by Hugh Cook
Once again, Master Ek cursed the fact that his precious fragment ended where it did. Though Ek was old and wise, his frustration was scarcely different from that experienced by an eager adolescent who has bought the first book of one of those dreadful gladiator yarns peddled by the shameless Chulman Puro.
Our adolescent has reached the final page of this yarn, Vorn the Gladiator is in a dungeon which is lit only by the phosphorescence from the fifty rotting corpses which share his imprisonment. Gouts of dirty water are flooding into this oubliette from a breach in the wall. Vorn is chained to the floor with unbreakable shackles. Already the water has reached his mouth, and And here the story ends, with Chulman Puro grinning like a pirate, for he knows his victims have no alternative but to pay out good gold for the continuation of the story, or suffer the pangs of unsatiated curiosity ever afterwards.
Master Ek, not having any access to the continuation of the text, suffered absolute agonies of curiosity. What did the missing portion of the MS say? That Untunchilamon possessed one of these mysterious organic rectifiers? Or that it lacked such an arcanum?
As a matter of urgency, Master Ek intended to find out.
For Ek was staring mortality in the face.
And Ek did not wish to die.
Death is the common fate of all men. The fisherman Threp Sodakik lies dead in the lagoon with starfish browsing upon the bloody rags of his corpse. The market gardener Pa Po Pep looks at the emblem of death which adorns his shaft, then rubs it first with ice and then with fertilizer, but rightly suspects that neither of these desperate experiments will save him from ultimate extinction. Ox No Zan, moaning as he rubs his aching jaw, knows he will die of pain unless he goes to the dentist, but may quite possibly expire from sheer terror if he actually submits himself to Doctor Death’s probes and pincers.
Death is everywhere; and inevitable; and inescapable.
Or so it had always seemed to Master Ek.
But now, in a passion of hope, he imagined himself uncovering an ‘organic rectifier’, whatever that might be, and using that to make himself immortal.
From the above, it will be seen that Master Ek had seriously misled young Rat. Ek had no need of any mysterious manuscript to tell him who the traitors were; he had already drawn up a comprehensive schedule of tortures and executions which would commence as soon as the Thrug was overthrown. What interested him, what excited him to the point of frenzy, was the question of immortality.
And here the historian must once again call the reader’s attention to the proposition which introduced this chapter: namely, that there did not exist a clear-cut division between ‘Justina Thrug and her allies’ and ‘Justina’s enemies’. In the case of Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek, we have a man divided even within his own mind. On the one hand, he wished to destroy the Thrug because he hated her, and because Aldarch the Third would look favourably on such destruction. On the other hand, the temptations of immortality were such that, if this ‘organic rectifier’ came into his hands, he might wish to keep it from being confiscated by Aldarch the Third. And it was possible, just possible, that such defiance of the Mutilator of Yestron might ultimately force Master Ek into an alliance with the Empress Justina.
CHAPTER SEVEN
What lures the trade fleet to Untunchilamon? What calls the ships across the waters of Moana? What makes them dare the dangers of the Kraken Deep and the coral teeth of Untunchilamon’s lagoons? What draws mariners to this sweating hell of rapturous mosquitoes, rabid vampire rats and magnanimous sharks?
Why, in fact, would anyone come to such a place?
Let us look at some people and their motives.
The red-skinned Chegory Guy, lover of Olivia Qasaba and confidant of the Crab, came to Untunchilamon because he wished to escape from his mother’s womb, and this necessitated a head-first dive from the clutching humidity of the uterus into the deliriums of a heatwave in Injiltaprajura. In other words, he was born there, and had no choice about the matter.
Olivia Qasaba, she of the intimate giggle, the fearless thighs, came to Untunchilamon because her father brought her there from Ashmolea; and she was too young at the time to protest.
The Crab came there But we will hear later how the Crab reached Untunchilamon, and with the price of fooskin being what it is, your historian cannot afford to tell the story twice.
The corpse-master Uckermark, he of the many scars and the intricate tattoos, came to the island with a pirate band which tried to loot Injiltaprajura’s treasury, and achieved but partial success. His friend Log Jaris arrived for identical reasons, and chose not to leave after being unfortunately transmogrified into a bullman.
