by Hugh Cook
But while Guest was bewildered, there is no need for this history to mimetically duplicate his bewilderment. Let his location then be stated with precision. He was held in Chi'ash- lan, a city in that region of ice and snow which is known as the Cold West. Chi'ash-lan lies at the western end of the Ravlish Lands, and it is a city mighty in war, a city ruled by a cruel and oppressive Bailiff. The Bailiff's unfortunate habits were matched by the like traits of the Morgrim Bank of Chi'ash-lan, in which Banker Sod of Safrak held high position; for, though nominally independent, Safrak's Bank had long been subordinate to the disciplines of the Morgrim Bank.
With the Circle open, and with Guest Gulkan a prisoner in Chi'ash-lan, and with Sod likewise restored to the freedoms of Chi'ash-lan, negotiations began between the Partnership Banks and the Witchlord Onosh - who naturally guarded his own Door in the mainrock Pinnacle with supreme care, making sure there could be no repeat invasion by murderous Zenjingu killers.
The Bankers invited Lord Onosh to come to Chi'ash-lan under flag of truce, telling him that his wizards were not included in this invitation. Sod had made it clear to the Partnership Banks that Lord Onosh had the support of two wizards, Pelagius Zozimus and Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, and that both these wizards were dangerous.
Lord Onosh accepted the Partnership Banks' invitation, and ventured to Chi'ash-lan in the company of Ontario Nol - who was introduced as a Yarglat warlord, and who looked the part, for he was dressed in boots of felt and in a coat made out of an old solskin horseblanket. Thus garbed, and armed with a scalping knife at his side, the venerable wizard of the order of Itch looked every bit the bloodstained barbarian.
With Lord Onosh and Ontario Nol went Eljuk Zala, venturing around the Circle to the chamber of hanging skeletons which held the Door of Chi'ash-lan's Morgrim Bank. With some trepidation, they exited from that chamber, daring themselves past the demon Ko, which remained mute in their presence.
Then they were taken to one of the inner offices of the Morgrim Bank, where Guest Gulkan was brought before them.
"Know our price," said Banker Sod, speaking on behalf of the Partnership Banks. "We will let you have Guest if you will surrender to us the rule of Safrak."
"I cannot surrender Safrak," said Lord Onosh, "for I have already surrendered my empire to Khmar, hence have nowhere to go."
"You will be allowed to hold the island of Ema-Urk in fief," said Sod. "That will be your reward if you will only surrender."
"I was told on an earlier occasion that I would be allowed to hold the island of Im-skim-patorta in fief," said Lord Onosh.
"Solemn agreement to that affect was followed by your effort to murder me and mine."
"You call me murderer?" said Lord Sod. "You? When you smuggled weapons into the mainrock Pinnacle with murderous intent?"
"The weapons were solely for self-defense," said Lord Onosh.
"You must admit that not one blade was used against you until you had started to seize my men."
"But you intended murder," said Sod.
"Intent!" said Lord Onosh. "You speak for intent, do you?
Well, I speak for action!"
So the two men argued back and forth; and indeed argue was all they could do, for since each had betrayed the other once there was no firm basis on which they could come to an agreement.
But -
While Sod threatened and blustered, Guest Gulkan looked in such good health that Lord Onosh was hard put to credit any threat to his life. Surely - so thought the Witchlord - the Partnership Banks would have treated the Weaponmaster Guest harshly had they thought of him as anything other than a friend. Believing Guest to be in no serious danger, Lord Onosh decided to call the Bank's bluff.
"You cannot kill my young Weaponmaster," said the Witchlord Onosh to Banker Sod, "for if you kill the boy Guest then you will have no hostages left to barter with. I suggest that you hand him back and negotiate with me as equal to equal on terms of - well, friendship, if you could bring yourself to think of me as a friend."
"Kill him we will unless you come to your senses," said Banker Sod, "and we will give you an invitation to the killing."
Then the conference broke up, with the Witchlord Onosh returning to Alozay with Ontario Nol and Eljuk Zala, and with Guest being dragged away to the cell in which he was to languish until his death-day.
Very shortly, Lord Onosh was served with an invitation to that death-day, which he accepted, still thinking it a bluff.
