The Wazir and the Witch coaaod-7

by Hugh Cook

  So began one of the wonder-workers, but a look from Master Ek silenced him. Ek wished to propose nothing. He desired the wonder-workers to do their own thinking; he sought to avoid taking explicit responsibility for generating Crab-defeating stratagems, lest the Crab some day call him to account for his misdemeanours.

  Ek rolled himself a ‘cigarette’, which is a quantity of tobacco compressed by finger-strength and rolled in a tube of paper. Standing by Ek’s chair was a tri-table, one of the notoriously rickety and unstable pieces of furniture favoured by Janjuladoola culture; this civilization considers the gross bulk of the earth to be unclean, hence scorns any object which is or which appears to be solidly rooted to the earth. Atop the tri-table was a casket of green bamboo. Ek opened this, withdrew a hot coal with a pair of soot-tipped tweezers, blew upon the coal until it glowed cherry-red, then lit his cigarette.

  While Master Ek smoked, the wonder-workers considered the possibility of placing the island of Jod under quarantine. It was certainly not impossible. A quarantine would cut off all news to the Crab; and, providing its suspicions were not aroused, those forces loyal to Aldarch Three could do as they wished with the monstrous Thrug.

  ‘One anticipates,’ said one of the sorcerers carefully, ‘that meticulously planned quarantine regulations could resolve many of our present difficulties.’

  ‘However,’ said another, ‘there is a danger that a certain person will escape justice before such quarantine measures could be put in place.’

  Ek smoked impassively. A casual observer might have thought that the nicotine of his addiction had somehow succeeded in staining his eyes, for these were a pale orange strangely flecked with green. However, this oddity had a genetic foundation. Ek was a mutant, though his divergence from the Janjuladoola norm began and ended with his eyes. He had never passed on this trait, and indeed was doomed to die without progeny; which was unfortunate, since those eyes had proved their superiority by retaining their acuteness right into his old age.

  (Ek was seventy. Is this old age? His flesh would answer in the affirmative. And, while many of the old complain that they inwardly feel as fresh as they did at twenty, Ek himself felt worn, weary and infinitely ancient.)

  While Ek thus smoked, his audience waited in an uncomfortable silence. Ek’s strategic silence tempted them to take further risks, to propose plots, schemes and conspiracies; but even the boldest spirits amongst the wonder-workers felt they had dared sufficient dangers already.

  Ek pursed his lips, as if to speak. The sorcerers waited for revelation. Ek blew a smoke-ring.

  ‘Thrug,’ said one of the sorcerers, pushed into speech by the tensions generated by silence, ‘may escape.’

  Ek stared at him through a haze of grey smoke. Slowly, slowly, the curling-coiling smoke dissipated. Ek outbreathed again, once more veiling his face.

  ‘She may escape,’ continued the sorcerer, ‘because her tame wizard is building her a ship. A special ship. An airship, we believe. It looks like a — a bird’s nest. It is being constructed atop the pink palace.’

  The end of Ek’s cigarette glowed red as he drew upon it. A crinkling brown line moved fractionally, eating its way down the cigarette. Ek breathed out, studied the lengthening ash at the end of his cigarette, tapped the ash into a clam shell, coughed harshly, spat, then said: ‘Priests have no powers. No temporal powers. That may change. When Aldarch the Third triumphs in Talonsklavara, it may change with remarkable rapidity. For the moment we priests merely watch. What others do is their business. But what they do and what they do not will be noted. Noted and remembered. In time.’

  At the conclusion of this speech, Ek folded his hands in his lap and studied the sorcerers assembled in his presence. Studied them as if he were committing their faces to memory. He had given them a clear message. He had not told them to move against Justina Thrug; fear of the Crab had restrained him, though the letter of the law was his excuse. But he had given them clear warning that he would remember everything they did or did not do.

  And, in due course, would give evidence.

  ‘Go,’ said Ek. ‘You are dismissed.’

  The sorcerers made reverence to Master Ek then departed with troubled minds. Ek had made his wishes clear. They were to move against Justina Thrug. Furthermore, he had indicated how it could be done without arousing the wrath of the Crab; a meticulously maintained cordon sanitaire around the island of Jod would suffice to keep the Crab in ignorance. As for the question of the flying ship, that was something for the sorcerers to attend to themselves.

