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.
By daylight she looks every bit the young royal, preening herself for her admirers, delicately supping upon fresh fish or zabaglione, accepting (as of right) those compliments and courtesies which come her way. But now it is night, and she is out for action. She is hot, hot, there’s no doubting it. She walks with a strumpet’s roll, her xanthic eyes alight with a leam of lust as she quits Lak Street and ventures down Skindik Way. Swiftly she reaches the depraved depths of Lubos. There she does not vacillate, but recklessly plunges into the stews.
One does not expect such things from the aristocracy. But there it is. The truth must be told, and the uneffaceable truth is that she is pursuing carnal satisfaction with no sense of aidos whatsoever, shamelessly strutting her stuff in the streets, ready (more than ready!) for the first male with the energy to take her.
She has not gone far through the wagmoire of the waterfront slumlands when she encounters a virile young mariner. He is a sailor fresh off a ship, a mangy street-fighter who has but one ear. Hunk is his name, and he has sailed the waters of the Great Ocean from Yam to Manamalargo. He has seen the cruel cliffs of Odrum, the jungles of Quilth, the storm-torn shores of Wen Endex and the limpid waters of Parengarenga Harbour.
He has tasted the exotic pleasures of a thousand ports, yet still is ready for more. Furthermore, the glamour of his pintle is alone sufficient to persuade the Princess Sabitha that he is the one. For when appetite goads the flesh sufficiently, questions of class, decency and caution go right out of the window.
Thus Hunk meets Sabitha, and, in the manner of all idiothermous animals lusting in heat, they decide without preparation or preamble to engage in that interesting activity which the scholarly Arwin has dealt with in such exhaustive length in his five-volume magnus opus, On The Generation Of Species.
But before genetic data (or organic secretions and their concomitant diseases) can be transmitted from one to the other, the would-be lovers are interrupted by the advent of an apparition in appearance formidable indeed.
It is a Thing which hangs in nightdark heights near the gable of the nearest speakeasy. A globular Thing the size of a fist. It crackles with electric auras of gangrene blue and corpse-love yellow. Then it speaks unto them in a voice of brass and cymbals, saying:
‘I am the demon-god Lorzunduk. Behold! And know your doom!’
Whereupon the Princess Sabitha flees, yowling.
Hunk stands his ground. His back arches, his hair stands on end, and he hisses and spits ferociously as the apparition descends. Then his nerve breaks, and he too flees.
Which is just as well.
For if the lovers had not been thus separated before the consummation of their passion then this chronicle would have had to touch in some way upon that aforesaid consummation. Which would have been unfortunate. For this work is meant for the literate, and the literate are by definition more interested in the life of the intellect than the life of the organism, the life of the aforesaid organism being — is it not? — essentially repetitive and thus tedious.
So let us be glad that we are not forced to waste our time by contemplation of an unoriginal act at which frogs, newly-weds and blowflies are equally competent. Let us be glad that we need here insert no account (doubtless to be skimmed or impatiently skipped by those in search of deeper revelation) of the shimmering scream of pleasure with which the Princess Sabitha accepted the hard-driving Hunk into her body, about the thrust of his drive questing deep in the humid velvet of her tight yet tender Well, you know the rest.
Anyway, to return to our chronicle. Both cats have fled in terror. Yet the glowing ball still hangs there in the air.
Sniggering.
Those of you who have been to Untunchilamon yourselves or who know the place by reputation will likely have guessed already that the glowing ball is nothing more than Shabble.
Shabble?
Yes, Shabble.
‘Shabble! Shabble!’ the children are wont to cry as they go chasing through the streets. ‘Shabble, come play with us! Shabble, Shabbiful, Jabiful, Shabajabalantiful.’ And sometimes Shabble will. Or, if not in a cat-chasing mood, then Shabble may condescend to amuse Shabbleself with a kitten to the kitten’s delight.
(Shabbleself? Itself. Himself. Herself. Theirselves. Choose any one at will or at random — and you will know at least as much about Shabble’s psychology as the so-called experts.)
Shabble, then.
