by Hugh Cook
Then the Weaponmaster shot a meaningful look at Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, who, of course, did not (and would not! not ever! regardless of the threat or provocation!) denounce the verbs, no, nor any of the other parts of speech.
With Brother Fern Feathers thus having capitulated before the Weaponmaster (but with the sagacious Sken-Pitilkin remaining as staunch in his scholarship as ever) Guest Gulkan then wound up his speech by making a brief recapitulation of all his exploits, then said:-
"So you see, I am well talented enough to undertake the tasks which lie before me. Furthermore, I am a personal friend of Plandruk Qinplaqus, the Silver Emperor who rules the Empire of Greater Parengarenga. In the past, he has received me in the palace of Na Sashimoko, the ruling palace of Dalar ken Halvar.
Furthermore, I am a boon companion of Asodo Hatch, the greatest of the emperor's warlords. Upon him I bestowed the woman Penelope, who is now his wife. As a token of their friendship, Plandruk
Qinplaqus and Asodo Hatch have kept safe for me the x-x-zix, the mighty wishstone which I won from Untunchilamon. Likewise they have preserved for my benefit the mighty mazadath, a charm of protection which makes a warrior immortal in battle."
This last comment about the mazadath was made by Guest in a spirit of outright deceit, for, since he did not entirely trust the wizards who were assembled on Drum, he thought it best to conceal some of his subtler resources under a camouflaging layer of braggarting barbarism. So, while denying primitive barbarism, Guest yet deliberately aped it; and wizards such as Fern Feathers, who were not equipped to be theater critics, accepted his gaudier performances as the inner truth of his nature, and thus were led to underestimate the Weaponmaster.
Naturally, Ontario Nol did not underestimate Guest Gulkan, for the wizard of Itch had known the Weaponmaster long enough to form a proper opinion of his abilities. But, even so, Nol did not know Guest well enough to realize that his boastful arrogance was, in part, a self-protective reaction to long defeat and disappointment. So, after listening to Guest boast at length of the high regard in which he was held in the city of Dalar ken Halvar, and the manner in which he planned to overthrow his enemies and rectify the world, Nol said:
"Brave words for a man who cannot even tell us who his mother was."
This was a low blow. It is usually one's father who cannot be known of a certainty. But, since Guest's gigantic bat-wing ears marked him as his father's son, it was only his mother's identity which remained a mystery. Guest knew he had been born in Stranagor, but all questions as to his mother's identity had been met with evasions.
But, over the years, Guest had had time in plenty to puzzle out this problem. In the tunnels of Cap Foz Para Lash, in the dungeons of Obooloo, in the Stench Caves of Logthok Norgos, in Drangsturm's Castle of Controlling Power, he had pondered the problem. And he thought he had solved it.
"I know who my mother is," said Guest, with equanimity. "And if in this company you choose to declare her, why, I will not disown her, for I am no wizard, hence do not share the prejudices of wizards."
Upon which Nol, impressed for once by the Weaponmaster's performance, gave the slightest of bows and made no further objections.
"So," said another wizard, "our Yarglat friend knows his mother. If his boast is to be believed, he also knows the emperor of Parengarenga and the greatest of Dalar ken Halvar's warlords.
The question then arises. Why is he living here in exile upon Drum? Why is he not living as a prince in Dalar ken Halvar, as the governor of one of Parengarenga's provinces, or perhaps as heir to the very Empire of Greater Parengarenga as a whole?"Guest did not like the tone of this address. There were several responses he could have made. He could, for example, have mentioned the fact that most of Parengarenga is uninhabitable wasteland, and to be made governor of one of Parengarenga's provinces is not by any means a fate to be greatly desired.
But instead he said:-
"Until now, my thoughts have been all for the recovery of the star-globe. To encompass the search for this globe, I have needed to have mastery of the skies, hence I have of necessity been based upon Drum. For, of all the wizards in the world, only Sken-Pitilkin has mastered the secret of controlled flight, therefore it is natural that he should be the greatest of my allies.
Plandruk Qinplaqus is mighty in power, but his power is that over the mind and that over the body politic. Of the skies he knows nothing, hence I count Sken-Pitilkin the greater wizard."