The conjuror Odolo, dexterous prestigitator and public entertainer, came to Untunchilamon (according to his bank manager) so he could be the bane of honest citizens. Or, to go by his own account But enough of this!
We have established what needed to be established; which is, that nobody came to Untunchilamon for the sake of pleasure. Rather, needs, greeds, fears and lusts of all descriptions drove them to that place.
As for the ships of the trade fleet, why, they chiefly came to purchase dikle (a thixotropic fluid widely used as a lubricant) and shlug (a grey grease most excellent for preserving metals). Both dikle and shlug flow (intermittently) from the mysterious wealth fountains of a small island in the harbour of Injiltaprajura, Untunchilamon’s capital. Fountains elsewhere located provide Injiltaprajura with the bounteous supply of fresh water which allows the city’s market gardens to be irrigated to such excellent effect.
The journey the trade fleet makes is arduous and hazardous in the extreme. Hence Master Ek was not the only one staring mortality in the face, for Manthandros Trasilika and Jean Froissart had their own worries on that score. The sea voyage from Yestron to Untunchilamon had its fair share of lethal dangers, including storms, those rare but hideously powerful monsters known as krakens, and the coral shadows of the lagoon passage from the north of Untunchilamon to Injiltaprajura itself. But what perturbed Trasilika and Froissart was not so much the voyage (the dangers of which have greatly been exaggerated by most travellers) as the reception they would receive on arrival.
They were not worried about the drumming cult, for news of this novelty had yet to escape Untunchilamon. Instead, they worried about the reception they might receive from the island’s politicians.
Manthandros Trasilika was coming to Injiltaprajura to take over Untunchilamon in the name of Aldarch the Third, and feared the task might prove difficult. Justina Thrug? She was only a woman, so Trasilika had left her out of his calculations. Rather, he worried about the many enemies of Aldarch Three who had fled to Untunchilamon during the years of Talonsklavara. He feared such opponents of the Mutilator might choose to dabble in assassination; as he loved to eat, he particularly feared poison. Furthermore, while Trasilika’s documentation was in good order, there was always a chance that some diehard Janjuladoola bureaucrats on Untunchilamon would not accept him as their new governor.
Indeed, Trasilika was a most unlikely choice for such an important and sensitive post. When one considers his appointment, the first question which arises is this: why would a xenophobe like Aldarch Three grant a man like Trasilika the wazirship of Untunchilamon? Trasilika was not of the Janjuladoola people. Instead, he was of the same racial group as the children of Wen Endex; that is to say, his skin was naturally possessed of a pink-tending-towards-pallor which tanned to brown (or broiled to red) on exposure to the tropic sun.
Furthermore, Manthandros Trasilika was not a citizen of the Izdimir Empire. Generations previously, the children of Wen Endex had established a colony on the shores of the northern continent of Tameran. This was Port Domax, a free port which in time became notorious for the rapacity and rascality of its merchants. Here Trasilika had been born; here he had been raised; here he had lived until his thirtieth year.
So how did Trasilika come to be, at the age of forty-five, a wazir of the Izdimir Empire, with ornate documents to prove it? Here a mystery,
a mystery compounded by the fact that Trasilika was fat. While the Janjuladoola people are given to private debauch, their culture frowns upon outwardly visible signs of dissipation, and in particular upon any overburden of flesh. While excess weight does not technically disqualify one from holding high office in the Izdimir Empire, it does act as an impediment to promotion.
Not only was Trasilika fat, he was also verbose: a strutting, posturing man who was wildly over-fond of his own loud and windy voice. This was a trait sure to serve him ill when he had dealings with the Janjuladoola; for the people of that culture place a high value upon silences, the Janjuladoola version of a skilled orator being the man who can ‘say without saying, command without speech’.
As Manthandros Trasilika was (though admittedly to a strictly limited extent) conscious of his personal limitations, he experienced some unquiet when he contemplated the dangers which lay ahead.
