Swords Against the Shadowland (Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar) (25 page)

"Sheelba, sender of dreams," he answered with cryptic bitterness. "Sheelba the manipulator." He glared suddenly at the woman who claimed to be Sadaster s wife. Had she really saved his life? How could he trust her?

Her eyes. He must see her eyes. Then he would know the truth. "Take off your blindfold," he said. "Let me see through those windows into
your
soul."

A blue-veined hand lifted from the armrest. Fingers curled and clutched at silk, and the blindfold came away. Gripping the strip of cloth, the hand settled into a black silk lap. Laurian turned her face toward him.

Fafhrd froze inside as he stared at those sightless orbs. Only a hint of color remained in the irises, but pools of thin red blood floated in the large whites. "You really are blind," he said in a voice suddenly regretful.

"Malygris's spell," she said stonily. "It killed my husband. It is killing me."

"You were not a sorceress in my dream," Fafhrd said.

Laurian laughed bitterly. "Indeed. I was but a pampered wife deeply in love with a man who gave me everything I wanted. And all I wanted were flowers and fruit trees, chimes to sing in the wind, fountains and pebbled walkways—a perfect garden in which to sit in the sunshine with Sadaster's head in my lap while I read poetry to him and stroked his brow."

Laurian's hands clutched the armrests of her chair. Slowly, with great effort showing on her face, she pushed herself up and stood. The veils of mist inside the sarcophagus swirled lightly about her as she pressed her hands together, the blindfold trailing from her fingers.

"Malygris made a grave mistake when he killed Sadaster," she said. With one frail hand, she gestured around. "He left me alive with my husband's magnificent library and a heart full of hatred."

Fafhrd felt a chill pass over his heart. "You studied magic, knowing the consequences," he said.

She laughed again. "I immersed myself in it," she answered with defiant anger. "Sadaster meant everything to me. I watched him rot day after day while he struggled uselessly to find a counter-measure to Malygris's evil curse ..." She pressed a palm to her head and stopped suddenly, trembling, as if unable to continue.

"I would walk through hell," she said at last in a quieter, more controlled voice, "challenge Death, himself, in the Shadowland to strike Malygris down for his crime." With a weary sigh, she sank into her chair, positioned her arms on the rests, and leaned her head back. "I am too weak. Knowledge I have, and power, but too little. And only my shroudcloth keeps me warm now."

Laurian's voice trailed away, and her head turned a little as if she had fallen asleep. Fafhrd watched her, uncertain of what he should do. Wait? Leave? He still had unanswered questions. He studied her face, so beautiful but for her ravaged eyes and the faintest lines of grief etched across her brow.

He found himself admiring Laurian. Love and vengeance, and the desperations to which they drove a person, were things he understood well. He thought of his own Vlana. Had he not stormed Thieves' House with all its traps and horrors to slay the thrice-cursed sorcerer, Hristomilo, who had killed Fafhrd's one true love?

He looked with a potent sympathy upon Laurian, who dared to claim Sadaster's magic for herself, caring not if Malygris's spell claimed her life so long as she found the power to take that hated wizard in the bargain. Fafhrd nodded approvingly.

Aye, he understood Sadaster's widow.

Sameel nudged his arm and offered him another cup of steaming gahvey. He accepted with surprise, unaware that the girl had slipped from the library and returned. Her moist gaze settled upon Laurian as she passed the cup into his hands.

"My mistress is dying," she whispered sadly. "Only the box sustains her life force, and in it she lingers, seeing beyond sight, hearing beyond hearing, pursuing her vengeance. I fear her time is short."

As if waking, Laurian's head snapped forward. "I am not dead yet, child," she said.

Fafhrd held his cup without drinking. "How is it that you see?" he asked.

Lifeless eyes turned his way. "The mist and the fog tell me things," she answered, waving a hand with slow grace, setting the mist that yet lingered in the sarcophagus to swirling. "We are great friends, the fog and I. The fog touched you in the street, and the one you call the Mouser. It overheard you and whispered to me that you also seek Malygris." A hard smile turned up the corners of her mouth. "And by my dream I knew that I could trust you. The enemy of my enemy. . . . I'm sure you've heard."