At this, Sken-Pitilkin could not help but feel a wine-smooth warmth envelop his soul; and it occurred to the sagacious wizard of Skatzabratzumon that, however delinquent Guest's scholarship, the Yarglat barbarian had learnt at least the bare essentials of the great art of politics.
"So," said Guest, who was not finished with his speechifying,
"till now I have been engrossed with the search for the star- globe. Now I have won that globe. Therefore I turn my attention toward Dalar ken Halvar, seeking help to aid me in the conquest of the circle."
"But what," said another wizard, "makes you think that Dalar ken Halvar will want to participate in such a conquest?"Guest looked at the wizard in amazement. To the Weaponmaster it was a self-obvious truth that any nation will naturally and inevitably seize any opportunity for conquest which presents itself. However, rather than drawing attention to this truism, Guest said:
"There is in Dalar ken Halvar the militant religion known as Nu-chala-nuth. It preaches the equality of all men and the inferiority of all women. It worships but one god, and is utterly intolerant of all others."
"For what purpose do you lecture us on theology?" said Brother Fern Feathers, who had at last plucked up the courage to match his wits again with Guest.
"Because," said Guest, "Nu-chala-nuth is a militant religion.
One of its basic tenets is the righteous necessity for the conquest of all Unbelievers. A religion possessed of such a religion is a potent weapon for conquest."
"Then why will the believers of a religion so intolerant have anything to do with you?" said Brother Fern Feathers.
"Because," said Guest, "while I was living in Dalar ken Halvar I made a nominal conversion to Nu-chala-nuth. I will be a Believer leading other Believers. Here note that each Believer is thought to be the equal of all the others, presuming his sex to be male."
Brother Fern Feathers wrinkled his nose, trying to grasp this notion. The idea of a god who was equally accessible to all people was something of a novelty to the wizard. Take for example the deity known as Zoz the Ancestral, the ruling god of the Janjuladoola. Anyone can worship Zoz the Ancestral, but it is commonly accepted that Zoz is essentially a racial god, the god of the gray-skinned Janjuladoola people, and that worshippers of other races must therefore be second-class worshippers.
"Are you trying to tell me," said Brother Fern Feathers,
"that the god of the Nu-chala-nuth has no natural racial or cultural constituency? Are you trying to tell me that this god is so thoroughly deracinated that anyone can be a leader of its Believers?"
"Deracinated," said Guest, puzzling over the word. "Oh! You mean, exiled. Yes. The god of the Nu-chala-nuth is most thoroughly exiled, for it comes not from this world but from another."
"That, one might have thought, is part and parcel of the definition of the nature of a god," said Brother Fern Feathers.
Whereupon Guest did his best to explain that the god of the Nu-chala-nuth was a god of the Nexus, and that the Nexus was a confederation of worlds existing in a series of inter-linked universes where the stars were (for the most part) an alien white rather than the familiar red, green, blue, yellow and gold of the stars of our world.
With much labor, Guest tried to explain all this, but Brother Fern Feathers plainly thought him wildly deluded in entertaining any notion so improbable.
"So," said Fern Feathers, when Guest was finished, "our Yarglat general is prepared to put his trust in the unifying onslaught of religious war. I think this a very dangerous strategy. True, we must have an army, but
why not seek alliance with the army which is on our very doorstep? In the Greaters, in the Lessers, in Estar, in Garabatoon, in Androlmarphos and in Stokos, a great alliance is forming, uniting for invasion. We have heard of this Morgan Hearst, of this Watashi, of the woman Ampadara and the child Monogail. Since they are arming for invasion, why not match our airpower to their swordpower?"
This was so patently logical that the proposal was met with a smattering of applause. But Guest flatly declared:-
"I do not trust them."
