Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

Pirouette by pirouette, the warrior spun to the nearest wall, which slammed him in the face, rebuffing his ballet with puritanical retort.

"Bravo!" said Guest, applauding vigorously as Thodric Jarl slid down that wall, staining its stones with a snail-track of blood from his vigorously bleeding nose.

"Blood!" said Rolf Thelemite excitedly. "See! Blood, blood!

The ribs have pierced his lungs! He's done for, now!"

But that was not the case.

On close examination, it appeared that Thodric Jarl had suffered no more than a chipped tooth and a bloody nose. He had not even been knocked out. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that this was most definitely not the most auspicious of introductions.

Ul-donlok: valley in the Ibsen-Iktus mountains and site of the ancient monastery of Qonsajara, which is home to a wizard of Yarglat breeding named Ontario Nol. The valley of Ul-donlok, which is high and narrow at its western end, slopes downward to the east, opening out as it nears the Swelaway Sea.

Hostaja Torsen Sken-Pitilkin did his best to make Thodric Jarl apologize for his foolish attack on Ontario Nol. Jarl refused.

"Dogs will hatch from eggs and pigs be born of pigeons before I say sorry to a wizard," said Jarl, intransigent as any monster of the nursery.

Jarl was sure Nol would kill him in any case, and no Rovac warrior wishes to die with an apology to a wizard on his lips.

"What are we to do with this rune-warrior?" said Sken-Pitilkin, shaking his head in disgust.

"Let's not worry about it," said Nol, shrugging off Jarl's insolent unrepentance. "After all, what matters a trifle like attempted murder when dinner is waiting? Come, friends. Let's seat ourselves and sup. For dinner cools monstrous fast in weather like this."

"Dinner?" said Pelagius Zozimus, who had a chef's highlydeveloped consciousness of the passage of time. "Dinner? My dear sir, dinner can hardly cool before it's cooked, and we've only just arrived! How can you possibly have dinner ready already?"

"I saw you from afar," said Ontario Nol gravely, "even if my servant did not."

"So!" said Sken-Pitilkin, taking this to be a confession of the possession of Powers. "The wizards of Itch have powers of sight, do they?"

"They do indeed," said Ontario Nol. "Such powers are consequent upon the possession of those ocular organs known as eyes, of which I have two. With my own two eyes I have long had you under observation from the heights of Qonsajara, in consequence of which I have been able to have a dinner prepared for you."

Upon which both Zozimus and Sken-Pitilkin felt foolish, and made no further comment as the hospitable wizard of Itch led the party of air adventurers into his dining room. It was a small room dominated by a large stone table, and though Nol had threatened them with a chilled dinner the room was in fact kept comfortably warm by a small but efficient fire.

"May we not wash, first?" said Sken-Pitilkin, conscious of the fact that all of them smelt somewhat of vomit, and that the half-digested eyes of two or three of the dogs of Ema-Urk still clung to Guest Gulkan's outer clothing.

"Wash?" said Nol, in patent surprise. "But why?"

"To please me," said Zelafona, coming to Sken-Pitilkin's rescue. "As a woman, I am particular of the company I keep, therefore would have these men washed if bowl, sponge and water to spare."

"I have no objection to a sponging of my face and my jacket," said Thodric Jarl, who was perfectly ready to make concessions to the witch Zelafona, though he was ever reluctant to give aid to a wizard. "Rolf will help me with the sponging."

So spoke Jarl, and spoke bravely. But his speech was badly slurred, for pain, altitude, fatigue, fear and a wizard's whirlwind battery had told heavily on his resources.

"If Jarl's so sick he needs a nursemaid," said Rolf Thelemite, his own fatigue displaying itself in his singularly ungracious manner, "then I suppose I can sponge him down."

"And Guest will wash himself," said Sken-Pitilkin in tones of warning, as the Weaponmaster advanced upon Ontario Nol's big stone table.

"Will I?" said Guest, rebelliously. "I don't think I will, you know. I'm not due for a bath for two or three years at least, and I'm not going to delay dinner for any such eccentricity." Sken-Pitilkin did not see how Guest could possibly be ready to eat again after having been so prodigiously sick earlier in the day. But the boy was as good as his word. He sat himself down at the dinner table – half-digested eyes and all – and was two-thirds of the way through a second helping of everything by the time his companions returned from their washing.

For dinner they had lentil soup, boiled potatoes and the eggs of several chickens, with a serving of roast soy beans on the side. Ontario Nol apologized for the sparceness of his table.

"Unfortunately," said Nol, "we have only the eggs of a chicken, and not the meat. I would have killed you a chicken, only I have none at Qonsajara. The eggs are paid to me in way of tribute by one of the villages further down the valley."

"You are a ruler, then," said Guest Gulkan.

"The absolute monarch of all I survey," acknowledged Ontario Nol. "I estimate the population of my kingdom as some three thousand people in all. It is sufficient."

"Your kingdom," said Guest, chewing against the resistance of some soy beans as he spoke. "How do you name your kingdom?"

"It is named Qonsajara," said Ontario Nol, "taking its name from this monastery, which once was consecrated to the rites of Zozo Darjidan, the tantric strain of Qa Marika. Do you know what is meant by tantrism?"

"Dorking," said Guest, remembering certain lessons in ethnology. "That's what it means. The tantric arts are the arts of dorking. Lotham and yargam, sagit and mok. That's what the pictures are all about."

"True," said Ontario Nol with a thin smile. "But there was more to it than that. The tantric rites have catharsis as their goal. One frees the spirit of the flesh by purging the flesh through excess. There is more to it, then, than… how did you put it?"

"Dorking," said Guest again, unabashed and unashamed.

"One hopes," said the witch Zelafona, "that the boy has not offended your religion. If he has, then my dwarf will be happy to beat him for you."

At that, Glambrax jumped onto the table and struck a beating pose. Guest Gulkan's hand went to his sword.

"Peace," said Ontario Nol, as Sken-Pitilkin swept Glambrax from the table with his country crook. "I own to no religion.

Though I name myself as abbot of this monastery, that is just for form's sake. In truth, this temple's rites are a thousand years dead, and the worshippers died with the rites."

By now, Ontario Nol had the full attention of all his auditors, and they listened in after-dinner leisure as he told what he knew of Zozo Darjidan and the religion of Qa Marika. He lacked the full story, but still knew the most amazing fragments of the much-dislocated history of times long past. He mentioned the Technic Renaissance and the Genetic Mutiny, and told strange stories of a planet named Olo Malan, which – depending on which tradition one adhered to – either was or was not the very ball of dirt on which they were presently standing.

Then Sken-Pitilkin had stories of his own to tell, and

Pelagius Zozimus followed him, after which the dralkosh Zelafona was persuaded to speak.

Never before had Guest heard Zelafona tell of the past. The boy listened, fascinated, as the old woman's shriveled voice spun tales of full-fleshed maidens and desiring heroes, of creatures which lived in mountains and fed themselves on time, of cities of singing glass and streets of liquid fire, of incubus and succubus knotted together in shadows of turbulent desire, of vampires in their cavern-realms, and of ghostly dragons hunting ghosts through realms of living men.