Swords Against the Shadowland (Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar) (2 page)

"The dream ..." Fafhrd started, rising again and pacing about.

"Aye, the dream," the Mouser agreed in an uneasy grumble as the images came tumbling once again into his head. "We have been snatched up by some god or wizard, Fafhrd, and transported here." He stirred the outer ashes of their dwindling campfire with the toe of one mouseskin boot. "Nice of them to bring our warmth along," he said caustically.

"Pity they couldn't have brought along my jewels," Fafhrd pouted. He quickly changed the subject. "I think I know where we are, Mouser," he announced, making a show of sniffing as he paced. "There's a familiarity about the air."

"You mean about the reek?" the Mouser corrected, wrinkling his nose as he, too, sniffed. The odor of weed-rot hung in the night. Like his partner, he too had made a guess about their present location, but whereas Fafhrd no doubt based his supposition on his barbarian-bred senses, he based his own on a knowledge of the positions of the stars and constellations, a distinction about which he felt quite smug.

Fafhrd, clutching Graywand in his hands, exposed a portion of the blade then slammed it back into the sheath, a gesture that was both an insult and a curse to his northern people. "This is the Great Salt Marsh," he said, his lips curled back in puzzlement and anger as he turned to face the west. "We're back in Lankhmar where we swore we would never come again."

The Mouser pursed his lips thoughtfully. The night wind brushed through the dark locks of his hair as softly as a woman's fingers, and he remembered a girl named Ivrian, a delicate, pretty little wisp with flowing blond hair and laughing eyes, who had been his first true love. He remembered also returning home one evening to find rats gnawing her murdered corpse and that of another woman, Vlana, who was Fafhrd's first love.

The quest to avenge Ivrian and Vlana had cemented the Mouser's friendship with the big Northerner, and grief had driven them from that despised city when their vengeance was complete. Like Fafhrd, he had no desire to return.

He touched his companion's arm. "Turn away, Fafhrd," he said. "A road still runs two ways, and nothing prevents us from giving our backs to Lankhmar twice."

But when the Mouser turned, something did block their way. Limned by the dim glow of the campfire, an old thatched hut stood on tall, stilted legs. The brittle straw that made its roof jutted up like hair on a wild man's head, and the black, blanket-covered door seemed to yawn like a toothless mouth.

The Mouser rubbed his eyes. Had he been so busy with his stargazing, or had the night been so dark that he had missed this sight before? The hairs prickling on the back of his neck, he slipped his sword, Scalpel, from its mouseskin sheath. The slender blade gleamed redly in the light of the coals.

"Either I have lost both booty and senses in the same evening," the Mouser said softly, "or that hut was not there a moment ago."

From within the hut came a muffled coughing and hacking. A barely perceived hand, more blackened bone than flesh, or so it seemed in the gloom, drew back the curtain draping the entrance. Like a slow-moving shadow, a cowled and black-robed figure emerged. It climbed down a rickety ladder, pausing after each labored step, to the ground. Reaching the bottom, it surrendered to a brief coughing fit. Then, the stooped figure shambled toward them.

From across the campfire's coals, it looked up. There was nothing to see inside that cowl, but a rasping, almost serpentine voice issued forth as the creature introduced itself.

"I am Sheelba."

The Mouser lifted the point of his sword. "This is Scalpel," he said, adding as his other hand touched the hilt of his dagger, "and this is Catsclaw. Come closer if you would make their more intimate acquaintance."

Fafhrd held his own huge blade level with the Mouser's. "I can smell a woman or a wizard a mile away," he said, scowling, "and your perfume is no dainty orchid juice."

From out of nowhere came a wind that blew through the coals of the campfire, snatching hot sparks and glowing ash into the air. A spinning vortex swiftly formed about the Mouser and Fafhrd. Like angry, swarming insects the burning bits and pieces flew around and around.

Then, just as suddenly, the wind ceased, and the coals settled harmlessly back to their original place, and the campfire was just a campfire once more.

A fit of coughing wracked the creature that called itself Sheelba. "Now that we have each displayed our manhoods," he said quietly, "let us speak of dreams and the reason you find yourselves once more in Lankhmar."