In appearance, a miniature sun, though coloration tends to be changeable and idiosyncratic. In voice eccentric, speaking at will in any of the accents heard ever on Untunchilamon, even those unplaceable foreign accents otherwise voiced only by the conjurer Odolo. In behaviour feckless, for Shabble has scant regard for consequences.
That is Shabble.
While Shabble is still hanging there in the air, an untoward incident occurs. There is a massive energy drain which affects all of Injiltaprajura. Lights darken. Fires go out. Gandies die. Then, to Shabble’s horror, Shabble feels Something trying to seize Shabble’s own energy. Shabble squeaks in fright and flees down the nearest drainpipe. The drainpipe (naturally) leads Downstairs.
Downstairs!
There is horror down there, and Shabble fears it greatly. Yet the alternative is death.
Thus Shabble flees.
We in our mortal flesh, living never more than a skin away from pain, are like to think of Shabble as a careless immortal. But, while it is certain that Shabble lives longer and safer than any of us — for Shabble’s body is a full-size sun, set in its own separate universe, interfaced with the local cosmos only by means of a cunning transponder which outwardly looks like a sun in miniature — yet even Shabble can be hurt, and has been. It is difficult to hurt Shabble, but the therapists of the Golden Gulag knew how. Oh yes! They knew how, and on occasion put theory into practice.
The therapists?
The Golden Gulag?
These will have to await their own chroniclers. For this is but a modest tale, dealing only with a few days in the life of Untunchilamon, with a struggle for the wishstone and the fate of some of the wonderworkers (and others) who became involved in that struggle.
This is not, then, the Omnium conceived of by the literary theoretician Sinja Larthelme, he whom those who would have themselves thought of as wise must pretend to hold in such high regard. In this account, many things are touched upon which ‘thou must pursue in scholarship thyself if thou wouldst know more of them,’ as Eric the Wise said to the over-valorous Uri of legend on the occasion of their famous debate outside the notorious Stench Caves of Logthok Norgos (into which the bright-smiling Uri ultimately ventured alone, and may be venturing still for all we know).
[The Golden Gulag mentioned by the Originator appears to be his personal invention. Despite the claim made above, the Originator does later elaborate this invention at length, claiming in the course of such elaboration to reveal the Truth which lies hidden behind the veils of the Days of Wrath. Yet an exhaustive search of the Archives for collaboration of these tales of the Gulag uncovers no mention of it whatsoever. In truth, scholarship knows virtually nothing of humanity’s mode of existence before the wars of the Days of Wrath. This Insertion by Order of Indorjed, Archivist Superior.]
[The naive should note that the unrelenting labours of the world’s best scholars have failed to produce even so much as a definitive date for the Days of Wrath. They are generally supposed to have taken place between 9,000 and 20,000 years Before Present; it is generally agreed that no closer dating can be arrived at. The airy exactitude of the Originator should be seen against this background. This Insertion by Order of Than, Chronologer Superior.]
[Here seventeen spurious Insertions by various hands have been deleted. One suspects that Insertions by some are valued for their own sake. That some see careers in terms of the creation of quantity rather than quality. The over-ambitious younger generation must learn that, in scholarship as in other things, continence is a virtue. By Order, Jonquiri 0, Disiciplinarian Superior.]
Well, then.
You have seen the start of our history.
A malign Power of some description — most probably a hideous demon in the process of breaking through into our innocent and unsuspecting world from the World Beyond — has subjected Injiltaprajura to a massive energy drain. Shabble, the bright-voiced imitator of suns, has been forced to flee Downstairs lest this energy drain end Shabble’s life entirely.
What now?
Why, the tale of the wishstone and the wonderworkers begins, and proceeds to its conclusion.
You know the setting and the scope of the action. If then you deem our history to be worthy of your attention, read on. If not, then may the mephitic stench of a million dead scorpions enfold you, may cesspool fevers rack your bones for the next five thousand years, may worms the colour of mastic ooze from your ears, and may your flesh decay until it becomes soft as a mango lost for a month in a dungheap.
And may you dwell in the house of your mother-in-law forever.