Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

"Not you too!" said Lord Onosh.

"But he did!" said Guest, seeing that he was disbelieved. "My blood, the nose, I mean – "

Helplessly, Guest held up his hand, which was streaked by the blood of his bleeding.

"So his nose bursts and he thinks himself gone," muttered his father. Then, angrily: "It's the mother! That's what's wrong!"

"Mother?" said Guest in bewilderment.

"Yes," said Lord Onosh, with increased anger. "It's your mother, it's her fault! Your mother, just as she – "

Then the Witchlord stopped himself. But he had said enough to leave Guest more bewildered than ever. The young Weaponmaster did not know who his mother was, hence could not guess what she might have done wrong. And what was the import of this waking dream he had just endured? Had his mother endured such dreams? Did Eljuk endure them still? And did Eljuk get bloody noses from some dreams of his? Guest tried to think back to the years of his childhood.

Eljuk had got bloody noses in childhood often enough, for sure – but all of those bloodspills could be traced easily and directly to the impact of Guest's feet, knees, fists and elbows.

They had now entered upon the mainrock's uppermost room, so, with their climb done, Lord Onosh tried to hand the star-globe to his son.

"Here," said Lord Onosh. "Take it again. Try it again. See what it does for you this time!" Guest made as if to take the star-globe, then thought better of it, and let it fall.

"It's – it's too dangerous," said Guest.

"Is it?" said Lord Onosh, kicking the star-globe.

In response, the elderly Ashdan named Ulix of the Drum bent down, picked up the globe of stars, examined it carefully then offered it to Guest.

"Take it, boy," said the Ashdan. "It's perfectly safe."

"But," said Guest, fearfully, "I, I, it…"

"You expected the unexpected," said the Ashdan. "You opened yourself to the new thing. So you… you…"

"What happened to me?" said Guest, with sudden anger. "You know, don't you! What was it!"

The Ashdan hesitated, then said:

"It is a Power."Guest absorbed that as best he could, then said, slowly, slowly:

"Like – like something of wizards?"

"No," said the Ashdan flatly. "Like something of witches."

"What are you talking about?" said Guest, frightened to hear such a strange thing said, and said about him.

"Ask your father," said the Ashdan. "He knows."

Then Guest looked at Lord Onosh, who was silent, confessing no secrets. Guest looked back to the Ashdan. As if in a dream, Guest reached out and took the globe of stars from Ulix of the Drum. The star-globe was cold, cold and heavy. He held it. Held it firmly. The world remained unwavering.

"It doesn't change me," said Guest softly, wondering at the stability of the world, the firmness of the stones beneath his feet. "Not this time."

"It never did change you," said the Ashdan. "You changed yourself. As I said. You opened yourself to the new thing, the new experience."

"So this, this rock," said Guest, hefting the star-globe,

"it's not dangerous. To me, I mean."

"You experienced the exercise of Power," said the Ashdan.

"But the means for the exercise of that Power are sourced within you. That Power is not conjured by rocks, globes, talismans or charms. It's inside you."

"Inside me!" said Guest, in frank alarm. "If that's meant as reassurance, then I'd hate to see you let loose on a threat!"

By now, Guest half-understood that he had inherited something from his mother. But what? He was far from sure that he wanted to find out! The more he thought about his waking vision, the more it was frightening him. And to think that Eljuk had such visions, and that his father obviously feared them – why, that was more frightening still! And his mother – there was something wrong with his mother, was there? Well. Guest had always believed his mother to have been a worthless slave woman long ago buried, her name buried along with her. But obviously she was still very bright in his father's memory.

"My lord," said Guest, addressing his father with due formality, conscious of the fact that they were talking in the presence of strangers such as Banker Sod and Ulix of the Drum.

"May we talk later about – about my mother?"

"No!" said Lord Onosh.

A flat denial, this. But Guest had learnt enough already to realize that some dreadful secret surrounded his genesis.

This shook Guest more than any of the reversals of fortune which he had endured to date. The reversals of war – well, those he had been trained to cope with. After all, the young Yarglat barbarian had been born into a warlord's household, and hence had lived always with the knowledge that he might well suffer death, defeat, exile, pain, hunger, torture and mutilation before his life was out.

Hence Guest had remained comparatively calm through the vicissitudes of civil war and the alarums of the struggle for Safrak. Like a professional firefighter in the midst of a conflagration, or like a bear-wrestler engaged in one of his public duels, the Weaponmaster had, by and large, kept his head in even the worst moments of those conflicts.

But this -!

It was a dreadful and totally unexpected shock to be suddenly, profoundly and obscurely betrayed by his ancestry.

Obviously he had inherited from his mother some kind of flaw, a split in the brain, a breakage of the mind, a witch-warp of some description – and quite obviously his father feared for the consequences of this unexplained and inexplicable flaw.

A shock to the basic stability of the family background is always traumatic, even when the family concerned is an imperial family, and therefore intrinsically more unstable than most.

Hence Guest was suffering dreadfully, just as one suffers in the aftermath of the dreadful moment when a parent reveals that there are werewolves in the family; or that grandfather used to rape dogs for a hobby; or that grandmother routinely preached the evolutionary heresy; or that mummy is actually a man concealed in a woman's weeds.

"Very well," said Guest, reluctant to challenge his father further in the presence of strangers. "Let us pay no mind to visions. Let us try instead this precious door with this precious bit of rock."

So saying, Guest advanced upon the marble plinth which supported the steel arch.

As Guest advanced, he held the star-globe in front of him. It gleamed with a steady inner light, and its heaviness again made him think it more like stone than glass. It was transparent, its interior fogged with a motionless smoke of underseas mystery, and in the green of that fog there hung the motionless firefly sparks of stars of all colors, some inspired in their solitude, others hanging close in their massed groupings of their galaxies.

"Where do I put it?" said Guest.

"There is a pocket of sorts in the marble base," said the Ashdan ancient, Ulix of the Drum. "See it?"

"Yes," said Guest.

The "pocket" was a gilded hole about twice the size of the star-globe.

"Put the globe into the pocket," said Ulix. "Do that, and you will open the Door."

Gingerly, Guest eased the globe into the pocket. And let it go. It rolled home with a slight clunk. Immediately, the steel archway filled with a humming curtain of silver-gray, which looked to Guest like a vertical sheet of that slippery metal known as mercury.

"There," said Ulix. "It is open. Now you can go through it, if you dare."

At which Banker Sod swore at Ulix, swore fluently and potently in Galish. Ulix ignored the captive Banker, as did the others.

"So," said Lord Onosh, looking speculatively at the door. He was starting to realize that this thing was no ordinary door but a Door of major significance. "A Door, is it? Then where does it go to?"Guest was of the opinion that the lord of the pelican had explained all this already. And so he had! But Guest was more ready to absorb explanation than was his father, since Guest had been rigorously tutored by the wizard Sken-Pitilkin since the age of five, whereas it is doubtful whether Lord Onosh was ever tutored by anyone in his entire life.