The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster coaaod-9

by Hugh Cook

  Witchlord and Weaponmaster endured the three days of ritual with such perfect patience that the high priest of the God of Bounty, impressed by their manifest piety, told them that there were two vacancies in the priesthood.

  "You are candidates," said the high priest. "Say the word, and you will be accepted."

  "Ah," said Guest, "but we are doomed on a quest."

  "No," said the high priest. "Do but say the word, and you will be inducted into the priesthood. Priests do not quest."

  Encouraged by this – for the longeurs of three days of ritual had failed to give him any enthusiasm for finding out What Happens next – Guest asked for details. He was told that the two positions currently vacant were those of the Collector of Alms and the Blesser of Turds.

  "The one, by tradition, is always a blind man with his male attributes removed," said the high priest, licking his lips. "The other has no ears, and is likewise bereft of the attributes specific to his gender."

  On getting a painfully precise explanation of what was meant by the removal of "male attributes", Witchlord and Weaponmaster decided that (unfortunately) neither of them was worthy to be inducted into the priesthood of the God of Bounty.

  "A pity," said the high priest, who had looked forward to the task of making these potential new recruits eligible for the priesthood. "A great pity."

  Then he supervised the arming of Witchlord and Weaponmaster.

  They were equipped with swordbelts, with swords, with knives, with throwing stars, with eye-gouging handscrews, with darning needles and with packets of pepper. All the weapons were firmly lashed to their swordbelts (but for the darning needles and packets of pepper, which were enclosed in leather purses which had been stitched tight, the purses themselves then being bound to the swordbelts). The idea was that the questing heroes would not be given any encouragement to run amok in the temple – but, once free in the Stench Caves, they would be able to liberate a full complement of weapons at their leisure.

  And so at last – much to the relief of Aldarch the Third, who lacked the infinite tolerance for ritual which Guest and his father had so capably demonstrated – Witchlord and Weaponmaster were conveyed to the innermost door of the Prime Temple which occupied the portal cavern of the Stench Caves. The Nijidith River existed from the Stench Caves by means of the gap beneath that innermost door, which was opened in a long ceremony involving much wailing, and the laceration of priestly noses, and the banging of calabashes, and the ceremonial sacrifice of a rat.

  Having been sacrificed, the rat was then cooked, and portions of it were served to both Witchlord and Weaponmaster. They ate it without any qualms whatsoever (while confined in the Fulch, Guest Gulkan had several times eaten raw rat, therefore had no objection to the same article when cooked), and found it perfectly palatable, for it was not a filth-eater, but, rather, a pampered creature which had been properly raised expressly for the purpose of consumption.

  Having thus fed, Witchlord and Weaponmaster were escorted through the Gates of Filth (for thus was the innermost door named), where they were ordered to halt in front of a small altar set amidst a sea of mud. A greenish phosphorescent light shone dimly down from the roof, and this was supplemented by flaring torches.

  "Halt!" said the high priest.

  For the ceremonies were not yet over! Before the questing heroes could be allowed to proceed any further into the inner depths, Aldarch the Third must first consecrate their mission by sacrificing a frog.

  A frog was produced. It was a brown frog spotted with purplish strawberry-shaped markings. It had been securely trussed with threads of gold, and of silver, of purple, and of crimson. Guest Gulkan and his father were invited to kiss this animal, which they duly did, pressing reverent lips to the coldness of its skin. Then the high priest placed the sacrifice on the altar, and withdrew.

  Aldarch the Third then stroked the frog with his finger, and hummed to it, then sucked on his finger, then let a glob of saliva fall to its cool flesh, then used his finger to spread his spittle across the animal's skin. Guest watched closely, for the Mutilator was wearing the ring of ever-ice on the very same finger which was stroking the frog, and Guest wished he could think of some way to win possession of that ring.

  Then the Mutilator drew his knife.

  It was a small knife, a weapon made with a back-breaking curve which ended not in a point but in a bead. A bluish bead.

