by Hugh Cook
The Empress had been through one trauma too many of late. She had almost been torn apart by centipedes in the Temple of Torture; she had fled for her life in fear of a mob; a dorgi had captured her Downstairs; she had come face to face with a therapist from the Golden Gulag; a second arrest had seen her committed to formal trial.
With her personal history in such disorder, she was not inclined to trust any idle assurances of a happy ever after. She would trust nothing for certain until the soil of Wen Endex was under her feet.
‘What did you say?’ said Idaho, in his warlord voice.
‘I said, Julie darling, that I’m happy to see you here.’
‘Well I’m not happy to be here,’ said Idaho. ‘Not in the same room with two frauds.’
And he drew his sword.
Trasilika and Froissart were terrorstruck, for they had come to the conference unarmed. But Justina never faltered.
‘Julie dear,’ said Justina, ‘put down your sword. These people may be frauds, but they’re my frauds.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Idaho, who was ignorant of the conspiracy.
‘My good friend Uckermark did a deal with these people,’ said Justina calmly. ‘He arranged it with Dardanalti. You see, we’re going to help them prove they’re not frauds. We’re going to do that by helping Froissart here to come through a trial by ordeal.’
‘We’re going to help him?’ said Idaho. ‘But why?’ ‘Because otherwi se Master Ek will kill them.’
‘Then let him!’
‘But then Master Ek would kill us.’
‘Oh,’ said Idaho, absorbing this. ‘So we help this Froissart to keep ourselves from being killed.’
‘Right,’ said Justina.
‘And that means Froissart doesn’t get killed either.’ ‘Right,’ sai d the Empress, beaming.
‘So who does get killed?’ said Idaho. ‘Trasilika?’
‘No,’ said Justina. ‘Nobody.’
‘Oh,’ said Idaho. Then: ‘I’m not sure I really like this.’ As far as he was concerned, a plan in which there was no place for murder was hardly a plan at all.
‘Julie, Julie,’ said Justina, ‘that’s only the theory. In practice things are likely to be much more dangerous. They always are. There’s every chance something will go wrong, every chance in the world. With a little luck, you’ll have people to kill by the dozens.’
And, by the exercise of the gentle arts of persuasion, the Empress slowly drew Idaho into committing himself wholeheartedly to the plot which was hatching.
Justina Thrug then entered upon an activity which, despite the exigencies of her plight, gave her considerable pleasure; this being the planning of a banquet.
Despite the great destruction which had befallen portside Injiltaprajura, the desert side remained unscathed by fire; which meant there would be no shortage of food for the grand occasion.
The highlight of the banquet was to be, of course, Jean Froissart’s trial by ordeal. The revels were scheduled to take place at a banquet just five days prior to the Festival of Light (for which Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek had yet to find a sacrifice). Such a timetable gave Justina barely enough time to organize everything. Nevertheless, she managed.
Such was the disorder which had befallen the city of late that no corrections had been made to the Directory of its leading personages. So a great many invitations came back with various disappointing notations, such as ‘burnt alive’, ‘died of smoke inhalation’, ‘missing believed dead’, or ‘fled on Turbothot’s bark’. However, overall the response was good.
As Manthandros Trasilika and Jean Froissart were still billeted in Moremo Maximum Security Prison, and declined public appearances on Justina’s advice, Injiltaprajura was possessed by a great curiosity as to their parts and natures; so many who would otherwise have thought it politic to decline an invitation from the Thrug accepted her summons with grateful thanks (as opposed to ungrateful thanks, which are scarcely rare among those who oftentimes find themselves compelled to unpleasant duties by the strict demands of protocol).
However, there was one person whose thanks were ungrateful, and that was Aquitaine Varazchavardan. Justina’s Master of Law was sitting alone at home when his invitation was delivered by the conjuror Odolo, runner of many messages. Varazchavardan took it, read it, accepted it, appraised Odolo of his decision then dismissed him.
