Swords Against the Shadowland (Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar) (21 page)

The Mouser raised one eyebrow and gave Scarface a sardonic, challenging look. Defiance would ill-serve him now, however. Instead, he turned smartly, moving so quickly that he pulled the leash from a lax guard's hand, and led the way toward the Overlord's throne, trailing the rope tied about his neck, leaving his guards to hurry after.

At the foot of the dais he paused. The royal seat was empty. The Mouser looked around. Off to the side, between a pair of gracefully fluted pillars, a trio of men stood in muted conversation. The light of a single brazier gleamed on their oiled beards and hair, and on the elaborate silver embroidery that adorned their black tunics and cloaks.

The Mouser needed no urging from his guards to stand silently and wait to be noticed. The Mouser used the time to test his bonds. Straining subtly against the ropes, he tried to flex some feeling into his fingers.

One of the three, a well-built and muscular man with the look of a wrestler, suddenly turned around. The brazier's light shimmered on a thinly delicate coronet of gold that adorned a stern brow. Dark eyes focused on the Mouser, and the observer pursed his lips in study. Abruptly, he waved off his two companions. Executing curt bows, the nobles obediently departed through a shadowed doorway. The wearer of the coronet strode slowly toward the throne.

Scarface raised his sword in salute, and his voice boomed. "Hail, Rokkarsh, Overlord of Lankhmar, Lord of. . ."

A gesture of irritation from Rokkarsh cut him off, and Scarface fell silent. His lowering blade, however, came to rest on the Mouser's right shoulder.

Scowling and grumbling inside, the Mouser bent his knees. With his hands tied behind his back, he dropped awkwardly to the floor, nearly cracking his chin on the expensive marble tiles.

"In Aarth’s name," the Overlord said, grimacing as he fanned the air with one hand and with the other selected a plump peach from a bowl on a small table beside the throne. "I told you to bathe him. His stink fouls the palace."

The Mouser raised his head, eyes narrowing to slits as he regarded the man before him. Slowly, he drew his knees under himself. Let Scarface put a sword in his back; he would grovel and crawl no more, particularly not before an oiled, pomaded effete with the audacity and bad taste to tattoo a rose around an exposed left nipple.

"If the palace stinks," the Mouser said through clenched teeth, his temper barely in check, "the cause must be that whore's perfume in which you've drenched yourself."

  
Scarface bellowed. "Let me strike off his head, my lord!"

The Overlord held up his peach as if to display the proud bite his royal teeth had taken from it. "No, not his head," he said with calm bemusement. "However, you may take from him the finger of your choice."

The Mouser's dusky face took on a serpentine quality, and he fixed Rokkarsh with his gaze. "If one of your dogs dares to touch me again," he boldly threatened, "I'll lay a curse to rot off a more important appendage than your finger."

The Overlord waved Scarface back and took a bite from his peach as he studied the Mouser. With a curious grin he asked, "Do you have such power, little man?"

The Mouser scowled at the reference to his height. "Lankhmar's walls will echo with the lamentations from your harem," he promised.

Rokkarsh licked a droplet of juice from his lips. "Well, we couldn't very well have that, could we?" he said. "I take it that you're some kind of wizard?"

"The great Overlord of Lankhmar may take whatever he likes," the Mouser sneered. "You can take my life if that pleases you, and you can take your fiddle and go up to the roof of the Rainbow Palace and play for the gulls while the city burns around you."

Rokkarsh set aside his peach and leaned forward as he licked his fingers. "The only thing burning in Lankhmar, little wizard, is the tower you set afire." The Overlord leaned forward, and his voice took on a new tone of menace. "Why did you enter a forbidden temple, and where is the partner witnesses saw with you:

The Mouser feigned a look of surprise. "Partner?" he said, glancing over his shoulders and down between his legs before he shrugged. "Your witnesses must be drunkards."

The Overlord assumed an expression of boredom as he reached again for his peach. "I think I shall risk your curse and let the corporal strike off your finger after all. Then perhaps you'll answer honestly the next time I ask."

