The Wicked and the Witless

by Hugh Cook

  'And later?' said Jarl.

  'If we can climb to the Lesser Tower, I believe I can open a door to the interior of that tower,' said Elkin.

  'What will we find then?' said Jarl. 'What will we gain?'

  'That,' said Elkin, 'I do not know.'

  At last they reached the gate at the end of the Passage. Elkin opened it, and they stumbled outside. Blinking at brilliant sunshine. While they had been toiling under- ground, winds from the sea had cleaved the clouds, and the sun slashed down from a breach of blue sky.

  After the close, oppressive blood-lit gloom of the dragon-lamp passage, the world of day was an amazement of wide-flung vistas, of blood-hot greens and simmering blues, of a million million glints and reflections.

  They had quit the Passage through a gate set in the base of a west-facing cliff. At their feet, leagues of rock-tumbled goat-footed pastureland tumbled away to a mirage-bright sea which lay at least a day's march distant.

  It was hot. Hot and steamy. The rain-washed world was being baked dry by the sun. Sarazin incautiously glanced at that luminary. His eyes flinched from the blazing white disk. Luxuriant mauve and purple blossoms flared across his landscapes as his watering eyes tried to adjust to the world.

  Elkin was closing the gate. Heth, without being asked, had already distanced himself from this ceremony: the bandit had wandered off towards a nearby stream. Thodric Jarl was following him. And Sarazin, realising he was quite thirsty, joined them.

  The wrist-thick yet energetic rivulet bubbled up from the rocks at the cliffbase, then went bounding away through its own miniature fern-fringed gorge. Sarazin's knees creaked as he squatted to the water.

  He dipped his hands into the (cold!) water, slushed it round his mouth, gargled, spat, coughed up phlegm, spat again, then handcupped more water and drank. Slowly. Letting the water warm in his mouth before he swallowed it, remembered times in the past when he had greeded down cold water to comfort hunger, only to suffer the iron-uncomfortable weight of it griping in his gut.

  'See-see-swaasool' sang a nearby bird.

  Inviting itself to dinner, perhaps? Snails as the hors d'oeuvres, bird as the main course, worms as dessert.

  'Swasoo swilasoooo . . .'

  Sarazin searched for the bird. Saw it perched some seven paces distant on the ruinous bare-bough remnants of what had once been a tree. It was no bigger than his fist, yet as gaudy as a thousand-league emperor. Its white-striped walnut-brown head was crowned with a flame-red ruff; its throat was adorned with emerald; the plumage of its back was gold seeded with sunglints of silver; its breast was a pale blue and its feet were gold again.

  It was immaculate.

  How did birds manage to look so perfectly turned out so soon after the worst of weather? Sarazin himself looked a mess, and, even without a mirror, he knew it. His thorn-torn dirt-grimed travel-worn hands were evidence enough.

  'Swasoo-too-loo!' sang the bird.

  The edible bird?

  Only one way to find out.

  'Glambrax,' said Sarazin, in a low and earnest voice. 'Shoot me that bird.'

  'What bird?' said Glambrax, bounding towards him, crossbow in hand.

  By the time the dwarf had assaulted across the terrain to Sarazin's position the bird had, of course, long since flown.

  Never mind,' said Sarazin, in disgust. 'Go and see if you can find something we can eat.'

  Glambrax obeyed, and was soon back with a handful of sheep droppings.

  'Are you out of your mind?' said Sarazin.

  'These are fresh!' said Glambrax. 'The turd implies the sheep, does it not?'

  'And the sheep the shepherd,' said Jarl.

  'Truly,' said Heth, 'and the sky smokes.'

  'What mean you by that?' said Sarazin, thinking Heth was using some obscure, eliptical idiom of his native Stokos.

  'Don't you see it?' said Heth. 'Look where I'm pointing.'

  Yes. Indeed. A thin thread of smoke was rising from a coomb some thousand paces distant.

  'Let's not worry about shepherds and their fires,' said Epelthin Elkin. 'Let's be getting to the Lesser Tower.'

