Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

But the demon had also told him that wizards were allies of dark things from the ruins of former times – allies of the Mahendo Mahunduk, a race of demon-flavored beasts left over from the wreckage of gods.

Whatever the true nature of the Mahendo Mahunduk – and Guest was uncertain that he had construed that nature with absolute accuracy – they were most certainly creatures of the World Beyond.

And Guest, for reasons which he had never been able to even halfexplain to himself, had always flinched from knowledge of the World Beyond. As he had remained wilfully ignorant of the whole bloody business of wounds and eviscerations, so too he had closed his mind to the realm of talking bones and boneless voices, though in Gendormargensis there had been shamans sufficient to those mysteries, so he would not have lacked for tutors had he ever sought the endarkenment of his blank-faced daylight.

Now far from all thoughts of day, Guest Gulkan prolonged his hesitation, more than half-hoping for a distraction which would prevent him from venturing forward. For the plain and simple truth was that he was afraid. In its silence, in the green glimmer of its cold continence, the demon was possessed of a terrifying Patience. It had sat there for – for how long? For generations, surely – for generations at a minimum.

Enduring the weariness of the toiling years, the demon had served the Safrak Bank as Guardian Prime and as Keeper of the Inner Sanctum. Sitting there, year after year, listening, learning, planning, waiting, thinking, the demon had had time to ripen into the full malice of its manipulative cunning. It reminded Guest of one of those turtles which has a tongue twisted into an imitation of scrapmeat, and, seeking to tempt unwary fishes with this offering, spends all its life in imitation of the basic manoeuver of the rock, its jaws constantly agape in the exercise of alluring entrapment.

As such a beast seemed the demon, only more so. Hence Guest hesitated, and to such an extent that he had quite positively halted – and was halted still when he heard someone coming stumping up the stairs behind him.

The Weaponmaster wheeled, his sword ready for butchery. But it was no enemy who was encroaching upon his vacillations. Rather, it was the dwarf Glambrax, who had blood on his boots and a bloody hatchet in his hand.

"How goes it below?" said Guest.

"Badly," said the dwarf.

Coming as it did from Glambrax, this baldly monosyllabic statement was ominous in the extreme. Nevertheless, the arrival of one of his comrades heartened the Weaponmaster, and he said:

"Guard well this gate. For I have business with the demon of this place."

"Demon?" said Glambrax. "What demon?"

"I mean that iceblock yonder," said Guest. "That great green iceblock at the far end of the hall."

"Then do your business, master," said Glambrax, starting to recover something of his customary loquacity, "and give the thing a lick for me. And I in my mightiness will hold this gate against giants and against dragons, against trolls and orcs, and even against the very elven lords in their arrogance. I will guard it against all onslaught of vampires, though their wings be a league of uncrimped crimson, and I will guard it against the footpad jaws of the werewolf, and the spikes of the Neversh itself. Yea, verily, while Drangsturm burns and my heartbeat thunders, I will hold the door against all such, though I cannot guarantee to hold it against men, and unfortunately it is men we fight tonight."

"Then do but consent to hold your tongue," said Guest, "and with that I will be content."

Thus spoke the Weaponmaster, speaking roughly out of habit, though he was heartened by the dwarf's recovered powers of the tongue. Having spoken, Guest Gulkan scraped his feet to remove any last traces of blood – though blood would surely have dried during his prolonged prevarications – and then with his sword at the ready he ventured forward.

In his venturing, Guest kept to the center of the hall, the part which was darkest since it was furthest from the wallside lanterns – for he favored the dark like a fugitive. A central course also kept him clear of the deep embrasures and the time pods, and hence guarded him against ambush.

With such caution, Guest dared himself some ninety paces through the gloom of the Hall of Time, halting some ten paces short of the green-glowing menace of Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis,

Demon of Safrak. Guest had expected this monolithic chunk of jade-green stone to recognize him, and to acknowledge him. But it did not. It stood there in square-cut continence, formidable in implicit rebuff, rising in looming silence to twice his own height. Beyond it, he could see the single flight of stairs. Guest Gulkan now stood on the floor of the Hall of Time, the single chamber which dominated Zi Obo, the Pod Stratum of the mainrock Pinnacle. If he could dare his way past the Demon of Safrak, then he could ascend the stairs which would take him to Jezel Obo. And Jezel Obo was the Sky Stratum, the topmost level of the mainrock Pinnacle, and home to its Inner Sanctum, the abditorial holy of holies to which none could penetrate but by the demon's leave.

But Guest had no thoughts of penetrating to Safrak's abditory. He had not come here to plumb for secrets. He had come to seek for help in war – help which he must have lest he die. And the demon's silence, rather than intriguing him, irritated him intensely.

"Italis!" barked Guest. "It's me!"

Then, getting no response, he elaborated:

"It is me! Guest Gulkan! The Weaponmaster! I was here before, remember? You told me about Jocasta, the Great God. A prisoner.

Well. If you can help, I'd, I would have helped before, but I've been busy. There were wars. Fighting and such. But, uh, if you could help me with wizardry, powers of a wizard, then your Great God, well, I'd surely rescue it."Guest paused, realizing he was handling this badly. In witless badinage with trifling fellows such as Glambrax or Rolf Thelemite, his tongue was ever nimbly fluent, because words were worth nothing and so could be spent freely. But now he was face to face with a brute which might well be the greatest Power of his acquaintance. And, because he had anticipated this encounter for so long, and was driven by great urgencies of battle, each word was so important that its mere enunciation was a struggle in itself.

"Italis," said Guest, "I, I'd, I'm sorry I didn't come here before. It was Pitilkin, you see. Sken-Pitilkin. He doesn't like you, not much, and – "Guest broke off, hearing someone boot-thumping down the stairs. Moments later, a warrior stumbled down those stairs into the green-spill light of the Demon of Safrak. The warrior was Hrothgar! Yes, Hrothgar, the Guardian who had befriended Guest Gulkan on his earlier visit to Alozay!

"Hrothgar!" said Guest.

"Guest!" said Hrothgar. "Catch!"

Then, to Guest's bewilderment, the Guardian Hrothgar flung something in his direction. But the demon snapped at the flying thing with an outflux of green liquidity which moved too fast for the eye to follow. Whatever Hrothgar had thrown, the demon caught it, and swallowed it.

Hrothgar swore.

Moments later, another man came pounding down the stairs. It was Banker Sod, the Governor of the Safrak Bank, the ruler of Alozay, the master of the mainrock Pinnacle. Sod was flushed with battle, and a sword was in his hand.

"Where is it?" said Sod, challenging Hrothgar in fury. "Where is it? What did you do with it?"

"I threw it from a window," said Hrothgar, matching the challenge of Sod's sword with his own.

"Then what good will that do you?" said Sod.

"I had to try," said Hrothgar.

"Had to!" said Sod, in apoplectic fury. "For what reason?"

"Ambition," said Hrothgar, in frank confession.

Now Guest had followed action and speech well enough to realize that Hrothgar had stolen something from the abditory above. As a Guardian, a mercenary soldier in the service of the Safrak Bank, Hrothgar's rewards in life had been to eat, drink and sleep, and to bed with his wife in their ramshackle home in Molothair, the colony at the foot of the mainrock Pinnacle.