Hugh Cook - The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers

‘I still don’t know why he made that dragon, though,’ said Chegory. ‘At the banquet, I mean.’

‘Maybe it was a joke,’ said Uckermark.

‘Banquet!’ said Pokrov, grateful to have something sensible to say. ‘That reminds me! I’ve been so busy all day I haven’t yet had lunch. Would you care to join me? Odolo doesn’t need us to watch over him.’

Chegory wasn’t really ready for another meal. In fact, he felt sick at heart because he had abandoned Olivia to the dangers of the pink palace. Furthermore, despite the anatomical difficulties involved, this sickness of heart had communicated itself to his stomach. In short, he was off his food.

Still, it would have been rude to refuse. Besides, in the presence of Pokrov, Chegory still felt constrained to play the role of the polite, disciplined, upwardly mobile young Ebrell Islander. Even though he knew he was a doomed outlaw, a debauched wastrel on the run from law and authority both, a hoodlum hopelessly entangled in a world of drugs, deceit, conspiracy, coups and sudden death.

‘Yes,’ said Chegory. ‘That’s, um, a great idea. We’ll have lunch, okay, it can’t make things worse.’

Over a (very) late lunch they discussed the probable fate of Olivia Qasaba and Artemis Ingalawa.

‘I wouldn’t worry about them,’ said Ivan Pokrov blithely. ‘Varazchavardan’s got nothing against them. Doubdess they’ll be back at the Dromdanjerie right now, cleaning up.’

Chegory shuddered.

‘You didn’t see what we saw,’ said he.

After lunch, Chegory quit the Analytical Institute and stood on Jod’s burning shore, where the wealth fountains were still pouring out streams of dikle and shlug as if they would never stop. The longest fountain flow on record had lasted for three years and had killed out all the lagoon life to a distance of five leagues from the disaster. Judging by the quantities of dead fish afloat in the harbour, this latest outburst might prove equally as disastrous.

Still, who could complain? Without such poisons, there would have been no wealth on Untunchilamon. It was dikle, shlug and other alien substances equally as miraculous which had made the island a wealthy and desirable part of the Izdimir Empire and had financed the construction of the fair city of Injiltaprajura.

Young Chegory Guy looked across the Laitemata Harbour to the streets of that city. All looked quiet. Dead. Normal, in a word. For in the usual course of events nothing would move in Injiltaprajura in the late afternoon of a day so hot.

Chegory watched the distant pink palace.

WTiat the hell had happened back there? He had seen a contest of Power between Varazchavardan and Odolo. The pink-eyed albino had almost broken Odolo’s neck. Then the conjuror had somehow rendered the wonderworker unconscious. Then, before Uckermark and Chegory could kill the odious Master of Law, Nixorjapretzel Rat had intervened.

‘So what do I know?’ said Chegory. ‘I know Varazchavardan wants to win Injiltaprajura for Aldarch Three. That he wants Justina dead. And me dead. And Olivia dead. And Ingalawa dead. And Uckermark dead, come to think of it.’

Yet Ivan Pokrov would have it that there was nothing to worry about!

The more Chegory thought about it, the more he was sure the Analytical Engineer was being wildly optimistic. Pokrov was so bland, so sure, so confident. So detached from reality! This was a life or death situation. Very shortly, Chegory was going to be dead. Unless Varazchavardan died first.

‘He’s got the soldiers on his side,’ muttered Chegory.

Then, after some thought: ‘But all it takes is a knife. One man with a knife.’

There was not much question about who that man was going to have to be. Yet Chegory did not rush back to the palace then and there to do or die in the manner of heroes for he had been taught to think his problems through before he acted. Think he did. But little good it did him! The process of thought made his head hurt and his tongue go dry, but apart from that it had no demonstrable effect whatsoever.

Yet, even when Chegory realised thought was useless, he did not rush into action. Instead, he procrastinated, pretending he was thinking still. In truth, he was afraid. The world had become larger and its stones had become heavier and harder — while Chegory himself had become smaller and softer and more vulnerable to pain. At last, all pretence of thought wearied away to nothing. He sat on a rock and concentrated on sweating.

Thanks to dehydration, Chegory was wearier yet by the time salahanthara came to an end. A malevolent sun sank through skies of butchery to seas incarnadine. Then the day died in a spectacular display of exsanguination as the colours of bloody death drained from the sunset sky. The sunset bells — drowned by blood, no doubt — failed to ring. The redskinned Ebrell Islander, his own colours darkening to death in the worldshadows of evening, sat on the shores of Jod watching the bloodstone buildings of Injiltaprajura clotting into the black congealment of night. Still the dikle and shlug poured endlessly from the wealth fountains, and still the oppressive heat suffocated all of Untunchilamon. Then, in the dark, Jod’s slabender frogs began to chorus: Gork-mork-gork-mork. Gork-mork-gork-mork…

The night was hot. Breathless. Stars conjured themselves in the heavens in the livery of phoenix and firedrake. Chegory sat there staring across the black waters of the Laitemata until he had come to a decision. He would- ‘Chegory!’

It was Ivan Pokrov, calling him.

‘What is it?’ said Chegory in a voice of charred wood and cracked leather.

He was thirsty, thirsty, he had not realised he was so thirsty.

‘It’s Odolo. He’s roused himself. He’s got something to tell us.’

So Chegory roused himself from his rocks and accompanied Ivan Pokrov inside. Pain pulsed in his skull: a headache brought on by heat and lack of water.

When Chegory entered Odolo’s sickroom, the first thing he saw was the ugly Uckermark. The corpse master, who still smelt faintly of the dead, was trimming the wick of an oil lantern. How hideous he was! A grotesque mess of scars and tattoos. He grunted as Pokrov came in behind Chegory, then said:

‘Our friend’s excited.’

He spoke truly. The conjuror Odolo was sitting up in bed. He was alarmingly feverish, his eyes over-excited, his hands conjuring rhetoric from the air, his knees jog-jolting beneath a thin mosquito sheet. He reminded Chegory of the way some of the more manic patients in the Dromdanjerie looked just before they gave themselves to violence.

‘Excited indeed!’ said Pokrov, observing Odolo’s agitation. ‘Has he told you why?’

‘He’ll tell you himself,’ said Uckermark.

Then, having trimmed the oil lamp, the corpse master left the room. Odolo began his explanations instanter.

‘I,’ said the conjuror, speaking clearly despite the bruises disfiguring his throat, ‘have been possessed by the demon Binchinminfin. ’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Chegory, imitating Jon Qasaba’s most soothing voice to perfection. ‘Yes, um, that’s okay, all right? Just sit back, nice now, nice and easy, and we’ll, ah, we’ll take care of things, okay?’

‘You’d better believe this,’ warned Odolo. ‘Lives are at stake. Don’t think me mad. Can madness by itself conjure dragons or make a man the match of a wonderworker in battle?’

Chegory made no answer. What could he say? He had made yet another social gaffe! Everything he did or said or thought was wrong, and got him in trouble with someone. He was too tired to cope. He just wanted to vanish.

‘Well,’ said Odolo. ‘Can it? Can madness conjure the powers of magic?’

‘I must apologise on behalf of young Chegory Guy,’ said Ivan Pokrov. ‘He’s boarded at the Dromdanjerie for so long that he probably expects everyone he meets to be at least half-way insane.’