The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers (5 page)

He spoke, of course, in Malud, since that is the language of the people of the island of Asral. Not only is it their name for their tongue - it is also their name for themselves. Although, as far as the eye is concerned, they are outwardly identical to the Ashdans.

‘Hush,’ said Al-ran Lars as he raised his lantern.

Light spangled from eye-bright diamonds, from coins in cascades, from gold-woven tapestries and other wealth beyond ennumeration. Pearls the size of pears. Almandine glowing as red as roses. Carbuncles lit by their own inner fire. The glamour of ultramarines. Globes of amber. The sombre ochre light of a solitary firestone, work of the wizards of Arl, masters of both the merely luminous and the incandescent.

‘There,’ said Tolon, the big one, the muscle-man.

He pointed.

‘That’s it,’ said Al-ran Lars, and slipped his hands into a pair of mailed gauntlets.

With his hands thus armoured, he picked up the sceptre of the Empress Justina. This ornament terminated in a glittering bauble, a fierce-blazing flare of rainbows, a soft-humming triakisoctahedron. Al-ran Lars raised it to his lips. Kissed it.

‘No snakes,’ said Arnaut.

‘I noticed,’ said Al-ran Lars dryly.

When he had first come here years before, the greatest wonders of the treasury had been guarded by snakes and by worse. But security had grown slack in the intervening years. Which is not surprising, since it takes a fair amount of hard work and enterprise (not to mention raw courage) to maintain a sizeable colony of poisonous reptiles in good health in an underground treasury.

Al-ran Lars passed the sceptre to Tolon, who hefted its weight easily. Tolon bent back the copper clasps which bound the triakisoctahedron to the sceptre, freed that fabulous bauble, then let the denuded sceptre fall. It clanged against the flagstones.

‘Let me see,’ said Arnaut, eagerly claiming the wishstone from Tolon.

The triakisoctahedron was warm to the touch. It vibrated constantly, as if it was not a jewel which he held but a huge insect, its wings ever seeking to urge its mass to flight. Arnaut raised the wishstone in both hands and said:

‘I wish I may I wish I might have a - a loaf of bread tonight.’

Nothing happened. Al-ran Lars laughed.

‘I told you,’ said he.

‘It was worth trying,’ said Arnaut, crestfallen.

‘Come,’ said Al-ran Lars. ‘Let’s be gone.’

Then he led the way to the door through which they had entered. It closed with a heavy thlunk-clunk, and the treasury was once more in darkness. Before venturing back through the tunnels Downstairs, Al-ran Lars searched first Tolon and then his nephew. But neither had taken any trinkets which might betray them.

‘Good,’ said Al-ran Lars, pleased with their discipline.

But this discipline was only to be expected. This raid had been planned and rehearsed for two years. It was slick, professional and cunning. Oh, how cunning!

When the loss of the wishstone was discovered, Injiltaprajura would be turned upside down by thief-seeking soldiers. Any foreigners who had just arrived in town would naturally be under suspicion. This was why Al-ran Lars had brought the Taniwha to Untunchilamon shortly before the beginning of the Long Dry. For long dull days of windless weather the brig had floated at anchor while Al-ran Lars bought and sold in the markets of Injiltaprajura. Now his ship was so familiar to all the city that it was but part of the scenery.

When the season of Fistavlir ended and the trade winds blew once more, the Taniwha would sail from Injilta-prajura with the wishstone aboard. Even her crew would be ignorant of this special cargo, knowledge of which would be restricted to Al-ran Lars, to his nephew Arnaut, and to his blood-brother Tolon.

Al-ran Lars was sure the wealth the wishstone would win would be worth all the effort and the danger which went with it. The two years of planning. The long, dangerous journey east from Asral. The days of trial and tension which yet lay ahead. Wealth would compensate for all. So he thought. Little did he know what horrors awaited them! What dangers fearful! What doom near-inescapable. But he was to learn. Oh yes, he was to learn soon enough.

The Malud marauders hustled along through the underways Downstairs till they came to a flight of stairs. Up they went. Al-ran Lars extinguished his lantern then opened the sally port at the top of the stairs. He and his companions then sallied out of it. They were in the open air again. To be precise, they were in Thlutter, the steep, jungle-growth gully just east of Pearl.

