Hugh Cook - The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers

Free-floating through the air came the jaws of the shark. Fresh blood on the teeth. Gnashed open, gnashed shut.

‘Not real,’ mumbled Chegory.

Then they lunged, they closed, his arm upflung, bitten, gone, and the pain was real real real, he screamed and screamed and screamed. Screaming, fled.

Stumbling through giddy smoke till there was no more smoke, no smoke, no light, dark only, a smouldering dark through which he wept, agony, his arm was agony, then there was light light light, bright phosphorescence to which he went, only to find the light full of drifting blood.

‘My arm.’

He touched his arm. Left hand to right arm. Felt the stump, the bloody stump, it was his, it was his, it was his blood feeding the vermilion fog which crowded the air.

The jaws of the shark had been real, had closed, had torn, had wrenched away his arm, had left him a cripple, bleeding, in agony, dying, dying, dying.

He sobbed with choking horror.

His legs were subsiding, sliding out of control as he fell toward darkness, toward darkness, the darkness.

Darkness all.

‘Joma dok notora koopeniti.’

Thus a voice.

‘Joma, joma!’

Insistent. Urging.

‘Sleeps you?’

That much intelligible. In Ashmarlan foreignly voiced.

‘Sleeps?’

A boot. Hard.

Chegory lay still, pretending to be dead. Then a hand grabbed his hair. A full handful of it. Yanked. Hard. He could pretend no longer, hence lurched from the ground. He was seized immediately. His arm wrenched back in an armlock. His arm? Right arm! But that was gone, gone, gone, torn and missing, brutalised by a shark, by the bare and barren jaws of a shark free-swimming through the air itself. Wasn’t that so?

No.

That had been but a hallucination.

He had breathed of zen, had he not?

He had.

That much he remembered.

Ah yes, it was coming back to him. The temple of the shark-god Elasmokarcharos. Set up in the manner often described to him by men who had been, who had seen, who had dared. Ancient amphorae from which issued a choking smoke. The smoke of zen, the herb which ruptures reality.

‘Are you listening?’

Hard voice emphasised by a slap.

‘I’m deaf,’ said Chegory, who had been too full of relief for his recovered right arm to pay attention to the lean and elderly Ashdan who had been addressing him in garbled Ashmarlan.

‘But you hear me now? Right?’

A shake.

‘I hear you,’ said Chegory.

He was released from the armlock. As if in reward. Then questioned.

‘Very well! Who are you?’

Chegory summed his interogator. Ashdan. Old. Eyes hard, fierce, tired, impatient, desperate. A young one with him, Ashdan likewise. Oh, and a third. A big man, not surpassingly tall but broad as a barrel.

These three he recognised from Shabble’s description of adventures Downstairs. These must be the pirates who had stolen the wishstone from the treasury! Shabble had played with them for much of a night, driving them to and fro through the underground mazeways. Then they had escaped their captor when the foolish imitator of suns had slept, trusting them to meanwhile stay put.

Pirates, then.

Pirates of the Malud, from Asral, where life is hard and often short. He must remember that they thought of themselves as the Malud and would take great offence if they were called Ashdans, even though those two peoples were in physical terms identical. What else did he know about Asral? Ingalawa had been there, and claimed it was ‘I said,’ said the old man, enunciating his words with great care, ‘I said, who are you?’

From the way he spoke Chegory knew his own life might prove exceedingly short unless he came up with a satisfactory reply, and shortly.

‘I’m Chegory Guy,’ he said, in Ashmarlan far better than that of his interrogator. ‘I work for Jon Qasaba in the Dromdanjerie. That’s our madhouse, in case you didn’t know. I’m down here looking for Orge Arat. He’s a lunatic. He escaped. He’s loose with an axe. He’s dangerous as seven hells or seventy dragons ravening.’

‘As dangerous as what?’ said the old man, not understanding this last complexity.

‘He’s dangerous dangerous!’ said Chegory, urging a touch of the frantic into his voice. ‘We’d better get out of here, out of here fast, he’s killed Qasaba already, there were five of us, now one, myself alone, sole survivor, the man with the axe he did for the others, hacked off arms, off heads, off fegs.’

‘Soboro mo?’ asked the young Ashdan.

‘Dab an narito,’ answered the old man.

‘Para-para. Al-ran Lars,’ said the big man.

‘Tolon! Skimara!’

That from the old man. While they discoursed thus, Chegory was scrutinising his surroundings. He was in a tight-curving corridor. Underfoot was a luxuriant growth of black grass which rustled when stepped on. Overhead, warm grey lights. The pirates continued to dialogue in their incomprehensible argot, presumably the Malud which ruled all conversation on far-distant Asral.

Chegory listened. Hard. Above and below the meaningless pirate talk he heard a thin high whine. Soft, soft and distant. Something rumbling. Low, ominous. Muted thunder. Rumbling this way. Rumbling that. Pausing. Then onrumbling further yet. An intestinal grumbling sourced somewhere in the walls. Some kind of animal there? Or water or some other fluid forcing itself through tangling pipes?

‘Did you hear me?’

Thus the elderly pirate.

Emphasising his query with a slap.

‘Deaf!’ said Chegory, a touch of genuine panic to his voice. ‘Deaf, I’m deaf!’

‘Dandrak! But now you hear!’

‘Yes yes yes, we’ve been through that. Okay. What do you want? You want me to get you out of here? I know the way, I can take you up, out, wherever you want to go.’

‘Good,’ said the pirate. ‘That’s what I wanted to know. Very well. Since you know the way, lead on.’

So Chegory was off again, once more bluffing diligently as he feigned full knowledge of the labyrinth through which he led the pirates who had thieved the wishstone and who (surely) still had it in their possession.

Could he get it off them?

He began thinking, hoping, planning, speculating. If he could triumph that spoil away from them he’d be a hero to all Injiltaprajura. Praise him with great praises! Chegory the Great! Hail him a hero!

‘You sure you know where we’re going?’ said the elderly pirate as Chegory hesitated at an intersection.

‘This way, this way,’ said Chegory hastily.

So saying he led them on through light, through darkness and into light yet further still. He had quite lost track of time. Was it undokondra still? Or bardardomootha? Or had the sun bells rung out to announce istarlat’s start? He had no idea, just as he had no idea how far he had wandered through the territory of shadow and nightmare. But what he did know was that he thirsted and hungered, his thews were aching and his mind was near boggled by fatigue.

He could not remember when he had last seen or smelt sewage. The absence of the human waste suggested they were deep, deep underground, far below the surface of Injiltaprajura. Or maybe somewhere under the Laitemata Harbour. There was no sign of vampire rats in these odourless corridors, either, which again indicated that they were deep indeed.

Stairs. Thafs what I need. Stairs to go up.

Luck then favoured young Chegory with a find in the form of a stairway leading upwards. He took it. Up they went. A mere thirty steps took them to a landing where they had the choice of taking a narrow, unpromising side tunnel lit by a dull purple light. Chegory spared it barely a glance then went on and up. Another landing, another side tunnel. Still the same purple light within. Likewise on the third landing. The fourth. The fifth. The sixth. By which time Chegory was panting and sweating, his heart playing at hammers in his chest. He was sorely troubled to find himself so fatigued so quickly. It told him his physical reserves were nearly exhausted by hunger, dehydration, labour and lack of sleep.