Stench Caves: complex of caverns from whence that thin and
putrid flux known as the Nijidith River outflows and courses west
to Lake Kak. The Nijidith River affords pigs and such with a
constant source of nourishment, and was the original attraction
which caused Obooloo to be founded on the shores of Lake Kak.* * *
Choosing to quest to the Stench Caves and thus save his
And while all this was going on, the murkbeast had
father from incineration, Guest Gulkan confessed to the location
of the ring of ever-ice which had the power to open and close the
time pods in the Temple of Blood.
Once Guest had confessed, the sewer-flavored waters in the
Temple of Blood were siphoned dry, and the muck at the bottom of
the octagonal chamber which housed the Great God Jocasta and the
demon Ungular Scarth was sieved until the ring was found.
Then Aldarch the Third used that ring to open the time pod
which held the Witchlord, and the man fell from that pod, and was
received by the Mutilator's healers. Thereafter, the Mutilator
wore the ring of ever-ice on his own hand.
Now since Lord Onosh had been sorely wounded when Guest had
first consigned him to the safety of a time pod, and since no time
whatsoever had passed for Lord Onosh since then, he proved
grievously wounded when liberated, and was some months recovering.
But, with the Witchlord Onosh being finally recovered, and
reconciled to joining the quest for the cornucopia to which his
son had pledged himself, Witchlord and Weaponmaster left the
palace of Ubazakura, accompanied by the Mutilator and a great host
of his people.
They went on foot, this being the traditional manner in which
the Stench Caves are approached from Obooloo, since those caves
are holy, and therefore to approach those caves is to undertake a
kind of pilgrimage.
While they pilgrimaged, Aldarch the Third led that multitude
in a holy chant. His voice was not so melodious as that of one of
his imperial dragons, but his power and status compelled Guest
Gulkan to attend to him with such concentration that the
Weaponmaster soon began to feel that he had never heard a more
affecting plaint in all his days.
Even so, Guest did not feel very much like a pilgrim. On the
night before, the Mutilator had honored Witchlord and
Weaponmaster with a feast, and Guest's head was aching from all
the wine he had drunk, for liquor of all descriptions had become
unfamiliar to his flesh during his days of imprisonment. Yes,
despite Guest Gulkan's great constitutional strength, the stress
of imprisonment had weakened him bitterly, and today he felt his
weakness in the length of the road, the sharpness of the light,
the invincibility of the sun.
The day was hot, and in its heat the greenflies of Ang were
at their pestilential worst. A hot shimmer of dragonflies
flickered between the processioning pilgrims and went winging out
over the Nijidith River - a slow and oozing flux of filth in which
pigs were diligently rooting for their sustenance. The pigs were
not by any means alone, for keeping them company were ducks which
went filleting through the muck with their beaks; and, ignoring
both pigs and ducks, multitudes of barefoot peasants stood up to
their knees in the rivermud, and sieved it for unimaginable
treasures (fish? bugs? worms? eggs? tadpoles? gemstones? coinage?
bones?).
It might have been thought that the Weaponmaster would have
occupied himself on that journey by making plans for resistance or
escape. But he did not. The fight had gone out of him, for he had
suffered too many setbacks and defeats - starting with the tearing
of his arms and legs in an arena in Chi'ash-lan. That had marked
him. The demon of Cap Foz Para Lash had repaired the damage done
to his flesh, but his psyche had been deeply damaged. He knew
his own vulnerability, and knew it too well, for all that he tried
to deny that knowledge. And, having found all that all his
resources of strength had failed him in Chi'ash-lan, he was less
sure of those resources than he had been on that foolish day of
youthful bravura when he had faced the Rovac warrior Thodric Jarl
in a duel in Enskandalon Square.
Consequently, though Guest had functioned well enough when
questing in the company of the wizards Pelagius Zozimus and
Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, he had found it harder to play the hero
without them. So when endeavoring to escape from Injiltaprajura,
and finding his escape ship confronted by a fleet loyal to the
Mutilator, he had found himself entirely lacking in initiative and
resource; and it had only been the intervention of his servant
Thayer Levant which had saved him from tamely surrendering the x-
x-zix and the mazadath to the Mutilator's forces.
Since then, imprisonment and threat had further sapped
Guest's confidence; and, of course, he was nursing a dragon, as
the cognoscenti of Obooloo term a hangover. He was further
depressed by the fact that his new boots - a personal gift from
the Mutilator - were giving him blisters. Therefore he made no
plans for mayhem, and he attempted no touristic appreciation of
the novel sights and scenes which greeted him on the way to the
Stench Gates, though he did take note of a young woman breast-
feeding a piglet, which (much to the Weaponmaster's envy) nuzzled
against her flesh in an utter contentment of gluttony.