As Guest Gulkan lay in the shadow-stink of a deathcell in Chi'ash-lan, he though himself forgotten and abandoned by the world. But in this he was deluded. For Guest Gulkan and the companions of his misfortune were a subject of intense discussion and speculation in places as far removed as Stokos and Tang.
"So he is to die in the arena," said Elch of Stokos, speaking of the young Guest Gulkan. "What does he think about that?"
"One doubts he does think," answered Ibstork. "He is after all a child of the Yarglat, and the Yarglat, if they have brains, have yet to demonstrate any of those behaviors which would prove it."
Elsewhere, in Quilth, Guest Gulkan was again the subject of discussion.
"His bowel motion was healthy," said Physician Floth of the Healer's Guild of Quilth.
He knew?
Of course he knew!
The most detailed bulletins of Guest Gulkan's health and conduct daily circulated through the realms of the Partnership Banks.Guest Gulkan was vitally important because he was the son of Lord Onosh, albeit a bastard son; and the Partnership Banks still thought that the Witchlord Onosh might intervene and concede the rule of Safrak in order to preserve his son's life.
But no such concession had been made when the day schedule for Guest Gulkan's death dawned.
On that day the Witchlord and a small party of observers and bodyguards came to Chi'ash-lan, and were escorted through its streets of snow to the arena of Chi'ash-lan.
It was then still summer in Safrak, so Lord Onosh was hard put to see how it could be winter in Chi'ash-lan. He asked of Sod the answer to this mystery, and was told that it was not winter in Chi'ash-lan but summer, but that the "Breathings" of the Cold West made it snow snow and ice ice even in the heartland of summer.
In the cold of that winter-frigid summer, Guest Gulkan sat in a cell, waiting to see what the lord of Safrak would do. Would the Witchlord Onosh surrender the rule of Alozay and liberate his much-beloved son? Or would he not?
Since the "not" was unthinkable, Guest Gulkan tended to concentrate on what he would do once he got back to Safrak.
He had been told that Thodric Jarl was gone. Good. That meant that Guest could make Yerzerdayla his forever. If he could find her.
Where was she, that woman of surpassing beauty? In Gendormargensis still - he presumed. Perhaps she could be bought from Khmar.
The young Weaponmaster focused on the image of Yerzerdayla, her breasts his bounty, her lips his pleasure, and her thighs -
His meditations came to an abrupt halt as the turnkey hammered on his cell door.
"Wake up, you in there!"Guest abrupted to his feet.
"Up against the wall!" said the turnkey, peering through the cell's spyhole.Guest flattened himself against the wall.
"Turn around!" yelled the turnkey. "Turn around! Turn and face the wall or I put a crossbow bolt through your backside!"
With some reluctance, Guest conceded his will to the voice.
Then the door was unlocked and thrown open, and muscle stormed forward and seized him.
"What's this, then?" said Guest, when he was out of the cell.
"What's happening? Where are we going?"
But nobody would answer him.Guest was beefed through the underground corridors by two guards, one a gigantic man whose shoulder overtopped Guest Gulkan's head, the other an iron-muscled dwarf with a grotesque acromegalic face. They brought him to the Door of Death and pushed him out into the snowlight. He fell, and went sprawling on the frozen dirt-curds of filthy snow which had hardened to ice.
Grazed and shaken, Guest Gulkan scrambled to his feet and looked around the arena of Chi'ash-lan, wincing at the brightpuzzle light of the sky. His enemy. Where was his enemy?
Nobody was waiting to fight. Instead the arena lay desolate under a low gray sky, scurfed with the sky's discards - heaps of snow and buckled ridges of ice. There must be an enemy here somewhere.
But where?
In the snow, of course!Guest Gulkan bootcrunched over frozen ice toward the most man-shaped of the snowdrifts and kicked at it. His boot uncovered a man, but the man was dead.
"To sword," said Guest, kicking the corpse.
The young Weaponmaster half-expected the corpse to rouse and resurrect, to haul itself up to the challenge and brute it out to the death. But the corpse remained in the snow, stolidly frozen.
This was the corpse of no gladiator but that of an alcoholic old man who had frozen to death after falling from the terraces.
