by Hugh Cook
‘Old friend!’ said Log Jaris as they went inside. ‘You surprise me! So greed got the better of you, did it?’
‘The opportunity of a lifetime,’ muttered Uckermark, feigning grief.
In truth, he was glad the wishstone was gone. It had been a mistake to take it. The thing was far too dangerous since there was scarcely a person on all of Untunchilamon who would not gladly kill for its possession. Uckermark very much doubted that the latest thieves to seize it would get away alive.
‘Chegory,’ said Yilda. ‘Help me with this door.’
‘No,’ said Uckermark. ‘The hell with the door. Let’s eat. We can worry about the door later.’
So eat they did.
Meanwhile, in the night outside, Shabble was bobbing along behind the wishstone thieves. To Shabble’s ears, the wishstone’s beaconing was loud and strong. Shabble could have jumped the thieves then and there — disarming them, terrorising them, burning them up or making them prisoner. But that would have ended the game too quickly. Hence Shabble went shadowstalking after them.
The demon of Jod was showing no light. Only the occasional squeak of excitement betrayed the presence of the imitator of suns, and, if the thieves heard those squeaks, they doubtlessly attributed them to unseen vampire rats.
Shabble’s excitement intensified when three Malud marauders fell in behind the thieves, following them at a distance.
Oh, this was a nice bit of drama! Oh, what fun!
Then the thieves took one of the downways which led to the underworld. In they went, one after another. Pelagius Zozimus. Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin. Thayer Levant. Then Guest Gulkan.
Shabble hesitated.
Then the Malud marauders came catfooting through the night, closing with the doorway in a quick, determined rush. They hesitated also, conferred briefly in whispers, then slipped inside. Shabble watched as Al-ran Lars, Arnaut and Tolon followed the wishstone thieves Downstairs.
For a moment longer Shabble lingered outside. Then innate devilishness conquered fear and Shabble followed. Oh, there would be fun in the dark tonight!
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It is to be regretted that Shabble’s over-developed sense of fun almost permitted an unnecessary fatality to take place. For, when the three Malud marauders finally jumped the four swordsmen they were following, Shabble found the ensuing battle so enthralling that all thoughts of intervention quite slipped away. Then Shabble’s excitement overmastered sense. The demon of Jod brightened in sheer pleasure as Guest Gulkan made a particularly daring sword-thrust. Thus was the imitator of suns betrayed to the lawless ones, who, unblooded, broke off their combat and stared at their one-sun audience.
‘Oh, don’t stop, don’t stop!’ said Shabble. ‘You were doing so well!’
‘It’s that demon-thing!’ yelled young Arnaut in his native Malud.
Then he took to his heels and fled.
But Shabble cut him off, and, after some fairly acrobatic flying and flame-throwing, herded all seven criminals into a cul-de-sac. Three were pirates: the Malud marauders Al-ran Lars, Arnaut and Tolon. Four were adventurers: Guest Gulkan’s faction, consisting of the Yarglat barbarian himself, the cutthroat Thayer Levant and the wizards Pelagius Zozimus and Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin.
‘What do you want from us?’ said Zozimus.
‘Silence!’ said Shabble imperiously. ‘You see this?’
Shabble unleashed a bolt of fire which melted a five-fist wound in the plax of the tunnel.
‘We’re none of us blind,’ said Zozimus, pretending (with some difficulty) that he was not impressed.
‘That’s a warning,’ said Shabble. ‘Right! March! Anyone who runs gets crisped!’
Here a native of Injiltaprajura would have told the demonic one to stop playing games and would have walked away, confident in the knowledge that Shabble was known to be loathe to burn anyone without extreme provocation. But the lawless uitlanders lacked this knowledge, hence were doomed to obey.
Long did Shabble drive these terror-enslaved victims, forcing them into the doomdepths. There they were held prisoner while Shabble amused Shabbleself by showing off. By, for example, singing various arias from the Dragon Opera, most tedious composition in all of Ho Lung’s oeuvre. If one of the hapless criminals tried to escape then the musical one would grow very hot and very bright, and the would-be hero would have to fall back. Tolon tried more often than the others, for he was stubborn and fearless.