Sensing no further immediate threat, the Mouser lowered his weapon. The creature plainly desired to talk, rather than fight, and there was something almost pathetic in its uncontrollable coughing and its bent, weakened posture. "I gather," he said at last, "you are the source and cause of both."

Sheelba nodded. "I sent the dream to occupy and divert your minds while I transported your sleeping forms across the great vastness of space. The story it tells is a true one, but there is more, much more, for you to learn.

"Malygris killed Sadaster," Fafhrd said. The Northerner squatted down on his haunches and leaned on his sword as he stared across the coals at Sheelba. His eyes gleamed, and his face shone weirdly in the dim, ruddy light.

Sheelba’s robed form seemed to shake and tremble, but whether from anger, fear, or ill health, the Mouser could not tell.

"Ah, he fell to a subtle and masterful spell," Sheelba said with grudging admiration. "It should have been beyond Malygris's meager talents, but jealousy and hatred drove him to surpass himself. Sadaster was near death before he even realized the cause of his affliction."

"I saw Sadaster die," Fafhrd said, grimly remembering his part of the dream. "Some hideous illness seemed to rot him from the inside out. At the end, he was no more than a living skeleton, and finally not even a living one."

A bitter note sounded in Sheelba’s voice when he spoke. "That is the beauty and horror of Malygris's work," he said. "It begins as a little cough—just a little thing. Sadaster could not defend himself, because he didn't know he was under attack until the spell had already touched him." Sheelba’s voice caught, and the wizard hesitated before finding strength to continue. "Would that it had ended there," he said. "Revenge is, after all, a thing understandable."

The Mouser eyed the creature before him with suspicion. "Malygris's black art has touched you, too," he said warily.

Hearing, Fafhrd rose slowly to his full seven-foot height. "It's no sickness that saps your vitality, stranger?" he said. "But evil Lankhmaran magic?"

Sheelba raised a withered fist and shook it at the sky. "Malygris was brilliant," he hissed, "but utterly inept. He had no true conception of what he had created. The spell possesses a mindless life of its own. It hangs in the ether like an arcane predator, waiting as it waited for Sadaster."

"Waiting for what?" Fafhrd asked nervously.

A swallowing sound issued from within the creature's black, faceless hood. "This spell was created to slay a wizard," Sheelba continued at last. "But Malygris, blast his soul, wove no controls into his creation. Now it strikes with purpose at every wizard, every magician, attracted by the simplest acts of legerdemain. Grand sorcerers, herb witches, young girls with their love potions, wearers of charms and talismans—they are all at risk. Indeed, many who walk the streets of Lankhmar are cursed already and know it not."

A wind sprang up again, and the Mouser's gaze shot toward the coals of the dwindling campfire, but this was seemingly a natural wind, no whim of Sheelba's, and the coals and ash performed no tricks, but stayed in their bed.

"Is there no counter-spell?" the Gray One asked. "No way to undo what has been done?"

Sheelba bent down over the campfire. A long-fingered hand snatched up one of the coals and popped it inside the hood as if it were a snack, a delicacy to be savored. Sheelba gulped, then belched.

"After much work and diligent study," he said with grim satisfaction, "I have found the counter-charm. However ..." He paused, and the hood lifted ever so slightly until the Mouser felt the power of unseen eyes directly upon him, peering from the blackness contained in those folds of cloth. "There is one ingredient which I must have, and which you must steal for me."

Fafhrd bristled. "Steal?" he said. "Steal? You mistake us, sir!" He glanced at his gray-clad companion with a hurt expression. "We do not steal! We liberate. We pilfer. We purloin and even filch. But we do not steal!"

The Mouser ignored Fafhrd’s comments. He peered closely at the strange figure on the other side of the coals. "You wear desperation like a pair of new boots," he said. "Uncomfortably. I, too, feel a sudden pinching on my soles."

Sheelba’s voice was a serpentine hiss. "Even here in the Great Marsh, far beyond the city's walls, his wretched curse reaches." That black, empty cowl turned upward toward the skies, and a long sigh issued forth. "I will die from this evil unless you two bring me what I need."