  Now, for the first time, Sarazin turned and looked up. Up at least a league-length height of cliff and crag, of thornbush outcrops and lean-grass scrambles to the bone- white sungleam of the dragon-encumbered pinnacle half a league high which was the Greater Tower of Castle X- n'dix. He thought he could see also a smaller structure which might be the Lesser Tower, but:

  —Whatever's up there can wait.

  I'm in no hurry to go mountaineering,' said Sarazin. Tet's check out this smoke.'

  'There's no mountaineering required,' said Elkin, eager to see more of this Dissident stronghold. Took close! You'll see a way to the heights which a very child could climb.'

  'Well,' said Jarl, 'you being closer to your second child- hood than we are, feel free to go on without us. Mean- while, we're going with Sarazin.'

  Outvoted, Elkin fell in with the rest, and, after a long and uncomfortable walk in damp, chafing clothes, they came upon five huts tucked in amongst the trees of the coomb. Approaching this hamlet, they savoured the smell of woodsmoke, which Sarazin for one found mo§t sug- gestive of cookery, mulled wine, warm beds, dry clothes and other pleasant things.

  After disputing their right to life with half a dozen mangy curs, Sarazin and his comrades became an object of fascination for thirty-seven peasants, most of whom were blond like Heth.

  'Anyone got any food?' said Sarazin in his best Churl.

  Laughter and the eager gabble of quick-talking children greeted his cry.

  'What did they say?' said Sarazin in bewilderment.

  'Hush,' said Jarl. 'Here's the headman coming out to talk to us.'

  Indeed, the oldster now approaching was the resident patriarch, who went by the name of Ugmug, and had taken it upon himself to deal with the strangers. He spoke a language incomprehensible to all but Heth, who knew it to be the Ligin of Stokos. With Heth as translator, the travellers learnt that the locals called their country X-zox.

  Elkin, his philological curiosity aroused, was ready to swear that the name X-zox, given to this coastal enclave, must be a corruption of X-n'dix, the ancient name for the castle. That suggested a continuous human presence in the enclave for thousands of years.

  (So at least thought Elkin, in his fatigue. Though there are of course other possibilities — such as, for example, that a passing wizard might lately have named X-n'dix to the locals, thus making the corruption recent rather than ancient.)

  'What name do the locals give to the Greater Tower of X-n'dix, and to the Lesser?' said Elkin.

  Heth asked, but, when the answer proved to be grossly obscene, answered that the locals left them unnamed. At

  which point fatigue overcame philology, and Elkin pursued the matter of names no further.

  Jarl, on the other hand, had questions yet to be answered, so, with Heth still serving as translator, he asked them. What was the coastline like? It was a reach of unbroken cliffs, offering certain death to any ship which tried to hazard a landing. Who ruled the valley? The heads of the families between them. How many people dwelt there? Some five fists of families — perhaps two or three hundred individuals at most.

  'Good,' said Jarl.

  'What about food?' said Sarazin.

  Heth asked if they might please be given a little food, since they had gone days unfed through all the weathers.

  But here they struck difficulty, for the traditions of capitalism were strong in X-zox, so nothing was forth- coming by way of hospitality. Sarazin and his people were invited to trade, but none of their gear was surplus to requirements. They lacked, of course, the strength to demand by force.

  'Do they know,' said Sarazin, 'that X-zox is but a part of the province of Hok, which is in turn but a fraction of the Harvest Plains, and that I am a warlord of the empire of which they are but the smallest part?'

  Hunger, frustration and fatigue had left Sarazin with a bloody temper. He was ready to
punch someone. Thodric Jarl wisely led Sarazin away, leaving Heth to do the negotiating.

  'Please,' said Heth to Ugmug, 'I can see you're of Stokos stock just like myself. We've ancestors in common, that's doubtless, let alone race and language. As a son of your people, I'm begging you. Couldn't you spare us just a little bread? Some old crusts, perhaps? Some meat meant for the dogs. Your most worthless rubbish would be a feast to us.'

  Ugmug wavered.

  Well . . .' said he.

  But then his niece stepped forward. Miss Inch. She was young, fierce, beautiful, and ferociously intelligent. Ugmug fell back a pace, for he was more than a little frightened of her.