As time went by the prisoners’ fear began to diminish. While to begin with they had been overawed by the fast-rolling sun which claimed to be a demon-god, Shabble’s frequent betrayals of Shabbleself’s childish nature led to wariness replacing terror. The captives began to try to bargain their way out of trouble.
‘If you let us go,’ said Pelagius Zozimus, ‘I’ll see you rich for ever. I personally vouchsafe your reward. By the rule of law I swear it.’
But Shabble had no use for such juratory assurances. It is hard to bribe Shabble, who has no use for sex, money, fame, power, or any of the other standard commercial jajas. If you ever have a run in with Shabble, then remember that this entity values friendship above all else. Immortals lead lonely lives, for the best of friends live scarcely more than a generation. Millennia roll by to leave one with… what?
Memories, at best.
Apart from companionship, Shabble is only interested in two things. Excitement: which Shabble seeks in delightsome practical jokes involving more than a little mayhem. Also: good conversation. Where on Untunchilamon would Shabble find such conversation? Certainly not with that relentless headhunter Jon Qasaba, who is so much the professional therapist that his idea of enjoyable social intercourse is to dissect his interlocutor.
Qasaba! The man has no manners. Has not, never had, never will. Did he look on us as people? No! As material. The raw material of his scholarly enterprises. He exploited our agony ruthlessly for the sake of a well-turned paragraph, the germ of a new theorem. He [Here a diatribe has been excised on the advice of our legal department. 0 Reno, scribe.]
[The legal advisement alluded to by O Reno suggests the excision of the diatribe on the grounds that the Qasaba in question may be the very person who at this writing is Waymaster in Obooloo. Yet surely this is an absurdity. For how could an obscure headhunter of Ashdan descent make himself master of the Izdimir Empire? How could a student of provincial madness survive the knifehand intrigues of the heartland of the Izdimir Empire? What would persuade Aldarch the Third to surrender his will to an uitlander from a treasonous splinter on the empire’s fringes? Here again we have an example of the paralytic cowardice of our legal department cramping scholastic enterprise. See my memo 19/872816 for supporting detail. Srin Gold, Commentator Extraordinary.]
But enough of Qasaba.
Let us return to our prisoners — or, in point of precise fact, Shabble’s prisoners — and watch them watching a dreamlike gemstudded machine trundling past. Under cover of the noise of its thungundling wheels they have a quick consultation. They decide if they run in separate directions Shabble surely cannot chase them all. Thus decided, they ease apart.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ says Shabble.
They don’t. For the time for thinking is over. Instead of thinking, they run. Only to find seventy-seven Shabbies where there had been but one before. Then a hundred and seventy-seven. Fireballs dancing, hissing, sliding. Scorching the walls where they impact.
The seven throw themselves flat. The fireballs die out. All but one. Which is Shabbleself, spinning triumphantly.
‘I am the demon-god Lorzunduk,’ says Shabble. ‘I existed since times antemundane. I in my glory will exist even after all the worlds have crumbled into dust.’
‘Oh what utter rubbish!’ says Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin.
Meanwhile, Arnaut fingers a knife. The young man from Asral is one of these mild-mannered people in whom there lurks a dragon-tempered brute. Sooner or later, that brute will out when some new outrage perpetrated by Shabble proves to be th
e last fish. Then Arnaut will run amok and launch an outright onslaught on Shabble. Which will, one fears, surely prove his death.
[‘The last fish.’ Proverbial. The last fish eaten by the glutton shark (against the dolphin’s good advice) was the one which burst its stomach. The same meaning is attached to the words ‘the seventh bone’. This is not to be confused with the outwardly cryptic phrase ‘when the jaws unhinge’, which has a meaning similar to our own proverbial ‘when the cat’s in the dogskin’. Valther Mash, Consulting Translator.]
Sooner or later.
But when?
Don’t worry. There is plenty of time. It is still only early in the life of the universe. Early early. As yet our narrative has dealt with but three days and we have all the rest of eternity in which to conclude our history.
[A conceit. A fatuous conceit. The Originator’s implied claim to immortality is but a literary conceit quite out of place in a sober historical work of this nature. In truth, the Originator is timebound like the rest of us, and knows it. In any case, there is no such thing as eternity: there is but the moment, as all timeresearchers know. Brude, Pedant Particular.]