As the procession drew nearer to the Stench Gates, the river
became more obviously polluted - for nuggets of floating filth and
lengths of what looked like intestines came floating downstream on
its oily waters. These delicacies were salvaged by the bucketload
by industrious peasants, who carted much away for their own use,
yielding up token portions to be burnt as offerings at the several
temples of the God of Bounty.
The God of Bounty, a minor god who had Zoz the Ancestral as
his patron, was worshipped by the banks of the Nijidith River, and
nowhere else. The largest of his temples occupied the huge portal
cavern which linked the world of daylight with the inner dark of
the Stench Caves, and, at the end of their journey, Witchlord and
Weaponmaster were led into this Prime Temple. It was dominated by
a huge carving which depicted the God of Bounty graciously
vomiting into the begging bowls of His worshippers.
It was then explained to the two that they must convert to
the worship of the God of Bounty if they would venture deeper into
the Stench Caves. Since both were agreeable to being converted,
the rites of conversion immediately began: and took a full three
days to complete.
Neither Lord Onosh nor his son Guest either felt or expressed
any impatience at this delay. For, while those who read histories
are commonly eager to know What Happens Next, those who have the
misfortune to be making history in their own right would usually
rather not know, or at least not just yet. Guest in particular
welcomed the respite, for it allowed him to drain and dry the
blisters which he had got from his new boots on the march to the
Stench Caves.
Witchlord and Weaponmaster endured the three days of ritual
with such perfect patience that the high priest of the God of
Bounty, impressed by their manifest piety, told them that there
were two vacancies in the priesthood.
"You are candidates," said the high priest. "Say the word,
and you will be accepted."
"Ah," said Guest, "but we are doomed on a quest."
"No," said the high priest. "Do but say the word, and you
will be inducted into the priesthood. Priests do not quest."
Encouraged by this - for the longeurs of three days of ritual
had failed to give him any enthusiasm for finding out What Happens
next - Guest asked for details. He was told that the two positions
currently vacant were those of the Collector of Alms and the
Blesser of Turds.
"The one, by tradition, is always a blind man with his male
attributes removed," said the high priest, licking his lips. "The
other has no ears, and is likewise bereft of the attributes
specific to his gender."
On getting a painfully precise explanation of what was meant
by the removal of "male attributes", Witchlord and Weaponmaster
decided that (unfortunately) neither of them was worthy to be
inducted into the priesthood of the God of Bounty.
"A pity," said the high priest, who had looked forward to the
task of making these potential new recruits eligible for the
priesthood. "A great pity."
Then he supervised the arming of Witchlord and Weaponmaster.
They were equipped with swordbelts, with swords, with knives, with
throwing stars, with eye-gouging handscrews, with darning needles
and with packets of pepper. All the weapons were firmly lashed to
their swordbelts (but for the darning needles and packets of
pepper, which were enclosed in leather purses which had been
stitched tight, the purses themselves then being bound to the
swordbelts). The idea was that the questing heroes would not be
given any encouragement to run amok in the temple - but, once free
in the Stench Caves, they would be able to liberate a full
complement of weapons at their leisure.
And so at last - much to the relief of Aldarch the Third, who
lacked the infinite tolerance for ritual which Guest and his
father had so capably demonstrated - Witchlord and Weaponmaster
were conveyed to the innermost door of the Prime Temple which
occupied the portal cavern of the Stench Caves. The Nijidith River
existed from the Stench Caves by means of the gap beneath that
innermost door, which was opened in a long ceremony involving much
wailing, and the laceration of priestly noses, and the banging of
calabashes, and the ceremonial sacrifice of a rat.
Having been sacrificed, the rat was then cooked, and portions
of it were served to both Witchlord and Weaponmaster. They ate it
without any qualms whatsoever (while confined in the Fulch, Guest
Gulkan had several times eaten raw rat, therefore had no objection
to the same article when cooked), and found it perfectly
palatable, for it was not a filth-eater, but, rather, a pampered
creature which had been properly raised expressly for the purpose
of consumption.
Having thus fed, Witchlord and Weaponmaster were escorted
through the Gates of Filth (for thus was the innermost door
named), where they were ordered to halt in front of a small altar
set amidst a sea of mud. A greenish phosphorescent light shone
dimly down from the roof, and this was supplemented by flaring
torches.
"Halt!" said the high priest.
For the ceremonies were not yet over! Before the questing
heroes could be allowed to proceed any further into the inner
depths, Aldarch the Third must first consecrate their mission by
sacrificing a frog.
