Hugh Cook: The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

"Greetings," said Guest, addressing himself to Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis, the jade-green monolith which stood before him.

The demon did not respond. It heard him, surely. It saw him, surely. But it said nothing. Within its substance, Shabble batted from side to side, trapped, caged, irrevocably imprisoned. And Guest, his memories of Untunchilamon fading fast, remembered instead the night when he and his father had fought against Banker Sod, striving for control of the mainrock Pinnacle. It was an alliance with Italis which had allowed Guest to win that battle and make himself master of Safrak. Guest waited.

He refused to be intimidate by this thing, or by its silence.

It could say nothing to disturb him, nothing to upset him, nothing to make him afraid. He was past all that.

So thought Guest.

Then the demon spoke.

"So," said Italis. "You have come to kill your father."

The words had weight. They were backed by an infinity of perception, of thought, of analysis, of years of study and of silent interrogation of probability.

And Guest, absorbing the words, felt his eyes become hot with tears. Then his mouth was wrenched open, and he found himself gasping for air. In huge, heaving gasps, he dragged in the air as his grief claimed him. For he had seen his doom, and had seen his father's doom, and had seen that there was no avoiding it.

Safrak Islands: group of islands in the Swelaway Sea, the inland sea of the continent of Tameran. The chiefest of the Safrak Islands is Alozay, long the headquarters of the Safrak

Bank. The Safrak Islands have long lived by trade, having commercial intercourse with the free city of Port Domax (on the shores of the Great Ocean of Moana) and with the Collosnon Empire.

The great city of Gendormargensis, the capital of the Collosnon Empire, lies to the north of the Swelaway Sea.

This book has concerned itself primarily with the life of the Yarglat barbarian known to the world as Guest Gulkan, the self- styled Weaponmaster.

Now Guest, in his confrontation with the ethnologist Brother Fern Feathers, was hot to deny his barbarous disabilities. Yet, whatever one thinks of the science of ethnology and its sundry stupidities and iniquities, it must be admitted that Guest was very much a prisoner of his barbarous upbringing. Guest Gulkan was born into the household of a warlord, and received the upbringing appropriate to a warlord's son, and therefore lived and thought as a warlord. His imagination revolved around power; and struggle; and swords; and horses; and the clash of armies. And, as he butchered his way from one disaster to another, Guest comported himself very much like the archetypical swordsman. He dared his caverns; he slew his monsters; he slaughtered his crocodiles; he bedded his women; and he did grievous damage to the irregular verbs wherever he encountered them.

So it was that the Weaponmaster lived in ignorance of his true historical significance – which was, to be an instrument to unlock the power which lay latent in the city of Dalar ken Halvar.

It was Guest, after all, who decided that the world should be conquered by the militant religion of Nu-chala-nuth rather than by the Swarms. When the wisdom of wizards could see no way into the future, it was Guest who bethought himself of Plandruk Qinplaqus, and of Asodo Hatch – so diligently supervising the construction of a machine designed to tame the x-x-zix and bring effective weather control to Dalar ken Halvar – and of the wealth of knowledge protected and preserved by Paraban Senk in the caves of Cap Foz Para Lash.

Only when Guest had unlocked the Circle of the Partnership Banks did he really realize what he had done. Only then did he realize that he had put an end to the old and ancient cyclic dynamic of feudal history which had for so long dominated the world.

It is a new world now.

Precisely what kind of world?

It is hard to say.

It is early days yet, and we cannot tell what shape the future will take. But this we know: the forges of Stokos, matched to the knowledge of Dalar ken Halvar, looks in its own right to be a combination which will prove potent against the Swarms.

As for Guest Gulkan's story, that has been told, at least to the extent which it can be told. There may be more yet to come, for Guest has declared his intention of venturing once more to the Shackle Mountains, and there entering the Cave of the Warp for a second time, and passing again through the Veils of Fire, protected by the mazadath which he yet wears around his neck. For Guest wishes to have further knowledge with the Lobos, a thing which does not figure in the writings of wizards, a thing which is unknown to demons such as Iva-Italis, and of which Paraban Senk can give no explanation.

As to the rest of Guest's life, why, no account need be given of it. For, as soon as Guest had opened the Circle of the Partnership Banks, he had initiated a new phase of history – a phase in which a dynastic struggle between father and son is of little consequence.

Still, for the sake of mere completeness, let us spare a few words to sketch out an account of events which seekers of sensation have elsewhere dealt with at weary length.

On opening the Circle of the Doors of the Partnership Banks, Guest Gulkan returned to Alozay, as has been recounted; and on Alozay he learnt of the doings of his father.

While Guest and his allies had been preparing for the reopening of the Circle, a rabble of pirates and Rovac warriors had been preparing to invade the Collosnon Empire from the south.

Dim rumors of this impending invasion had reached as far as Gendormargensis, a city then in some considerable disorder as a consequence of the brawling disorder of its Yarglat rulers, who had been making coups and counter-coups against each other for the better part of half a year.

Hearing of the disorder in Gendormargensis, and of the threat of invasion from the south, the Witchlord Onosh thought the moment ripe for his return.

This may be thought presumptuous.

For, surely, Lord Onosh had been defeated; and disgraced; and discredited. Lord Onosh had lost his empire to Khmar, and had been reduced to the rule of the Safrak Islands, paltry pieces of rock in the wash of the Swelaway Sea. How then could he aspire to reconquer the Collosnon Empire?

The answer is simple.

During the long years in which he had lived in exile on the Safrak Islands, Lord Onosh – ever counseled by the wisdom of Bao Gahai, the steadfast companion of his defeat – had prepared for his return.

Preparation had been difficult during the reign of the Red Emperor Khmar, whose rule of terror had restricted speech, thought and movement. But, under the rule of Khmar's son Celadric, the Collosnon Empire had become a milder place; and the Witchlord's agents had taken advantage of freedoms of speech, assembly and movement to sound out inclinations, to spy, to suborn, to bribe and to subvert.

In particular – ever remembering the cause of the disorder which had precipitated his overthrow! – Lord Onosh had cultivated the leaders of Stranagor and Locontareth. He had studied in great length the question of taxation, and had covertly promised the provinces a just share of fertilization.

Regarding the question of taxation, it must be admitted that Khmar's son Celadric had been no better than any of the rulers who had preceded him. There were many good things which could be said of Celadric – one notes in particular his scholarship, and the courageous manner in which he subdued even the most wickedly barbed of the irregular verbs – but it has to be admitted that he had one or two exceedingly vicious vices.

The most vicious of all Celadric's vices was that of architecture. Much has been made of the manner in which so many great men have destroyed themselves with strong drink, or with opium, or with gambling, or with an over-indulgence in orgasmic pursuits – but the great vice of architecture is potentially as ruinous as all of these put together.