Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

Then Levant fired, unleashing a blunt-tipped quarrel which went hurtling in Shabble's direction.

The quarrel smashed into Shabble.

Shabble was slammed across the room and knocked through the nearest arched window.

"Go!" yelled the Weaponmaster.

Sod charged across the room, grabbed the star-globe, then rushed to the window. Guest Gulkan followed, as did Levant. Levant gave a piercing whistle. In response to that whistle, Sken-Pitilkin's airship swooped down. Guest, Sod and Levant joined Sken-Pitilkin, Eljuk and Ontario Nol in Sken-Pitilkin's stickbird. Sken-Pitilkin took the starglobe into his own hands – for he thought Sod an unreliable custodian of such a treasure – then sent his stickbird whirling to the skies.

As Sken-Pitilkin and his passengers climbed toward the heights, there glowed in the fog behind them an arc of fire, an arc which marked the wrath of the burning of the exterior stairway built out from the side of the mainrock Pinnacle.

For Shabble, it was all very confusing. Shabble was happily dreaming, bobbing up and down in seas of silver-sharded dream music, when the world suddenly bucked and buckled, and the bubble of bounce found itself unceremoniously smashed into wakefulness.

"Squa!" squeaked Shabble, in shocked amazement.

The entire world appeared to have unaccountably vanished.

Gone was the mainrock Pinnacle, gone the kitten-friendly company of wishstone and star-globe. Instead, Shabble was lost in a formless blackness-in-grayness-in-blackness, a nothing-in-nothing, a primordial pre-Creation chaos.

The world had ended!

The universe had ceased to be!

Time was at an end, and Shabble had suffered the misfortune of surviving that end!

Shabble had time to think just this:

– Woe!

Then Shabble realized that Shabbleself was falling.

A moment later, the bubble was struck by the slam-shock impact of the Swelaway Sea. The falling bubble hit the waters hard and fast, and plunged deep into the watery darkness.

Lost.

Bewildered.

Utterly confused.

In many ways, Shabble was much smarter than any human, but Shabble had been short-changed in the matter of unreasoned orientation. A human shocked awake in unfamiliar circumstances will orientate itself to new surroundings almost instantaneously.

A cat or dog will do likewise. But Shabble had been designed to run on logic – albeit the logic of a child rather than that of an adult – and hence was poorly equipped to deal with any alogical ellipsis.

And what is more illogical than to go to sleep in a tower and wake to find oneself in water?

– But it is water.

So thought Shabble, still sinking, and still trying to work what had happened and where it was.

– I'm in water.

– I think.

– But what kind of water?

Then Shabble steadied itself. Once stable, Shabble spat out a fireball to mark its place, then let itself sink again. Using the quick-fading fireball as a watermark, Shabble computed the rate of sinkage, deduced the salinity of the water, and pronounced the water fresh.

– I'm in fresh water.

– The Swelaway Sea is fresh not salt.

– So maybe.

– Maybe…

The hard-thinking bubble decided that maybe – indeed, probably – it had been violently displaced from the mainrock

Pinnacle and precipitated into the waters of the Swelaway Sea.

Which meant…

Why, it meant that in all probability someone had attacked poor Shabble with a weapon from the Nexus or the Technic Renaissance. Perhaps a force-shock projector such as a Maverick IV slam-gun.

"Well," said Shabble, loudly, "you're going to pay for that."

Having issued that threat – easy enough to do underwater, since Shabble lacked any mouth or other orifice, and hence could speak as easily to the fishes as the birds – Shabble quested upwards to the surface.

Won the night air.

Spun thrice, to rid itself of excess water.

Then started to climb.

Somewhere out in the fog of the night, a fire was burning, high, high above the water. Shabble sent flame flaring through the baffling fog, fire answering to fire. Then Shabble homed in on the flames, and found the stairway outside the mainrock Pinnacle to be burning.

It had been the hope of the conspirators that Shabble would be confused by the fire, and would waste valuable time in searching the burning stairway for clues as to the loss of the star-globe. But Shabble had lived through much human disorder, and on the grounds of grim experience the bubble of bounce had come to associate arson as a customary and essentially motiveless manifestation of all other forms of disorder.

Therefore, when Shabble saw the stairway burning, Shabble thought thus:

– Oh, the stairway's burning!

And having thus acknowledged the fact, Shabble wasted no further time on it, but instead did a swift-search sprint up and down a quick half-dozen stairways.

The search ended when Shabble dropped down to the Palace Docks of Alozay and found Sken-Pitilkin's stickbird missing. Then Shabble guessed! Then Shabble knew!

The bubble sprinted outwards, whizzed upwards, shot through one of the windows of the Hall of Time, and spun to a hovering halt in the presence of Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis, Demon By Appointment to the Great God Jocasta.

"Where's Sken-Pitilkin?" said Shabble. "Him and whoever's with him! Where are they?"

"They are fled by air," said Iva-Italis.

Since Shabble's arrival on Alozay, the quarantine which had previously isolated the demon had ended entirely, and Italis had since made up for lost time. Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis knew much, heard much, guessed much, was nourished in wisdom by spies and informers, and had wit sufficient to deduce what was not told by direct presentation. "They are fled – Sken-Pitilkin, Sod, Levant, Guest Gulkan, and possibly others. They have fled by air, and if you are swift you will catch them."

"Which way have they gone?" said Shabble.

"Seek!" said Iva-Italis. "Seek, seek! For as you bubble in your folly they are cleaning their heels with the moon's doormats."

"The clouds, you mean," said Shabble.

"Of course," said Iva-Italis, indulging in a moment's smug pride. "For I am a poet amongst other things, poetry being – "

But Shabble was gone already.

Through a slit window shot Shabble, slicing with speed toward the north. Then Shabble climbed, and scanned. But all was cloud, impenetrable cloud which hid the thieves who had made off with the star-globe. Shabble blasted fire in all directions. Clouds bloomed red. Water steamed as bolts of Shabble-wrath struck home.

But all was useless, useless, for the night was vast and Shabble but a pinprick lost in that night. Shabble was most upset.

Everything had been going so well! It had been so much fun!

But now -

Shabble returned to Alozay, and in the Hall of Time the bubble of bounce again sought counsel from the demon Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis.

"What's happened, little friend?" said Iva-Italis. "Couldn't you catch them?"

"No," said Shabble. "They got away. Where have they gone?"

"Come closer," said Iva-Italis, "and I'll whisper it in your ear."

"Shabbles don't have ears," said Shabble, keeping well out of reach of Iva-Italis. "Just tell me where they've gone and I'll -

I'll, um – "

"You'll do me a favor," said Iva-Italis.

"Yes!" said Shabble.

"Then," said Iva-Italis, "listen closely, little friend. I don't know for certain where they've gone, but Sken-Pitilkin, you doubtless recall, is not known as the wizard of Drum for nothing."

That was all the clue that Shabble needed. The wrathful bubble promptly launched itself into the night skies, making for the Penvash Channel, for the island of Drum, and for a confrontation with those who had stolen the star-globe.