  Bluish? Greenish? It was hard to tell, for, after all, the Stench Caves were lit by the green glow from the roof combined with the flaring torchlight, which – as any interior designer will tell you – is scarcely the kind of illumination to be using when one is trying to match colors. But, despite the limitations of the light, Guest Gulkan was fairly sure that the bead on the end of the Mutilator's knife was a kind of blue or green. It looked to me made of porcelain, and so reminded him of the hideous coffin in the Mutilator's bathroom. Yet. The sight of that bead stirred a deeper memory. What?

  The Mutilator jabbed at the frog. The animal convulsed. And Guest remembered.

  Standing there at the Stench Gates, Guest Gulkan once again remembered the vision which had long ago beset him in the mainrock

  Pinnacle. His vision had transported him to a room where a grayskinned stranger had slapped him, then had jabbed him with a hooked knife, terminating his vision, and precipitating his return to the realities of the mainrock.

  Aldarch was the gray-skinned stranger.

  The knife which had sacrificed the frog was the same knife which had assailed Guest during his visionary transportation.

  And.

  And!

  The demon Ungular Scarth had said -

  In the Temple of Blood, in the octagonal chamber which housed the Great God Jocasta, the jade-green demon had told Guest that a special knife needed to cut through the force-field which imprisoned the Great God. Anaconda Stogirov, High Priestess of the Temple of Blood, was in possession of one such blade.

  The other -

  "Wah!" said Guest.

  And his father, who had been waiting for a cue which would tell him his son was ready for violence, slammed the Mutilator with his elbow. Down went the Mutilator! Guest grabbed for the Mutilator's knife.

  "Mazara!" screamed the Mutilator, rising from the mud. Guest slashed him across the cheek. The Mutilator reeled backward, and Guest kicked him in the crutch. As Aldarch doubled over, Guest grabbed the man's head. Slammed it with his knee. The ripped the ring of ever-ice from the Mutilator's finger, and crammed it onto his own hand.

  "Come on!" cried Lord Onosh.

  So, realizing he did not have time to decapitate the Mutilator, or to skin him alive, or to organize his roasting, Guest chopped him on the neck – hoping the blow would kill – then went pelting into the darkness.

  Witchlord and Weaponmaster fled at full pace. A dozen paces took them to the first of a multitude of corkscrew turns in an ever-branching tunnel. Then the Stench Caves widened from tunnel to cavern, and the Witchlord tripped, and went down. He fell heavily, winding himself. Guest, conscious of the cries of the guards who were in hot pursuit, grabbed his father. The cavern was lit by the unearthly green phosphorescence from overhead, but here and there were patches of darkness. Guest dragged his father toward the nearest such patch, not knowing whether it was a maw or a womb.

  It proved to be a pocket of rock-shadowed mud. Cold mud. Wet mud. Slickery mud which absorbed Guest and his father as they plunged into it, going in up to their waists, and going in just in time – for moments later a good two dozen of the Mutilator's guards came pounding into the cavern.

  As the guards raced into the cavern, Guest noticed the chip of ever-ice in the ring on his hand was gleaming in the darkness, vibrant with its own inner light. Hastily, he plunged it under the mud.

  The guards went pelting past. One slithered, slid, then went sprawling with a belly-flop. One of his fellows kicked him, swearing in fear, rage and panic. Green light slick-sliced from the guards' swords, making Guest uncomfortably awar
e of the fact that his own weapons were as yet unavailable for his use, since they were firmly attached to his swordbelt. In his hand, he still had the little knife he had won from Aldarch the Third, but he doubted the wisdom of cutting anything free while he was waist- deep in mud, for he might loose his steel to the slime.

  Abruptly, the leading guard halted.

  Then cried out. Guest thought he had been discovered.

  A moment later, with a roar, a thing with a great many tentacles lunged from the mud and seized the guard who had halted and shouted. The guard screamed, then screamed no more, for a tentacle forced its way down his throat. Even as Guest watched, aghast, the tentacle abrupted through the guard's back.

  The guard thrashed in spasms. Then the monster of the murk tossed him to one side. He hit the wall with a sick glap-slup of bursting organs, then folded up in a crumpled heap on the mud of the cavern floor.

