Swords Against the Shadowland (Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar) (42 page)

The Mouser shut his ears. With a grunt, he leaned on Catsclaw, driving it deep. The breath sighed from Malygris's lips, a short, soft song of release, and perhaps—did the Mouser, out of some unwarranted sense of guilt, imagine it?—relief. The wizard's chest sank, and his whole form seemed to grow smaller between the Mouser's knees.

At last, the Mouser found his voice. "Damn you," he said, no witticism, no challenge, no triumphant cry, just a fervent wish. "Damn you to hell."

Death of Nehwon laughed.

The chill mist of Shadowland swirled, filling the Mouser's eyes, obscuring the great barge and its master. The souls of the dead seemed to blow apart like smoke in a wind. Fafhrd cried the Mouser's name.

The Mouser barely heard, nor could he answer, and soon Fafhrd stopped calling. All was silence and mist.

And cold—the mist was so cold.

TWENTY

HEROES' REPOSE

T
he Mouser hung suspended in a misty limbo, an impossible neverland without time or sensation, dimension or vista. A death-like chill rimed his senses. He saw nothing but gray vapor, heard no sound, smelled only the anaesthetic dampness, felt nothing but the cold.

Only one other thing touched his awareness—Malygris's curse. Like a sharp-toothed worm, it ate at his vitals with a voracious, desperate hunger. He felt it working faster, devouring him, as if it knew with some vague, obscene intelligence that its time was running out.

A soft wind blew through the void, tearing and scattering the fog. Pieces of mist ripped away and formed little whirling dervishes; thin vaporous wisps darted about briefly, like forlorn ghosts reluctant to quit a haunting. The rest of the fog rippled and fluttered like an unnatural veil as it slowly dissolved.

The world of Nehwon resolved itself under the Mouser's feet. Like a man waking from a long dream, he looked around. A veritable sea of tall grass waved before him. The stars—all his precious, familiar constellations—peppered the night sky. A deeply velvet, cobalt shimmer on the eastern horizon heralded the approach of dawn.

To his right, in the distance, he spied the yellow winking and twinkling of glow-wasps. Equally distant to his left stood the long black silhouette of Lankhmar’s walls.

Fafhrd spoke from behind him. "Dare we believe that we stand in the Great Salt Marsh?"

The Mouser didn't answer. He raised one incarnadined hand before his eyes. In the starlight, dripping Catsclaw glistened wetly in his fist. His once-gray glove, his sleeve, were black and sticky. Blood spotted his tunic, his trousers, and his cloak. A streak of moistness slowly dried on his left cheek.

A scream boiled up from deep inside. He fought to suppress it, but it rose, forced itself up to his lips. Still he resisted, muttering, "No! No!" The scream would not be denied.

Throat raw, he sank to his knees in the spongy marsh soil, vaguely aware of Fafhrd's comforting hands on his shoulders. In his mind, he saw Malygris's horror-stricken face at the moment of death, and he saw his own hand drenched in the wizard's blood. Revulsion filled him, that he had killed a helpless man, even one such as Malygris, who couldn't act to defend himself.

Yet, as he wept, he knew his tears were not for Malygris. "Ivrian," he whispered. "Ivrian!" Death had torn her from his side yet again. To see her, to hold her, and to lose her all over! How could a heart bear that?

Fafhrd pulled away, wracked by a fit of coughing. As if cold water had been thrown on the Mouser, he jumped to his feet. The Northerner stood a few paces off, bent double, hands braced weakly on knees. A thin black phlegm trailed from his lips to the grass.

With a handful of his gray cloak, the Mouser wiped Fafhrd's mouth. "You know I'm not a superstitious man," Fafhrd muttered.

"Of course not," the Mouser answered as he wiped the rest of his partner's sweating face. His own concerns thrust aside, he repressed a shiver of fear as he cared for the big Northerner. Fafhrd burned with fever; his garments were soaked with perspiration, and a constant, unceasing quiver shook that massive frame. "You're a paragon of enlightened civilization," he added.

Fafhrd swallowed, unable to rise from his bent posture. "If you're going to insult me," he said, his voice little more than a croak, "then we'll part company right here."

