The Wazir and the Witch

by Hugh Cook

  ‘Just one last thing remains,’ said Master Ek. ‘By what means do you choose to be called?’

  ‘Why, Manthandros Trasilika, of course,’ said the heavyweight promptly. ‘So I was born, so I will live, so I will die.’

  This was an offence against custom, for a new wazir usually takes a new name when assuming his post. But Ek was too far gone to be troubled by such trifles.

  ‘So be it,’ said Ek. ‘As Manthandros Trasilika you will be known. And you? Do you claim the name Jean Froissart?’

  ‘It is my own,’ said Trasilika’s companion, ‘so what other should I claim?’

  This question was both ignorant and rude, but Ek let it pass without comment, and said:

  ‘Then go forth into the world as wazir and priest, Trasilika and Froissart your names.’

  ‘Go forth we will,’ said Mathandros Trasilika. ‘First to secure the execution of Justina Thrug. Are there loyal troops we can call upon?’

  ‘That is for you to find out,’ said Ek, then walked away.

  This was a display of breathtaking, almost suicidal insolence. Mathandros Trasilika was now the wazir of Untunchilamon. And no priest, not even a High Priest, treats a wazir with open contempt. Not if he values his head.

  ‘Hey!’ said Trasilika. ‘You can’t walk out on us like this!’

  Ek, who for the moment did not value his head, went on walking. And Dui Tin Char said, smoothly:

  ‘Master Ek has been troubled of late, as have we all, for the island has been beset by nightmares of all descriptions. The drumming has been getting on his nerves of late.’

  So spoke Tin Char; though in truth it was not Master Ek who was disturbed by Injiltaprajura’s drummers but Tin Char himself.

  ‘Drumming?’ said Trasilika.

  ‘Yes, yes, drumming,’ said Tin Char. ‘A hideous cult of diabolical inspiration which has the entire younger generation in its grip. And this is the least of the problems which have been worrying Master Ek. Be easy on the old man, for he has need of your mercy.’

  ‘Mercy!’ said Trasilika. ‘That’s as may be. But I have need of fighting men that j ustice may be done. ’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Froissart eagerly. ‘The witch must die.’ ‘And die she will,’ said Tin Char. ‘Today. For the troops are ready and waiting. They have been waiting only for the arrival of the new wazir.’

  So spoke Tin Char. And he was as good as his word. For, very shortly, arrangements were being made to secure the arrest and execution of Justina Thrug, self-styled empress of Untunchilamon.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  On the fateful day which was marked by the arrival of the good ship Oktobdoj, the Empress of Untunchilamon began her routine with a swim, followed by a breakfast of papaya, pineapple and flying fish. Even as she took her breakfast, her spies were proceeding toward the pink palace with news of the ships lately arrived in the Laitemata, one a general trader and the other a brothel ship.

  However, Justina was not a dainty eater, and she had demolished her breakfast long before her spies reached the portals of her palace. She then proceeded to a meeting with her legal counsel.

  Dardanalti was Justina’s lawyer, and a very good one he was. While he was of the Janjuladoola race, he was conscientious in his service to the usurper Thrug; for Dardanalti was one of those men for whom money takes precedence over prejudice, and Justina served him well. He was young, energetic, efficient, knowledgeable and cunning; better still, he did not belong to any of the Janjuladoola faiths, but adhered to the evolutionary heresy. This made him remarkable, for heretics of this breed were to be found almost exclusively among the Ebrell Islanders. Equally remarkable was Dardanalti’s ability to look crisp and cool regardless of the extremes of heat and humidity he, like every other inhabitant of Injiltaprajura, had necessarily to endure.

  Justina met regularly with Dardanalti in a bid to find a legal solution to her difficulties. If all else failed, she planned to seize a dozen ships by brute force and flee from Untunchilamon. But was there a way for her to take those ships legally, without going to war against their crews?

  Furthermore, what would happen if a new wazir came to Injiltaprajura aboard one of the ships of the Trade Fleet? If Aldarch Three had already triumphed in Talonsklavara - a strong possibility - then an Aldarch appointee might be on his way to Untunchilamon with a death warrant commanding the execution of Justina Thrug.