Injiltaprajura’s portside slopes steeply from Pokra Ridge to the waterfront. Gullies steeper yet gash the slope. For the most part, roads and houses avoid these gullies, which are choked with vegetation in which there dwell indestructible black pigs, snakes, spiders, scorpions, centipedes half as long as your arm, bush dogs, numerous cats and mosquitoes in their millions.

Many of these mosquitoes began to bite the three pirates (for such the Malud marauders were, surely, though they guised themselves as honest merchants) as soon as they emerged into the night air. Muggy night air, air alive with the splitter-splatter of a dozen fountains, with the smells of dank earth, coconut rot, over-ripe bananas, decayed mangos and frangipani.

‘Dogs!’ said Tolon.

‘I’m not deaf,’ said Al-ran Lars.

Dogs in their hundreds were barking. To north, south, east and west. It sounded as if every dog in Injiltaprajura had been roused to wakefulness.

‘Come on,’ said Arnaut. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

‘Wait!’ said Al-ran Lars.

Next moment, the bells of the pink palace rang out. These were the midnight bells, marking the end of undokondra (that quarter of the day which lasts from dusk to midnight) and the start of bardardornootha. The bells had scarcely died away when rainbows flourished through the heavens. The peacock-plumage blaze of colour lit up Thlutter. Lit up the broad-leaved banana trees, the trailing scorpion vines and the faces of the Malud marauders. Faces which clearly revealed their dismay. Then the rainbow light snapped out. Vanished! Gone!

The three Malud blinked blind at the darkness.

‘The wishstone!’ said Arnaut. ‘The wishstone, the stone, that’s what’s doing it!’

‘Nonsense,’ said Al-ran Lars, closing his eyes in an effort to recover his nightsight.

‘Maybe it’s the wonderworkers,’ said Tolon. ‘Warning us. Hunting us.’

‘Rubbish!’ said Al-ran Lars. ‘They can’t know anything. Not yet.’

But he was worried. The rainbows in the sky had echoed the inner life of the wishstone. The relationship between sky and stone might be spurious, accidental, coincidental. Nevertheless, the sky-brightening had surely been a symptom of a fearful exercise of magic.

Al-ran Lars came to a swift decision.

‘We’re going back,’ he said. ‘Back Downstairs.’

‘You really wish to run?’ said Tolon.

‘Rather that than fight my way through Injiltaprajura street by street.’

‘It’s not far,’ argued Tolon. ‘We could be back aboard soon enough.’

‘With these dogs on the rouse?’ said Al-ran Lars. ‘With the sky amok with colour? The whole city will be awake by now.’ Arnaut said: ‘I think—’

‘Think later!’ said Al-ran Lars. ‘Thinking we can do when we’re safely underground.’

So saying, he led his comrades back Downstairs. Down there, of course, Shabble was still on the loose.

What precisely did cause those dogs to rouse, those rainbows to flourish through the sky? With the benefit of perfect hindsight we can say, without a doubt, that those phenomena were associated with the arrival of a demon in Injiltaprajura. Yes, a hideous Thing had broken through from the World Beyond, and would in due course do appalling damage to the dignity of some of the city’s leading citizens.

But this was not known at the time, hence the shock, alarm and bewilderment felt by the Malud marauders was shared by others in the city. Priests roused themselves from bed and went to pray to their gods and to make whatever sacrifices their religions demanded. Sentries standing watch woke their superior officers and were cursed for their pains. Fishermen in canoes which were working the Laitemata and the lagoon by night extinguished their lamps, stowed their gear and began rowing for shore, fearing the sea itself might be next to manifest an unexpected disturbance -perhaps one which would doom their frail craft.

We see, then, that many of the worthy citizens of Injiltaprajura were disturbed by these manifestations which were, at that time, so inexplicable. One of those who suffered a certain degree of angst as a result of the phenomena-of-unknown-origin was Justina’s Master of Law, Aquitaine Varazchavardan.

The name rings a bell?

I wouldn’t be surprised.

