Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

Ulix of the Drum, who knew that Lord Onosh was but a poor and ignorant Yarglat barbarian, ventured on a further full and complete explanation.

"Enough!" said Lord Onosh, when he thought his head had suffered injury sufficient for a single day. "This thing cannot be understood, that much I see clearly. But what it does, ah, that's simple enough. With a Door like this – well, enough of that! The important thing is to keep this secret, is it not? For with this – with this we can conquer the world, if we go about it softly."

"Softly, yes," said Guest, "for we would not wish to spoil our chances. I think to use this to conquer the world indeed, then to win back my empire in Tameran from Khmar."

"Your empire?" said Lord Onosh in astonishment.

"Why, yes," said Guest. "The demon made the Guardians swear their fealty to me, did it not? Does it not therefore follow that I am their lord? And does it not equally follow that the mainrock is mine, yes, and Alozay as a whole, and the Safrak Islands likewise mind?"

"You have an enormous and arrogant conceit about you today," said Lord Onosh coldly. "That you happened to accept the surrender of some prisoners, why, that is but one of the commonplace incidents of war."

"Commonplace incidents!" said Guest, with explosive force.

"Yes!" said Lord Onosh. "A commonplace! A nothing!"

Now all this time, Banker Sod had been keenly watching Witchlord and Weaponmaster, and eyeing the disposition of the others. As father and son squared up to each other, looking as if they would be hacking at each other in moments, Sod abruptly moved.

Sod grabbed the dwarf Glambrax.

And threw him.

It may be that Sod had previously had some opportunity to practice the ancient and noble art of dwarf-tossing, for he threw Glambrax with uncommon force and accuracy, skittling both Witchlord and Weaponmaster. Then Sod threw himself onto the plinth, flung himself into a forward roll, and vanished through the Door.

Hot with rage, Guest scrambled up from the floor and leapt onto the plinth.

"No!" cried Ulix. "You – "

But it was too late.

For Guest plunged through the Door in hot pursuit of Banker Sod.

"My son!" cried Lord Onosh, in anguish. "My son!"

And with that cry the Witchlord drew his sword, as if intending to immediately revenge himself for the loss of his son.

Fearing the temper of this stranger, Thayer Levant nimbled onto the plinth and bolted toward the Door.

"Levant!" said Ulix of the Drum. "You – "

But Levant was gone.

"Get him back!" said Lord Onosh. "Now! Now! You! Zozimus! Sken-Pitilkin! My son! He's – "

Then Lord Onosh broke off, for a barrage of fighting men came shouldering through the Door. They were men dressed in the most sinister suits of black, their faces masked so that nothing showed but the whites of their eyes. They were Zenjingu killers, and they were bent on murder.

Immediately, Ulix of the Drum grabbed for the star-globe, yanking it from its socket. The Door closed. As the Door scissored shut, one of the Zenjingu killers was sliced clean in half by its abrupt closure.

"Cha-thara!" cried Ulix of the Drum, raising his pelican- headed walking stick.

At this Word, the Zenjingu killers began to stumble in blind disorientation, for Ulix of the Drum had neatly disabled their sanity. The Lord of the Silver Pelican was a wizard of Ebber, and his were powers over the mind.

Taking advantage of the disorientation of his enemies, Lord Onosh hacked and cut, slaughtering every last one of them. But that did not alter the facts. Guest Gulkan was gone, missing, vanished, wandering amidst the perils of some unknown foreign land, and there was no way for his father to get him back.

Door: an archway of what appears to be steel, set on a plinth of what appears to be marble. When activated by a star-globe, the Door fills with a humming silver screen. Each such Door typically forms part of a Circle, the separate parts of which can be continents apart. To physically interfere with such a screen is, in effect, to open a one-way valve to the next Door of the Circle.

To step through such a valve is to find oneself Elsewhere.

With Sod having followed Guest Gulkan through the Door, and with Ulix of the Drum having closed down that Door, Lord Onosh took personal possession of the Door's controlling star-globe.

Setting aside all questions of the fate of the Weaponmaster and the potential of the Door, he then set about consolidating his conquest.

At the command of the demon of Safrak, the Guardians had sworn themselves to Guest Gulkan's service. By isolating the demon, setting guards to prevent anyone from entering the Hall of Time, Lord Onosh ensured that the demon of Safrak did not give anyone leave to retract such an oath of fealty. By blurring the question of Guest's whereabouts – initially the world was led to believe that both Guest and Sod were still in residence in the heights of the mainrock – Lord Onosh neatly circumvented the possibility of any legalistic nitpicker pointing out that an oath to the Weaponmaster did not compel loyalty to the Witchlord.

Having thus temporarily shored up his position, Lord Onosh swiftly moved to reorganize the Guardians, combining his own men into that force, extracting personal oaths of loyalty from all and sundry, and diluting the old blood with new recruits.

In all of this, the Witchlord was advised by the dralkosh Bao Gahai, and, to a lesser extent, by the wizards Pelagius Zozimus and Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin.

So it was that Lord Onosh came to the Swelaway Sea in the winter of the year Alliance 4307, and, through a combination of courage, luck and studied brutality, made himself the undisputed lord of Alozay.

Notwithstanding all the reversals of the past, the Witchlord Onosh still claimed himself ruler of the Collosnon Empire. He hoped to use the islands of Safrak as a base from which to recover his empire. So he labored mightily to secure his power base, soon reaching out from Alozay to bring all the Safrak Islands under his sway. recognizing that the greater number of his potential subjects spoke Toxteth, Lord Onosh set himself to master that tongue.

Having mastered Alozay by the sword, he brought the lesser islands to heel by threat of violence, then chose sound-tempered Guardians to hold each of these islands in fief. Meanwhile, he despatched ambassadors and a trade delegation to the free city of Port Domax.

Since no army makes its passage through any land without leaving wreckage and complaint in its wake, Lord Onosh sent other representatives to the west, to meet all claims consequent upon his armed withdrawal to the shores of the Swelaway Sea. In the west, his agents dispensed much good gold to settle claims for murder, and rape, and arson, and looting, and pillaging, and poaching, and blasphemy, and the desecration of temples, and horse rustling – all of which claims were well-founded, for the Yarglat are not gentle in either victory or defeat.

Furthermore, all those to north, south, east and west were invited to prove out any claims they might have against the Safrak

Bank, since Lord Onosh recognized that he was now a Banker and must look to banking for his cash flow. In this spirit, he undertook to guarantee the safety of all trade through the Swelaway Sea, and confirmed Safrak's schedule of fixed and moderate charges for pilotage, provisioning, dock facilities and armed protection.

All in all, Lord Onosh conducted himself as a model ruler, which proved decidedly expensive in the short term. There were, for example, a full twenty merchants from Port Domax who had managed to get themselves killed during the Witchlord's armed seizure of the mainrock Pinnacle and the associated city of Molothair, and in the fullness of time Lord Onosh paid full and generous compensation to the widows of each.