The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

by Hugh Cook

  Furthermore, the Partnership Banks were distressed that Sod had used ineffective treacheries in his dealings with the Witchlord Onosh. Effective treacheries against non-Bankers were acceptable, but the price of failure was ....

  Sod had a lively sense of what the price of failure might be, and so exerted himself strenuously to negotiate an agreement with the Witchlord Onosh. Finally, under dire pressure from the Partnership Banks, Sod surrendered Eljuk Zala Gulkan to his father, and then surrendered himself to the Witchlord as a hostage.

  Once his son Eljuk had been restored to him, and once he had Sod as a hostage, Lord Onosh at last consented to negotiate with the Partnership Banks in earnest, as a result of which the Doors of the Circle of the Banks were open again.

  "Furthermore," said Sken-Pitilkin, "Ontario Nol has recently returned to Alozay through those Doors, there to resume his training of Eljuk Zala."

  "I am pleased for my brother," said Guest Gulkan, mightily wearied by the laborious detail in which Sken-Pitilkin had told the tale of the negotiations for the reopening of the Circle.

  "There is more pleasure yet to come," said Sken-Pitilkin.

  "The high point of my story is that we are to be privileged to travel the Circle, just as Plandruk Qinplaqus was in former times when he traveled that Circle as Ulix of the Drum."

  "We?" said Guest. "Who are you talking of?"

  "Myself," said Sken-Pitilkin, "and yourself, and Thayer Levant, and Pelagius Zozimus."

  "And Qinplaqus himself?" said Guest.

  "He no longer wishes to risk the Circle," said Sken-Pitilkin.

  "For after having been once betrayed and imprisoned, he cannot bring himself to trust the Banks. He blames the Partnership Banks as a whole for Sod's delinquencies, and will assist us against them."

  "What are we planning?" said Guest. "War?"

  "We are seeking leverage," said Sken-Pitilkin. "And once we have it, we will see how much of the Circle we can win. We already rule the Door at Alozay, and Plandruk Qinplaqus is our ally here in Dalar ken Halvar. If we could but win Chi'ash-lan, then we would be well placed to coerce the Partnership Banks as a whole to obedience to our will."

  This was a new Sken-Pitilkin, a Sken-Pitilkin whom Guest Gulkan had not previously seen. The Sken-Pitilkin who had been the companion of Guest's childhood had been a broken-down exponent of the irregular verbs, a ragged refugee scraping his living in exile, an irascible master of the classroom.

  But Sken-Pitilkin's true history was far greater and grander than anything Guest had guessed at. Sken-Pitilkin had known power; and fame; and glory; and mightiness; and mastery; and the appetite for such things had been rekindled during the long manoeuverings of the past four years.

  While Guest had been concerning himself with the exercise of his limbs, the eating of his meals and the rigors of his marital bed, Sken-Pitilkin had been exercising himself mightily in politics, embroiling himself in the affairs of the Witchlord Onosh and the Partnership Banks, acting as translator, as advisor, as diplomat, as interrogator, and as a professional practitioner of international law.

  So it was that, for four long years, as Guest had turned inward in the manner of the invalid, his world shrinking till it took account of little outside his own skin, Sken-Pitilkin's world had been enlarging to a point where its complexity could not be compressed into anything less than a volume of ten thousand pages or more.

  (Oh, Time! Strength! Cash! Patience!)

  So Guest was uncommonly sluggish in responding to Sken-Pitilkin's enraptured enthusiasm for the embroilments of a quest and its consequences. Sken-Pitilkin perceived this sluggishness, but, presuming it would be transitory, he said:

  "We were talking of the x-x-zix. The subject of our quest.

  Have you by chance heard of this device?"

  Then Guest Gulkan thought, and by a miracle of memory he recalled an early mention of the thing. (In truth, Sken-Pitilkin must have spoken of the x-x-zix a thousand times in Guest Gulkan's youth, but the Yarglat barbarian was such a poor scholar that it was a very miracle that he remembered so much as a single of these mentions).

  "The Untunchilamons!" said Guest. "That was it! The Untunchilamons! When you were young, you quested for the x-x-zix.

  You quested on all twenty-six of the Untunchilamon, and you - "

  "There is but one Untunchilamon," said Sken-Pitilkin.