  Long had Justina and Dardanalti wrestled with these problems, but without coming any nearer to a solution. Justina had no great hopes for this latest meeting, but, to her surprise, Dardanalti announced that he had finished his analysis of her predicament.

  ‘Surprise me,’ said Justina.

  ‘By exhaustive research,’ said Dardanalti, ‘I find there is no way you can legally seize twelve ships or avoid the wrath of any incoming wazir.’

  ‘That,’ said Justina severely, ‘surprises me not at all. I’m not paying you to tell me what I can’t do. What’s the matter with you? Isn’t the success bonus big enough? If it isn’t, maybe you’re getting a little too greedy.’

  ‘My lady,’ said Dardanalti hastily, ‘you misjudge me. I know this matter to be dear to your heart.’

  ‘To put it mildly,’ said Justina.

  ‘So,’ continued Dardanalti, ‘once the search for legal methods was exhausted, I began to explore those which, ah, are not strictly in accordance with legislated guidelines.’

  ‘Illegal methods,’ said Justina, who always wished to simplify.

  ‘Um, well, in a manner of speaking,’ said Dardanalti, his customary fluency failing him. ‘Let us say, perhaps . . . how shall I put this? I began to contemplate a variety of manoeuvres, the legality of which has yet to be tested by the courts. That is one way of putting it.’

  ‘You mean for us to become partners in crime,’ said Justina. ‘Very well. If that is what we must do to survive, that is what we will do. But I can’t afford to sit here for six months or more while you dream up some wild and woolly scheme. I need something soon. Now, in fact.’

  ‘Then you have it,’ said Dardanalti.

  ‘Explain,’ said Justina, her brusqueness betraying something of the pressure she was under.

  So Dardanalti did explain.

  His scheme was daring, ambitious and very dangerous. Therefore it had a certain natural appeal for the Empress Justina, who was, after all, a child of Wen Endex and the daughter of a Yudonic Knight. Dardanalti proposed that they intercept one of the incoming ships of the Trade Fleet and place a false wazir aboard.

  ‘The false wazir would be your creature,’ said the young lawyer, growing enthusiastic as he enlarged on this scheme. ‘He would give you authorization to seize a dozen ships.’

  ‘But what if there was a real wazir with the Trade Fleet?’ said Justina.

  ‘Then things would get very sticky,’ admitted Dardanalti. ‘But we might yet win. After all, who could tell our wazir from the real thing? There’s forgers on Untunchilamon who could make the necessary seals, warrants and authorizations.’

  Justina began to smile.

  But only momentarily.

  ‘You seem,’ she said, ‘to have overlooked one vital point. Where is the candidate for this false wazirship to come from?’

  She had a point. Injiltaprajura was a city of barely 30,000 souls, most of whom had been on the island for the last seven years or more. How could they find a face unknown to the city’s power brokers?

  ‘There is Jal Japone,’ said Dardanalti.

  ‘There is,’ said Justina, and left it at that.

  The outlawed warlord Jal Japone effectively ruled the northern wastelands of Untunchilamon. He was of Janjuladoola race, and Justina trusted him not at all.

  ‘There is also,’ said Dardanalti, ‘the Dromdanjerie.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Justina.

  Her lawyer had a point. The Dromdanjerie was Injiltaprajura’s lunatic asylum. It held the usual range of howling madmen, slobbering morons, helpless dements, autistic bone-bags, schizophrenic
demon-angels, alcoholic degenerates and syphilitic idiots; but also imprisoned within its walls were a few very intelligent psychopaths, some of whom had not been seen in public for decades.

  ‘Candidates?’ said Justina.

  ‘Pardon?’ said Dardanalti.

  ‘Have you any specific candidates in mind?’ said Justina. ‘For our fake wazir, I mean?’

  ‘No, my lady,’ said Dardanalti.

  ‘Then,’ said Justina, ‘I propose that we go together to the Dromdanjerie. The sooner the better. Now being better than any time later.’

  But before Justina and Dardanalti could depart, a manservant intruded upon their privacy.

  ‘What is it?’ said Justina.

  ‘We have news of the latest arrivals,’ said the manservant, referring to the two ships which had come into the Laitemata at dawn.

  ‘Good,’ said Justina, pleased to see that her orders were being obeyed; it was most important that the palace had intelligence about each new vessel that arrived in the harbour.