"Don't even think of that, Fafhrd Red-Hair," the Mouser answered bluntly, and again the thought that had raced through his mind so often of late struck him again:
what would I do without half my soul?

"You know I'm not a superstitious man," Fafhrd repeated as he pushed one hand into the purse on his belt. "But if I had a tik-penny, I'd buy a favor from the gods." He drew out a handful of glimmering rings and necklaces. "I don't think there's any luck in a dead woman's treasure."

"Then buy your favor with that," the Mouser said grimly.

Fafhrd's fist tightened about the jewels, and he closed his eyes in prayer. Stiffly, painfully, he straightened. Opening his eyes, he drew back his left arm, turned toward the cobalt glow of the approaching sun, and let fly. The weird pre-dawn light caught the gems and bits of gold and silver as they arced high above the marsh. For an instant, the air flashed and sparkled.

If the gems fell to earth, or if some divine hand snatched them in mid-flight, the Mouser could not swear, for something else distracted him. Against that strange velvet blueness, he spied a distant silhouette, a vague half-glimpsed shape, there for a moment, then gone. Yet his heart leaped with hope.

Still clutching bloody Catsclaw, he put his clean arm around Fafhrd. "Come on," he urged, supporting his friend. "Come on, walk with me."

"Where?" Fafhrd asked, drawing himself erect, doing his best to hide the pain on his pale face.

"Toward the sun," the Mouser said, starting off with one eye on his partner.

"Why didn't you just say you wanted the jewels before I threw them away?" Fafhrd grumbled. "You'll never find them in this grass."

"To hell with the jewels," the Mouser answered as they moved forward.

Fafhrd snorted indignantly. "I don't want any more favors from that quarter."

Despite himself, the Mouser smiled. There was the Fafhrd he knew best, quick-witted and spirited in the face of disaster. He fairly ran, skipping a few paces ahead of his partner as he pushed his way through the tall grass. Up a small, rolling rise they made their way with the Mouser hugging the bloody dagger protectively to his chest.

"There it is!" the Mouser called back to Fafhrd. "I knew I saw it!" Staring up the rise, he cupped one hand to his mouth and called, "Sheelba! Sheelba, you transfigured, green-blooded, black-hearted, wizard-spawned accident of your mother! Come out!
 
We're here!"

Sheelba’s black hut perched on its stilted legs at the dawn-lit summit. The wind that shivered over the marsh rustled its grass-thatched roof and teased the flap of cloth that covered its squat doorway. Nothing else moved around the hut. No lamp or candlelight shone from within.

A black circle on the earth near the hut marked where a fire once had burned. The ashes, however, were long dead and cold. "Sheelba?" the Mouser called again, eliciting no answer. He exchanged a nervous look with Fafhrd, then turned cautiously toward the ladder that rose to the hut's entrance and put one hand on the rung.

The hut gave a quiver. The Mouser snatched his hand away in shock and surprise. The rung was warm, pulsing! And though it looked like bamboo wood, it felt like. . . . Something else.

Sheelba’s hut was alive.

"Problem?" Fafhrd asked quietly from the dead ashes of the old fire.

"No problem," the Mouser answered nervously. "None at all." He stared up at the black doorway again, and now it looked to him like a mouth, and the flap curling in the breeze so much like a tongue licking its lips in anticipation of a morsel.

Determinedly, the Mouser shot out his hand, grasped a ladder rung, and began to climb. "I'll bite you right back," he promised under his breath.

"What's that?" Fafhrd called.

The Mouser didn't answer. He climbed to the doorway, which was just a doorway after all, and pushed back the cloth covering, which was thankfully just a cloth covering. Or so it seemed. How could he be sure, after this adventure, that anything was really what it seemed anymore?

The cloth fell behind him as he rose to stand on the thinly carpeted floor. He had expected darkness, but the moment he stepped upon the rugs, a perfect crystal ball mounted upon an elaborately worked gold pedestal ignited with a soft white glow.

At a glance, the Mouser appraised the pedestal's potential value, estimated its weight, and judged the chances of carrying it off. Then he chided himself. Now was not the time for such thoughts.

