Hugh Cook - The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers

[Perhaps. But who cares? Oris Baumgage, Fact Checker Minor.]

[An inexcusable flippancy! Noted, and to be punished in due course. Jonquiri 0, Disciplinarian Superior.]

[While Yafungroid is not to be lightly dismissed, scholars should nevertheless note that shortly after completing his extensive annotations to this Text the eminent Phrenologist died of a surfeit of lampreys admixed with the Extract of Opium to which he was notoriously addicted. Sot Dawbler, School of Commentary.]

[Sot Dawbler implies that Yafungroid suffered mental degeneration as a consequence of overindulgence in the Balm of Souls. But what of it? Should we care if Yafungroid was brain-damaged? His field was the study of the mad. Set a thief to catch a thief, a lunatic to catch a lunatic! I accept Yafungroid’s conclusions in full and wish only that I could aspire to the magisterial magnificence of his style. Drax Lira, Redactor Major.]

As Chegory looked for a way of escape he faced a multiplicity of choice. There were, all in all, forty-seven doorways out of that hallway. Young Chegory did not count them but I know it to be so for I have been to the very place myself during my own researches Downstairs. Indeed, you must remember that at every point this history is supported and enhanced by my own detailed and longstanding knowledge of both the participants and the theatre of action.

Thus I can tell you of a certainty that the one doorway which issued on to a flight of stairs was one armspan wide and thrice that in height; that the stairs themselves were of an incorruptible metal unaccountably percolated by multiple holes, each hole being the size of a finger hole; that one climbs 170 steps in all to reach a large, circular chamber made of equally incorruptible plax; and, further, that from this Chamber seventeen tunnels wheelspoke outwards.

Chegory found the stairs, climbed them and reached the chamber with its seventeen-fold choices.

Where now?

He chose a tunnel at random and set off down it, charcoaling the occasional mark on the walls so he would be able to find his way back if he ran into a dead end or danger.

As he walked, he began to worry. Had Aquitaine Varazchavardan recognised him? He doubted that Varazchavardan knew him by name. Nevertheless, Justina’s Master of Law might remember seeing young Chegory on Jod, in which case he would know where to start looking for a name. Gods, what a mess!

‘Still,’ said Chegory, ‘it was quite funny, really.’

It was not funny at all. It was an unmitigated disaster. Nevertheless, Chegory allowed himself a little Shabble-like snigger when he recalled Varazchavardan slapping at his burning robes. Fool of a sorcerer! To set his own liquor alight by exercise of magic!

His own liquor?

Chegory corrected his mental slip. That had not been Varazchavardan’s liquor. That had been the property of some foul unscrupulous drug dealer. And Varazchavardan, well, he must have been leading a raid on the place.

‘Great,’ said Chegory, with dry irony. ‘I’m a wanted man. Incinerator of soldiers. Consort of drug dealers. Fugitive prisoner. Looter. Rioter. And now I’ve got enemies in high places to boot! What worse could happen?’

Much, as he found out before he had taken another three footsteps. Lights dimmed, lights darkened, then violet shadows rose around him, weaving, writhing, sharpening into monsters with glaucous eyes and jacinth teeth. One glance at their slavering jaws told him they were car-nivorously inclined. He had no time to scream before they were upon him.

Razorblade teeth bore at his raw flesh, shattered his bones, ripped open his gut then sliced his orchids in half with a lacerating pain which sent him swooning into unconsciousness.

For some time he knew nothing.

Then, blunder by blunder, he began to recover thought and sensation both. He was walking. His eyes were open a crack. Grey light hinted at walls, floor, a door past which he strode.

‘Stop walking,’ he told himself.

But his legs made progress without him. Strong legs they were, hardened to labour by toilsome labours in the rockfields of Jod. His arms immobile at his sides. Strength he had in those arms, the mighty strength which comes from sledgehammering rocks and ruthlessly pursuing sparetime practice with a killing blade. But he was powerless to control that strength.

I am an Engine.

Thus he thought, comparing himself to Ivan Pokrov’s Analytical Engine, remorselessly driven by coded algorithms, exercising operations of the most complex precision without possession so much as a shred of free will.

By an extreme effort of such will he at last succeeded in closing his eyes.

Now I will…

Now he would nothing.

Will and consciousness blundered away together. His eyes cracked open again. A part of Chegory’s brain which in truth could scarcely be called Chegory needed sight that it might control the passage of his corpse through the underworld beneath Injiltaprajura. It is scarcely extravagant to think of Chegory as being just then a corpse, for, though his body breathed, walked, and possessed both blood and a heartbeat, no will was resident in his flesh. No will, no thought, no sentience.

By the time sentience, will and consciousness returned, Chegory’s automative fit was long since over. He found himself lying in the dark. Vampire rats! Downstairs, dark meant rats. Were there any? He listened carefully for scrabbles or squeaks. Heard none. Nevertheless his heart was racing. He had been asleep, asleep and helpless, quite unconscious and at the mercy of any four-legged marauder. In the dark Downstairs that could have been suicide.

He stood up, wincing as something went grik! in his spine. He flexed his back cautiously. It was okay. He closed his eyes. Opened them again. Sought light but saw not the slightest leam. Instead, dark absolute, a smothering black velvet shrouding all. Was he blind?

He clicked his fingers. The quality of the echoes suggested he was in an underground room. Quite a large room. He was surprised. Thanks to the dark, he had got the impression he was confined in some place no larger than a coffin. He felt around. Barrels. A smell of — alcohol!

Gods!

Here… a board. Something… something soft. Friable.

Too coherent to be turd. Lift it. Smell. Cheese. Not the goat cheese from the vats of Beldysobros, sole local supplier. No, this was imported stuff. Very nice, too. Needed that. More? No, just metal. Ow! Sharp. Knife. Good.

Chegory tested his new-found knife then slipped it into the larger of his boot sheaths. He’d need it if he ran up against vampire rats. Or Malud marauders. Or mad elven lords with strange foreign companions. Idly he wondered what had become of his best-beloved fighting blade, his skewer-shiv and his knuckle-lance, lost when soldiers had stripped him of that protection when they arrested him outside the Dromdanjerie.

Okay. Explanations.

How had he got here?

Sleepwalking.

Sleepwalking? Hardly!

Zen.

That was his next thought.

Flashback.

Got it in three!

Indeed, Chegory now realised exactly what had happened. He had breathed of the zen burning in the amphorae in the temple of Elasmokarcharos, shark-god of the Dagrin. The hallucinogenic herb had made him imagine that the jaws of shark floated through the air to tear away his arm. Later, he had made a temporary recovery. However, some time afterwards he had been overwhelmed by the phenomenon known as flashback.

Zen is a strange drug for, unlike alcohol or opium, its effects do not dissipate in direct relation to time. Instead, once one has used the drug the potential exists for sudden, untimely recurrences of the initial drugshock. Hallucinations may partially or totally swamp the sensorium. Worse, the drug may lead to the acting out of desires known or unknown, to murder or rape, incest or arson, shark-swimming or suicide.