Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

But it was not so. For the human material which they were endeavoring to help was unruly in the extreme.

And here one is tempted to give a catalogue, that it may be clearly understood by all of history that wizard and weaponmaster did not shirk their duty when the world was in need. But such self-defensive exculpatory cataloguing would fill many pages needlessly, and add nothing to the body of wisdom. Let it merely be recorded that, of the people whom wizard and Weaponmaster saved, at least one in ten responded by trying to murder them in an effort to win possession of the yellow bottle and its commanding ring.

And inside the bottle itself – well, the behavior of the refugees is better imagined than described. Like so many rats trapped in a cage, they fought, they raped, they stole, they murdered, and they waged warfare against each other. They fought over religion, race and language. They came to blows over matters concerning personal odours, and the food which one breed ate, and the food which another breed didn't eat. Men killed each other in fights over women and women killed each other in fights over men.

And when these refugees were set down on hard land – usually in the Ravlish Lands – they were at the mercy of the sundry bandits, warlords, slavers and professional murderers who made the plunder of the helpless their speciality.

Furthermore, Sken-Pitilkin's stickbird began to be increasingly menanced by the Neversh. The wizard of Skatzabratzumon could outfly the Neversh, the lumbering winged monsters which were the greatest of the Swarms, but they seemed to be anticipating his movements. He would fly from one, only to find his flight interesected by another at a distance of a hundred leagues. As the danger increased, Sken-Pitilkin realized that the Skull of the Deep South was distantly aware of the tiny stickbird which was nimbling in and out of the lands of its conquest, and was doing its best to destroy this adversary.

So Guest and Sken-Pitilkin were forced to become selective, to plan their raids carefully, to limit their flights, and to fly for the most part by night, when the Swarms did not fly.

It was then that Sken-Pitilkin began to hatch a grandiose plan – which was, to gather in as many wizards as he could, and base them upon Drum, and set up a new Confederation with himself as its head.

To the sagacious wizard of Skatzabratzumon, this seemed the most logical plan in all the world. The Swarms were conquering Argan, and were threatening the northern continent of Tameran and the eastern Ravlish Lands. It was therefore surely supremely logical that the surviving wizards of the Confederation should base themselves defensively upon Drum, a substantially fortified island set in a wild wash of water which was at or near the intersection of Argan, Tameran and the Ravlish Lands.

But this scheme met with little success.

One fraction of the Confederation, finding the city of Androlmarphos to be defensible, had made that city its own, and declined to exchange its comforts for the windswept barrens of far-distant Drum. Others had fled east, taking ship, and voyaging across the Inner Waters and past the Stepping Stone Islands to the Ebrell Islands. They declared the Ebrells to be a base more logical than Drum, for it was closer to the Breach (and, therefore, closer to the Shackle Mountains and the all-important Cave of the Warp).

And when Sken-Pitilkin did meet isolated wizards who had not thrown in their lot with the rival Confederations arising in Androlmarphos or on the Ebrells, why, he found that many bore a grudge against him for things he was alleged to have done in the past, and for crimes he was alleged to have committed against the Confederation; and more than one held Sken-Pitilkin to be personally responsible for the downfall of Drangsturm, and (though there was neither truth nor logic to any such accusation) tried to kill him on that account.

In the end, Sken-Pitilkin was able to bring a bare one dozen wizards to Drum. That dozen included the ethnologist Brother Fern Feathers. Fortunately, Guest failed to recognized Fern Feathers; and Sken-Pitilkin, who was fully aware of Guest's attitude toward the scientific researches of wizards, warned the ethnologist that he should do his best to conceal the scholarly labors of his past. Therefore, when Guest asked Fern Feathers to declare his history, that wizard said he had long labored as a slug chef; and with this declaration Guest was contented.

The dozen wizards brought to Drum also included (much to Guest's delight) the Yarglat wizard Ontario Nol; and (to Guest's yet greater delight) Eljuk Zala Gulkan. In the years in which Guest and Eljuk had been separated, Eljuk had attempted his Tests for a second time: and, in the Cave of the Warp, had succeeded in making the necessary alliance which made him a wizard in his own right.

But what could a dozen wizards do against the Swarms? What could they do when they were refugees upon Drum, a bare and barren island which was hard-pushed to feed itself and its sea dragons?

On their own, they were nothing. Guest therefore bent his attention once more to the business of recovering the star-globe, and to this purpose he dared the hazards of the Old City of Penvash, and spent many days up to his neck in the waters of the river which ran south from that Old City. But, search as he might, Guest never managed to recover the star-globe which could have opened the Doors of the Partnership Banks – even though he coerced Sken-Pitilkin and his fellow- wizards into assisting him in this hunt.

Concluding that the star-globe might well have been removed from the river by an earlier treasure hunter, Guest then realized the thing might be anywhere in the world. And how was he to find it when the world was so vast, and in such disorder?

It was then that Guest, for the first time in his life, began to make a systematic effort to exploit the Gift of Seeing which was a part of his inheritance. But in these efforts he failed absolutely.

For, whereas in early youth Guest had routinely had premonitions, and had from time to time endured visions of the future, and had seen things which were yet to be, and had seen too those things which were distant, in his maturity this facility had perished entirely.

There is nothing unusual in this.

For the Weaponmaster's life had been, in many ways, one long exercise in selective amnesia. If he had not been able to suppress the memory of the pain of his wounding at Babaroth, when his foot had been cruelly wounded by a bamboo spike, how then would he have been able to valorously prosecute his later battles? If he had not been able to subdue the memories of a mighty avalanche which he had used to crush, grind and pulverise his father's army during the course of Tameran's civil war, how then would he have been able to sleep at nights? Guest had forced himself to suppress his memories of the mauling he had endured in an arena of Chi'ash-lan, when the Great Mink itself had shredded his arms and legs, sentencing him to four long years of humiliating convalescence.

So.

To remember was terror. To be aware was to suffer. And, after a lifetime of blunting self-awareness and suppressing memory, Guest was entirely shut off from those wild and undeveloped Powers which (given the tutelage of a shaman or similar) he might potentially have developed into something useful.

So it was that that Guest was forced to fall back on routine method for his interrogation of the world; and, year after year, he was often to be found in D'Waith, or in Favanosin, or in Port Domax, or in the other cities to which he persuaded Sken-Pitilkin to fly him.

And, at last, Guest learnt of the location of the star-globe.

It had been uplifted from a river in Penvash by one Yen Olass Ampadara, and was presently said to be on the island of Carawell.