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  The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers

  ( Chronicles of an Age of Darkness - 6 )

  Hugh Cook

  Hugh Cook

  The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers

  FOREWORD

  Mighty are the labours of the redactors of Odrum, and merciless is their diligence. As it endured redaction in the dungeons of Odrum, the Text which follows became encumbered by a full two million words of explication and interpolation. In the interests of convenience, readability and sanity, most of this overgrowth has been cut away.

  The enormity of the labours expended by Odrum upon this Text boggles the imagination. Upon the foundation of this historical account there was erected a terrifying redactatorial monument complete with an elaborate apparatus of footnotes, screeds of etymological speculation and hundreds of thousands of words of textual analysis.

  Only a few (a very few) of the comments by some of the more prominent redactors have been left to give a faint indication of the flavour of the Text in its redacted form. The rest of Odrum’s additions have been soundlessly elided. Which is only fair, since Odrum’s scholars were equally ruthless in their abbreviation of the Originator’s writings.

  Common sense tells us that the reader needs no editorial help to understand a straightforward history such as this. Even so, a few words to explicate the Hermit Crab are in order. Drax Lira, Redactor Major of Odrum, plainly misunderstood and grossly underestimated this entity. The Originator of the Text knew better, yet never learnt of the Crab’s origins. In fact, the Originator knew not even the Hermit Crab’s name.

  As it happens, the Hermit Crab originated in the fires of the local star. It belonged to a race of creatures which are not formed from flesh as we understand it, but instead exist as dynamic, highly localised modulations of probability. As a result of a theological dispute, the Hermit Crab was forced to flee from its fellows. Since to stay was to die, it abstracted itself from the inferno which had served it as a home for the better part of seventy million years, and fled into the unutterably cold wastelands of outer space.

  At length, it reached a planetary surface. It was sick and injured by the time it made landfall on the shores of Jod, and therefore had no time for the fifty thousand years of careful thought and diligent analysis which would have been advisable under the circumstances. Instead, it had an urgent need to embody what was left of its life processes in corporeal form, lest those processes be altogether extinguished.

  You must understand that the Hermit Crab was and is entirely lacking in divinity. Like us, it was and is mortal. In its original form, it was fit only for life in the seas of a sun. Therefore it found the shores of Jod entirely inimical, and was forced to evolve with extreme rapidity in order to survive.

  As it was no god, devil or demon, the Hermit Crab lacked the skill to create organic form and process ex nihilo, and instead adapted what it found to hand. The first living organism it encountered was a crab of the type which is known to the Hindrix-Prodorgotz system of taxonomy as Thorbakrodomon Rantharchardaliz. Therefore the Hermit Crab adapted the biology of this animal for its own purposes, and dwelt thus thereafter on the shores of Jod.

  Thousands of years passed.

  During those millennia, the Hermit Crab slowly changed and adapted the form it had learnt. In nature, Thorbakrodomon Rantharchardaliz grows to no great size. A typical specimen will have a carapace which is scarcely a fingerlength across at maturity. However, the Hermit Crab found it inconvenient to remain at this size, since it was often attacked by seagulls. These it obliterated, thanks to those powers to modulate probability which it still retained from its earlier mode of existence. However, seagulls remained a danger, since even the Hermit Crab had to (and has to) sleep sometimes.

  The soft-bodied castle crabs which live in discarded seashells can never risk growing beyond the size of the available armour. However, the Hermit Grab suffered no such limitation, since it was a true crab with its own exoskeleton which it could shed at will whenever it wished to enlarge itself. Hence it was able to increase its size until the depredations of seagulls were no longer a danger. However, increased size brought it to the attention of humans, who proved even more of a nuisance than the seagulls had been.

  Many tragedies ensued in the long years before the Hermit Crab managed to learn the local languages, and to modify its anatomy so that it could vocalize its simple and understandable demands (for peace and quiet and an adequate source of nutrition). After that, life went more smoothly. And the Hermit Crab had the leisure in which to contemplate further changes to its organic structure.

