Covers
Lulu Cover for
The Witchlord And The Weaponmaster (Lulu.com)
by Hugh Cook using Lulu Resources and map created by Hugh Cook.
Back Cover
'Guest Gulkan.' The voice was deep, dark, cavernous. A voice of roiling stone and flensing steel. A voice of sulphurous flames and bone-grinding appetites. At the sound of it, Guest halted. His flaring nostrils endeavoured to gape still wider. His hair, that part of it which was not firmly matted to his skull by the dedicated accumulation of filth, endeavoured to stand on end. With wild eyes, with the agitated whip-crack intemperance of a highly-strung horse about to panic and bolt, Guest turned to face the demon. 'You!' said Guest, challenging the jade-green block of glowing stone. 'Is it you?' 'Who else?' said the voice. This time there was no mistaking the source of that voice. The jade-green monolith was speaking to him. Guest Gulkan was being directly addressed by a demon - by Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis, Keeper of the Inner Sanctum and Guardian Prime. 'What do you want?' said Guest, trembling on the edge of a one- man stampede. 'I want you,' said the demon. 'Come here!' In the course of Guest Gulkan's eventful life, empires are won and lost. Driven by his unquenchable thirst for power, Guest encounters many people and events which are beyond his understanding. The son of a barbarian emperor must change his ways - for about him the whole world is changing. The Age of Darkness is coming to an end.
Inside Cover
Cleaving the air with bloodstroke upon bloodstroke, Jarl made his bitter steel sing. He hacked the bandit leader down, then claimed for himself the choicest treasure found in the bandit camp - a thing of female gender which named itself Yerzerdayla. The female thing was brought in chains to the imperial battle base, where it was seen by the young Guest Gulkan, the self-styled Weaponmaster, he who at the age of 14 laid claim to a man's estate, though he was still possessed of much of a child's impetuous unreliability. Guest Gulkan stood in his muddy boots, smelling like a slaughterhouse, and gaped at Yerzer- dayla. For this captive slave - dressed in silks and chained by jade clasped with silverbright - looked more like an imperial aristocrat than one of common flesh. 'I am in love,' said Guest, who was of a certainty in lust. Such was the first meeting of Guest Gulkan and the elegant Yerzerdayla, she of the blonde body and the perfumed hair. Then: 'Who is the woman?' asked Guest. 'She is a thing claimed already by Thodric Jarl,' answered Yerzerdayla's keepers. 'Claim he may,' said Guest. 'But I will have!'