The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster coaaod-9

by Hugh Cook

  Then those who held Sken-Pitilkin and his companions captive settled down to wait until they were able to arrange to leave by sea.

  Now any sea voyage out of D'Waith is a chancy procedure, for the waters are made dangerous by sea serpents, and by the shoals of the Lesser Teeth and the pirates of the Greaters.

  But the journey overland was generally considered impractical. True, convoys of Galish merchants routinely traveled the overland trading route known as the Salt Road, and that led all the way south from Larbster Bay down to the Castle of Controlling Power at the western end of Drangsturm.

  But in those days – and of course, while we are here talking about recent history, the world has changed out of all recognition since then – the Galish had their own agents in every town of substance. So supposing one of the Galish were to break a leg, or suffer some other misfortune, why, it would be the easiest thing in the world for shelter to be arranged, and for the victim to be left to heal, in the certainty of being able to join another Galish band at some time in the future.

  A combination of armed strength, willing agents, assured credit and sustained goodwill made it possible for the Galish to hazard overland journeys which others would blanch at. Thus blanching, the wizards who had caught Sken-Pitilkin and his companions patiently waited until they were able to procure passage by sea from D'Waith to the city of Runcorn, a free port to the north of the Harvest Plains.

  From Runcorn, another sea voyage took them to Androlmarphos, a port which serves the Harvest Plains. From there, it was easy to arrange passage to Cam, the ruling city of the island of Stokos.

  All this time, Sken-Pitilkin and his companions were trapped in the bottle, and found their imprisonment to be exceedingly wearying. Sken-Pitilkin busied himself with the revision of some of the more intricate irregular verbs, but his companions lacked the same intellectual resources. Even Ontario Nol swiftly grew restless in his prison, and swore a great revenge on his jailors. And even Sken-Pitilkin had to admit that a diet of siege dust and water – for on such the prisoners were typically fed – was less than satisfactory.

  In the days of their confinement, the prisoners made elaborate plans for tricking, deceiving, bluffing, ambushing and overpowering their jailors, for seizing the ring which commanded the bottle, and for wrecking their revenge on those who had so unjustly deprived them of their liberty.

  But these plans came to nothing, for the jailors treated their prisoners with the greatest of caution, and never came near them unless it was absolutely necessary, and then only approached them in force.

  Denied all possibility of escape, the prisoners began to use the undisturbed possession of their peace to co-ordinate stories which would protect the secret of the Door – a secret which they none of them wished to yield to the Confederation of Wizards.

  "What will we say, then?" said Guest. "How will we explain away Shabble?"

  "Why," said Sken-Pitilkin, "we will say that we were living on Safrak when in a demon in globular form rose unexpectedly from the depths of the Swelaway Sea and began burning and raping everything on the islands. The Confederation will take this Shabble to be a demon, and destroy it."

  "That's hardly credible," said Guest.

  "Of course it is!" said Sken-Pitilkin. "That's what demons do, you know. They arise when they're least expected. As for their depredations – boy, a very Yarglat barbarian would blanch at them."Guest ignored the implicit accusations of boyhood and barbarism, for he had long since grown out of taking either seriously. Instead, Guest said:

  "Stories are all very well, but Shabble will give the lie to them if challenged in interrogation."

  "But who would believe anything Shabble says?" said Sken-Pitilkin. "If Shabble tells the truth of what happened on Untunchilamon, and of all that has happened since, why, nobody will believe so much as the smallest fraction of it, since it is all so frankly incredible."

  "Perhaps," said Guest. "But there yet remains the problem of how we are going to escape from the Confederation ourselves."

  "I think," said Sken-Pitilkin, "you will find escape to be no problem at all. I think you are merely being held as a witness."

  "A witness?" said Guest.

  "Yes!" said Sken-Pitilkin. "Have you not understood? We are heading toward Drangsturm for a trial. My trial! I am to be put on trial for crimes against the Confederation. For sheltering Zozimus and Zelafona when they came to me for help. You will be but a witness at that trial, and then, doubtless, you will be released."

  "And Eljuk?" said Guest. "And Levant?"

  "The same," said Sken-Pitilkin. "And, unless he has somehow offended the Confederation in some way which is not known to me,

  Ontario Nol will also be released. Be of good cheer, boy! The problem is mine, and mine alone!"

