Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

On hearing the words "nanotechnological manipulators" phrased in that alien nomenclature, the quokka flinched as if burnt.

"Aha!" said Guest. "It confesses its nature, does it?"

"I confess nothing," said the quokka sullenly.

"Then I will hang you," said Guest.

"If you hang me," said the quokka, "then you'll die. You can't get out of here alone."

"Well then," said Guest, "if I must die, I'll at least having the satisfaction of having one last meal before I do die."

With that, the Weaponmaster rose to his full height, and raised the bootlace. The quokka was dragged upwards onto the tips of its toes. It squealed as the noose tightened. Guest eased off the pressure – just a trifle.

"All right, all right!" said the quokka. "I'll show you, I'll show you! I'll show you the way out! But. But. You have to promise me. You have to promise not to kill me."

"You have my word," said Guest. "I give you my oath upon it.

I swear by my honor. I will not kill you, nor do you any other harm. But – but! This oath is conditional. To be honored with your life, you must find us the cornucopia."

"The cornucopia?" said the quokka scornfully. "There's no such thing."

"Then," said Guest, again tightening the bootlace, "you will very shortly find yourself equally non-existent."

At that, the quokka was at last persuaded, and, with uncommonly little fuss and difficulty, it guided them first to the cornucopia – which was hidden in a the heart of a three- dimensional maze which would have perplexed the intellect of any five dozen mathematicians put together – then led them to a gnarled flight of derelict stone stairs which led upward.

"Your liberty is at the top of these stairs," said the quokka. "But as for me – this is as far as I go."

"Very well," said Guest. "Father mine, it is time for you to hang this quokka."

"Hang me!" said the quokka, in great distress. "But you swore to preserve me!"

"I swore to do you no harm," said Guest, demonstrating his rapidly advancing philosophical prowess by a strict application of logic. "That is not the same as preserving you. I will be true to my oath. I will do you no harm. It is my father who will do you harm."

"I doubt it," said the Witchlord.

"What?" said Guest, startled.

"You may amuse yourself by hanging this rat, if you wish," said Lord Onosh, "but I think it beneath my dignity."

"Dignity!" said Guest. "We're not talking dignity! We're talking of law! This thing has led men to its deaths, I'm sure of it. Are we to let it free to lead more men to destruction?"

Here Guest had a point. It was undeniably true that the quokka had tried to lead both Witchlord and Weaponmaster to their deaths; and, in all probability, if released it would encompass the death of anyone else who found their way into the Stench Caves. So it was necessary to hang it. Hanging is an ugly business, and in an ordered society there would be no need for it, since in an ordered society, there would be no need for it, since an ordered society would have an Inspector of Boats to regulate the sale of boats and an Inspector of Caves to regulate the governance of Stench Caves.

But as Guest Gulkan lived in a singularly disordered age, a great age of darkness in which competent Inspectors and other regulatory bureaucrats were singularly thin on the ground, he must necessarily be put to the trouble of undertaking the singularly brutal business of hanging in order to serve the ends of justice and preserve the lives of the unwary.

So the quokka was duly hung; and, having been hung, it was eaten. Raw. For Witchlord and Weaponmaster did not have a tinderbox between them; and, besides, they were in no mood to waste time on unnecessary cookery.

Having eaten the quokka – not all of it, for they were not hungry enough to trouble themselves with the guts, and they discarded the fur and the bones – Witchlord and Weaponmaster ventured up the stairs.

At the top of the stairs, the two Yarglat barbarians found themselves at the bottom of a huge pit. Honest sunlight beamed down on them from the top of the pit – it was by Guest's reckoning late afternoon – but the walls of the pit were quite unclimbable.

Witchlord and Weaponmaster climbed to the small mound of rubble in the middle of the pit, a mound made of rocks and of bones, of stones and of dirt, of the droppings of bats and the feathers of vultures. Guest saw something which he thought he recognized. He picked it up. It was a skull.

"So much for that!" said Guest, tossing the skull away.

The quokka had betrayed them!

Realizing this, Guest greatly regretted having persuaded his father to hang the brute. He had discovered one of the great drawbacks of hanging, which is this: supposing you hang a person, and that person then proves to have been a greater criminal than you thought, why, it is impossible to recall them so you can escalate their punishment. This is why, under many of those regimes which do practice hanging, convicted criminals are kept under lock and key for as much as ten or twenty years, to allow the authorities time to prove out any greater crimes of which they may be guilty.

"We have at least the cornucopia," said the Witchlord, trying to be encouraging.

"So we do," said Guest. "So we do."

But he thought of the possession of this magical device as a totally inadequate compensation for being marooned at the bottom of an unclimbable pit somewhere in the Stench Caves of Logthok

Norgos.

So thinking, Guest let the cornucopia fall, then kicked it as it fell. It flopped into the air then sprawled flat on the ground.

The cornucopia was a piece of wrinkled green leather the length of Guest's forearm. It was shaped like a hollow cone, and nothing could be seen within it except a voluminous blackness. It was flexible, and could be comfortably folded up and stuck in one's pocket, and it worked as advertised – that is to say, it duplicated anything which might be put into it. Guest had already tested it by spitting into it and getting it to duplicate his dribble in a constant stream.

"Since we've got time on our hands," said the Witchlord, "you might make use of that thing to make me a ring."

"A ring?" said Guest.

"Yes," said his father. "A ring of ever-ice. Or are we to fight over the one you're wearing on your finger?"

"That's a thought," said Guest.

So he took the ring from his father, sucked on it to remove all crusted mud, spat out the mud, picked up the cornucopia, held it upright, then popped the ring of ever-ice into the voluminous darkness.

Then Guest turned the cornucopia upside down.

Out fell the ring of ever-ice.

Followed by a twin of itself.

Then a triplet.

Then, in a cascading rush, some seven or eight thousand rings came pouring from the cornucopia, piling up around their ankles in a clickering chittering turbulence.

"Whoa!" cried the Witchlord in alarm. Guest jerked the cornucopia to the upright, thus cutting off the flow of rings.

"Wah!" he said.

Then stooped to inspect the hoard at his feet.

"Why," said Guest in disgust, picking up a handful of rings,

"they're rusted!"

And it was true.

The rings were rotten rounds of rust, each with a glob of rust where the original had displayed a chip of ever-ice. But where was the original?

"Where is my ring?" said Guest.

"It was probably the first to fall out," said his father. "It fell at your feet, so – don't move!"

Then Guest stooped to the scrapmetal nightmare at his feet, and rummaged through it with an avaricious diligence. Not all of the rings proved rusty, and some were tolerable counterfeits of the original. But Guest eventually located the one true ring of ever-ice, which could be told from all the others because only the true ring shone with its own inner light.