The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster coaaod-9

by Hugh Cook

  Sheltered and sustained by Nol's benevolent patronage, Guest Gulkan, Thayer Levant and Eljuk Zala lived out the years in the same Castle. There was yet a hope that Sken-Pitilkin might win his case and be set at liberty; and, sustained by that hope, Guest Gulkan was reluctant to venture to Chi'ash-lan on his own account to mount a solitary challenge against Banker Sod and the might of the Partnership Banks.

  But at last Sken-Pitilkin's final appeal failed, and the effective death sentence against him was confirmed.

  By this time, Eljuk Zala Gulkan had progressed so far in his studies under Ontario Nol that he was ready to enter the Warp and endure the Trials which would see him graduate as a full-fledged wizard (if he survived!)

  So it was that Eljuk Zala and his master Ontario Nol joined Sken-Pitilkin on the journey eastward from the Castle of Controlling Power. With them went Guest Gulkan and Thayer Levant; for Guest still hoped to somehow liberate Sken-Pitilkin during the journey, even though Ontario Nol had warned him that in all probability this would be impossible.

  At the eastern end of the flame trench Drangsturm, the party took passage on a ship which set forth from the Castle of Ultimate Peace and began to cruise eastward in the direction of the Stepping Stone Islands and the Ocean of Cambria.

  Once the ship was past the Stepping Stone Islands, its eastward course took it into the waters of the Ocean of Cambria.

  On that voyage, Guest Gulkan was granted a second look at the Chameleon's Tongue, that hook of beach-fringed land on which he had once made a landing when Sken-Pitilkin had botched the job of navigating to Untunchilamon.

  To Guest's disappointment, nobody was much interested in the view. Sken-Pitilkin was incarcerated in the yellow bottle, brooding on the certainty of his death, and was in no mood to trifle with memories. Thayer Levant had taken up residence in that same bottle, where he passed his time by practicing knife fighting, and proved uninterested in reminiscence. As for Shabble – why, to Shabble, flight was a way of life, so the bouncing bubble could scarcely be expected to be impressed by Guest's recollections of his aerial voyage across Moana. Meantime, Ontario Nol was busy soothing Eljuk's nerves, and giving him some last- ditch tutoring, and had no time to play tourist.

  This might seem a small matter, but it left Guest singularly disgruntled to find himself reduced to such a marginal role that he could find nobody willing to take an interest in his reminiscences of the past.

  Once the ship was eastward of the Elbow, it turned for the north, taking care to stand well off shore.

  As the ship sailed north, the west was landmarked by the jagged stubble of the Lizard Crest Rises, blue-toned by distance.

  The ship was so far from shore that it was impossible for uninitiated landlubbers to tell when they were passing Seagate, the entrance to the Sponge Sea. But thereafter the mountains to the west became more formidable – great slab-sided thunderbolts of rock rising to crags which were peaked with patent snow.

  The eastern coast of Argan – that coast which now lay to the west of the ship – is a mix of the lightly populated and the entirely desolate. Even from a distance, and even to such a poor geographer as the Yarglat barbarian Guest Gulkan, those mountains effortlessly clarified the demographical dynamics which had populated the west while leaving the east to the woodlouse and the bumble bee.

  It is commonly said that the great geographical determinant is water, and by and large this is true. Any large city must be built by water; and those rulers who have commanded construction in defiance of this imperative are usually forced to abandon the works of their ego shortly thereafter. But, while water is the one great essential, the lie of the land must not be overlooked.

  The sagacious Sken-Pitilkin, though doomed to death, was still a compulsive pedagog. Therefore, when Guest Gulkan entered the yellow bottle in which Sken-Pitilkin was held captive, and there reported on the view, Sken-Pitilkin took advantage of the report to lecture Guest Gulkan on the Demographic Theory of Contours, and was lecturing still when their ship sailed into the Breach, ending its voyage by the Shores of Glass which lie on the dawnside of the Shackle Mountains.

  The shore was made of billows of glass in blue and yellow.

  Hard glass it was, and great heat was required to melt it, and sundry scratchings near the shore gave evidence of the efforts of generations of over-optimistic entrepreneurs who had bankrupted themselves by trying to mine the stuff.

