The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster coaaod-9

by Hugh Cook

  A militant religion like Nu-chala-nuth had endless potential to generate grief, suffering and war.

  But what was the alternative?

  The Swarms were threatening the invasion of Tameran and the Ravlish Lands, and, ultimately, there was no guarantee that any part of the world would be permanently safe from these monsters. A unifying force was needed to rally humanity against these monsters, and the militant monotheistic religion of Nu-chala-nuth fitted the bill. The unifying force of Nu-chala-nuth, combined with the knowledge of Cap Foz Para Lash and the resources of the Circle of the Partnership Banks would provide all that was needed for the defeat of the Swarms.

  As debate proceeded, Asodo Hatch was won over long before his master, Plandruk Qinplaqus. Ever since Guest Gulkan had brought the x-x-zix to Dalar ken Halvar, Asodo Hatch had been masterminding the research project which had been trying to make that ancient weather machine functional. Since then, his life had been one long exercise in frustration. Paraban Senk, the unembodied entity which ruled the underworld of Cap Foz Para Lash, had been able to give Hatch most of the technical advice he needed, but this advice amounted to a heart-breaking recipe for never-ending labor.

  For, to build a machine capable of mastering the x-x-zix, one must first build a series of lesser machines; and to build the lesser machines one must first fabricate a thousand different kinds of materials, such as various kinds of metal alloys; and to fabricate each of these thousand different materials one must first build a set of fabricating machines. And -

  And the whole heart-breaking exercise had very much confirmed to Asodo Hatch that which he had long suspected: namely, the fact that the impoverished city of Dalar ken Halvar was too poor to emulate the arts of the ancients. It could not support the number of specialists which a machine civilization required; it could not command an adequate supply of energy; and it was short even of the basic metals such as iron, tin, copper, gold and silver.

  Since Plandruk Qinplaqus was not likely to yield in his determination to have the x-x-zix made functional, Hatch was doomed to waste out the rest of his life in futility unless he could capture the resources needed to exploit his knowledge.

  "Stokos can give us iron, and coal, and steel," said Hatch, as he began to appreciate the potential of this Circle. "On Stokos, the mines have been dug already, the forges built, and generations of craftsmen have refined the arts of working metal.

  If we open this Circle, then the ruling city of Stokos becomes a suburb of Dalar ken Halvar, which means that we have steelworks on our doorstep."

  Thus did Asodo Hatch signify his conversion to Sken-Pitilkin's plan; and, though the conversion of Plandruk Qinplaqus was by no means as simple, eventually the Lord of the Silver Pelican was brought to the same opinion.

  There then followed long days of preparation, for all were acutely conscious of the fact that the Door in Voice opened to a region long overrun by the Swarms, hence there was the possibility that such monsters would muscle through to Dalar ken Halvar as soon as the Door in the Bralsh was opened. The problem was solved – at least as far as Dalar ken Halvar was concerned – by placing huge blocks of stone on either side of the steel arch within the Bralsh. These blocks constricted the approaches to the archway so that, while a man could get to the arch, a monster in its hugeness would not have been able to get out into Dalar ken Halvar.

  Nor were these brute physical preparations the end of the matter, for the city of Dalar ken Halvar as a whole had to be briefed as to what was afoot, and prepared for the opening of the Circle. For there was no way that it could be held secret. Not when it would be necessary to use hundreds of men to guard and fortify the Door at Voice, and hold it against the Swarms.

  Then came the day.

  In the Bralsh, Plandruk Qinplaqus ceremonially placed the star-globe in its niche in the base of the marble plinth which supported the steel arch of the Door. Immediately, there came a hum as of wasps or of bees. The seductive silver shimmer of the screen of the Door came to life, filling the arch. And Guest Gulkan – accompanied by Asodo Hatch, by Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin and by a dozen spearheading heroes – was gone through that screen in moments.

  A single footfall took Guest from the Bralsh in Dalar ken Halvar to the Singing Dove Pensions Trust of Tang. He found himself in a well-remembered conical chamber hung with silken ropes and scented with incense. It was utterly empty.

  Onward!

