by Hugh Cook
In the center of the room, however, was something not quite so conventional. It was not particularly startling, but it was odd. Under the circumstances, Guest Gulkan found anything odd to be ominous. The thing which had attracted his attention was a shallow rectangular well, square-cut, and of no great depth – for had it been filled with water (or with blood, or milk, or liquid honey) then Guest could have jumped into it without getting wet above the knees. For the moment, though, the well was entirely empty of all fluids, so Guest was able to see that its floor was pierced by many drainage holes.
In the center of that well there stood a brazier, which was lit; and above the brazier hung what appeared to be a coffin, suspended from the roof on metal chains. The coffin had the milky whiteness of porcelain.
"We have a man in the coffin," said Aldarch.
"So," said Guest, affecting a calm which he did not quite feel. "So you're boiling him alive."
"Oh no," said the Mutilator. "The brazier is… it's for his health, you could say. This room gets cold, especially at night.
If he wasn't kept warm then he'd die. Shall we look at him?"
"By all means," said Guest.
The Mutilator took Guest Gulkan by the elbow in a companionable manner and guided him forward till they both stood on the edge of the well, where they were able to look down upon the coffin and observe its contents.
Might there perhaps be snakes in the coffin?
No, there were no snakes.
Instead, there was a man.
A modest opening in the coffin allowed for an inspection of the man's face. The man's nose stuck through the gridwork bars, and the bridge of that nose had gone septic where the skin had been chafed away by the unprotected iron. The man's complexion was olive; his pores big; his eyebrows black; his lips full and sensual. Guest absorbed all these details as he looked down on the man. There seemed to be no hurry. Aldarch the Third seemed prepared to stand here all day. The more Guest stood there, the more… the more he was disturbed. Something… something was not quite right.
A fluid of dire darkness, a fluid filthy with bodyscum, a fluid hinting of oil and eels, bathed the man with the quiescent menace of a quicksand swamp, and bathed him so generously that it almost swallowed his face.
With a little more fluid…
If a little more fluid were to be poured into the coffin then the man would surely drown. Now Guest saw the nature of the torture. The man was kept here for many days, and each day a little more fluid was added. In the end, someone would pour in one last jar, and the victim would be helplessly choked. The horror would be to wait for day after day, trapped, helpless and immobile, knowing the nature of the death that was to come.
"How long has he been here?" said Guest.
The moment he asked, he knew the question was a mistake.
Because Aldarch smiled. The smile was thin but satisfied. Aldarch knew that Guest had begun to appreciate the horror of the victim's situation.
"He has been here for forty days," said Aldarch. "He has fed well. We have fed him upon figs and we have fed him upon almonds.
That is sufficient."
"Figs, nuts… and… and water? Do you feed him water? Is he lying in his urine?"
"What makes you think that?"
"It would be a way to drown a man," said Guest, making an incontinent confession of the workings of his mind. "Trap him in a coffin like this, then… he has to piss, and in the end he drowns of it."
Aldarch snorted with laughter.
"What a mind!" said the Mutilator. "But, no. We do nothing so crude. From the first day, the coffin is filled to the level you see now. The bathroom attendants adjust the level as necessary.
The fluid, of course, is sesame oil." As this was translated, the Mutilator watched his prisoner's face. When Guest did not react, the Mutilator said, softly: "So. So you really don't know. You really don't understand. Very well."
The Mutilator raised his hand and gave an order – an order which was not translated. Guest Gulkan listened in confusion to the slick-sliding vocables of Aldarch the Third's Janjuladoola. He could not even guess what was going to happen next. But obviously something was going to happen, and Guest feared that -Guest wished he was elsewhere.
While Guest was still wishing, a girl-slave with symbolic chains dangling from her wrists stepped forward to remove the brazier. Once she had exited with her burden, an executioner approached, bearing a sledgehammer. He looked at the Mutilator.
"Proceed," said Aldarch Three.