  It is true that a profit could be made from the Shores of Glass were they to be located near any center of civilization, despite the hardness of the substance and the difficulties of smelting it. But the dangers, isolation and barrenness of the Breach increased all expenses unreasonably.

  There was no water, hence all must be imported; there was no food, and the waters of the Breach were unaccountably impoverished from a fisherman's point of view; there were storms in winter; there was a danger of dragons all through the year; and the Malud marauders from Asral were so rapacious in their plunderings of the sea-trade that no ship that made passage through the Ocean of Cambria could possibly get insurance for its voyage.

  Hence the wizards of the Confederation naturally expected to find the Shores of Glass deserted, and were disconcerted to find a small colony of purple-skinned Frangoni warriors established by the sea. These Frangoni were from the Ebrell Islands, and to a man they were sages who had chosen to devote themselves to dith-zora- ka-mako, the Mystical Way of the Nu-chala-nuth.

  In any religion there is typically a triple dynamic at work.

  There is the dynamic of political power, which attracts those who infiltrate religious organizations with the motives of cold- blooded careerists. These will typically be found advising Banks,

  Bankers, emperors, warlords and kings. Then there is the pastoral dynamic, which attracts those who, as a solution to their personal inadequacies, seek to bring into their own lives (or into the lives of men in general – and, sometimes, the lives of women also, although this is usually optional) – the light of such Living Gods as the Great Frog, the Holy Goat-Rapist, the Smock-Smock and the Vodo Man.

  Then there is religion of the third kind.

  Religion of the third kind is the mystical religion which concerns itself with the burning moment when heart and mind are consumed by an incandescence which cannot be captured in words – or when, in the peace of a raindrop, a rock becomes a rock and a tree becomes a tree, each known in the fullness of its own nature.

  The Frangoni from the Ebrells were bent on practicing that third kind of religion, but their theory and praxis meant but little to the wizards. The entire religion of Nu-chala-nuth counted as nothing as far as the Confederation of Wizards was concerned.

  Still, the traveling wizards admired the dedication with which these ascetic Frangoni mystics were building their colony.

  They had made small hutches for themselves by gluing together fragments of glass. With enormous labors, they were wresting further fragments from the local terrain, with a view to constructing an enormous monastery; and, judging by the size of the foundation-lines which had been scratched out on the ground, if ever completed this monastery would be one of the wonders of the world.

  By cunning employment of solar stills, the religious colonists provided themselves with fresh, clean, potable water.

  Already they had piled up great heaps of byproduct salt; and, since the Confederation of Wizards is, amongst other things, a commercial operation, it was entirely natural for the travelers to dicker with the mystics, trading olives and oranges for sacks of salt which could be sold elsewhere for enormous profit. Thus a dozen days passed in preparations and barter. But at last trade was finished and the expedition was ready to set forth.

  This business of trade was entirely logical, moral and unobjectionable, yet it infuriated Guest Gulkan beyond measure. He believed (this was the rationalization by which he sustained his own ego against the buffeting of misfortune) that his life was heading toward some culminating crisis; and he took it as a personal affront to find t
he wizards so casual as to postpone this crisis by a whole twelve days of mercantile dickering.

  At last, leaving behind a strong contingent to guard their ship, the wizards went inland on foot, bearing great stocks of food, water and firewood in the yellow bottle in which both Shabble and Sken-Pitilkin were still held as prisoners. Thayer Levant chose to keep Shabble and Sken-Pitilkin company, for the knifeman had absolutely no interest in tramping at great length through the mountains. But, compelled by pride, and by a rational soldierly interest in maintaining his own fitness, Guest Gulkan chose to march the long leagues rather than ride them out in the bottle.

  The wizards marched to the north-west corner of the Breach, where the blue and yellow billows of the Shores of Glass gave way to honest rock. From there, they followed a steep and ancient train marked with cairns and with ancient gray-white banners mounted on bamboo poles.

  The trail climbed precipitous slopes by means of stairways a league or more in height. They crossed engulfing gorges by ancient bridges. In places, Eljuk had to be blindfolded and led with a piece of rope, for he was too terror-stricken to proceed with his eyes open. Some of the paths, after all, consisted of nothing up flags of rock inserted into man-made slots in a sheer cliff face.

