The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers (18 page)

Up to the seventh landing they went.

There misfortune befell young Chegory and his companions, for a squad of soldiers rushed them from the side tunnel which there debouched. The soldiers were armoured well and armed with spears, hence the pirates had no option but to discard their weapons and surrender.

Then curt commands were issued and a most reluctant Chegory Guy was escorted up the stairs in the company of his Asral-born companions. He knew their captors were soldiers of Justina’s palace guard. Their uniforms and accoutrements left him in no doubt about that. Doubdess they had been scouring the depths Downstairs in an effort to capture at least some of the looters who had robbed Injiltaprajura’s treasury.

This means execution. At the very least!

So thought Chegory.

Then they reached the top of the stairs and were marshalled at spearpoint into a vast cellerage illuminated by cold lights overhead which shone harsh and bright on a scene of industrious activity. Those few shadows which survived were sheltering under big, heavy barrels. Workers were decanting the contents of these containers into jugs, urns, amphorae and botdes. In the air was a smell which Chegory knew to be that of alcohol.

Justina’s guards were everywhere in evidence.

Chegory did not quite understand what was going on here. Obviously this was a secret warehouse for the distribution of drugs, an underground equivalent of Firfat Labrat’s warehouse in Marthandorthan. But what then were the guards doing? Was this a raid? If so, why was work proceeding as usual? And who was this tall white-skinned man now approaching?

Was it... ?

Could it be ... ?

Yes, it was!

The now-near newcomer with pink eyes and alabaster skin was none other than the wonderworker Aquitaine Varazchavardan, Master of Law to the Empress Justina of Untunchilamon, the dignitary whom Chegory had last met when the sorcerer had come to Jod to interrupt Ivan Pokrov’s lunch with queries about the Analytical Engine. Varazchavardan was still wearing the same silken ceremonial robes alive with dragons ultramarine and incarnadine. As the sorcerer drew near, Chegory made reverence in the Janjuladoola manner.

‘Aha!’ said Varazchavardan, ‘so it’s—’

The pirates moved.

A hand-signal from the eldest threw them into action.

The muscle man grabbed Chegory Guy and hurled him at the guarding spearmen, skittling them. The elderly pirate whipped out a hidden blade, triced Varazchavardan into his clutches then pressed steel to trachea.

‘Keep back!’ yelled Varazchavardan. ‘Keep back, or he’ll kill me!’

But skitded guardsmen were already scrambling to their feet, scrabbling for their fallen weapons. The muscle man picked up a cask of alcohol and hurled it. Then threw another, which burst on impact. Chegory rolled out of the way of a third, picked himself up and dodged a fourth.

Swiftly the throat-threatening pirate dragged his hostage Varazchavardan toward the top of the stairwell. Chegory hobbled after the fast-retreating pirates, splashing through spilt liquor as he went. What alternative did he have? To stay and be arrested. Or killed out of hand! Soldiers followed cautiously. The ancient clutching Varazchavardan let his knife tease a little blood from the albino’s skin. The sorcerer screamed at his men.

‘You want me dead? Get back, you fools! Get back!’

In response, one optimist hurled a knife, thinking he could skewer the pirate who had the Master of Law in his dutches. The knife went wide. Varazchavardan swore. This called for desperate measures!

'Richardia rincus rident!’ he gasped.

A shock of purple flame flashed from his body. It blasted away the throat-threatening pirate. Varazchavardan was free! But the same flames ignited a sea of spilt alcohol. Varazchavardan fled, howling, beating at the flames swift-flaring from his embroidered dragons as fire swarmed up his silken robes. The muscleman pirate had already scooped up the elderly one and was sprinting for the stairs. The youngest of the Malud marauders was hot on his heels, with Chegory Guy close behind.

By the time they gained the stairs the cavernous warehouse was a lurid theatre of dragon-mouthed incineration. Down the stairs they pounded, fleeing the holocaust. First landing. Second. Third. Fourth. Fifth. Thunder roared behind them as barrels of liquor began to explode in the inferno.

Still down the steps they ran.

‘Omora sora!’ gasped Chegory, pausing on the sixth landing to pant for breath.