  'Don't listen to these people,' said Miss Inch. 'They've got goods to trade. Swords. Jerkins. Boots.'

  'Well then,' said Heth, 'I suppose I can go barefoot if I must. Would my boots buy a meal for the five of us?'

  Yes,' said Ugmug.

  "No!' said Miss Inch. We can do better than that. Charge what the market can bear! He'll sell his boots for half a meal just for himself. He has to. He's got no choice. So why should we sell our foodstuffs cheaper?'

  Woman,' said Heth, appalled at her attitude, 'have you no charity?'

  'Altruism,' said Miss Inch, 'destroys the basis of economic prosperity, which is that I should be free to exchange my best for your best at terms agreeable to us both. So give us your boots! You'll get a fist of bread in return.'

  'Those terms,' said Heth, slowly, 'are not agreeable to me.'

  'Hal' said Inch. Wait till tomorrow! Hunger will bring you to agreement by then if not sooner.'

  'Do you think to enslave me through hunger?' said Heth.

  'What's this nonsense about slavery?' said Inch. You're perfectly free to come and go as you please, buy or sell, borrow and lend, go into business, open a bank or float a company. You call that slavery?! Rubbish!'

  Heth thought her a cold, cruel, vicious woman. But he was wrong. She was an economist of the laissez-faire variety, dedicated to the highest principles of individual freedom and personal responsibility. She refused him charity since she knew such welfarism would undermine his initiative, take away his incentive to work, and make him into a lazy good-for-nothing dole bludger.

  As Heth had never met an economist before, he entirely failed to recognise what he was up against. He still thought he could beg at least a little bread before sunset.

  'Woman,' he said, 'think what you would want for yourself if you were in my position.'

  'I'd never be in your position,' said Inch smugly. I'd never emigrate until I had sufficient means to support myself in a new country.'

  'I'm not an immigrant!' said Heth. 'I'm a soldier, a fighting man, a patriot. A supporter of King Tor.'

  'Tor!' said Inch, in a voice which made Heth realise immediately that he'd made a big mistake. The ogre?! You support him? Don't you realise his government built roads and sewers, ran lighthouses, opened a university and built a hospice in Cam?'

  'Is that so terrible?' said Heth.

  'Of course it is!' said Inch. 'Government should take care of the law and the defence of the realm, and that's that. Let the market look after the rest! These Flame-worshippers have got the right idea. They're not spending so much as a clipped sping on the roads.'

  Then the roads,' said Heth, heavily, 'will fall into ruin.'

  'If they do,' said Inch, 'that will prove there was no justification for them in the first place, in terms of the market.'

  This debate could have gone on all day, as Heth, despite his wretched condition, had found fresh and fiery energies for debate now that his beloved King Tor had come under attack. However, at that stage Jarl returned, and, with help from Elkin and Glambrax, dragged Heth away.

  So, still hungry, and disgusted by their reception, Sarazin and his party began to trudge back the way they had come, heading for the Towers of X-n'dix.

  'What happened?' said Sarazin.

  Heth explained.

  While the doctrines espoused by Miss Inch were alien to Heth, they were well known to much of the rest of the world, for their originator was of course the great

  Yan Nard, one of the Nine Immortals of history. These ideas were not entirely unfamiliar to Sarazin, for Lord Regan's own beliefs owed much to Yan Nard's teachings.

  'What this ignorant peasant woman doesn't under- stand,' said Sarazin, 'is that such arguments only apply within a stable social context. They don't hold good in emergencies.'

  An interesting assertion! What would Miss Inch have said in reply? It would have made, perhaps, a historic debate — but Jarl refused Sarazin permission to return to the hamlet to start it.

  'We'll not get anything out of these people whatever we say or do,' said Jarl. 'So let's make do with what we've got.'

  'Which is nothing!' said Sarazin.

  'No,' said Jarl. 'We must have got some information, at least. Well, Heth — what did you learn?'

  'A little' said Heth. 'Boats must run from here to Stokos, for all that they claim a landing's impossible on the shores of X-zox.'

