by Hugh Cook
"He's lying!" said Iva-Italis.
"Lying?" said Vorlus Ulix, turning cool eyes upon the demon.
"Why should I lie? What would motivate me to untruth in idleness?"
"You libel the Great God because you fear the Great God," said Iva-Italis.
"Then you admit," said Vorlus Ulix, "that your Great God is a thing rightly to be feared."
"Only by cowards," said Iva-Italis, who was accustomed to being able to disorder the minds of ordinary mortals by such accusations.
"Then count me as a coward," said Vorlus Ulix, who was no ordinary mortal, and hence not thus to be so easily disordered.
"He – he's calling you a coward!" said Guest Gulkan, who till then had not known that it was humanly possible for an adult male to receive such an insult with equanimity.
"The thing can call me what it wants," said Vorlus Ulix, poking it disrespectfully with his pelican-hilted walking stick.
"It is but a piece of useless junk from days gone by. It's trapped here, just as its master is trapped in Obooloo. They're both slaves in their way. Victims. Prisoners. Slaves to their own immortality. They cannot die, otherwise they would – gladly."
"I will remember you," said Iva-Italis, in fury. "I read the future and I read your death."
"You are not the first to tell me that I was born mortal," said Vorlus Ulix calmly. "That said, as far as the future is concerned, I would trust more to myomancy than to you."
"Myomancy?" said Guest.
"The divination of the future based on the scrutiny of mice," said Sken-Pitilkin, ready as ever to diminish the boy's illiteracy, or at least to try to.
"I will remember you," said Iva-Italis again.
"Remember me as you wish," said Vorlus Ulix. "You doubtless have time free for remembering, but me – my day is busy, and now I must be gone. I bid you farewell."
This last was said to Sken-Pitilkin, who nodded in acknowledgement. Then Vorlus Ulix made his way past the stone- block demon, with his servant Thayer Levant silently following in his wake. The demon did not attempt to attack them as they made their way up the stairs.
Shortly, both Vorlus Ulix and his servant were gone from sight, leaving Guest Gulkan alone with the wizard Sken-Pitilkin and the demon Iva-Italis.
"Why did you involve that – that thing in our affairs?" said Iva-Italis.
"Thing?" said Guest.
"The wizard!" said Iva-Italis. "That wizard of Ebber!"
"My lord," said Guest Gulkan, turning uncomfortably to the jade-green monolith which commanded his loyalty. "I did not know that the, that the thing would prove so disrespectful. But I have brought you Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, as you wished."
"Ah, yes," said Iva-Italis, somewhat mollified. "That much you did. Step forward, Sken-Pitilkin." Sken-Pitilkin did indeed step forward, but was cautious enough to halt well short of the Iva-Italis creature. Sken-Pitilkin had known Ulix of the Drum of old, and trusted his judgment. If Vorlus Ulix thought that this demon-thing was not to be trusted, then so it was.
"You have heard my debate with, ah, Vorlus Ulix," said Iva-Italis, "the gentleman we otherwise know as – "
"The boy has no need to know the gentleman's true name," saidSken-Pitilkin.
"Why don't I need?" said Guest.
"Step back, boy," said Iva-Italis, who was finished with Guest, at least for the moment. "It's the wizard I want to speak with. Sken-Pitilkin. You will help me."
"I?" said Sken-Pitilkin. "Why will I help you?"
"Because I have what you want," said Iva-Italis.
"And what is that?" said Sken-Pitilkin, who was not conscious of wanting anything, and hence had not the slightest idea what the demon might have in mind.
"You are Hostaja Torsen Sken-Pitilkin," said Iva-Italis, "and you are a wizard of the order of Skatzabratzumon."
"That is true," said Sken-Pitilkin, wondering how the demon had come by that last datum. It certainly had not come from Guest Gulkan, who had repeatedly proved himself quite incapable of either memorising or pronouncing the word "Skatzabratzumon".
"Your order commands powers of levitation," said Iva-Italis,
"and long has it sought to command the powers of flight."
"It seeks no longer," said Sken-Pitilkin, "for it has been conclusively proved by mathematical analysis that sustained flight is impossible. No wizard can put forth power sufficient for time sufficient."
