Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

"What will we say, then?" said Guest. "How will we explain away Shabble?"

"Why," said Sken-Pitilkin, "we will say that we were living on Safrak when in a demon in globular form rose unexpectedly from the depths of the Swelaway Sea and began burning and raping everything on the islands. The Confederation will take this Shabble to be a demon, and destroy it."

"That's hardly credible," said Guest.

"Of course it is!" said Sken-Pitilkin. "That's what demons do, you know. They arise when they're least expected. As for their depredations – boy, a very Yarglat barbarian would blanch at them."Guest ignored the implicit accusations of boyhood and barbarism, for he had long since grown out of taking either seriously. Instead, Guest said:

"Stories are all very well, but Shabble will give the lie to them if challenged in interrogation."

"But who would believe anything Shabble says?" said Sken-Pitilkin. "If Shabble tells the truth of what happened on Untunchilamon, and of all that has happened since, why, nobody will believe so much as the smallest fraction of it, since it is all so frankly incredible."

"Perhaps," said Guest. "But there yet remains the problem of how we are going to escape from the Confederation ourselves."

"I think," said Sken-Pitilkin, "you will find escape to be no problem at all. I think you are merely being held as a witness."

"A witness?" said Guest.

"Yes!" said Sken-Pitilkin. "Have you not understood? We are heading toward Drangsturm for a trial. My trial! I am to be put on trial for crimes against the Confederation. For sheltering Zozimus and Zelafona when they came to me for help. You will be but a witness at that trial, and then, doubtless, you will be released."

"And Eljuk?" said Guest. "And Levant?"

"The same," said Sken-Pitilkin. "And, unless he has somehow offended the Confederation in some way which is not known to me,

Ontario Nol will also be released. Be of good cheer, boy! The problem is mine, and mine alone!"

A few days after Guest Gulkan had been given this intelligence, the jailors got passage out of Cam. And thus began the final stages of the journey down to Drangsturm.

By now, Shabble was getting on famously with Eljuk. Eljuk was a born student, and Shabble, when all else failed, was a patient teacher. Shabble taught Eljuk origami, and, before the bubble was through with his teaching, Eljuk's nimble fingers could shape paper dragons, or configure a scrap of paper to an imitation of a Neversh.

The Neversh is the greatest of the brutes of the Swarms, the monsters which then dominated the lands south of Drangsturm. The Neversh has two spikes which can suck the juices from a man or a water buffalo, and both Sken-Pitilkin and Guest Gulkan had bad dreams about those spikes.

Drangsturm was now close.

From Cam, the jailors took the yellow bottle south to Narba, then traveled down through Provincial Endergeneer to the realms of the Far South, the realms of Drangsturm.

"Right!" said Guest, who longed for their arrival and for his release from the bottle. "Just wait! As soon as I'm out of here, heads will roll!"

But, when Guest Gulkan reached Drangsturm, he was dismayed to find that he was not to be liberated from the yellow bottle.

Instead, there was to be (eventually) a trial. The renegade wizard Hostaja Torsen Sken-Pitilkin would be put on trial for high treason. As Sken-Pitilkin had predicted, Guest Gulkan would be a witness at that trial, and both the trial and the pre-trial interrogations would be held in the yellow bottle itself. Sken-Pitilkin, who did not want to see Guest Gulkan put to death for perjury, advised him to tell the truth in his pre-trial interrogation.

"But what should I say about Shabble?" said Guest. "And about the star-globe? And about Doors?"

"Of Shabble you need merely say that you are ignorant," said Sken-Pitilkin. "This will be readily accepted."

"But, but what about Doors?" said Guest. "What about when they ask me about Doors?"

"Will they ask if you've got a dragon in your pocket?" said Sken-Pitilkin. Then, when Guest looked at him blankly: "They've no reason to suspect we've a Door on Safrak, so won't ask after such.

Anyway, if they ask you any question too sensitive, just say you don't remember."

"But I do remember!" said Guest.

"I'm not sure that you do," said Sken-Pitilkin, who, in long conversation with the Weaponmaster, had found that Guest's memories of the past were selective in the extreme. "Tell them you were tortured. Tell them about your time in the dungeons of Obooloo. Tell them you were driven into the Stench Caves and washed out in a great Flood. Once they know the number of your traumas, they'll not expect you to remember much."

Such was Sken-Pitilkin's counsel.

But Guest Gulkan was still greatly worried about his pre- trial interrogation until that interrogation actually began. Then he found he had no problems at all.

For Guest was a barbarian, was he not? Of course he was! And does one ask a barbarian a question of any complexity? Of course one does not! For a barbarian's brain is small, and his intellect is slow, and his wit is sufficient for nothing more than the riding of horses and the skinning of his enemies.

So those who interrogated Guest Gulkan were careful only to ask him small questions, easy questions, questions which would not confuse and jumble his poor and untutored brain.

Was he a Yarglat barbarian? Yes, he was. Was he acquainted with Hostaja Torsen Sken-Pitilkin? Yes, he was. And with the wizard Pelagius Zozimus? Again, yes. And the witch Zelafona? Yes, without a doubt. And her son Glambrax? Yes. And had he seen these three in company? Why, yes. And where was that? In the city of Gendormargensis. And when? Why, during the final years of the reign of the Witchlord Onosh.

That was all the interrogators really wanted to know from Guest Gulkan. It was sufficient to tie Sken-Pitilkin to the criminals Zozimus, Zelafona and Glambrax. It was sufficient, therefore, to damn Sken-Pitilkin and ensure his execution.

With Guest Gulkan, Ontario Nol, Eljuk Zala and Thayer Levant having been interrogated, the trial did not immediately start, for Sken-Pitilkin had demanded to be given time in which to prepare for that trial.

So Guest, being of no further interest to the Confederation's prosecutors, was turned over to the wizards of the Ethnological Commission, who were delighted at having a real live Yarglat barbarian to interrogate.

Much the ethnologists asked, and much Guest told – though he did not tell all. In particular, Guest in his shyness preserved in secrecy some of the sex customs of the Yarglat. For example, he did not confess that the woman in her ecstasy will often haul upon the ears of the man, and leave those ears a mass of bruises on the following day.

"No sex customs?" said his interrogators, when Guest tried to stonewall them on that point. "But you must have sex customs!

Everyone has sex customs!"

This is the thing about ethnology. It is very much a science of the bedroom, for your average ethnologist is nothing but a thwarted pornographer. Since the ethnologists were so insistent, Guest at last found he had no alternative but to invent new sex customs for their delectation. So he described louche orgies in which a great congress of men, women, dogs and horses took place in a gigantic bowl of strawberries and cream.

"From where are so many strawberries obtained?" said one of the more sceptical wizards.

"Well | | " said Guest.

Frankly, though the Weaponmaster had long had the image of a strawberry-and-cream orgy in mind, and was determined to stage such an event at least once before he died, he still had absolutely no idea as to how one could come by so many strawberries and so much cream – even supposing that the resources of an empire were placed at one's disposal. Guest proving unforthcoming on this subject, the interrogators turned their attention to Eljuk Zala.