Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

But, with the Witchlord Onosh being finally recovered, and reconciled to joining the quest for the cornucopia to which his son had pledged himself, Witchlord and Weaponmaster left the palace of Ubazakura, accompanied by the Mutilator and a great host of his people.

They went on foot, this being the traditional manner in which the Stench Caves are approached from Obooloo, since those caves are holy, and therefore to approach those caves is to undertake a kind of pilgrimage.

While they pilgrimaged, Aldarch the Third led that multitude in a holy chant. His voice was not so melodious as that of one of his imperial dragons, but his power and status compelled Guest Gulkan to attend to him with such concentration that the Weaponmaster soon began to feel that he had never heard a more affecting plaint in all his days.

Even so, Guest did not feel very much like a pilgrim. On the night before, the Mutilator had honored Witchlord and Weaponmaster with a feast, and Guest's head was aching from all the wine he had drunk, for liquor of all descriptions had become unfamiliar to his flesh during his days of imprisonment. Yes, despite Guest Gulkan's great constitutional strength, the stress of imprisonment had weakened him bitterly, and today he felt his weakness in the length of the road, the sharpness of the light, the invincibility of the sun.

The day was hot, and in its heat the greenflies of Ang were at their pestilential worst. A hot shimmer of dragonflies flickered between the processioning pilgrims and went winging out over the Nijidith River – a slow and oozing flux of filth in which pigs were diligently rooting for their sustenance. The pigs were not by any means alone, for keeping them company were ducks which went filleting through the muck with their beaks; and, ignoring both pigs and ducks, multitudes of barefoot peasants stood up to their knees in the rivermud, and sieved it for unimaginable treasures (fish? bugs? worms? eggs? tadpoles? gemstones? coinage? bones?).

It might have been thought that the Weaponmaster would have occupied himself on that journey by making plans for resistance or escape. But he did not. The fight had gone out of him, for he had suffered too many setbacks and defeats – starting with the tearing of his arms and legs in an arena in Chi'ash-lan. That had marked him. The demon of Cap Foz Para Lash had repaired the damage done to his flesh, but his psyche had been deeply damaged. He knew his own vulnerability, and knew it too well, for all that he tried to deny that knowledge. And, having found all that all his resources of strength had failed him in Chi'ash-lan, he was less sure of those resources than he had been on that foolish day of youthful bravura when he had faced the Rovac warrior Thodric Jarl in a duel in Enskandalon Square.

Consequently, though Guest had functioned well enough when questing in the company of the wizards Pelagius Zozimus and Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, he had found it harder to play the hero without them. So when endeavoring to escape from Injiltaprajura, and finding his escape ship confronted by a fleet loyal to the Mutilator, he had found himself entirely lacking in initiative and resource; and it had only been the intervention of his servant Thayer Levant which had saved him from tamely surrendering the x- x-zix and the mazadath to the Mutilator's forces.

Since then, imprisonment and threat had further sapped Guest's confidence; and, of course, he was nursing a dragon, as the cognoscenti of Obooloo term a hangover. He was further depressed by the fact that his new boots – a personal gift from the Mutilator – were giving him blisters. Therefore he made no plans for mayhem, and he attempted no touristic appreciation of the novel sights and scenes which greeted him on the way to the Stench Gates, though he did take note of a young woman breast- feeding a piglet, which (much to the Weaponmaster's envy) nuzzled against her flesh in an utter contentment of gluttony.

As the procession drew nearer to the Stench Gates, the river became more obviously polluted – for nuggets of floating filth and lengths of what looked like intestines came floating downstream on its oily waters. These delicacies were salvaged by the bucketload by industrious peasants, who carted much away for their own use, yielding up token portions to be burnt as offerings at the several temples of the God of Bounty.

The God of Bounty, a minor god who had Zoz the Ancestral as his patron, was worshipped by the banks of the Nijidith River, and nowhere else. The largest of his temples occupied the huge portal cavern which linked the world of daylight with the inner dark of the Stench Caves, and, at the end of their journey, Witchlord and Weaponmaster were led into this Prime Temple. It was dominated by a huge carving which depicted the God of Bounty graciously vomiting into the begging bowls of His worshippers.

It was then explained to the two that they must convert to the worship of the God of Bounty if they would venture deeper into the Stench Caves. Since both were agreeable to being converted, the rites of conversion immediately began: and took a full three days to complete.

Neither Lord Onosh nor his son Guest either felt or expressed any impatience at this delay. For, while those who read histories are commonly eager to know What Happens Next, those who have the misfortune to be making history in their own right would usually rather not know, or at least not just yet. Guest in particular welcomed the respite, for it allowed him to drain and dry the blisters which he had got from his new boots on the march to the Stench Caves.

Witchlord and Weaponmaster endured the three days of ritual with such perfect patience that the high priest of the God of Bounty, impressed by their manifest piety, told them that there were two vacancies in the priesthood.

"You are candidates," said the high priest. "Say the word, and you will be accepted."

"Ah," said Guest, "but we are doomed on a quest."

"No," said the high priest. "Do but say the word, and you will be inducted into the priesthood. Priests do not quest."

Encouraged by this – for the longeurs of three days of ritual had failed to give him any enthusiasm for finding out What Happens next – Guest asked for details. He was told that the two positions currently vacant were those of the Collector of Alms and the Blesser of Turds.

"The one, by tradition, is always a blind man with his male attributes removed," said the high priest, licking his lips. "The other has no ears, and is likewise bereft of the attributes specific to his gender."

On getting a painfully precise explanation of what was meant by the removal of "male attributes", Witchlord and Weaponmaster decided that (unfortunately) neither of them was worthy to be inducted into the priesthood of the God of Bounty.

"A pity," said the high priest, who had looked forward to the task of making these potential new recruits eligible for the priesthood. "A great pity."

Then he supervised the arming of Witchlord and Weaponmaster.

They were equipped with swordbelts, with swords, with knives, with throwing stars, with eye-gouging handscrews, with darning needles and with packets of pepper. All the weapons were firmly lashed to their swordbelts (but for the darning needles and packets of pepper, which were enclosed in leather purses which had been stitched tight, the purses themselves then being bound to the swordbelts). The idea was that the questing heroes would not be given any encouragement to run amok in the temple – but, once free in the Stench Caves, they would be able to liberate a full complement of weapons at their leisure.

And so at last – much to the relief of Aldarch the Third, who lacked the infinite tolerance for ritual which Guest and his father had so capably demonstrated – Witchlord and Weaponmaster were conveyed to the innermost door of the Prime Temple which occupied the portal cavern of the Stench Caves. The Nijidith River existed from the Stench Caves by means of the gap beneath that innermost door, which was opened in a long ceremony involving much wailing, and the laceration of priestly noses, and the banging of calabashes, and the ceremonial sacrifice of a rat.