"By that analysis," said Iva-Italis, "the flame trench of Drangsturm would be likewise impossible."Sken-Pitilkin was silent. Sken-Pitilkin knew very well how Drangsturm worked, but was not about to communicate this sensitive information to a demon.
"The wizards of Arl made Drangsturm, did they not?" said Iva-Italis.
"So you say," said Sken-Pitilkin.
"So it is Written," said Iva-Italis. "The wizards of Arl made Drangsturm, a trench of molten rock designed to burn with unceasing fury for all time. It divides the continent of Argan in two, does it not?"
"Perhaps it has thus been Written," said Sken-Pitilkin, who knew that the demon was speaking the truth, and who was finding himself intrigued despite himself.
The demon was proving exceptionally well-informed, and Sken-Pitilkin had never thought to meet with such a savant on Safrak.
"Drangsturm burns," said Iva-Italis. "It burns with a power which exceeds that commanded by all the wizards of Arl who ever were. How is such a trick compelled?"
"You tell me," said Sken-Pitilkin, who knew the answer but was not prepared to betray that answer unless he was severely tortured.
"Wizards," said Iva-Italis, "are by their nature hostile to the very universe itself. Is that not the case? You are a wizard, hence the sustaining creation is itself your enemy."
"I own no such enemy," said Sken-Pitilkin.
"You are a wizard," said Iva-Italis. "You are a Force in your own right, are you not? You are a Light in the Unseen Realm. And what realm is that if it is not the realm of the Mahendo Mahunduk?"
Despite himself, Sken-Pitilkin shuddered, then struck his country crook on the skull-pattern tiles of the Hall of Time, as if seeking by that action to abolish the demon Iva-Italis from his sight.
"I am not so easily dismissed!" said the demon. "I have you, have I not? I have your truth!"
"What is he talking about?" said Guest Gulkan, completely bewildered by all this.
"Remove yourself," said Sken-Pitilkin curtly.
"Stay, boy," said Iva-Italis easily. "Stay, and you will hear the Inner Secrets which wizards have thought well-hidden from the world. Stay – but stay back, and stay silent."
"Guest," said Sken-Pitilkin, "as you love your liver, leave."
"That's a threat?" said Guest.
"Take it as you will," said Sken-Pitilkin, belatedly realizing that it was better not to give the boy a challenge.
"It is a threat indeed," crooned Iva-Italis. "He threatens you, you see. Death is his threat. To stay, to hear – oh, death is the least of it. But to leave – death also. You are brief, Guest Gulkan. Brief in your living, brief in your lungs. I blink. Your bones are dust. I close my eyes for a moment. Your children's children have been forgotten by their grandchildren. So it is. So it will be. Unless. I promise you, Guest. You can live and live and live. Five thousand years is the least of it."
Listening to the demon's crooning voice, Sken-Pitilkin realized that the demon exalted. Now Sken-Pitilkin realized that the demon's earlier attempts to exclude Guest Gulkan from this debate had been but a rhetorical feint. The demon had sought to convince the boy Guest that there was deliciously forbidden knowledge to be had in this room, and Guest had allowed himself to be convinced.
The boy and the wizard confronted each other. The lights in the Hall of Time had burnt away to nothing, for they had not been renewed during the long debates of the night. The sole illumination was provided by the cold green glow emitted by the monolithic presence of Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis, demon of Safrak, Keeper of the Inner Sanctum, Guardian Prime, and Demon by Appointment to the Great God J
ocasta.
By that light, Sken-Pitilkin saw a preternatural alertness in Guest Gulkan's eyes. It was the look of the hunter-killer. Guest was watching Sken-Pitilkin, and was watching the demon too. His hand was on the hilt of his sword. He was poised as if for battle, and ever and again he glanced at the approaches which would give any intruder access to their conclave.
Suddenly Sken-Pitilkin realized:
– If not tonight then tomorrow.
If Guest Gulkan could be chased from the demon's side right then and there, he would be back the next night. Guest Gulkan would return. And the demon -
– What it knows it will tell.
– Perhaps if it tells I can try to untell.
– Or perhaps. Sken-Pitilkin suppressed the "perhaps", suppressed the bloody thought which rose unbidden into his mind. He was not that kind of person. He muttered as much to himself:
"I am not that kind of person."
"He thinks," said Iva-Italis, mockingly, "he thinks he may have to kill you."Sken-Pitilkin's head came up with a jerk.