Then wished he had not been so quick to send the conjuror away. For the mansion on Hojo Street was desolate, and Aquitaine Varazchavardan was very much alone. Even his slaves and servants had fled; and such was the uncertain state of civic organization that he had no hope of organizing an effective hunt for their recovery. The certain message of this mass desertion was that Varazchavardan’s underlings had little confidence in his continued survival. The wonder-worker could not quarrel with such opinion. He too believed it was only a matter of time before the executioners came for him.
Finding the tension near unbearable, Varazchavardan began to debate whether he should continued existing. There was no release from the moment. Existence itself was becoming a form of unendurable confinement, the intolerable silence of the grand house a punishment in its own right. Under such circumstances, was it an error to endure?
Varazchavardan at last roused himself. He lit every lantern he could find. Then dumped some ice into a glass. What now? Sit and watch the geckos? No. He lit a mosquito coil and watched that instead.
Watching the slowly untwining smoke of the mosquito coil had a most soothing effect on the Master of Law, who allowed himself to drift into fantasy to such an extent that at last he momentarily believed himself to be back in Obooloo, drinking tea and watching the cloud formations shape and reshape in the blue empyrean.
What was the source of Varazchavardan’s despair?
The answer is very simple.
Varazchavardan feared he would ultimately be executed by Aldarch the Third as a consequence of his past association with the Thrug. To preserve himself, he had to flee Injiltaprajura. But he had no hope of escaping by Justina’s airship. For he knew as a certainty what Justina only feared: that the Cabal House would destroy Sken-Pitilkin’s new airship just as it destroyed the first.
Thus Varazchavardan sat alone, watching the geckos and listening to the click of melting ice, and contemplated suicide. In that extremity, he applied the Test of the Moment.
That test consists of this single question:
If I had been created ex nihilo this very moment, would I see the rewards of life as being a sufficient reward for enduring life’s pains, burdens and indignities?
The Test of the Moment was devised by the sagacious philosopher So Da Thee, who was driven to such an expedient as a consequence of his abstemious lifestyle. Among the Korugatu philosophers (and such was Thee) a personal crisis is usually resolved by a recourse to drink. (Methodical recourse to drink is also had in the absence of any such crisis, but that is another story.) Thee, refusing such solace, had devised the Test.
A diligent application of the Test does this: it frees a life from its historical context. An interesting exercise indeed, since most people mostly view life in the light of the hopes and expectations of the past. Those who in youth hoped for paradise find it hard to settle for less, while those brought up with an expectation of living in hell are more easily satisfied — the problem being that those so raised tend to shape the world to the hell of their expectations.
Imagine, then (and we follow Thee in this exercise in fantasy) a speculator who has lost a fortune of a million dragons. In exile, he lives in a fisherman’s shack on the shores of Manamalargo, making his life as a crab catcher. There he laments the loss of his dragons, his pleasure dome and the concubines housed therein.
Supposing he then applies the Test.
A creature created at this very moment has no losses to mourn for. It possesses only assets. So the speculator thinks not of the silken limbs of his lost concubines, but of his own sturdy flesh. He thinks not of his lost palace, but i
nstead admires the architecture of his shack, which shelters him from sun and rain alike. And — but you can fill in the rest.
Suffice it to say that in the end, in So Da Thee’s favourite scenario, the imaginary speculator goes forth from his shack with his heart filled with joy, for the world is a wondrous place, filled with a million causes for optimism.
(In Hing Dar Radeker’s countervailing scenario, the rejoicing speculator leaves his fisherman’s shack to enjoy the delights of a walk along the shore, and promptly gets beaten to death by debt collectors come to dun him for the half million dragons he still owes his stockbroker. But then, Radeker was always a pessimist.)
Varazchavardan had first heard of So Da Thee’s Test of the Moment some years ago. At the time, he had disparaged it; and not entirely without reason. But now he applied it. And found (for the moment!) the courage to face the future. Varazchavardan decided he would certainly not kill himself until after the banquet, the solemn feast at which Jean Froissart would attempt to pass a trial by ordeal. Varazchavardan was assured of life and liberty till then.
