The Wazir and the Witch

by Hugh Cook

  But it was hopeless, the words did her no good at all, and when she tried to say them again she was blubbering so much that the words were quite unintelligible.

  Olivia was still crying when she came into the Crab’s cave.

  When she had whiled away the nights in that cave in the arms of her dearest Chegory, it had always been dark. But tonight, the Crab’s wind chimes - the copper wind chimes which Olivia had made for the thing - were glowing green. What did that mean? That the Crab did not like to be in the dark, not if it was alone?

  ‘Are you awake?’ said Olivia, speaking through tears.

  No response came from the hulking shadows of the Crab. And Olivia, suddenly furious, thumped on the thing with all her strength, pounding its carapace with her fists.

  ‘Hey! Hey!’ she shouted. ‘Wake up!’

  ‘Please,’ said the Crab huffily. ‘I am not a percussion instrument. Besides, even if I was, you are not a drummer, are you?’

  ‘Is that supposed to be a joke?’ said Olivia fiercely.

  ‘I do not make jokes,’ said the Crab.

  ‘That’s just as well,’ said Olivia. ‘Because I’m not in a mood for any jokes.’

  ‘No,’ said the Crab. ‘By the sound of it, you are in a very bad mood. I recommend a nice soothing walk. Four times round the island should do it.’

  ‘I’m not here for my health,’ said Olivia.

  ‘What are you here for, then?’

  ‘To beat some sense into your thick ugly head.’

  ‘I am a crab,’ said the Crab. ‘I do not have a head.’ ‘No!’ yelled Olivia, giving the thing an almighty thump. ‘You don’t have any sense, either. You want to be human? Or don’t you?’

  The Crab sighed.

  ‘I know what you’re on about,’ said the Crab. ‘You want me to get the organic rectifier. It’s in the Temple of Torture, right?’

  ‘Right!’ said Olivia. ‘So you know all about it! So why don’t you get on with it?’

  ‘As I told Log Jaris—’

  ‘I’m not Log Jaris, I’m Olivia Qasaba,’ said Olivia. ‘I don’t care what you told the bullman, I’m telling you now, you have to get the organic rectifier, right now.’

  ‘If it’s really there to be got,’ said the Crab.

  ‘Of course it is!’ said Olivia. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t be here telling you all this.’

  ‘You might be,’ said the Crab. ‘Humans are incredibly duplicitous creatures, as I’ve learnt to my cost.’ ‘Duplicitous?’ said Olivia.

  She was so sick with fear, rage, hate and fatigue that she had quite forgotten whether she did or did not know that word.

  ‘Yes, yes, duplicitous, that’s what they are,’ said the Crab. ‘Cheats, liars and lords of deceit.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t understand anything!’ said Olivia. Then, abruptly, her animating rage left her. Olivia, deserted by her fury, sat down in a wet, hot, saggy heap. She wept.

  After a time, Olivia calmed herself.

  It was quiet.

  The Crab was saying nothing. Maybe it had gone back to sleep. Somewhere, a slabender frog was talking to the night. Then, across the water, someone screamed.

  ‘You hear that?’ said Olivia to the Crab. ‘Someone’s getting hurt. That’s Master Ek, that’s what, he’s doing it, hurting people. You could stop him, you know.’

  The Crab said nothing.

  It remained stolidly silent.

  Olivia closed her eyes, and waves of black despair swept over her.

  ‘Remember,’ she said, ‘you are an Ashdan.’

  ‘No,’ said the Crab. ‘I am a Crab.’

  ‘And a big, stupid, silly Crab at that,’ said Olivia, getting to her feet. She bit her lip. Then: ‘Open your claw. This one. Come on! Do what I say! Open it! Come on, silly, we haven’t got all night.’

  The Crab’s left claw opened with a slight creaking sound. Olivia held up her right hand.

  ‘You see this?’ she said. ‘You see this hand? The organic rectifier can make it better. If there really is a rectifier. If I’m not lying. If I’m telling the truth. You grant me that?’

  ‘If you can choose the axioms, you can win any argument,’ said the Crab.

  ‘Well what’s that supposed to mean?’ said Olivia. ‘What I say makes sense, doesn’t it? If there really is an organic rectifier, you can get it for me, can’t you? So you can fix my hand. If my hand gets hurt, I mean.’

  There was a pause. Then: ‘Yes,’ said the Crab, albeit grudgingly.

