouth secrets. ‘Froissart is false,’ said Idaho.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Ek, even though he believed as much himself. ‘Froissart can’t be false. He proved himself in trial by ordeal.’

  Juliet Idaho grinned a drunken grin and said:

  ‘Froissart proved the powers of conjuring. The executioner who waited upon him was the conjuror Odolo -who had Shabble up his sleeve.’

  ‘That can’t be so,’ said Master Ek. ‘I saw Shabble myself at sunset, spinning above the Xtokobrokotok.’ ‘So?’ said Idaho. ‘Shabble needs no guides to find Shabbleself s way from Marthandorthan to Pokra Ridge. Shabble came privily to Odolo shortly after sunset. Oh, they fooled you nicely!’

  This infuriated Ek, because he had been fooled indeed; and, now he understood what had happened, it was blindingly obvious. Had it not been for his arthritis, Ek would have kicked himself severely.

  ‘But,’ protested one of the acolytes, who knew more of sorcery than of prestidigitation, ‘I was there! I saw! It wasn’t Shabble, it was a ball of iron. We smashed it to pieces afterwards.’

  ‘Long sleeves,’ said Idaho. ‘Long sleeves.’

  He giggled.

  Then the Yudonic Knight fainted, and slid beneath the table.

  Leaving Ek and his acolytes looking at each other.

  ‘The Thrug thinks us children,’ said Ek in rage. ‘Children, to be fooled by a cheap trick. But she’s gone too far this time! And her Froissart thing! What they did was blasphemy. For that I’ll have Froissart butchered.’ Slowly, Ek recovered his temper. Then he kicked the unconscious Juliet Idaho and said:

  ‘Strip him.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Master Ek, without much surprise. ‘It is as I thought.’

  Then the High Priest stubbed out his cigarette in Idaho’s omphalos.

  ‘We’ll keep this thing here in our holding cells,’ said Ek. ‘Hold it under constant observation in a lighted cell. Give it no chance to commit suicide. I want to dispose of it myself. By way of sacrifice. In public. When the time is right.’

  ‘When will that be, master?’ said one of the acolytes.

  ‘When I say so!’ said Ek, irritated by a question so witless. ‘Now, I have another job for you. Our congregation must be roused, for I wish to celebrate the Festival of Dark. Yes, here, tonight, this very night. Not in our Temple on Hojo Street. That’s unsafe. No, we’ll hold it here.’

  ‘But,’ said one of the acolytes, ‘this building is consecrated to the—’

  Ek kept his temper.

  Instead of losing it, he merely said:

  ‘I will formally dedicate this building to Zoz before the Festival of Dark commences. Now go and rouse our people!’

  The rousing shortly commenced.

  The acolytes woke certain Janjuladoola people who were adherents of the Temple of Zoz the Ancestral. And these woke others, who roused more fellow worshippers in turn. Soon people in their dozens were flocking to Goldhammer Rise, where they thronged into the Temple of Torture. This could not accommodate them all, so the unaccommodated gathered in the street outside, with acolytes relaying Master Ek’s words to them once the Festival of Dark began.

  In the Most Holy Calendar, the Festival of Dark falls a few days before the Festival of Light. The precise timing is at the discretion of the local High Priest, and Master Ek was within his rights to schedule it for that very night.

  It is traditional for the High Priest of the Temple of Zoz to celebrate the Festival of Dark by preaching on the conflict between anarchic chaos and that countervailing redemptive power which brings order. In contrast, the Festival of Light is devoted solely to a celebration of that prosperity which naturally flows from the triumph of order, to the general benefit of all.

  Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek performed his duties as tradition decrees, and held the required service. In the course of his preaching, he declared the worship of Power to be the ultimate aim of humanity; and described Aldarch Three as Power incarnate.

  ‘The natural instinct of the natural man is to ravage, savage and despoil,’ said Ek, getting into his stride. ‘To preserve the world against such destructions, the State gives each man incentives to support the ruling order. In the way of incentive, in return for allegiance to the ruling order, the State allows each man the power over his women, his children, his slaves and his other chattels.

  ‘As it is a man’s privilege to dispose of his wife, his children and his slaves, so it is a Temple’s privilege to dispose of its priests. And so, as the Festival o
f Light draws near, I name Jean Froissart, priest of Zoz the Ancestral, as the sacrifice of the year.’

  A remarkable honour! But Jean Froissart, as yet unconscious of the great privilege which had been bestowed upon him, slept on in ignorance; and he would not learn his fate for some time yet.

  By this time, certain students of history may be ready to raise an outcry about the disproportionate amount of space which has been given to insignificant people such as the Yudonic Knight named Juliet Idaho. Why, they will ask, is this so? And why, in contrast, has a person of such importance as Jon Qasaba been allowed to disappear from this Chronicle? Why has no effort been made to show his role in these events?

  Certainly it would be interesting to follow Jon Qasaba’s fortunes. But this is not Qasaba’s biography: instead, this is the history of the final days of the rule of the Family Thrug on Untunchilamon.

  And, despite what he later became, Jon Qasaba played no role whatsoever in those final days. For Olivia’s father, feared by many to be dead, had been taken prisoner by Ms Mix.

  You will remember that Ms Mix was an ogre, one of the twenty-seven creatures of that breed then dwelling on Untunchilamon. You will doubtless further remember that this Ms Mix was the mother-in-law of the escaped lunatic Orge Arat, Arat himself being the author of a Secret History known as the Injiltaprajuradariski.

  Or perhaps you will not remember.

  If you have no mother-in-law of your own, you may fail to understand the formidability of the breed; and hence the particularities of Ms Mix may have failed to lodge in your mind.

  Regardless of what has or has not been remembered, the fact remains that Jon Qasaba was in the hands of a mother-in-law (admittedly someone else’s, not his own) and was doomed to suffer much before he escaped and regained his freedom. Yes, Jon Qasaba was a man much cursed by adventures. Now adventuring is greatly to the taste of an adolescent, but Qasaba was a scholarly Ashdan who had long outgrown desires for such overinvolvement in life. So he did not take kindly to what was happening to him. But that was his doom, and there was no way for him to avoid it.

  While we are on the subject of adventuring, let us note that Jon Qasaba was by no means the only person undergoing adventures in and around the city of Injiltaprajura. Many were the people who were undergoing sore trials in the wilds of Downstairs; or who had found themselves in grave danger after retreating into the wastelands of Zolabrik; or who were caught up in the currents of mutinous conspiracy which flourished and festered aboard the ships which were conveying looters, deserters and other such rabble away from the shores of peril.