The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

by Hugh Cook

  There in the hot sun, Guest Gulkan felt bright-spark slivers of memory sharping out of his mind's darkness as Jocasta probed for a hold, a grip, a secure possession of the Weaponmaster's will. Cold. That was what Guest felt. Despite the heat of the day, he shivered, for Jocasta's probing had recalled to mind the frozen heights of the mountains of Ibsen-Iktus. Guest remembered -

  The impossible clarity of the mountain heights. Breathless heights where every step is a staircase. Blue transparencies of sky. A drift of snow grown gray with wind-blown grit. A bridge of ice, humped across a river. The chickling trickle of melt-water sheeking and sharking beneath sheets of ice. A windless day with an unfelt wind high, high above blasting dragon-licks of snow from sky-scarp heights.

  And he remembered -

  Avalanche!

  A roiling roll-roar of rocks went toiling in spuming plummets from the heights, causing the ground to shake beneath his feet. A real memory, this. Caught by the living life of that memory, Guest saw the wizard Sken-Pitilkin. There was blood on the wizard's forehead - blood beaded in drops. The wizard Sken-Pitilkin was literally sweating blood, and his face was pallid as unbaked dough.Guest remembered.

  Under a swordpoint's compulsion, Sken-Pitilkin had sent an avalanche rolling downhill, and then had retched violently, bringing up green bile from an empty stomach.

  "But I had to!" protested Guest.

  And with that protest, the Weaponmaster was free from the Great God's efforts at possession.

  The Great God Jocasta had tried to sound out Guest Gulkan's most potent memories, seeking thus to make an accurate index of the Weaponmaster's mind, and so to facilitate his possession. But Guest's most potent memories were memories of shameful deeds which he had later repudiated. Guest had invested a lifetime's effort in protecting himself from his own memories by suppressing them, justifying them or minimizing them. So when Jocasta probed Guest's deepest memories, the unfortunate Great God ran into defensive structures built up by a lifetime's effort. And so, weakened as it was by Stogirov's onslaughts, the Great God was unable to possess the Weaponmaster.

  "You will yield," said Jocasta, trying to sound convincing.

  "Yield!" said Guest. "The hell I will!"

  Then the wrathful Weaponmaster grabbed a sword from a vacillating soldier who was trying - and failing - to figure out just what was going on here.

  Having grabbed that sword (and accidentally breaking several of the soldier's teeth in the haste of his grabbing) Guest Gulkan attacked the Great God with that weapon. Guest attacked with all the vigor of a musician of Sung assailing that elephant-sized metal drum which is known as a klambakora. Steel clanged uselessly against the Great God's flanks. But Guest's defiance served to convince the Great God Jocasta that possessing the Weaponmaster was not a possibility, at least not for a shaken and battle- weakened Great God. Accordingly, Jocasta decided upon retreat.

  Jocasta lurched through the air, bumped the Weaponmaster, hit him hard. Guest went down. Jocasta hesitated. Having been hit so heartily, might the Weaponmaster perhaps be weaker than before?

  The Great God hung over its fallen prey, humming.

  And Guest felt cold again.

  Very cold.

  The coldness solidified to actual ice, and he found himself back in the arena of Chi'ash-lan where once the Great Mink had torn off his arms and legs at the behest of Banker Sod. Once upon a time. But once upon a time was now! He screamed as the mauling strength savaged his perfections. The glunching bones broke slick and wet, smunch and crunch. Flesh to pulp, bone to slivers.

  Then the image faded, and Guest found himself being bounced along the dirt under the harsh sun of Dalar ken Halvar. His father had him by the hair, and was dragging him away from the Great God Jocasta.

  "Enough!" yelled Guest, as the pain of being hauled by his hair washed away the pain of the waking nightmare he had just endured. "Let me go!"

  So the Witchlord let go of the Weaponmaster, and Guest slumped to the ground. He felt a twinge of cold, a touch of frost, an insinuation of ice, as the Great God Jocasta again made a determined effort to seize control of his mind.

  "You won't," said Guest grimly, recovering his fallen sword and getting to his feet. "You can't."

  But before Guest Gulkan could mount yet another fatuous attack on the Great god Jocasta, Yubi Das Finger came out of the Bralsh. A striking figure was Yubi Das Finger! For this Banker was dressed in motley, with the motley being rigorously littered with shiny ceramic animals, his whole outfit being topped off by a damaged face and a golden skullcap fringed with tiny glass beads.

