by Hugh Cook
There was a pause. Then: ‘Yes,’ said the Crab, albeit grudgingly.
‘Well then,’said Olivia.‘Here…’
No.
She could not say it.
But she must!
She bit her lip again. Hard.
She tasted blood.
Her blood.
Blood running from her lip.
Blood of her blood, blood from her lips, and Chegory gasping, and later…
‘I am an Ashdan,’ said Olivia, all expression crushed from her voice while terror fought with discipline. ‘So.’
She put her hand between the chomp-chopper-chuk edges of the Crab’s claw. It was a huge claw, its knobbly biting bits swelling out like globular teeth. Its surfaces were strangely cool against the fever of her flesh.
‘So,’ said Olivia.
She wanted to wrench her hand away.
But she could not.
She must not!
‘So,’ said Olivia. ‘You can crunch my wrist. You can crunch it right off. Do it. If that’s what you have to, then do it. Then you’ll believe.’
So said Olivia.
Then she closed her eyes and waited for the Crab to decide.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
It happened halfway between midnight and dawn: midway through the darks of bardardornootha. By then, the moon had sunk from sight. By then, the entire city had fallen to silence, but for a single dog intermittently barking, a single rooster voicing an occasional challenge, several hundred slabender frogs celebrating life and generation, the pulsing rub-drub-thump which issued from a group of half a dozen insomniac drummers who had installed themselves atop the heights of Pearl, the groans of those many sleepers who endured tormented dreams of the Mutilator of Yestron, and the high-pitched assault-hum of several hundred million mosquitoes.
It happened.
The buildings of portside Injiltaprajura abruptly brightened as if the moon had risen anew. But there was no moon. The buildings themselves were glowing. Atop the pink palace, the glitter-dome burnt beacon-bright. The Cabal House glowed a phosphorescent blue. The warehouses of Marthandorthan — Xtokobrokotok among them — shone first pink then gold.
Along Goldhammer Rise, buildings brightened to an intolerable white. In among these buildings lay the Temple of Torture. That was brightest, glowing as if the sun itself had come to life within. All inside the Temple’s walls threw themselves flat and shielded their eyes.
Abruptly, the roof of the Temple shattered. A rockfall of splintered masonry blattered downwards — but dissolved to dust before it could do any damage.
The Temple was roofless.
The naos of the Temple lay open to the sky, and there lay the organic rectifier.
Slowly, a cocoon of purple light began to weave itself around the organic rectifier. Soon the antique device was entirely surrounded by a seamless integument of purple light. Then, smoothly, without making any fuss at all, the organic rectifier rose into the air and slid swiftly toward the island of Jod.
Shortly afterwards, the lights which lit Injiltaprajura were snuffed out. In the renewed dark, dogs and monkeys howled in fear, rage and anguish. Within the Temple of Torture itself, guards, initiates and acolytes picked themselves up from the ground, and began to inspect the damage. When they realized the ‘skavamareen’ was missing, messengers went hotfoot in search of Master Ek, who had taken himself off to his villa on Hojo Street just after midnight.
Shortly, Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek was issuing furious orders. The hell with caution! He was going to act, and now. He was going to kill out all opposition on Untunchilamon. Manthandros Trasilika, Justina Thrug, Aquitaine Varazchavardan, the lawyer Dardanalti — he would make a clean sweep. And if by chance Aldarch the Third failed to approve, well, Ek would deal with the consequences of such displeasure when the time arose.
Ek decided thus because he was sure a crisis was on hand. Had the Crab removed the ‘skavamareen’ from the Temple of Torture? Or had Varazchavardan stolen the thing by exercise of sorcery? Or did the Thrug command some monstrous power of which the world was as yet ignorant? Or had the very Cabal House itself joined Justina in conspiracy? Ek had no firm answers to any of these questions. But he presumed that the Temple of Torture had been destroyed because, one way or another, his enemies were on the point of staging a final confrontation. He was sure that his best chance of survival lay in acting immediately, seizing the initiative, and putting a permanent end to as much of the actual and potential opposition as he possibly could.
By daybreak, Ek had seized Nixorjapretzel Rat, Aquitaine Varazchavardan, the Empress Justina, Jean Froissart and Manthandros Trasilika. And, of coarse, he already held the formidable Juliet Idaho as a prisoner.
