The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

by Hugh Cook

  Those human spiders were climbing without ropes, and, even as Guest watched, one slipped and fell. In utter silence. Guest listened, but heard no scream, no sound of impact - nothing but the unending wail of ten thousand mourners and the hoarse gutturals of a distant shout which might have been entirely unrelated to the fallen climber.

  "Come," said the Witchlord, leading the way into the tunnel which exited from the courtyard's eastern side.Guest followed, splashing through rank puddles of his own urine, which further soaked the ruinous wads of his straw sandals.

  In such manner, Guest ventured the fumbling darkness till he saw ahead the green glow of the demon Ungular Scarth.

  Witchlord and Weaponmaster found that the octagonal chamber which housed the demon was still graced with a metal grille which allowed one to walk across the pool of liquid filth which dominated that room.

  When that pool had been temporarily drained so a ring of ever-ice could be recovered from the floor of the chamber, a small portion of the metal grille had been removed to admit a man, but this portion had been replaced, and the once-drained pool had been flooded again. It occurred to Guest that maybe Anaconda Stogirov, the notorious High Priestess of the Temple of Blood, had arranged for the chamber to be flooded with liquid filth as a way of demeaning the untouchable demon which dominated the room with its green icelight.

  "Greetings," said Guest Gulkan.

  "And to you, greetings," said Ungular Scarth. "I see you have the knife. Is it Anaconda's knife, or did you take it from the Mutilator?"

  "I took it from the Mutilator," said Guest.

  "And you have the cornucopia," said Scarth, speaking to the Witchlord. "So! That explains the misfortune which has beset Obooloo!"

  "One would have thought you would have guessed that much already," said Lord Onosh.

  "I should have," admitted Scarth. "But I am as other people are. When legend speaks of the cornucopia, it speaks of the generation of silver, of gold, of wealth beyond imagining. It says nothing of pissing."

  "That is the difference between legend and life," said Guest.

  "Yes," said the demon. "And there is a further difference.

  The people of legend have more sense than the people of life. Why are you wearing those gutter-tread sandals when your father has boots?"

  "Am I to kill my father for his boots?" said Guest.

  "It may well be that you will end by killing your father," said Scarth, "but I was not talking of murder. The cornucopia, man! If the boots are folded, they will fit!"

  Then Guest felt properly foolish, for he knew his father's feet to be a match for his own.

  "Never mind that," said Guest, unbuckling the sheath which held the Mutilator's hooked knife. "We'll see about boots later."

  With that, Guest Gulkan withdrew the Mutilator's blade from its sheath.

  And wondered.

  How had the demon Ungular Scarth detected the presence of that weapon when it had been hidden from sight inside the buckle-down sheath? Maybe ... maybe by logic alone. For, after all, Guest would not have ventured idly into the Temple of Blood. His presence in that Temple implied that he had secured resource sufficient for the liberation of the Great God.

  With knife in hand, Guest Gulkan advanced upon the Great God Jocasta, who hung silent and unchanging in the air. While Guest advanced, his father hung well back, taking care to keep well out of reach of the demon Ungular Scarth. For Lord Onosh did not trust the demon further than he could throw it.

  While Lord Onosh had profound reservations about the demon and the Great God it served, Guest Gulkan had none such. He smiled upon the Great God, which presented the same aspect to the world as it had done when Guest had seen it first. It was a doughnut the size of a man's head, floating in the air within two shells of light - a dull red inner shell of its own production, and a sharp- burning outer shell of blue which constituted its imprisonment.

  "Hail, Jocasta," said Guest, with due formality.

  The Great God made no reply, and the demon Ungular Scarth did not speak on its behalf.

  Then Guest applied the blue-green bead at the end of the Mutilator's hooked knife to the surface of the blue-burning shell which imprisoned the Great God.

  As the knife touched the force field, it began to vibrate, setting Guest's teeth on edge. He had expected the knife to slice apart the transparent shell, but instead it twisted wickedly and skidded across the surface.

  "More strength!" said Scarth.

  "More!" said Guest. "I am using strength enough to open a coconut!"

  "More," affirmed Scarth. "Use your muscle!"

