Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

But the face!

As the man drew near, Guest Gulkan saw his face was hideously disfigured by burns. Twisted welts and lava-field fluxes had warped that face until its age and race were beyond determination.

On his right hand, the man wore a glove puppet in the form of a green-skinned dragon with red dewlaps. As he drew level with Guest, the man's right hand moved. The dragon snapped at Guest's ear. And it had teeth! Yes, there were miniature teeth built into the mouth of the glove puppet, teeth sharp as razors! Guest's hand went to his sword.

But the stranger laughed, laughed like a bell, laughed with such penetrating clarity that one might imagine him to be heard from one side of the Swelaway Sea to another. He had a singer's voice, trained to carry, and the laugh was a song of sorts, so penetrating that Guest felt its vibrations in his bones.

Disarmed and made dumbstruck by that laugh, Guest stood like a scarecrow, gawking at the stranger. Who sniffed him. Smelt him.

Sucked sweat, dust and dinner into his nostrils. Sampled him.

Memorized him. Then snorted, hummed, winked, and went tripping down the western stairs, the light of his lanterns swaying from the walls in a warmglow wash as he descended.

Such was Guest Gulkan's first encounter with Yubi Das Finger, a citizen of the Empire of Greater Parengarenga, and a resident of the far-distant city of Dalar ken Halvar.

Descending the stairs, the stranger began to sing. Abruptly, his song was cut off by a lurching cry. There was a pause. A scream! In panic, Guest sprinted to the head of the stairs, his sword already in his hand.

Then upward from the depths below there came a bright and bell-clear laugh, a laugh both generous and mocking at the same time, and Guest knew himself to have been the victim of a joke.

Sweating and blood-pounding – in the aftermath of his influenza, he was far too weak to enjoy such a joke! – Guest seated himself in his armchair. But no sooner had he settled himself than he heard more footsteps descending in the east.

Though the Hall of Time was a full hundred paces in length, though Guest Gulkan was seated near its western end, he clearly heard two people descending the stairs in the east. He got the disconcerting impression that the jade-green demon of the east was amplifying the sound of those descending footsteps. He tried to dismiss the thought, but the thought proved reluctant to be dismissed.

– It is but a stone.

Thus thought Guest, who had been seriously disconcerted by his encounter with Yubi Das Finger, and did not think himself up to the stress of facing further shocks.

Down came two people. They passed on either side of the coldglowing demon and proceeded toward Guest Gulkan at a measured pace, the lattermost carrying a bablobrokmadorni stick bright with twin lanterns.

As they came near, Guest saw the foremost was an ancient featherweight of an Ashdan, who was followed by a ragged servant.

More strangers. Guest braced himself for jokes, threats or revelations, but the pair gave him only the most cursory of glances before exiting from the hall, taking the stairs which led downwards. Guest was relieved that the passage of the dwarf-statured Ashdan and his lowbrowed bablobrokmadorni servant had gone off so smoothly.

Then: More footsteps!

Coming down!

And there were many of them!

Yes, there was no mistaking it!

A great body of armed men was coming down the eastern stairs, their armor clanking, boots tramping, horns blowing, shields clashing. Horses! They had horses! Guest heard hoofs on stone, heard an animal whinny. And – barrels! They were rolling barrels as they came! The barrels were thumping on the steps! And – one burst! Guest heard it shatter to a gust of liquid, heard curses, guttural swearing.

Now Guest was under the impression that the seventh and last stratum of the mainrock Pinnacle – Jezel Obo, the Sky Stratum – was a small place. No place, then, where one could hide a bootshod army with its horses, its shields, its barrels.

Yet they were coming downstairs!

From where?

From the sky!?

In something of a panic, Guest hastened across the skull- pattern tiles of the Hall of Time, his heart swift-hammering, his sword in his hand.

The sounds of the descending army grew louder and louder as he hurried to the eastern stairs. Would he have to challenge him?

No, they had leave to pass. Unless the demon said otherwise! Would it say? And if it did – would Guest have to hold an army singlehanded? But the demon could bite! Sod said so. It could bite, it could kill, it could gullet down men. Men? Well, a man. Maybe. But – an army?

In a boil of fearful anticipating, Guest braved himself to the eastern stairs… only to have the noise of the onslaughting army fade, melt, diminish, then echo away to nothing, vanishing into silence even as he reached the eastern end of the hall. Guest stood sweating, his heart pounding. He shook his head, half-convinced he had suddenly lost the power of hearing. But his hearing was clear enough. He could hear his own breathing, could hear a subtle wind-whine as a draught from the Swelaway Sea penetrated the Hall of Time through the high-vented slit windows.

Despite the cold of the night air, a bead of hot sweat rolled down Guest's forehead.

He thought he heard – faintly, distantly – a cold and desolate laugh.

"What is going on here?" said Guest, harshly, addressing the demon Jocasta in the Eparget of the Yarglat.

But the demon made no reply.

The demon in question was, as previously indicated, an entity firmly incarnated in a square-cut jade-green pillar, this pillar being an imposing monolith which stood twice the height of a man.

The pillar glowed with its own cold inner light – not a white light like that of ever-ice, but a green light hinting of deepwater depths. The demon, Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis by name, was Guardian Prime and Keeper of the Inner Sanctum, the holy of holies of the Bank. Iva-Italis had been in the service of the Safrak Bank for generations, and had long had charge of the Guardians.

The Weaponmaster Guest should by rights have been intimidated by such an august personage, but was not. Unfortunately, Guest had yet to acquire a mature respect for the Holy and the Unholy, the Hallowed and the Unhallowed, and as far as he was concerned the demon was just a hunk of rock. In truth, the young Weaponmaster in his ignorance thought this lump of rock to be incapable of speech, thought and action, believing rather that the powers attributed to the glowing stone were but idle tales fabricated to intimidate the ignorant.

Yet -

Yet something had made that noise of an army.

"What is it?" said Guest, questioning the rock. "What was it?

Ghosts?"

But nobody answered him.

He started to feel foolish.

He had been sick, had he not? He had. Even now he was weak in the aftermath of his fever. He was alone, and a man alone hears voices. So

… well…Guest turned away from the demon and started the long trek back to his armchair.

Then someone spoke his name.

"Guest Gulkan."

The voice was deep, dark, cavernous. A voice of roiling stone and flensing steel. A voice of sulphurous flames and bone-grinding appetites. At the sound of it, Guest halted. His flaring nostrils endeavored to gape still wider. His hair, that part of it which was not firmly matted to his skull by the dedicated accumulation of filth, endeavored to stand on end.

With eyes wild, with the agitated whip-crack intemperance of a highly-strung horse about to panic and bolt, Guest turned to face the demon.

"You!" said Guest, challenging the jade-green block of glowing stone. "Is it you?"

"Who else?" said the voice.

This time there was no mistaking the source of that voice.