The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers coaaod-6

by Hugh Cook

  Forth went the heroes, forth through the streets of night where massive bloodclot shadows loomed in every doorway. The night was hot and humid — and preternaturally peaceful. Shuttered silence guarded many a window which would usually have been alive with lamplight and laughter.

  All Injiltaprajura knew that something untoward was going on and the city had battened down as if to meet a hurricane.

  Our heroes quested through this ominous atmosphere to the Cabal House: and found it closed against them. A mirbane balefire was burning bright atop the building, summoning all the sorcerers of Injiltaprajura to ingather. Judging by the raucous uproar coming from the upper rooms, those worthies had ingathered indeed.

  ‘It sounds like a party,’ said Uckermark as he knocked on the door.

  There was no response, so Uckermark used his boot. The door hummed, glowed yellow, belched sulphur, then darkened to silence. He kicked again. This time the door maintained a stolid impassivity. As the corpse master attacked the door yet again, Log Jaris turned and walked away.

  'Where are you going?’ said Chegory in bewilderment.

  But the bullman walked on without looking back. Uckermark, ignoring his comrade’s retreat, continued to assault the door. Then Chegory Guy joined him, for the young Ebrell Islander could resist the temptation no longer. Chegory displayed such enthusiasm for kicking, thumping and hammering that Uckermark left him to continue the attack alone. The corpse master himself stepped back and bawled at the top of his voice:

  ‘Come out of there, you turd-spawned dog-eaters!’

  Sounds of drunken singing floated down from above, but if Uckermark was heard he was ignored. So he began to harangue the sky-dwellers at length. Half a thousand obscenities later, Chegory abandoned his attempts to break down the door.

  ‘This is useless,’ said he, wiping an abundance of sweat from his feverish brow. ‘We’ll never get through this.’

  ‘I think we will,’ said Log Jaris, returning from his travels with a sledgehammer slung over his shoulders.

  Without further ado, the bullman began to smash down the door to the Cabal House.

  ‘I don’t know that this is entirely wise,’ said Ivan Pokrov, who possessed all a good citizen’s inhibitions against vandalism in full force.

  ‘Then you know what you can do with wisdom,’ said Log Jaris.

  He swung the sledgehammer again. One of the door timbers cracked.

  ‘Ores!’ screamed a terror-stricken voice within. ‘There are ores without!’

  ‘Yes, ores!’ roared Log Jaris. ‘Big huge hulking ores with bloodstained teeth! Coming to eat you up!’

  Sounds of panic ensued. Then faded. Whatever sorcerers were guarding the door had fled.

  ‘Gutless wonders,’ muttered Log Jaris.

  Then he wrecked the door entirely and stormed inside, closely followed by Uckermark and Chegory Guy. Ivan Pokrov lingered outside, for, though the analytical engineer had felt wildly brave and courageous on Jod, he had survived for many millennia by not taking unnecessary risks, and in immortals such old habits die particularly hard.

  Pokrov’s reckless companions found the ground floor of the Cabal House deserted but for the heavy odours of incense and sulphur. Log Jaris led an unopposed assault which swiftly took the heroes to the heights. There they found the sorcerers, who had broken out their supplies of alchemical alcohol ages ago, and were all thoroughly drunk. One, more sober than the others, questioned the intruders. Thus:

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Chegory knew this sorcerer. It was Nixorjapretzel Rat, Varazchavardan’s erstwhile apprentice.

  ‘We’re here seeking help,’ said Log Jaris.

  ‘Piss off,’ said Rat.

  ‘In case you don’t know,’ said Uckermark, ‘a demon, Binchinminfin by name, has taken possession of your master Aquitaine Varazchavardan.’

  ‘He’s my master no longer,’ said the drunken Rat. ‘I graduated to sorcerer last year.’

  ‘The hell with your quibbling!’ said Uckermark. ‘Are you listening to me? There’s a demon, a-’

  ‘We know, we know,’ said Rat. ‘We know all about that. It may mean the end of Untunchilamon. It may mean the end of the world.’

  ‘Why?’ said Chegory. ‘It’s, um, only a demon, okay? We can take it, gang up on it, right?’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Rat. Weeping fat tears of fear, grief and self-pity. ‘The demons have scant sense of self-discipline. The Grand Treaty of the High Consenting Powers has long been endangered-’

  ‘Oh, stop babbling!’ said Uckermark, with impatient anger. ‘What are you on about? Talk straight sense!’