  Then Guest gritted his teeth and applied his full strength to the task. His hands, his arms, his entire body shook with vibratory energy. A thin line of white fire appeared, and widened to a slit.

  "I've done it!" said Guest.

  And withdrew the knife.

  The slit promptly healed itself.

  "The force field is self-sustaining," said Ungular Scarth.

  "Self-sustaining, self-healing."

  "Now you tell me!" said Guest.

  "Try again," said the demon.

  "Again!" said Guest, who was sweating heavily, and who could feel his forearms shaking with the effort of his exertions.

  "Are you a weakling?" sneered the demon.

  "Am I weak?" said Guest, with an ill temper. "Well, yes, I am, because I have suffered in the dungeons of the Mutilator, and suffered in the Stench Caves, and suffered from bedless wandering since, and I am in no mood to be trifled with!"

  "I do not call the liberation of gods a matter of trifling," said Scarth, softly. "Look! The Great God is ready!"

  At which Guest saw that the red glow of the Great God's self- protective force field was dying away. Where there had been two spheres of light, now only one remained: the outer sphere of imprisoning blue. Guest realized that the Great God was preparing to exit, was preparing to escape.

  "Your strength, now," said Ungular Scarth. "Use your strength, and liberate a god!"

  Thus encouraged, Guest scraped the ruinous mess of his straw sandals from his feet, and braced his bare feet against the rigidity of the metal grille. Then, with all the brutality at his command, Guest hacked a great slice through the blue-burning skin of the force field. Before the slit could heal, the Great God pushed its way to liberty, birthing itself with a sound like a breaking harpstring.

  "Ha!" said Guest, his face alight with a grin of triumph.

  "So! You are free! Well, here I am!"

  There he was, indeed, and the Great God Jocasta was duly conscious of the fact. Liquid fire ran through Guest Gulkan's veins. Images swirled through his head in a dementing turmoil. He felt dizzy, and almost dropped the knife he was holding. A hand which was not his own forced that knife to the challenge, but the hand was his own, his own hand but not his own to control, and his head was turning, his body was turning, he was turning on his father, the knife was poised to kill -

  Then Guest found tongue enough to cry and yelled:

  "Run!"

  Lord Onosh took the hint, and fled.

  Then Guest Gulkan, hopelessly possessed by the Great God Jocasta, was puppeted into the pursuit of his father.

  With his son in hot pursuit, Lord Onosh raced into the central courtyard, slipped in a puddle of urine and went down. And before he could rise, his son was upon him.Guest felt his own hand wrench at his father's hair. Felt his own strength smash his father's face to the reeking urine. Felt his knotted fingers haul his father's face from the splash-puddle, then twist it, exposing to knife to the blade.

  Then - compelled by the Great God Jocasta, which had him in firm possession - Guest Gulkan raised his knife for the slaughtering of his father.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Guest Gulkan: the Yarglat barbarian otherwise known as the Weaponmaster. Under the compulsion of hubristic ambition, he has dared his way into the Temple of Blood. There he has liberated the Great God Jocasta. By way of reward, he expected to be given the powers of t
he wizard. Instead, the Great God has taken possession of him. His father, the Witchlord Onosh, lies at his feet. And Guest is poised to kill his father. He does not want to, but he cannot help himself!

  So there was Guest, about to slaughter his father, when with a whoosh a high-pressure flood of saliva came barrel-bursting from the cornucopia, knocking him down and rolling him over and over till he ended up in a thrashing heap against the temple wall. The Great God Jocasta lost control of Guest's body, for its contortions were too quick to be followed by the God's mechanism of control - and Guest abruptly found himself free.

  Free from possession, Guest fought through a swiftly-rising flood-rush of foaming spittle, grappled with the pumping cornucopia, and brought it to the upright, thus cutting off the outflow of his father's spit - which otherwise would surely have continued pumping until it had digested the world.

  This was no sooner done than Guest realized that the Great God Jocasta was moving in on Lord Onosh, humming ominously.

  "Run!" said Guest.

  But, even as he said it, a voice of thunder roared in outraged anger:

  "HALT!"Guest momentarily thought it was the Great God Jocasta speaking, but it was not.

