Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

"In proof of my honor," said Guest, "I must quest to Obooloo to liberate the Great God. Besides – without Jocasta's help, how can I win a wizard's powers?"

Paraban Senk heard this out to the finish then said:

"I think you bound to no quest, for I think Jocasta has lied to you. There are many kinds of god and many kinds of demon, but Jocasta is no god, demon, devil or hero. Jocasta is only a machine, and Iva-Italis likewise. Iva-Italis is a farspeaker designed for use in war, and Jocasta is a thinking machine which once proved delinquent in the exercise of its will. Both are devices of delinquency – fraudulent, scheming, power-crazed and treacherous."

"I think," said Guest, his response so instantaneous as to make it very improbable that any thinking had gone into the framing of it, "that you don't like me and you don't want me to be a wizard."

"The wizards of this world," said Paraban Senk, "have gained their powers by making an alliance with entities of the World Beyond. Since the machine which calls itself Jocasta is no such entity, it cannot make you a wizard. It can however make you a slave. Jocasta can build a web through your body, a web through your brain. With such a web once built, Jocasta can control you, body and brain alike, and project power through you, albeit at a risk to your health." Guest frowned.

"What web do you speak of?" said Guest. "Is Jocasta a kind of spider?"

"Jocasta," said Senk, "could conjure in your flesh and bone a web of nerves of cunning design. With your body thus adapted to a new pattern, Jocasta could make you flesh of its flesh, mind of its mind. At a distance you would be safe, but if ever near the Great God then you would be its slave. It could control you likewise if you were ever near a farspeaker such as the demon Iva-Italis."

"I don't understand," said Guest, still frowning. "I don't understand this – this web."

"Do you expect to understand?" said Senk, who really thought it over-optimistic to expect a Yarglat barbarian like Guest to understand so much as basic arithmetic, far less the greater mysteries of the world.

"If you'd stop talking in riddles and talk sense for once," said Guest, "then I'd understand soon enough."

"All right, then," said Senk. "Supposing you have a ball of string which is knotted and raveled. Can you talk to it? Or with it?"

"That's a nonsense question," said Guest. "String can't talk.

It's not in the nature of string to talk."

"Isn't it?" said Senk.

"Of course it isn't!" said Guest.

"Have the Yarglat no music? Have you never seen a harp?"

Since the making of music was not one of the strong points of Yarglat culture, harpists had not exactly been thick on the ground in Gendormargensis. But Guest knew of the instrument, and, sensing that for some obscure reason any denial of harp knowledge might be though of as a demerit, he staunchly said:

"We Yarglat are mighty in harpwork. We are famous for it."

"So," said Senk. "What is the harp if not a string which talks?"

"But that's a trick!" said Guest. "The riddle wasn't fair!"

"Whoever said we were playing at riddles?" said Senk. "I speak of no riddles but of facts. String in combination with the simplest of devices can talk as a harp, or hear the wind as a windchime, or pull a fish from the sea, or kill a man by triggering a trap, or weave itself to art in the game of cat's cradle. Your body is one knotted, raveled, snarled-up ball of string, and Jocasta is the weaver who can shape it to a new pattern, then play that pattern with the skills of harpist and fisherman."

"Jocasta is then a thing mighty in power, then," said Guest.

"You admit it!"

"Is there no sense to be got out of this thing?" said Senk, in an exasperation which echoed that of the learned Sken-Pitilkin in one of his more frustrated moments.

"I'll take no talk of sense from a schoolteacher, which is all you are," said Guest. "I'm an emperor's son and heir to an empire myself. I'm oath-bound to rescue Jocasta, and so I will."

"You are not oath-bound at all," said Senk. "You are not oath-bound because Jocasta lied to you. The thing cannot make you a wizard. It can only control you, possess you, seize you, subject you. Use you as a tool, a thing."

"But it bound itself to me in honor," said Guest.

"It has no honor!" said Senk. "honor is – how can I put this? You're mortal, you die, you seek significance in the face of mortality, you seek a meaning. The oath-culture is quest for precisely that: significance in the face of mortality. The honor of a man's death is the meaning of that death. Jocasta shares no such fear of death, hence needs the support of no such culture, hence cannot be trusted to hold to an oath. Do you understand?"

"You are a schoolmaster," said Guest, "hence have an ethnological temperament. But a thing – you're like Sken-Pitilkin.

What's it all about, that's what you say. Then you riddle out a meaning, then you say because it's got a meaning it's got no meaning. First you shape the thing in words, then you say the thing's only words so it's nothing. But things are things despite any number of words, and a thing is good in itself. My horse, my woman, my honor, my sword. My honor – "

"Your honor is not a thing," said Senk, with crushing force.

"You confuse categories. You confuse your horse with your honor when your horse is a flesh-and-blood animal with mass, weight and an appetite for hay, whereas your honor is a cultural construct, which is something quite different."

"Yes, well," said Guest, not appreciating that he had just been crushed under one of the heavier hammers in the intellectual toolbox, "you're talking categories, but that's just like breaking up a bit of bread, you get big bits and small bits but it's all bread when you're finished with it."

Though Guest had been tutored by the wizard Sken-Pitilkin since the age of five, he had nevertheless ever preserved a sturdy independence of intellect, reinforced by a close observation of a world in which brightsparking intellects (such as that of Eljuk

Zala) tended to lose out to solid-muscled swordarms (such as that of Guest Gulkan).

Paraban Senk protracted the argument for another three days, until at last in the despair of reason he recognized the Weaponmaster's implacable resolve, and began to counsel Guest as to how he might (just possibly) be able to bring his mission to a successful conclusion.

This complicated Sken-Pitilkin's plan to quest to the island of Untunchilamon to rescue the x-x-zix: for Guest was determined to first dare to Obooloo, penetrate the Temple of Blood, rescue the Great God Jocasta, and (by way of reward) win the powers of a full-fledged wizard.

"We could manage such a mission," said Sken-Pitilkin at last,

"but there is one thing which must be done first."

"What?" said Guest.

"First we must recover the ring of ever-ice which you won from Banker Sod," said Sken-Pitilkin. "For, if you die in Obooloo without revealing its whereabouts, then it will be lost to the world forever." Guest, who had preserved the secret of this ring's whereabouts as much as an act of independence as anything else – for, as an invalid, what other sphere of independent action had been left to him? – declared the thing to be in the care of one Anna Blaume, proprietor of the Green Parrot, an establishment in Galsh Ebrek. Sken-Pitilkin then undertook the tricky business of recovering this ring, which he handed over to the Witchlord Onosh.

Lord Onosh then used the ring to open one of the pods in Alozay's Hall of Time, and to incarcerate within that pod the woman Yerzerdayla.

Lord Onosh then directed Sken-Pitilkin to make one last attempt to dissuade Guest Gulkan from the folly of his planned onslaught on Obooloo: and Sken-Pitilkin reluctantly accepted this commission.