  ‘I mean,’ said the young and still-blubbering sorcerer, ‘when one demon disrupts, others will likewise.’

  ‘What means this in-house argot?’ said Log Jaris. ‘Are you trying to tell us that other demons will do as Binchinminfin has?’

  A sorcerer older, wiser and more articulate tottered over to them and said:

  ‘As a single ringleader can make a mob from an honest crowd, so a single delinquent demon can rouse the jealous mass of his fellows to actions criminal, even though demons and sorcerers alike know the destruction of the very world would follow. Every head in the city may house a demon by this time tomorrow morning. If so, then the world will end the day after.’

  ‘Then what are you going to do about it?’ said Uckermark with contempt. ‘Drink yourself into oblivion? Or what?’

  ‘We’re working on it,’ said the older sorcerer.

  Evidendy he meant they were working on getting drunker, for he turned away and seized the nearest flask of alcohol, clearly intending to do just that.

  ‘Rat!’ said Uckermark. ‘We’re going to the palace to take on this demon. You’re coming with us!’

  ‘I’m doing no such thing!’ said Rat, who had no taste for suicide. ‘Back! Back, I say! Or I’ll turn you into a frog!’

  Then Rat raised his hands and cried out in a high and hideous voice. One of Uckermark’s boots promptly turned itself into a frog. As the corpse master’s weight was bearing down on it at the time, the boot’s unexpected incarnation as a web-footed amphibian was chiefly notable for its brevity.

  ‘Come on,’ said Log Jaris. ‘Let’s be going.’

  Nixorjapretzel Rat was raising his hands again. Was crying out. The heroes hastened toward the stairs. Fire flashed toward them. They ducked, and fled.

  They halted, panting, at the first landing. The young and relentless Rat was standing at the head of the stairs, his hands raised yet again. He spoke in a high, sibilant voice. The air wavered. A good half-dozen stones directly above the heroes converted themselves to butter. One of these stones was the keystone of an arch.

  ‘Oh shit!’ said Uckermark.

  Then led the retreat, taking eight stairs at a single leap. Behind the heroes, stones creaked. Then, with a roar, the arch collapsed. Fragments of rock pursued them at the rattle. When the heroes halted at the bottom and looked back, they saw the stonefall had sealed off the stairway.

  Untunchilamon’s wonderworkers were, to a man, trapped in the Cabal House.

  ‘Borgan!’ said Log Jaris.

  Then, having voiced that obscenity, he led the way outside. Sounds of drunken singing still floated from the uppermost chambers of the Cabal House.

  ‘No joy?’ said Ivan Pokrov, who had waited patiently in the street all this time.

  ‘Well, we did learn something,’ said Uckermark, taking off his remaining boot since he thought it easier to walk barefoot than one-booted.

  ‘What?’ said Pokrov.

  ‘The demon Binchinminfin is definitely in possession of Varazchavardan. The sorcerers have told us as much. They also say that where one delinquent demon has gone a thousand may follow.’

  ‘Well,’ said Chegory, trying to sound brisk and brave. ‘That’s it, then, isn’t it? There’s, ah, well, only one thing for it. Go to the palace, that’s it, then it’s knifework, that’s the way, slaughter this demon man
to man.’

  But they did no such thing, for before they could do anything so brave or so foolish, Yilda came panting up the street toward them.

  ‘Come back!’ she said. ‘Back to the corpse shop! Now, now!’

  ‘Why?’ said Uckermark.

  Once Yilda had got her breath back, she explained.

  With explanations given, all hastened back to the corpse shop. They plunged in through the wide-open door and hastened to the backsquare courtyard. There a sun-shining bubble of light was lording it over a disreputable bunch of ill-assorted humans.

  ‘Hello, Shabble,’ said Log Jaris, who knew the demon of Jod of old. ‘What have you got for us?’

  ‘Prisoners!’ said Shabble, squeaking with excitement.

  Prisoners indeed. Exhausted, haggard, nerve-shattered prisoners.

  The unfortunates in question were Arnaut, Al-ran Lars, Tolon, Guest Gulkan, Thayer Levant, Pelagius Zozimus and Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin. After the encounter with the dorgi, Shabble had herded them through the interstices of the underworld until at last, after following a cautiously circuitous route, they had emerged into the starlight of Injiltaprajura by night. Then the demon of Jod had brought them to the corpse shop.