As for Jean Froissart, he was in better shape than he had been on departure from Bolfrigalaskaptiko, for he had experienced a complete remission of the symptoms which had then afflicted him. No longer did he suffer stabbing chest pains or twinges of lacerating agony in his arms and shoulders; furthermore, his intermittent breathing problems had disappeared entirely. He was inclined to think that his doctor had been right: his symptoms had been consequent upon anxiety.
But, while the physical symptoms were in remission, Froissart remained anxious still, and his anxiety increased tenfold when Manthandros Trasilika called him to a private shipdeck conference.
‘Do you know who this is?’ said Trasilika, displaying a miniature portrait.
Trasilika’s fleshy palm engulfed the oval-shaped miniature, hiding it fom all scrutiny but their own. It was a picture of an old, old man with a cruel mouth parted in a smile which showed black gravestone teeth. Froissart surmised these fuliginous fangs to be dentures; he was wrong, but the mistake was pardonable, for few men as old as this retained their own teeth. The age of the sitter, more than the limitations of the portraitist, made the subject’s race hard to decipher; for it is one of the peculiarities of humanity that those differences which evidence themselves so stridently in youth (contrasts of race, health and gender) soften and blur with increasing age, all but vanishing in extreme senescence, that time of life when all flesh displays its common ancestry in the universal processes of wasting, shrivelling and depigmentation. However, Jean Froissart had spent many years in the Izdimir Empire, and hence was hypersensitive to matters of race; accordingly, he swiftly identified this gnarled ancient as a member of the Janjuladoola people. Only one thing made Froissart hesitate before pronouncing that diagnosis, and that was the eyes. Those ocular orbs, animating the wizened flesh as they did with such intelligent malice, were pale orange flecked with green, like undercooked eggs sprinkled with mint; they deviated so much from any human norm that Froissart momentarily wondered if the painting was of a real person at all, or whether the subject was a creature of legend or myth.
‘Well?’ said Trasilika. ‘Are you delaying the delivery of your wisdom till your ninetieth birthday adds the authority of age to its native credibility?’
‘No,’ said Froissart. ‘No, it was the eyes that gave me pause, that’s all. What I think is… here we have an old man. One of the Janjuladoola. Eighty, perhaps. Or older. That’s all. What else is there to say?’
‘Much,’ said Trasilika, closing his spongy fingers around the miniature. ‘The man is not eighty. He is in his youth still, for his years do not exceed seventy. He is a priest of Zoz the Ancestral. A High Priest. He is… the High Priest on Untunchilamon.’
Froissart was startled.
‘But,’ he said, ‘but, but you said…’
‘I know what I said.’
Before their departure from Bolfrigalaskaptiko, Trasilika had told Froissart (in the strictest confidence) that the latest intelligence (allegedly brought from Untunchilamon by the canoes of the Ngati Moana) confirmed earlier rumours which had declared Justina Thrug to be guilty of a massacre of all priests of Zoz the Ancestral who had the misfortune to dwell upon her island.
Obviously, Trasilika had lied.
‘So… so this is a priest,’ said Froissart, his ‘this’ referring to the miniature which Trasilika had already pocketed. ‘May I know his name?’
‘Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek,’ said Trasilika.
‘Ek?’ said Froissart in alarm.
‘The same.’
‘But — but you said he was dead.’
‘I lied,’ said Trasilika simply.
‘How could you?’ said Froissart.
He was horrified, and with good reason. Law and custom decreed that no wazir could be officially installed in his office without the ceremonial assistance of a High Priest of Zoz the Ancestral. In the absence of such a High Priest, Froissart himself would have conducted the necessary religious ceremony. But now that right, duty and privilege would automatically be claimed by Master Ek himself.
Jean Froissart knew much of Master Ek already, and none of what he knew was pleasant. Ek was as much a xenophobe as Aldarch the Third. He preached the supremacy of the Janjuladoola people, and despised all other races, particularly the children of Wen Endex; and, as both Trasilika and Froissart belonged to the despised group, Ek would doubtless be reluctant to give them his cooperation.
On the perilously unstable island to which the two men were venturing, lack of cooperation might mean their deaths; and surely there was a possibility that Ek’s displeasure might take a more active, more dangerous form.
