Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

"So," said Qinplaqus, "you now have a source of earnings here, which will guarantee your financial security during the years of your retirement if you meet with failure in your quest."

This was all very reasonable, but it dismayed Guest thoroughly. Retirement! Was he to think of retirement? He was in his maturity, was at his peak, was ready for the rule of the Circle, the rule of the world! How then could he think of retiring to Dalar ken Halvar? To live by the Yamoda River; to swim in the waters of Lake Shalasheen; to eat polyps and soy beans; to live in a bamboo hut… no, it was scarcely a vision of paradise.

Having divested himself of the yellow bottle and its controlling ring, Guest then decided to leave his mazadath in Dalar ken Halvar. He knew what it was for, and knew it was no good to him.

This left Plandruk Qinplaqus holding the profits of the struggles of Guest Gulkan's life. The Silver Emperor had become the guardian of the yellow bottle and its controlling ring; the mazadath; and the cornucopia, which steadfastly refused to generate anything whatsoever except black slime. The Silver Emperor was ruler too of the x-x-zix, the fabled wishstone of Untunchilamon, which still refused to control the Hot Mouth.

Despite all the efforts of a team of mad scientists supervised by Asodo Hatch, this weather machine remained beyond human control, and it was supposed that it might take two or three generations to discipline the thing. Guest thought of these treasures as tokens of defeat. Rightly or wrongly, he had derived one great lesson from their possession: he was not adequate to the difficulties of contending against demons and gods. The great error of his life had been when he had first trusted the demon Italis.

Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis, demon of Safrak and Guardian Prime, had promised Guest that he would be granted the powers of a wizard if he would only liberate the Great God Jocasta from imprisonment in Obooloo's Temple of Blood. But the demon had been lying. The Great God Jocasta had been lying. At great personal cost, Guest had succeeded in liberating Jocasta from the Temple of Blood – and Jocasta had immediately possessed him, and had tried to make him kill his father.

Thanks to the intervention of Anaconda Stogirov, Guest lived free of possession, his father yet survived, and a badly damaged Jocasta was hiding out in the nethermost depths of Cap Foz Para Lash. In preparation for his onward journey, Guest visited Cap Foz Para Lash himself, and paid his respects to Paraban Senk, the disembodied entity which commanded that trogloditic realm.

Inside Cap Foz Para Lash, Paraban Senk organized running repairs on the Weaponmaster's teeth. His teeth were treated in the same room of miracles which had secured the regrowth of his arms and legs after his long-ago mauling by the Great Mink of Chi'ash- lan. That same room of miracles cured the Weaponmaster of threadworm, roundworm and ringworm, treated him for dandruff then sampled his blood.

After his blood had been sampled, Guest Gulkan was told he had been infected by yaws, a tropical disease transmitted by the contact of skin with skin. If left untreated, it would – or so he was told – it would deform his bones and damage his joints. But treatment was offered to him in the form of a dose of chemicals, and this he took.

He was told also -

But enough is enough!

It would be wrong to intrude upon the Weaponmaster's privacy by itemizing the various diseases with which he had infected himself in the course of his travels. Let us remark only that, while many questing heroes have died by the sword, and an equal number have fallen to dragons, a far greater proportion of such creatures have been ultimately struck down by syphilis, or by other diseases similarly acquired and yet more fearsome in their operation.

With this visit to Cap Foz Para Lash having come to its conclusion, Guest was ready to leave. Or, not exactly ready – for he was daunted by the difficulty of the task which yet awaited him. But there was nothing more to be secured by lingering further in Dalar ken Halvar.

Plandruk Qinplaqus organized Guest's transport as far as the realms of Drangsturm. A military convoy escorted him from Dalar ken Halvar to the seaport city of Estro Sex. From there, an imperial ship took him to the Ebrell Islands, then through the Stepping Stone Islands to the Inner Waters, landing him in due course at the Castle of Ultimate Peace, the stronghold which guarded the eastern flank of Drangsturm. Guest landed with some trepidation.

For, as far as the Confederation of Wizards was aware, Guest Gulkan had died in the Cave of the Warp in the Shackle Mountains, when he had ventured beyond the Veils of Fire. There was a danger, then, that he would be recognized; that recognition would lead to arrest; that arrest would lead to torture; and that, having been rigorously tortured for his secrets, he would be handed over to a cabal of wizardly ethnologists for lethal dissection.

Yet, as Guest knew well from his earlier sojourn in the realms of Drangsturm, the management of trade along the Drangsturm Road (the road between the Castle of Controlling Peace and the Castle of Controlling Power) was routinely controlled by the soldiers of the Landguard. Since Guest was presumed to be dead, no member of that garrison force would be on the lookout for him, so he thought the danger of his capture was minimal.

In practice, Guest proved right in this. He was able to travel the Drangsturm Road unmolested, thus reaching the Salt Road which ran up Argan's western seaboard. Guest headed toward Narba, feeling rather more hopeful now he had negotiated the dangers of Drangsturm. But, en route to Narba, he began to hear the most troubling news from the north. There were wild rumors of war; of dragons; of a Power which turned the living to stone; of battles of wizards; of the overthrow of cities; of a wholesale piracy which looted entire provinces; of plague; of mad dogs; of living rainbows; of werewolves; of outbreaks of contagious vampirism; of blasphemy; of revolution; of treason; of treachery; of floods; of orcs and ogres; and (ah! fearsome threat!) of rates of inflation running at a thousand percentage points per day.

Giving support to the probability of threat was the fact that the roads were clogged with refugees; and, on reaching Narba, Guest found that many of the people there were sailors and merchants customarily based in Androlmarphos, people who had been away from that city when it was struck by war, and were unable to return there because the city had fallen to an alliance of pirates.

From what Guest could make out, it seemed that the city of Androlmarphos had been invaded by pirates from the Greater Teeth.

The Harvest Plains, the nation which owned the seaport of Androlmarphos, was arming for war – seeking to displace the pirates from their seaport. In the Rice Empire, the armies were likewise arming for war, and – if rumor was to be believe – Lord Regan of the Rice Empire hoped to profit from disturbance in the Harvest Plains by launching an invasion of those Plains.

This gave Guest a problem.

How was he to go north in the face of such a concatenation of difficulties? And if he did go north, how was he to preserve himself against being mistaken for a spy, or for a pirate, or for a bandit?

Fortunately, an easy solution to Guest Gulkan's difficulties was at hand. Narba had long traded with the pirates of the Greater Teeth; and, now that those pirates had ambitiously seized the city of Androlmarphos, Narba continued to provide them with every facility they could pay for. So pirate recruiters were working freely in Narba, recruiting mercenaries, and pouring out the treasure of Androlmarphos to build an army which could contend against the might of the Harvest Plains.

So Guest volunteered himself for war, and thus was shortly shipped north to Androlmarphos, so avoiding the dangers posed by whatever part of rumor could be substantiated by fact.