by Hugh Cook
"And," said Sken-Pitilkin, "the demon knocked him to the ground."
Sod did not know whether to believe this account. On the face of it, the story was highly improbable. For the demon Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis did not customarily defend the privacy of the holy of holies by knocking people to the ground. Rather, the demon's custom was to fatally ravage anyone who attempted an unauthorized passage up the eastern stairs of the Hall of Time.
Clearly, Sken-Pitilkin was holding something back.
But what?
Sod first taxed Sken-Pitilkin directly, suggesting that he was not telling the truth, or at least not the whole truth.
"I am old," conceded Sken-Pitilkin, "and my memory is failing. It may be that I have misplaced some of the events of the night, or misrecalled them."
Sod did not believe him for a moment.
So the pale-skinned iceman took himself off to the Hall of Time, and there endeavored to interrogate Iva-Italis. A singularly unsatisfactory procedure, this! For the demon played mute, even when Sod threatened to withhold its monthly ration of those unfortunate rats which gave it such prolonged and reliable amusement.
Sod next interrogated Guest, who blandly claimed that the height of his fever had wiped out his memory.
This left Sod with a problem. Both Guest and Sken-Pitilkin had engaged in some kind of nefarious dealings with Safrak's demon. What had they done? What had they learnt? And should they be killed to preserve the Bank's safety? A difficult decision, this. For Guest was the son of the Witchlord Onosh, and Safrak wanted no war with the Collosnon Empire. Doubtless an accident could be arranged, but…
The unfortunate truth was that Banker Sod had become addicted to the cookery of Pelagius Zozimus, who delighted the Banker with his many ingenious recipes for preparing snails and slugs. Zozimus had only come to Alozay to help protect Guest Gulkan. If Guest died, then Zozimus would immediately leave, denying Sod the blandishments of his cookery.
Thus did a slug-chef's art help secure Guest's safety, at least for the moment. Sod contented himself by banning Guest Gulkan (and Sken-Pitilkin!) from venturing anywhere near the heights of the Hall of Time. Guest of course was still in some danger from Sken-Pitilkin, who nightly revolved the question of whether the boy knew too much. On recovering from his influenza, Guest had set himself to master the Toxteth tongue, and had taken to putting in extra work with his sword. From long acquaintance with the boy, Sken-Pitilkin could read his intent from the slightest clues, and Guest's ferocious attack on Toxteth was by no means a slight clue. Guest's behavior implied that he was preparing himself to join the Guardians. The boy now had it in mind to stay on Alozay as a hired sword. Once a member of the Guardians, a mercenary entrusted with the defense of the Bank, Guest would have further opportunity of intercourse with the demon Iva-Italis. Sken-Pitilkin knew that Guest felt denied, thwarted, cheated by the fact that his father had named his brother Eljuk to be the heir of the Collosnon Empire. Guest wanted power, and the demon Iva-Italis offered him just that – a wizard's power, to be easily won by a simple quest.
So -
The boy was driven by ambition, and the strength of that drive would see him win through to his demon, sooner or later, and there was no telling what would happen then.
Therefore Sken-Pitilkin thought further of murder.
But the wizard of Skatzabratzumon had developed a durable affection for Guest during the ten years of their classroom relationship, hence could not bring himself to casually despatch the boy. Besides, Sken-Pitilkin had told Lord Onosh that he would guard, guide and protect Guest on Alozay, and such a commitment could not be lightly brushed aside, for Sken-Pitilkin had his honor.
And there was another factor to be considered. Sken-Pitilkin was intrigued by the possibility of developing a practical airship, hence wanted to keep open his route to the demon Iva-Italis. Suppose Guest stayed on Alozay. Suppose Guest became a Guardian. Then the boy would grow older (definitely) and wiser (possibly). Once older and wiser, the boy would be more amenable to advice.
Counseled by Sken-Pitilkin, Guest might well abandon his impossible plans to be "made a wizard". He might consent to scheme with Sken-Pitilkin. Working together, they might be able to trick the demon Iva-Italis out of the knowledge necessary for a wizard of Skatzabratzumon to build a practical airship.