  ‘Well then,’said Olivia.‘Here . . .’

  No.

  She could not say it.

  But she must!

  She bit her lip again. Hard.

  She tasted blood.

  Her blood.

  Blood running from her lip.

  Blood of her blood, blood from her lips, and Chegory gasping, and later . . .

  ‘I am an Ashdan,’ said Olivia, all expression crushed from her voice while terror fought with discipline. ‘So.’

  She put her hand between the chomp-chopper-chuk edges of the Crab’s claw. It was a huge claw, its knobbly biting bits swelling out like globular teeth. Its surfaces were strangely cool against the fever of her flesh.

  ‘So,’ said Olivia.

  She wanted to wrench her hand away.

  But she could not.

  She must not!

  ‘So,’ said Olivia. ‘You can crunch my wrist. You can crunch it right off. Do it. If that’s what you have to, then do it. Then you’ll believe.’

  So said Olivia.

  Then she closed her eyes and waited for the Crab to decide.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  It happened halfway between midnight and dawn: midway through the darks of bardardornootha. By then, the moon had sunk from sight. By then, the entire city had fallen to silence, but for a single dog intermittently barking, a single rooster voicing an occasional challenge, several hundred slabender frogs celebrating life and generation, the pulsing rub-drub-thump which issued from a group of half a dozen insomniac drummers who had installed themselves atop the heights of Pearl, the groans of those many sleepers who endured tormented dreams of the Mutilator of Yestron, and the high-pitched assault-hum of several hundred million mosquitoes.

  It happened.

  The buildings of portside Injiltaprajura abruptly brightened as if the moon had risen anew. But there was no moon. The buildings themselves were glowing. Atop the pink palace, the glitter-dome burnt beacon-bright. The Cabal House glowed a phosphorescent blue. The warehouses of Marthandorthan - Xtokobrokotok among them - shone first pink then gold.

  Along Goldhammer Rise, buildings brightened to an intolerable white. In among these buildings lay the Temple of Torture. That was brightest, glowing as if the sun itself had come to life within. All inside the Temple’s walls threw themselves flat and shielded their eyes.

  Abruptly, the roof of the Temple shattered. A rockfall of splintered masonry blattered downwards - but dissolved to dust before it could do any damage.

  The Temple was roofless.

  The naos of the Temple lay open to the sky, and there lay the organic rectifier.

  Slowly, a cocoon of purple light began to weave itself around the organic rectifier. Soon the antique device was entirely surrounded by a seamless integument of purple light. Then, smoothly, without making any fuss at all, the organic rectifier rose into the air and slid swiftly toward the island of Jod.

  Shortly afterwards, the lights which lit Injiltaprajura were snuffed out. In the renewed dark, dogs and monkeys howled in fear, rage and anguish. Within the Temple of Torture itself, guards, initiates and acolytes picked themselves up from the ground, and began to inspect the damage. When they realized the ‘skavamareen’ was missing, messengers went hotfoot in search of Master Ek, who had taken himself off to his villa on Hojo Street just after midnight.

  Shortly, Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek was issuing furious orders. The hell with caution! He was going to act, and now. He was going to kill out all op
position on Untunchilamon. Manthandros Trasilika, Justina Thrug, Aquitaine Varazchavardan, the lawyer Dardanalti - he would make a clean sweep. And if by chance Aldarch the Third failed to approve, well, Ek would deal with the consequences of such displeasure when the time arose.

  Ek decided thus because he was sure a crisis was on hand. Had the Crab removed the ‘skavamareen’ from the Temple of Torture? Or had Varazchavardan stolen the thing by exercise of sorcery? Or did the Thrug command some monstrous power of which the world was as yet ignorant? Or had the very Cabal House itself joined Justina in conspiracy? Ek had no firm answers to any of these questions. But he presumed that the Temple of Torture had been destroyed because, one way or another, his enemies were on the point of staging a final confrontation. He was sure that his best chance of survival lay in acting immediately, seizing the initiative, and putting a permanent end to as much of the actual and potential opposition as he possibly could.

  By daybreak, Ek had seized Nixorjapretzel Rat, Aquitaine Varazchavardan, the Empress Justina, Jean Froissart and Manthandros Trasilika. And, of coarse, he already held the formidable Juliet Idaho as a prisoner.