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
At dawn the rays of the rising sun ignited the colours of the glitter dome atop the pink palace of the Empress Justina. The sun bells rang out. Bardardornootha had ended; istarlat had just begun. Yet although it was so early in the day it was still muggy, for though the air had grown less hot overnight it most certainly had not cooled.
The conjuror Odolo, Official Keeper of the Imperial Sceptre, felt the enclosing and unwelcome warmth of the day when, he awoke in the profound shadows of a cell in Moremo Maximum Security Prison. He woke on a single niggardly blanket which was grey with lice. He sat up, coughed, stretched, scratched, stretched again to try to ease the aches in his limbs, then tried to figure out where the hell he was.
Already Odolo was bewildered, disorientated and confused. He tried to concentrate, comprehend and cogitate, but this was next to impossible because of the words madly scrambling through his mind.
Words?
Words in Dub, Toxteth and Janjuladoola. Obscenities, profundities, absurdities and inanities. The banal and the quotidian buttock to buttock with the visionary and the esoteric. The words jostled each other senselessly in a mad tumbling disorder, thus:
Yam sot-pot in aspic flaring black dragon red farmer does dung to be art gum blue dreamfish prinked lissome their giblets of prophecy to lithe the blue supply said the rainbow of scorpions sexed cats sang the sorceress sibyl taupe baklava shim-sham-shimmying gluttoned its appetites, ravaged its seas bamboo the ebony, cassava the ivory cotton coin candles persistent in welfare snakeskinned the sunlight sheds pain Odolo pressed his head against the dank, unyielding stone of his jail cell. The stone at least was cool even though the air was over-warm. He closed his eyes. He concentrated. On ice. A big block of ice. Blue-white. In sunlight. A glory of diamonds. Cool ice. Frozen. Silent. Frozen…
Slowly, the words silenced. Odolo centred himself in his cell’s shadow-stock in the position known as Celestial Lotus. He was in control of himself. At least for the moment. He started doing a Personal Status Assessment as he had learnt to when he was an acolyte studying under Mantua Hull of the Combat Wing of the School of Strategy on the island of Odrum.
[Here a manifest error. A Records Search shows no student by name of Odolo and no instructor by name of Mantua Hull anywhere on our island in living memory. The Originator lies, or has failed to detect lies told to him by his nameless informant — Odolo himself? This error I verify-. Threndil Falcon, Keeper of the Census.]
The results of the Personal Status Assessment were reassuring. Momentarily reassuring. He was adequately hydrated. Not particularly hungry. Had slept sufficiently. Was combat-functional. Senses and reflexes intact.
Then all sense of reassurance disappeared as Odolo consulted his memories. He remembered! The banquet, of course. Those amazing walnuts spilling from his helpless hands. Then the Thing upchoking from his throat. His helpless efforts to restrain It. The outrush of acrid smoke. Then — then the dragon. The monster forming itself amidst the smoke.
Mother of turtles! They think me guilty!
If indeed the Powers That Be were blaming Odolo for manifesting a dragon in the banqueting hall then he was in trouble dire, trouble deep, trouble blue and bloody.
¦Jit!’ said Odolo.
In response to this obscenity the shadows skittered and scraped. Something dwelt within the cell. He was not alone! What was it? Claws, tentacles, teeth?
‘Nothing!’ said Odolo defiantly.
Then wished he had not spoken so loudly.
There was a monster in the cell with him! He was sure of it!
So thought Odolo — but only for a few moments. For the briefest scrutiny of the shadows showed him that nothing of any consequence could possibly be hiding there. He must have been imagining those strange skittering sounds. He put them out of mind and turned his thoughts to a more important subject: escape. Could he escape?
First, where was he? Surely he was in Moremo Maximum Security Prison on the northern side of Pokra Ridge. Okay. Could he get out? Through the floor? Through the walls? All were of the bloodstone of Untunchilamon. A rock far softer than granite. So he could surely tunnel out of his cell if allowed to work undisturbed for six or seven years. However, he fully expected his case to be resolved for better or worse (worse being torture, dismemberment and death) within six or seven days at the most.