Many notorious and dangerous accomplices of the Thrug had escaped, among them the bullman Log Jaris, who had fled downstairs with his woman Molly. Of Shanvil Angarus May there was no sign; and the wizard Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin was another notable who was nowhere to be found. Sken-Pitilkin’s cousin, Pelagius Zozimus, had been sighted briefly in Marthandorthan. But before he could be arrested, he had turned into a carpet snake, and then into an eagle — and had flown away.
‘Never mind,’ said Ek. ‘This is enough to be going on with. We will begin sacrificing our captives to Zoz the Ancestral. Immediately!’
‘But,’ said one of his acolytes — Aath Nau Das, as it happens — ‘this is hardly regular.’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Master Ek.
‘I mean,’ said his acolyte boldly, ‘that there are prescribed forms for sacrifices and such.’
‘Yes,’ said Ek, ‘and prescribed forms of politeness for acolytes to use when addressing their masters!’
‘A thousand apologies,’ said Nau Das, without sounding very apologetic. ‘But, master of the many decades, there is such a thing as legality. These people haven’t had a trial as yet.’
Ek smiled grimly, showing his blackened teeth.
‘The hell with legality,’ said Ek. ‘We’ll start killing them here and now.’
‘What?’ said Ch’ha Saat, the youngest of his acolytes. ‘Without even torturing them?’
Ek considered. Arranging for torture would mean delay. On the other hand… he had endured a great deal over the years, and it would be a shame to send the Thrug out of the world without saying goodbye in the appropriate fashion.
‘Very well,’ said Ek. ‘We will torture them before we kill them. Let’s get busy then!’
And busy they got, and soon gathered together clamps and throttle-bands, stabs and wrecking irons, tweezers and cactus probes, shark hooks and purple veils, bottles of torture water and vials of vitriol, and heavy-duty urns packed with writhing centipedes and fat juicy scorpions.
Then Ek had all the captives brought out into the courtyard of the Temple of Torture. In the pungent heat of the morning they were lined up at spearpoint. Ek was pleased to see they all looked more or less undamaged. And that they were, for the moment, fairly calm. This way, he would know that the end result was all his own work.
Ek made no speeches but proceeded with the ceremonies of destruction immediately, beginning with the slow and studied sacrifice of a vampire rat. This he performed with his own hands, even though it cost him much in pain, for his arthritis was bad that morning.
‘Now,’ said Ek, ‘what I have done with a rat I will do with a human. Bring forward Jean Froissart!’
Froissart was dragged forward, flung down on an operating table and tied into place. Froissart lay there, staring upwards in terror. His heart was staccato. Master Ek loomed over him with a knife. Then Justina screamed.
‘Shabble!’ screamed Justina. ‘Kill them!’
Ek looked round wildly. There was no Shabble, no magical rescuer. Justina had bluffed. But her bluff had worked. While her guards were distracted, she had broken free, and ‘Stop her!’ cried Ek.
But already the Thrug had a wrecking iron in her hands. And Juliet Idaho had broken free — someone must have cut hi
s bonds! — and had wrested a scimitar into his hands. And the guards were looking on in askance, residual loyalties to the Empress or to Trasilika making them hesitate rather than intervene.
‘A pardon,’ said Varazchavardan, looking at Ek.
‘Done!’ said Ek.
Thus did Aquitaine Varazchavardan plead with Master Ek for a priestly pardon for any and all sins he might have committed during the years of the rule of the Family Thrug on Untunchilamon; and Ek granted him that pardon. Whereupon Varazchavardan threw forth his hands and cried:
‘Bobskabo! Bobskabo! Bro!’
Thus he conjured into life a huge and hideous monster with half a thousand fangs. Purple were its feet, and its legs were twenty in number. Its muscles pumped outwards like dough rising with miraculous speed. It roared. Then it advanced upon Justina Thrug and Juliet Idaho, meaning to destroy them.
Not to be outdone, Nixorjapretzel Rat threw out his own hands and cried:
‘Mikrandabor! Mikrandabor! Splotch!’
Instantly, another monster materialized. This one was orange, and spindly, and was pocked all over with little blue sores, and looked in the worst of tempers imaginable.