A frog was produced. It was a brown frog spotted with
purplish strawberry-shaped markings. It had been securely trussed
with threads of gold, and of silver, of purple, and of crimson.
Guest Gulkan and his father were invited to kiss this animal,
which they duly did, pressing reverent lips to the coldness of its
skin. Then the high priest placed the sacrifice on the altar, and
withdrew.
Aldarch the Third then stroked the frog with his finger, and
hummed to it, then sucked on his finger, then let a glob of saliva
fall to its cool flesh, then used his finger to spread his spittle
across the animal's skin. Guest watched closely, for the Mutilator
was wearing the ring of ever-ice on the very same finger which was
stroking the frog, and Guest wished he could think of some way to
win possession of that ring.
Then the Mutilator drew his knife.
It was a small knife, a weapon made with a back-breaking
curve which ended not in a point but in a bead. A bluish bead.
Bluish? Greenish? It was hard to tell, for, after all, the Stench
Caves were lit by the green glow from the roof combined with the
flaring torchlight, which - as any interior designer will tell you
- is scarcely the kind of illumination to be using when one is
trying to match colors. But, despite the limitations of the
light, Guest Gulkan was fairly sure that the bead on the end of
the Mutilator's knife was a kind of blue or green. It looked to me
made of porcelain, and so reminded him of the hideous coffin in
the Mutilator's bathroom. Yet. The sight of that bead stirred a
deeper memory. What?
The Mutilator jabbed at the frog. The animal convulsed. And
Guest remembered.
Standing there at the Stench Gates, Guest Gulkan once again
remembered the vision which had long ago beset him in the mainrock
Pinnacle. His vision had transported him to a room where a gray-
skinned stranger had slapped him, then had jabbed him with a
hooked knife, terminating his vision, and precipitating his return
to the realities of the mainrock.
Aldarch was the gray-skinned stranger.
The knife which had sacrificed the frog was the same knife
which had assailed Guest during his visionary transportation.
And.
And!
The demon Ungular Scarth had said -
In the Temple of Blood, in the octagonal chamber which housed
the Great God Jocasta, the jade-green demon had told Guest that a
special knife needed to cut through the force-field which
imprisoned the Great God. Anaconda Stogirov, High Priestess of the
Temple of Blood, was in possession of one such blade.
The other -
"Wah!" said Guest.
And his father, who had been waiting for a cue which would
tell him his son was ready for violence, slammed the Mutilator
with his elbow. Down went the Mutilator! Guest grabbed for the
Mutilator's knife.
"Mazara!" screamed the Mutilator, rising from the mud.
Guest slashed him across the cheek. The Mutilator reeled
backward, and Guest kicked him in the crutch. As Aldarch doubled
over, Guest grabbed the man's head. Slammed it with his knee. The
ripped the ring of ever-ice from the Mutilator's finger, and
crammed it onto his own hand.
"Come on!" cried Lord Onosh.
So, realizing he did not have time to decapitate the
Mutilator, or to skin him alive, or to organize his roasting,
Guest chopped him on the neck - hoping the blow would kill - then
went pelting into the darkness.
Witchlord and Weaponmaster fled at full pace. A dozen paces
took them to the first of a multitude of corkscrew turns in an
ever-branching tunnel. Then the Stench Caves widened from tunnel
to cavern, and the Witchlord tripped, and went down. He fell
heavily, winding himself.
Guest, conscious of the cries of the guards who were in hot
pursuit, grabbed his father. The cavern was lit by the unearthly
green phosphorescence from overhead, but here and there were
patches of darkness. Guest dragged his father toward the nearest
such patch, not knowing whether it was a maw or a womb.
It proved to be a pocket of rock-shadowed mud. Cold mud. Wet
mud. Slickery mud which absorbed Guest and his father as they
plunged into it, going in up to their waists, and going in just in
time - for moments later a good two dozen of the Mutilator's
guards came pounding into the cavern.
As the guards raced into the cavern, Guest noticed the chip
of ever-ice in the ring on his hand was gleaming in the darkness,
vibrant with its own inner light. Hastily, he plunged it under the
mud.
The guards went pelting past. One slithered, slid, then went
sprawling with a belly-flop. One of his fellows kicked him,
swearing in fear, rage and panic. Green light slick-sliced from
the guards' swords, making Guest uncomfortably aware of the fact
that his own weapons were as yet unavailable for his use, since
they were firmly attached to his swordbelt. In his hand, he still
had the little knife he had won from Aldarch the Third, but he
doubted the wisdom of cutting anything free while he was waist-
deep in mud, for he might loose his steel to the slime.