  “You dare much by taking us captive,’ said Pelagius Zozimus.

  Strong was the voice of the wizard of Xluzu and stern was his demeanour, for his pride would not let him confess to his dilapidated condition. In contrast, his cousin Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin looked to be at death’s door, and was mumbling incoherently in the quavering voice of an old man on the edge of senility.

  ‘We dare nothing,’ said Uckermark. ‘It’s Shabble who dares.’

  ‘But, sirrah,’ said Pelagius Zozimus to Uckermark, ‘is not this ill-mannered goblin your servant?’

  ‘Silence!’ said Shabble, who knew not what a goblin was, but presumed the designation to be insulting.

  ‘Because if it is,’ continued Zozimus, ‘then I-’

  ‘Silence!’ said Shabble again, this time in female accents terrifying to hear. Yes, Shabble had again borrowed the voice of Anaconda Stogirov, Chief of Security for the Golden Gulag. A voice which had always commanded both fear and respect.

  Anaconda Stogirov! What do we know of her? That she [Here some thirty thousand words of elaborate fantasy have been deleted. I must repeat facts already made clear in my Editorial Note. The ‘Golden Gulag’ is mythical entirely, the Originator is in many respects an irresponsible fantasist, and this Text in its entirety is to be treated with the greatest of caution. Drax Lira, Redactor Major.]

  — thus we see that Stogirov was a woman worse than the Iron Lady of the Death Cycle legends.

  Anyway, to return to our history.

  You will remember that (some 30,000 words ago) we left Shabble in the courtyard of the corpse shop with Shabble’s prisoners. Zozimus was angrily protesting against imprisonment, and though 30,000 words have passed we find him angry still. Anyway, to return to our narrative tense (the past) let us discover him saying:

  ‘I am Justina’s master chef! An imperial servant! My mistress will have you fried alive unless you release me now!’

  The bluff was senseless, since Uckermark already knew Zozimus to be but a foreign thief, and Zozimus knew that he knew. Even so, the bluff was a brave feat of rhetoric considering that poor Zozimus was so tired he felt drunk.

  ‘Maybe there will be some frying alive,’ said Uckermark, with a grin. ‘And quickly! Shabble will fry you on the spot if I ask as much.’ It was then that he saw the wishstone in Arnaut’s hands. He removed it with a polite ‘thank you’.

  Then said to Shabble: ‘Why have you brought these people here, litde friend?’

  ‘They are criminals guilty of crimes against the State,’ said Stogirov’s voice. ‘They will suffer sundry peripheral ablations before they endure execution most bloody. They-’

  ‘That’s enough!’ said Ivan Pokrov, who, unlike Uckermark, was not enjoying this at all. ‘Shabble! Come to order! Or I’ll take you to a therapist! Right now!’

  Shabble squeaked in terror. The light of the shining one faded till the dim-glowing globe was scarcely visible in the dark. This eclipsed sun drifted toward Chegory Guy, who took pity on poor Shabble and bundled the sad and sorry demon into the most capacious pocket of his canary robes.

  ‘Thank you for reining in your goblin,’ said Zozimus. ‘Now, as an imperial servant-’

  ‘The Empress Justina is a captive, and possibly dead,’ said Ivan Pokrov. interrupting without apology. ‘We have a crisis situation here. You have to help us kill a demon.’ ‘A demon?’ said Zozimus. momentarily taken aback. Then he shuddered as if emerging from very cold water, pressed his fingers to his temples as if attempting to expel fatigue by an exercise of brute force, then said, crisply: ‘Explanations! ’

  Pokrov proceeded to explain in Ashmarlan. Tolon listened impassively (perhaps understanding, perhaps not) but Arnaut clamoured for a translation into Malud which Al-ran Lars provided. Meanwhile, Pelagius Zozimus put Pokrov’s dialogue into Toxteth for the benefit of Guest Gulkan. who then rendered the translation into another tongue entirely at the request of Thayer Levant. Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, who was temporarily non — compos mentis, followed the conversation not at all.

  ‘Duggerlop,’ muttered Thayer Levant, when the translation of a translation had enlightened him as to their situation.

