Hugh Cook - The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers

Another drop of blood dripped from Varazchavardan’s tom cheek and fell to the pink, pink tiles of the Star Chamber.

‘You can have them taken away,’ said Varazchavardan grimly, ‘when they’re all dead.’

So saying, he seized a scimitar from one of his guards. He stalked toward Odolo, intent on murder. He would save Justina to the last. She could have the pleasure of watching all her underlings get slaughtered before she herself fell beneath the blade. As Varazchavardan advanced upon Odolo, the cowardly conjuror made no move to defend himself, but instead grovelled at the sorcerer’s feet.

‘Sit up!’ said Varazchavardan, who wanted a clear target to swing at.

Odolo reluctantly sat on his thighs.

‘Raise your head,’ said Varazchavardan. ‘Come on! Chin up!’

Odolo complied.

Reluctantly.

Varazchavardan grimaced. He did not really want to do this. Like the guards, he disliked the idea of getting blood all over his clothes. If he were to behead the conjuror there would be no way to avoid such a besmirchment. Furthermore, he was wearing his favourite robes. Besides: what if Odolo flinched? Then the blade might well hack out a piece of his skull and leave him alive and screaming. Unless an expert is in charge, execution by decapitation can take a long time and be very, very messy. Still, politics is politics, so Varazchavardan had no choice.

He drew back the scimitar.

He struck.

He put all his strength into the blow.

The scimitar swept toward the conjuror’s neck.

Then burst into splinters.

Olivia screamed. Justina screamed. Ingalawa (to her shame!) screamed also. Uckermark stared in disbelief. Dolglin Chin Xter fainted. Then Chegory Guy made his move. The husky young Ebrell Islander tried to burst free- but his guards restrained him.

‘Sir!’ said Bro Drumel urgently. ‘Are you hurt?’

Varazchavardan, who had clapped a hand to his cheek, brought it away bloody. He had a fresh wound in addition to the claw-marks where Justina had scored him. A piece of shrapnel had pierced his flesh. The splinter of steel was half-projecting from his wound.

‘Odolo!’ said Varazchavardan.

He turned his bloody eyes on the conjuror. He raised his hands. He cried:

‘Jenjobo! Jenjobo! Dandoon! Dandoon!’

Smoke wreathed from Varazchavardan’s fingertips and surged toward the conjuror. The smoke formed, turned into a fifty-fingered monster, a monster dire, a monster huge, a thing of volcanic height and night-bat shadows, a thing which screamed with a lunatic voice which was half whip-crack hate and half insanity. The monster closed with the conjuror. With a death-scream, it struck at Odolo Then, on an instant, dissolved.

One moment it was there. A moment later, it had collapsed.

The collapsed remnants of the monster spilt to the floor and flowed away in all directions, steaming slightly. The monster had been converted to a flood of chowder and kedgeree.

‘Nadinkos!’ said Varazchavardan, now ankle-deep in this food-flood. Then he swore again. Then raised his hands again. In a voice of outraged fury he shouted: ‘Wenfardigo! Wenfardigo! Doktoris! Doktoris! Ko!’

On an instant a nightmarish beast formed itself from the very air. It was a creature of horror, a screaming fiend with scrabbling claws and teeth demonic. It breathed out smoke, then sulphur, then screamed again — and then attacked. But before it could open so much as a needle-point pin-prick in Odolo’s hide, it collapsed into a slather of very hot curry, adding heat and pungency to the slovenly carpet of chowder and kedgeree which had already polluted the Star Chamber.

‘That does it!’ said Varazchavardan.

Once more he raised his hands. He took a deep breath. Then he cried out again in a high, twisted language. There was a crash of thunder. A blinding flash of light. Then a hideous scream of tearing stone and rending metal.

Most people who could — fled.

Bro Drumel fled.

Chegory Guy’s guards fled.

But Chegory himself stood his ground.

Those who (like Chegory) were fool enough to linger were privileged to see Varazchavardan and Odolo grappling with each. Both had Changed. To things of stone and steel. To things inhuman which tore each other with energies unearthly.

For half a heartbeat, Chegory Guy watched these two monster-made Powers battling with each other. Then, ruled by the dictates of sanity, Chegory fled. He burst out of the Star Chamber and ran mindlessly until he collided with someone. The collision sent him sliding to the floor.

‘You,’ said tones far from unfamiliar, ‘have been walking in your food.’

Panting, Chegory looked up. The speaker was none other than Slanic Moldova. Having said his piece, the lunatic returned to his mural.

‘Sian,’ said Chegory, ‘get out of here. There’s wonderworkers at war in the Star Chamber. Sian. Do you hear me? Sian!’

But Moldova ignored him.

So Chegory picked himself up, scraped the curry, kedgeree and chowder from his feet. Then started to think. Where was Olivia? Where Ingalawa?

He dared a shout:

‘Olivia!’

Someone came running from the direction of the Star Chamber. A soldier with a torn ear.

‘Stop!’ said Chegory. ‘What’s happening back there?’

But the soldier ran past without stopping. After him came the corpse master Uckermark.

‘Come on,’ said Uckermark, grabbing ChegOry by the arm. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’

‘No!’ said Chegory. ‘I have to get Olivia!’

He pulled away from the corpse master then began to jog back toward the Star Chamber. Uckermark hesitated momentarily, said something decidedly obscene, then followed at a leisurely pace. It was far too hot to run any more. Besides, if young Chegory Guy truly wished to die, why should a law-abiding corpse master be in any hurry to join him in death?

Before the fast-hastening Chegory Guy reached the Star Chamber he heard the hideous sounds of combat still proceeding within. He gained the portals of the Star Chamber. He halted. Odolo and Varazchavardan, still guised in the very shapes of hell, were locked in mortal combat. Granching and dranching they raged, clubbed each other with synthetic gravity and clawed with sharpened light.

Harsh actinic illumination outglared from their carapaces. A matching radiance burnt from the very walls of the Star Chamber itself. No shadow could survive in that room. The dazing light was thrice brighter than the noonday sun. Chegory, near-blinded by the glare, could not tell whether any of the huddled forms at the feet of the fighters might be Olivia.

‘Olivia!’ he cried.

Then he tried to shout again — but his voice cracked, broke, failed. He swallowed. Then screamed:

‘Odolo! Varaza — Varazchavardan! Stop it! Stop!’

The two combatants broke away from each other as if they had heard him and had chosen to obey. Then, still guised in the shapes of nightmare, they growled with hideous voices which made the very floor vibrate. Then they charged each other. They flailed wildly as they clashed once more. Lighting crackled around their metal-insect hulls as they slashed and hammered at each other. They grappled. Had each other in a death-grip. They were changing even as Chegory watched, sprouting claws ornate and pincers savage, growthing clutching tentacles and head-cropping mandibles. From one came an intolerable screaming.

Then Both fighting forms collapsed into chaos.

One moment they were there. The next, gone. Dissolved to a thrashing cloud of murk and motion. Which, even as Chegory watched, reformed. The cloud of obscurity resolved itself into two human forms, radiant still with actinic light, still in a death-grip locked.

There was the flesh of Varazchavardan, and there Odolo. Who was dying, surely. For Varazchavardan had the conjuror’s neck in a grip of iron. Literally. For one of Varazchavardan’s arms had not reverted to flesh, but was metal still. That metal arm was forcing Odolo’s neck around. Soon the neck must break.