  "HALT!" roared the wrath-thundering challenger. "HALT! THROW DOWN YOUR SWORD! OR YOU WILL BE ELIMINATED!"

  For a moment, Guest was all confusion, then he saw the challenger who owned that voice which mountains would surely have envied. The loud-mouthed challenger was a woman who was dressed in an armor fashioned from the same painfully bright blue transparency which had imprisoned the Great God Jocasta.Guest had never seen this woman before, but he had heard the odd snippet of news about Obooloo while he had been incarcerated in the Mutilator's dungeons - and knew enough to surmise (with absolute accuracy, as it happened) that this was none other than Anaconda Stogirov, High Priestess of the Temple of Blood.

  Stogirov had a weapon in her hand, a weapon of contorted metal which ended in a nozzle tipped with white light. Guest had barely caught sight of it when it spat flame.

  The firebolt which jolted from Stogirov's alien weapon slammed into the Great God Jocasta. That blast of raw energy struck the Great God, sending the free-floating thing crashing backwards. The Great God was sent slamming into the rearward wall.

  It caromed off the blank-faced stone, tumbled through the air, then steadied itself.

  The Great God spat fire at Stogirov, who ducked.

  She ducked too slowly!

  She was hit!

  But not vaporised - for her armor absorbed the fireshock.

  Stogirov coolly leveled her own weapon and returned the Great God's fire. Guest acted.

  He grabbed his father, who was in no condition for independent heroics, then he slung the unconscious man over his shoulder like a sack of severed heads and positively sprinted from the central courtyard.

  Behind him, Stogirov and the Great God engaged in a firefight which the Great God lost - for Stogirov's weaponpower was greater.

  So Jocasta followed Guest Gulkan's lead and fled, exiting from the Temple of Blood in the wake of the Witchlord-burdened Weaponmaster.

  "COME BACK, YOU!" said Stogirov, firing yet once again at the retreating Great God.

  The echoes of the amplified boom of Stogirov's voice died away, to be replaced by the truncheon-beat of her boots trampling over the heat-cracked rock as she moved in the pursuit of the fast-fleeing Great God. Out of the Temple of Blood went Anaconda Stogirov - out of the temple and into the streets of Obooloo. Guest Gulkan most naturally fled up Lobdoptiskop, that narrow street which winds its way uphill in the shadow of Achaptipop, the massive rock which sustains the Sanctuary of the Bondsman's Guild.

  Up that street he labored, sweating under the burden of his father's weight. Then that burden began to gasp and croak. Hoping that if Lord Onosh was well enough to complain then he might be well enough to walk, Guest dumped the man down.

  Panting and sweating, Guest Gulkan turned. And looked downhill. And saw. He saw a floating doughnut, which he knew immediately to be the Great God Jocasta. And in pursuit of that doughnut was a figure bulbous in blue-burning armor - the wrathful Anaconda Stogirov, High Priestess of the Temple of Blood! Guest, in his supreme innocence, had thought those two would happily spend the rest of the day fighting it out in the temple.

  "Grief of gods!" said Lord Onosh, staggering to his feet.

  "There's no way out for us now!"

  But Guest still had the cornucopia.

  Nearby was a cow which was fortuitously lifting its tail. As a great gush of urine gouted from its backside, Guest filled the cornucopia. Then he upended that horn of plenty. A limitless surge of bovine urine slammed forth from the cornucopia like a spout of water erupting from a hole at the base of a mighty dam.

  In moments, the plunging street of Lopdoptiskop was being pillaged by a flood of drenching urine. Anaconda Stogirov clutched at a doorway but was knocked away. With a scream, she was swept downhill, vanishing in the millrace of the cow's multiplied bounty. But the Great God Jocasta floated clear of the jouncing flood. Guest abruptly brought the cornucopia upright. He held it firmly upright, to let the horn of plenty swallow what urine remained within it. Guest stowed the cornucopia, then father and son hurried on up the street to gain the gateway of the Sanctuary of the Bondsman's Guild.

  "You can't come in here!" said a guard, addressing the pair in the Janjuladoola tongue, which language neither of them spoke.