Snarling savagely, Rat’s monster attacked that which had been created by Varazchavardan. The two monsters tore each other to bits in moments, whereupon both melted into pools of a watery pink liquid which smelt like crushed sugar cane. Varazchavardan wrested a spear from the nearest soldier and began to beat the hapless Rat with the butt of the thing.
That still left Justina Thrug and Juliet Idaho to deal with. The two heroes stood at bay in a corner of the courtyard of the Temple of Torture, and still Ek’s guards looked dubious about taking them on.
‘All right,’ said Ek, addressing himself to Justina and Idaho. ‘I’ll do a deal with you. If you surrender, I’ll cut your throats. No torture, just a straight throat-cutting. How’s that?’
In reply, Idaho shouted:
‘Wen Endex!’
And the Thrug screamed:
‘Galsh Ebrek!’
Then the pair of them charged.
Fortunately for Ek, his soldiers intervened on his behalf, and both heroes were overwhelmed and disarmed. But the episode left Master Ek badly shaken, for it showed him how loosely he held the reins of power. He would not be safe and secure until the Thrug and her supporters were dead. He had been a fool to let his acolytes tempt him into any indulgence in time-consuming torture.
‘Right,’ said Ek. ‘I’ll show them my mercy anyway. No torture, I’ll just cut their throats.’
Then he went back to Jean Froissart.
‘If I remember rightly,’ said Ek, ‘before we were so rudely interr upted, I was going to cut your throat.’ ‘Don’t!’ said Froissart.
‘Why shouldn’t I?’ said Ek.
‘Because,’ said a strangely familiar voice, ‘if you do, we will kill you.’
Ek wheeled. This, of course, he did not do with the precipitate haste of a trained athlete. Rather, he wheeled in slow motion, as befits an old man with arthritis. But wheel he did, and his wheeling brought him face to face with a young Ashdan girl, Olivia Qasaba. The Qasaba girl had intruded upon the courtyard of the Temple of Torture in the company of an Ashdan male.
A stranger, this male. Nobody Ek had ever seen before. He looked to be something like fifty years of age, and his head was bald, and indeed hairless but for a modest square-chopped beard. He was naked but for a loincloth. Yet he was an imposing figure even so, for he had a champion’s build, and he stood a head taller than any other man in sight. Sweat gleamed on his massive thews and oiled his sculpted pectorals. And his eyes — ah, the eyes! They were the startling blue so often found among the peoples of Ashmolea.
‘Who are you?’ said Ek.
‘I am Olivia Qasaba,’ said the girl.
‘I wasn’t talking to you!’ said Ek. Then, to the man: ‘Who are you? Tell me!’
‘I am Codlugarthia,’ said the man.
‘And I,’ said Master Ek, ‘am Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek, High Priest of Zoz the Ancestral for the island of Untunchilamon. I have a need of good men.’
‘I serve nobody,’ said Codlugarthia. ‘My time has come. Now others will serve me.’
Ek smiled, slightly. Then said to Varazchavardan:
‘Try again. Get rid of him.’
‘With pleasure,’ said the wonder-worker, who was bitterly disappointed that his monster had not been able to devour Justina. He turned his attention to Codlugarthia. He flung out his hands and cried:
‘Bara-’
Aquitaine Varazchavardan said no more. For Codlugarthia pointed a finger at him. They were standing a good twenty paces apart, but Codlugarthia’s power did its work. There was a hideous crackling-snappling as Varazchavardan’s leg bones shattered in a dozen places. The albinotic sorcerer screamed in agony, collapsed, then fainted.
Nixorjapretzel Rat bravely confronted the power of Codlugarthia.
‘Barapus!’ said Rat, throwing out his hands. ‘Barapus! Mox! Mox! Nixi!’
The air between sorcerer and Ashdan boiled. An ominous cloud of blue swelled in the air, thrashed, throbbed, steadied — then resolved itself into a budgerigar.
‘Oh, get out of here!’ said Ek in disgust. ‘Guards! Get rid of this man!’
The guards levelled their spears, preparing to throw them. They presumed the intruding Ashdan to be a wizard or sorcerer, but were sure none such could survive the onslaught of a dozen fast-hurtling spears. Codulgarthia gestured.