Laughter from those terraces drew Guest Gulkan to survey his audience, which was paltry, for the terraces were almost empty.
The quantities of unswept snow which lay drifted on the stone ledges of the terraces indicated that they had been largely empty for days, if not for months; which is scarcely surprising, for the operation of a gladiatorial arena that even a place as rich as Chi'ash-lan can hardly hope to indulge in the more bloody forms of entertainment right through the year.
The Witchlord Onosh was up there, together with his entourage, but they were hidden behind the veils of the windows of a walled-in box, and Guest Gulkan could not see them, and was not aware of their presence.
"What's going on?" said Guest Gulkan, addressing his audience in the Galish, since that had been the language of his jailors.
By way of reply, the alcoholics in the audience laughed uproariously and hurled snowballs in Guest's direction. The snowballs fell short, for the arena was large and the alcoholics nearly incapably drunk on the dreadful rubbish they had been imbibing, which was a dire concoction fermented from the blubber of whales and the dung of dogs. Guest Gulkan scanned the rucked surface of the arena's snows for any further enemies who might have buried themselves in ambush, saw none, shivered, stamped his feet, and looked to the box reserved for Bailiff Vok, to which his attention was called by the pair of gilded dragons which flanked it. But Bailiff Vok's box was empty. At that time, the Malf of Chi'ash-lan had bankrupted themselves to buy the right to launch ten days of pogrom against the Zy. The Malf were making the most of it, and Bailiff Vok was doing likewise - patrolling his streets on foot to observe the burnings and lynchings, the tortures and rapes, the savagings and the lootings.
So Guest Gulkan stood desolate in the arena, wondering if he was to be allowed to shiver to death.
He was not.
For, with a scraping squeal of rust and reluctant timbers, a sally port opened, and out from that sally port there ventured a dozen athletes, each armed with a wooden staff. Black was their garb and black the masks which hid their faces. These were yet more of the dreaded Zenjingu warriors, the ultimate killers, the dreaded combat cult fanatics of Chi'ash-lan. It was known in Chi'ash-lan that the Zenjingu could kill with a touch, or a laugh, or a look. It was known in Chi'ash-lan that the Zenjingu could decapitate a man with an adroitly-thrown dinner plate, or eviscerate a stalwart warrior with a sharpened toothpick, or take a blacksmith by the foot and shake him till his spine dislocated and his liver fell out of his side.
But Guest knew none of this. So why then did his heart quail when he saw his enemies were a dozen in number? After all, he was a hero, was it not? And is it not written that any hero worthy of his salt can kill a dozen of his enemies single-handed? Here a mystery. But what is certain that Guest Gulkan did quail. But not for long. For shortly he was far too busy for any quailing. He was trying to defend himself - and he was failing.
The athletic Zenjingu ringed Guest Gulkan and began to whack him with their wooden staffs. He tried to grab one. And did! For a moment the Weaponmaster stood there tussling with a Zenjingu warrior, seeking to wrench the staff from his enemy's grip. Then another staff smashed his wrist. Guest Gulkan opened his mouth in soundless agony.
Obliterating pain.
A staff rammed him in the stomach and down he went. He retched, puking yellow bile to the snow. Hit around the head, he slumped, dazed and struggling. He rolled, kicked, got up on one knee, staggered half-upright. Then was felled by a blow to the kidneys. The alcoholics on the terraces screamed their approval.
The staffs rose and fell, smashing ribs and cracking other bones.
Then it seemed the Zenjingu were done, for nobody hit the Weaponmaster any more. Not that this improved his condition much.
To move hurt, to breathe hurt, to be hurt. He waited for someone to kill him properly. He waited to die.
But nobody came to give him the coup de grace.
Instead, there was some excited shouting in a language he did not understand. He was too wrecked to look around, and so did not see a cylindrical cage being dragged out into the middle of the arena. Once centrally positioned, the cage was anchored with cruel metal spikes which were driven deep into the frozen snow.
Then jailers came for Guest Gulkan, who was being pissed on by half a dozen Zenjingu warriors who were otherwise unemployed.