Fafhrd sipped his beverage. "Has the fog told you where to find Malygris?"

"I've found several of his hiding places," Laurian answered, her hands curling into small fists, "but never Malygris, himself."

"I can sense your disappointment," Fafhrd said, attempting a bit of levity while he considered. "I thought that Malygris loved you. In my dream, he slew Sadaster out of jealousy."

Laurian's face reddened. "I met the fool but one time, Northerner—at the celebration of my engagement to Sadaster. He and my husband once were friends. In his warped mind, he fancies that he's loved me ever since, and that only some black spell of Sadaster's kept me from returning that love."

Fafhrd shrugged as he took another sip of the hot, strong-tasting beverage. Beneath his calm demeanor, his thoughts churned with schemes and possibilities. "Still," he said slowly as he fingered the rim of his cup, "sometimes the simplest plans are best. Have you invited him over for gahvey?"

Laurian started. "What?"

"He's a man, isn't he?" Fafhrd said, raising his cup in a mock-toast. "Open your window, wave a hanky, and call yoo-hoo." Fafhrd quickly swallowed the rest of his gahvey and handed the cup back to Sameel. "Trust me," he added. "If he's in love, he'll come."

Laurian touched a fingertip softly to her lips as she considered. "I could set traps, magical snares ..."

Fafhrd interrupted. "Just stick a knife in him."

Laurian froze, her mouth half-open, facing Fafhrd as if she actually saw him. "Have I been such a fool?" she whispered disbelievingly. "Could it be so easy?"

"It's never easy to knife a man," Fafhrd answered gravely, "no matter how much you hate him. That's why I'll be hiding behind a curtain with a sword." He clapped a hand to his side where Graywand should have been, abruptly remembering— he'd lost it in the Tower of Koh-Vombi. He looked up sheepishly. "I seem to have misplaced my weapon."

"... right into my very bedchamber," Laurian ruminated, murmuring to herself. She paused again, then she gestured toward her handmaiden. "Sameel, fetch Sadaster's sword."

Obediently, the girl hurried from the room.

"You will have my husband's sword, Northerner," she said, her voice firm with determination. "But do not doubt. If Malygris proves fool enough to walk into my home, it will be my dagger that drinks his heart blood."

Fafhrd paced to the open window and stared outward. In the distance, Rhan's spire rose above all the rooftops of Lankhmar. Behind it, the sun sank slowly toward the horizon. Soon darkness would fall.

Where, he wondered, was the Mouser?

"Dagger or sword," Fafhrd said quietly, vaguely troubled by the impending night. "It matters not, so long as I have a drop of that blood."

"A gruesome request," Laurian said. Then she spoke a name as if it were a question. "Sheelba?"

Fafhrd nodded, his back to her. His gaze still upon the horizon, he covered his mouth with a fist and allowed the small cough he had been resisting. A chill and a shiver of dread rattled through him. Squeezing his eyes shut briefly, he mastered himself. Now was not a time for fear.

Realizing Laurian had not seen his nod, he explained. "With that last ingredient Sheelba can cast the counter-spell to end this nightmare Malygris has dreamed for us."

Laurian's voice softened again as she leaned back within her silver sarcophagus. "A counter-spell?" She sighed as she tied the white linen blindfold once more over her ravaged eyes. "Then more than vengeance will guide my blade. Lankhmar is my city, and I know the suffering of its people."

With a second sigh, she folded her fragile hands upon the shroudcloth that draped her lap, and her head sagged forward upon her bosom.

Fafhrd moved around the room again to face her. Once more, she seemed to sleep. No matter how he tried to deny it, a troublesome fear grew within him. He whispered a question. "Why didn't you bring the Mouser, too?"

Laurian did not stir. Even the thin mist that surrounded her seemed to hold perfectly still.

Fafhrd repeated, strangely unable to raise his voice. Did he want her to hear? Did he want an answer?