  Yet Guest spared him only the briefest of glances - for he had encountered the man before in his various sparse yet informative dealings with the Banks. Rather, Guest concentrated his attention on those who were following on behind Yubi.

  The honorable Das Finger was leading a dozen sweating slaves who were carrying a huge black cauldron, a cauldron which looked to be one of the orking pots of Galsh Ebrek. On Yubi's command, they upended the pot and dropped it over the Great God.

  "We have it," said Yubi, with satisfaction.Guest gaped.

  It had never occurred to the Weaponmaster that something as mighty as a Great God could be secured and imprisoned by any expedient so simple as dropping a pot on top of it. But of course the Great God Jocasta had been direly injured by the firebolt weapon so generously employed against it by Anaconda Stogirov, and Yubi Das Finger's tactic appeared to be working.

  For Jocasta strove against the pot, trying to lift it directly upwards. But the Great God could not raise it from the ground by more than a fingerlength. Next, Jocasta tried to burn a hole in the black iron. The metal grew red hot, but it did not melt or yield.

  Yubi Das Finger spat on the glowing iron. His saliva sizzled into silence.

  "Let me out!" roared Jocasta, using the Galish Trading Tongue.

  Yubi knew that language, but made no reply. Instead, the scar-faced Banker giggled manically.

  Thwarted, Jocasta lifted the iron pot clear of the ground - only a fingerlength clear, but a fingerlength was sufficient - and began to carry that burden on an erratic course of retreat which sent the iron pot caroming into a succession of ox carts and bamboo huts.

  "It's getting away!" said Guest in alarm.

  "Yes, my friend," said Yubi Das Finger. "The thing is getting away from us. So tell us, little friend - what is it, exactly? A friend of yours? You brought it through the Door, didn't you?"

  Yubi Das Finger had spoken of the Door! Admittedly, he had spoken in the Galish, which few people in Dalar ken Halvar were likely to know. But even so! A Banker does not speak of Doors or of Circles in public, and Yubi was a Banker born and bred. The error was a measure of the extreme stress of the moment.

  "The - the thing is a god," said Guest. "A Great God, that's, that's what it says, it alleges. But we didn't bring it here, it, it followed us!"

  "A god, is it?" said Yubi dubiously.

  Yubi Das Finger was no theologian, but he thought it most unlikely that any god of any description could be confined under an upturned orking pot for even as short a time as half a heartbeat. He presumed, therefore, that the thing under the pot was an artefact of some description, possibly a weapon of war left over from the Days of Wrath or from some conflict more ancient yet. That then was how Yubi described it to the public.

  "It's a mad machine," said Yubi, to all who wanted to know.

  "A mad machine, which we'll have to destroy."

  Whereupon assorted heroes did their best to kill the thing, or at least to disconcert it. They beat its iron pot with the butts of spears, setting up a great racket. The pot lurched, crushing a soldier against an ox cart. As he screamed piteously, the pot continued on its way, navigating hazard by hazard through the streets of Childa Go.

  Childa Go, Dalar ken Halvar's fishing-shack quarter, was heavy with the smell of drying fish. As Guest plodded along behind the iron pot, keeping at a respectful distance - for he had no wish to be burnt or crushed himself
- the smells awakened strong memories of his past adventures in Dalar ken Halvar. He heard a sharp explosion as a piece of bamboo burst in a cooking fire, and remembered the excited hubbub of Dog Day festivities, when the city was one uproarious turmoil of competitive confusion.

  He remembered other things, too.

  His legs kept remembering the injuries they had suffered on that terrible day in Chi'ash-lan: the day of the Great Mink. Those memories were idle folly, for Guest's legs were new legs, grown for him in the minor mountain known as Cap Foz Para Lash. Still, he remembered what he remember. He could not deny it.

  The procession of people trooping after the Great God steadily swelled. Guest realized they were skirting the slopes of Cap Ogo Botch, the minor mountain atop which stood the palace of Na Sashimoko. The imperial palace - for Dalar ken Halvar was the capital of the Empire of Greater Parengarenga. Who ruled now in Dalar ken Halvar? Thanks to his embroilment in the affairs of Untunchilamon and Obooloo, Guest's knowledge of current affairs was years out of date - a failing which could be potentially fatal.