  Whereupon Guest Gulkan knocked him unconscious, and hurried into the Sanctuary with his father in his wake.

  To penetrate the precincts of the Sanctuary had been easy, but to get into its Holy of Holies was (theoretically) rather more difficult. For that Holy of Holies was guarded by a jade-green block of stone, a block of stone which ate people who had not permission to pass. This monster was of course the demon Lob (in whose honor the street of Lobdoptiskop had been named).

  Lob was but one of the far-scattered demons loyal to the Great God Jocasta, and of course Lob was under the impression that Guest Gulkan had set himself the task of rescuing that Great God.

  So when Lob saw Guest approaching with Jocasta bobbing along behind, why, Lob naturally thought that Guest had fulfilled his mission of rescue (as he had) and that the Weaponmaster was now Jocasta's beloved friend (or slave).

  So the man-eating demon let Witchlord and Weaponmaster pass, unwounded and unrestrained, and so they entered into the Holy of Holies where the Door of the Bondsman's Guild was kept safe from all prying eyes.

  There was the Door!

  The gate to the Circle of the Partnership Banks!

  In all his life, Guest had seldom been so relieved as he was when he saw that metal archway standing on its marble plinth, and confirmed that the span of the archway was filled with a screen of shimmering, hard-humming silver.

  In front of that archway stood a Banker, and he did not look happy to see Witchlord and Weaponmaster intruding on his domains.

  He held up a single finger in a gesture of admonition. The Great God Jocasta fired a bolt of energy at the Banker, and it burnt off that upraised finger. The Banker looked at the roastmeat scar where his missing digit had been but a moment earlier, then he fainted clean away. He fell face forward. There was a solid crunch as his face smashed into the marble of the plinth, teeth splintering, jaw breaking.

  Remorselessly, the Great God glided through the air toward the humming silver screen.

  "No!" shouted Guest, horrorstruck.

  But it was far too late for protest.

  For the Great God slipped through that screen and was gone.

  It had escaped! It had got away from Obooloo, going through the Door to - why, to Dalar ken Halvar, of course! For Dalar ken Halvar was the next place on the Circle of the Partnership Banks.

  Witchlord and Weaponmaster did not hesitate. They scrambled up onto the plinth and hurried through the humming screen of vertical quicksilver, arriving instantly in the Bralsh, the Bank of Dalar ken Halvar. In the Bralsh there was a sm
ell of scorched flesh and a scene of panic-stricken disarray. The Great God Jocasta was briefly glimpsed - vanishing out of the main exit.

  "Guest Gulkan!"

  So cried Yubi Das Finger, the leading Banker of the Bralsh.

  But Guest had no time to spare for idle conversation. Instead,

  Witchlord and Weaponmaster charged from the Bralsh, striving out into the hot sun of Dalar ken Halvar. Precisely what they hoped to accomplish is a mystery, for surely they must have known themselves to be unequal to the powers of a Great God.

  But charge they did.

  And got out into the streets of Childa Go, the fishing quarter of Dalar ken Halvar. There the Great God lurched to a halt, and turned to confront them. And, to his horror, Guest Gulkan felt his mind again slipping into the possession of his enemy.

  Chapter Forty

  Name: Paraban Senk (aka the Teacher of Control).

  Birthplace: Charabanc.

  Occupation: teacher.

  Status: head of the Combat College of Dalar ken Halvar.

  Description: disembodied entity which typically manifests itself as an olive-skinned face, male and of middle years.

  Age: Senk claims an age in excess of 20,000 years.

  Hobby: Senk personally schedules the entertainments which appear on the Eye of Delusions at Dalar ken Halvar, and this voluntary activity may be the nearest thing which Senk has to a hobby.

  Quote: "The Stormforce exists for the controlled application of force."

  "No!" shouted Guest Gulkan.

  His voice was a wing-broken squawk of protest.

  But it was too late for protest, for the Great God Jocasta was bent on taking over the Weaponmaster's mind, and was in no mood to argue about it. Yet Jocasta did not find the act of possession as effortlessly easy as before, since this time Guest was forewarned and fighting - and the Great God itself had been damaged in its battle with Stogirov.