As Froissart and Trasilika confronted each other in the shipdeck sunlight, a fight broke out between two sailors, matelots whose tempers had been strained beyond endurance by the stresses of this much-feared voyage to the waters of Untunchilamon. Without hesitation, both men plunged into the fray and sorted out the miscreants. No dignitary of the Janjuladoola people would even have contemplated joining such a brawl, but Froissart and Trasilika could not resist it.
Though Jean Froissart had lived for years in Obooloo, he still retained from his youth a love of physical conflict. He had been raised to be a Yudonic Knight of Wen Endex, and thus in his early years his every impulse toward reckless violence had been lauded and applauded. The results of such training in one’s formative years are not easily altered.
As for his companion:
Though he was travelling to Untunchilamon to be the new wazir of that island, Manthandros Trasilika was at heart a merchant; and a fat merchant; and a rapacious, rascally merchant. But he was not a cowardly merchant. The traders of Port Domax are noted for their ferocity in battle and the unmerchantlike joy which they take in the same; which helps explain the long and uninterrupted independence of their city.
When the sailors had been separated, pummelled and dismissed to the brig, a sweating Trasilika said to a panting Jean Froissart:
‘Cheer up,’ said Trasilika. ‘Soon I’ll be wazir and we’ll all be rich.’
‘Or dead,’ said Froissart. ‘Ek could be the death of us.’
‘Not Ek,’ said Trasilika. ‘Ek could be many things to us, but death is not one of them.’
‘How can you be so certain?’
‘Relax! I’ve a gift for Ek. Something he wants. Something he wants really, really badly. Something which will sweeten his heart till he sings to us as a lover.’
‘What?’ said Froissart.
‘A death warrant,’ said Trasilika. ‘A death warrant for the witch of Injiltaprajura. Justina Thrug, whom he so bitterly hates. My first act as wazir will be to have the bitch slaughtered. Then Ek, oh, Ek will love us indeed.’
Manthandros Trasilika was the very picture of confidence, but Froissart was not entirely convinced. He worried. And his worries were worsened when, that very day, he experienced a perturbing new symptom. Not the stabbing chest pains he had previously suffered with such anguished apprehension, but something equally ominous, if not more so. It felt like a heaviness in the region of his heart, as if that organ had been lumbere
d with a burden of lead. For the rest of that day he lived in fear of a massive, crushing heart attack.
‘Nonsense,’ muttered Froissart to himself. ‘Hypochondriacal hysteria. I’ve the constitution of an ox and a clearance from a heart specialist.’
The force of such self-reassurance was strengthened toward evening, when the weight at last eased from his chest, and he was almost able to persuade himself that the whole incident had been a figment of his imagination.
But, while fears of heart attack could be attributed to hypochondria, fears of Nadalastabstala Banraithan-chumun Ek were not so easily dismissed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Empress Justina woke in the depths of bardardor-nootha, that quarter which starts at midnight and ends at dawn. She woke alone, for she had gone to bed unpartnered; the current political crisis had almost ended her customary indulgences, for she needed all her wit and energy to ensure her own survival.
Her twin sister Theodora was not as continent. Nightly, Theodora was holding revels with Troldot ‘Heavy-Fist’ Turbothot, a trader from Hexagon who owned and captained one of the ships which had been anchored in the Laitemata all through the Long Dry. But Justina herself slept solo, except when she took the Princess Sabitha to bed.
On waking, the Empress listened for drums. She had banned all ‘drumming’ in the precincts of the pink palace, but someone was disobeying her orders. At odd moments of night and day, she had heard the ominous tok — tok — thuk of a small hand drum echoing through her hallowed halls. The culprit might be a young soldier; or a waiter; or someone else. Whoever it was, Justina wanted them caught and stopped.
Justina listened.
She heard…
A mosquito.
The clicketing of some unidentifiable night insect.
And:
Her own heavy breathing.
Apart from that, nothing.
The night was not ruled by sound but by heat, the ever-heat of the tropics, the soft wet suffocation of the island nights. Justina felt as if she was wrapped in warm wet dishcloths. Her folds and clefts were swampy with sweat, with the hot ooze of fluid, the slow spralpablan-darakatarla of a woman’s bloodsea waters.