Once the fighting cult heroes had finished, Guest was dragged to his feet. He screamed in lacerated agony as bones rubbed against broken bones. He screamed again and again as he was bundled across the frozen snow then forced into the cage.Guest Gulkan was made to sit upon the iron bench which bisected the cage. The iron was so cold that, had his captors stripped him of his clothes, his skin would surely have frozen instantly to the metal. But the Zenjingu and the jailers had left the Weaponmaster with his garments. Humiliation was not what they had in mind.
Once seated, Guest was tied in place. His arms were tied so they stuck out of the cage at the elbow and his legs were tied so they stuck out of the cage at the knee. Then, after a little self- congratulatory backslapping, the Zenjingu and the jailers withdrew, hooting with laughter as they went.Guest Gulkan sat.
In pain.
In gasping torments.
In wrenching agony too sharp to be delirium, there sat Guest Gulkan, shocked and shattered, too savaged by his torments to have any comprehension of what was going on. That "what" was nothing.
For nothing happened as Guest Gulkan sat, living from breath to breath, from pain to pain, a lifetime passing between each spasm of renewed excruciation.
How long he sat there, he did not know. Perhaps a lifetime, perhaps thrice longer.
Then he heard something.
It was soft but it was big. How big? He could not tell. Not precisely. But the thing was big enough to pad the air with silence, to change the world of sound with the muffling stupendousness of its presence. It was huge. It had to be. But what was it?
It was behind him.
A bigness, a prowling softness, a bulking appetite, a lode of deliberate purpose shifting and sensing, a hungering half-heard and half-felt. And then. It breathed upon him. Its breath was hot against his neck.
It leaned against the cage. But all its bulk was not sufficient to move that cage. Nevertheless, Guest felt the metal shudder with the strain.
Then.
Then.
It.
It licked his hand.
Its tongue was hot, and heavy, and then it bit.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Plandruk Qinplaqus: ruler of Dalar ken Halvar, aka Silver Emperor, aka Ulix of the Drum. A gnostic manic-depressive who has long ruled the Empire of Greater Parengarenga from the palace of Na Sashimoko. In appearance: a withered Ashdan of great antiquity, his frail form usually supported by a crooked walking stick, the handle of which is silver, and is in the shape of a pelican.
For Guest Gulkan, arms and legs both shredded by the mauling strength of the Great Mink, there was no blessed darkness, no sovereign relief, no surcease of pain. Instead, spearblade agony - as if repeated jolts
of razorblade lightning were being shoved through his lacerated flesh. He screamed, jolting spasms racking his body. His world was an incoherence of razors.
"He is as good as gone," said Lord Onosh, looking down on the racked and ruined body of his son.
Then Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin took Lord Onosh by the sleeve, and drew him to one side.
"My lord," said Sken-Pitilkin, "there is in Dalar ken Halvar a power which commands the cure of the flesh. Our good friend Ulix of the Drum will guarantee that cure if we can but get the boy Guest to Dalar ken Halvar promptly."
"How would we do that?" said Lord Onosh.
"Why," said Sken-Pitilkin, "do but open the Door, and it can be done in moments. Ulix of the Drum will lead the way, and I will follow, and Zozimus with me. With but half a dozen men to bear Guest along, we can shock our way through the Circle before they realize we are upon them."
"I would think rather to shock with an army," said Lord Onosh.
"Shock, my lord, is a tactical jewel more easily possessed by the few than by the many," said Sken-Pitilkin. "If we take an army, thinking to defeat our enemies in war, they will recover soon enough. But Dalar ken Halvar is friendly territory, if we can but get there."
Lord Onosh was so shaken by what had lately happened that he allowed Sken-Pitilkin to persuade him easily.
Then Sken-Pitilkin assembled his forces.
The wizard first thought himself of the witches Bao Gahai and Zelafona. But both refused their assistance.
"Forgive me if I am wrong," said Sken-Pitilkin to Bao Gahai,
"but I had thought you tender of the Weaponmaster's life."
"So I am," said Bao Gahai. "But I am old, Pitilkin. My skin is but a thin web cast in fragility across my flesh. My bones are as matchsticks. Such Power as remains to me is scarcely enough to discipline my dreams. I am entering into my final years, Pitilkin.