Swords Against the Shadowland (Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar) (37 page)

The magic that had compelled such a carnal frenzy the night before had exacted a toll of suspicion and uncertainty from the citizens. Many had stayed home tonight; some had left the city early to return to their farms and villages.

A man suddenly leaped from behind a rain barrel to block their path. Round, wide eyes filled with the light of madness glared at them from a sallow, too-thin face. His wild hair jutted from his head at all angles, and clothes that once were finely made hung on him in tatters.

"Good sirs, don't go any further!" came a sibilant whisper. The man paused and shot fearful looks over his bony shoulders before turning back to Fafhrd and the Mouser. "There's plague in the district! Plague!" He hesitated again, then thrust a hand forward. Keeping his voice low, he added, "That'll be a tik-penny for the warning."

"We know," Fafhrd answered. Delicately, he put his hand to his mouth and gave a sharp cough, then another.

The beggar's eyes grew even wider, and his knees began to shake. When Fafhrd coughed a third time, he turned and fled down the street, disappearing around a corner.

"That didn't sound like a very genuine cough," the Mouser commented.

"I didn't feel like parting with a tik-penny," Fafhrd said with a wink and a shrug.

Skirting the edge of the Garden of Dark Delights, they came to Face-of-the-Moon Street. The Mouser preceded Fafhrd up the pebbled walkway, past the elaborate lawn sculptures, and up the marble steps. Small oil lamps suspended on bronze pegs burned on either side of the door tonight, their flames shielded by glass globes.

"Stand here," the Mouser said, positioning Fafhrd against the wall where he'd be just out of sight when the door opened. "When I hook the fish, you net him."

Seizing the brass knocker, the Mouser slammed it twice against the plate. In a moment, the door opened. The Mouser pushed back his hood and smiled at the hugely muscled, bald warrior that served the house as guardian and doorman.

"Good evening, you over-grown jackass. Remember me?"

The doorman growled. "Yes, little man. I threw you out on your drunken head last night."

He reached for the Mouser with large, grasping hands. When the Mouser backed up a step, the doorman followed. Fafhrd tapped him on the shoulder and, when he turned, smashed his own huge fist against the doorman's jaw.

The doorman's eyes glazed, but his lips parted in a weak grin. "Thank you, sir. May I have another?" Half-heartedly, he raised a fist to strike back, but Fafhrd's blow had achieved its purpose. The Mouser dropped to his hands and knees behind the doorman's legs, and Fafhrd gave a push. Over the doorman went into the bushes beside the high marble steps.

"A mightier blow I couldn't have delivered myself," the Mouser said, brushing his hands. "Now for Ivrian and a few answers!"

Yet before they could enter the house, a startled gasp spun them about. At the gateway to the marbled path, wrapped in a walking cloak, Ivrian stood still as a deer and stared nervously at them both. Then she bolted back into the street.

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser bounded down the steps in pursuit, reaching the street just in time to see the girl dash into the Garden of Dark Delights. They charged after her. A flash of a heel led them through the shadows; a swish of a cloak drew them deeper still into the park.

Abruptly, Fafhrd grabbed the Mouser's arm and jerked him to a halt. "You know I'm not a cautious man by nature," he whispered, peering around. "But this situation, in the parlance of my distant northern cousins, stinks."

A familiar voice called out from behind them. "The only stink here," it said, "clings to the two of you!"

Fafhrd whirled, the great sword he called Graywand sweeping from its sheath in one smooth motion.

The Mouser held up a hand. "Captain!" he cried in greeting as he turned.

"I was having a drink at a tavern," Nuulpha said. The faint moonlight glinted on his corporal's helmet as he pushed back his hood. "I thought I saw you skulking past, so I followed."

"How fares that fat, spend-thrift wife of yours?" Fafhrd asked, sheathing his blade again.

"Not well," Nuulpha answered, his voice dropping a note. "Though I speak roughly of her sometimes, she is the reason I serve Demptha Negatarth—in hope of a cure. She too suffers from Malygris's curse."

"Forgive me," Fafhrd said quickly. "I intended no cruelty."