  Eljuk's brother Guest was more disturbed by the long tunnels which pierced entire mountains, and which were a necessary and unavoidable part of the route. In those sometimes-humming sometimes-hot wormways through the living rock, Guest experienced grim intimations of doom, particularly when passing certain great iron doors which were sealed against intrusion.

  The more lengthy and many-branched tunnels reminded Guest of the mazeways Downstairs, the labyrinth beneath the city of Injiltaprajura on the far-distant island of Untunchilamon. At times – when black grass was growing underfoot and cold green lights were burning overhead – the resemblance was so close that he more than half-expected to encounter a dorgi or a therapist.

  But every venture through the long succession of such complexes delivered them again to the sky, and each time the sky was higher, and colder, and more beset by wind.

  In the dry and wind-ravaged heights of the Shackle Mountains, environmental stress – the height, the dryness, the grinding wind, the poor food and the labor of travel – began to take their toll on Eljuk Zala. Under the influence of that stress, cold sores broke out, and their crusted presence added a further disfigurement to the purple birthstains which marred his lips.

  Spreading beyond those lips, the sores took hold on his cheeks.

  Eljuk had to be reminded not to touch those sores, with Sken-Pitilkin doing the reminding repeatedly when Eljuk entered the yellow bottle in the evenings to study irregular verbs and origami. If the hands wander from lips to eyes, then the disease can endanger the sight, as Sken-Pitilkin had learnt during those years of his youth in which he had practiced as a pox doctor.

  "He saved our brother Morsh," said Guest Gulkan, reminding Eljuk of the manner in which Sken-Pitilkin had secured a cure for Morsh Bataar when that young man's leg had been grievously broken,

  "so you should trust to his counsel." Guest was solicitous of Eljuk's health, and tried to convince him that he should travel inside the yellow bottle. But Eljuk would not. Since his brother Guest chose to march the mountains,

  Eljuk was determined to do likewise. Besides, the bottle was claustrophobic, and from previous confinement Eljuk had grown to hate the thing.

  Once, when Shabble was busy chasing shadows in the depths of the yellow bottle, and when Eljuk had fallen asleep in the middle of construing a particularly irregular verb – the verb trizon, which varies according to astrological influences – Guest ventured to share with Sken-Pitilkin his concerns for Eljuk's safety.

  "He's – he's got these Trials to face, hasn't he?" said Guest. "He has to go into this, this Warp thing. Maybe he'll die."

  "Maybe he will," said Sken-Pitilkin.

  "Well," said Guest, "isn't there any way I can help him?

  Maybe I could persuade him to rest, you know, to gather his strength."

  "I didn't know you to be so tender of your brother," said Sken-Pitilkin.

  "Why," said Guest in surprise, "but I saved him from drowning at the risk of my own life."

  "Eljuk?" said Sken-Pitilkin.

  "You remember!" said Guest. "The battle, you know, down by the Yolantarath. Oh, but you weren't there. It was Zozimus, that's right, he was all dressed up in his armor, he had a falcon, you were back in Gendormargensis. Anyway. Eljuk was in the water, he was crying out for help, so I raced down to the river, I jumped in and pulled him out."Guest was emphatic in his account. Clearly the Weaponmaster believed himself to be telling the truth. But Sken-Pitilkin, even though he had not been there on the day, knew otherwise. For Guest had confessed the full story in drunken reminiscence with the

  Rovac warrior Rolf Thelemite and the dwarf Glambrax, and Sken-Pitilkin had overheard some of those drunken confessions.

  True, Guest had jumped into the Yolantarath River to save a man. But – Eljuk? Sken-Pitilkin had a very distinct memory of Guest saying:

  "Eljuk! I'd not so much as sponge my face for Eljuk!"