  Back through the Door went Guest, his onslaught taking him to the Taniwha Guarantee Corporation of Quilth. Here was a similar conical chamber, but this one had been sealed with doors of steel.

  It was lit – but dimly – by small barred windows high overhead.

  No time to linger! Guest went through the Door again, this time stepping to the Orsay Bank of Stokos. He found the Orsay Bank's Door unattended but for the fresh-made corpse of an elderly Banker who had dropped stone dead at the shock of seeing the Door so unexpectedly reactivated.

  Press on! Guest plunged through the Door again, this time stepping through to the Morgrim Bank of Chi'ash-lan. He found the chamber of Chi'ash-lan's Door to be in utter darkness but for the unearthly green light emitted by the demon Ko. The glowing green shone sick and wet on the skeletons which hung from the ceiling of Chi'ash-lan's weirding room. By that same light, Guest saw that the entrance to the room had been bricked up.

  The demon Ko said nothing, but Guest supposed the thing saw him, and supposed too that it would immediately communicate its knowledge to every other demon in the Circle of the Partnership Banks.

  Time to go! Guest dared through the Door again, to Alozay. He arrived in Alozay's weirding room in the highest level of the mainrock

  Pinnacle. It was bright with sun, and it was empty.

  That high and airy chamber was not empty for long, for Asodo Hatch and Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin came pushing through the Door in Guest's wake, with armed men following. As Guest lingered – for he had given himself the task of introducing Alozay to the new realities of the renascent Circle – Hatch and Sken-Pitilkin pushed onward. More and more men came pouring through the Door, stepping into Alozay then stepping back through the silver screen so they could push through to the ruins of the Monastic Treasury of Inner Adeer, where a Door opened to the ruins of the city of Voice.

  They would hold Voice in strength, and fortify it against the Swarms.

  Once this great press of men had hastened in and out of Alozay, Guest Gulkan was left alone in the weirding room in the mainrock Pinnacle. He had thought it best that he confront his father alone, rather than with armed men at his back, for he wanted the Witchlord Onosh as an ally rather than a slave. He wanted no taint of coercion to contaminate their relationship. He sought an alliance of equals: himself and his father, united against the world.

  So Guest was alone when he ventured to the outer stairway which led downward from the Sky Stratum of Jezel Obo to the Archive Stratum of Trilip – bypassing the Hall of Time where the demon Italis maintained its vigil. But he found that outer stairway hanging in tatters, splinters of sky interpolated into its shattered fabric.

  Then Guest ventured out onto the living rock of the mainrock

  Pinnacle, and scanned the view to north and south. To south was the city of Molothair, which was inhabited still, for smoke was rising from its chimneys. To the north, the broad expanse of the Swelaway Sea was dotted with fishing boats. So. The island of Alozay, the ruling rock of the Safrak Islands, was still inhabited. Was still at peace. That knowledge canceled one of Guest's fears: for in recent days he had endured a nightmare in which the Swarms had made a covert invasion of the Safrak Islands.

  There had been no such invasion.

  Alozay still maintained its integrity.

  But the outer stairs had fallen to ruin, so Guest had no choice but to descend the inner stairs, and thus to precipitate a confrontation with the demon Italis – a confrontation which he had wished to defer until after he had met his father in conference.

  So down Guest went, descending the inne
r stairs until he came in sight of that monolithic block of rock, twice his own height, which was as green as jade, that smoothest and hardest of stones, which the Ngati Moana call -

  What is the word?

  Pounamu.

  Remembering that word, Guest remembered Untunchilamon. And so, as he looked around the Hall of Time – trying to see past the demon Italis – the Weaponmaster's head was alive with incongruous memories of tropical heat, of monkeys and of and coconut palms.

  There was nobody in the Hall of Time.

  Not as far as Guest could see.

  The Hall was empty. Its walls were terribly scarred by fire, and its tiles, which had once been patterned with skull-shaped designs, were scarred and blistered. Turning his attention back to Italis, Guest realized that there was a spark of brightness moving within the demon. A spark? Watching the lurid light which flashed and pulsed inside the demon, Guest realized it was a sphere about the size of a fist, and realized this was Shabble. That explained why nothing had been heard of the shining one since it had left Guest on his desert island.