The oppressive red of the bloodstone was already getting to him. Its blood-heavy ominousness was not at all the sort of colour to inspire optimistic thoughts. Six or seven years to get out through the walls, then. What about the door?
The cell’s massive operculum had been painted to resemble a monster with mouth wide open, slavering jaws gaping to receive Odolo into its maw. Artistic ingenuity had made the turnkey’s spyhole the pupil of the monster’s single eye. Odolo ignored the artwork. He kicked the door. It was solid. Nobody was going to use that exit but by invitation.
Odolo kicked the door once more, for luck. Then stood stock still. Listening. He could hear something! Strange skittering sounds. Yes, he could really hear them. He was not imagining them. So what was to blame? Some kind of animal? Perhaps. But there was nowhere in the cell where anything of any size could hide. Unless it was hanging from the roof.
Odolo looked up.
Moremo’s architects had placed a small window at twice manheight from the floor. Light from the eastern sun showed that nothing hung from the roof but a few cobwebs; the same light, shining on the wall opposite the window, stirred the blood of the bloodstone to life and cast shadows of heavyweight bars which prevented egress and ingress by prisoners and marauding animals alike.
Nothing is here but me and nothing can get in to get me.
So thought a relieved Odolo, then relieved himself into the magnanimous dark of the cell’s vomit hole, stirring claws in the dark below to a boiling frenzing. An unearthly high-pitched screaming arose from below. Was there a captive skavamareen down there? No! Worse! Vampire rats! The grille guarding the vomit hole was not to stop prisoners climbing Downstairs, for the sewer pipe was far too small to facilitate escape. The grille was to stop vampire rats sallying forth from the sewers to eat prisoners alive.
At this stage a stranger to Injiltaprajura might have relaxed and enjoyed his good fortune, for the grille was a heavyweight affair most certainly rat-proof. Such a stranger would have told himself he was in a cell both pleasant and capacious (as prison cells go). He had privacy. He had light. He had a bed. He had blankets, and company in plenty in the form of friendly lice most urgently desirous of intimacy. Sheer luxury!
However, the conjuror Odolo did not relax at all, for he knew all too well that this was an execution cell. Worse, it was not any old death cell. This was the horror house, the place reserved for those miscreants attainted of the crime of lese-majeste. When found guilty (and who would be accused of something
so serious if they were not guilty?) then they suffered a particularly horrible death.
Odolo knew his fate. After he was convicted of treason his executioners would remove that grille then leave him alone in the cell. In the bowels of the night, in the depths of bardardornootha, there would be a snickering squeal. Then up would come the vampire rats in their legions. Then he would die most hideously, losing first his fingers in the defence of his eyes and then In panic, Odolo wondered if he was doomed already. What if he had been tried while unconscious? Tried and sentenced? Sentenced and doomed? It was all too horribly possible. Yet — the grille was still in place. So surely he had a chance yet.
Aldarch the Third!
A chance of life! His slim, sole and virtually nonexistent chance. He would be saved only if Aldarch III conquered Untunchilamon in time to stop the execution. Saved? Rewarded, even! For it would seem to the public that Odolo had by sorcery attempted to kill the Empress Justina, bitch-spawn of the rebellious Lonstantine Thrug and sworn enemy of Aldarch III.
But it is Fistavlir.
Indeed. It was the season of Fistavlir, the Long Dry, when Untunchilamon lay becalmed in the doldrums. No wind stirred. Hence no ships. No minion of Aldarch III could approach Injiltaprajura until the next wind season came.
In any case, Talonsklavara could drag on for years yet.
True. The civil war in Yestron, which was in its seventh year, had plenty of history-making potential left. Aldarch the Third was rumoured to be winning, but what trust could Odolo put in rumour?
My life I must save myself.
The grille was still in place. Still guarding the vomit hole to protect him from vampire rats. So as yet he had not been tried and sentenced. He was safe, for the moment. Unless he let hysteria run him amok. He must guard against panic. Must rest. Relax. Conserve his strength.
He closed his eyes.
Tried to rest, to relax.
To embalm himself in sleep.