  Furthermore, though Guest plainly retained no memory of the occasion, the Weaponmaster had once made a sober confession to Sken-Pitilkin, admitting to a precognitive vision in which he had seen his father drown in the Yolantarath. In consequence of that vision, when Guest had seen someone floundering in the river he had naturally thought it to be his father – and, identifying the man thus on the strength of his vision, had risked his life to save the poor fellow who was in difficulties, only to find to his disgust that it was actually Eljuk. Guest Gulkan had confessed the whole truth of the matter to Sken-Pitilkin on an evening when he had sat at the confluence of the Pig and the Yolantarath, waxing sentimental about the fate of some men he had hung some days earlier. Sken-Pitilkin was interested to observe how systematically Guest misremembered his own past – not wilfully, but entirely unconsciously. We are often the least reliable witnesses to our own lives, for so much in memory later changes as we reconfigure ourselves in the light of future experience.

  "You saved your brother once," said Sken-Pitilkin, who saw no point in challenging Guest's misremembering of the past, "but now he must save himself. There is nothing you can do to help your brother face his Trials. The Trials are as much a test of will as anything. Your brotherly solicitude can scarcely help strengthen his will."

  "I'm afraid he's going to die," said Guest.

  "I know for a fact that I am most definitely going to die," said Sken-Pitilkin pointedly.

  This forced Guest to face up to a fact which he was most reluctant to acknowledge: the fact that he was in the presence of one who had been sentenced to death.

  "Couldn't you escape?" said Guest. "I mean, they've got to let you out of this bottle when we get to this Warp. You can't take the bottle into the Warp if you're still inside it."

  "Some of these wizards are wizards of Arl," said Sken-Pitilkin. "When I'm let out of this bottle, they'll be watching me. One false move, and I'll be crisped to a cinder."Guest Gulkan accepted this.

  In the arrogance of his early youth, the Weaponmaster would never have accepted such a gloomy prognosis. For, in his extreme youth, the Weaponmaster had thought himself equal of anything the world could bring about him. But, ever since being mauled by the Great Mink, Guest had been unable to muster up the same invincible confidence.

  So the trek continued, with each day taking Guest Gulkan and his traveling companions higher and higher into the Shackle Mountains. The heights were cold, and silent. The lichen of long centuries grew on cairns where dirt-gray banners hung from gray bamboo. The path crossed slopes where rock had once run liquid.

  Eljuk began to turn inward, no longer responding to his brother. In the face of his silence, Guest sought advice from Ontario Nol.

  "Is he sick?" said Guest Gulkan.

  "Sick?" said Nol.

  "You know," said Guest. "Like all of us were at Ibs
en-Iktus, you know, the first night in Qonsajara."

  "Your sickness was caused by climbing too high too fast," said Nol. "Here we have gone slowly, hence height is not a problem."

  "But Eljuk's so quiet," said Guest.

  "What would you expect?" said Nol somberly. "Of course he's quiet! He's preparing himself for tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow?" said Guest.

  "We should be there tomorrow!" said Nol. "At the Warp. At the Place of Testing. Then – Guest, many try, but few succeed."

  "Why?" said Guest. "What happens? These, these Tests, what makes them kill people?"

  "That is not for you to know," said Nol.

  And the eminent wizard of Itch quite refused to talk about it any further.

  That evening, Guest Gulkan tried to discuss the matter of Eljuk's Tests with Sken-Pitilkin.

  "It's those – those Mahendo Mahunduk things," said Guest.

  "That's what it is, isn't it? They'll kill him!"

  "Quiet!" said Sken-Pitilkin, in shock. "Quiet, lest a wizard hear, and kill you!"

  It had now been so long since Sken-Pitilkin had heard Guest speak of the Mahendo Mahunduk that he had hoped the Weaponmaster to have forgotten all about them. The Mahendo Mahunduk, the sometime soldiers of the Revisionary Gods, were creatures of destruction who were half-demon and half-deity. Their old masters were dead, or else had evolved, since evolution is one of the fatal flaws to which the gods are prone; and so the Mahendo Mahunduk were at liberty to make alliances with wizards.

  As a slave can enter the service of an emperor, and gain a measure of power and protection from his association with such a dignitary, so too can a wizard make an alliance with one of the Mahendo Mahunduk. But, just as a cruel and demanding emperor may subject a candidate slave to a potentially destructive test of will, so too do the Mahendo Mahunduk test all candidate wizards.