Hugh Cook - The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers

‘We’re here seeking help,’ said Log Jaris.

‘Piss off,’ said Rat.

‘In case you don’t know,’ said Uckermark, ‘a demon, Binchinminfin by name, has taken possession of your master Aquitaine Varazchavardan.’

‘He’s my master no longer,’ said the drunken Rat. ‘I graduated to sorcerer last year.’

‘The hell with your quibbling!’ said Uckermark. ‘Are you listening to me? There’s a demon, a-’

‘We know, we know,’ said Rat. ‘We know all about that. It may mean the end of Untunchilamon. It may mean the end of the world.’

‘Why?’ said Chegory. ‘It’s, um, only a demon, okay? We can take it, gang up on it, right?’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Rat. Weeping fat tears of fear, grief and self-pity. ‘The demons have scant sense of self-discipline. The Grand Treaty of the High Consenting Powers has long been endangered-’

‘Oh, stop babbling!’ said Uckermark, with impatient anger. ‘What are you on about? Talk straight sense!’

‘I mean,’ said the young and still-blubbering sorcerer, ‘when one demon disrupts, others will likewise.’

‘What means this in-house argot?’ said Log Jaris. ‘Are you trying to tell us that other demons will do as Binchinminfin has?’

A sorcerer older, wiser and more articulate tottered over to them and said:

‘As a single ringleader can make a mob from an honest crowd, so a single delinquent demon can rouse the jealous mass of his fellows to actions criminal, even though demons and sorcerers alike know the destruction of the very world would follow. Every head in the city may house a demon by this time tomorrow morning. If so, then the world will end the day after.’

‘Then what are you going to do about it?’ said Uckermark with contempt. ‘Drink yourself into oblivion? Or what?’

‘We’re working on it,’ said the older sorcerer.

Evidendy he meant they were working on getting drunker, for he turned away and seized the nearest flask of alcohol, clearly intending to do just that.

‘Rat!’ said Uckermark. ‘We’re going to the palace to take on this demon. You’re coming with us!’

‘I’m doing no such thing!’ said Rat, who had no taste for suicide. ‘Back! Back, I say! Or I’ll turn you into a frog!’

Then Rat raised his hands and cried out in a high and hideous voice. One of Uckermark’s boots promptly turned itself into a frog. As the corpse master’s weight was bearing down on it at the time, the boot’s unexpected incarnation as a web-footed amphibian was chiefly notable for its brevity.

‘Come on,’ said Log Jaris. ‘Let’s be going.’

Nixorjapretzel Rat was raising his hands again. Was crying out. The heroes hastened toward the stairs. Fire flashed toward them. They ducked, and fled.

They halted, panting, at the first landing. The young and relentless Rat was standing at the head of the stairs, his hands raised yet again. He spoke in a high, sibilant voice. The air wavered. A good half-dozen stones directly above the heroes converted themselves to butter. One of these stones was the keystone of an arch.

‘Oh shit!’ said Uckermark.

Then led the retreat, taking eight stairs at a single leap. Behind the heroes, stones creaked. Then, with a roar, the arch collapsed. Fragments of rock pursued them at the rattle. When the heroes halted at the bottom and looked back, they saw the stonefall had sealed off the stairway.

Untunchilamon’s wonderworkers were, to a man, trapped in the Cabal House.

‘Borgan!’ said Log Jaris.

Then, having voiced that obscenity, he led the way outside. Sounds of drunken singing still floated from the uppermost chambers of the Cabal House.

‘No joy?’ said Ivan Pokrov, who had waited patiently in the street all this time.

‘Well, we did learn something,’ said Uckermark, taking off his remaining boot since he thought it easier to walk barefoot than one-booted.

‘What?’ said Pokrov.

‘The demon Binchinminfin is definitely in possession of Varazchavardan. The sorcerers have told us as much. They also say that where one delinquent demon has gone a thousand may follow.’

‘Well,’ said Chegory, trying to sound brisk and brave. ‘That’s it, then, isn’t it? There’s, ah, well, only one thing for it. Go to the palace, that’s it, then it’s knifework, that’s the way, slaughter this demon man to man.’

But they did no such thing, for before they could do anything so brave or so foolish, Yilda came panting up the street toward them.

‘Come back!’ she said. ‘Back to the corpse shop! Now, now!’

‘Why?’ said Uckermark.

Once Yilda had got her breath back, she explained.

With explanations given, all hastened back to the corpse shop. They plunged in through the wide-open door and hastened to the backsquare courtyard. There a sun-shining bubble of light was lording it over a disreputable bunch of ill-assorted humans.

‘Hello, Shabble,’ said Log Jaris, who knew the demon of Jod of old. ‘What have you got for us?’

‘Prisoners!’ said Shabble, squeaking with excitement.

Prisoners indeed. Exhausted, haggard, nerve-shattered prisoners.

The unfortunates in question were Arnaut, Al-ran Lars, Tolon, Guest Gulkan, Thayer Levant, Pelagius Zozimus and Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin. After the encounter with the dorgi, Shabble had herded them through the interstices of the underworld until at last, after following a cautiously circuitous route, they had emerged into the starlight of Injiltaprajura by night. Then the demon of Jod had brought them to the corpse shop.

“You dare much by taking us captive,’ said Pelagius Zozimus.

Strong was the voice of the wizard of Xluzu and stern was his demeanour, for his pride would not let him confess to his dilapidated condition. In contrast, his cousin Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin looked to be at death’s door, and was mumbling incoherently in the quavering voice of an old man on the edge of senility.

‘We dare nothing,’ said Uckermark. ‘It’s Shabble who dares.’

‘But, sirrah,’ said Pelagius Zozimus to Uckermark, ‘is not this ill-mannered goblin your servant?’

‘Silence!’ said Shabble, who knew not what a goblin was, but presumed the designation to be insulting.

‘Because if it is,’ continued Zozimus, ‘then I-’

‘Silence!’ said Shabble again, this time in female accents terrifying to hear. Yes, Shabble had again borrowed the voice of Anaconda Stogirov, Chief of Security for the Golden Gulag. A voice which had always commanded both fear and respect.

Anaconda Stogirov! What do we know of her? That she [Here some thirty thousand words of elaborate fantasy have been deleted. I must repeat facts already made clear in my Editorial Note. The ‘Golden Gulag’ is mythical entirely, the Originator is in many respects an irresponsible fantasist, and this Text in its entirety is to be treated with the greatest of caution. Drax Lira, Redactor Major.]

— thus we see that Stogirov was a woman worse than the Iron Lady of the Death Cycle legends.

Anyway, to return to our history.

You will remember that (some 30,000 words ago) we left Shabble in the courtyard of the corpse shop with Shabble’s prisoners. Zozimus was angrily protesting against imprisonment, and though 30,000 words have passed we find him angry still. Anyway, to return to our narrative tense (the past) let us discover him saying:

‘I am Justina’s master chef! An imperial servant! My mistress will have you fried alive unless you release me now!’

The bluff was senseless, since Uckermark already knew Zozimus to be but a foreign thief, and Zozimus knew that he knew. Even so, the bluff was a brave feat of rhetoric considering that poor Zozimus was so tired he felt drunk.

‘Maybe there will be some frying alive,’ said Uckermark, with a grin. ‘And quickly! Shabble will fry you on the spot if I ask as much.’ It was then that he saw the wishstone in Arnaut’s hands. He removed it with a polite ‘thank you’.