In such hope, Sken-Pitilkin restrained his hand, and set himself to wait.
Yet very little waiting had gone by before Sken-Pitilkin started to find himself increasingly impatient. To control the secrets of flight was the dream of every wizard of Skatzabratzumon. Sken-Pitilkin had made many experiments in that direction during his apprenticeship, and during the long years of his maturity he had spent generations trying to crack the problem.
He knew how to wait, yes, but would waiting serve his purpose? Was there any proven virtue in patience? Guest would grow older – that much was certain. But the Weaponmaster's ultimate acquisition of wisdom was strictly problematical.
And so, after thinking long and hard about the acroamatical revelations made by the demon Iva-Italis, Sken-Pitilkin started actively considering trying an experiment along the lines which the demon had suggested. Create a magical artefact. Expose some part of that artefact to the destructive normalizing forces of the universe. Then control the resulting destruction, trapping the destructive forces and using them for the purposes of flight.
Doubtless there would be dangers in such an experiment: but surely the potential rewards amply justified the risks.
Consider what it would mean were we able to fly.
Given the power of flight, we could transport goods with ease, high above the ravenous mountains and those over-fertile oceans so prodigious in their production of krakens and sea serpents. The sundry races of the world would be united by an undreamt-of ease of travel, and on close acquaintance would grow to know each other better, old hatreds dying as new friendships blossomed. The death of suspicion would mean an end to war. Better still, the greatest experts of all the world would be free to travel the globe resolving the sundry problems of humanity, thus ending the present Age of Darkness and ushering in a golden Age of Light.
Do not think, then, that Sken-Pitilkin was possessed of a reckless hubris when he decided to dare the construction of an airship. He knew the dangers. But here was an opportunity to to restructure the world and save all of humanity from its lesser nature.
Hence Sken-Pitilkin began to build small-scale model airships, designing these with a view to perfecting the art of sustained and controlled destruction. Sken-Pitilkin's experiments were not an unqualified success.
Upon his experiments he lavished the sap-days of the spring, the heat of summer and the fruitfullness of autumn. But, while he secured plenty of destruction, he was less than successful in the controlled management of that destruction. Finally, as winter was setting in, the eminent wizard of the order of Skatzabratzumon was summoned into the presence of Banker Sod.
"Sken-Pitilkin!" said Sod. "Sit!"
The wizard sat.
"Tell me," said Sod, "why do you think I've called you here?"
"Why," said Sken-Pitilkin, with guilty uneasiness, "I suppose, ah, to have me spy Guest's letters, perhaps. He got another epistle from Bao Gahai only yesterday. His brother Morsh is walking and riding, so says the letter, and as the boy was laid up last winter with a broken leg – "
"Don't toy with me!" barked Sod. "Sken-Pitilkin! I want to know! Are you responsible for the outbreak of explosions, tornados, waterspouts, hurtling debris and other such poltergeist- like activity which has of late vexed, troubled and disturbed our peace?" Sken-Pitilkin thought about it, then said:
"No."
It was, after all, Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis who had suggested that the secret of flight lay in the mastery of sustained and controlled destruction, therefore the demon Iva-Italis was (at least in Sken-Pitilkin's opinion) responsibly for the consequences of Sken-Pitilkin's experiments in that direction.
"No?" said Banker Sod.
Banker Sod looked at Sken-Pitilkin very hard, meanwhile drumming his black-nailed fingers on his desk. Then Sod came to a decision. He stopped drumming, and said:
"Very well. I accept your denial. You are not responsible for the recent incidents. But – I am making you responsible for making sure that they stop!" Sken-Pitilkin got the message, and the incidents ceased.
So peace came to the island of Alozay, though not to the world at large – for unrest was increasing in the Collosnon Empire, the tax revolt in Locontareth was gathering strength, and the empire was moving slowly but inevitably toward a state of civil war.
Chapter Seven
Alozay: Safrak's ruling island. Its Grand Palace occupies the mainrock Pinnacle, the prodigious upthrust of rock which overshadows the city of Molothair. Molothair itself lies on a tongue of low-lying land. Alozay has two sets of docks on Alozay: the Palace Docks, serving the mainrock Pinnacle, and the Molothair Docks, serving the low-lying city itself.