  "No," said Guest. "There are twenty-six. I remember that distinctly. If you told me that once you told it to me a hundred times."

  "No, no," said Sken-Pitilkin, who had long been out of the habit of tutoring young Guest, and so had started to forget how difficult it was. "It was you who told me the number twenty-six, which you got from confusing Untunchilamon with the islands of

  Rovac. There is but one Untunchilamon, and I can state it as a certainty since I have been there."

  "In your youth."

  "Yes, in my youth."

  "Questing," said Guest Gulkan.

  "Verily," said Sken-Pitilkin.

  "And now," said Guest Gulkan, "as you launch yourself upon the years of your senility, you wish to take up that quest again."

  "Of senility I know not," said Sken-Pitilkin. "But my resolve is certain, and certainly a quest is a part of it."

  Then Sken-Pitilkin explained the nature of the x-x-zix, which was a device capable of controlling the Breathings of the Cold West, which were the ancient weather machines which made that region so abominably cold.

  "Our good friend Plandruk Qinplaqus desires the use of the x- x-zix also," said Sken-Pitilkin, "and long has he sought it, for Dalar ken Halvar has Breathings of its own, these Breathings being those which make the climate hereabouts so infernally hot."

  Then Sken-Pitilkin tutored Guest Gulkan further, explaining that use of the x-x-zix would allow the climates of both Dalar ken Halvar and Chi'ash-lan to be moderated to something close enough to the sensible.

  Therefore Sken-Pitilkin proposed that Guest Gulkan join him in questing to Untunchilamon in alliance with the wizard Zozimus, then return with that treasure to Dalar ken Halvar. There the wizard Plandruk Qinplaqus, he who was otherwise known as Ulix of the Drum, would make use of the x-x-zix to remedy the climate of his own city.

  "And then," said Sken-Pitilkin, "he will help us bring the Circle of the Partnership Banks to heel."

  "How?" said Guest.

  "Why, it is obvious," said Sken-Pitilkin. "The Banks exist to make money, and a greening of the icelands of Chi'ash-lan would make more money than you could shake a stick at. If you have the strength of the x-x-zix in your hand and the wisdom of wizards to support you, then you can make yourself master of the Circle of the Partnership Banks. Or so I believe."

  "It would help me also," said Guest, shaking off his sluggishness with a rapidity which was consequent upon his upbringing in the household of a ruling warlord, "if I could make myself a wizard in my own right."

  "Why, doubtless it would so help you," said Sken-Pitilkin.

  "But to make you a wizard would take a lifetime."

  "Not so," said Guest. "For there is in the city of Obooloo the Great God Jocasta, who has sworn to make me a wizard, powerful and immortal, if I do but liberate the thing from cruel imprisonment at the hands of one Anaconda Stogirov, priestess of the Temple of Blood."

  "So you have told me you have been told," said Sken-Pitilkin,

  "but it is a nonsense."

  And it was a nonsense.

  Of this Sken-Pitilkin was certain.

  Nevertheless, the sagacious wizard of Skatzabratzumon was hard put to dissuade the Emperor in Exile from this folly, and so called for assistance from Paraban Senk, the Teacher of Control who ruled the Combat College in which Guest had been so long a patient.

  "Is this going to be a short lecture or a long one?" said Guest, once he was settled with Sken-Pitilkin in front of one of the screens which Senk used to communicate with mere mortals such as wizards and warriors.

  "That depends on you," said Paraban Senk, manifesting his chose
n face upon the screen. "Tell me, Guest Gulkan, what on earth has persuaded you to this foolishness."

  "Foolishness?" said Guest. "What foolishness?"

  "Your intended quest to Obooloo," said the olive-skinned Teacher of Control. "That is what I refer to when I speak of foolishness. Explain yourself!"

  By now, Guest had long been accustomed to treating this face- on-a-screen with the dignity due to a person-in-the-flesh, and so responded to this command with due gravity.

  "When I was 14," said Guest, "My father went hunting bandits in the mountains near Gendormargensis."

  This was ever the Yarglat way of telling a tale - to start way back in the distant past with the egg of its genesis. The Teacher of Control was lucky that the Yarglat barbarian had not started earlier still - with a detailed account of his family's genealogy, say, or with a founding reference to the Yarglat creation myths.