This phrase will not be translated, for it was voiced in his native Dub and is therefore axiomatically obscene since it is impossible to say anything in that tongue which has fewer than three unseemly connotations.

While Chegory was so pausing and panting, the pirates were still pounding down the stairs. Chegory knew he must hurry else he would get left behind. But - wasn’t that what he wanted in any case? Of course it was! He had no desire whatsoever to keep the company of these desperate killers for a moment longer than he had to. Decision then was instantaneous. He ducked into the narrow side tunnel and began striding out as best he could to put the greatest possible distance between himself and all potential pursuers.

Down the tunnel of purple light went Chegory Guy. He took a left turn then a right. The tunnel broadened. The light changed from purple to lemon. All was quiet, quiet, quiet. Then he began to hear a rhythmical thumping shattering crashing up ahead. On he went, for he thought he knew what it was.

He was right.

The noise was being made by another ice machine dumping huge blocks of ice into chambers already littered with the same. Ice white bright ensnared the colours of lights of red, green and blue downshining from above. Cold, it was cold, the delicious shock of such cold thrilled him into wakefulness, cleared his head, made him sharper, stronger, readier.

His thirst craved immediate appeasement, but such melt water as there was drained away through grilles in the floor so there were no potable pools awaiting. Instead, Chegory must perforce crunch the cold, cold ice between his teeth then swallow the shattered slurry. Soon the mounting burden of fractured ice in his belly was beginning to cause him discomfort. He durst not eat more lest overconsumption led to cramps or stomach upsets.

Fatigue was regaining the ascendancy. The initial excitement of discovering the ice (and thus of being saved from thirsting to death) was wearing off. He backed off from the ice and settled himself in an ice-cooled corridor, meaning to rest for a little before he went on. Instead, he slipped off to sleep, for he was far too tired to be kept awake merely by the rocksliding downfalls of ice.

It was cold which woke him.

He found himself shivering. Goose-pimples on his skin. He hugged himself, slapped his arms and thighs, then returned to the ice stack to gnaw more concrete water, thinking it best to stock up before he resumed his march.

Cold, it was cold, bitter cold, he had not been so cold since... yes, since last year’s flying fish expedition. He had gone out in a local fishing canoe by night. Ox No Zan had been with him, and Olivia Qasaba, and a dozen others, most of them fishermen. Night, and moon on the rippling sea. Flaring torches. Olivia squealing with excitement. Flying fish kicking in the toe-deep water in the bottom on the canoe. Then the long journey back, a lean wind driving the sail and stripping the warmth from their exhausted bodies. He had been truly cold by the time they reached shore, and had remembered it long after since chills of any description were so rare on Untunchilamon.

With ice eaten, Chegory was ready to march. On he went, taking things nice and slow. Then he stopped. What was it, that thing lying in the middle of the tunnel? A nasty, grisly piece of shrivelled black. A banana skin! A banana skin long dead, admittedly, but sign of human life nevertheless, unless one was to presume one of Injiltaprajura’s monkeys had wandered this far into the deeps with a piece of fruit in hand.

‘Saved,’ muttered Chegory, for he was sure he must be nearing an exit.

Fatigue fled in the face of excitement, as it had on his discovery of the ice which had so recently (this was how he thought of it, though he was doubtless overdramatising the situation somewhat) saved his life. His stride lengthened as he stepped out smartly, eager to see what was ahead.

The tunnel down which he strode was pierced to left and right by ovoid doorways opening on empty chambers. Chegory glanced in each as he passed it, and was rewarded when he spotted further signs of human life in the tenth to the right. Rubbish rubbish rubbish! Oh most welcome sight! Among the mingled triflings of garbage were a few pieces of broken coconut shell. The carapaces of a couple of land crabs. A small, discrete dumping of turds. A bit of dried-out banana leaf, perhaps used as the wrapping for a handful of rice or rations similar. A few lumps of charcoal remaining from a fire.

‘Someone camped here,’ said Chegory. ‘Or rested here, at least. Ice miners, maybe.’