  A few days after Guest Gulkan had been given this intelligence, the jailors got passage out of Cam. And thus began the final stages of the journey down to Drangsturm.

  By now, Shabble was getting on famously with Eljuk. Eljuk was a born student, and Shabble, when all else failed, was a patient teacher. Shabble taught Eljuk origami, and, before the bubble was through with his teaching, Eljuk's nimble fingers could shape paper dragons, or configure a scrap of paper to an imitation of a Neversh.

  The Neversh is the greatest of the brutes of the Swarms, the monsters which then dominated the lands south of Drangsturm. The Neversh has two spikes which can suck the juices from a man or a water buffalo, and both Sken-Pitilkin and Guest Gulkan had bad dreams about those spikes.

  Drangsturm was now close.

  From Cam, the jailors took the yellow bottle south to Narba, then traveled down through Provincial Endergeneer to the realms of the Far South, the realms of Drangsturm.

  "Right!" said Guest, who longed for their arrival and for his release from the bottle. "Just wait! As soon as I'm out of here, heads will roll!"

  But, when Guest Gulkan reached Drangsturm, he was dismayed to find that he was not to be liberated from the yellow bottle.

  Instead, there was to be (eventually) a trial. The renegade wizard Hostaja Torsen Sken-Pitilkin would be put on trial for high treason. As Sken-Pitilkin had predicted, Guest Gulkan would be a witness at that trial, and both the trial and the pre-trial interrogations would be held in the yellow bottle itself. Sken-Pitilkin, who did not want to see Guest Gulkan put to death for perjury, advised him to tell the truth in his pre-trial interrogation.

  "But what should I say about Shabble?" said Guest. "And about the star-globe? And about Doors?"

  "Of Shabble you need merely say that you are ignorant," said Sken-Pitilkin. "This will be readily accepted."

  "But, but what about Doors?" said Guest. "What about when they ask me about Doors?"

  "Will they ask if you've got a dragon in your pocket?" said Sken-Pitilkin. Then, when Guest looked at him blankly: "They've no reason to suspect we've a Door on Safrak, so won't ask after such.

  Anyway, if they ask you any question too sensitive, just say you don't remember."

  "But I do remember!" said Guest.

  "I'm not sure that you do," said Sken-Pitilkin, who, in long conversation with the Weaponmaster, had found that Guest's memories of the past were selective in the extreme. "Tell them you were tortured. Tell them about your time in the dungeons of Obooloo. Tell them you were driven into the Stench Caves and washed out in a great Flood. Once they know the number of your traumas, they'll not expect you to remember much."

  Such was Sken-Pitilkin's counsel.

  But Guest Gulkan was still greatly worried about his pre- trial interrogation until that interrogation actually began. Then he found he had no problems at all.

  For Guest was a barbarian, was he not? Of course he was! And does one ask a barbarian a question of any complexity? Of course one does not! For a barbarian's brain is small, and his intellect is slow, and his wit is sufficient for nothing more than the riding of horses and the skinning of his enemies.

  So those who interrogated Guest Gulkan were careful only t
o ask him small questions, easy questions, questions which would not confuse and jumble his poor and untutored brain.

  Was he a Yarglat barbarian? Yes, he was. Was he acquainted with Hostaja Torsen Sken-Pitilkin? Yes, he was. And with the wizard Pelagius Zozimus? Again, yes. And the witch Zelafona? Yes, without a doubt. And her son Glambrax? Yes. And had he seen these three in company? Why, yes. And where was that? In the city of Gendormargensis. And when? Why, during the final years of the reign of the Witchlord Onosh.

  That was all the interrogators really wanted to know from Guest Gulkan. It was sufficient to tie Sken-Pitilkin to the criminals Zozimus, Zelafona and Glambrax. It was sufficient, therefore, to damn Sken-Pitilkin and ensure his execution.

  With Guest Gulkan, Ontario Nol, Eljuk Zala and Thayer Levant having been interrogated, the trial did not immediately start, for Sken-Pitilkin had demanded to be given time in which to prepare for that trial.

  So Guest, being of no further interest to the Confederation's prosecutors, was turned over to the wizards of the Ethnological Commission, who were delighted at having a real live Yarglat barbarian to interrogate.