The interior of the hut was a single circular space. A large chair and foot cushion dominated one area. A table with a silver tea samovar and a small cup stood beside it. A shelf of books and scrolls occupied another area. A pallet of braided rushes and blankets served for a simple bed. The rest of the space was given over to trunks, and racks of herbs, strange bottles, old candle stubs, and a surprisingly massive worktable draped with a plain white cloth.

The worktable caught the Mouser's attention. Upon it, a flask lay overturned amid the shards of a broken alembic, and the candles on either end of the table had burned completely down into their holders.

In the center of the workspace stood a wide crystal crucible that gleamed and glittered as if it had been cut and hollowed from one half of an impossibly large diamond. The light from the crystal ball burned on its facets and cast rainbow images all across the workspace and around the hut. The Mouser's jaw dropped as he beheld it. With an awesome reverence, he crept across the carpets toward the beautiful vessel, one hand extended, not to steal it, but just for the joy and honor of touching so great a rarity.

Yet halfway across the room, he froze. Just below the edge of the table's drapery, he spied a booted foot and a tiny fraction of a black robe's hem.

"What a dump," Fafhrd commented, poking his head through the doorway from the ladder and looking around.

"Take a closer look," the Mouser suggested as he eased cautiously behind the worktable. He caught his breath. Cursing, he dropped to his knees.

A figure in black robes and a hood lay face down, partially concealed by the table drapery, as if he had caught it as he fell and dragged some of it with him. The Mouser had no doubt that it was Sheelba. He grasped the wizard by the shoulders and turned him over, surprised by the slight weight and the brittle bone of the body inside the robes.

A raspy whisper issued from within the hood, as a skeletally thin hand reached trembling up to draw the hood even closer and so conceal whatever was within. "Wizard-spawned accident of my mother?" Sheelba rasped.

The Mouser shrugged, greatly relieved to find the wizard alive. "Rhetorical excess," he said.

Fafhrd bent over the Mouser to peer down at Sheelba. The rainbows from the diamond crucible filled his eyes and hid the worry in them. "Let's get him to his bed."

Sheelba raised a hand and grasped at the table drapery. "No," he insisted. His words came haltingly, painfully through lips as dry as parchment. "I smell the blood of our enemy on you. Help me up, that we might end this nightmare." Before he could say more, he gave a sigh. His fingers relaxed their grip in the drapery, and his hand slipped to the floor.

"Sheelba?" the Mouser said. No answer came from within the black hood. Over his shoulder, he spoke to Fafhrd. "The samovar has water or tea. Fill the cup and bring it."

Sheelba stirred again even as Fafhrd moved. "Water be damned," he murmured. "I've lain here for days too weak to move. Bring wine from the black trunk with the copper hinges. Bring the jug." This time, he grasped the Mouser's tunic. "Get me on my feet, Gray One."

The Mouser slipped his clean arm under the wizard's shoulders. Sheelba weighed so little he had no trouble lifting him up. Fafhrd stood ready with the jug in one hand, the small cup in the other. "A cupful first," he said, holding it close to Sheelba's Hps and tipping it. "The jug if you keep it down."

But Sheelba did no more than wet his lips before he pushed Fafhrd away. He leaned upon the worktable, his hands on either side of the crucible. Fiery rainbows danced on the thinly translucent skin that stretched over his knuckles. Even the faceless darkness within his hood began to fill with color. "I feared you would not succeed in time," he said. "But you have—barely. The ingredients are mixed. Add Malygris's blood to the potion, and your victory is complete."

For the first time, the Mouser bent over the crucible and saw that it contained a still, clear liquid. For a moment, he stared in small confusion, a slight vertigo clawing at his senses. Then he gasped.

The rainbow light that danced about the room came not from the interplay of the crystal ball's glow on the facets of the crucible, but from some strange energies contained within that liquid, energies that swam and swirled languidly, directionless, through a watery suspension.

Half-entranced by the sight, the Mouser raised Catsclaw and his bloody hand over the vessel. All that he had done, all that he and Fafhrd had endured in Lankhmar, had come to this. He saw his own hand rising as if pulled by a string. He saw himself as a puppet, manipulated by another hand greater and more powerful than his own.