"That is not true!"
"He thinks," continued Iva-Italis, "that if you stay you will learn, and if you learn then it may in all wisdom be far too dangerous to let you leave here alive."
"I will run that risk," said Guest Gulkan flatly.
And his eyes met Sken-Pitilkin's, and it was the wizard who dropped his eyes. Shamed by self-knowledge. And shocked and shaken by the ease with which the boy made the death decision.
"You are worthy," said Iva-Italis in approval. "Hear this, then. But know that it is death to hear. Death to hear and death to tell."
"Tell," said Guest Gulkan, who knew he was mortal, who knew he was doomed to die in any case. Sken-Pitilkin heard the certainty of death in Guest Gulkan's voice, and was shaken, for Sken-Pitilkin had long lived far removed from the urgent pangs of mortality, the deathconsciousness of the brief-lived warrior. Sken-Pitilkin had forgotten how ruthlessly such creatures would dare, gambling all and everything when suitably tempted.
After all, what was there to lose?
"Guest," said Iva-Italis, "Guest Gulkan. Know this, and know that you walk from here as the only one who knows. All wizards know this, but none other knows it. The god of this creation is Ameeshoth."
"The god you serve?" said Guest.
"No!" said Iva-Italis.
"I'm confused," said Guest.
"And not for the first time," said Sken-Pitilkin, beginning to recover some of his composure. "Young Guest was made to swing swords and breed sword-swingers, and one suspects it might be beyond even the talents of a demon to lecture him effectively on the higher theology."
"So speaks the wizard," said Iva-Italis. "Listen to him, Guest. He hold you in contempt, just as he holds in contempt all of created reality. And why? Because he has allied himself with something other."
"Something other?" said Guest.
"Guest," said Iva-Italis, seeking a way to make things of cosmic consequence intelligible in words small enough for even an uneducated sword-swinger to understand, "Sken-Pitilkin is a wizard."
"That much I'd noticed," said Guest, with barely suppressed impatience.
"As a wizard," said Iva-Italis, "he has power."
"That is the nature of the breed," said Guest Gulkan, with emphatic and quite unsuppressed impatience.
"So where does the power come from?" said Iva-Italis.
"Why, from the Meditations," said Guest, who had once asked Sken-Pitilkin that very question, and had experienced no trouble in getting an answer.
"So what are the Meditations?" said Iva-Italis.
"The Meditations," said Guest, quoting from memory, "are a species of mental discipline. There's the Meditations of Power, that's how wizards get power, and there's the Meditations of Balance, which is how they, ah, keep safe the lightning, that's the way it's sometimes put."
"So say wizards," said Iva-Italis.
"You mean it's not true?" said Guest.
"It is a truth which is less than the whole truth," said Iva-Italis. "The Meditations are a mental discipline, certainly. A discipline. A link. Through such discipline, wizards link themselves with the Mahendo Mahunduk. They link, Guest! They link themselves! That's how! That's how they win power! That's how they keep safe that power!"
There was a note of frenzy in the demon's voice, but Guest was confused – as confused as a young suitor who has been introduced to his sweetheart's mother for the first time, and who finds that mother enthusiastically explicating the interconnections of her family en masse, and expecting him to understand the links of blood and marriage between a multitude of strangers, not excluding a great regiment of second cousins thrice removed.
By such confusion was Guest beset, and, for all the sense the demon made, the thing might as well have been garbling away in an untranslated string of foreign irregular verbs.
"So," said Guest, "so who are the, ah, the Mah – the Mahduk?"
"The Mahendo Mahunduk," said Iva-Italis. "They are the minions of the Horn."
"Ah!" said Guest, suddenly enlightened. "Now I remember! Sken-Pitilkin told me once. About the Horn, I mean. The Horn was a god. A world of rocks. There was a battle. One god wrecked the other. The god who won, well, that god made this world."
The amount that Guest Gulkan managed to forget was ever a source of amazement to Sken-Pitilkin, but sometimes what he chose to remember – and when – was just as much a shock to the system.
"Precisely," said Iva-Italis. "The god who lost was the Horn.
The god who won was Ameeshoth."
"And the Mah – the Mahdo – "
"The Mahendo Mahunduk," said Iva-Italis, "are minions of the Horn. The Horn is dead, but they yet live. As yet they still survive, and their survival threatens the created reality in which we live, for ever they strive to destroy the works of Ameeshoth.