  "Greetings," said Guest, addressing himself to Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis, the jade-green monolith which stood before him.

  The demon did not respond. It heard him, surely. It saw him, surely. But it said nothing. Within its substance, Shabble batted from side to side, trapped, caged, irrevocably imprisoned. And Guest, his memories of Untunchilamon fading fast, remembered instead the night when he and his father had fought against Banker Sod, striving for control of the mainrock Pinnacle. It was an alliance with Italis which had allowed Guest to win that battle and make himself master of Safrak. Guest waited.

  He refused to be intimidate by this thing, or by its silence.

  It could say nothing to disturb him, nothing to upset him, nothing to make him afraid. He was past all that.

  So thought Guest.

  Then the demon spoke.

  "So," said Italis. "You have come to kill your father."

  The words had weight. They were backed by an infinity of perception, of thought, of analysis, of years of study and of silent interrogation of probability.

  And Guest, absorbing the words, felt his eyes become hot with tears. Then his mouth was wrenched open, and he found himself gasping for air. In huge, heaving gasps, he dragged in the air as his grief claimed him. For he had seen his doom, and had seen his father's doom, and had seen that there was no avoiding it.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Safrak Islands: group of islands in the Swelaway Sea, the inland sea of the continent of Tameran. The chiefest of the Safrak Islands is Alozay, long the headquarters of the Safrak

  Bank. The Safrak Islands have long lived by trade, having commercial intercourse with the free city of Port Domax (on the shores of the Great Ocean of Moana) and with the Collosnon Empire.

  The great city of Gendormargensis, the capital of the Collosnon Empire, lies to the north of the Swelaway Sea.

  This book has concerned itself primarily with the life of the Yarglat barbarian known to the world as Guest Gulkan, the self- styled Weaponmaster.

  Now Guest, in his confrontation with the ethnologist Brother Fern Feathers, was hot to deny his barbarous disabilities. Yet, whatever one thinks of the science of ethnology and its sundry stupidities and iniquities, it must be admitted that Guest was very much a prisoner of his barbarous upbringing. Guest Gulkan was born into the household of a warlord, and received the upbringing appropriate to a warlord's son, and therefore lived and thought as a warlord. His imagination revolved around power; and struggle; and swords; and horses; and the clash of armies. And, as he butchered his way from one disaster to another, Guest comported himself very much like the archetypical swordsman. He dared his caverns; he slew his monsters; he slaughtered his crocodiles; he bedded his women; and he did grievous damage to the irregular verbs wherever he encountered them.

  So it was that the Weaponmaster lived in ignorance of his true historical significance – which was, to be an instrument to unlock the power which lay latent in the city of Dalar ken Halvar.

  It was Guest, after all, who decided that the world should be conquered by the militant religion of Nu-chala-nuth rather than by the Swarms. When the wisdom of wizards could see no way into the future, it was Guest who bethought himself of Plandruk Qinplaqus, and of Asodo Hatch – so diligently supervising the construction of a machine designed to tame the x-x-zix and bring effective weather control to Dalar ken Halvar – and of the wealth of knowledge protected and preserved by Paraban Senk in the caves of Cap Foz Para Lash.

  Only when Guest had unlocked the Circle of the Partnership Banks did he really realize what he had done. Only then did he realize that he had put an end to the old and ancient cyclic dynamic of feudal history which had for so long dominated the world.

  It is a new world now.

  Precisely what kind of world?

  It is hard to say.

  It is early days yet, and we cannot tell what shape the future will take. But this we know: the forges of Stokos, matched to the knowledge of Dalar ken Halvar, looks in its own right to be a combination which will prove potent against the Swarms.

  As for Guest Gulkan's story, that has been told, at least to the extent which it can be told. There may be more yet to come, for Guest has declared his intention of venturing once more to the Shackle Mountains, and there entering the Cave of the Warp for a second time, and passing again through the Veils of Fire, protected by the mazadath which he yet wears around his neck. For Guest wishes to have further knowledge with the Lobos, a thing which does not figure in the writings of wizards, a thing which is unknown to demons such as Iva-Italis, and of which Paraban Senk can give no explanation.