  Many notorious and dangerous accomplices of the Thrug had escaped, among them the bullman Log Jaris, who had fled downstairs with his woman Molly. Of Shanvil Angarus May there was no sign; and the wizard Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin was another notable who was nowhere to be found. Sken-Pitilkin’s cousin, Pelagius Zozimus, had been sighted briefly in Marthandorthan. But before he could be arrested, he had turned into a carpet snake, and then into an eagle - and had flown away.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Ek. ‘This is enough to be going on with. We will begin sacrificing our captives to Zoz the Ancestral. Immediately!’

  ‘But,’ said one of his acolytes - Aath Nau Das, as it happens - ‘this is hardly regular.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Master Ek.

  ‘I mean,’ said his acolyte boldly, ‘that there are prescribed forms for sacrifices and such.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ek, ‘and prescribed forms of politeness for acolytes to use when addressing their masters!’

  ‘A thousand apologies,’ said Nau Das, without sounding very apologetic. ‘But, master of the many decades, there is such a thing as legality. These people haven’t had a trial as yet.’

  Ek smiled grimly, showing his blackened teeth.

  ‘The hell with legality,’ said Ek. ‘We’ll start killing them here and now.’

  ‘What?’ said Ch’ha Saat, the youngest of his acolytes. ‘Without even torturing them?’

  Ek considered. Arranging for torture would mean delay. On the other hand ... he had endured a great deal over the years, and it would be a shame to send the Thrug out of the world without saying goodbye in the appropriate fashion.

  ‘Very well,’ said Ek. ‘We will torture them before we kill them. Let’s get busy then!’

  And busy they got, and soon gathered together clamps and throttle-bands, stabs and wrecking irons, tweezers and cactus probes, shark hooks and purple veils, bottles of torture water and vials of vitriol, and heavy-duty urns packed with writhing centipedes and fat juicy scorpions.

  Then Ek had all the captives brought out into the courtyard of the Temple of Torture. In the pungent heat of the morning they were lined up at spearpoint. Ek was pleased to see they all looked more or less undamaged. And that they were, for the moment, fairly calm. This way, he would know that the end result was all his own work.

  Ek made no speeches but proceeded with the ceremonies of destruction immediately, beginning with the slow and studied sacrifice of a vampire rat. This he performed with his own hands, even though it cost him much in pain, for his arthritis was bad that morning.

  ‘Now,’ said Ek, ‘what I have done with a rat I will do with a human. Bring forward Jean Froissart!’

  Froissart was dragged forward, flung down on an operating table and tied into place. Froissart lay there, staring upwards in terror. His heart was staccato. Master Ek loomed over him with a knife. Then Justina screamed.

  ‘Shabble!’ screamed Justina. ‘Kill them!’

  Ek looked round wildly. There was no Shabble, no magical rescuer. Justina had bluffed. But her bluff had worked. While her guards were distracted, she had broken free, and—

  ‘Stop her!’ cried Ek.

  But already the Thrug had a wrecking iron in her hands. And Juliet Idaho had broken free - someone must have cut his bonds! - and had wrested a scimitar into his hands. And the guards were looking on in askance, residual loyalties to the Empress or to Trasilika making them hesitate rather than intervene.

  ‘A pardon,’ said Varazchavardan, looking at Ek.

  ‘Done!’ said Ek.

  Thus did Aquitaine Varazchavardan plead with Master Ek for a priestly pardon for any and all sins he might have committed during the years of the rule of the Family Thrug on Untunchilamon; and Ek granted him that pardon. Whereupon Varazchavardan threw forth his hands and cried:

  ‘Bobskabo! Bobskabo! Bro!’

  Thus he conjured into life a huge and hideous monster with half a thousand fangs. Purple were its feet, and its legs were twenty in number. Its muscles pumped outwards like dough rising with miraculous speed. It roared. Then it advanced upon Justina Thrug and Juliet Idaho, meaning to destroy them.

  Not to be outdone, Nixorjapretzel Rat threw out his own hands and cried:

  ‘Mikrandabor! Mikrandabor! Splotch!’

  Instantly, another monster materialized. This one was orange, and spindly, and was pocked all over with little blue sores, and looked in the worst of tempers imaginable.

  Snarling savagely, Rat’s monster attacked that which had been created by Varazchavardan. The two monsters tore each other to bits in moments, whereupon both melted into pools of a watery pink liquid which smelt like crushed sugar cane. Varazchavardan wrested a spear from the nearest soldier and began to beat the hapless Rat with the butt of the thing.