Scarface stepped close and, grasping one of the Mouser's bound hands, began to pry at a finger. The Mouser's heart thundered in his chest as he resisted by making fists, but he had little control over his rope-numbed hands. Desperately, he fixed his gaze on the Overlord.

"I'm looking for Malygris!" he shouted.

Rokkarsh held up a hand and Scarface became still, though he maintained a grip on one of the Mouser's fingers.

"The wizard?" Rokkarsh asked with interest. "Why?"

The Mouser glared back at the Overlord. "To end the thrice-damned plague he's conjured on Lankhmar and surrounds."

Rokkarsh turned pale. Trembling, he rose from his throne and, drawing back his arm, an enraged scream bubbling on his lips, he let fly the half-eaten peach.

TWELVE

TUNNELS OF HOPE AND HEARTBREAK

T
he half-eaten peach flew past the Mouser's head and struck Corporal Scarface with such force that it knocked his helmet askew.
 

  
"Great shot," the Mouser complimented.
 

  
"Get out!" Rokkarsh, purple-faced, screamed at his guards. "Leave us!"

Scarface sputtered as he struggled with his chinstrap and tried to set his helmet aright. "But, my lord!" he exclaimed as juice dribbled down his cheek and chin, "the prisoner!"

Rokkarsh reached as if for another peach, but his hand slipped down between the throne and the table that held the bowl and came up again with a short, gleaming sword. Brandishing it, he gestured with the point toward the great doors.

"Insignificant fart," he said, his voice low with menace as he glared at the corporal, "your new rank goes to your head. Should the Overlord of Lankhmar fear a lone, bound man? Get out! And if one of you repeats a word of what he heard here, I'll hang the lot of you from the city walls."

Scarface shot a look of purest hatred at the Mouser, and the Mouser responded with a crooked grin and a mocking lift of his eyebrows. Retreating from their Overlord's fury, the other soldiers hurried to the doors. Slamming his sword back into its sheath, Scarface stalked after them.

"Now, little man." As the great doors closed behind the last of the soldiers, Rokkarsh descended halfway down the steps of the dais and stopped. His eyes narrowing to slits, he waved the point of his blade hypnotically before the Mouser's face. The red light of the braziers seemed to turn the silver metal to flame, and the Overlord himself appeared to grow subtly in power and stature as he struck a pose.

"You are not native to Lankhmar," Rokkarsh observed, studying the Mouser closely. "Your dusky skin suggests Tovilyis. I think you've come, an agent of some foreign power, to sow seeds of discontent, fear, and false rumor among my people."

"I know nothing of my parentage or my specific origins," the Mouser acknowledged, lifting his head high in stubborn pride, "but my guardian, Glavas Rho, raised me in the southlands of Lankhmar, steeped me in her traditions and customs, weaned me on her tales and legends. Lankhmar's gods are my gods, her ways my ways, and her people are my people as much as yours."

Rokkarsh sneered. "A pretty speech, but your arrogance puts the lie in your mouth. A true son of Lankhmar wouldn't dare to speak so to his Overlord. You're a spy and a rumor-monger."

With numbed fingers, the Mouser surreptitiously explored the knots of his bonds, working clumsily to loosen them, gaining nothing. He fought to conceal his disappointment, considering his options. Perhaps he could reason with Rokkarsh, reach him with words.

"Forgive my urgency, which you mistake for arrogance, most noble lord," the Mouser said. "Don't you see that our people are dying in their homes from an evil plague, and that damned wizard, Malygris, is to blame?"

Rage flashed across Rokkarsh's face, and he raised his sword as if to strike off the Mouser's head. "Hold your tongue, rogue, lest I cut it from your mouth! There's no plague in Lankhmar, and the loyal citizen, Malygris, has done me the dearest of favors with his magic."

The Mouser felt the blood in his veins turn cold, and for a moment, he ceased to work against his bonds. "Favor?" he said suspiciously. "What favor?"

A faint smile danced over the too-handsome face of Lankhmar's Overlord. Abruptly, he lowered the sword he held, turned, and climbed the few steps to his throne. Languidly, he sank upon it, throwing one arm over its high, velvet-cushioned back.

