terms of a mode of discourse possessed of a logic as rigorous as that used to clarify the dance of the stars.
Which is a nonsense.
Because [To spare scribes, readers and overburdened library shelves alike, some seventy thousand words of impassioned exegesis have here been excised by Order of the Redactor Major.]
Well, where were we?
We were at the point where Chegory Guy was loading lanterns on to a bablobrokmadorni stick for Olivia. Once the stick was loaded, she followed her father into the depths of the Dromdanjerie to help calm the inmates. She walked with a firm, confident step. She knew the mad by name, and was used to dealing with their moods and panics. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that she had a lead-weighted cosh in her back pocket.
The daughter of an Ashdan liberal, yet she carried a cosh?
Well, yes.
Life in the Dromdanjerie does tend to inject a certain degree of realism into one’s actual behaviour whatever one’s ideological outlook.
Chegory Guy did not follow. Not because he was scared, but because Jon Qasaba had often explicitly forbidden him to venture into the dormitories. Instead, he lit more lanterns, then sat silent. Waiting. As he waited, he heard all the dogs of Injiltaprajura begin to bark and howl.
What did he think of as he sat there thus? We can only guess. Perhaps he thought of Olivia, of her heat, her nipples, the marginal hairs, the faint-breathing odour easing from her secret. He was young, was he not? So what else would he think about? And Olivia was worth thinking of, oh yes, she was worth it, very much worth it indeed.
But I never touched her, I swear it.
CHAPTER THREE
While Shabble was exploring Downstairs and Chegory Guy was lighting lanterns, other events were taking place elsewhere in Injiltaprajura. To the treasury housed deep below the pink palace there came a band of robbers. These brigands were the Malud marauders Al-ran Lars, Arnaut and Tolon.
How did they get in?
How did they get past the guards, bars, doors and walls?
Why, by using a secret passage.
Al-ran Lars, you see, had helped loot that treasury before. He had been to Injiltaprajura years before in an ill-famed ship known as the Kraken and captained then by the notorious Log Jaris. On that raid, Al-ran Lars and his companions had snaffled the bard of Untunchilamon. Now Al-ran Lars was back for a second helping.
Some will call his intentions immoral, but surely this is unjust. What benefit has the world from treasure which does naught but sit in the dark for year on year, unchanging? Treasure thus restrained is dull stuff, not process but form. Once it is released into the world, it joins that endlessly fascinating interplay of energy which we know as the economy.
This is what it is all about.
It?
Life, strife, existence!
So Da Thee, a Korugatu philosopher near unique in his sobriety, says simply that life is energy.
Remember that while the treasure of Injiltaprajura lay untouched in doom-dark silence, its existence was (in practice) purely theoretical. In practice, it made no difference whether the treasury was filled with gold or with shadows. Therefore let us not libel the Malud marauders by calling them witless criminals. Let us see them by the light of philosophy, and know them as life-makers, releasers of energy, creators of new potential for the world’s existence.
‘Where is it?’ said Arnaut, youngest of them all and hence the most excitable.
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