  Much the ethnologists asked, and much Guest told – though he did not tell all. In particular, Guest in his shyness preserved in secrecy some of the sex customs of the Yarglat. For example, he did not confess that the woman in her ecstasy will often haul upon the ears of the man, and leave those ears a mass of bruises on the following day.

  "No sex customs?" said his interrogators, when Guest tried to stonewall them on that point. "But you must have sex customs!

  Everyone has sex customs!"

  This is the thing about ethnology. It is very much a science of the bedroom, for your average ethnologist is nothing but a thwarted pornographer. Since the ethnologists were so insistent, Guest at last found he had no alternative but to invent new sex customs for their delectation. So he described louche orgies in which a great congress of men, women, dogs and horses took place in a gigantic bowl of strawberries and cream.

  "From where are so many strawberries obtained?" said one of the more sceptical wizards.

  "Well | | " said Guest.

  Frankly, though the Weaponmaster had long had the image of a strawberry-and-cream orgy in mind, and was determined to stage such an event at least once before he died, he still had absolutely no idea as to how one could come by so many strawberries and so much cream – even supposing that the resources of an empire were placed at one's disposal. Guest proving unforthcoming on this subject, the interrogators turned their attention to Eljuk Zala.

  "You were of the Yarglat in your youth, were you not?" said they.

  "So I am told," said Eljuk. Then, venturing on a blatant lie to preserve himself from dissection: "But I was taken from those barbarous realms when I was but a baby, hence have no memory of them. But – but some little I have heard. When Guest spoke of strawberries and such, he spoke by way of euphemism. For cream read blood, and for strawberries read the organs of sacrificial victims."

  "Brother!" said Guest, evincing shock. "These things are not to be spoken of in the presence of the unclean!"

  The ethnologists were delighted, and in particular they were exceedingly pleased by Guest Gulkan's shock. For it is counted a great feat of ethnology to penetrate to the most secret, sensitive part of an alien culture, then display the intimacies of those secrets for public view, like the organs of a dead chicken.

  Finally, the ethnologists compelled Guest Gulkan to undress for him, so that his physique might be sketched. For they had observed the largeness of his flap-handle ears, and wondered whether other organs might be similarly distended.

  The undressing of the Weaponmaster – a grievous breach of the taboos of the Yarglat, but one which he was past caring about – proved him to be uncommonly battered and scarred. It also proved him to be in possession of an amulet, the mazadath which he had come by in Dalar ken Halvar.

  "What is that?" said Brother Fern Feathers, the wizard who headed the Ethnological Commission.

  "It is the liver of a dog," said Guest.

  "A dog!?" said Fern Feathers.

  "Yes, yes, a dog," said Guest. "An iron dog, a dog of a kind known as a dorgi. I slaughtered the thing in Dalar ken Halvar, hacked it with my sword then gulleted its ruins with my fingernails. It is from that corpse which I have this prize of mine."

  Naturally the wizards did not believed this farraginous mix of fact and fantasy, so examined Guest's amulet. But they dismissed it as a trinketing piece of silverwork, though a proper Investigation would have proved its metal to be much, much harder than silver.

  "It is a pretty thing," said Fern Feathers, giving a final verdict on the mazadath, "but it has no potency."

  This was true, at least as far as wizards were concerned, and so they left the thing in Guest Gulkan's possession, having done no more than sketch it for their ethnological records.

  With his interrogation at last at an end, Guest Gulkan was able to exercise his own ethnological curiosity by first participating in and then spectating at the trial of Hostaja Torsen Sken-Pitilkin, which was presided over by three judges.

  Those judges were all wizards of Arl: being Heenmor, Phyphor and Garash. It may be argued that the last-named was still technically an apprentice. However, though Garash had not yet been released from the service of his master Phyphor, he still commanded a wizard's full powers.

  It would be a grievous labor to recount in full the laborious processes of a trial of a wizard by wizards. It was a trial of truly historical length, and most of it was spent arguing points of law.