The amount of rubbish suggested people had been here often, as did the state of the walls, which past visitors had liberally graffitographed with charcoal sketches of the postures of lust — the fluid strokes of the said sketches suggesting that easy artistry which comes from long and diligent practice. There too young Chegory saw, among an overlay of names and slogans, a few scribbled equations. Familiar were these indeed, for they were couched in the inscrutable elegance of Thaldonian Mathematics. Had Ivan Pokrov been this way? Quite possibly. But Chegory was unlikely to find him round the next corner, particularly since the charcoal marks could have been there for anything from a day to fifty thousand years or more.

Chegory picked up one of the pieces of coconut shell. A few tiny, dessicated fragments of dried coconut meat adhered yet to the brown-black rind. He scratched them off with a thumbnail still black from his rock gardening. Licked them up. Food food food! He drooled at memories of the last lunch he had eaten. Sea slugs and flying fish. Right now he would happily have killed for another such meal. Or any meal.

‘Soonest out, soonest fed,’ muttered Chegory.

He tossed the coconut shell over his shoulder. It clattered on the metal underfoot. Chegory scratched through the rest of the rubbish. Nothing there. Nothing to eat, anyway.

He picked up a piece of charcoal then began to write on the wall. He wrote in Ashmarlan for that was the sole language he could read and write, since nobody had thought to learn him his letters till he started to board with Jon Qasaba at the Dromdanjerie, and thereafter the language of his education had naturally been that of his Ashdan tutors.

[Here an anomaly. Ashmolea’s language of scholarship is not the demotic Ashmarlan but the elegant Slandolin, language of Formal Literature and High Art, hence surely Guy’s tutors would have educated him in Slandolin. Does the Originator of the Text err in ignorance? Or is this but an absent-minded slip of the pen? Or is one to presume that the Ebrell Islander Guy was found by his tutors to be incapable of attaining mastery of Slandolin? Quite possibly, since the Originator notes that Guy was, in technical terms, ignorant of any language whatsoever. Scholars should bear in mind ambiguities such as this whenever they encounter a passage in which the Originator is sufficiently hubristic as to lay claim to omniscience.
Sot Dawbler, School of Commentary.]

THALDONIAN MATHEMATICS SUCKS RED RULES, OK?

AQUITAINE VARAZCHAVARDAN ZABAGRUBS PIGS OLIVIA OLIVIA OLIVIA URI THE VALOROUS WAS HERE JUSTINA LOVES VAZZY.

THEODORA LOVES. AND LOVES. AND LOVES.

Here is, first, conclusive proof that Chegory Guy had at least some awareness of what went on in Justina’s pink palace. He knew of the albinotic ape Vazzy which the Empress held in such high regard and he had heard at least a rumour or two of the scandal surrounding the life of Justina’s twin sister, the famous Theodora. What is here secondly demonstrated is the essential bankruptcy of the notion of ‘educating’ an Ebrell Islander. Once Chegory Guy learnt to read and write did he act as an educated man? Did he enter upon politics or the law, or—

[Here a lengthy tirade against Ebrell Islanders and the stupidity of ‘educating’ them has been deleted on the grounds of redundancy. Conclusive proof of the moral degeneracy and intellectual insufficiency of this subhuman breed has appeared in this Text already. There is no need to reproduce further Comments by the Originator on this subject, particularly when one begins to suspect some of these Comments are Originated not for purposes of advancing scholarship and enhancing the world’s enlightenment but merely to allow the Originator an arena in which to display intellectual prowess, or a misguided ‘wit’ which the Originator equates with such prowess.
Drax Lira, Redactor Major.]

With his works of literary composition completed, Chegory Guy pocketed some spare charcoal in case he was once more beglamoured by inspiration, then onward he went, soon entering on a huge vaulted hall shod with tessellating tiles cast in three dozen different patterns. Blue and green were the tiles and metal was their substance. Their unity was pierced by half a thousand transparent tubes ascending from floor to ceiling. Fluids flowed within those tubes. Some were clear, doubtless bearing water to feed the fountains which watered Injiltaprajura so generously. Others were stained with colour. A couple did young Chegory recognise - the grey of shlug and the bile-green of dikle. But what was that thick fermented black? That blue made to rival the sky? That ominous red, darker yet than bloodstone? That yellow as bright as the lethal sun scorpion of Zolabrik?