Hugh Cook - The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers

‘I’ll hold you to that,’ said Ingalawa. ‘You know what happened last time.’

‘Yes,’ said Pokrov with a sigh. ‘I remember.’

Shabble loves to gossip. Shabble loves to sing. Shabble loves to imitate voices with malicious intent, and is the most adroit ventriloquist imaginable. Shabble is (socially, at least) a menace.

But Shabble did naught but hum softly as the four humans went stilt-striding through the chemical outpour to the harbour bridge. There they dismounted, put their leg-lengtheners in the stilt-rack, then began to walk toward the mainland. They went slowly, slowly, for the heat was unendurable, the humidity suffocating.

Day was almost at an end, and, in its death-throes, the bloody sun set the oily waters of the Laitemata ablaze with baleful fire. Fish in their thousands floated belly-up in those poisoned waters. Lifeless their silver, swift-fading their orange and green. An octopus groped for survival one last time then slackened and died.

If the flow from the wealth fountains did not abate there would be nothing left alive in the Laitemata by the morrow.

Then the dikle and shlug would spread out into the lagoon. A few days’ outflood would suffice to double the price of fish in Injiltaprajura. Still, who could complain? Production of such poisons was one of the mainstays of Untunchilamon’s economy, and there was no stopping that production even if people had wanted to.

' Chegory stopped to watch another sick octopus struggling in the water. The dying beast was kin to the gigantic krakens which dwelt in the Deep far to the north. Such monsters shun the shallows and will never dare water low enough to be plumbed by human divers. Hence Injiltaprajura was safe from their depredations, for the Laitemata Harbour could only be approached through lagoon passages scarcely deep enough to float a ship.

‘Come on, Chegory!’ said Olivia, and he hurried to catch up with the others.

The harbour bridge rocked beneath the feet of the trampling humans, for it lacked all foundation and was afloat upon pontoons. Its boards of unpainted coconut wood creaked underfoot as creak the bones of an animated skeleton as it wrestles the lid from its coffin.

As Chegory drew level with Olivia she dropped back. He halted immediately, knowing she meant to tap his ankle and send him tumbling. He paused, as if admiring the view. The clutter of stalls and shops scattered along the waterfront all the way from the harbour bridge to the far end of Marthandorthan. The crowded slumclutter of Lubos directly ahead. Further uphill, the hulk of Ganthorgruk, with the Dromdanjerie — home — directly above it. Higher yet, the inscrutable mass of Pearl. Then, riding the heights of Pokra Ridge, the pink palace itself and the temples and mansions of Hojo Street.

‘Come on, Chegory,’ said Olivia, skipping past him. ‘Come on, or you’ll be late for dinner.’

He followed.

They were only halfway to the shore when the sun-bloody sky flashed into rainbow. Its gaudy colours writhed like the feathers of a million peacocks afloat upon an ocean of boiling red oil. Then the waters of the Laitemata buckled, then flailed, then reared toward the sky as a monstrous shape erupted from the sunfire sea. Up from the waters it came. Huge, bulking, loathsome, vast. A kraken! Its gorged tentacles of purple-brown shed water in flurries as they thrashed.

It was close, close, close enough to seize them. Its eyes were bloody as the sun, swollen with rage, engorged with lusts anthropophagous. Knowing that it was themselves that the eyes perceived, the humans tried to flee. The kraken groped for the harbour bridge. Shook the bridge. The shockwaves skittled the scampering humans.

Olivia screamed in fear. She scrambled to her feet then tripped and fell. Chegory grabbed one of the rope handrails and hauled himself upward. Pokrov stayed down, clutching a knee in agony. Ingalawa got up. The kraken shook the bridge again. But this time Ingalawa kept her footing. She slid into the whirlwind stance with a combat shout so shattering it could be heard for half a league away. All praise for her courage! Yet what use was such defiance? The kraken was already hauling its vast, slovenly bulk toward its prey. Could Ingalawa outfight it? To that question, what fool requires an answer?

Even Shabble seemed unprepared to contend with the loathsome thing from the depths, for the imitator of suns was sliding upward into the sky, singing, sweetly singing, soft-lilting in an ecstasy of music.

Shabble’s brightness caught the eye of the kraken. Which lazily uncoiled a spare tentacle and sent its fearsome strength questing for Injiltaprajura’s oldest juvenile delinquent. The tentacle caught the ever-rasing Shabble and snapped tight around the surface of the shining one.

There was a brilliant flash of light.

A burst of searing heat.

A convulsion as the kraken writhed in pain, the remnants of its Shabble-ensnaring tentacle racked by spasms of uncontrollable agony. Bright burnt Shabble, though this brightness was somewhat obscured by the fumes of incinerated tentacle which hung around the shining one.

‘Shabble!’ yelled Chegory. ‘Kill it kill it kill it!’

The kraken recovered itself. Groped toward the humans.

‘As you love us, kill it!’ screamed Chegory.

One tentacle of swollen purple-brown coiled round Olivia’s ankle. Chegory fell upon it in fury. In a berserker rage he wrestled with the monster. But he wrestled uselessly, for the remorseless strength of the monster began to drag the Ashdan lass toward its waiting maw. In panic Chegory tore at the tentacle with his teeth. But the rubbery substance refuted the onslaught of his incisors.

Olivia screamed incoherently as she was torn away from the harbour bridge. Chegory grabbed her hand. Her eyes bulged with panic as she clutched him. The tentacle upreared. Chegory, still clutching, was yanked off his feet.

Then Shabble Shabble spat fire.

The kraken convulsed in agony.

It outflung Olivia. She fell. Landing heavily on Chegory Guy.

The kraken screamed.

High and shrill it screamed.

Shabble let rip with a blast of fire which tore the monster clean in half. Huge clouds of steam ascended from the sea, tainted with the stench of burnt monster and by fumes released by superheated dikle and shlug.

The monster was dead. Dead, dead, dead and destroyed, while they were still clutching to life.

Olivia was sobbing, sobbing, sobbing, clutched close by Chegory and clutching close. Artemis Ingalawa eased out of her fighting stance. Ivan Pokrov, the pain in his knee abating, picked himself up. He was eager to observe the monster’s corpse at close hand before it subsided beneath the waters of the Laitemata. He could be heard to mutter:

‘How interesting. How very interesting.’

Shabble, still softly singing all the while, floated down from the heavens like a feather.

‘Chegory dearest,’ said Shabble, ‘there’s more than one.’

The Ebrell Islander untangled himself from Olivia and looked round. Shabble was right! There were at least half a dozen monsters in clear sight, thrashing madly in the harbour waters. The nearest was only a league distant.

‘Kill them!’ he said curtly.

‘Oh, I don’t really want to kill anything else, Chegory dearest,’ said Shabble.

‘Don’t worry about the other monsters,’ said Pokrov. ‘They’ll die from a surfeit of dikle and shlug before they can do any harm. Come and look at this, Chegory. Isn’t it fascinating?’

‘It’s gross, it’s horrible,’ sobbed Olivia. ‘I hate it, I hate it, I want to get out of here, I want to go home.’

‘Come along then, darling,’ said Chegory.

Then, soothing her as best he could, he led her shore-wards along the harbour bridge.