Nuulpha shrugged. Unfastening his chinstrap, he removed his helmet and wiped a hand through his damp black hair. "It's no matter," he said. Then he screamed.

Before their eyes, his helmet transformed into a spitting black cat. Fangs sank deep into Nuulpha's hand; the beast wrapped itself ferociously around his arm and with razor-sharp talons raked his flesh to red ribbons. Not all his efforts could shake the creature loose.

"Wizard!" Fafhrd shouted, whipping out his sword again.

Once more, the earth began to buck and shake, to lift and roll in wave after wave, and to spin like a child's top. With an awkward and frustrated cry, the Northerner fell and thrashed on the ground. The Mouser, too, toppled helplessly sideways.

"Time to die, fools!" Malygris called. "Time for all to die— you, me, Lankhmar itself. Laurian is lost, so let all be lost!"

The Mouser twisted his head up from the grass and tried to gaze around. Malygris was somewhere close to judge by his voice. Yet, the wizard cloaked himself with still another damned illusion, rendering himself invisible. He twisted his head the other way. Fafhrd and Nuulpha kicked and struggled and twitched to no avail. The cat, at least, was gone. That, too, had only been an illusion.

A deranged voice boomed in the Mouser's ear. "Hear the death-cry of an entire city!"

Immediately the ground turned solid again. The Mouser found himself standing in the middle of a street. Flames leaped up from scores of buildings. The dead lay piled in the gutters and ditches. A cart trundled toward him, stacked with bodies. As it went by, he stared at the pale, horror-stricken faces, the bloody lips and the ruptured eyes. The driver coughed so severely he could barely work the reins and guide his draft-ox.

A trio of wild-eyed men bearing torches dashed past him. "Plague!" they screamed. "Plague!" Kicking open the door of a house, they proceeded to set fire to the interior,

"No!" shrieked an old woman. In her arms, she cradled a small boy. The child hung limp and fragile, weakly coughing. A thin red film trickled from its lips and down its chin as the Mouser stood helplessly by

"It s everything we have!" the old woman cried.

One of the men swung his torch, knocking her into the street. The cart rolled heedlessly across her back, crushing woman and child.

The Mouser fought down his revulsion and gathered his strength. "Illusion!" he cried, squeezing his eyes shut. "It's not real! None of it's real!"

Abruptly he was in the park again, sprawled on the grass, staring up at the sky through the thick trees.

"Isn't it?" Malygris's voice said coldly. "Listen carefully, little one. Listen to the groans of fear that come even now from the other side of the garden walls; now a cry goes up through the city, becomes a chorus; the despairing wails begin to mount."

The Mouser listened, and true enough he thought he heard, like a distant wind, the voices of terror, a lamentation rising in the night.

"Show yourself, coward!" Fafhrd said as he rose uncertainly to his feet. "Let me put another dagger in you."

"I have already won our duel, barbarian," Malygris answered. "I see the streaming mark of my curse upon you."

Fafhrd gave a stricken look and wiped the back of one hand across his mouth. It came away with a red smear.

Farther down the walkway, the darkness flickered in a peculiar manner, as if the wind had rippled a black curtain and parted it. Malygris's thin, bald form appeared, his arms folded into ragged bloodstained sleeves, his eyes burning with madness.

"Perhaps you'd like a preview of things to come," he said, his wild gaze fixed on Fafhrd.

A violent coughing wracked Fafhrd's mighty frame, bending him double as he clutched his chest and throat. His hair turned thin, lost its luster, and began to fall out. He spit blood into his hands; crimson spotted his lips and chin, the front of his tunic. Dark circles formed around his eyes, and the flesh began to hang upon his cheekbones.

Weakened legs gave way beneath him, and he fell gasping for air with spasming lungs. His musculature dissolved away until his bones began to show through bloodless flesh and his ribs showed right through his garments until he appeared little more than a pitifully thrashing skeleton with a veil of parchment draped over it.

A desperate mewling issued from Fafhrd's dehydrated lips, and he raised a supplicating hand toward the Mouser.