  That still left Justina Thrug and Juliet Idaho to deal with. The two heroes stood at bay in a corner of the courtyard of the Temple of Torture, and still Ek’s guards looked dubious about taking them on.

  ‘All right,’ said Ek, addressing himself to Justina and Idaho. ‘I’ll do a deal with you. If you surrender, I’ll cut your throats. No torture, just a straight throat-cutting. How’s that?’

  In reply, Idaho shouted:

  ‘Wen Endex!’

  And the Thrug screamed:

  ‘Galsh Ebrek!’

  Then the pair of them charged.

  Fortunately for Ek, his soldiers intervened on his behalf, and both heroes were overwhelmed and disarmed. But the episode left Master Ek badly shaken, for it showed him how loosely he held the reins of power. He would not be safe and secure until the Thrug and her supporters were dead. He had been a fool to let his acolytes tempt him into any indulgence in time-consuming torture.

  ‘Right,’ said Ek. ‘I’ll show them my mercy anyway. No torture, I’ll just cut their throats.’

  Then he went back to Jean Froissart.

  ‘If I remember rightly,’ said Ek, ‘before we were so rudely interrupted, I was going to cut your throat.’ ‘Don’t!’ said Froissart.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ said Ek.

  ‘Because,’ said a strangely familiar voice, ‘if you do, we will kill you.’

  Ek wheeled. This, of course, he did not do with the precipitate haste of a trained athlete. Rather, he wheeled in slow motion, as befits an old man with arthritis. But wheel he did, and his wheeling brought him face to face with a young Ashdan girl, Olivia Qasaba. The Qasaba girl had intruded upon the courtyard of the Temple of Torture in the company of an Ashdan male.

  A stranger, this male. Nobody Ek had ever seen before. He looked to be something like fifty years of age, and his head was bald, and indeed hairless but for a modest square-chopped beard. He was naked but for a loincloth. Yet he was an imposing figure even so, for he had a champion’s build, and he stood a head taller than any other man in sight. Sweat gleamed on his massiv
e thews and oiled his sculpted pectorals. And his eyes - ah, the eyes! They were the startling blue so often found among the peoples of Ashmolea.

  ‘Who are you?’ said Ek.

  ‘I am Olivia Qasaba,’ said the girl.

  ‘I wasn’t talking to you!’ said Ek. Then, to the man: ‘Who are you? Tell me!’

  ‘I am Codlugarthia,’ said the man.

  ‘And I,’ said Master Ek, ‘am Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek, High Priest of Zoz the Ancestral for the island of Untunchilamon. I have a need of good men.’

  ‘I serve nobody,’ said Codlugarthia. ‘My time has come. Now others will serve me.’

  Ek smiled, slightly. Then said to Varazchavardan:

  ‘Try again. Get rid of him.’

  ‘With pleasure,’ said the wonder-worker, who was bitterly disappointed that his monster had not been able to devour Justina. He turned his attention to Codlugarthia. He flung out his hands and cried:

  ‘Bara—’

  Aquitaine Varazchavardan said no more. For Codlugarthia pointed a finger at him. They were standing a good twenty paces apart, but Codlugarthia’s power did its work. There was a hideous crackling-snappling as Varazchavardan’s leg bones shattered in a dozen places. The albinotic sorcerer screamed in agony, collapsed, then fainted.

  Nixorjapretzel Rat bravely confronted the power of Codlugarthia.

  ‘Barapus!’ said Rat, throwing out his hands. ‘Barapus! Mox! Mox! Nixi!’

  The air between sorcerer and Ashdan boiled. An ominous cloud of blue swelled in the air, thrashed, throbbed, steadied - then resolved itself into a budgerigar.

  ‘Oh, get out of here!’ said Ek in disgust. ‘Guards! Get rid of this man!’

  The guards levelled their spears, preparing to throw them. They presumed the intruding Ashdan to be a wizard or sorcerer, but were sure none such could survive the onslaught of a dozen fast-hurtling spears. Codulgarthia gestured.

  And the spears, while still in the hands of their owners, erupted into flame, and disintegrated into burning fragments a moment later.

  Then Codlugarthia pointed a finger at Master Ek.

  ‘I do not like your attitude,’ said Codlugarthia.

  Then his lips pursed in concentration. A moment later, Ek’s left eye exploded. Ek clapped a hand to his ruined face. His shrivelled scream ascended to the heavens. Wailing, he fell to his knees.