  The bare facts of the case may be stated with the utmost simplicity. Sken-Pitilkin was accused of high treason, in that he had aided and abetted certain enemies of the Empire of Wizards, those enemies being things belonging to or allied with the Sisterhood of Witches. It was said that the witch Zelafona had fled from the justice of the Empire of Wizards. Fleeing in company with the dwarf Glambrax and the wizard Zozimus, the witch had sheltered upon Sken-Pitilkin's home island of Drum. Shortly afterwards, Sken-Pitilkin had departed from Drum with witch, wizard and dwarf, fleeing to the northern continent of Tameran, where he made his home in the city of Gendormargensis, and earned his living as a tutor.

  Those were the facts, at least as the Confederation's lawyers stated them. But Sken-Pitilkin accepted none of it, and disputed vigorously on each and every point. He was accused, was he, of aiding and abetting enemies of the Empire of Wizards? Then surely it was logical to ask – what Empire?

  Running along the track of this logic, Sken-Pitilkin argued that the Empire of Wizards had fallen to ruin long generations previously, which was undeniably true as a matter of literal fact.

  But the lawyers representing the Confederation argued, rather, that the Empire still existed as a legal entity, even if the Empire had entirely vanished from the world of the flesh and the fact.

  With the judges deciding for the Confederation on that point, Sken-Pitilkin tried another tack. Sken-Pitilkin claimed the Confederation must prove that he had known Zozimus, Zelafona and Glambrax to have been in flight from justice.

  "For," said Sken-Pitilkin, "the law does not allow you to assume me to have had such knowledge. On the contrary. You must summon your witnesses and prove it."

  "We need do nothing of the kind," said the lawyers in opposition to him. "For common sense does all the proving the law requires."

  "Common sense!" said Sken-Pitilkin, scandalized. "Since when has common sense had anything to do with the operation of the law?

  Ten thousand years of legal tradition deny the legitimacy of common sense! Will your set yourself against such tradition?"

  But his enemies were unmoved. They claimed that the mere application of common sense was sufficient to prove that Sken-Pitilkin – whom all of them knew of old – would never have left Drum except under dire pressure. Sken-Pitilkin was a creature of habit, known to be very fond of his home island; and, furthermore, no wizard would willingly go to a place so barbarous a
s Tameran unless driven by extreme necessity. It followed that Sken-Pitilkin had known his guests – Zozimus, Zelafona and Glambrax – to have been criminals. By rights, he should have chopped off their feet and handed them over to the Confederation. Since he had not done so, he was guilty of treason.

  "Common sense proves as much," said the chiefests of the prosecutors. Sken-Pitilkin thought this a low and scurrilous blow. To allow common sense into a case before the courts! Surely there was no precedent for such a thing! Not in all the annals of legal infamy!

  But, condemned by no evidence saving that of common sense alone, Sken-Pitilkin was ultimately found guilty of high treason, and was sentenced to death.

  The manner of his sentence was this: he was to seek his death by taking the thing called Shabble, and by disposing of it in the depths of the Warp, the depths beyond the Veils of Fire.

  For, after long interrogation of Shabble, the wizards of the Confederation had decided that this thing was dangerous; and, not being sure as to how it might otherwise be disposed of, they had decided to consign Shabble to certain doom which waited beyond the Veils of Fire.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Shackle Mountains: a range of mountains on Argan's eastern seaboard, inland from the Breach and the Bitterwater Coast. In these mountains is the Warp which apprentice wizards enter to endure the Trials which will decided whether they graduate (or whether they die). In the Warp itself lie the Veils of Fire, and no person has ever penetrated beyond those Veils and returned to tell the tale. Accordingly, the wizards of the Confederation believe that the enigmatic but doubtlessly dangerous Shabble can be destroyed by being taken beyond those Veils.

  It would be a long and weary business to give an account of the process of appeal whereby Sken-Pitilkin sought to challenge his conviction for high treason. The case dragged on for years.

  During that time, Ontario Nol was at liberty, since no crime could be proved out against him. He had led a blameless life, first at the monastery of Qonsajara in the mountains of Ibsen-Iktus, and later on the island of Alozay. His long but voluntary exile was regarded as eccentric, but not criminal. So Nol was assigned quarters in the Castle of Controlling Power, the great stronghold at the western end of the flame trench Drangsturm, and was allotted that portion of the Confederation's profits to which he was rightfully entitled.