Hugh Cook - The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

Hence he put his soul into his bedtime efforts – but his woman never became pregnant.

For, unbeknownst to Guest, Penelope had no plans to hatch children, and the demon had obliged her by arranging for its medical facilities to bury in her buttocks a pair of slow-release contraceptive pellets which would guarantee her infertility for a decade.

As soon as Penelope had mastered enough of Guest's native Eparget to her tongue for basic communication to be possible, she learnt that he wanted sons to fight with him in his great war against Khmar, though she was not by any means clear as to who "Khmar" might be. But the purple-skinned Frangoni beauty was not inclined to co-operate with this plan, for she believed it to be sheer folly. Penelope believed that a great Flood was imminent, and that this Flood would swamp the entire world, precipitating a mass Evolution of humans to fishes.

Once Guest and Penelope were united in piscatorial bliss it would be very nice to have a pair of child-fishes to keep them company, but there was no point in idly breeding human children to fight in a war which would never happen. So thought Penelope – and felt guiltless at frustrating Guest's intent.

By the end of his second year in the minor mountain of Cap Foz Para Lash, Guest Gulkan had arms and legs – of a sort. They were not sufficient for his support, but they were adequate for his propulsion. Daily, the Weaponmaster was carried from his mountain cave to Dalar ken Halvar's river, and there he played fish the whole morning through, strengthening his limbs for war by endless labors of swimming. When he was not swimming, he was resting; or was renewing his efforts to establish a dynasty; or was eating, for he found himself possessed of a ravenous appetite.

Before coming to Dalar ken Halvar, Guest Gulkan had known nothing of swimming, and invariably associated water with drowning. But, as his limbs were initially of an uncommonly light weight, he learnt the art easily, for he found himself naturally buoyant.

Later, as his legs lengthened and strengthened, their weight of ever-growing bone and muscle weighed him down, and to stay afloat became harder. But by then he had entirely mastered the art of swimming down to a fine, and sustained himself in the water as if born to it.

Two years of swimming brought Guest to the end of his fourth year of exile in Dalar ken Halvar, by which time Sken-Pitilkin had wrecked his seventy-seventh experimental airship – and had just succeeded in making the seventy-eighth fly.

And Guest was cordially invited to join Sken-Pitilkin on the second test-flight of that amazing device.

Jocasta: an alleged Great God held prisoner in Obooloo by Anaconda Stogirov, high priestess of the Temple of Blood. This entity has faithfully promised to make the Weaponmaster Guest Gulkan a wizard should Guest secure its liberation.

Now during his time inside Cap Foz Para Lash, Guest Gulkan had heard from the demon Paraban Senk many wild and wonderful tales of the worlds which were alleged to exist in other universes. He had heard of the rollercoaster, and the bungi jump, both devices of terror unimaginable to anyone who had led the sheltered life of a Yarglat barbarian.

Though Guest was no scholar, he had been trained in ethnology by Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, and so had diligently set himself the task of discovering whether the rollercoaster and the bungi jump had been instituted as initiation rites – fearsome tests of manhood to be undertaken as part of the rites of passage marking the transition from childhood – or whether these outrageous forms of horrorshock were looked upon as a form of fun.

After long research, Guest concluded that the peoples of the high civilizations known to Paraban Senk routinely plunged down artificial mountains in rickety carts, or hurled themselves from the heights with elasticated ropes tied to their ankles, purely for their own pleasure. He was most frightfully glad that he had not been born into any world where pleasure itself had the taste of torture, and looked upon Sken-Pitilkin's airship as a device better fit for such a world than for his own.

Ever since the precipitous flight which had seen Guest and his companions flung from the Swelaway Sea to an air-wrecking in the Ibsen-Iktus mountains, Guest had entirely ceased to envy the birds; and it was only with the greatest reluctance imaginable that he allowed himself to be cajoled into Sken-Pitilkin's airship to partake of its second flight.

In the end, thinking himself doomed to reduced to a mess of fractured chicken bones, Guest Gulkan climbed into the gigantic nest of sticks which Sken-Pitilkin declared to be an airship.

To his amazement, it flew.

And Guest, dazzled and bewildered by the wonders of controlled flight (which was entirely different from the absolutely uncontrolled flights which he had previously endured), was returned to the ground in one piece, amazed to find his skull and skeleton intact.

"Now," said Sken-Pitilkin, "since you have recovered your strength, and since I have a functional airship, we can start to plan our campaign."

"Our campaign?" said Guest.

"Our quest," said Sken-Pitilkin.

"Quest?"

"For the x-x-zix," said Sken-Pitilkin.

"It would seem," said Guest, "that I have a lot to learn."

"So you have," said Sken-Pitilkin. "So you have. Very well!

Let us start the explanations!"

Then, in tedious detail, Sken-Pitilkin took Guest Gulkan through the tortuous details of the Witchlord's slow and painful negotiations with the Partnership Banks. Since Lord Onosh had suffered so badly from the Banks' deceits, he had not easily been able to bring himself to trust Sod.

But Banker Sod had been given great incentive to make agreement with Lord Onosh, for the Partnership Banks as a whole were unhappy with Sod. It was agreed amongst the Banks that Sod should never have incarcerated Ulix of the Drum in his timeprison; and the Banks were alarmed at the ambition Sod had shown by arranging this incarceration, for it appeared that Sod had imprisoned the rightful ruler of Dalar ken Halvar because he had entertained notions of seizing that city and ruling it himself.

Furthermore, the Partnership Banks were distressed that Sod had used ineffective treacheries in his dealings with the Witchlord Onosh. Effective treacheries against non-Bankers were acceptable, but the price of failure was…

Sod had a lively sense of what the price of failure might be, and so exerted himself strenuously to negotiate an agreement with the Witchlord Onosh. Finally, under dire pressure from the Partnership Banks, Sod surrendered Eljuk Zala Gulkan to his father, and then surrendered himself to the Witchlord as a hostage.

Once his son Eljuk had been restored to him, and once he had Sod as a hostage, Lord Onosh at last consented to negotiate with the Partnership Banks in earnest, as a result of which the Doors of the Circle of the Banks were open again.

"Furthermore," said Sken-Pitilkin, "Ontario Nol has recently returned to Alozay through those Doors, there to resume his training of Eljuk Zala."

"I am pleased for my brother," said Guest Gulkan, mightily wearied by the laborious detail in which Sken-Pitilkin had told the tale of the negotiations for the reopening of the Circle.

"There is more pleasure yet to come," said Sken-Pitilkin.

"The high point of my story is that we are to be privileged to travel the Circle, just as Plandruk Qinplaqus was in former times when he traveled that Circle as Ulix of the Drum."

"We?" said Guest. "Who are you talking of?"

"Myself," said Sken-Pitilkin, "and yourself, and Thayer Levant, and Pelagius Zozimus."

"And Qinplaqus himself?" said Guest.

"He no longer wishes to risk the Circle," said Sken-Pitilkin.