  As Guest was worrying about it, the Great God Jocasta slipped through the streets, making its way between the Grand Arena and Cap Uba. It gained Scuffling Road. The broad avenue was just as Guest remembered it - still lined for the most part with the impoverished bamboo buildings which typified Dalar ken Halvar. It was still unpaved, surfaced with the soft red dust of the Plain of Jars. Guest remembered often, often making his way through red dust rutted with cart tracks, going on crutches to the Yamoda River or to Lake Shalasheen to swim, back in those long-ago days when his new-growing legs had been too weak to sustain him.

  In those years, his home base had been the underground stronghold within the minor mountain known as Cap Foz Para Lash, so after his swim he had always returned to that place. And Guest realized that - whether by accident or design - the Great God Jocasta was making a similar journey.

  At the end of Scuffling Road was the kinema, the natural amphitheater outside the lockway. The lockway, with its twin doors of kaleidoscope, guarded the way into Cap Foz Para Lash. Guest had the uneasy suspicion that the Great God knew where it was going, and intended to link up with Paraban Senk, the formidable demon who ruled the depths Cap Foz Para Lash.

  Was Senk then a friend of Jocasta?

  Certainly the demons of Guest's acquaintance seemed to have the ability to talk to each other at a distance, silently communicating across oceans and continents. The demon Iva-Italis on Alozay maintained relationships with Lob in Obooloo and Ko in Chi'ash-lan. So - was Paraban Senk a member of this strange and long-enduring partnership?

  By now, a very considerable procession was trailing after the Great God Jocasta. It was joined by a company of armed and armored men moving at a pace which had them gasping in the heat of the day. The leader of those men was a Frangoni giant who challenged the Weaponmaster by name:

  "Guest Gulkan!"

  "My lord," said Guest, speaking in the Galish.

  Yubi Das Finger, who had been keeping pace with Guest, translated and elaborated that courtesy.

  Meantime, Guest summed the stranger, who had muscles of a hugeness indicative of a fondness for pumping iron rather than water, who wore robes of flowing purple, and whose uncut hair was most curiously heaped on top of his head to further amplify his height. A Frangoni warrior. A tall, big, purple-skinned Frangoni warrior. An impressive figure, certainly, but to Guest they all looked alike, these Frangoni.

  Then the Frangoni warrior said - and Yubi Das Finger translated, for Guest and the purple-skinned stranger had no language in common:

  "What's going on here?"

  "My lord," said Guest. "We're chasing a Great God."

  This Yubi Das Finger translated, deadpan.

  The Frangoni was more learned in theology than was Guest Gulkan, and so, like others before him, the purple-skinned warrior decided that whatever was lurching along under the iron orking pot was most definitely not a god. Possibly it was a turtle, or a large crab, or an injured Shabble, or a low-powered Sword, or a bad-tempered dwarf of prodigious strength. But a god? Never!

  "Stop it!" said the Frangoni.

  In response to his order, his men surrounded the orking pot, and braced their shields against it, and tried to sweat it to a halt in a scrum. While they sweated and strained, Guest used his Galish to ask a discrete question of Yubi Das Finger:

  "Who is the - the big one?"

  "The big one, as you so nicely put it," said Yubi Das Finger,

  "why, that is Asodo Hatch. If memory serves, you were once married to his sister Joma."

  Now that Hatch had been named, Guest felt foolish for not having recognized him, for they had met often enough in the past. Guest's failure to recognize the Frangoni was surely an index of his fatigue, his disorientation, and the pounding he had suffered during his long wanderings. But Guest was not troubled by this hint of mental deterioration. Rather, he was troubled to hear Yubi say that he had been "once married". For was he not married now?

  "Joma?" said Guest. "Why, I have a wife, big, yes, tall and purple, but her name - "

  "Penelope," said Das Finger. "That was the other name. You may have known here as that, but now we call her Joma, for she - but never mind that."

  "What?" said Guest. "Never mind what? Why? And - and where is she?" Guest was sorely alarmed, for during his entire absence - which had involved him in a trip to Alozay, a preliminary raid on Obooloo, a journey across Moana, prolonged difficulties on Untunchilamon, imprisonment in Obooloo and the hazards of his venture into the Stench Caves - he had imagined Penelope to be faithfully waiting for his return. It had never occurred to him that the woman might have an independent existence, a life which could be separated from his own wants and desires. So he was shocked to hear Yubi use a form of words which suggested the possibility that his long-anticipated reunification with his purple-skinned true-heart might not proceed with automatic ease.