Varazchavardan is a formidable figure who has doubtless found his way into many histories by now, so there is every possibility that you will have encountered him already in your reading. Nevertheless, let us tell him in detail even so.

Aquitaine Varazchavardan, who had fingernails as long as the fingers themselves, dwelt in a villa on Hojo Street. Varazchavardan, who was sorcerer and civil servant both, liked his sleep. Yet he was wide awake, even though bardardornootha had begun. There is no mystery about this. His mind was occupied by an urgent question:
What the hell is going on?

Earlier in the evening, the lean albino had been woken by the massive energy drain which had extinguished every light in the city. He had known at once that it was nothing to do with the wonderworkers dabbling with the transmutation of metals in the fastness of the Cabal House. No. Someone or Something was tampering with the Fundamentals. Who? Or What? Could it be that the Hermit Crab had been roused to action?

Gods forbid!

Shortly after the energy drain, something had set every dog in Injiltaprajura to barking. Varazchavardan had immediately suspected earthquake. Yet the earth had stayed stable. It was the sky which had next shown signs of disturbance. Rainbows had briefly lit up the entire dome of the heavens from one horizon to the next.

And what next?

Varazchavardan grimaced, watched and waited.

He was standing on the balcony of his villa’s uppermost storey. He looked up and down Hojo Street, and saw lanterns on the move as nervous worshippers began to flock to their temples.

Hojo Street is the most desirable piece of real estate in Injiltaprajura, and consequently attracts land taxes quite astronomical. So astronomical, in fact, that most buildings on Hojo Street are owned by institutions which can live tax free - most notably religions.

Aquitaine Varazchavardan flexed his talons and looked across the Laitemata Harbour to the island of Jod where dwelt the Hermit Crab.

Is it the Hermit Crab?

He remembered his first (and last) interview with that sinister sage. He had dared a trifling piece of magic to test the island’s eremite, and had nearly been turned inside out. That brief encounter had been sufficient to convince him the Crab could do whatever it wanted.

But why would it eat energy, wake dogs, conjure with rainbows? There’s no sense to it.

The night’s manifestations were more in the nature of an experiment. Who but the wonderworkers indulged in experiments? Ivan Pokrov, of course! The man was always playing with mysterious objects recovered from Downstairs or dredged up from the seabed in fishermen’s nets.

Demon’s claw! What’s Pokrov up to now?

So thought Aquitaine Varazchavardan. After thinking such, he vowed to visit Pokrov soon to see precisely what was afoot on Jod.

If it’s Pokrov, we can bring him to heel.

And if not?

Varazchavardan, of all people, should have been able to deduce from the evidence that Untunchilamon was probably feeling the will of Something from Beyond. A Power of some kind. A demon. A minor god. Or (greater gods forbid!) a major god. He had the requisite knowledge, experience and intelligence. But all he thought was:

Time will tell.

The truth is, though Varazchavardan was alarmed by the sudden manifestations, he had a lot of other things on his mind which worried him far more. Political things.

Abandoning his fruitless scrutiny of the night sky, Varazchavardan opened the mosquito screens and went back inside. He poured some sherbet into a glass, opened an amphora arid clawed out a chunk of ice which he dropped into his drink. Ice, sourced Downstairs, was dirt cheap in Injiltaprajura. Otherwise Varazchavardan would scarcely have found life in the tropics bearable. He hated the heat.

This was his fifteenth year on Untunchilamon. Much of that time had been tolerably enjoyable - the eight years he had spent as chief adviser to Wazir Sin. At the start of Talonsklavara he had considered going to Yestron to join the struggle for control of the Izdimir Empire, but had abandoned the notion since the probable outcome of the continental civil war had at that time been unclear. Shortly afterwards, Varazchavardan’s old friend Sin had been murdered by Lonstantine Thrug.

Then life had become difficult.

Still, by adroit political manoeuvring, Varazchavardan had managed to stay close to the heart of power. He had been helped by the fact that he was head of the wonderworker’s Cabal House. Lonstantine Thrug had not wished to pick a quarrel with Injiltaprajura’s sorcerers, and his daughter Justina had been similarly cautious, allowing Varazchavardan to retain his position as Master of Law.