This was but the smallest fragment of a great and terrifying truth to which Guest did not dare give voice. There were two parts to this truth, one small, one great. The small and secret revelation was that Guest, in his own right, did not have power sufficient to match the potential treachery of the demon Italis and its kin. As for the great revelation -
What Guest did not, could not, would not say was that forces of change were being liberated in Dalar ken Halvar - forces so enormous that all powers of wizardry would be an irrelevance beside them. Guest had seen machines. He had seen two therapists in their might. He had met with a dorgi in its rampaging wrath. He had seen Shabble. And Shabble, though a mere toy to its makers, could fly, and spit fire, and sing, and calculate income tax, and imitate demons, and tell jokes, and do a dozen other things besides. Guest knew that a machine culture was on the rise in Dalar ken Halvar. In that city, Asodo Hatch had long been at work, supervising a machine which could command the x-x-zix which Guest had won from Untunchilamon. Guest knew that things would not stop there. The old order was passing, and the rule of wizards was but a passing quirk of the old order.
This Guest knew.
Unlike any wizard, Guest Gulkan had the advantage of having endured four years of convalescence in the tunnels of Cap Foz Para Lash, in the heart of Dalar ken Halvar, where he had enjoyed the company of Paraban Senk, a thing versed in the ways of an anciently powerful machine culture. Later, he had had long acquaintance of Shabble, sharing incarceration with Shabble in a yellow bottle which had been taken by a laborious route from Drum to Drangsturm. Adding stories of the past to his own experience, Guest believed he could see something of the future, though he saw through a glass darkly.Guest had praised Sken-Pitilkin, the master of the skies. But a machine culture would bring machines which could out-perform a wizard a thousand times over, so that Sken-Pitilkin's stickbird would seem but a ludicrous eccentricity beside the huge ships of the air which circumnavigated the planet, which flew between planets, and which crossed the gulfs between the very stars himself.
So thinking, Guest realized Sken-Pitilkin was watching him.
"There is much which Guest is leaving unsaid," said Sken-
Pitilkin. "In Dalar ken Halvar, they have - potentially - the power to unlock the greatest secrets of the past."
"You mean," ventured Brother Fern Feathers, "to subject us to a repeat performance of the wars of the Days of Wrath?"
"That is part of it," said Sken-Pitilkin, making no attempt to shy away from that possibility. "But what is the alternative?
Are we to bow to the Swarms and thus to condemn all unborn generations to a life of skulking terror? And even if we somehow defeat the Swarms by our own devices, what then? The world is a place comfortable enough for wizards, but is it paradise? Perhaps more power will simply see us better armed for our own destruction, but are we on that basis to deliberately choose to see ourselves defeated by the Swarms? With the Swarms upon our borders, I think it reasonable for us to make an alliance with Dalar ken Halvar, and use first its militant religion and later its more secret strengths to right the world to something closer to our hearts' desire."
"We can right the world by making an alliance with these people to the south of us," said Brother Fern Feathers. "With this
Rovac warrior Morgan Hearst and his cohorts."
"Yes," said Sken-Pitilkin. "We can do that, but in two or three generations a greater power will arise in Dalar ken Halvar and sweep away everything we have made."
So said Sken-Pitilkin.
There then followed a full three days of sometimes disorderly debate, during which Guest wished most heartily that he had had Shabble to aid him. The bubble was but a toy, but it had actually lived through the years of the Nexus. It had seen at first hand the wonders of a machine civilization, and it could be most persuasive in describing wonders of which Guest could give but faltering second-hand accounts.
However, at the end of three days of debate, it was formally agreed that Sken-Pitilkin and Guest Gulkan could take themselves off to Dalar ken Halvar to seek an alliance with Plandruk
Qinplaqus and the militant religion of Nu-chala-nuth - the purpose of this alliance being to reopen the Circle of the Doors of the Partnership Banks and wage a destructive war against the Swarms.
So, this having been decided, Sken-Pitilkin set forth for Dalar ken Halvar, with the Weaponmaster as his sole companion - and with the rest of the wizards more than half-convinced that these two would get themselves killed either during the journey or shortly after their arrival in Parengarenga.
Chapter Fifty-Six
The Swarms: diverse breeds of monsters which were confined to the south of Argan until the destruction of the flame trench Drangsturm. The Swarms are controlled by an entity known as the Skull of the Deep South. The unfortunate truth is that wizards once awakened the enmity of the Skull when they made an ill- advised and abortive attempt to enslave it; and, in the thousands of years since then, the Skull has harbored a deep-seated hatred of humankind.