The executioner tapped the coffin with his sledgehammer. The ceramic coffin cracked. The executioner hit it again. The coffin shattered. Down came the coffin in a bursting of fragments, a leapage of filth. In the middle of this downburst flopped the prisoner, who hit the marble, clawed at it spasmodically, then lay still in the accumulated slime of forty days of his own filth. Guest flinched, and slashed at his own face with the flat of his hand, abolishing a splash of filth which had landed there.
"Watch," said the Mutilator. "You will find this very interesting."
At first it seemed that nothing was happening. Guest raised his eyes to the blue sky and the high mountains, to the impeccable white of the distant snow. He had a great yearning to be free from this place of self-important steel and degrading spectacle, to be free to walk in those mountains and to leave his footprints in those snows. He remembered the far-distant mountains of Ibsen-Iktus, remembered the blackrock razorblade of those uppermost heights, remembered the high-altitude winds which had stripped away the snows in pluming streams which -
"Watch," said the Mutilator, with something of the corkscrew in his voice. Guest, called back to the filthy spectacle before him, forced himself to study the wretched thing which lay before him in the crippled eloquence of its squalor. It lay on its belly. He could see its ribs moving with the lizard-quick panting of its breathing. It was going nowhere, yet it was exhausted by the rigors of the journey. Guest caught a whiff of the stench from the slime-coated body, and he almost gagged.
He controlled himself.
He struggled to understand.
What was the true import of this spectacle? What was the significance of bathing a man in his own filth? Was this some insult to the pride of the Janjuladoola? Some insult based on the transgression of protocols and the breach of taboos? Was this the ultimate punishment of the Izdimir Empire? To be made to lie helplessly for day after day in the putrid stench of one's own dung and urine?
Aldarch the Third, who had been covertly watching the Weaponmaster, grunted with satisfaction. He gave an order. This time the translator rendered it into Toxteth for Guest's benefit:
"Wash the man."
A bevy of slave girls approached, each bearing a wooden bucket brimming with water. Aldarch dipped his fingers into each bucket in turn, then signified his approval. The buckets were emptied over the man, were emptied one by one, and as the downpour washed away the slime it became possible to see, and as it became possible to see -
"Watch," said Aldarch softly, as Guest Gulkan looked away.
"Watch. Look closely. Watch and learn."
By an effort of great self-control, Guest forced himself to watch, forced himself to look closely, and forced himself to see, to learn, and to understand.
The forty days of immersion in sesame oil had caused the skin to be eaten away from the body, exposing the bare flesh and the blood vessels. Little remained of the face except those parts which had been free from the fluid. The rest was gone. As for the head, why, the sesame oil had eaten away the skin of the scalp. The bald bones of the skull were bare, their sutures clearly visible.
Across the bare bone there laced a webwork of arteries.
"Soon," said the Mutilator. "Soon it will begin. As the water dries, so it will begin. He is tender after his long confinement, and the air is painful."
"The air?" said Guest, not quite understanding.
"As you see," said Aldarch, indicating the specimen on the floor in front of them.
Even as Guest watched, the anatomical specimen before him began to tremble as if shivering. Then it began to move, warping in slow-motion agony. Guest was reminded of a spider crumpling in a flame. But this was a slow, slow fire. This fire did not quickly consume the flesh.
The man on the floor jerked in spasms. His wet slithering spasms reminded Guest obscenely of orgasms. Aldarch the Third watched with intense interest. Even for him, this was a special thing. He did not see this every day. The Mutilator's attendants were, one and all, frozen into a hieratic stillness.
"It hurts him," said Aldarch, speaking with a softness which the interpreter translated in a bare whisper. "He is burning. It hurts him to breathe. It hurts him to be."
As if in response, the writhing man began to mutter, speaking in choked intakes, speaking in the language of drowning, speaking of pain, of strangulation, of the unutterable.
"Always," said Aldarch, intently. "Always. It always happens this way. He is speaking."
"Of what?" said Guest.
