Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

"It is best," said Lord Onosh, scarcely able to speak because of the pain of his wound. "I can hardly stand, far less walk."

So Guest took the ring of ever-ice which hung from a chain round his father's neck, and with that ring he opened an empty time pod. Zozimus and Sken-Pitilkin helped the Witchlord into the pod, then Guest used the same ring to seal it.

Upon which the men who had surprised them on the stairs started to pour into the octagonal chamber.

"Scarth!" bellowed Guest. "Kill them!"

So saying, Guest gestured dramatically at the men who were pouring into the chamber. Such was the drama of the Weaponmaster's gesture that the ring of ever-ice escaped his hand. Still strung on its metal chain, it flew through the air, clittered to the steel grille, slipped through, slished into the oily depths of pungent sewerage, and was gone.

"Pox!" swore Guest.

As if commanded by this Word, the demon Ungular Scarth lashed the air with tentacles of quick-slicing green. But the chamber was too large for the demon's tentacles to command the whole of it, and Guest and his companions were soon sorely oppressed by their attackers.

"Go!" yelled Ungular Scarth.

Taking the hint, the adventurers began to retreat down the tunnel by which they had first penetrated to the Great God's chamber. They retreated through the darkness to the central courtyard which contained the Burning Pit.

"Your airship!" said Guest to Sken-Pitilkin.

"It was not made for ascent," said Sken-Pitilkin. "It was but a crude device made to let us float downwards. We cannot escape."

"Not by that means," said Pelagius Zozimus. "So let us try our strength in combat!"

"Which way to the Temple's outer gate?" said Guest.

"How would I know?" said Zozimus.

"The gate to the Temple of Blood is on the southern side," said Thayer Levant.

Since a few lights shone atop the great rock Achaptipop, and since Guest Gulkan knew that great rock to lie to the north of the Temple of Blood, it was the work of a moment to determine which way was south.

An archway on the southern side of the Temple's central courtyard gave the adventurers access to yet another tunnel, and by dint of the speed of their feet and the bloody commitment of their swords, they shortly found themselves out on the streets of Obooloo.

"Which way now?" said Guest Gulkan.

"How would I know?" said Pelagius Zozimus in extreme irritation, somehow presuming that this generalized question had been addressed specifically to him.

"Now," said Thayer Levant, "we must make for Achaptipop. This way!"

Levant knew Obooloo intimately, since he had been there so often in the past with Plandruk Qinplaqus. And Guest Gulkan, who had initially thought Levant to be the most useless member of their party, was swiftly changing his opinion, and was now more inclined to think Levant likely the most useful of their number.

But the adventurers found the way to Achaptipop was barred against them. For alarm-trumpets blown on the heights of the Temple of Blood had already roused a great number of soldiers into the streets, and roadblocks had been thrown up, dividing Obooloo into a number of small areas between which communication was impossible.

Finding themselves trapped in a small area of the city, and surely doomed to be discovered by search parties, Guest Gulkan and his companions turned again to Thayer Levant, and asked for direction.

"I think," said Levant, "that only one recourse remains to us, and that is to make our way to the House of Conceded Sacrifice, which lies nearby."

"The House of Conceded Sacrifice?" said Guest. "That sounds ominous."

"It is," said Levant. "For it is a place where people go to die, and death is the only way to leave it."

This scarcely sounded inviting, but the inhospitality of the city was such that, in the end, Guest Gulkan and his companions had no alternative but to accept Levant's advice, and to consign themselves to the House of Conceded Sacrifice.

House of Conceded Sacrifice: an institution in Obooloo which has the legal right to offer unassailable protection to all and sundry – for a price. It is nominally devoted to the worship of the Experimental Frog (also known as the Missing Frog, the Mouth of Blood, Our Great Lord Hosjabajaba, and as Jolatarba the Gourmet). Once refugees run out of money they are invariably dissected, their dissection being dedicated to the greater glory of the said Frog.

So it was that Guest Gulkan and his comrades escaped from the Temple of Blood and surrendered themselves to the House of Conceded Sacrifice, where they were received with the traditional courtesy extended to all who sought that refuge.

Night was almost done by the time the adventurers were safe in that refuge. Then came the dawn, bringing the familiar sun, the familiar sky. Yet despite the renewal of sun and sky, Guest Gulkan felt as if the world had been turned upside down.

The Weaponmaster had firmly expected that by now he would have been a wizard, and the honored ally of a liberated Great God, with the world at his feet, and enough strength at his command to allow him to crush the greatest of his enemies beneath the pad of the smallest toe of his left foot.

Instead, Guest had failed utterly. The Great God and its demons had been proved to be lairs. Guest's father had been sorely wounded, and was now imprisoned in the unchanging stasis of a time pod inside the Temple of Blood. The ring which commanded that time pod had been lost to a pool of sewage inside the Temple of Blood.

And as for Guest, why, he found himself a prisoner in the House of Conceded Sacrifice, which offered refugees sanctuary for only as long as they could afford to pay for their keep.

Once the adventurers had exhausted their supply of ready cash, they would be dissected, this dissection counting as a sacrifice in honor of the Experimental Frog, the deity to whom the House of Conceded Sacrifice was dedicated.

The priests of the House of Conceded Sacrifice provided the adventurers with a list of temple charges. After consulting with the other adventurers, Guest pronounced the prices reasonable, and announced that he and his companions would stay for twenty-nine days then prepare themselves for dissection by drinking themselves into insensibility. Guest made this announcement in Toxteth, which was the only language he had in common with any of the priests of the House of Conceded Sacrifice. He made the announcement directly to the High Priest of that House, since Guest and his companions had stirred up so much trouble in the city that no lesser dignitary dared to deal with them.

"I have heard," said Guest, "that there is a spirit of great potency distilled from the crushings of the sugar cane."

"There is," said the High Priest gravely. "It is called rum."

"Very well," said Guest. "On the thirtieth day, we'll drink down a barrel of this – this rum. A barrel between four. Will that suffice?"

"My lord," said the High Priest, "a barrel would suffice for the suicide of thirty. We do not wish you dead."

"I am of the Yarglat," said Guest staunchly. "I will still be fit enough to scream, even should I drink the whole of this barrel to myself. I have but one request. After I have been dissected, I wish my body to be burnt of a pyre of my own making. My companions wish likewise."

The High Priest had no objection to this, so Guest Gulkan and his companions spent twenty-nine days building such a pyre, configuring it in the form of a gigantic bird's nest, and at dawn on the thirtieth day they all four of them piled into this stickbird and took to the heavens.

Up, up, up and away they whirled! Guest whooped with exhilaration as he looked down upon Obooloo. Then he spat.

Unfortunately, Guest's spittle fell into Lake Kak, a body of water so thoroughly polluted that no act by any human agency could possibly damage it further. Still, this gesture of defiance buoyed up the Weaponmaster; and, thus buoyed, he settled himself down to endure the rigors of air-flight.