Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

Obooloo: capital of the Izdimir Empire. Lies amidst mountains in the province of Ang in the heartland of the continent of Yestron.

In the end, Guest Gulkan could not be dissuaded from his madcap plan to venture to Obooloo to liberate the Great God Jocasta. Furthermore, he sought to implicate and involve his father in this plan; and the Witchlord Onosh, who was consumed with guilt because he felt himself partly to blame for Guest's mauling in the arena of Chi'ash-lan, felt constrained to agree to commit his own strength to the raid on Obooloo.

So Guest said goodbye to Penelope, telling her that he was going to fly away on Sken-Pitilkin's stickbird, the airborne contraption which had so lately terrorized the skies above Dalar ken Halvar.

This was a blatant lie, since Guest was actually going to travel to Obooloo by way of the Doors of the Circle of the Partnership Banks; but the Weaponmaster had told his wife nothing of that Circle or those Doors, and did not intend to.

"When will you be back?" said Penelope.

"As soon as I can be," said Guest, speaking in perfect honesty.

For, though her womb had proved barren, Guest was generally satisfied with his wife, and had no thought to abandon her on a permanent basis. Rather, he wished her to do what the wives of heroes have always done: to wait.

"You'll be back?" said Penelope, seeking confirmation of the Weaponmaster's pledge.

It would not be true to say that the purple-skinned Penelope was passionately in love with Guest Gulkan. Nevertheless, he had been tolerably civil and attentive to her during four long years which she had spent as a refugee in the tunnels of Cap Foz Para Lash, sheltering from the wrath of her home city, which had given itself to the madness of the religion known as Nu-chala-nuth.

Indeed, Penelope would surely have fallen in love with Guest entirely, had she not already pledged her heart to another. That other was a valorous Ebrell Islander, Lupus Lon Oliver by name. To tell the truth, Penelope had once been married to the valorous Lupus, and had never gone through the formality of getting a divorce. The red-skinned Lupus Lon Oliver was currently in insurrection against the city of Dalar ken Halvar and the religion of Nu-chala-nuth. He was leading a wild life in Parengarenga's deserts, fighting with a band of doomed but undaunted revolutionaries led by a female of the Pang, a woman warrior named Shona.

In the absence of Lupus Lon Oliver, her true love, Penelope had developed a strong affection for Guest Gulkan, hence sought his return.

"I'll be back," confirmed Guest.

"Then," said Penelope, "take this."

And, with that, she took from her neck the bright-metal chain which she customarily wore, and passed the chain and its pendant to the Weaponmaster.

"Thank you," said Guest, taking the chain and the amulet which served as its pendant.

This object he had seen often enough, for Penelope wore it always, whether she was clothed or naked. He knew already that the pendant burnt with its own light, and was not surprised by this.

But – the weight!

The amulet was small enough for Guest to conceal in his fist, yet it was so uncommonly heavy that he wondered at its weight.

Over the last four years, it had been so much a part of his everyday existence that he had ceased to notice it. But now he looked at it closely. The webbing and weaving of half a thousand filigree threads created the oval of the amulet. The wire of which this work had been fashioned appeared at first glance to be silver, but it was not, for it glistened with a shimmering light like the moon itself made liquid and mixed with mercury.

"What is it?" said Guest.

"It is luck," said Penelope.

Then she kissed him.

So Guest Gulkan departed from the minor mountain of Cap Foz Para Lash, taking with him a mazadath, an amulet of Nexus make.

This mazadath – the pendant which Penelope had given to her Weaponmaster – had once been part of a dorgi. And the dorgi was a formidable brute of animated metal which had once guarded the tunnels inside Cap Foz Para Lash.

(At any rate, this is what Paraban Senk told Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, for that disembodied demon, on realizing that Penelope had given her amulet to the Weaponmaster, and that the amulet was about the depart from Cap Foz Para Lash, was loathe to see the thing go; and, speaking privily to Sken-Pitilkin, Senk requested that the wizard relieve the Weaponmaster of his burden. Something Sken-Pitilkin declined to do, for life was difficult enough already without gratuitously enhancing its difficulties by trying to steal a love-charm from a Yarglat barbarian).

So it was that Guest Gulkan took his leave from his wife

Penelope, exited from Cap Foz Para Lash, and made his way through the city of Dalar ken Halvar to the Bralsh – the building which housed the Door of Dalar ken Halvar's Door.

According to their plans, Weaponmaster would unite with Witchlord on Alozay, then together they would venture to Obooloo to liberate the Great God Jocasta. By now, Guest was fired up with a great enthusiasm for his mission, and for the quest for the x-x- zix which would follow it.

Witchlord and Weaponmaster would not be venturing alone, for the wizards Pelagius Zozimus and Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin would be daring the dangers with them, together with the knifeman Thayer Levant. The last-named, Levant, was undoubtedly sent by Plandruk

Qinplaqus to spy on the others, but they did not resent such scrutiny, since a cheating of the Silver Emperor formed no part of their plans.

Plandruk Qinplaqus came in person to the Bralsh to see them off.

"One last thing," said Qinplaqus, once all their arrangements had been confirmed and reconfirmed for one last time.

"What?" said Guest "Good luck," said Qinplaqus.

That benediction meant a lot to Guest, and it warmed him mightily as he ventured through the Circle of the Partnership Banks, passing from Dalar ken Halvar to Tang, from Tang to Quilth, and then to Stokos, to Chi'ash-lan, and then to Alozay.

On Alozay, the ruling island of the Safrak Islands, Guest Gulkan was greeted by his brother Morsh Bataar, who brought him dire tidings of disease.

"Our father is ill," said Morsh.

"Ill?" said Guest, in startlement.

This was the last thing which Guest had expected!

"You speak as if you doubt my word," said Morsh. "But it is true. As a horse has hair, so our father has an ailment. He cannot quest with you, not yet, for his doctors have pronounced him too sick to stir from his bed."

"What's wrong with him, then?" said Guest.

"He has a cold," said Morsh.

"A cold!" said Guest, scandalized.

They were heroes, were they not? Questing heroes! Truly heroic heroes, their deeds and avowals proportioned like the greatest of those of legend. How then could they be held up by a trifling matter like a cold? Guest demanded to be shown into the presence of his father, and found Lord Onosh laid up in bed with a bad headcold, which he was endeavoring to treat with a medicinal concoction compounded of lemons, hot water and something strongly alcoholic. As a consequence of the side-effects of the alcoholic component of this medicine, Lord Onosh had reached a stage of pronounced incoherence.

This did not please the Weaponmaster at all, who in his anger was threatening to scalp the Witchlord when the Witch herself appeared. Bao Gahai hustled Guest out of the sickroom, interrogated him at length about all of his doings, then at last consented to leave him in peace.

In the moody solitude of his disappointed brooding, Guest

Gulkan took himself off to the Hall of Time. This was guarded by men with spears, and by solid doors which a blacksmith had closed with chains. Both the men and the doors resisted the Weaponmaster's will, but Guest at length succeeded in subduing the men and having the doors broken down.