Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

"Watch," said the Mutilator. "You will find this very interesting."

At first it seemed that nothing was happening. Guest raised his eyes to the blue sky and the high mountains, to the impeccable white of the distant snow. He had a great yearning to be free from this place of self-important steel and degrading spectacle, to be free to walk in those mountains and to leave his footprints in those snows. He remembered the far-distant mountains of Ibsen-Iktus, remembered the blackrock razorblade of those uppermost heights, remembered the high-altitude winds which had stripped away the snows in pluming streams which -

"Watch," said the Mutilator, with something of the corkscrew in his voice. Guest, called back to the filthy spectacle before him, forced himself to study the wretched thing which lay before him in the crippled eloquence of its squalor. It lay on its belly. He could see its ribs moving with the lizard-quick panting of its breathing. It was going nowhere, yet it was exhausted by the rigors of the journey. Guest caught a whiff of the stench from the slime-coated body, and he almost gagged.

He controlled himself.

He struggled to understand.

What was the true import of this spectacle? What was the significance of bathing a man in his own filth? Was this some insult to the pride of the Janjuladoola? Some insult based on the transgression of protocols and the breach of taboos? Was this the ultimate punishment of the Izdimir Empire? To be made to lie helplessly for day after day in the putrid stench of one's own dung and urine?

Aldarch the Third, who had been covertly watching the Weaponmaster, grunted with satisfaction. He gave an order. This time the translator rendered it into Toxteth for Guest's benefit:

"Wash the man."

A bevy of slave girls approached, each bearing a wooden bucket brimming with water. Aldarch dipped his fingers into each bucket in turn, then signified his approval. The buckets were emptied over the man, were emptied one by one, and as the downpour washed away the slime it became possible to see, and as it became possible to see -

"Watch," said Aldarch softly, as Guest Gulkan looked away.

"Watch. Look closely. Watch and learn."

By an effort of great self-control, Guest forced himself to watch, forced himself to look closely, and forced himself to see, to learn, and to understand.

The forty days of immersion in sesame oil had caused the skin to be eaten away from the body, exposing the bare flesh and the blood vessels. Little remained of the face except those parts which had been free from the fluid. The rest was gone. As for the head, why, the sesame oil had eaten away the skin of the scalp. The bald bones of the skull were bare, their sutures clearly visible.

Across the bare bone there laced a webwork of arteries.

"Soon," said the Mutilator. "Soon it will begin. As the water dries, so it will begin. He is tender after his long confinement, and the air is painful."

"The air?" said Guest, not quite understanding.

"As you see," said Aldarch, indicating the specimen on the floor in front of them.

Even as Guest watched, the anatomical specimen before him began to tremble as if shivering. Then it began to move, warping in slow-motion agony. Guest was reminded of a spider crumpling in a flame. But this was a slow, slow fire. This fire did not quickly consume the flesh.

The man on the floor jerked in spasms. His wet slithering spasms reminded Guest obscenely of orgasms. Aldarch the Third watched with intense interest. Even for him, this was a special thing. He did not see this every day. The Mutilator's attendants were, one and all, frozen into a hieratic stillness.

"It hurts him," said Aldarch, speaking with a softness which the interpreter translated in a bare whisper. "He is burning. It hurts him to breathe. It hurts him to be."

As if in response, the writhing man began to mutter, speaking in choked intakes, speaking in the language of drowning, speaking of pain, of strangulation, of the unutterable.

"Always," said Aldarch, intently. "Always. It always happens this way. He is speaking."

"Of what?" said Guest.

"Of his pain," said Aldarch. "He begs for his mother in her mercy. He begs. But. But if you ask – he can tell you the future if you ask."

"This I – I don't need to know the future," said Guest. "I'll face the future when I come to it."

"The man will die anyway," said Aldarch. "Since the man will die in any case, you might as well have the knowledge of his wisdom. I will ask your future for you."

Then, abruptly, the Mutilator stepped down into the well.

Disregarding the stench and the filth, he straddled the writhing man. Then, to Guest's utter horror, the Mutilator seated himself on that appalling figure. The living corpse screamed in a high- pitched whistle. The Mutilator slapped it. Slapped it hard.

Splatters of filth flew in all directions. Then the Mutilator spoke to the thing, spoke with a snarling savagery, as if to a delinquent dog.

At which -

At which the man either did or did not begin to speak. Guest was not sure whether the dying man was speaking, but he knew for a certainty that he could hear a voice of some description, a withered voice which was warped with agony, a voice outgulping words in gouts, words of terrible import.

Then the voice fell silent.

Aldarch the Third rose from his victim, who had ceased to move. The Mutilator scrambled out of the shallow well. He looked uncommonly ungainly as he climbed out of that pit, but his ungainliness did not detract from his dignity.

A slave girl approached, bearing a canary-yellow handcloth which steamed slightly. Aldarch took it, wiped his face, cleaned his hands, then tossed it into the pit. Despite this token cleansing, the Mutilator was still besmeared with filth. He stank.

But he did not seem to mind. He looked the Weaponmaster in the face, and he said:

"He says you will kill your father."Guest shuddered.

For it was hard to deny the likelihood of any prediction by such a terrible.

"That is what he says," continued the Mutilator. "He says that you will kill your father. And I say this – if you cannot or will not liberate your father from the time pod in the Temple of Blood, then you will most certainly be the death of your father.

For I will put that pod in a fire then heat it until it bursts."

As Guest absorbed this threat, the Mutilator enhanced it with one last statement: "I have done as much before."Guest shuddered.

And, with that, the Mutilator exited, leaving the Weaponmaster to contemplate the final twitchings of the man who lay dying at his feet.

Stench Caves: complex of caverns from whence that thin and putrid flux known as the Nijidith River outflows and courses west to Lake Kak. The Nijidith River affords pigs and such with a constant source of nourishment, and was the original attraction which caused Obooloo to be founded on the shores of Lake Kak.

Choosing to quest to the Stench Caves and thus save his father from incineration, Guest Gulkan confessed to the location of the ring of ever-ice which had the power to open and close the time pods in the Temple of Blood.

Once Guest had confessed, the sewer-flavored waters in the Temple of Blood were siphoned dry, and the muck at the bottom of the octagonal chamber which housed the Great God Jocasta and the demon Ungular Scarth was sieved until the ring was found.

Then Aldarch the Third used that ring to open the time pod which held the Witchlord, and the man fell from that pod, and was received by the Mutilator's healers. Thereafter, the Mutilator wore the ring of ever-ice on his own hand.

Now since Lord Onosh had been sorely wounded when Guest had first consigned him to the safety of a time pod, and since no time whatsoever had passed for Lord Onosh since then, he proved grievously wounded when liberated, and was some months recovering.