  "There is no time for the first question," said Das Finger, who was unwilling to waste time on lecturing Guest in ethnology.

  "And as for the second question, why, I suspect it one better answered by Asodo Hatch himself."

  But the Frangoni warrior Asodo Hatch was too busy to be free for such questions, since he was playing referee, overseeing the duel between his soldiers and the runaway orking pot. The pot, which had once more grown red-hot as Jocasta filled it with flames of wrath, was driven into a bamboo house. The house caught fire, and Hatch's men were driven back, leaving the pot to blunder blindly in the flames.

  Asodo Hatch had the house surrounded. His men tore down its pitiful bamboo fence, giving access to the back yard. Guest Gulkan was close to the fore, and almost accidentally buried himself in the yard's copious rubbish pit, which was mired with festering unpleasantness.

  As the burning house collapsed, the god-driven orking pot emerged from it uncertainly. Somewhere a woman was screaming. The pot wobbled, then thrust its way toward the waiting soldiers. They made a wall of shields and stood ready to receive the pot.

  But the rubbish pit lay between the soldiers and the pot.

  The pot hovered over the pit -

  Then halted.

  It settled.

  It was half-over and half-off the rubbish pit.

  The Great God Jocasta promptly dropped down into the bottom of the pit and escaped upward through the uncovered portion of that pit.

  Asodo Hatch gave a curt order, and a hail of spears assailed the Great God. Most missed, and sent murder hurtling into the crowd of over-eager spectators. Some clanged home, bouncing off the Great God in a demonstration of futility.

  The Great God hung in the air, humming.

  Asodo Hatch held his ground, and challenged the thing in all the languages he spoke. Guest Gulkan understood none of them, and had to tug at Yubi Das Finger's sleeve to get a translation. Had the Weaponmaster been more diligent in his linguistic studies, he would have known most of those languages - such as the Code Seven of the Nexus.

&nbs
p; It is widely believed in Dalar ken Halvar that many of the greatest artefacts available to our own age were sourced in the Nexus. This "Nexus" is said to have been a grouping of interlinked worlds, an association comprised of more worlds than this world has fingers to count. It is believed in Dalar ken Halvar that the stars of those worlds are not green, red, blue and yellow like the stars of our own sky, but, rather, burn with a cold and uncanny ice-chip white. Under such stars - this at least is Dalar ken Halvar's ruling superstition - metal beasts such as the dorgi were once made.

  Asodo Hatch, presuming the Great God Jocasta to be a creature from just such a world, challenged Jocasta in the Code Seven which Dalar ken Halvar believes to have been spoken by the Nexus.

  "You!" said Asodo Hatch, bellowing like a water buffalo as he endeavored to imitate that dreaded Nexus monster known as a dorgi. "You! You! Halt! Halt right there! Or I will eliminate you!"

  "You have no idea who I am, or what," said the Great God Jocasta, responding to Asodo Hatch in the same Code Seven in which Hatch's challenge had been phrased. "Know that I am a god, and a Great God at that. Many are my servants. Their number is legion. I command heavens of ice and hells of living needles. You will bow down and worship me. Here! Now! Or you will end up in hell, where you will be constrained to burn your own liver as a sacrifice to the Lesser Slime Toad."

  "I know precisely who you are, and what," said Hatch, who had no patience with such nonsense. "You are a delinquent asma from Gorbograd. If you are who I think you are, then you were employed in Gorbograd as a person in charge of cart parks."

  This is what Hatch said, or at least the sense of what he said, for his words cannot be translated precisely into any of the languages of our world. For example, the "carts" of which he spoke were not precisely carts as we understand them, for they had no wheels. Rather, they hovered. But in their hovering they were not like birds or butterflies. The "carts" of which Hatch spoke were more like ghosts than vehicles made of actual wood and actual leather, for these "carts" could dissolve themselves, and could travel in a state of dissolution through stone and through steel, later coagulating themselves out of the thin smoke of their ghosthood to come to rest in the ordinary domains of the physical world. Even so, they could carry humans, or take water from place to place, just like the carts of our world.