Early in the spring of the year Alliance 4306 – a few days after Guest Gulkan's 16th birthday and a full year after Guest Gulkan's introduction to the demon Iva-Italis – the Rovac warrior Thodric Jarl came to Safrak to recall Guest Gulkan to Gendormargensis.
While the Collosnon Empire had been told that Guest was on Alozay as a hostage, Jarl knew otherwise, and knew that there would be no trouble in recovering the boy from Safrak. In Gendormargensis, it was thought by the uninitiated that the Safrak
Bank regularly demanded hostages from the Collosnon Empire.
However, while it is certainly true that selected individuals were on occasion sent to Alozay as "hostages", the Safrak Bank never demanded any such prisoners, and in fact was paid good gold for safeguarding them.
The Emperor Onosh was a Yarglat barbarian, true, but he had dwelt in Gendormargensis for so long that he was perilously close to being civilized. In Gendormargensis, Lord Onosh had been guided by selected advisors of Sharla ancestry – the Sharla being the sophisticated people who had owned the Collosnon Empire before the Yarglat took it from them in the Wars of Dominion. Aided by his Sharla advisors, and by the subtlety of his dralkosh Bao Gahai,
Lord Onosh had learnt some nimble tricks of politics, and had gone some distance toward mastering the art of blaming all of one's cruel, self-serving and unpopular actions upon some other agency.
In a truly sophisticated civilization, the art of the abdication of responsibility is brought to such a high pitch of perfection that no government ever admits to wanting to do anything which is in the least bit cruel, self-serving or unpopular. The political praxis of such states consists of one long exercise in the avoidance of responsibility. Typically, the government of a sophisticated state presents itself as kind, thoughtful and humane.
But -
But the kind, thoughtful and human administrations of sophisticated states are guides by a network of committees, subcommittees, research groups, panels, outside experts and other such similar functionaries who can be relied upon to produce a string of recommendations which are typically cruel, vicious, short-sighted and barbarous in effect.
And, since it is one of the conceits of high civilization that no government is competent to decide the rights and wrongs of any question through the application of its own wisdom, it follows that the kindest and most diligently popular of all enlightened governments can practice a cruel, self-serving and unpopular brand of politics by the simple expedient of bowing to the wisdom of its advisers – and can do this in good conscience.
Since the Collosnon Empire was a comparatively primitive organization, it had not yet constructed such a comprehensive apparatus of systematized intellectual dishonesty. Hence Lord Onosh had to bear personal responsibility for at least some of his own actions. Nevertheless, the emperor was slowly learning that it was best if his misdeeds be blamed on other people, and he was becoming pretty good at placing the responsibility for his most unpopular actions on either his enemies or his allies.
Safrak accommodated the Witchlord's needs by allowing him to send prisoners to Alozay as "hostages". This let him exile selected dissidents, sending them into distant custody while protesting his love for them, and blaming their fate on the hostage-demanding land of Safrak.
A nice trick, this. It had allowed the Witchlord to exile his son from Gendormargensis without appearing to be cruel, capricious or arbitrary – and allowed him to recall the boy at his pleasure by simply telling Gendormargensis that Safrak had chosen to relinquish its hostage.
So it was that in the spring of the year Alliance 4306 – ah, but the date has been given already! Repetition, repetition, there is no point to it, no need for it. The parchment holds the ink, and holds it for all time. So if the date be lost in the first reading, then it will be found in the second.
A second reading!?!
Is the historian truly counseling a second reading of his works?
Yes, he is!
And shamelessly!
Let it clearly be stated that a second reading is not just to be recommended but is, rather, close to being compulsory. For this is a True History, one which faithfully strives to render the tangled complexities of life itself. To unknot the tangles of this interweaving in a single reading will not be easy. After all, the events confused their very victims, so how should they be clearcut plain to the onlooker?
Read then this history a second time!
If this suggestion seems bizarre, then know that it is not entirely without precedent. Your true scholar will give a book a generation if the text be worthy. And if the book be sufficiently irregular in its verbs, why then, a true scholar will stand content to pore its pages for the better part of a millennium, and think the time well spent.
