Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

But Qinplaqus was adamant.

Levant must go!

"Then we will take Levant," said Guest. "And we will leave you the cornucopia which we won from the Stench Caves of Logthok

Norgos. On our behalf you may use it to generate wealth, piling up the treasure which we may need for the financing of our future wars."

So spoke the Weaponmaster. For his part, the Witchlord Onosh was not at all sure that he wished for Plandruk Qinplaqus to take charge of the cornucopia. Nevertheless, the offer could not be unsaid, so the cornucopia was handed over to Qinplaqus. But – to the mutual dismay of both Witchlord and Weaponmaster – the thing had been corrupted by over-use.

For it proved capable of generating nothing but an outflux of black slime, regardless of what was put into it – silver, gold, grapes, chocolate, sand, water, urine, cockroaches, mice, kittens, steel, copper, zinc.

A great disaster, this!

So died all visions of world-conquering wealth; and, depressed at realizing they had won no profit from their raid on the Stench Caves, Witchlord and Weaponmaster prepared to leave Dalar ken Halvar.

In accordance with the insistence of Plandruk Qinplaqus, Thayer levant accompanied Witchlord and Weaponmaster as they traveled to the Bralsh. There, the three adventurers were admitted to its weirding room; and stepped onto the marble plinth in that weirding room; and stepped through the archway sustained by that plinth; and found themselves in the Singing Dove Pensions Trust of Tang.

Again through the Door, and they were in the Taniwha Guarantee Corporation of Quilth. Another passage through that humming silver screen took them to the Orsay Bank of Stokos. Then to a room of hanging skeletons – the weirding room of the Morgrim Bank of Chi'ash-lan.

The next step would take them home.

Home to Alozay, the ruling island of the Safrak archipelago.

Witchlord and Weaponmaster braced themselves. Levant saw their bracing, anticipated swordplay, and sighed.

They stepped through the Door.

And found themselves in the weirding room in the uppermost chamber of the mainrock Pinnacle, the great spike of rock which dominated the island of Alozay.

And there -

Alozay: ruling island of the Safrak archipelago of the Swelaway Sea. On Alozay stands the mainrock Pinnacle, home to the Door of the Safrak Bank. This Bank was formerly ruled by Lord Sod, who is now a hostage on Alozay, which has been ruled by the dralkosh Bao Gahai in the absence of the Witchlord Onosh. Also in residence on Alozay is Guest Gulkan's scholarly brother, Eljuk

Zala Gulkan, he who is disfigured by a birthmark which dribbles from the corners of his mouth then spills to a merging at his neck; and Ontario Nol, a wizard of the order of Itch, who has long been Eljuk's tutor.

Through the Door came Witchlord and Weaponmaster, with Thayer Levant trailing but a footfall behind them, and there they found Shabble waiting for them.

Lord Onosh was so disconcerted that he almost turned and fled back through that Door. For, though Guest had by this time described Shabble often and at length, the Witchlord was hard put to maintain his composure when he found that the truth of this flying ball lived to the tale which Guest had told.

"Hello," said Shabble, speaking in the Toxteth which was used by so many of Alozay's inhabitants.

But Lord Onosh made no reply.

Shabble drifted through the air toward the Witchlord. The fist-sized bubble pressed itself against the Witchlord's cheek, rolled up the Witchlord's face, bumped over the ridges of the Witchlord's slanting forehead, shone a tightly-focused beam of light into the mysterious recesses of the Witchlord's bat-wing ears, then rolled down his back, ducked between his legs, and slid upward through the air till they were (so to speak) face to face once more.

"Welcome to my island," said Shabble. "I welcome you. You and my son."

Then Shabble turned on Guest Gulkan.

Shabble drifted through the air to hang hot and humming by the Weaponmaster's ear. Shabble was warm, warm as a cat's yawn, a bath-sponge sea. The warmth was suggestive of magma. Guest thought of scar tissue, of welted burns, of buckled flesh, of molten distortion, of hot-poker pain.

"You have a ring on your finger."

"A ring?" said Guest.

"A pretty ring," said Shabble. "Light within and light without. I have heard of this ring. Yilda!"

At that, one of Shabble's people approached. A woman. A hardbitten woman named Yilda, whom Guest had last seen on Untunchilamon. At that time, he had scarcely remarked her face, for he had not thought her made for great destiny. But obviously he had been wrong.

"Give her the ring," said Shabble. "Do not – do not! – swallow it. The corpse master Uckermark is somewhere in this rock, and his skill is ample for dissection."Guest knew this Uckermark also. The thus-named corpse master had been another of the denizens of Untunchilamon, another of those people whom Guest had never expected to see ever again in his entire life. Guest handed over the ring of ever-ice, the ring which could open and close time pods.

Yilda slipped it on her own finger. Guest then expected Shabble to ask for the mazadath, the silver-gleaming amulet which hung round Guest's neck, against his skin and hidden from the world.

"Guest," said Shabble, singing the name with lilting sweetness. "Guest. There is something else."

"Is there?" said Guest.

He was very conscious of the mazadath's weight. He did not want to give it up. Why? He knew of no certain use for it. But if he could only retain its possession, concealing it from this Shabble, then he would feel he had won a victory of a kind, if only a moral victory.

"Guest, Guest," crooned Shabble. "My dear friend Guest. The wishstone. You had it. Where is it?"

"Did I have it?" said Guest.

"You did!" said Shabble. "And the Cockroach has need of it!"

"Then," said Guest, "you'll have to ask Thayer Levant where it got to, because he was the one who had it last!"

"Levant?" said Shabble. Guest indicated the ever-faithful Thayer Levant. Shabble sang out for guards, and Levant was taken away for interrogation – while Witchlord and Weaponmaster were escorted to the lower depths of the mainrock Pinnacle. Guest and his father fully expected to be promptly thrown into a prison cell. But, instead, they were shown to the best of all available quarters, and were told that they were to be guests of honor at a banquet.

And, that very evening, Guest Gulkan and his father dined in the banquet hall which was such a prominent feature of Dolce Obo, the Pillow Stratum of the Grand Palace of Alozay. Guest was surprised to find the bounty of the autumn harvest gracing the banquet table, for the Weaponmaster had been chronologically disorientated by the pressure of recent events, and by his rapid translation between the differing climates of Obooloo, Dalar ken Halvar and Alozay.

But autumn it was. Guest Gulkan had spent so much time adventuring in Untunchilamon and counting the shadows in a dungeon in Obooloo that the Witchlord Onosh had not been liberated from his time pod in the Temple of Blood until that Midsummer's Day which had been the first day of the Third Year of Peace in the Izdimir Empire.

That day was now three months in the past; the season had turned from summer to autumn; and Alozay was feeding on all which came to the Safrak archipelago from the lands surrounding the Swelaway Sea. Plums, pumpkin, apples, cucumber… Guest lost track of the number of fresh good things laid out to eat.

Yet the Weaponmaster found he wished to satisfy his appetite for conversation more urgently than he wished to appease any demands made by his belly.

At the banquet table he could see his brother Eljuk, and after their long separation Guest found himself longing to talk with Eljuk. Eljuk had stayed on Alozay when Witchlord and Weaponmaster had departed, meaning to raid Obooloo and rescue the Great God Jocasta from Anaconda Stogirov's Temple of Blood.