  Any form would have been a burden to the Hermit Crab, for, in its previous mode of existence it had enjoyed freedoms which we can scarcely comprehend. Imagine yourself reincarnated as a paving stone, and enduring several millennia of such entrapment. This will give you a measure of what the Hermit Crab had to suffer.

  However, while any form would inevitably have been hard to endure, the Hermit Crab realized its frustrations would at least be diminished if it could assume human shape. It would gain freedoms of action and intercourse which were totally impossible while it remained trapped within a crab’s carapace.

  Unfortunately, attempts by the Hermit Crab to modify its structure further always failed. First forms are like first languages: once learnt, they are near impossible to unlearn. In the end, the Hermit Crab realized it could not learn a second form without freeing itself of the first. It would have to step away from its flesh and (briefly, at least) exist once more as a disembodied modulation of probability in an environment totally unsuited to such a mode of existence. In theory, this was possible; if it decided to abandon crab-flesh for human, it had at least a 3 per cent chance of success. And a 97 per cent chance of dying a swift and painful death.

  Such odds did not appeal to the near-immortal Hermit Crab, which therefore retained its first-found form. And suffered. Hence its somewhat grumpish disposition, its unambitious philosophical outlook and its eremitic mode of existence.

  That is all the reader really needs to know about the Hermit Crab. Its name is (strictly speaking) irrelevant. However, for the record, let us note that the wizard Paklish once sojourned on Untunchilamon and was long in discourse with the Hermit Crab. (We mean of course Hablos Paklish the philosopher, not the brilliant but ill-fated Alkibiades Paklish, would-be domesticator of dragons.) It was the philosopher Paklish who bestowed upon the Hermit Crab its name, Codlugarthia, which in the Janjuladoola of Yestron South means ‘Son of Thunder’.

  However, as you will see from the Text which follows, this name had quite fallen out of use by the year Alliance 4312.

  AN OPENING EDITORIAL NOTE

  This Text purports to be a true and correct account of certain events on Untunchilamon. However, as complete Verification has proved impossible, scholars are advised to treat it with caution. To accept it as the whole truth (or as nothing but the truth) would be rash, to say the least.

  I myself have been to Untunchilamon and to Injilta-prajura in days gone by, during the rule of the late Wazir Sin. I then met some of those who feature in this Text, notably Justina Thrug (later to be the Empress Justina), Aquitaine Varazchavardan (then chief adviser to Wazir Sin), and Nixorjapretzel Rat (then an eager young scholar who earned himself some coppers by serving as my interpreter-guide).

  I also saw the magical fountains of dikle and shlug which spring from the island of Jod, where I was shown the Analytical Engine by Ivan Pokrov. His explanations of the Engine were most unsatisfactory; I remain convinced that this conglomeration of titanium cogs is incapable of cognition, and that Pokrov is a fraud. The Hermit Crab I also saw, but all it said was ‘Go awa
y.’ As I possess a parrot with a vocabulary far more extensive, I remain unimpressed.

  But I swear by my fingernails that I never heard any mention of this maze of sewer-works said to exist Downstairs, or of this dorgi and this Shabble, or of this mythical ‘Golden Gulag’ which the Originator of this Text has conjured with. Such surely belong to the realm of fantasy. In this Translation, we have not endeavoured to dignify the Fantastic by scholarship, which could in any case say only that the cryptic is cryptic; hence references to such semantic entities as ‘zulzers’, ‘ionising radiation’.

  ‘transponder’, ‘vocal identities’ and ‘spectral analysis’ remain unglossed.

  It is for the Originator to say what True Meaning these semantic entities have (if any). However, for reasons which need no elaboration (we are hardly dealing with ancient history, are we?!) the Originator is not likely to be available for Interrogation. Ever.

  It is with every confidence that I repeat the original conclusions of the Report I made to the Battle Council on my return from my Survey of Untunchilamon: there is nothing and nobody on this sunburnt little island capable of materially assisting us in the Conquest.

  Given under my hand on this the morning of the twelfth day of the fifth month of the 15,436,794th year of Din Civil.

  Drax Lira.