Yet this is a counsel of perfection, impossible for those whose brief mortality makes the pursuit of such perfection an unattainable ideal. So, in case the constraints of that mortal disease called life make a second reading impossible, let the date be restated, and hammered down, and branded on the mind.
It was spring, and early spring at that. It was the year Alliance 4306, and Guest Gulkan in his adolescent youth had attained the unholy age of 16, surely one of the most perilous of ages in the whole passage from babyhood to manhood. The boy Guest, the self-styled Weaponmaster, had then been in residence on Safrak's ruling island for upwards of a year; and in that year had engaged in an unholy amount of drinking, gambling and troublemaking, none of which will be detailed here – which is not to suggest that any of it had escaped the notice of his elders.
In the early spring of that year, the Rovac warrior Thodric Jarl – gray in beard and gray in eye, he whom Guest Gulkan had dueled for the favors of the woman Yerzerdayla – came to Safrak's ruling island to summon the Witchlord's son home to Gendormargensis.
Thodric Jarl did not come alone. He traveled with friendly swords to guard his back, for the countryside was in disorder. A tax revolt centered on Locontareth had quite got out of hand, and Lord Onosh was marching to war against the rebels. The Witchlord wished the Weaponmaster to march to battle at his side, hence had sent Jarl to fetch the young man.
By this time, the influenza epidemic which had decimated Safrak a year previously was but an almost-forgotten incident in history. The Collosnon Empire had heard nothing of that epidemic.
All those people had died without Lord Onosh, Jarl, or Bao Gahai, or any other in Gendormargensis learning of their deaths. Bones become dust but the blood goes on.
While Jarl had heard nothing of the epidemic – and was destined to learn nothing – he had heard much of the island of Alozay, center of all trade between the Collosnon Empire and Port Domax (Port Domax being a free city placed many leagues distant on the shores of the Great Ocean of Moana).
Lord Onosh had given Thodric Jarl no orders to scout for the means whereby Alozay might be defeated, and to Jarl's best knowledge the Witchlord had no designs on the Safrak Islands.
&nb
sp; Nevertheless, as a boat brought Jarl and his comrades to the Palace Docks at the foot of the mainrock Pinnacle, Jarl studied all with a warrior's eye, and committed all to memory.
Jarl could see no certain way to storm the heights, since the rocks above overhung the docks of Alozay, and to gain the heights one had to be winched up to a drop-hole which gaped in the living rock far, far above.
Still, presumably the mainrock Pinnacle could be taken by siege, assuming one had boats enough, and patience sufficient.
At the dockside, Jarl was met by a yellow-skinned cur-dog which bit at his boots, then by a tall and sallow junior Banker, a young man with crooked teeth and breath so bad it scared away the dog. The junior Banker addressed Jarl in the Eparget of the Yarglat. Jarl's native tongue was Rovac, but war had made him the master of a good half-dozen languages, with Eparget the latest to be subdued to his possession. Thus he was able to explain himself.
The junior Banker heard Jarl's mission then told him that he and his comrades would have to wait.
"None of you can proceed," said the junior Banker, "until at least one of you has been properly identified and vouched for. You must get a security clearance before you can be allowed to proceed."
Thodric Jarl protested vehemently, and demanded to see the Governor of the Bank – but the Governor was unavailable.
"Someone already on Alozay must vouch for you before you can be allowed to proceed," said the junior Banker, with the repetitive instincts of either a born parrot or a born bureaucrat.
"But I don't know anyone on Alozay!" said Jarl.
"Then," said the junior Banker, "you are going to be waiting at the docks for a long time."
So Jarl admitted to knowing Rolf Thelemite, who was produced in order that he might identify Jarl. Thodric Jarl glowered at Rolf Thelemite, who smiled. Though both these worthies were Rovac warriors, the pair were by no means friends. Long, long ago, on a day when Jarl had been very drunk, Rolf Thelemite had defeated him in a fist fight, and Jarl still held a grudge against the man on that account. Rolf Thelemite knew as much.