Hugh Cook - The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers

Shabble’s excitement intensified when three Malud marauders fell in behind the thieves, following them at a distance.

Oh, this was a nice bit of drama! Oh, what fun!

Then the thieves took one of the downways which led to the underworld. In they went, one after another. Pelagius Zozimus. Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin. Thayer Levant. Then Guest Gulkan.

Shabble hesitated.

Then the Malud marauders came catfooting through the night, closing with the doorway in a quick, determined rush. They hesitated also, conferred briefly in whispers, then slipped inside. Shabble watched as Al-ran Lars, Arnaut and Tolon followed the wishstone thieves Downstairs.

For a moment longer Shabble lingered outside. Then innate devilishness conquered fear and Shabble followed. Oh, there would be fun in the dark tonight!

It is to be regretted that Shabble’s over-developed sense of fun almost permitted an unnecessary fatality to take place. For, when the three Malud marauders finally jumped the four swordsmen they were following, Shabble found the ensuing battle so enthralling that all thoughts of intervention quite slipped away. Then Shabble’s excitement overmastered sense. The demon of Jod brightened in sheer pleasure as Guest Gulkan made a particularly daring sword-thrust. Thus was the imitator of suns betrayed to the lawless ones, who, unblooded, broke off their combat and stared at their one-sun audience.

‘Oh, don’t stop, don’t stop!’ said Shabble. ‘You were doing so well!’

‘It’s that demon-thing!’ yelled young Arnaut in his native Malud.

Then he took to his heels and fled.

But Shabble cut him off, and, after some fairly acrobatic flying and flame-throwing, herded all seven criminals into a cul-de-sac. Three were pirates: the Malud marauders Al-ran Lars, Arnaut and Tolon. Four were adventurers: Guest Gulkan’s faction, consisting of the Yarglat barbarian himself, the cutthroat Thayer Levant and the wizards Pelagius Zozimus and Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin.

‘What do you want from us?’ said Zozimus.

‘Silence!’ said Shabble imperiously. ‘You see this?’

Shabble unleashed a bolt of fire which melted a five-fist wound in the plax of the tunnel.

‘We’re none of us blind,’ said Zozimus, pretending (with some difficulty) that he was not impressed.

‘That’s a warning,’ said Shabble. ‘Right! March! Anyone who runs gets crisped!’

Here a native of Injiltaprajura would have told the demonic one to stop playing games and would have walked away, confident in the knowledge that Shabble was known to be loathe to burn anyone without extreme provocation. But the lawless uitlanders lacked this knowledge, hence were doomed to obey.

Long did Shabble drive these terror-enslaved victims, forcing them into the doomdepths. There they were held prisoner while Shabble amused Shabbleself by showing off. By, for example, singing various arias from the Dragon Opera, most tedious composition in all of Ho Lung’s oeuvre. If one of the hapless criminals tried to escape then the musical one would grow very hot and very bright, and the would-be hero would have to fall back. Tolon tried more often than the others, for he was stubborn and fearless.

As time went by the prisoners’ fear began to diminish. While to begin with they had been overawed by the fast-rolling sun which claimed to be a demon-god, Shabble’s frequent betrayals of Shabbleself’s childish nature led to wariness replacing terror. The captives began to try to bargain their way out of trouble.

‘If you let us go,’ said Pelagius Zozimus, ‘I’ll see you rich for ever. I personally vouchsafe your reward. By the rule of law I swear it.’

But Shabble had no use for such juratory assurances. It is hard to bribe Shabble, who has no use for sex, money, fame, power, or any of the other standard commercial jajas. If you ever have a run in with Shabble, then remember that this entity values friendship above all else. Immortals lead lonely lives, for the best of friends live scarcely more than a generation. Millennia roll by to leave one with… what?

Memories, at best.

Apart from companionship, Shabble is only interested in two things. Excitement: which Shabble seeks in delightsome practical jokes involving more than a little mayhem. Also: good conversation. Where on Untunchilamon would Shabble find such conversation? Certainly not with that relentless headhunter Jon Qasaba, who is so much the professional therapist that his idea of enjoyable social intercourse is to dissect his interlocutor.

Qasaba! The man has no manners. Has not, never had, never will. Did he look on us as people? No! As material. The raw material of his scholarly enterprises. He exploited our agony ruthlessly for the sake of a well-turned paragraph, the germ of a new theorem. He [Here a diatribe has been excised on the advice of our legal department. 0 Reno, scribe.]

[The legal advisement alluded to by O Reno suggests the excision of the diatribe on the grounds that the Qasaba in question may be the very person who at this writing is Waymaster in Obooloo. Yet surely this is an absurdity. For how could an obscure headhunter of Ashdan descent make himself master of the Izdimir Empire? How could a student of provincial madness survive the knifehand intrigues of the heartland of the Izdimir Empire? What would persuade Aldarch the Third to surrender his will to an uitlander from a treasonous splinter on the empire’s fringes? Here again we have an example of the paralytic cowardice of our legal department cramping scholastic enterprise. See my memo 19/872816 for supporting detail. Srin Gold, Commentator Extraordinary.]

But enough of Qasaba.

Let us return to our prisoners — or, in point of precise fact, Shabble’s prisoners — and watch them watching a dreamlike gemstudded machine trundling past. Under cover of the noise of its thungundling wheels they have a quick consultation. They decide if they run in separate directions Shabble surely cannot chase them all. Thus decided, they ease apart.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ says Shabble.

They don’t. For the time for thinking is over. Instead of thinking, they run. Only to find seventy-seven Shabbies where there had been but one before. Then a hundred and seventy-seven. Fireballs dancing, hissing, sliding. Scorching the walls where they impact.

The seven throw themselves flat. The fireballs die out. All but one. Which is Shabbleself, spinning triumphantly.

‘I am the demon-god Lorzunduk,’ says Shabble. ‘I existed since times antemundane. I in my glory will exist even after all the worlds have crumbled into dust.’

‘Oh what utter rubbish!’ says Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin.

Meanwhile, Arnaut fingers a knife. The young man from Asral is one of these mild-mannered people in whom there lurks a dragon-tempered brute. Sooner or later, that brute will out when some new outrage perpetrated by Shabble proves to be the last fish. Then Arnaut will run amok and launch an outright onslaught on Shabble. Which will, one fears, surely prove his death.

[‘The last fish.’ Proverbial. The last fish eaten by the glutton shark (against the dolphin’s good advice) was the one which burst its stomach. The same meaning is attached to the words ‘the seventh bone’. This is not to be confused with the outwardly cryptic phrase ‘when the jaws unhinge’, which has a meaning similar to our own proverbial ‘when the cat’s in the dogskin’. Valther Mash, Consulting Translator.]

Sooner or later.

But when?

Don’t worry. There is plenty of time. It is still only early in the life of the universe. Early early. As yet our narrative has dealt with but three days and we have all the rest of eternity in which to conclude our history.

[A conceit. A fatuous conceit. The Originator’s implied claim to immortality is but a literary conceit quite out of place in a sober historical work of this nature. In truth, the Originator is timebound like the rest of us, and knows it. In any case, there is no such thing as eternity: there is but the moment, as all timeresearchers know. Brude, Pedant Particular.]