  The precise meaning of this is unclear, but it can reasonably be presumed to be a statement of extreme discontent. Levant then exchanged further words with Guest Gulkan in a tongue foreign to all our informing witnesses. Whereupon Guest Gulkan addressed the others in tolerably good Toxteth:

  ‘My good friend Thayer Levant notes that we’ve got nothing personal against Varazchavardan. If you want us to help kill him, we will — but only if we get a suitable reward.’

  ‘We’ll give you the wishstone,’ said Pokrov grandly.

  Uckermark and Log Jaris looked at each other. How could the crazy analytical engineer say something so stupid? The wishstone was of incalculable value. Still, the words could not be unsaid. They sparked a clamour from the Malud marauders and from Guest Gulkan’s faction. Both sides wanted the wishstone.

  In a moment, there were weapons alive in the night, and the two factions were squared off for combat.

  ‘Shabble!’ said Pokrov, thinking to restore order with the help of his ‘goblin’.

  Shabble lay inert in Chegory’s pocket. But Chegory fumbled the now unshining one out of the pocket and tossed this fearer of therapists into the air. Shabble dropped like a stone. The long-surviving plaything of many millennia was playing dead.

  ‘Enough of this!’ roared Log Jaris.

  Toxteth is a great language for roaring so that is what he roared in. Even those who did not understand his vocables paused nevertheless.

  Log Jaris confronted the would-be combatants. This was a very ticklish situation. Shabble had never thought to disarm the prisoners, who were well-equipped for slaughter. If the prisoners thought to combine — as they shortly surely would — they could easily overwhelm Log Jaris and his friends.

  ‘The demon Binchinminfin haunts Varazchavardan’s flesh,’ said Log Jaris. ‘Varazchavardan so possessed will prove our doom unless we doom him first. There’s no escape from Untunchilamon till Fistavlir ends and the winds renew once more. Oh, we could escape from mortal men in a shallow canoe — but from a demon?’

  ‘I’ll take my chances in a canoe,’ said Guest Gulkan. ‘Give me the wishstone and I’ll be gone.’

  ‘What do you want with the wishstone?’ said Log Jaris. ‘To rule the world,’ said Guest Gulkan.

  The bullman laughed heartily.

  ‘This thing,’ said Logjaris, taking the glittering triakisoctahedron from Uckermark’s hands, ‘rules nothing. Wishstone it is called but it grants no wishes. It is but a toy. A bauble. Opal and diamond in one, hence treasured much — but useless for the exercise of power.’

  ‘Wrong!’ said Guest Gulkan. ‘It is a power amon
g powers for those who know how to use it.’

  ‘Then suppose we hand it to you?’ said Log Jaris. ‘Can you abolish Varazchavardan? Can you defeat Binchinminfin? Can you turn Injiltaprajura upside down and inside out?’

  ‘Yes!’ said Guest Gulkan, his voice shaking with untrammelled emotions. ‘Give it to me! It’s mine!’

  He reached for it.

  Tolon growled with displeasure.

  Swords leapt to the ready.

  All were poised for slaughter.

  Then Shabble in a single moment evolved from stone to firefly, from firefly to candle, from candle to sun. So evolving, the shining one leapt skywards. Swordsmen flinched from the glare. Then Shabble spake in a cooing female voice most melodious and most beautiful to hear, saying sweedy:

  ‘Don’t fight, dear friends. For I, dear friends, must fry you to cinders if you do.’

  This beautifully voiced death-threat brought order to Uckermark’s courtyard and set the stage for long and involved tripartite negotiations to begin. It would be tedious to recount these convoluted negotiations in detail but the gist of the matter can be given in moments.

  Of the three parties present, only guest Gulkan’s faction wanted the wishstone for its own sake. The Malud marauders sought the precious bauble only because they knew it could be exchanged elsewhere for fabulous wealth. If Uckermark and his friends lusted for the thing, they likewise did so only because they could use it to get rich.

  ‘So there’s no problem,’ said Logjaris, when all parties had made their positions clear. ‘If we kill Varazchavardan, we’ll be heroes. If we secure the rule of Untunchilamon for the Empress Justina, her gratitude will let us rape the treasury entire. There’ll be riches and honours for the least of us. We’ll sleep on pearls and swim in liquid gold. If our friend Guest Gulkan will consent to settle for the wishstone then the rest of us will surely settle for treasure.’