Hugh Cook - The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers

At dawn the rays of the rising sun ignited the colours of the glitter dome atop the pink palace of the Empress Justina. The sun bells rang out. Bardardornootha had ended; istarlat had just begun. Yet although it was so early in the day it was still muggy, for though the air had grown less hot overnight it most certainly had not cooled.

The conjuror Odolo, Official Keeper of the Imperial Sceptre, felt the enclosing and unwelcome warmth of the day when, he awoke in the profound shadows of a cell in Moremo Maximum Security Prison. He woke on a single niggardly blanket which was grey with lice. He sat up, coughed, stretched, scratched, stretched again to try to ease the aches in his limbs, then tried to figure out where the hell he was.

Already Odolo was bewildered, disorientated and confused. He tried to concentrate, comprehend and cogitate, but this was next to impossible because of the words madly scrambling through his mind.

Words?

Words in Dub, Toxteth and Janjuladoola. Obscenities, profundities, absurdities and inanities. The banal and the quotidian buttock to buttock with the visionary and the esoteric. The words jostled each other senselessly in a mad tumbling disorder, thus:

Yam sot-pot in aspic flaring black dragon red farmer does dung to be art gum blue dreamfish prinked lissome their giblets of prophecy to lithe the blue supply said the rainbow of scorpions sexed cats sang the sorceress sibyl taupe baklava shim-sham-shimmying gluttoned its appetites, ravaged its seas bamboo the ebony, cassava the ivory cotton coin candles persistent in welfare snakeskinned the sunlight sheds pain Odolo pressed his head against the dank, unyielding stone of his jail cell. The stone at least was cool even though the air was over-warm. He closed his eyes. He concentrated. On ice. A big block of ice. Blue-white. In sunlight. A glory of diamonds. Cool ice. Frozen. Silent. Frozen…

Slowly, the words silenced. Odolo centred himself in his cell’s shadow-stock in the position known as Celestial Lotus. He was in control of himself. At least for the moment. He started doing a Personal Status Assessment as he had learnt to when he was an acolyte studying under Mantua Hull of the Combat Wing of the School of Strategy on the island of Odrum.

[Here a manifest error. A Records Search shows no student by name of Odolo and no instructor by name of Mantua Hull anywhere on our island in living memory. The Originator lies, or has failed to detect lies told to him by his nameless informant — Odolo himself? This error I verify-. Threndil Falcon, Keeper of the Census.]

The results of the Personal Status Assessment were reassuring. Momentarily reassuring. He was adequately hydrated. Not particularly hungry. Had slept sufficiently. Was combat-functional. Senses and reflexes intact.

Then all sense of reassurance disappeared as Odolo consulted his memories. He remembered! The banquet, of course. Those amazing walnuts spilling from his helpless hands. Then the Thing upchoking from his throat. His helpless efforts to restrain It. The outrush of acrid smoke. Then — then the dragon. The monster forming itself amidst the smoke.

Mother of turtles! They think me guilty!

If indeed the Powers That Be were blaming Odolo for manifesting a dragon in the banqueting hall then he was in trouble dire, trouble deep, trouble blue and bloody.

¦Jit!’ said Odolo.

In response to this obscenity the shadows skittered and scraped. Something dwelt within the cell. He was not alone! What was it? Claws, tentacles, teeth?

‘Nothing!’ said Odolo defiantly.

Then wished he had not spoken so loudly.

There was a monster in the cell with him! He was sure of it!

So thought Odolo — but only for a few moments. For the briefest scrutiny of the shadows showed him that nothing of any consequence could possibly be hiding there. He must have been imagining those strange skittering sounds. He put them out of mind and turned his thoughts to a more important subject: escape. Could he escape?

First, where was he? Surely he was in Moremo Maximum Security Prison on the northern side of Pokra Ridge. Okay. Could he get out? Through the floor? Through the walls? All were of the bloodstone of Untunchilamon. A rock far softer than granite. So he could surely tunnel out of his cell if allowed to work undisturbed for six or seven years. However, he fully expected his case to be resolved for better or worse (worse being torture, dismemberment and death) within six or seven days at the most.

The oppressive red of the bloodstone was already getting to him. Its blood-heavy ominousness was not at all the sort of colour to inspire optimistic thoughts. Six or seven years to get out through the walls, then. What about the door?

The cell’s massive operculum had been painted to resemble a monster with mouth wide open, slavering jaws gaping to receive Odolo into its maw. Artistic ingenuity had made the turnkey’s spyhole the pupil of the monster’s single eye. Odolo ignored the artwork. He kicked the door. It was solid. Nobody was going to use that exit but by invitation.

Odolo kicked the door once more, for luck. Then stood stock still. Listening. He could hear something! Strange skittering sounds. Yes, he could really hear them. He was not imagining them. So what was to blame? Some kind of animal? Perhaps. But there was nowhere in the cell where anything of any size could hide. Unless it was hanging from the roof.

Odolo looked up.

Moremo’s architects had placed a small window at twice manheight from the floor. Light from the eastern sun showed that nothing hung from the roof but a few cobwebs; the same light, shining on the wall opposite the window, stirred the blood of the bloodstone to life and cast shadows of heavyweight bars which prevented egress and ingress by prisoners and marauding animals alike.

Nothing is here but me and nothing can get in to get me.

So thought a relieved Odolo, then relieved himself into the magnanimous dark of the cell’s vomit hole, stirring claws in the dark below to a boiling frenzing. An unearthly high-pitched screaming arose from below. Was there a captive skavamareen down there? No! Worse! Vampire rats! The grille guarding the vomit hole was not to stop prisoners climbing Downstairs, for the sewer pipe was far too small to facilitate escape. The grille was to stop vampire rats sallying forth from the sewers to eat prisoners alive.

At this stage a stranger to Injiltaprajura might have relaxed and enjoyed his good fortune, for the grille was a heavyweight affair most certainly rat-proof. Such a stranger would have told himself he was in a cell both pleasant and capacious (as prison cells go). He had privacy. He had light. He had a bed. He had blankets, and company in plenty in the form of friendly lice most urgently desirous of intimacy. Sheer luxury!

However, the conjuror Odolo did not relax at all, for he knew all too well that this was an execution cell. Worse, it was not any old death cell. This was the horror house, the place reserved for those miscreants attainted of the crime of lese-majeste. When found guilty (and who would be accused of something so serious if they were not guilty?) then they suffered a particularly horrible death.

Odolo knew his fate. After he was convicted of treason his executioners would remove that grille then leave him alone in the cell. In the bowels of the night, in the depths of bardardornootha, there would be a snickering squeal. Then up would come the vampire rats in their legions. Then he would die most hideously, losing first his fingers in the defence of his eyes and then In panic, Odolo wondered if he was doomed already. What if he had been tried while unconscious? Tried and sentenced? Sentenced and doomed? It was all too horribly possible. Yet — the grille was still in place. So surely he had a chance yet.