"She dared not snatch your friend," Sameel said, standing nervously behind him. In her hands, she carried a magnificent great-sword in an elegantly crafted leather scabbard. "She had only strength enough for one of you. And your friend has not yet been touched by Malygris's curse."

Fafhrd's mouth went dry. He stared at Sameel's moistening eyes, reading the fear and uncertainty he suddenly saw in those limpid green pools. Groping beyond his own uncertainty, his heart went out to her. "You, too?"

Wordless, she nodded.

A cold anger filled Fafhrd, and his hand went to the sword. He curled his fingers around its hilt. It fit his grip as if it had been made for him. Grimly, he drew the blade. Streaming through the window, the last sunlight touched the keen edge with a glittering fire.

Red fire, Fafhrd thought, turning the sword in the light— deep and rich as the color of blood.

FOURTEEN

PIECES OF DREAMS, NIGHTMARE SHARDS

F
afhrd slipped naked between the sheets of Sameel's bed and eased his head carefully down upon the pillow. The vertigo troubled him less than before, and the constant hammering inside his skull had eased somewhat. Still, he saw the wisdom of resting a while. Later, he would rise, go out and search for the Mouser.

Turning on his side, his gaze fell upon his new sword, which leaned against a chair where his clothes were hung. Sameel's room had no windows, and the lambent flame from an oil lamp lent the polished black pommel stone a starlight glow.

Sameel entered the room quietly, bearing another tray of fresh herbs and steaming bowls. Noting the direction of his gaze, she said, "My master called the sword,
Payday.''

"I’lll name it Graywand," Fafhrd said, "as I name all my swords."

"Why is that?" Sameel asked. Setting down the tray, she crumbled herbs and scattered them in varying portions over the bowls. Immediately a sweet aroma perfumed the air.

He closed his eyes for a brief moment, and the face of his father floated in his mind—dark eyes, sweeping hair as red as Fafhrd's own, a handsome visage clouded by a melancholy and regret that Fafhrd had never understood.

"To honor Nalgron," he said, opening his eyes again, speaking as if to the sword itself. "After his fatal fall on White Fang Mountain, I inherited his sword, which he called Graywand. An uncle presented it to me when I was only a small boy." He paused and crooked one arm under his head. "But my mother, Mor, despised my father. Fearing I would grow to be just like him, she took the sword, broke the blade, and ordered the pieces melted."

Old memories washed over him, and he imagined at that moment that his face looked not unlike the clouded, brooding face of his father. "When I grew old enough to claim my own blade," he continued, "I gave it the name of my father's sword to remember him—but also to spite my mother. And every sword I've owned since that day I've named Graywand."

With a long piece of straw, she took flame from the lamp and lit a small candle beneath a slender copper samovar. "I never knew my parents," she said softly. "Laurian found me living in the streets when I was very small and took me in." She hesitated, holding the straw's flame close so that it uplit her face. Then she blew it out. "Sometimes in my dreams, I see the shadow of a face that might have been my mother." She shook her head. "But I don't know."

Fafhrd watched her as she bent over the tray again and crumbled some herbs into a delicate white kerchief. Lamplight and gloom played about the soft lines and curves of her body, lending her an aura of mystery and beauty Fafhrd had not noticed before. He rose up on one elbow, the better to observe her.

Folding the kerchief carefully, she turned from the tray and approached the bed. "Breathe these fragrances," she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed's wooden frame. "They will ease your pain."

Sameel lifted the pomander to his nose, but Fafhrd caught her wrist. Though she stiffened, she did not pull away. Their eyes met. For a long moment neither moved, and the only sound came from the soft sputtering of the lamp and the candle. Without taking his eyes from hers, Fafhrd drew her hand and the pomander closer. As he breathed in the woodsy aroma, he lightly kissed her fingertips, and when she did not protest, he drew her gently down beside him.

He shifted position, drawing her closer as he unfastened the brooches that held her simple dress upon her shoulders. She trembled against him. "I've never . . ." She bit her lip, her eyes brimming with tears. She squeezed them shut. "My lord, I don't want to die without tasting love."