But the banquet was approaching with a speed which was nothing short of terrifying.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
On the morning of the day of the banquet, Jean Froissart was summoned to a conference with Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek. The meeting was not at Ek’s mansion at Hojo Street, nor at the nearby Temple of Zoz the Ancestral. Instead, Jean Froissart was constrained to take himself off to the Temple of Torture in Goldhammer Rise.
As he awaited his interrogation by Master Ek, Froissart began to sweat. What did the old monster want? A fly settled on Froissart’s face and began feeding on his sweat. He brushed it away. It returned with allies. That was the tropics through and through. Life swarm-ping, breeding, ramping without order. Not for the first time, Froissart longed to be in Wen Endex in deep-frozen winter, that part of the year’s cycle when so many things die out of the world, thus making possible spring with its rushing renewals, the sudden flowers, the joy of life awaking.
Spring.
Untunchilamon would never know such a change.
And joy?
Surely there was no joy to be found in this pestilential climate, always so hot that the mere possession of a skin was an almost unendurable burden.
Angrily, Froissart slapped his own face. Mashed a fly.
‘Master Ek will see you now.’
That from an acolyte. Froissart rubbed at the fly, removing mashed entrails from his sweating skin as best he could. All too soon, he was face to face with the High Priest.
‘I hail the lord who serves the Lord of Lords,’ said Froissart.
Master Ek looked up from the corpse on which he was working, smiled, and invited his guest to inspect the meat.
‘Interesting, is it not?’ said Ek, prying at a delicate membrane with a needle-sharp hook.
‘Yes,’ said Froissart, fascinated by the interwriggling blue and red veins which snaked through the pink-grey of the membrane.
‘Ah,’ said Ek. ‘Interesting indeed.’
And he pulled, and the membrane tore, and Froissart saw into the organ below, saw into a ripeness where something writhed, and was assailed by the stench of rotting meat, and gagged, and had to strive to keep himself from vomiting.
‘Trasilika,’ said Ek, the word abrupting into Froissart’s distress. ‘Who is he?’
‘Who he claims to be,’ said Froissart. ‘Manthandros Trasilika is the true wazir of Untunchilamon. Aldarch the Third gave him his appointment.’
‘If you are lying…’
‘My tongue is green,’ said Froissart.
Ek seemed to accept this assertion, at least for the moment. The High Priest wiped his hands on a bloody rag then led Froissart into an interrogation chamber. Two chairs awaited, a low table between them. Froissart sat at Ek’s invitation.
‘Cigarette?’ said Ek.
Froissart was not sure whether to accept or not. He knew the tobacco Ek smoked to be a narcotic drug, a drug which produced an addiction which was almost unshakeable. But how quickly did the drug gain control of its victim? Was it a hallucinogen? Or what?
‘Try it,’ said Ek, extending one of his paper tubes of tightly rolled tobacco.
Froissart took the cigarette. An acolyte produced a hot coal, holding it with a pair of tongs. Froissart, who had some experience of smoking opium, got the cigarette alight and puffed on it slowly. Then Ek said, abruptly, without preambles:
‘Who was Mishlin?’
‘Author of the Book of Hot Iron,' answered Froissart, speaking automatically, without needing to think.
Silence.
Then:
‘In which city was the word of Zoz first proclaimed?’
‘In no city,’ answered Froissart. ‘Rather, in the mountain temple known as Qo.’
Another silence. Ek smoked, studying Froissart all the while. Those eyes of pale orange flecked with green had the potential to be grossly disturbing. Inhuman eyes. A mutant’s eyes. But Froissart was not worried. He knew now why he had been called to the Temple. Ek feared him a false priest, and was determined to prove him a fraud by testing his knowledge.
But Jean Froissart could easily pass any such test.
Though Froissart was a child of Wen Endex, he had gone to Ang and had been converted to the worship of Zoz the Ancestral. Why? Because he had truly Believed. At a crucial stage in his life, he had been granted a vision of horror. He had Believed, as an iron certainty, that Zoz existed.
He had converted.
He had worshipped.
He had obeyed.
