Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

It did not soar upwards, but, rather, went bouncing across the sea, skip by skip. On seeing Shabble adopt this slow and selfindulgent mode of transport, Guest groaned. He had a vision of the bubble slow-hop-skipping all the way across Moana, a process which would surely take days.

"Grief of gods!" said Guest.

Then made a moody promenade around his minuscule island, then withdrew – not for the first time – to the yellow bottle. With Shabble gone, Guest began to make a methodical assessment of his assets. He had food, including more siege dust than he could have eaten in a thousand years, and he had water. And, toward the end of his search, Guest realized he also had a book.

The book was a book of verbs.

To be precise, the book was Strogloth's Compendium of Delights, that hateful manual of irregularities which had vexed, perplexed and persecuted Guest's boyhood. Guest glared at the thing, then laid rough hands upon it, determined to rend it and tear it, to rough it and burn it.

Then he stopped himself.

He was all alone, marooned without women or companions, deserted by even Shabble. In this exile, nothing remained to him but the exercise of his sword and this one, single, solitary book.

"But," said Guest, "why did it have to be this book?"

Why not a pillow book, or a potentially useful Book of Maps, or a great Book of Battles, or (he had raw materials in plenty) a great Book of Cookery?

"I blame Sken-Pitilkin," muttered Guest.

For who else did he know who was in love with the verbs? Who else had the motive, the means and the opportunity to smuggle such a reprehensible object into the yellow bottle? But, regardless of who was to blame, the facts were the facts, and Guest was stuck with the facts. He was marooned on a desert island, and the sole companion of his maroonment was the most hateful book in all the world: Strogloth's monomaniacal compendium of the world's irregular verbs.

Oh doom of dooms!

Oh fates worse than death! Guest Gulkan saw the future, and he shuddered.

Moana: aka Great Ocean: that mighty body of water which has to its west the continent of Argan, to the east Yestron, to the north Tameran, and to the south Parengarenga. The several notable islands of the Great Ocean include Ashmolea (homeland of the formidable Ashdans), Asral (home of a breed of semi-piratical traders) and Untunchilamon.

Mighty is the Great Ocean of Moana and many are its islands.

Lost on a speck of sand anchored somewhere in the vastness of that ocean, Guest Gulkan endured his solitude, feeding on black slime from the cornucopia and living under the rowing boat.

The Door remained steadfastly closed.

And Shabble -

Shabble did not return. Guest was not exactly surprised by the bubble's disappearance. He could well imagine Shabble swimming in the sea with the dolphins and the sharks, or browsing through the forests of Ashmolea, or flirting with dragons amidst the higher mountains of Argan.

But what had happened to Sken-Pitilkin? And to Thayer Levant?

Even without Shabble to inform them and summon them, surely they would have reopened the Door to rescue the Weaponmaster. Wouldn't they? Or were they too scared of the unknown dangers of the Door?

Or too scared of discovering an angry Shabble? Or – had something happened to them? Guest could only guess, and though he guessed a thousand times he never struck precisely at the truth, for it never occurred to him that Levant might have had sufficient independent will to betray his master. Though Levant had kept Guest company for a good many years of wandering, Guest had never really got to know the man. He had always thought of Levant as a creature owned and operated by Plandruk Qinplaqus, and had never given him that uncompromising trust which is necessary for the fullest friendship.

In the absence of rescue, Guest languished on his island through day after day of sterile frustration, with nothing but Strogloth's Compendium of Delights to comfort him. Guest's long marooning was doubtless of great benefit to his scholarship, for, with Strogloth as his guide, he at last (and with great resentment, and with many sighs, moans and whimpers) began to explore the highways and byways of foreign linguistic irregularities. He studied in the Geltic, for instance – Geltic being the language of the Rice Empire.

Now Geltic is not one of the world's most complicated languages, and its irregular verbs are distressingly few in number. However, the verb "jop", which means "to be", is worthy of the scholar's attention. The present tense of jop, for example, runs thus: Po ojop – I am.

Skobo hunjasp – thou art.

Soth jopskop – he is.

Mo sadithjop – she is.

Parakama ipjop – mother is.

Yem opdop – father is.

Zodo nop – we are.

Bara jolp – you are.

Haji jijop – they (friends or associates) are.

Aski jujop – they (strangers or neutral parties) are.

Jili jilijop – they (enemies) are.

Bo jo – they (slaves, inferiors, animals or things) are.

Ah, how sweet it is to contemplate this spectacle! The barbarian has been tamed! His sword has failed him, and so, with the sweet resignation of a milkmaid, he bends himself at last to the Book!

And so the days passed; and the weeks; and the months; and sun piled up on sun, and moon on moon; and Guest began to mutter to himself in the foreign tongues, and found his dreams beset by their verbs, hooked verbs and winged verbs, verbs which crawled and verbs which tunneled, verbs with antennae and verbs with teeth. He imagined himself becoming a monstrous creature like the demons Ko and Italis, or like the therapist Schoptomov: a thing which sits and waits and broods and conjugates its verbs.

Surely, on release – if release ever came – he would be a master of all the languages of the world. He would be as adroitly fluent in his linguistics as one of the jade-green monsters of the Circle of the Partnership Banks, or those lurking torturing machines which skulked variously in the mazeways Downstairs beneath Injiltaprajura or in the Stench Caves of Logthok Norgos.

So thought Guest.

But – alas! – the Weaponmaster had yet to start upon the complexities of Janjuladoola, or of Slandolin, or of the High Speech of wizards, when the peace of his scholarly studies was rudely interrupted. Guest was sitting one day beneath his fishing boat, with a fishing line laid out along the beach. He was fishing. No, he was not mad. Though his baited hook lay upon the sand rather than in the water, he was still fishing in earnest. He was not fishing for fish – he had eaten fish sufficient to feed a whale, and had no wish to catch another fin for as long as he lived. Guest Gulkan was fishing for seagulls; and, though you would be right in thinking this a cruel and vicious sport, it was the only way he could get himself any fresh meat.

While Guest was so fishing – idly, for seagulls were few and far between that day – his peace was shattered by a battle-cry scream. Guest was jerked away from a semi-doze dream. He sat up in such a hurry that he cracked his head against his rowing boat. He swore, then rolled out into the sun, crouched on all fours then looked to the Door.

There was a small group of people on and around the marble plinth of the Door. And Guest realized he could hear the hum of the Door in action – a hum which he had not noticed in his earlier drowsiness. The arch of the Door was filled with a screen of liquid silver.

Hastily, Guest concealed the yellow bottle beneath his rags, then strode down the beach toward the strangers. If they had come to hunt him, then they would find him soon enough, since he had no caves or jungles to hide in. And, if they had come to rescue him, why, all he wanted was time sufficient to make a ceremonial burning of Strogloth's Compendium of Delights. Then he would be ready to leave his island.