  Redactor Major

  CHAPTER ONE

  Untunchilamon is an equatorial island girded by reefs of red coral, an island of magic and mystery which lies mid-ocean between the continents of Argan and Yestron.

  Since that is our setting, what then is our story? You will have heard much of Untunchilamon in saga, song, chronicle or legend, and will doubtless expect this tale to deal with the fate of the famous bard of that island. But it does not. The precious bard of Untunchilamon was stolen some years before our story opens when a ruthless band of waterthieves ventured to Injiltaprajura and looted the treasury. Thereafter the bard was fated elsewhere. To the west, in fact. To Argan.

  But this history does not touch upon Argan.

  This account deals instead with the wishstone, the fabulous bauble ornamenting the sceptre of the Empress Justina, who came to power in Injiltaprajura after Lon-stantine Thrug went mad (another good man destroyed by syphilis!) and was incarcerated in the Dromdanjerie.

  Our history opens in the year Justina 5. To be precise, it opens in the season of Fistavlir, time of the Long Dry, when the doldrums have settled over Untunchilamon. Then the wind is nil or chancy, and precipitation is zero. Not that this worries the good folk of Injiltaprajura, for the fountains sourced Downstairs supply them with all the water one could wish for, and then some.

  Justina 5.

  Which year is that?

  By the Cosmos Clock of Din Civil, it is the year 15,436,789. By the Holy Calendar of the Golden Sepulchre it is Jintharth 424. The Wind Worshippers, on the other hand, denominate it as the Year of the Tinted Quail. whereas the Disciples of the Golden Monkey know it as Fen 4 of Asio 5699.

  Those versed in the history of Yestron should note that Justina 5 is the seventh year of the Talonsklavara, the disastrous civil war instigated by Aldarch the Third. In Argan, far west of Untunchilamon, historians reckon Justina 5 to be the year Alliance 4312, whereas in the northern continent of Tameran it is Khmar 5, that is to say the fifth year of the rule of the Red Emperor.

  As for the Ngati Moana, the people of the Great Ocean — why, by their reckoning it is the Year of the Flying Fish in the 376th Generation Cycle.

  The time, then, is Justina 5. The place is Untunchilamon. With that settled, let us now have… action.

  Let us survey the city by night.

  The city?

  Injiltaprajura, of course. There is no other city on Untunchilamon. Study then this city, Injiltaprajura, pearl of the Laitemata Harbour — not to be confused with that monolithic chunk of bone which is itself known as Pearl. Injiltaprajura, lit bright by candles, star lanterns and the blue-green glimmer of walls adorned with moon paint.

  Injiltaprajura is a metropolis of some 30,000 souls. The city is governed from the palace which stands on the heights at the inland end of Lak Street, and this imposing edifice of pink marble is currently the home of the Empress Justina. The pink palace sits atop Pokra Ridge, that half-circle of rock which separates Injiltaprajura’s urbanised portside from the northern desert side where one finds barracks, quarries, cemeteries, and the many market gardens which flourish thanks to a limitless supply of water sourced Downstairs.

  Let us ignore Injiltaprajura’s desert side for the moment, since the portside has a virtual monopoly on life and action. Let us start at the steps of the pink palace, then follow Lak Street as it winds its way downhill past the houses of the great and the grand, past the mysterious ship-sized chunk of bone which is known locally as Pearl, and then past the Cabal House of the wonderworkers of Untunchilamon.

  If we wished, we could make a diversion at this point. We could leave Lak Street and risk the precipitous slopes of Skindik Way. Do we so wish? Of course we do not! For if we were thus to dare our way into the slums we would inevitably encounter the lunatic asylum, then the enormous rotting doss house known as Ganthorgruk, and then the city’s slaughterhouse.

  And beyond?

  Things still worse! The clutter of hovels and scramble-walks known as Lubos, which is without doubt the worst quarter of the city. There we would find such dubious people as the corpse master Uckermark, asleep amidst the stench of decomposing meat.

  Let us not, therefore, turn down Skindik Way. Instead, let us continue to make our way down Lak Street. Past the Cabal House. From which there issues sound and light — a pluff, then a cascade of red sparks.