  'How did you find that out?'

  'Because the talk turned to Stokos, and it's clear these people know what happens there. Worse, they see no wrong in Gouda Muck and his gang of lunatics.'

  'Tell me more,' said Jarl.

  Sarazin, now sulking, paid little heed to the conversation which followed. He was busy conjuring with fantasies in which he wrecked bloody vengeance upon the. people of X-zox. He only abandoned these play dreams when his party began the sweat-gasping climb up the near-sheer league-length heights of the Towers of Castle X-n'dix.

  Evening shadows were falling by the time the five made it to the nearer of those Towers: the Lesser, which stood to the west of the Greater, and was therefore invisible to the east. Seen from a distance, the Lesser Tower looked tiny. But up close it was impressive enough in terms of size — though the style left more than a little to be desired. Sarazin thought:

  —It looks like a weapon. A giant's club.

  The Lesser Tower was circular in section, its diameter widening from roughly thirty paces at ground level to thrice that at the top, which was ten times manheight from the ground. Those proportions made the tower seem heavy, unwieldy, overbearing. For a moment, Sarazin thought it was falling — then realised that the impression of movement came from the slow-streaming evening clouds.

  Glambrax scampered ahead of the others, grabbed a dark-purple thigh-bone which projected from the tower, hauled himself up and kissed a skull the colour of polished mahogany. In the dying light of the evening, Sarazin saw the entire tower was built of skulls, bones, gargoyled heads, fangs, claws, veined wings, and other pieces of both human and alien anatomy.

  Painted?

  His fingers caressed the nearest skull. It was dark, dark red, dark as blood drying towards black. Anatomically correct, right down to the close-stitched joints between the skullbones. His fingernail bent as he tried to scratch away the colour. He tried it with the tip of a knife.

  "Metal,' he said.

  'Or pottery,' said Epelthin Elkin. 'Pottery!' said Sarazin. I'm not daft enough to believe that.'

  'The Dissidents,' said Elkin, 'were masters of ceramics.'

  'Did they work ever in Selzirk?' said Sarazin. This reminds me of the roof of my mother's High Court. Also of a certain monument in Libernek Square.'

  The Dissidents were patrons of the arts,' said Elkin. 'They may well have fostered talent which later expressed itself elsewhere.'

  Sarazin — wondering if perhaps Elkin had been a Dissident himself — studied the gloomy colours of the wallwork. Waterweed green, squid purple, murder red, mahogany, lead, anthracite, pumpkin and plum.

  'Whatever this is made of, one could have wished that the colour scheme had been somewhat more sophisticated. If this was the art they patronised it leaves much to be desired.'

  'Ah,' said Elkin, 'doubtless they would have welcomed a maven like yourself to advise them in matters of taste.'

  'Are you mocking me?' said S
arazin, the touch of anger in his voice suggesting the final triumph of hunger over wit, of fatigue over tolerance.

  'Doubtless he means,' said Jarl, 'that only a fool would stand here talking colours when we've our lives to lose and a world, perhaps, to win.'

  With that, he began circling the Tower, looking for a gate. He found nothing, and returned to the others disgruntled.

  'Where's the door?' said Jarl.

  'Right in front of us,' said Elkin.

  So Jarl tried the wall with a word:

  'Open!'

  But no door opened.

  'Lead friend Heth out of earshot,' said Elkin, 'and I'll attend to this.'

  That he did, a single Word of his causing part of the sculptured wall to melt away. Within, red light breathed from dragon mouths in legion, showing them the interior of the Lesser Tower of Castle X-n'dix.

  They entered with swords drawn, for they had no idea what they might find within.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  X-zox: enclave on western coast of Hok.

  X-n'dix: complex built by the Dissidents which dominates

  the heights separating X-zox from the Willow Vale.

  Willow Vale: valley opening on to the southern coast of Hok.

  Inside the Lesser Tower the heroes found .. . silence. Dust. More dragon-mouth lamps. Stairs climbing in tight spirals to the heights. Arrow slits and spyholes invisible from the outside, so cunningly were they hidden among the tower's decorations.