Swords Against the Shadowland (Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar) (39 page)

"Laurian's handiwork again," Fafhrd said with a sad shake of his head. Abruptly he changed the subject as he peered into the black stairwell. "You know I'm not a superstitious man, Mouser. But if your plan is to descend into this hole without any kind of light, I'd like a few moments to change your mind."

"Feel around in the corner near your foot, Fafhrd," Demptha instructed. "You should find an old lantern, battered and rusted, as if it had been discarded and forgotten years ago. But if you shake it, you'll find the reservoir still contains a small amount of oil."

Fafhrd crouched low and explored the corner of the crib with a broad sweep of his hand, encountering the lantern lying on its side. Holding it close to his ear, he shook it and smiled at the sloshing sound it made.

"How do you expect to fire the wick?" the Mouser asked.

Demptha Negatarth gave a low, mocking chuckle. "As some wise friend once said, wizards are stingy with their secrets."

A small flame sprang suddenly from the lantern's wick. An orange glow lit up Fafhrd's startled face. Hiding his own surprise, the Mouser blinked at the sudden light. Though it was hard to be sure, he thought he saw a tiny rain of fine black powder above the wick before Demptha withdrew his hand.

"A mere trick of prestidigitation," he scoffed, assuming a professional disinterest, though in truth he was considerably impressed.

"Your friend asked for light," Demptha replied with the slightest of smiles. "Not miracles."

Seizing the lantern by its bail, the Mouser turned the wick as high as it would go and lowered the glass shield around it. Then, drawing slender Scalpel from its sheath, he led the way down the narrow steps.

Demptha followed, and Fafhrd brought up the rear. The Northerner's great body nearly filled the tiny tunnel at the bottom. He bent low, and still his head brushed the ceiling. He thumped the close walls on either side with his fists.

"A worm burrowing through the earth has more room," he grumbled.

"But a worm lacks your charm and good nature," the Mouser said impatiently as he lifted the light high and started forward.

"Not to mention my good looks," Fafhrd shot back.

"The tunnels below Lankhmar are not always so cramped," Demptha explained as he gave Fafhrd's arm a sympathetic pat. "Some, however, are worse."

They stopped talking then. Their small light quivered, intimidated by the blackness ahead, but the Mouser pricked the dark with the point of his rapier and pushed it back with each nervously determined step. He felt the weight of Ivrian's pearl on the back of his right hand where he had thrust it under his glove and thought of her down here somewhere with Malygris— and with something still more dreadful.

The tunnel merged into another, then another. At last Fafhrd could stand straight as he walked. He gave a soft cough, stifling it as best he could with his hand. "Were I not already at Death's door," he whispered, "the quailing in my heart would send me clawing right up to the surface world again."

The Mouser said nothing. The same crushing fear that had filled these passages before still permeated them. He could barely breathe, for the choking hand of it held him by the throat. Only the thought of Ivrian drew him on.

The softest weeping rose from Demptha. "My poor Jesane," he murmured. "Even with her brave heart, she must have run from this terror, abandoning her charges."

"It caught up with her," the Mouser said, tight-lipped.

Against the strangling dark, they pressed on. Demptha's weeping ceased as they emerged into a cavern. "Is this the way to the Temple of Hates?" the Mouser asked doubtfully, for it lacked the look of the cavern that led to that place.

Demptha moved past the Mouser, turning his gaze toward the high ceiling, then all around as he walked to the very edge of the lantern's light and touched a stalagmite that stood twice his height. He shook his head. "This is wrong," he said, and a new fear shadowed his face as he turned back toward the light. "Yet it can't be. We came by the proper route."

"What is this mist rising from the ground?" Fafhrd said apprehensively.

The Mouser fairly jumped as he glanced downward at a creeping vapor that curled around his boots. Everywhere he looked, as far as the lantern let him see, a fine cold smaze seeped up through the cavern floor and filtered into the air, diffusing the quality of the lantern's light, leeching away the faint warmth it offered.

The very walls seemed to retreat into the deepening darkness. The ceiling, too, arched away from vision. Still the vapor rose, growing thicker, hiding the floor and the tops of their feet, climbing their ankles and shin bones.