  And while all this was going on, the murkbeast had simultaneously grabbed most of the other guards, and was variously squeezing them, crushing them, waving them about, or munching them down to satisfy its appetite.

  As far as Guest could make out by the dim green phosphorescent light from the roof of the cave, the murkbeast had no feet, no legs, no means of perambulation. Rather, it appeared to be rooted in the muck on a thick stalk. It made him think of a toad which had been grafted onto a sea anemone and equipped with the tentacles of an octopus (tentacles dreadfully reminiscent of those of the therapist Schoptomov).

  While Guest was still staring in fascinated horror, the murkbeast finished its feast.

  Then the cavern was still, but for the noisy vomiting of a cowering survivor, and the groaning of a man a man who had been crushed but uneaten.

  When the survivor had finished vomiting, he started crying, then exited from the cavern, exiting from this scene of living nightmare. But no such easy retreat was available to Witchlord and Weaponmaster. For if they retreated, they would run into Aldarch the Third; and, all things being equal, Guest would far rather take his chances with the murkbeast.

  The guard who had been crushed was still groaning. As if annoyed by the noise he was making, the murkbeast swatted him with a tentacle. He screamed, and thrashed, and was slapped again.

  Several times. Guest heard the crunch of breaking bones, a crunch like that of rock being quarried. Again, a tentacle slapped living flesh, making a sound like a canoe grounding itself on a coral reef.

  And, thus slapped, the man screamed no more. Rather, he panted, his breath a matter of heaving gasps, a strenuous fighting. He was fighting for his life, and he was losing. Guest was reminded of a dying man he had once encountered on the stairs in the mainrock Pinnacle. That had been on a night of battle, the night on which Witchlord and Weaponmaster had wrested control of Alozay from Banker Sod. Guest had encountered a dying man, had paused to pity him, then – compelled by the necessities of war – had passed on. Ever since then, he had not once thought of that man. But now he remembered.

  Half-thinking to help or comfort the man, Guest started from the muddy pit in which he was mired. But his father pulled him back.

  "Wait," said the Witchlord. "Guards may come in search of their dead."

  "We'd hear them," said Guest.

  "Not if they were quiet," said his father. "Not while our friend out there is making such a racket."

  So Guest, acknowledging the truth of this, subsided into the pit.

  He waited.

  At length, Lord Onosh grunted, the loudness of his grunt emphasizing the silence in the cavern – for the man who had so recently been dying was now dead.

  "Time for us to be moving," said the Witchlord.

  But by this time, Guest was in no mood to be moving. The wait had served to sap his courage, for the obvious and irrevocable truth of the green-glowering depths was that the Weaponmaster was way out of his depth. He was not equipped to wage war on a murkbeast – and that creature was the very first of the dangers encountered in those depths!

  In this cold, wet, muddy place, there was nothing which was familiar. Guest had precious little to pad him against the cold, and was afforded no padding of habit or familiarity which could protect him against the full knowledge of the fragility of his own vulnerability. This was an alien place, a place which by no stretch of the imagination could be considered home, and it made him conscious of the pain, the death, the agony which was implicit in the configuration of his flesh and bones. Guest remembered squatting on a beach by night on the Chameleon's Tongue, on the shores of Argan, convinced that the Great Mink was on the loose in the night. He remembered comforting himself with his own familiar, personal, private smell. The gesture had served. But no such comfort would avail him here. For there was no denying that a monster waited in the dark, a murkbeast built for the rending of men.

  "It will eat us," said Guest, trying to keep the fear from his voice.

  "It has left one uneaten," said Lord Onosh, "therefore it has fed sufficiently. Come. Have you a knife?"

  "Take this," said Guest, passing his father the weapon he had won from the Mutilator. "But be tender of the point."

  "The edge will serve," said his father, starting to saw at the fastenings which bound his weapons to his swordbelt.

  Then Lord Onosh passed the knife back to his son, who used it to liberate his own weapons. They were well-made and serviceable, though the possession of sword, knives, throwing stars, eye- gouging handscrews, darning needles and packets of pepper gave Guest no confidence in the face of the murkbeast. It did not look to be the kind of creature which would take much notice of weapons. So thinking, Guest discarded one of his knives, and used the buckle-down sheath thus freed as a repository for the blade which he had stolen from the Mutilator.

