Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

"He was my brother," said Eljuk. "The brother of my blood. He saved my life when I would have died in the Yolantarath. He saved me from drowning. At risk to his own life – he never knew how to swim. Now he'll never learn."

Such was Eljuk's distress that, in the end, Lord Onosh felt he had no choice. Gently, the Witchlord constrained Eljuk to set his chair upright, then to seat himself in that chair; and, with Eljuk thus seated, the Witchlord began to explain the true fate of the Weaponmaster Guest Gulkan.

And the upshot of a long debate between father and son was that the Witchlord at last agreed to open the Door in the uppermost chamber of the mainrock Pinnacle; and to precipitate the confrontation of the Banks of the Circle for which he had been preparing himself; and, if it was possible, to initiate the rescue of the missing Weaponmaster.

Partnership Banks: those Banks which have long exploited the Circle for secret profit. On Alozay, the Safrak Bank has ever been the government; but governments elsewhere have usually been ignorant of the secret of the Circle. Since the Banks are immortal bureaucracies they have managed to outlast kingdoms, empires and dynasties. Starting from Safrak, the Banks of the Circle are these:

– the Safrak Bank of the Safrak Islands;

– the Monastic Treasury of Inner Adeer, in Voice;

– the Flesh Trader's Financial Association of Galsh Ebrek;

– the Bondsman's Guild of Obooloo, capital of Aldarch III;

– the Bralsh, of Dalar ken Halvar;

– the Singing Dove Pensions Trust of Tang;

– the Taniwha Guarantee Corporation of Quilth.

– the Orsay Bank of Stokos;

– the Morgrim Bank of Chi'ash-lan.

Three men had left Alozay by way of the Door, and these three were the Weaponmaster Guest Gulkan, the iceman Sod, and the rough and ragged Thayer Levant.

Sod had leapt through that portal to escape from his captivity; Guest Gulkan had pursued him; and the unheroic Levant had fled after them to escape from a perceived threat to his own life.

Upon raging through the Door to the Monastic Treasury of Inner Adeer, Guest had been confronted by armed force in great superiority. And so, realizing he might have made an error, he had promptly jumped back through that Door, thinking in his confusion that by this means he could return to Alozay. But of course the Door was part of a Circle, so instead of returning to his point of departure, Guest had found himself advanced around that Circle, to Galsh Ebrek.

Sod had arrived in Galsh Ebrek fractionally before Guest Gulkan, for Sod had hoped to get as far as Chi'ash-lan (if that should prove at all possible) before someone in the mainrock

Pinnacle had wit sufficient to close the Door. Thayer Levant had fled after Guest. Levant had used Doors often, hence knew their nature well. Like Sod, Levant had a specific destination in mind.

He had hoped to get as far as the Bralsh of Dalar ken Halvar before the Circle was closed.

But the star-globe had been removed from its niche when these three adventurers had got no further than Galsh Ebrek, and so it came to pass that all three were stuck there. Guest was nimble-witted enough to realize in short order that he was truly trapped, and to swallow a certain ring before anyone thought to search him. This ring sustained a chipstone of ever- ice, and was the sole tool capable of opening and closing the time pods of Safrak's time prison. Later, when Sod happened to ask after that ring, Guest Gulkan averred that it had been torn from his possession during a brief scuffle in the Monastic Treasury of Inner Adeer – and Sod did not disbelieve this.

Thereafter, the Doors of the Circle were closed for a long passage, as Lord Onosh devoted himself to consolidating his command of Safrak – and, later, to dickering with Khmar's ambassadors.

For Banks and Bankers alike, the long closure of the Door was an agony. Particularly for Banker Sod – who was marooned in Galsh Ebrek with no better company than that of the barbarous Weaponmaster Guest Gulkan and the profoundly treacherous and untrustworthy knifeman Thayer Levant.

Galsh Ebrek, of course, is the ruling city of Wen Endex, homeland of the Yudonic Knights. It is notable also as the birthplace of the slug-chef Zozimus and the scholarly Sken-Pitilkin; and a telling commentary on the demerits of the place is that both slug-chef and scholar departed from its shores in early life, and never thereafter suffered nostalgia for the place.

The Bank of Galsh Ebrek was the Flesh Trader's Financial Association, so Sod, Levant and the Weaponmaster Guest found themselves in the precincts of this organization when the Doors of the Circle closed. The Flesh Trader's Financial Association quite refused to hold Guest and Levant as prisoners, since Sod had no cash with which to pay for their keep (and was refused credit by the local Bankers, who feared that any money lent to him would be lost forever if the Door refused to open again).

The local Bankers proposed the slaughter of Guest and Levant, thinking murder to be cheaper than imprisonment, and thinking too that such people could not be let loose in the world with the secret of the Doors.

But Sod was at pains to point out that these prisoners might be of great future importance. After all, Thayer Levant was a servant of Ulix of the Drum, and everyone knew how important he was! And Guest, why, he was the son of the Witchlord Onosh.

"And this Witchlord," said Sod, "he currently commands the star-globe which rules the Circle, so we may need his son as a hostage for future negotiations."

Furthermore, said Sod, the Witchlord was in a position to preach the secret of Circle and Doors to the entire world if he so chose. Therefore what point was there in trying to secure that secret by killing the Witchlord's son?

"After all," said Sod, "there is steady commercial intercourse between the islands of Safrak and the free city of Port Domax, and between Port Domax and Galsh Ebrek, which implies that any revelations made by Lord Onosh will in due course be common knowledge in Wen Endex."

All this made a degree of sense, so Guest and Levant were sworn to secrecy – swearing themselves readily when they understood that the alternative was death – and were released into the city of Galsh Ebrek on solemn parole. Their cover story was that they and Sod were part of a parcel of refugees from the fall of Safrak – refugees recently arrived by sea.

The Bankers of Galsh Ebrek still being too stingy to fund the refugees, they necessarily had to find work. Guest hoped to find employment as a swordsman, a bodyguard, a mercenary, a gladiator, a hacker-down-of-dragons and killer-of-bog-monsters, but Sod advised him against drawing attention to himself.

Thus counseled, Guest finished up as a barman at the Green Parrot. The owner of that establishment was one Anna Blaume, who was at first reluctant to employ any creature as ill-favored as Guest Gulkan. After all, he was patently a Yarglat barbarian, for he was marked as such by his high cheekbones and the great width of his nose. Furthermore, his extraordinary bat-wing ears made him look a proper fright, and Ms Blaume was mildly sensitive to cosmetic effect even though her customers typically were not.

But Guest appeased the proprietor of the Green Parrot by suggesting that she hold a piece of his property as a bond to secure his good behavior.

"What property?" asked she.

"This ring," said Guest, brandishing the ever-ice ring which he had earlier swallowed, but had subsequently recovered by means of a diligent daily investigation of his dung. "This is a lucky ring, for there is a star trapped inside it, not a red star or a green star, but one of the rare and precious white stars. You can wish on it thrice, and be sure that at least on one your wishes will be at least half-answered. Hold this as a bond, and if I misbehave myself you can keep it."