  ‘One is a general trader,’ said the manservant, retailing the information freshly delivered by Justina’s spies.

  ‘And the other?’ said Justina.

  ‘It is a cruise ship, ma’am.’

  ‘A what?’ said Justina.

  ‘A - a ship of ill repute,’ said the manservant.

  ‘He means a brothel ship,’ said Dardanalti.

  ‘Oh,’ said Justina. ‘I didn’t know there really were such things. I thought that was just a story.’

  ‘Manamalargo is famous for such cruise ships, ma’am.’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Justina. ‘One lives and learns. What news of Yestron?’ ‘Talonsklavara wages still. The war is undecided.’

  ‘Good,’ said Justina. ‘You are dismissed.’

  The manservant departed, and Justina smiled.

  ‘That seems to solve our immediate problems,’ said Dardanalti.

  ‘It gives us time in which to manoeuvre,’ said Justina. ‘But no more. The sooner we choose and train our wazir the better. Come! The bedlam awaits.’

  The impetuous haste with which Justina set forth for the Dromdanjerie is best explained by the agonies of impotent waiting which she had endured for so long. At last she had a plan of action: risky, uncertain, perhaps lunatic. But a plan regardless. Something she could do. And this fired her frame with energy. So forth she went with Dardanalti at her side.

  But Justina had got no further than the front steps of her palace when she was intercepted by Juliet Idaho, who demanded to see her in private. Immediately.

  Justina sighed, commanded Dardanalti to wait, then walked Idaho to her office. Juliet Idaho was a warrior’s warrior, a hero who would have made a fitting companion for Vorn the Gladiator on any of the missions of peril undertaken by that lusty swordsman; but Justina was not a gladiator, and sometimes (just sometimes) Idaho got on her nerves.

  Once in her office, Justina sat.

  ‘What is it?’ said she.

  ‘This,’ said Juliet Idaho, passing over a document.

  ‘And what is this?’ said Justina.

  ‘That’s what I want to know,’ said Juliet Idaho, seating himself without invitation.

  Justina studied Idaho’s offering, a single sheet of ricepaper nearly obliterated by a million chicken-scratchings in vermilion ink.

  ‘It appears to be writing,’ said she, squinting at the miniscule letters so painfully executed in a crabbed and scorpioned hand. ‘But in what language I cannot say. The words are like our dummer’s drums: they say something, but say nothing intelligible to me.’

  ‘The text is written in Slandolin, my lady,’ said Idaho.

  Justina had never got round to learning that language. She supposed she should have; but then, there were so very many tongues that the learning of them could easily have overwhelmed a lifetime.

  ‘What is your interest in this . . . this Slandolin?’ said Justina. ‘What have we here? A work of scholarship?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Idaho. ‘It purports to tell of the creation of a dragon. A new kind of dragon. A dragon no longer than your finger.’

  ‘This dragon?’ said Justina.

  So saying, she pointed at the little nest of cat’s fur and feather-fluff which sat upon her desk. Within was the dragon Untunchilamon, so named by the Empress Justina. This was a beast of heroic lineaments but decidedly unheroic physical capacities; seven days previously it had been mobbed by a squabble of seagulls on the island of Jod, and would have died but for the personal intervention of the imperial veterinarian, who had been upon Jod to give the Hermit Crab a medical check. The poor mite of a dragon had been half-dead when brought to the palace, but had been recovering steadily ever since; indeed, the veterinarian averred that it would soon be fit to fly.

  For those who lack knowledge of alien tongues, it should here be noted that the dragon Untunchilamon was so named for the same reason that cats are so often called ‘Cat’. In the Janjuladoola of the Izdimir Empire, ‘Untunchilamon’ means ‘dragon’, hence many firedrakes have thus been called, and doubtless many more will thus be denominated hereafter.

  Why then was Justina’s island named ‘dragon’ in Janjuladoola? Here there is no great mystery. The ruling rock of the island was and is the sunset-tinged bloodstone, its red colour oft associated with fire and hence with dragons.

  ‘The document,’ said Idaho, ‘would appear to speak of the creation of this dragon, yes. However, there is a fractional notation of greater interest at the very bottom of the page. A translation reads thus.’