At this juncture, the lowlands of Argan's western coast had fallen almost entirely to the occupation of the Swarms. Pockets of exception included Androlmarphos, Hok and Estar.
The seaport city of Androlmarphos, defended by tidal marshlands and by a webwork of rivers, as yet preserved its integrity, and had become home to many wizards. In the mountains of Hok, the former rulers of the Harvest Plains had taken refuge, together with some of their people. In the north of Argan, the province of Estar was guarded by mountains, and a refugee army had mounted a sturdy defense of those mountains, and had so far defeated the Swarms. The defense of Estar automatically protected the uplands of Penvash.
But, by and large, the entire western seaboard of Argan was dominated by the Swarms. On his previous flight to Dalar ken Halvar, that flight which he had made with the Weaponmaster to recover the yellow bottle from Dalar ken Halvar, Sken-Pitilkin had dared a transit due south from Drum, and had overflown the wreckage of Drangsturm, thus crossing Argan at its narrowest point. But he thought the Neversh to be too numerous by now for him to dare a repeat performance of this feat; and he was well aware that the conscious malignity of the Skull of the Deep South had to be added to the sheer numbers of the Neversh when one sought to calculate their danger.
In the center of the continent, the mountainous wastelands were as yet free from the monsters. But that high and desolate continental hinterland was the preserve of dragons. Here we are not talking about sea dragons, those idle and talkative creatures who inhabited Sken-Pitilkin's home island of Drum. No, we are talking about land dragons, those crude and hideous beasts of infinite malignity which have so haunted the imagination of humanity.
Since dragons, unlike the Swarms, lack a coordinating general like the Skull, it happens that dragons have never yet proved a serious danger to the survival of humanity. If a dragon should happen to take up residence in your neighborhood, then its exactions may prove expensive, but the bottom line is that the average dragon does far less damage than the average war, plague, famine or flood; and there is many a region which has stoically gone about its business for generations, despite the informal taxation of that business by one dragon or by a brood of the things.
Nevertheless, Sken-Pitilkin had absolutely no intention of putting himself in the way of a dragon unless he had to; and, on adding the dangers of dragons to the dangers of the Swarms, he decided to shun the continent of Argan entirely, and to chart a passage which would keep him well clear of
its shores.
Being thus wary of all winged monsters, Sken-Pitilkin first flew himself and the Weaponmaster north to Lex Chalis, that rock- tip of Tameran where caves still preserved the stone circles in which Guest and Sken-Pitilkin had cooked their fish, their shellfish, their kelp and their lobsters during a long winter's season which they had spent hiding from Shabble.
After resting for a day in that place of unpleasant memories, they flew east toward the island of Ork, eventually arriving there in good order. They were now on the fringes of the Great Ocean of Moana. Imagine Moana to be a box, with Tameran at its top and Argan on its western edge. The island of Ork then lies in the north-west corner of the box.
The eastern side of the box is the continent of Yestron, and the southern side is formed by the continent of Parengarenga. Guest Gulkan and Sken-Pitilkin therefore had to go far, far, far to the south on their way to Dalar ken Halvar.
They made the trip by island-hopping, landing and resting on the islands of Ashmolea and Asral. Their next stop was the Ebrell Islands - of which, the less said the better. This is no place for a thesis detailing the twenty different degrees of stench which can be generated by rotting whale blubber!
From the Ebrells, Sken-Pitilkin flew to Parengarenga, a target so large it was impossible to miss. But, having picked up the coast, how then was the wizard to reach his way to Dalar ken Halvar? That city is, after all, but a speck in the midst of an enormous wasteland.Sken-Pitilkin, who still had occasional nightmares about the crossing of Moana which had seen him miss the island of Untunchilamon entirely, followed the stratagem which had seen him get safely to Dalar ken Halvar on his most recent visit. He took the trouble to scout up and down the coast of Parengarenga till he located one of its few seaports.