By way of wizards they have a link to this world of ours, for wizards draw their powers through a dark intercourse with these creatures of realms of diabolism."
"So speaks a demon," said Sken-Pitilkin, with the flat-voiced calm of a man who has just noticed that one of his arms has been amputated. "So speaks a demon, but the demon is wrong."
In point of fact, the demon was at least half-right. There had indeed been an Originating God known to the wisest of wizards as the Horn. And that god had indeed been overthrown by a Supplanting God known as Ameeshoth. And the created reality which sustained the existence of Sken-Pitilkin and Guest Gulkan alike was indeed the creation of Ameeshoth. But, as for the Mahendo
Mahunduk, why, they had nothing whatsoever to do with the Horn.
In truth, the Supplanting God known as Ameeshoth had been attacked and destroyed by a cabal of Revisionary Gods. The Mahendo Mahunduk, half-demon and half-deity, had served the Revisionary Gods as soldiers in that war of destruction. In the long ages since then, the Revisionary Gods had evolved, changing by slow degrees into the theological host of which modern-day humanity was intermittently and imperfectly aware.
But while the Revisionary Gods had evolved, the Mahendo Mahunduk had not. They remained half-demon, half-deity. And, since the Revisionary Gods had evolved to a state where they had no further use for the Mahendo Mahunduk, the Mahendo Mahunduk had found other ways to employ their abilities.
Still -
"I'd say it speaks the truth," said Guest Gulkan, who had been quite positively convinced by the demon's half-truths. "It upset you right enough, didn't it? You wouldn't be very popular if this got out, would you?"
"Ah," said Sken-Pitilkin, as if he had just bitten hard upon a rotten tooth. "The boy is apt in politics."
"True," said Iva-Italis.
Indeed, Guest Gulkan had got right to the meat of the matter in less than an eyeblink. By granting to wizards certain powers to act on the sustaining creation, the Mahendo Mahunduk were acting in defiance of all the gods half-known and half-worshipped by humanity. The Mahendo Mahunduk were old; and ominous; and dangerous; and hence a perfect focus for the hysterias
of humanity. And while even Sken-Pitilkin did not pretend to understand every detail of the realms of theology, he knew the hysterias of humanity to a nicety.
The hysterias of humanity could be known to a nicety by anyone versed in the history of witch-hunt and pogrom. Wizards had once exploited the mechanics of hysteria to exterminate the witches who had for so long been their rivals in power; and, given the right leverage, anyone with sufficient political capacity could get rid of wizards by the same process.
"The Mahendo Mahunduk," said Iva-Italis.
"The Mahendo Mahunduk," said Guest Gulkan, repeating the words – and, from the way he said those words, Sken-Pitilkin knew the boy was committing them to memory.
"This is power I have given you tonight," said Iva-Italis.
"What kind of power have I given you?"
"Leverage," said Guest Gulkan promptly.
"Good!" said Iva-Italis. "Good. I have given you leverage.
Leverage to use with your wizard, or else with the world. With such leverage, your wizard will help you win through to Obooloo.
When you win to Obooloo, you will rescue the Great God Jocasta.
Then the Great God will make you a wizard in your own right."Guest Gulkan looked at Iva-Italis then looked at Sken-Pitilkin.
"Well?" said Guest Gulkan, with a note of challenge.
"I," said Sken-Pitilkin, "will have nothing whatsoever to do with this mad quest of demons and gods. Regardless of this – this leverage, so called. I will not be compelled."
"You will not," said Guest Gulkan, in a way which suggested that Sken-Pitilkin might be well advised to reconsider his opinion.
"I will not," said Sken-Pitilkin.
He would not unsay it.
So -
"Sken-Pitilkin is thinking that he may have to kill you after all," said Iva-Italis.
This time there was no reaction from Sken-Pitilkin. The wizard's mind was clear: frog-spawn cold and ice-block lucid. He was calculating his chances of getting out of this room alive. Of getting off Alozay alive. Once clear of the island, he could perhaps win his way to Port Domax, ship himself to Ashmolea, then claw a passage south to the Ebrell Islands. From the Ebrells, he could dare himself westward to the Inner Waters and the realms of the Confederation.