  "I asked nothing about you at the age of 14," said Senk, who came from a culture which lacked all fireside patience, and thus restricted its storytelling to an account of proximate cause, crisis and consequence.

  By brute interrogation, Paraban Senk extracted the meat of Guest Gulkan's story in record time. In a time of crisis, a time when Witchlord and Weaponmaster were fighting for their lives on Safrak, Guest Gulkan had parleyed with the Great God Jocasta through the mediumship of the demon Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis, had won a victory against his enemies thanks to the Great God's intervention, and so was bound to fulfill his pledge to the Great God.

  "In proof of my honor," said Guest, "I must quest to Obooloo to liberate the Great God. Besides - without Jocasta's help, how can I win a wizard's powers?"

  Paraban Senk heard this out to the finish then said:

  "I think you bound to no quest, for I think Jocasta has lied to you. There are many kinds of god and many kinds of demon, but Jocasta is no god, demon, devil or hero. Jocasta is only a machine, and Iva-Italis likewise. Iva-Italis is a farspeaker designed for use in war, and Jocasta is a thinking machine which once proved delinquent in the exercise of its will. Both are devices of delinquency - fraudulent, scheming, power-crazed and treacherous."

  "I think," said Guest, his response so instantaneous as to make it very improbable that any thinking had gone into the framing of it, "that you don't like me and you don't want me to be a wizard."

  "The wizards of this world," said Paraban Senk, "have gained their powers by making an alliance with entities of the World Beyond. Since the machine which calls itself Jocasta is no such entity, it cannot make you a wizard. It can however make you a slave. Jocasta can build a web through your body, a web through your brain. With such a web once built, Jocasta can control you, body and brain alike, and project power through you, albeit at a risk to your health." Guest frowned.

  "What web do you speak of?" said Guest. "Is Jocasta a kind of spider?"

  "Jocasta," said Senk, "could conjure in your flesh and bone a web of nerves of cunning design. With your body thus adapted to a new pattern, Jocasta could make you flesh of its flesh, mind of its mind. At a distance you would be safe, but if ever near the Great God then you would be its slave. It could control you likewise if you were ever near a farspeaker such as the demon Iva-Italis."

  "I don't understand," said Guest, still frowning. "I don't understand this - this web."

  "Do you expect to understand?" said Senk, who really thought it over-optimistic to expect a Yarglat barbarian like Guest to understand so much as basic arithmetic, far less the greater mysteries of the world.

  "If you'd stop talking in riddles and talk sense for once," said Guest, "then I'd understand soon enough."

  "All right, then," said Senk. "Supposing you have a ball of string which is knotted and raveled. Can you talk to it? Or with it?"

  "That's a nonsense question," said Guest. "String can't talk.

  It's not in the nature of string to talk."

  "Isn't it?" said Senk.

  "Of course it isn't!" said Guest.

  "Have the Yarglat no music? Have you never seen a harp?"

  Since the making of music was not one of the strong points of Yarglat culture, harpists had not exactly been thick on the ground in Gendormargensis. But Guest knew of the instrument, and, sensing that for some obscure reason any denial of harp knowledge might be though of as a demerit, he staunchly said:

  "We Yarglat are mighty in harpwork. We are famous for it."

  "So," said Senk. "What is the harp if not a string which talks?"

  "But that's a trick!" said Guest. "The riddle wasn't fair!"

  "Whoever said we were playing at riddles?" said Senk. "I speak of no riddles but of facts. String in combination with the simplest of devices can talk as a harp, or hear the wind as a windchime, or pull a fish from the sea, or kill a man by triggering a trap, or weave itself to art in the game of cat's cradle. Your body is one knotted, raveled, snarled-up ball of string, and Jocasta is the weaver who can shape it to a new pattern, then play that pattern with the skills of harpist and fisherman."

  "Jocasta is then a thing mighty in power, then," said Guest.

  "You admit it!"

  "Is there no sense to be got out of this thing?" said Senk, in an exasperation which echoed that of the learned Sken-Pitilkin in one of his more frustrated moments.