"Malygris undertook to rid me of important rivals and enemies," he said with a bemused grin. "The Patriarch of Aarth, for one, that meddling old fool." He gazed down upon the Mouser to measure the effect of his words as he touched the golden circlet he wore with a fingertip. "This rests a little easier on my brow with certain priests and powerful wizards out of my way. And if a few insignificant fortune-tellers and herb-witches have been incidentally brushed aside by Malygris's spell . . ."—he hesitated, looked thoughtful, then waved a hand—"well, their sacrifices are for the betterment of the state."

As he glared at the monster on the throne above him, the Mouser trembled with poorly hidden anger. "You fool!" he hissed. His life was forfeit; he knew that now beyond all hoping. Rokkarsh would not have confessed so much, otherwise. "Your ass disgraces the honored throne upon which it sits!"

Rokkarsh selected a new peach from the bowl close at hand and took a deep bite. Juice squirted upon his chin and dribbled downward. Contemptuously, he spat the pit at his prisoners feet.

The Mouser cursed his inept, swollen fingers because they couldn't manage the knots. How he wished he could squeeze Rokkarsh's neck and choke the breath from his body. "You stationed soldiers around the tower to protect Malygris," the Mouser accused. "Your villainy is even blacker than his!"

Rokkarsh inclined his head indifferently. "As the only wizard who can safely practice his art, he has some value to me." Setting aside the sword that dangled from one hand, he clapped his palms together sharply. "You, however, have no value at all. While you pose no real threat to a mage of Malygris s caliber, I can hardly let you run around the streets screaming 'plague!' and upsetting the citizenry."

On either side of the Mouser the nearest of the tall, fluted columns suddenly popped open. Unseen in the smooth stone, narrow doors flung back. From each, a giant emerged, men as tall as Fafhrd, clad only in loincloths and gleaming with sweat. Each carried an axe of impressive size.

The Mouser shot a worried look over his shoulder, wondering how many more of the scores of columns supporting the massive roof also housed a defender. Shouldering their axes, the pair of giants seized him roughly by his arms, lifting him up to the very tips of his toes. "Take a bath, pigs," the Mouser said, clenching his teeth against the pain that shot up into his joints. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. "You've been in your larders too long."

Rokkarsh chuckled softly. "They can't answer you," he said. "They surrendered their tongues to better serve their Overlord."

"Good at keeping secrets, huh?" the Mouser said, wincing as the pair lifted his bound hands high, forcing him to bend forward.

"Very," Lankhmar's Overlord agreed. "I trust them to repeat nothing said within these walls." Throwing back his head, he laughed.

The Mouser's head slumped forward, and droplets of sweat rolled from his brow onto the floor as despair and anger filled his heart. Then slowly, even as his arms were twisted higher still, he lifted his head and glowered at Rokkarsh. "One way or another," he promised, "I'll see you in hell."

The Overlord ceased his laughter and rose slowly from his throne, and when he stood erect, in the brazier's flickering red glow, he seemed to keep on rising, growing until he filled all the Mouser's tortured vision. "Indeed you will," he whispered in low, dangerous tones that echoed through all the hall. "Indeed."

He gestured to the pair of giants. "Take him to the dungeons below," he instructed. "Strike off his head and cast his corpse into the worm pits." Sinking down on his throne again, he seemed to resume his normal size once more. He reached for a fresh peach, took a bite, and threw one leg over the carved arm of his royal seat, half-reclining. "Ah," he sighed, paying the Mouser no more attention. "I am in need of a nap."

The axemen jerked the Mouser off his feet and dragged him away, his heels scrabbling and kicking futilely on the marble tiles. Out of the great hall and through a darkened archway they went and into a shadowy passage illumined only by regularly placed, low-burning cressets. The axemen paused long enough to put the Mouser on his feet, then still gripping his arms, they escorted him at a brisk pace through windowless corridors, down flights of stone steps, deep into the bowels of the Rainbow Palace.

A damp, foul-smelling seepage coated the rough floor of the lowest sub-basement. From lightless, locked cells soft murmurings and groans issued as the Mouser's muttered cursing and the footsteps of his guards disturbed prisoners who had not seen the sunlight in countless days.