Hugh Cook - The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers

‘I say kill him!’ said Thayer Levant.

‘You would,’ said Pelagius Zozimus disapprovingly.

‘The boy by chance could help us,’ said Guest Gulkan.

‘Help us?’ said Levant. ‘How?’

‘Maybe by guessing us a way to seize the wishstone,’ said Hostaja Sken-Pidlkin.

The wishstone?

Yes!

Precisely how Guest Gulkan and his comrades came to Untunchilamon is a mystery which is unlikely ever to be resolved, for they never confessed their mode of travel to any competent informant. But what is certain beyond a doubt is that they came to Injiltaprajura solely in order to find the wishstone. Indeed, it was this band of four adventurers which was responsible for the gaping hole in the treasury through which Chegory Guy had so recently ventured.

Thirty nights earlier this quartet had ventured Downstairs, meaning to find their way to the treasury, blast a hole in the wall, seize the wishstone and be gone. Unfortunately they had run into problems. To be exact, they had lost their way, and had then encountered a therapist left over from the days of the Golden Gulag. It had taken the combined strength and skill of all four to allow them (barely) to escape the clutches of the therapist.

After that trauma — strong men have died of less! — they had at length navigated to the treasury. Then the two wizards Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin and Pelagius Zozimus had used the very last of their presently available power to destroy part of the wall. (They were, you see, ignorant of the existence of the secret door earlier used by the Malud marauders.)

The adventurers had expected to find the treasury dark and empty in the dead of night. Instead, they had found it bright-lit and aswarm with activity. They had fled, and hence had not seen the riot which their attack on the treasury had provoked.

‘You think he could help us to the wishstone?’ said Levant. ‘Okay! Ask him! I wager you’ll not get much help from him.’

‘Why not?’ said Zozimus. ‘He’s an Ebrell Islander, is he not? They’re notable thieves, you know.’

Levant knew no such thing, for he had scarcely even heard of the Ebrell Islands. He shrugged and said:

‘As you wish.’

So Pelagius Zozimus spake unto Chegory Guy and said:

‘Let’s be frank. We’re here for the wishstone. Can you help us get it?’

‘You mean,’ said Chegory, ‘you’re hunting the thieves who stole it?’

‘What are you babbling about, boy?’ said Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin. ‘We’re not looking for thieves. We’re thieves ourselves. To wreck a way into the treasury of Injiltaprajura and make off with the wishstone is our intent. We got as far as the wrecking but found soldiers within. Can you tell us why?’

‘I’ve as good as told you already,’ said Chegory. ‘The wishstone’s been stolen already.’

‘Who’s got it?’ said Guest Gulkan.

‘Oh, it’s no use asking him,’ said Zozimus, still speaking in his native Toxteth. ‘He won’t know.’

‘But I do, I do,’ said Chegory, eager to please since he thought pleasing likely to prolong life. ‘It’s pirates, that’s who. Three pirates of Ashdan race, though they’re not from Ashmolea, no, they’re from Asral. That makes them of the Malud, it’s Malud they speak though their skins are Ashdan, but Shabble knows Malud as good as Ashmarlan, Shabble’s an expert with tongues, and besides one of them could speak Ashmarlan in any case.’

Thus it tumbled out. Fear, fatigue and an intense eagerness combined to produce an overall effect of unintelligibility.

‘Slow down a bit, boy!’ said Sken-Pitilkin. ‘You’re not at race with a dragon, you know. Tell us in bits. First bit. You’re a pirate, are you? Is that what you’re trying to tell us?’

‘Oh no, oh no,’ said Chegory. ‘I’m an Ebrell Islander.’ ‘That,’ said Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin dryly, ‘is no disqualification from piracy.’

Then he led the interrogation of Chegory Guy until the truth, or Chegory’s version of it, had been extracted. Many subsidiary questions followed until Chegory’s stumbling tongue began to bungle so many words he became quite unintelligible.

‘So,’ said Pelagius Zozimus, summing up, ‘these pirates would appear to have the wishstone at the moment.’ Chegory grunted in assent.

‘Well,’ said Zozimus briskly, ‘in due course no doubt we’ll catch up with your pirates. Meantime, we have to get out of here. In the confusion of flight from the treasury we happen to have misplaced ourselves. You know this labyrinth well?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Chegory.

Though he was near numb with fatigue he was s till sufficiently alive to danger to realise that his captors might well kill him out of hand if they once thought him no longer of any use to them.

‘Good!’ said Zozimus. ‘A guide, at last! Lead on, little chicken, lead on.’

So Chegory set off through the underground passages, choosing his direction at random but treading the magnanimous stones underfoot in a confident manner meant to suggest that he knew exactly where he was going.

[Translator’s note: preliminary Inspection of this Translation has resulted in numerous Queries, one of which relates to the existence of‘magnanimous stones’. Please be assured that the Text has been Translated with Accuracy Ultimate. The fault, if any, lies with the Originator, who would appear to have, at best, only a shaky understanding of the accepted meanings of the word ‘magnanimous’.]

That was the night that Chegory Guy learnt what it means to be asleep on one’s feet. Often he stumbled through dreams as he trekked endlessly, endlessly, through the tortuous tunnels. He blinked awake to find himself walking over stone lit by bloody red light. Over black grass growing soft and silent beneath banks of warm grey lights. Over fractured ice, the spillage from chambers where an ice-making machine dropped huge blocks of frozen water on to pyramids of shattered crystal, splintered light.

It was only after the ice was far behind and lost to sight that Chegory realised he should have picked some up to appease his mounting thirst.

Too late, too late!

Through dreams he walked, and then through nightmare.

Where?

‘Where are we?’ said the violence, shaking him awake.

He woke.

The lord in the elven armour had him by the arm. Blue eyes, blue eyes he had. Obscured by smoke, smoke which made young Chegory cough. His eyes stung. Seared by the smoke. He shook his head, closed his watering eyes. Darkness veiled his eyes and was slow, slow to clear.

‘A temple,’ said the greybeard.

Voice clear in Toxteth.

‘That much I’d guessed,’ said the lordly armoured one. ‘But why’s he brought us here. Well?’

Another shake, jarring Chegory from dream.

He squeezed tears from his smoke-stung eyes. Cracked them open. Just enough to see. Smoke ascending from huge amphorae scabbed by age. Strings of teeth stretched from floor to ceiling. Jaws, huge jaws, gaping jaws fresh-painted with blood. Jaws dead but alive with potent horror.

‘Out,’ said Chegory, blurting the word with the urgency of a man vomiting up choking blood. ‘Out, get out, get out, out now, out or we’re dead.’

He had never been anywhere like this. But he knew exactly what it was. It was a temple of Elasmokarcharos, the shark-god of the Dagrin, the aboriginal people of Untunchilamon. And the stuff burning on the altar was zen, zen, it was zen, he had breathed of it, had ‘Out!’

Thus Chegory. All panic.

But:

‘There’s nobody here,’ said the leather-girded barbarian, sword out, sword at the ready.

‘Music,’ mumbled the greybeard.

While the elven lord was dancing already, was swaying, was stepping, pacing out with an even tread measured in dignity, slow-measured, while down on his hands and knees was the shifty man in the ragtattered cloak, while The jaws!