  As to the rest of Guest's life, why, no account need be given of it. For, as soon as Guest had opened the Circle of the Partnership Banks, he had initiated a new phase of history – a phase in which a dynastic struggle between father and son is of little consequence.

  Still, for the sake of mere completeness, let us spare a few words to sketch out an account of events which seekers of sensation have elsewhere dealt with at weary length.

  On opening the Circle of the Doors of the Partnership Banks, Guest Gulkan returned to Alozay, as has been recounted; and on Alozay he learnt of the doings of his father.

  While Guest and his allies had been preparing for the reopening of the Circle, a rabble of pirates and Rovac warriors had been preparing to invade the Collosnon Empire from the south.

  Dim rumors of this impending invasion had reached as far as Gendormargensis, a city then in some considerable disorder as a consequence of the brawling disorder of its Yarglat rulers, who had been making coups and counter-coups against each other for the better part of half a year.

  Hearing of the disorder in Gendormargensis, and of the threat of invasion from the south, the Witchlord Onosh thought the moment ripe for his return.

  This may be thought presumptuous.

  For, surely, Lord Onosh had been defeated; and disgraced; and discredited. Lord Onosh had lost his empire to Khmar, and had been reduced to the rule of the Safrak Islands, paltry pieces of rock in the wash of the Swelaway Sea. How then could he aspire to reconquer the Collosnon Empire?

  The answer is simple.

  During the long years in which he had lived in exile on the Safrak Islands, Lord Onosh – ever counseled by the wisdom of Bao Gahai, the steadfast companion of his defeat – had prepared for his return.

  Preparation had been difficult during the reign of the Red Emperor Khmar, whose rule of terror had restricted speech, thought and movement. But, under the rule of Khmar's son Celadric, the Collosnon Empire had become a milder place; and the Witchlord's agents had taken advantage of freedoms of speech, assembly and movement to sound out inclinations, to spy, to suborn, to bribe and to subvert.

  In particular – ever remembering the cause of the disorder which had precipitated his overthrow! – Lord Onosh had cultivated the leaders of Stranagor and Locontareth. He had studied in great length
the question of taxation, and had covertly promised the provinces a just share of fertilization.

  Regarding the question of taxation, it must be admitted that Khmar's son Celadric had been no better than any of the rulers who had preceded him. There were many good things which could be said of Celadric – one notes in particular his scholarship, and the courageous manner in which he subdued even the most wickedly barbed of the irregular verbs – but it has to be admitted that he had one or two exceedingly vicious vices.

  The most vicious of all Celadric's vices was that of architecture. Much has been made of the manner in which so many great men have destroyed themselves with strong drink, or with opium, or with gambling, or with an over-indulgence in orgasmic pursuits – but the great vice of architecture is potentially as ruinous as all of these put together.

  There are many individuals, families, companies and cities which have come to ruin through over-indulgence in oak, cedar, granite, marble and mortar; and, though Celadric had not exactly ruined the Collosnon Empire through such indulgence, it must be allowed that he had grievously over-taxed such provincial centers as Locontareth and Stranagor to pay for the aggrandizement of his capital.

  Furthermore, the very length of time which Lord Onosh had been away from his former empire had worked to his advantage.

  Memories had mellowed and softened to his advantage. Compared to Khmar, he was a golden saint, and his reign a time of peace and plenty. Those who were threatening the invasion of Tameran from the south had made Khmar's daughter Monogail their figurehead – which meant, in effect, that they were proposing the conquer in the name of Khmar. However rational and reasonable that may have seemed in Estar, it met with little favor in the empire's heartland.

  So, with Gendormargensis disordered by coup and countercoup, and with a bloodthirsty invasion threatened from the south, Lord Onosh decided to make his move.

  Locontareth declared for Lord Onosh, and raised an army for him; and, by the time Guest Gulkan reopened the Circle of the Partnership Banks and made his way to Alozay, Lord Onosh was once more ruling the Collosnon Empire from Gendormargensis.