  "You threw away a knife!" said his father, in tones of accusation.

  "So I did," said Guest. "And it is a crime, yes, but I would do it again, and, what's more, I have done worst in the past and will do worse again in the future."Guest spoke with some heat, for fear was converting itself to anger. His fear was all of the murkbeast.

  Though the murkbeast had been initially hidden in the mud, it had made no move to withdraw to that shelter. Its stalk was severely distended, suggesting that its glutting of itself had made such withdrawal a physical impossibility. Perhaps it would lie there for days, quiescent, digesting, its sprawled tentacles lying heedless in the muck.

  Perhaps.

  And then again…

  "I'll go first," said Lord Onosh, when his son made no move to venture forward.

  Then the Witchlord matched action to his words. Guest watched as his father stepped forward, moving carefully, keeping close to the walls of the cavern. The green light from above shone on the Witchlord's gouged and slanting forehead, lit his high Yarglat-bred cheekbones with a fever sheen, and emphasised the darkness of the shadows which pooled in the bigness of his ears. Moving thus, Lord Onosh looked more like a creature from myth than a man; and Guest felt fragile, incompetent and childish by comparison.

  So the Witchlord ventured forward. He drew level with the murkbeast.

  And -

  And took another step.

  And abruptly lurched, and fell.

  "Father!" shrieked Guest.

  The cry was torn from him, as if with hooks. The murkbeast had the Witchlord! Had him, had seized him!

  And Guest, in shamed horror, found himself rooted to the spot, paralyzed by his own terror. He could not do the manly thing. He could not dare the forward step, even though his father was down, was -

  Was -

  Was getting up…

  "Uh," said Lord Onosh, grunting.

  Then he spat out mud.

  Then he turned to Guest, and said: "There are little brutes in imitation of the big one. A little one grabbed me, but my hand was enough for its strangulation."Guest was still unable to speak, but grunted, hoping his grunt did not betray too much of his wet and shit-sliding terror.

  "Come," said his father. "It's safe."

&n
bsp; Obedient to this encouragement, Guest drew his sword and began to venture toward his father.

  The mud in the cave was particularly sticky, or so it seemed to Guest. His boots bogged deep with every footstep, and it was a physical effort to pull each foot free from the morass.

  "Slowly," said Lord Onosh, sensing or seeing Guest's distress. "Slowly does it. Slow and steady."

  "Slow and steady," said Guest, his voice trembling involuntarily as he took up that refrain.

  Even as he said it, a tentacle uncurled itself in lazy leisure and reached out in Guest's direction.

  "Careful," said his father, thinking the tentacle was but feinting.

  Then the heavy weight of the tentacle slammed itself down on Guest's shoulder, slapped home in a positively convivial manner, then abruptly whipped itself around his neck and started to tighten.

  "Gah!" said Guest, with a choked cry barely a hair's-breadth from strangulation.

  The tentacle was pulling on him. Not with any unduly monstrous force, but with a sufficiency of effort to shortly secure his death. Guest had been judged by the murkbeast, and condemned, and sentenced to death by hanging!

  When he realized that, the Weaponmaster became icy calm. The worst had happened. The murkbeast had him.

  So.

  When a dog seizes upon your hand, you must not pull it away, for that is what the dog is expecting. Rather, you must plunge that hand fiercely down the dog's throat, and use the other hand to destroy the brute which has seized you.

  So thinking, Guest ceased to resist. With a mighty lunge, he hurled himself at the murkbeast. Taken by surprise, its tentacle momentarily slackened. By rights, Guest should have used the slackening to attack the murkbeast. But – weakened by fear, and by long habit of irresolution – the Weaponmaster yielded to the entirely human impulse to free the slack of the tentacle from his neck.

  By trying to do so, he lost his chance. The murkbeast recovered itself, fed strength into the tentacle, held Guest tight, then abruptly jerked him off his feet and hauled him toward its gaping toad-mouth.