  He handed the Empress a piece of paper, rough stuff incorporating patent splinters of wood. The Slandolin of the purple script had been translated into Janjuladoola and set down in large letters of lamp-black ink written in a bold, confident hand. The translation read thus:

  ‘A neat trick, this creation of dragon from cockroach. But greater feats have been done in the past. Take for example the attainments of the organic rectifier, that magnanimous piece of machinery which allowed selected citizens of the Golden Gulag to make themselves immortal. Such was the jovial vigour of its accomplishments that it could jest a man to woman in less time than a twinkling wave takes to break from curves as smooth as haunch and hip to a flurry of foam and galactic scintillations, which is certainly less time than it takes to write these words which seek to encapture that motion. Damn this light! And how is a man to work with the dogs so wrath? Anyway: the rectifier. It could easily have delighted the Crab by converting that frustrated dignity to human form. Furthermore, though Untunchilamon knew it not, there was—’

  Justina frowned.

  She read through the translation a second time.

  The implications made her head spin.

  ‘Are we to imagine that there might be a ... a device of some kind?’ said she. ‘Here, I mean? On Untunchilamon? A device to magic Crab to human?’

  ‘I’m a Yudonic Knight,’ said Juliet Idaho. ‘I don’t imagine things. I kill things. I vote we find the person who wrote the original. Find, interrogate, torture, kill. That strikes me as better work than any labour of imagination.’

  ‘Julie, darling,’ said Justina, smiling upon her trusted retainer. ‘Your energy and enthusiasm are a constant inspiration to me. Verily, we shall seek the author of the original text. Where did that text come from?’

  ‘It was thieved from the Cabal House by one of our spies,’ said Juliet Idaho. ‘He knew not the value of what he had carried away, for he could read no Slandolin. In truth, he is illiterate; he reads nothing.’

  ‘What else did he steal?’ said Justina.

  ‘A great many bills, most of them invoices for deliveries of medicinal alcohol. A book of bad poems, a lampoon upon Aquitaine Varazchavardan, a street map of Obooloo, the plans for a twenty-oar galley, the deeds to the title of Ganthorgruk and a letter addressing birthday greetings to Jal Japone.’

  ‘Try to find another thief,’ said Justina. ‘A literate one. With such a thief found, send him into
the Cabal House to steal some more of this purple writing. Meanwhile: who did our translation?’

  An obvious question, since Juliet Idaho knew no more of Slandolin than did the Empress herself. Furthermore, since no imperial business was conducted in that Ashmo-lean tongue, no official translators of such were on tap.

  ‘A soldier,’ said Idaho. ‘I knew it for an Ashdan tongue so I sought out an Ashdan to read it. Shanvil Angarus May.’

  ‘May!’ said Justina. ‘I know him well. But he tells himself to be from Ashmolea North. Are not the secrets of Slandolin the sole possession of the south?’

  ‘Of livers and kidneys and buckets of blood, of such is my teaching,’ answered Idaho, speaking with unabashed violence. ‘I asked as a soldier will. I asked: can you do it. He answered: yes. So I told him: do it.’

  ‘Well!’ said Justina, sounding slightly miffed. ‘I’m sorry I asked!’

  ‘Forgive me, my lady,’ said Idaho.

  That much he said in a stiff and formal manner which entirely failed to suggest remorse. But Justina replied with grace and gratitude, for all the world as if he had made an impassioned and extended apology on bended knees:

  ‘Julie, my love, of course I forgive you. I know what a strain you’ve been under. You’ve been working so terribly hard and doing such a darling job. I couldn’t possibly ask more of you. What say you fetch me Shanvil May so we can talk over the translation in detail?’

  Whereupon the doughty Juliet Idaho - ‘Julie’ to his Empress but ‘Thugboots’ to his troops - was much mollified. He bowed to his Empress, though such was not his custom, then departed to search for Shanvil May.

  While the Empress Justina ruled Idaho with velvet, it would be wrong to suppose that all her dealings with the world were thus. Some she flattered; some she urged to her assistance by feigning that melting weakness which your romantic and misogynist alike will describe as being womanly. But others she bent to her will by exercise of brute force and unprincipled violence, for the strenuous demands of keeping order in her faction-fraught kingdom did not allow her to eschew these standard weapons of stateswomanship.

  Then Justina rang for a manservant and told him to fetch Dardanalti.