  It could be done.

  But the prospect of a head-on clash with Justina and her allies was scarcely something the wonder-workers welcomed, for they feared her abilities greatly, and suspected that moves against her might well compromise their own health and happiness.

  Not to mention their lives.

  As the sorcerers departed, the idling winds strengthened to a purposive breeze which held the promise of better things yet to come; but this good omen failed to lift the spirits of those upon whom Ek had laid such a heavy burden.

  While Master Ek had been conducting his lengthy and theatrical audience with certain senior wonder-workers, a much younger and comparatively inexperienced sorcerer, Nixorjapretzel Rat by name, had been waiting for a personal interview with Ek. When Ek dismissed the wonder-workers, Rat heard them depart, their footsteps clunking down the stairs on the southern side of the house, their querulous voices raised in unintelligible conversation which faded out of earshot as they trooped along Hojo Street.

  But Rat himself was not called to Ek’s presence.

  Instead, he was left to stew.

  Nixorjapretzel Rat was sitting on a chair. The chair was on a verandah. This shaded portico was on the northern side of Master Ek’s mansion atop Pokra Ridge, and afforded the outlooker with a view across Master Ek’s back garden, across a steeply descending slope largely given over to market gardens, and then across a great many leagues of the wastelands of Zolabrik.

  Nixorjapretzel Rat had scant appetite for the view.

  Another desire temporarily dominated his existence.

  Nixorjapretzel Rat wished to urinate.

  This urge possessed him sixty times a day, though until the present troubles he had scarcely needed to relieve himself more than twice or thrice between the sounding of the sun bells and bat bells. Young Nixorjapretzel had already taken himself off to a quack, who had pronounced him the victim of boblobdidobaltharbi (for which read nervous enuresis). The quack had recommended a long holiday combined with a programme of massage and sunbathing. Unfortunately Rat had no time for a holiday, had suffered a slipped disk on his first and only visit to a professional masseur, and already endured regrettable side effects as a result of his exposure to the sun.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Rat to a passing servant, ‘is there a place where I might avail myself of the second minor pleasure?’

  The grey-skinned servant expressed incomprehension in the Janjuladoola manner; that is to say, he raised his hands to nipple-height and twiddled his fingers.

  ‘Have you no ears?’ said Rat, mortally offended.

  It happened that Nixorjapretzel Rat was of the Janjuladoola people. Not only was he of that race: he also had the honour of having been bom in Obooloo itself. While he had dwelt in the cold and mountainous realms of Ang, his skin had always displayed the luxuriant grey which was his birthright. But Untunchi-lamon’s harsh and relentless sun had wrought curious changes in his pigmentation, giving his skin a slightly reddish tinge. In consequence, young Nixorjapretzel was sometimes mistaken for an Ebrell Islander, which led members of the Superior Race to pretend that his efforts to speak the Superior Tongue fell short of comprehension.

  The servant twiddled his fingers some more. Then departed. Rat raised his hands, pointed in the direction of the retreating racist, and muttered:

  ‘Vo. Vo bigamo. Vo bigamo skoreeth. Japata!’

  On an instant, the back of the servant’s shirt disintegrated in
to a mass of seething colours. The servant cast a startled glance at Rat. Then fled. Leaving a cloud of harlequin butterflies flicker-floating in the air. Nixorjapretzel Rat was somewhat disappointed, for he had meant the servant to be incinerated on the spot. On reflection, though, the sorcerer was inclined to be glad that his magic had gone wrong, for Master Ek might have been annoyed had one of his servants been reduced to a heap of smouldering ashes, and Ek’s annoyance might swiftly have proved lethal for Rat.

  The butterflies scattered on the ship-shifting winds now blowing across the city of Injiltaprajura. The same winds stirred through the shrubbery of the gardens of Mansion Ek; but with much reduced force, since walls sheltered those gardens. In those gardens, some thin and stunted sprite bamboo struggled for survival. This cold-climate plant had been imported to Ang from the northern continent of Tameran; it thrived in the cold uplands which surrounded Obooloo, but barely survived in Untunchilamon’s realms of fever heat and sunstroke. Still, Master Ek’s gardeners did their best to make the plant grow, for it was greatly prized for its grey foliage.