The Mouser shivered as he lifted the lantern higher. "I think the way lies there," he said, pointing to the rightward side of the cavern with his sword. "I'm sure I saw the opening of another tunnel."

Every sense screamed to turn away, but the Mouser fixed his gaze ahead, and his comrades followed.
Could this be one of Malygris's illusions?
'he briefly wondered. Then he dismissed that consideration. Their true foe, he felt sure, still remained unknown— and unnamed.

To his small relief, the passage on the far side of the cavern lay exactly where he thought it should. Yet, as he shone the lantern's light upon its threshold, he hesitated, alerted by a shadow.

An emaciated figure lurched from the tunnel into the cavern. Bulging, jaundiced eyes glared with a horrible light from a thinly bearded face.

"Mish!" Demptha Negatarth cried over the Mouser's shoulder as he recognized his missing friend, and the Mouser also gaped with surprise—a mistake.

With a sweep of his arm, Mish knocked the Mouser's sword away. A hand of astonishing strength seized the Mouser's tunic and flung him crashing to the rocky ground. His head struck against a towering stalagmite, filling his eyes with sparks of colored fire. The lantern rattled loudly and rolled to a stop against a jutting stone; the wick hissed; veiled beneath cold white vapor, the quivering flame threatened to go out.

"Turn away!" Mish howled at the Mouser. Then his unnatural gaze locked on Demptha Negatarth. His hands shot out. Catching the old wizard by the throat, he squeezed. "Ten more!" he cried.

Fafhrd leaped around Demptha, who stood in his way. Graywand whisked from its sheath as he moved, and the blade flashed.

Mish screamed. Stumbling back, he held up twin stumps of severed arms. Again he screamed, and the sound of his pain echoed desperately against the walls of earth and stone.

Demptha screamed, too, and fell to the ground, wrestling with the hands that still stubbornly tried to throttle him.

Fafhrd struck again. Swinging with all his fear-driven might, he sliced off Mish's head and sent it smashing against the same stalagmite where the Mouser struggled to sit up. It landed in his gray-clad lap between his very knees.

A sound of repulsion gurgled in the Mouser's throat. Hurling the head away, he scrambled to save the lantern.

Mish's corpse fell. It kept on falling, as if the mist were water, and a feathery white wave closed over it. Ripping free the hands that gripped him, Demptha dropped them into the unnatural stuff, and they too sank away as if into a rippling lake.

Rising with the lantern in one hand, his sword in the other, the Mouser walked cautiously to the spot and poked the rapier into it. The point scraped on solid stone. Licking his lips, looking to his comrades, he stamped his feet upon the place.

"Dance this way with that light," Fafhrd said, "and look at this." He held Graywand's broad blade to the amber glow. It gleamed cleanly. "No blood."

"Whatever that was," the Mouser said to Demptha, "it wasn't Mish." Yet in his heart, he wasn't so sure. He couldn't discount the radical change in Ivrian, once his true love.

Entering the new tunnel, the Mouser steeled himself against the terror that permeated this strange labyrinth. Once again, the stone walls pressed close, and the ceiling slanted gradually lower and lower. The mist thickened as they advanced, and the small lantern became virtually useless. Unable to see more than a few feet ahead, the Mouser waved his sword before him, tapping first one wall and then the other.

Suddenly metal rang on metal. The Mouser felt a shock rise up through his sword and into his arm. Barely keeping a grip on his weapon's hilt, he leaped back, colliding with an unwary Demptha. "Fall back! Fall back!" he cried. Shoving the lantern into Demptha's hands, he drew his dagger, Catsclaw.

A figure brandishing shield and a long dirk rushed screaming out of the fog at the Mouser. Behind that ferocious warrior, from the narrow tunnel, came four more, similarly armed. Blocking the dirk's thrust with Scalpel, he brought his foot up against the nearest shield and kicked the closest foe back into his companions.

The Mouser's eyes snapped wide. He recognized the face that appeared just over that shield rim. "The Ilthmarts!" he shouted. "The dead Ilthmarts!"