  "I'll take no talk of sense from a schoolteacher, which is all you are," said Guest. "I'm an emperor's son and heir to an empire myself. I'm oath-bound to rescue Jocasta, and so I will."

  "You are not oath-bound at all," said Senk. "You are not oath-bound because Jocasta lied to you. The thing cannot make you a wizard. It can only control you, possess you, seize you, subject you. Use you as a tool, a thing."

  "But it bound itself to me in honor," said Guest.

  "It has no honor!" said Senk. "honor is - how can I put this? You're mortal, you die, you seek significance in the face of mortality, you seek a meaning. The oath-culture is quest for precisely that: significance in the face of mortality. The honor of a man's death is the meaning of that death. Jocasta shares no such fear of death, hence needs the support of no such culture, hence cannot be trusted to hold to an oath. Do you understand?"

  "You are a schoolmaster," said Guest, "hence have an ethnological temperament. But a thing - you're like Sken-Pitilkin.

  What's it all about, that's what you say. Then you riddle out a meaning, then you say because it's got a meaning it's got no meaning. First you shape the thing in words, then you say the thing's only words so it's nothing. But things are things despite any number of words, and a thing is good in itself. My horse, my woman, my honor, my sword. My honor - "

  "Your honor is not a thing," said Senk, with crushing force.

  "You confuse categories. You confuse your horse with your honor when your horse is a flesh-and-blood animal with mass, weight and an appetite for hay, whereas your honor is a cultural construct, which is something quite different."

  "Yes, well," said Guest, not appreciating that he had just been crushed under one of the heavier hammers in the intellectual toolbox, "you're talking categories, but that's just like breaking up a bit of bread, you get big bits and small bits but it's all bread when you're finished with it."

  Though Guest had been tutored by the wizard Sken-Pitilkin since the age of five, he had nevertheless ever preserved a sturdy independence of intellect, reinforced by a close observation of a world in which brightsparking intellects (such as that of Eljuk

  Zala) tended to lose out to solid-muscled swordarms (such as that of Guest Gulkan).

  Paraban Senk protracted the argument for another three days, until at last in the despair of reason he recognized the Weaponmaster's implacable resolve, and began to counsel Guest as to how he might (just possibly) be able to bring his mission to a successful conclusion.

  This complicated Sken-Pitilkin's plan to quest to the island of Untunchilamon to rescue the x-x-zix: for Guest was determined to first dare to Obooloo, penetrate the Temple of Blood, rescue the Great God Jocasta, and (by way of reward) win the p
owers of a full-fledged wizard.

  "We could manage such a mission," said Sken-Pitilkin at last,

  "but there is one thing which must be done first."

  "What?" said Guest.

  "First we must recover the ring of ever-ice which you won from Banker Sod," said Sken-Pitilkin. "For, if you die in Obooloo without revealing its whereabouts, then it will be lost to the world forever." Guest, who had preserved the secret of this ring's whereabouts as much as an act of independence as anything else - for, as an invalid, what other sphere of independent action had been left to him? - declared the thing to be in the care of one Anna Blaume, proprietor of the Green Parrot, an establishment in Galsh Ebrek. Sken-Pitilkin then undertook the tricky business of recovering this ring, which he handed over to the Witchlord Onosh.

  Lord Onosh then used the ring to open one of the pods in Alozay's Hall of Time, and to incarcerate within that pod the woman Yerzerdayla.

  Lord Onosh then directed Sken-Pitilkin to make one last attempt to dissuade Guest Gulkan from the folly of his planned onslaught on Obooloo: and Sken-Pitilkin reluctantly accepted this commission.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Obooloo: capital of the Izdimir Empire. Lies amidst mountains in the province of Ang in the heartland of the continent of Yestron.

  In the end, Guest Gulkan could not be dissuaded from his madcap plan to venture to Obooloo to liberate the Great God Jocasta. Furthermore, he sought to implicate and involve his father in this plan; and the Witchlord Onosh, who was consumed with guilt because he felt himself partly to blame for Guest's mauling in the arena of Chi'ash-lan, felt constrained to agree to commit his own strength to the raid on Obooloo.

  So Guest said goodbye to Penelope, telling her that he was going to fly away on Sken-Pitilkin's stickbird, the airborne contraption which had so lately terrorized the skies above Dalar ken Halvar.