Abruptly, the leading guard halted.
Then cried out.
Guest thought he had been discovered.
A moment later, with a roar, a thing with a great many
tentacles lunged from the mud and seized the guard who had halted
and shouted. The guard screamed, then screamed no more, for a
tentacle forced its way down his throat. Even as Guest watched,
aghast, the tentacle abrupted through the guard's back.
The guard thrashed in spasms. Then the monster of the murk
tossed him to one side. He hit the wall with a sick glap-slup of
bursting organs, then folded up in a crumpled heap on the mud of
the cavern floor.
simultaneously grabbed most of the other guards, and was variously
squeezing them, crushing them, waving them about, or munching them
down to satisfy its appetite.
As far as Guest could make out by the dim green
phosphorescent light from the roof of the cave, the murkbeast had
no feet, no legs, no means of perambulation. Rather, it appeared
to be rooted in the muck on a thick stalk. It made him think of a
toad which had been grafted onto a sea anemone and equipped with
the tentacles of an octopus (tentacles dreadfully reminiscent of
those of the therapist Schoptomov).
While Guest was still staring in fascinated horror, the
murkbeast finished its feast.
Then the cavern was still, but for the noisy vomiting of a
cowering survivor, and the groaning of a man a man who had been
crushed but uneaten.
When the survivor had finished vomiting, he started crying,
then exited from the cavern, exiting from this scene of living
nightmare. But no such easy retreat was available to Witchlord and
Weaponmaster. For if they retreated, they would run into Aldarch
the Third; and, all things being equal, Guest would far rather
take his chances with the murkbeast.
The guard who had been crushed was still groaning. As if
annoyed by the noise he was making, the murkbeast swatted him with
a tentacle. He screamed, and thrashed, and was slapped again.
Several times. Guest heard the crunch of breaking bones, a crunch
like that of rock being quarried. Again, a tentacle slapped living
flesh, making a sound like a canoe grounding itself on a coral
reef.
And, thus slapped, the man screamed no more. Rather, he
panted, his breath a matter of heaving gasps, a strenuous
fighting. He was fighting for his life, and he was losing.
Guest was reminded of a dying man he had once encountered on
the stairs in the mainrock Pinnacle. That had been on a night of
battle, the night on which Witchlord and Weaponmaster had wrested
control of Alozay from Banker Sod. Guest had encountered a dying
man, had paused to pity him, then - compelled by the necessities
of war - had passed on. Ever since then, he had not once thought
of that man. But now he remembered.
Half-thinking to help or comfort the man, Guest started from
the muddy pit in which he was mired. But his father pulled him
back.
"Wait," said the Witchlord. "Guards may come in search of
their dead."
"We'd hear them," said Guest.
"Not if they were quiet," said his father. "Not while our
friend out there is making such a racket."
So Guest, acknowledging the truth of this, subsided into the
pit.
He waited.
At length, Lord Onosh grunted, the loudness of his grunt
emphasizing the silence in the cavern - for the man who had so
recently been dying was now dead.
"Time for us to be moving," said the Witchlord.
But by this time, Guest was in no mood to be moving. The wait
had served to sap his courage, for the obvious and irrevocable
truth of the green-glowering depths was that the Weaponmaster was
way out of his depth. He was not equipped to wage war on a
murkbeast - and that creature was the very first of the dangers
encountered in those depths!
In this cold, wet, muddy place, there was nothing which was
familiar. Guest had precious little to pad him against the cold,
and was afforded no padding of habit or familiarity which could
protect him against the full knowledge of the fragility of his own
vulnerability. This was an alien place, a place which by no
stretch of the imagination could be considered home, and it made
him conscious of the pain, the death, the agony which was implicit
in the configuration of his flesh and bones.
Guest remembered squatting on a beach by night on the
Chameleon's Tongue, on the shores of Argan, convinced that the
Great Mink was on the loose in the night. He remembered comforting
himself with his own familiar, personal, private smell. The
gesture had served. But no such comfort would avail him here. For
there was no denying that a monster waited in the dark, a
murkbeast built for the rending of men.
"It will eat us," said Guest, trying to keep the fear from
his voice.
"It has left one uneaten," said Lord Onosh, "therefore it has
fed sufficiently. Come. Have you a knife?"
"Take this," said Guest, passing his father the weapon he had
won from the Mutilator. "But be tender of the point."
"The edge will serve," said his father, starting to saw at
the fastenings which bound his weapons to his swordbelt.