  The paltry plantings of sprite were overtopped by luxuriant stands of fist-thick green bamboos native to the tropics. The tight-furled spears of fresh upthrusts of green spoke of fervent growth, of prodigal fecundity, of life imbued with a positively copulatory passion. Such brazen spear-thrust lust roused uneasy thoughts in the fidgeting Rat, who had committed himself to celibacy for fear of contracting some of the lethal venereal diseases which ran rife amongst Untunchilamon’s population.

  Standing clear of both species of bamboo were plantings of banana trees, their broad leaves shredded to fronds by recent fraughts of bad weather. Like the bamboos, they too yielded to the whims of the light-lilting flirts and quirks of wind which stooped beneath the guardian walls; but the paw-paw trees, on the other hand, seemed to dwell in a different climate, for their close-stacked leaves were reluctant to answer to such cajolery. As for the lone needle-rose, pride and joy of Master Ek’s gardener, that spine-spiked monstrosity remained stubbornly immobile; for no freak of weather could move a needle-rose, not the occasional whisper-winds of Fistavlir nor the massed force of those full-fledged hurricanes which sometimes (once a century on average) descended upon the city of Injiltaprajura.

  Nixorjapretzel Rat began to contemplate a quick expedition down to the garden so he could piss upon the needle-rose, or hide himself in among the banana trees and relieve himself in their comparative privacy. While he vacillated, the opportunity was lost, for Master Ek at last put in an appearance.

  ‘Jan Rat,’ said Ek. ‘How nice that you could put in an appearance.’

  At that, Master Ek smiled. His smile was not a pretty one, for his teeth were blackened by the mercury treatment used in Obooloo to cure syphilis. To cure? In a manner of speaking. Statistically, the outcome is that one-third are cured, one-third are killed and one-third are left half-dead from mercury poisoning but with the vibrant life of their affliction unaffected.

  ‘I came as soon as I could,’ said Rat.

  ‘I’m sure you did, Jan Rat.’

  Young Nixorjapretzel was already intensely irritated by Ek’s use of the slighting ‘Jan’, a Janjuladoola title properly applied only to children. But he durst not complain, for he was in the presence of the most powerful and most dangerous man on Untunchilamon. So he said:

  ‘My Master knows I am ever at his service.’

  ‘You claim to read my mind, do you?’ said Ek. ‘Are you always so free in taking liberties with your superiors?’

  ‘I meant no offence,’ said Rat, taking a backward step.

  He bumped against an amphora seated upon a rickety tri-table just behind him. The amphora fell, shattered, scattering a mix of pulped paw-paw and mashed banana across the verandah. With many protestations of innocence and apology, a grovelling Rat began to clean up the soft and slushy mess, or at least to try to.

  ‘Stop that,’ said Master Ek impatiently. ‘Sit! There, in that chair! Sit, and do nothing.’

  Nixorjapretzel Rat immediately precipitated himself into the cane chair indicated by Ek. Who wasted no further time, but flourished a sheet of paper in front of his incontinent victim.

  ‘What is this?’ said Ek.

  ‘Ricepaper,’ said Rat. ‘Ricepaper washed with purple.’

  ‘It’s writing, fool. Is it not? What says this writing?’ ‘Somethin g, something,’ gabbled Rat. ‘Something in, oh, Toxteth maybe. Dub? Ash marlan?’

  ‘Slandolin,’ said Ek coldly. ‘I am reliably informed that you read that language. Am I in error?’

  ‘I… I…’

  ‘I knew your father,’ said Ek. ‘He was a translator, was he not? A man of great scholarship. He was very fond of you, too. It is fortunate that the Great Enfolding claimed him before you grew to the estate of manhood, for surely the sight of your quivering flesh and incompetent tongue would give him the greatest displeasure. The language is Slandolin, and what it says is known to me, for I have had it translated into the Superior Tongue for my own enlightenment. Read!’

  Nixorjapretzel Rat obeyed. With every appearance of the greatest care imaginable, he studied the single sheet of ricepaper which Ek had given him, a piece of paper so clogged with miniscule purple-penned letters that at a glance it looked as if it had been washed with ink.

  ‘Tell me now,’ said Ek, treasuring the words on his tongue as if they were portentous in the extreme, ‘what says this text?’

  ‘It is a madman’s garbling of a fragment of recent history,’ said Rat.