"Stop it!" the Mouser cried. In horror, he watched as Fafhrd's bloody teeth dropped out of his head. Drawing his dagger, Catsclaw, he prepared to throw, but suddenly there were three images of Malygris, then six, then nine, then more than the Mouser could count, all arrayed before him like an impossible, ragged army.

He screamed in frustration. Scooping up a handful of pebbles from the walkway, he flung them. Every image of Malygris reacted exactly the same, raising one arm to shield a laughing face.

"This is how it will be for you, defiler!" Malygris said to Fafhrd, his eyes blazing, his voice an angry hiss. "But you'll die slowly, over weeks, perhaps months. Your flesh will rot and drip from your bones, just as it was with Sadaster. You'll curse the day you came between me and Laurian!"

Through a gumless slash of a mouth, Fafhrd managed to answer, "You're insane."

Balancing his dagger carefully by the point, the Mouser folded his legs and sat down on the ground. His eyes narrowed to small slits; he calmed his breathing and let his racing heart slow.
It's all illusion,
he reminded himself. Fafhrd was not really dying at his feet. Nor did his enemy stand before him in scores.

He had been the pupil and ward of Glavas Rho. The herb-wizard had raised him through boyhood and taught him a thing or two about magic. A simpler form of magic, to be sure, but the Mouser had paid attention to his studies. A discerning eye, he knew, could tell the real from the false.

"Yes, insane!" Malygris agreed. "You destroyed the most precious jewel in Nehwon, my Laurian. Now I will have my revenge!" The wizard barked a short, ugly laugh. "Just imagine when your heart stops, Northerner!"

Fafhrd's bulging eyes snapped wider. A choked gasp of pain forced its way sharply from his lips as he clutched his shrunken chest.

The Mouser remained calm. Subtly, he snatched another pebble and flicked it toward one of the images of Malygris. When it failed to react, he hid a smile.
False,
he judged. So the unreal images only reacted when the real wizard moved.

"You killed Laurian," Fafhrd croaked. Somehow, as if he too were managing to fight the illusions, he struggled to his hands and knees. "You wrapped your own hands around her silken neck, because she hated you with all her heart! You are the murderer—and the fool."

The Mouser flicked pebbles at three more images, eliminating them in his mind. When he found one that reacted, then his dagger would fly.

"I could have won her," Malygris raged. The images shook their fists at Fafhrd. "But Sadaster stole her from me and dragged her to this cursed city. Sadaster and Lankhmar poisoned her heart against me. Now see how they are punished!"

Malygris thrust his good arm upward, and his fingers strained toward the sky.

High above the treetops, a thin red glow appeared. A ribbon of bloody hue wafted as if on a wind, furling and unfurling on itself, floating gracefully like a thin kite. Yet through the pretty light, it radiated an evil, a soul-shriveling vileness of dark and vast power.

The Mouser stared. The ribbon descended through the trees to swirl a few times about Malygris's upraised hand. It moved then to Fafhrd, but as if with some arcanely primitive power of recognition, it turned away.

Despite himself, the Mouser's heart quailed. That tenuous scarlet veil swept across the lawn. Too late, he leaped to his feet. The red horror poured into his nostrils, into his mouth as he gave an involuntary cry.

In the moment that it touched him, entered him,
infected him,
he felt a hunger deeper and blacker than anything his mind had ever conceived, a starving void, a ravening gulf, greedy in its need. It swallowed him like a morsel,
devoured
him.

Then, it spit him out again like chewed gristle and moved on.

The Mouser shivered with fear even as he fought to remain calm. A barely perceptible weakness burrowed in his muscles; he felt it like the tiniest tear in his soul through which his life-force leaked away.

Forgotten in the conflict, Nuulpha rose suddenly from the ground as the red ribbon coiled serpent-like about his throat. If Nuulpha noticed at all, though, he gave no sign of it. And uncoiling, the ribbon rose away from him and faded. Was Nuulpha, then, already infected as well?

The corporal thrust a hand under his crimson cloak and into a vest pocket on his jerkin. "They are mere swordsmen, fool," he said coldly. Only the voice was not that of Nuulpha! The air seemed to ripple around him like water.
Illusions and illusions!
The image of Nuulpha melted. In his place stood Demptha Negatarth. "And your fight is here."