"Of his pain," said Aldarch. "He begs for his mother in her mercy. He begs. But. But if you ask – he can tell you the future if you ask."
"This I – I don't need to know the future," said Guest. "I'll face the future when I come to it."
"The man will die anyway," said Aldarch. "Since the man will die in any case, you might as well have the knowledge of his wisdom. I will ask your future for you."
Then, abruptly, the Mutilator stepped down into the well.
Disregarding the stench and the filth, he straddled the writhing man. Then, to Guest's utter horror, the Mutilator seated himself on that appalling figure. The living corpse screamed in a high- pitched whistle. The Mutilator slapped it. Slapped it hard.
Splatters of filth flew in all directions. Then the Mutilator spoke to the thing, spoke with a snarling savagery, as if to a delinquent dog.
At which -
At which the man either did or did not begin to speak. Guest was not sure whether the dying man was speaking, but he knew for a certainty that he could hear a voice of some description, a withered voice which was warped with agony, a voice outgulping words in gouts, words of terrible import.
Then the voice fell silent.
Aldarch the Third rose from his victim, who had ceased to move. The Mutilator scrambled out of the shallow well. He looked uncommonly ungainly as he climbed out of that pit, but his ungainliness did not detract from his dignity.
A slave girl approached, bearing a canary-yellow handcloth which steamed slightly. Aldarch took it, wiped his face, cleaned his hands, then tossed it into the pit. Despite this token cleansing, the Mutilator was still besmeared with filth. He stank.
But he did not seem to mind. He looked the Weaponmaster in the face, and he said:
"He says you will kill your father."Guest shuddered.
For it was hard to deny the likelihood of any prediction by such a terrible.
"That is what he says," continued the Mutilator. "He says that you will kill your father. And I say this – if you cannot or will not liberate your father from the time pod in the Temple of Blood, then you will most certainly be the death of your father.
For I will put that pod in a fire then heat it until it bursts."
As Guest absorbed this threat, the Mutilator enhanced it with one last statement: "I have done as much before."Guest shuddered.
And, with that, the Mutilator exited, leaving the Weaponmaster to contemplate the final twitchings of the man who lay dying at his feet.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Stench Caves: complex of caverns from whence that thin and putrid flux known as the Nijidith River outflows and courses west to Lake Kak. The Nijidith River affords pigs and such with a constant source of nourishment, and was the original attraction which caused Obooloo to be founded on the shores of Lake Kak.
Choosing to quest to the Stench Caves and thus save his father from incineration, Guest Gulkan confessed to the location of the ring of ever-ice which had the power to open and close the time pods in the Temple of Blood.
Once Guest had confessed, the sewer-flavored waters in the Temple of Blood were siphoned dry, and the muck at the bottom of the octagonal chamber which housed the Great God Jocasta and the demon Ungular Scarth was sieved until the ring was found.
Then Aldarch the Third used that ring to open the time pod which held the Witchlord, and the man fell from that pod, and was received by the Mutilator's healers. Thereafter, the Mutilator wore the ring of ever-ice on his own hand.
Now since Lord Onosh had been sorely wounded when Guest had first consigned him to the safety of a time pod, and since no time whatsoever had passed for Lord Onosh since then, he proved grievously wounded when liberated, and was some months recovering.
But, with the Witchlord Onosh being finally recovered, and reconciled to joining the quest for the cornucopia to which his son had pledged himself, Witchlord and Weaponmaster left the palace of Ubazakura, accompanied by the Mutilator and a great host of his people.
They went on foot, this being the traditional manner in which the Stench Caves are approached from Obooloo, since those caves are holy, and therefore to approach those caves is to undertake a kind of pilgrimage.
While they pilgrimaged, Aldarch the Third led that multitude in a holy chant. His voice was not so melodious as that of one of his imperial dragons, but his power and status compelled Guest Gulkan to attend to him with such concentration that the Weaponmaster soon began to feel that he had never heard a more affecting plaint in all his days.