And the spears, while still in the hands of their owners, erupted into flame, and disintegrated into burning fragments a moment later.
Then Codlugarthia pointed a finger at Master Ek.
‘I do not like your attitude,’ said Codlugarthia.
Then his lips pursed in concentration. A moment later, Ek’s left eye exploded. Ek clapped a hand to his ruined face. His shrivelled scream ascended to the heavens. Wailing, he fell to his knees.
And his guards fled.
Juliet Idaho, released from restraint by the fast-fleeing guards, strode forward and kicked Master Ek in the head, knocking him unconscious. And the Empress Justina turned to Codlugarthia and said:
‘Greetings, my good man. Let me introduce myself. I am a child of Wen Endex, Justina Thrug by name, daughter of the great Lonstantine. How was it you named yourself?’
‘I named myself as Codlugarthia,’ said the Ashdan hero who had rescued her. ‘But you know me far better by another name. For I am the Crab, long a hermit upon the island of Jod, but now set free in a form far better for the active exercise of power.’
‘Then,’ said Justina, giving a slight bow, ‘it will be my pleasure to serve you. In bed or out of it.’
Justina had no idea how many centuries the Crab had lived as a Crab upon the island of Jod, but she was fairly sure it had not enjoyed carnal delights with any human female in all that time. So surely — or so she hoped — it would be ready for a volcanic initiation into the arts of the pleasures of the flesh.
‘I will bear your offer of service in mind,’ said Codlugarthia gravely. ‘But now we must be gone from here, for a mission awaits us.’
‘What mission?’ said Justina, somewhat puzzled at this.
‘Chegory, that’s what mission!’ said Olivia. ‘Rescuing Chegory, that’s what we have to do!’
‘Oh yes,’ said Justina. ‘How remiss of me. Very well! Let us to the rescue go! Juliet — are you coming?’
‘You couldn’t keep me away,’ said Idaho.
And, heavily armed with discarded weapons — one scimitar, two knives and a handful of caltrops — the Yudonic Knight joined Justina, Codlugarthia and Olivia as they set forth from the Temple of Torture. They left Manthandros Trasilika behind to cut loose Jean Froissart — and what fate thereafter befell Froissart and Trasilika is not for this history to tell.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
It was the Empress Justina who led the way through the depths Downstairs as the rescue party hastened t
o the aid of Chegory Guy and Ivan Pokrov, the prisoners of the dreaded therapist. Olivia Qasaba followed at Justina’s heels. Then came Codlugarthia, with the Yudonic Knight Juliet Idaho bringing up the rear.
On they went, and down.
Justina remembered the way well, for she had sweated it out a tenth of a footstep at a time as she laboured with the organic rectifier. Without such a burden to shift, the journey was miraculously short — two or three leagues at most, which is no distance at all for a fit healthy person — and the expedition was soon approaching the lair of the therapist.
It was then that they were surprised by a dorgi.
Down a corridor it came, crunching toward them in fury, meaning to crush them to death, to munchle-crunchle their bones, to trample them thoroughly until nothing was left of them but a bloody grit.
Codlugarthia saw the metal monster coming toward him. Calmly, he raised his finger.
He exerted a fraction of his power.
There was a scream from the dorgi. The thing slewed from side to side, crashed into a wall, came to a dead halt, then backed off a bit. It was defiant, but it was still frightened. It did not quite know what had been done to it, but it had unpleasant memories of being attacked by a granch-grusher, which had produced very similar sensations.
‘Leave us,’ said Codlugarthia in Janjuladoola.
‘No,’ said the dorgi.
‘Leave,’ said Codlugarthia. Then: ‘I do not wish to have to repeat myself. Nor do I wish to have to raise my voice.’
In answer, the dorgi trained the snouts of its zulzer upon the heroic Ashdan. Then it fired. Belatedly, the dorgi remembered: it was out of ammunition. It did not hesitate: it charged.
Codlugarthia’s fingers flickered.
The floor of the corridor ruptured.
A torn and jagged split gashed the floor of the corridor. Limitless depths yawned below. And the dorgi, assaulting forward at a furious pace, had no way to save itself. It tumbled into the pit and it fell, crashing through unseen metallic obstacles far below. There was a siren-pitched scream from deep, deep below. A sullen explosion. A rumbling thunder-roar.