And, as an outsider among the Janjuladoola, he had studied twice as hard as his fellow priests, thus winning a minimal acceptance from his superiors. He had explored the histories of the martyrs and saints, the revelations of the mystics who had proclaimed the benefits of applied algetics, and the intricate realms of theological thought and speculation which were impossible in the coarse-tongued Toxteth of Wen Endex.
Later, Froissart had lost his faith. He had become an agnostic: a secret doubter, but never an open apostate.
Why did Froissart lose his faith?
Partly because, as the uncertainties of youth had been replaced by the confidence of manhood, he had lost his need to believe so fervently in anything. Then he had met with a wandering Korugatu philosopher who had wrecked his faith by long conversation over many nights of drinking.
(A mystery, this, since the Korugatu philosophers are based in Chi’ash-lan. How did such a one come to Yestron? Here your storyteller would fable some farfetched explanation, but the honest historian must confess ignorance.)
Froissart’s Korugatu philosopher acknowledged, of course, that the gods exist. This is beyond dispute, for deities prove themselves often by working miracles, manifesting themselves upon battlefields and answering prayers. Adroit sacrifice will nearly always bring results from Above, or from Below, or from the Sideways Realms. Therefore we cannot doubt that the Higher Ones (and the Lower Ones, the Sideways Ones and the Inverted Ones) do exist (and perhaps will continue to exist in the future).
But, claimed the sage, that the gods exist in the forms humanity attributes to them is far less certain. It is the way of priesthoods to pretend to a certain knowledge of the minds of the gods. But to know our own minds is near impossible, so how can we be so sure of those of beings alien to us?
In the face of these arguments and much alcohol, Froissart’s faith had at last collapsed. But still he retained his knowledge, hence was easily able to survive a viva voce examination by Master Ek.
‘Why do we worship Zoz the Ancestral?’ said Master Ek.
‘Because He is the greatest power,’ said Froissart.
‘How do we worship Him?’ said Ek.
‘By satisfying His demands for pain and death,’ said Froissart.
‘Why does Zoz demand pain?’ said Ek.
‘Because it proves His power.’
‘And why death?’
‘Because that prov
es His power likewise,’ said Froissart.
‘What is the greatest good?’ said Ek.
‘To yield to power to prevent pain.’
The catechism proceeded along such lines for some time, until at last Master Ek seemed satisfied.
‘Wait here,’ said Ek.
Then he withdrew, leaving Froissart to sweat. Which Froissart did, in both a physical and a metaphysical sense. Ek had another trick up his sleeve. But what?
At last the High Priest returned and said:
‘A sacrifice has been prepared. You are to sacrifice a vampire rat to the greater glory of Zoz the Ancestral.’
Jean Froissart was conducted to the naos of the Temple, where a rat was waiting for sacrifice. Froissart passed this test perfectly.
Ek told him so once they had returned to the interrogation chamber.
‘You have passed,’ said Ek.
Then he smiled.
At least, his mouth smiled. So did his eyes. But his ears and his eyebrows did not.
‘A penitent thanks the lord who serves the Lord of Lords,’ said Froissart formally.
‘Your thanks are welcome,’ said Ek. ‘Will you share a drink with me?’
‘With pleasure,’ said Froissart.
Ek tried to snap his fingers. He failed, and a spasm of pain shot through his hand. He cursed his arthritis, and said:
‘The drinks.’
An acolyte entered bearing a small tray on which there were two cups. Ek took one and sipped slowly. Froissart took the other and drank, but more rapidly.
‘Strong stuff,’ said he in surprise.
‘But good,’ said Ek.
Then he waited.
But, to Ek’s surprise, Froissart did not collapse on the ground in a babbling heap. Instead, he calmly drank down the rest of his drink.
To conceal his confusion, Ek lit a fresh cigarette. Somehow, this damnable Froissart had made himself immune to the poisons which had just been used on him. There were ways to do that, of course. The taking of an antidote. Or the swallowing of graduated doses to build up immunity. Ek drew upon his cigarette. Exhaled smoke. Thinking.