Even so, Guest did not feel very much like a pilgrim. On the night before, the Mutilator had honored Witchlord and Weaponmaster with a feast, and Guest's head was aching from all the wine he had drunk, for liquor of all descriptions had become unfamiliar to his flesh during his days of imprisonment. Yes, despite Guest Gulkan's great constitutional strength, the stress of imprisonment had weakened him bitterly, and today he felt his weakness in the length of the road, the sharpness of the light, the invincibility of the sun.
The day was hot, and in its heat the greenflies of Ang were at their pestilential worst. A hot shimmer of dragonflies flickered between the processioning pilgrims and went winging out over the Nijidith River – a slow and oozing flux of filth in which pigs were diligently rooting for their sustenance. The pigs were not by any means alone, for keeping them company were ducks which went filleting through the muck with their beaks; and, ignoring both pigs and ducks, multitudes of barefoot peasants stood up to their knees in the rivermud, and sieved it for unimaginable treasures (fish? bugs? worms? eggs? tadpoles? gemstones? coinage? bones?).
It might have been thought that the Weaponmaster would have occupied himself on that journey by making plans for resistance or escape. But he did not. The fight had gone out of him, for he had suffered too many setbacks and defeats – starting with the tearing of his arms and legs in an arena in Chi'ash-lan. That had marked him. The demon of Cap Foz Para Lash had repaired the damage done to his flesh, but his psyche had been deeply damaged. He knew his own vulnerability, and knew it too well, for all that he tried to deny that knowledge. And, having found all that all his resources of strength had failed him in Chi'ash-lan, he was less sure of those resources than he had been on that foolish day of youthful bravura when he had faced the Rovac warrior Thodric Jarl in a duel in Enskandalon Square.
Consequently, though Guest had functioned well enough when questing in the company of the wizards Pelagius Zozimus and Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, he had found it harder to play the hero without them. So when endeavoring to escape from Injiltaprajura, and finding his escape ship confronted by a fleet loyal to the Mutilator, he had found himself entirely lacking in initiative and resource; and it had only been the intervention of his servant Thayer Levant which had saved him from tamely surrendering the x- x-zix and the mazadath to the Mutilator's forces.
Since then, imprisonment and threat had further sapped Guest's confidence; and, of course, he was nursing a dragon, as the cognoscenti of Obooloo
term a hangover. He was further depressed by the fact that his new boots – a personal gift from the Mutilator – were giving him blisters. Therefore he made no plans for mayhem, and he attempted no touristic appreciation of the novel sights and scenes which greeted him on the way to the Stench Gates, though he did take note of a young woman breast- feeding a piglet, which (much to the Weaponmaster's envy) nuzzled against her flesh in an utter contentment of gluttony.
As the procession drew nearer to the Stench Gates, the river became more obviously polluted – for nuggets of floating filth and lengths of what looked like intestines came floating downstream on its oily waters. These delicacies were salvaged by the bucketload by industrious peasants, who carted much away for their own use, yielding up token portions to be burnt as offerings at the several temples of the God of Bounty.
The God of Bounty, a minor god who had Zoz the Ancestral as his patron, was worshipped by the banks of the Nijidith River, and nowhere else. The largest of his temples occupied the huge portal cavern which linked the world of daylight with the inner dark of the Stench Caves, and, at the end of their journey, Witchlord and Weaponmaster were led into this Prime Temple. It was dominated by a huge carving which depicted the God of Bounty graciously vomiting into the begging bowls of His worshippers.
It was then explained to the two that they must convert to the worship of the God of Bounty if they would venture deeper into the Stench Caves. Since both were agreeable to being converted, the rites of conversion immediately began: and took a full three days to complete.
Neither Lord Onosh nor his son Guest either felt or expressed any impatience at this delay. For, while those who read histories are commonly eager to know What Happens Next, those who have the misfortune to be making history in their own right would usually rather not know, or at least not just yet. Guest in particular welcomed the respite, for it allowed him to drain and dry the blisters which he had got from his new boots on the march to the Stench Caves.