Then Lord Onosh passed the knife back to his son, who used it
to liberate his own weapons. They were well-made and serviceable,
though the possession of sword, knives, throwing stars, eye-
gouging handscrews, darning needles and packets of pepper gave
Guest no confidence in the face of the murkbeast. It did not look
to be the kind of creature which would take much notice of
weapons. So thinking, Guest discarded one of his knives, and
used the buckle-down sheath thus freed as a repository for the
blade which he had stolen from the Mutilator.
"You threw away a knife!" said his father, in tones of
accusation.
"So I did," said Guest. "And it is a crime, yes, but I would
do it again, and, what's more, I have done worst in the past and
will do worse again in the future."
Guest spoke with some heat, for fear was converting itself to
anger. His fear was all of the murkbeast.
Though the murkbeast had been initially hidden in the mud, it
had made no move to withdraw to that shelter. Its stalk was
severely distended, suggesting that its glutting of itself had
made such withdrawal a physical impossibility. Perhaps it would
lie there for days, quiescent, digesting, its sprawled tentacles
lying heedless in the muck.
Perhaps.
And then again ....
"I'll go first," said Lord Onosh, when his son made no move
to venture forward.
Then the Witchlord matched action to his words.
Guest watched as his father stepped forward, moving
carefully, keeping close to the walls of the cavern. The green
light from above shone on the Witchlord's gouged and slanting
forehead, lit his high Yarglat-bred cheekbones with a fever sheen,
and emphasised the darkness of the shadows which pooled in the
bigness of his ears. Moving thus, Lord Onosh looked more like a
creature from myth than a man; and Guest felt fragile, incompetent
and childish by comparison.
So the Witchlord ventured forward. He drew level with the
murkbeast.
And -
And took another step.
And abruptly lurched, and fell.
"Father!" shrieked Guest.
The cry was torn from him, as if with hooks. The murkbeast
had the Witchlord! Had him, had seized him!
And Guest, in shamed horror, found himself rooted to the
spot, paralyzed by his own terror. He could not do the manly
thing. He could not dare the forward step, even though his father
was down, was -
Was -
Was getting up ....
"Uh," said Lord Onosh, grunting.
Then he spat out mud.
Then he turned to Guest, and said:-
"There are little brutes in imitation of the big one. A
little one grabbed me, but my hand was enough for its
strangulation."
Guest was still unable to speak, but grunted, hoping his
grunt did not betray too much of his wet and shit-sliding terror.
"Come," said his father. "It's safe."
Obedient to this encouragement, Guest drew his sword and
began to venture toward his father.
The mud in the cave was particularly sticky, or so it seemed
to Guest. His boots bogged deep with every footstep, and it was a
physical effort to pull each foot free from the morass.
"Slowly," said Lord Onosh, sensing or seeing Guest's
distress. "Slowly does it. Slow and steady."
"Slow and steady," said Guest, his voice trembling
involuntarily as he took up that refrain.
Even as he said it, a tentacle uncurled itself in lazy
leisure and reached out in Guest's direction.
"Careful," said his father, thinking the tentacle was but
feinting.
Then the heavy weight of the tentacle slammed itself down on
Guest's shoulder, slapped home in a positively convivial manner,
then abruptly whipped itself around his neck and started to
tighten.
"Gah!" said Guest, with a choked cry barely a hair's-breadth
from strangulation.
The tentacle was pulling on him. Not with any unduly
monstrous force, but with a sufficiency of effort to shortly
secure his death.
Guest had been judged by the murkbeast, and condemned, and
sentenced to death by hanging!
When he realized that, the Weaponmaster became icy calm. The
worst had happened. The murkbeast had him.
So.
When a dog seizes upon your hand, you must not pull it away,
for that is what the dog is expecting. Rather, you must plunge
that hand fiercely down the dog's throat, and use the other hand
to destroy the brute which has seized you.
So thinking, Guest ceased to resist. With a mighty lunge, he
hurled himself at the murkbeast. Taken by surprise, its tentacle
momentarily slackened. By rights, Guest should have used the
slackening to attack the murkbeast. But - weakened by fear, and by
long habit of irresolution - the Weaponmaster yielded to the
entirely human impulse to free the slack of the tentacle from his
neck.
By trying to do so, he lost his chance. The murkbeast
recovered itself, fed strength into the tentacle, held Guest
tight, then abruptly jerked him off his feet and hauled him toward
its gaping toad-mouth.
"Father!" screamed Guest.
But his father could not help him now. The murkbeast had him,
and would engulf him in moments, sucking him down to a suffocating
doom, or breaking him with its bone-munching strength.