Hugh Cook: The wizards and the warriors

These two did not lance boils, perform abortions, repair hymens or draw teeth. They had not devoted themselves to the High Arts in order to labour over ingrowing toenails. Their hands held the powers of thunder; they had mastered the Names and the Words; they had learnt the Four Secrets and the Nine Mysteries; they had the harsh pride of those who follow the most rigorous of intellectual disciplines. They were meant for greatness: but wherever they went, young men would come slinking up to them to beg cures for oozing chancres, and furtive young women would bring them their tears and fears. They would never shake the appellation of pox doctor, even though they had done nothing to earn it.

Of the three, only Miphon had really studied the gentle skills of healing; only he was humble enough to put himself at the service of the common people.

That night, there was a birth. As the local midwife had lately died of septicaemia, Miphon served as accoucheur, delivering the child with aplomb. It was the easiest birth he had ever attended – and he had seen many in the families of the Landguard of the Far South. As always, he felt joy at this most common yet most profound of all miracles. As it has been Written (in Kalob IV, quilt 9, section 3b, line xxii): 'The greatest Heights yield to those who stoop the Lowest'. Miphon. reaching those Heights, was amply rewarded.

The people credited him with the easy birth, though in fact he had done little except be there to catch the baby. He was honoured by being asked to name the perfect girl-child who had just joined humanity.

T name her Smeralda,' said Miphon, giving her the nicest name he knew.

'May we know who she is named after?'

'A good person,' said Miphon, thinking quickly. Who'd choose to be named after a deceased donkey? He improvised: 'A princess of Selzirk, pride of the Harvest Plains.'

This satisfied everyone.

Miphon got little sleep, for Phyphor woke in the early-early, and forced them to set off down the road by darkness. Proper food and a proper bed had rejuvenated him; he was eager to close with Castle Vaunting and finish their business with the wizard Heenmor.

And so it was that three Forces left Delve by night, all Powers in the World of Events, Lights in the Unseen Realm, Graduates of the Trials of Strength, Motivators of History, masters of lore versed in the logic of the Cause and the nature of the Beginning. And the peasants of Delve, despite their gratitude for the successful birth, told rude pox doctor jokes when the wizards were gone, then returned to the pleasures of seducing their sisters and scratching the boils on their backsides and the lice in their hair.

Dragon: large scale-armoured egg-laying fire-breathing carnivore, not to be confused with the sea serpent of the Central Ocean or the taniwha of Quilth. Dragons are not related to the colony creatures of the Swarms but are related – distantly – to the phoenix and the basilisk, and – very distantly – to the platypus. There are three types:

1. Common or land dragon: very large, inimical, extremely destructive aviator of limited intelligence, typically leading a solitary, cave-dwelling existence;

2. Sea dragon: flightless, intelligent, gregarious creature noted for vanity and promiscuity. Robust swimmer, but mates on land – frequently. Properly flattered, is relatively harmless, but if scorned becomes extremely dangerous;

3. Imperial dragon: lithe, sinuous, domesticated flying dragon of Yestron, where it is famed for its gentle nature and plaintive song. Extremely susceptible to all those diseases which affect bees, it also swiftly becomes alcoholic if exposed to temptation.

Alish, watching the rising stars, judged the night half gone. It was time to set out. Hearst, roused from sleep, was soon asleep in the saddle; he did not wake again until they were nearly at Maf, ten leagues south of Castle Vaunting.

Waking, he found that words already dared by Prince Comedo's jester began to nag through his head:

Sing now the song of Hearst the dung, A drunkard with a braggart's tongue.

Now Hearst he thought that pigs could fly, When wine-cups he had gundled, So pumped his loins and puffed his boasts, Then off to Maf he trundled.

But Hearst found pigs can't reach the sky:

No dragon had he fondled When slipped his foot to fill his mouth, And screaming he fell down to land, Spread wide across the grinning rocks:

The place which now the seagull mocks.

Sing now the song of Hearst the dung, Unmastered by his pride and tongue, Split from his crutch to his boasting lung, No prettier than what the seagull done.

The song had found popular appeal with Comedo's men, a rag-tag rabble of bandits, pirates, assorted thugs and deserters. Later, no doubt, they would have time to make a longer, bawdier, funnier song.

Their drinking doggerel would tell of how, a few days after the dragon Zenphos raged across Estar, the wizard Heenmor fled the castle. Prince Comedo, desiring revenge for insults and injuries the castle had suffered, sent Morgan Hearst out wizard-hunting with nineteen mounted men. But when his horse fell lame, he missed the kill – and it was the men who died, not the wizard.

Hearst's temper – never a steady beast, that temper -had grown stormy in the days of lame-foot limp-foot jokes that followed, leading him to drink more than he should have to ease that temper to its nightly sleep.

Finally Morgan Hearst, scourge of the Cold West, had sat at the card table with a full skin to lose money, shirt and sword to the young fool Prince Comedo.

Hearst – drunken, boastful, vain – had made one last gamble: 'This one last wager I'll make with you on the turn of the next card, and if I win I'll reclaim all I've lost, and if I lose…' – Ah yes, you lost, didn't you, bird-dung, and that's why you're here.

For this was the wager: 'If I lose, I'll go to Maf to scale the cliff that daunts the eagle's wing; I'll raid the lair where the dragon Zenphos lives; I'll bring you the red ruby of legend which the wizard Paklish set in the dragon's head, after the sage Ammamman tore the left eye from its socket.'

Thus the wager.

– So. It's done. Now for the death.

He had known the wager for madness even as he made it, but he had been too proud to retract it. They would have laughed at him. He was strong, and brave, but a laugh could wound him to the marrow.

– They would have laughed at you, and made rude jokes about you, and talked for generations about the wager Morgan Hearst made in his cups, and had to retract in shame.

– But they'll joke away regardless, after you fall. They'll call you a zany fool, a drunken clown.

– They'll be right.

Already, he could imagine, in precise detail, the disaster which lay ahead of him. He knew that he was doomed. He was sober for the climb, but he was sure it would make no difference.

In the half-light before sunrise, they saw the bones of men, cattle, a small whale, a juvenile sea serpent. The horses, picking their way over the stony ground to the southern face of Maf, grew uneasy; finally Durnwold's baulked, and he had to dismount and lead it by foot.

All too soon, they were there.

'Rise, sun!' cried Comedo.

The sun obeyed.

'Your sword,' said Comedo to Hearst, as the sun 47 splayed their long shadows across the ground. Hearst yielded the blade.

'But remember,' said Hearst, 'I regain it if I succeed.' 'If?' said Comedo. 'You venture an If? You disappoint me.'

Hearst grimaced, but said nothing as the prince brandished the battle-sword Hast, a weapon as famous as the warrior Morgan Hearst. Avor the Hawk had dared many battles with that blade, never finding any man to match him. A woman had killed him in the end – his seventh wife had poisoned him when he discarded her for an eighth. After that, the sword had come to Hearst, who had carried it year after year in the Cold West, till it was as much a part of him as his arm.