"Ilthmarts behind us, too!" Fafhrd answered grimly. "Five more!" There was no room in the tunnel for Graywand. He drew his dagger, instead. Bellowing a mighty roar, he charged straight into the five, slashing with the thin blade and smashing with his fists, using his huge body to clear a retreat back into the larger cavern.

Pushing Demptha Negatarth before him, the Mouser leaped past Fafhrd's victims before they could stir to their feet. "Out! Out!" he shouted at the wizard. "And take care to guard that light!"

A booming laugh filled the cavern as Fafhrd emerged and freed Graywand. Thrusting Demptha aside, he called to his partner as the Mouser emerged. "Hah, a good battle is a cure for the numbing fear-stink that fills this blasted maze!"

"Personally, I'm insulted," the Mouser answered diffidently. "Ilthmarts—and Ilthmarts we've already beaten."

Fafhrd laughed again and twirled Graywand in a showy one-handed arc as he fell back into a defensive posture. "It would be rude of me to point out that Laurian's magic defeated them when they had us cornered like a pair of rats."

"A treacherous slander!" the Mouser scoffed. "She merely interfered while I was catching my second wind."

A host of battlecries sounded, and the Ilthmart warriors charged into the cavern. Fafhrd met the first one, knocking him aside with a ringing blow on a shield. The second warrior tripped over the first, smacking his chin on the rocky floor. The third leaped screaming over the first two. With a dancer’s grace, the Mouser dropped to one knee and thrust upward, piercing flesh with Scalpel's point.

The fourth and fifth squeezed out behind the third. Both charged the Mouser. The rapier edge of Catsclaw swept in a sidewise arc, slipping beneath a shield to slice a muscled thigh before the Mouser rolled aside and jumped to his feet.

The rest of the Ilthmarts rushed clumsily from the narrow tunnel, pushing and shoving each other as they emerged. "Eight more!" they shouted. "Eight more for the Shadowland!"

"These fools can't count!" Fafhrd laughed as he waded into them, swinging left and right with Graywand. "We are but three!"

A dirk flashed through the air toward the Mouser. With a flick of his blade, he batted it aside in mid-flight, and with an advancing lunge, pushed his point through the throat of the thrower.

"Seven more!"

The odd count caught the Mouser's attention. Whirling about, he spied the Ilthmart that had voiced it. That warrior loomed over a cowering Demptha, dirk upraised, prepared to strike a death blow.

"No!" the Mouser shouted, too far away to help.

But Demptha did not cower. He merely stooped to set the lantern safely aside. Even as the Ilthmart stabbed downward, Demptha reached into his left sleeve. Out came a packet. Black powder showered over the Ilthmart. Bright star-like sparks flared, and a hideous scream tore through the cavern. Shield, dirk, clothes, and Ilthmart all burst into white flame.

Shielding his eyes against the sudden painful brightness and the crackling heat, the Mouser ran to Demptha's side and pulled him up. "Stay behind me!" he ordered.

On the distant side of the cavern, partially obscured by the gray vapor, a silhouetted Fafhrd gave a forceful shout. Graywand's blade and elaborate hilt sparkled like blue lightning as he cleaved an arc through the air and drove the sword through the final Ilthmart’s shoulder and deep into his torso, carving the man nearly in half.

For a moment, the two combatants stood as if frozen, still as statues, a captured tableau of desperation and death. Then the Ilthmart corpse slipped free of the great blade and fell out of sight under the mist.

For a moment more, Fafhrd remained unmoving. Finally, he lowered his sword and leaned heavily on it. A wracking cough shook his great form.

Before the Mouser could run to his friend, the burning Ilthmart, now the major source of light, screamed his last scream and fell face-forward into the thick mist, sinking into it just as Mish had done. A crushing blackness once more filled the cavern with nothing more than the lantern's small flame to hold it back. In the renewed dark, the Mouser rubbed a gloved fist over his eyes, unable to see. "Fafhrd!" he called.

"I'm here," Fafhrd answered, emerging from the mist into the small light of the lantern as Demptha raised it. A dark smear of blood stained his mouth and chin.

"You're wounded!" Demptha cried.

Fafhrd allowed a humorless smirk. "Not by any Ilthmart blade," he answered.