Fafhrd puffed out his chest as his gaze narrowed contemptuously. "Us?" he said, his voice gruff. "Do you take us for errand boys?"

"I take you for the best thieves and adventurers ever to pass through Lankhmar’s gates," the wizard answered. He raised a withered finger to stem their surprise. "Oh yes. Though I live in the swamps and marshes, nothing transpires in the City of the Black Toga that I don't know about. I am called Sheelba of the Eyeless Face. Yet I have eyes, and they are everywhere, and my ears, too. I know your reputations, as I know your deeds and your skills."

Fafhrd's contemptuous expression yielded to a prideful grin. "Indeed?" he said more pleasantly.

The Gray Mouser frowned. His companion was such an easy target for flattery, but his own suspicions were running in dangerous directions. His right hand tightened imperceptibly around Scalpel's hilt, though he wondered what good his blade could do to a being with power enough to transport two grown men halfway around Nehwon. "What is this errand you would have us run?" he asked, "and tell us if we have a choice in the matter?"

Sheelba stretched out his hand above the coals, which began to crackle and spark with new flame. Then with a whooshing roar, the flame shot up into a writhing column nearly as tall as Fafhrd.

The Mouser jumped back, whipping out his sword with one hand, shielding his face from the heat with the other.

The fiery shaft quivered wildly, lighting up the landscape, coloring the sky with a blood-red hue. Two smaller prominences exploded from either side of the column, and each in turn sprouted fingers of flame. Those arms and hands began to move up and down, shaping fire as if it were potters clay. Wherever the hands touched, the flames turned silver and took seemingly solid substance.

From his dream, the Mouser recognized the form and features of the wizard called Malygris as they emerged from the fire. In only moments, a gleaming silver statue stood where the campfire had been. A penumbra of flame danced around its edges, then flickered out.

"It's alive!" Fafhrd cried in alarm, raising his sword defensively as the statue's head turned to take them in with a gaze.

"Because Malygris is alive from moment to moment in my thoughts," Sheelba explained. "Have no fear, Northerner. This is only a construct. The real Malygris is hiding somewhere in Lankhmar."

"Hiding?" the Mouser said.

Sheelbas empty cowl nodded, and his words dripped with disdain as he spoke. "Too late, the bumbling fool realizes what he has done, but he hasn't the knowledge or skill to unmake what he has made. Frankly, it's taken me a year to research a counter-measure, and I am many times his match in wizardry." He paused abruptly, seeming to choke on the last word before a bout of coughing seized him. His cloaked frame shook with the strain, and he wheezed for breath.

Despite his reservations, the Mouser started forward to help in whatever manner he could, but Sheelba held up a hand, refusing any offer of support.

"You must roust Malygris from whatever hole he has crawled into," Sheelba said, his voice noticeably weaker, when he could speak again. "My life is not the only one at stake. Many others will die if you deny me. Anyone who uses magic or is touched by it—even the simplest charms—is at risk." He pointed to the gleaming image of Malygris with a shaky finger. "No one is immune, not man, woman, or child. I have the spell that can stop this madness, and I have all the ingredients for it save one."

"Return to Lankhmar City," Fafhrd murmured. His mouth set itself in a firm, tight line as he clenched his jaw. Clearly, he found the idea as distasteful as the Mouser. "But if we do this thing for you, creature, we are hirelings, not errand boys. What rate of pay do you offer?"

"Ever the businessman," the Mouser muttered. "Ever an eye to profit."

Sheelba ignored Fafhrd, turning to the Mouser. "You understand, don't you, Gray One?" he whispered, leveling one frail finger near the Mouser's nose. "You see the choices."

With lightning quickness, the Mouser reached out and caught that finger, expecting to snap it like the twig it resembled. Instead, it bent bonelessly backward toward the wizard's wrist, and if it caused Sheelba any pain at all, he gave no sign of it. "Bah!" he cried, releasing the useless grip and stepping back.

The image of Malygris quietly watched everything with its silver eyes.

"What is it, Mouser?" Fafhrd said, moving closer to his friend, his gaze sweeping back and forth distrustfully from the silver statue to the brown-cloaked wizard. "You have better instincts for sorcery than I, and the look upon your face . . . !"