  What lies within?

  A dragon, mayhap?

  No, only the wonderworkers themselves, busy with the exercise of magic. This cascade of sparks is, one hopes, but a harmless epiphenomenon of their endeavours.

  Exactly what, you ask, are those endeavours? What precisely are they doing in the Cabal House? Why, nothing original. The wonderworkers of Injiltaprajura — that is to say, the city’s resident sorcerers — are engaged in the attempt to turn lead into gold, which is a feat theoretically within their capabilities but in practice near impossible.

  So far, tonight’s experiments have seen the wonderworkers turn lead into spaghetti, chaff, peacock feathers, black marble, musk, the jawbone of a jackal, the mummified flesh of an archer a thousand years dead, pumice, salt water, wax and a great big heap of carpet fluff. Yesterday they succeeded in converting the same substance into cheese, pyridine, basalt and sawdust. And tomorrow — who knows?

  The truth is, the powers of the sorcerers of Yestron are third-rate when compared with those of the wizards of Argan. Yestron’s wonderworkers are capable of spectacular effects, but lack the fine nuances of control of which wizards are capable. Furthermore, sorcerers (unlike wizards) cannot create objects which in themselves possess powers magical or attributes uncanny.

  Therefore, while a sorcerer might (might!) be a match for a wizard in combat, sorcerers could never make the magic rings, enchanted gates, bewitched bottles, philtres, potions, slaughter-swords, flying sticks and flame-trenches that the wizards of Argan’s Confederation create.

  Ignore then the Cabal House of the wonderworkers, and observe instead Lak Street. Something is moving on that thoroughfare. What is it? Precisely what is it that has caught our attention? It is not the virgular serpent sliding from a sewer-hole. Nor is it the tiny jade button which lies by that sewer-hole, a button which was attached to Troldot Turbothot’s dress uniform until it became detached during a brief scuffle with a would-be pickpocket. Nor has our attention been drawn by the dead dog (as yet unconsumed by carrion eaters) which has attracted the scavenger snake into the open air.

  No, the subject of our interest is the Princess Sabitha. Out on the night, out on the town, out on the prowl. Hoping (expecting!) to be seduced, seized and subjected to — well, let us leave the business of subjection to the imagination. At least for the
moment. And while the imagination does its work, let us watch the Princess Sabitha, who steps out lively even though the night is hot enough for mosquitoes to be drowning in their own sweat.

  [I personally went to the trouble of obtaining fifty mosquitoes which I then placed within a sealed retort. Subjecting these vampiric reptiles to increasing degrees of heat in an effort to elicit an outflow of sweat secured at length their utter dehydration and their death yet failed to bring about any visible production of moisture. The necessary conclusion is therefore that the autodestruction of mosquitoes through the mechanism suggested by the Text is impossible, which implies that the Originator is here in error, or else is perpetrating a deliberate Untruth. Oris Baumgage, Fact Checker Minor.

  What do we know of the Princess Sabitha, this gay young aristocrat?

  This we know: she was not born on the island of Untunchilamon. No, she was born far to the east in Yestron. To be precise, she was born in Ang. With more precision still, we can place her nativity in the city of Obooloo, in the very heart of the Izdimir Empire. Her full name was Sabitha Winolathon Taskinjathura. She was a descendant of the famous Ousompton Ling Ordway whose lineage has been dealt with at such length in Lady Jade’s Book of the Higher Aristocracy, and thus she could trace her ancestry back for at least some three thousand years.

  In due course, the dictates of fortune brought Sabitha to Untunchilamon. There, as befitted her royal station, she was domiciled in the palace of the Empress Justina. Unfortunately, thanks to the slapdash way the palace was organised, nobody has made the appropriate arrangements to supervise her amusements. In fact, far more care is taken of Justina’s grossly over-indulged albinotic ape Vazzy.

  In all the time the princess has been resident in the pink palace, nobody has seen fit to remedy this situation. Hence she is free to come and go as she pleases, without so much as a chaperone. Thus, on the night on which our history opens, here she is out on her own on the streets of Injiltaprajura.