  ‘A madman wrote this?’ said Ek. ‘An interesting hypothosis. What brings you to believe as much?’

  ‘Because none of this is true,’ cried Rat. ‘It’s libels, that’s all. It has me dealing with Varazchavardan, running for him, walking for him, doing his errands, bringing him news. Whereas I repudiate the man.’

  Ek looked upon the babbling Rat with disgust.

  ‘Save your lies for the courts of law,’ said Ek. ‘You’re not on trial yet, least of all for treason. So we’ve no need for pretence. Your association with Varazchavardan is long, and my informants tell me that it continues yet. You’ve no need to dissemble, least of all with me. As yet, the time for punishment lies in the future. Some as yet may hope to avoid their just desserts.’

  ‘Just desserts?’ said the quivering Rat.

  ‘Torture,’ said Ek. ‘Torture to the point of death and then to the place beyond. This is the fate which will befall those who have leagued with traitors, with the enemies of the State, the enemies of our dearly beloved Aldarch Three. All such will suffer their doom unless they can earn themselves a pardon.’

  ‘Oh, earning,’ said Rat. ‘I’ll work, I’ll work, anything, I’ll do anything for pardon.’

  ‘So you admit it,’ said Ek. ‘You admit yourself a traitor or the associate of traitors, which amounts to the same thing.’

  Rat gaped in dismay.

  ‘But — but you said-’

  ‘Fool!’ said Ek. ‘No! Stay in the chair. This is no time for grovelling, least of all at my feet.’

  In the years of his increasing age, Ek no longer took pleasure in the grovellings of underlings, for his feet had lost the strength to kick them effectively.

  ‘What is it time for, then?’ said Rat, emboldened by the fact that Ek had spared him a kicking.

  ‘For work,’ said Ek. ‘Hard work for one who wishes to earn himself a pardon. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to seek ou t the rest of this manuscript.’ ‘The rest?’ said Rat.

  ‘This piece of ricepaper is but a fraction of what I suspect to be a much greater whole. A Secret History of Untunchilamon. I suspect this Secret History has been written by one whose motives as yet remain a mystery, but who nevertheless appears to have sources of information which have disclosed to him at least something of the extent of the treason which pervades the ranks of high and low alike on Untunchilamon. Your mission, then, is to find the rest of this text and the person who wrote it, and bring both of
them to me.’

  ‘And if I don’t accept?’ said Rat. ‘Don’t accept the mission, I mean?’

  ‘A treason trial this very day and your. execution on the morrow,’ said Ek.

  ‘Oh, I accept, I accept!’

  ‘Then go!’ said Ek.

  Rat went.

  In his haste, young Nixorjapretzel slipped on the still-spreading ooze of mushed banana and pay-paw and sprawled flat on his face. Provoked beyond endurance, Ek kicked him, albeit ineffectually. Rat scuttled away on all fours, found the stairs, precipitated himself down them then fled.

  Once the Rat had gone, old master Ek stumped away to his favourite smoking chair where he rolled himself a cigarette and endeavoured to relax. But relaxation did not come easily, for Ek was in the grip of a great excitement.

  What had roused this old and arthritic man to such a passion? Why, it was the manuscript which he had discussed with Nixorjapretzel Rat. But why should this in itself prove a source of such stimulation? Because of what was written on one fragment of that manuscript, a short and incomplete fragment which Ek had not shown to Rat.

  Now that Rat had gone, Nadalastabstala Banraithan-chumun Ek once again pulled that secret fragment of ricepaper from his tobacco pouch. He unfolded it slowly, for his arthritic fingers felt as if splinters of bone were floating loose in the joints, and this condition did not encourage speed.

  Ek read it greedily for the thousandth time, his eyes of green-flecked orange deciphering the miniscule script with ease. Ek had once been a translator, and his decreptitude had as yet left him with his mastery of a dozen languages still intact. As a matter of strategy, he kept this mastery secret, which encouraged the unwary to betray themselves in his hearing as they discoursed in foreign tongues; one such language was Slandolin, which Ek could read with ease, though he pretended complete ignorance of this argot.

  This was what was written on that piece of paper: *… to become immortal. Immortality is easily achieved if one has possession of an organic rectifier. On Untunchilamon…’

  On Untunchilamon what?