Swords Against the Shadowland (Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar) (32 page)

Staring at the closed shutter, the Mouser sniffed the air. "You don't feel it?" he whispered to his partner. "Something intangible, indefinable, like a cold breath on the back of your neck?" He paused and swallowed. Once before, he had felt fear such as this, but stronger—in the tunnels under Lankhmar. "A strange wind is blowing, Fafhrd."

The Northerner frowned. "I don't feel any wind," he said. "Nor this fear you speak of, whatever it is."

"Do you not feel it, my stubborn friend?" the Mouser said, starting northward up the street. "Then tell me truly why I found you deep in your second bottle before the sun was even over the rooftops?"

Quickly overtaking the Mouser, Fafhrd started to protest. Instead, he fell silent, and his face took on an expression as grim as his companion's, and his eyes began to minutely search the alley entrances and shadowed places as they made their way.

From Dim Lane to Craft Street they encountered no more than five people. None spoke or offered any greeting. Averting their eyes, those citizens hurried past, clutching parcels or purses or daggers concealed beneath their cloaks.

At the Craft Street intersection, only two merchants had opened their shops. One of them stood in the doorway, glaring suspiciously up and down the road. In one hand, he gripped a wooden mallet that might have been a tool of his trade.

On the Street of Thinkers, the university bells tolled, calling students to study. Today, the bells carried a lonely quality and their summons went unheeded.

The Street of Silk Merchants normally bustled with trade even at the earliest hours. It was totally empty. Shop doors remained closed, windows shuttered.

"If Laurian cast a powerful spell last night," the Mouser said, "I think every citizen must have felt it. Something's left them cowed and hiding in their homes."

Fafhrd put a hand to his mouth and coughed, a soft explosion that rose from deep in his lungs. "If you're right," he said, wiping a trace of spittle from his lips, "then this is a city of the damned."

The Mouser stared at his partner, and he paled. "Malygris's curse," he said with a sudden dreadful understanding. "It may have touched every person affected by Laurian's magic."

A look of infinite sadness settled upon Fafhrd's face. "I wonder if she knew what she did?" He shook his head forcefully. "I can't believe she would doom so many innocents."

Gray-gloved hands curled into fists at the Mouser's sides. "I wonder if Laurian is responsible at all," he murmured. "Or even Malygris, for that matter."

"Malygris killed Laurian last night," Fafhrd snapped. "He's no innocent."

The Mouser only half-listened as, privately, he dealt with a bitter realization. Magic had compelled him to seek out the Dark Butterfly and suffer her humiliations. He felt sure of that, but the surety brought no consolation. Instead, it brought danger, threat, and uncertainty. Would he, too, now fall victim to the horrible, wasting sickness?

"I don't know what that wizard is," the Mouser muttered, "but I swear, Fafhrd, there's some greater mystery here that we've not yet touched upon."

The same hushed quiet filled the Street of the Gods, but on this most major of major thoroughfares, braver souls ventured. The clip-clop of a horse caused Fafhrd and the Mouser to turn and watch as a black carriage, its small drapes drawn to conceal the occupant, passed them by. The driver kept his gaze straight ahead, studiously ignoring them.

At the Temple of Mog, a squad of armed priests stood guard by the entrance and along the surrounding wall, a clear reminder of their battle with the priests of Aarth and the violence that had taken place only days before. They glared with dark suspicion at the few citizens wandering among the open shops and businesses.

Only one block northward, however, Temple Street appeared abandoned. The south side of the street consisted of temple walls and back gates, but small closely crowded shops lined the opposite side. With no good idea exactly where Demptha's business stood, the Mouser scratched his chin and wondered which way to go. He chose the riverward direction and began scrutinizing the merchants' signs carefully.

Finally, he stopped and peered upward at an elaborately painted sign. Portrayed upon it in vibrant colors was a wild peacock, its tail feathers displayed, an emerald clutched in one talon, a ruby in the other. "
The Bird of Jewels,
from the Lankhmaran tarot," the Mouser said, putting his hand upon the door. "I should have expected it."

Fafhrd put a hand on his companion's arm. "Can you be sure you have the right shop?"

The Mouser nodded. "I recognize the style of his art." The door swung open at his touch. "Unlocked," he said with some surprise.

They slipped inside and hesitated while their eyes adjusted to the gloom. A large worktable with various tools for gem-cutting and delicate metal-shaping scattered upon it occupied most of the visible interior. Several cupboards and empty display cases stood against a wall. A fine layer of dust covered everything.

  
"Demptha?" the Mouser called softly. Then louder, "Demptha?"

Fafhrd pointed to a curtained doorway at the rear of the shop. With the tip of one finger, he pushed back the edge and peeked through. He beckoned for the Mouser to follow.

The rear room was larger, but empty of furniture. A few tools hung on pegs on the walls, and an empty chest stood with its lid open. A broken chair leaned in one corner. In another corner, a narrow wooden staircase led to an attic.

With one hand on Catsclaw's hilt, the Mouser crept up the stairs. Carefully, he eased up the horizontal door. "Mog's blood!" he exclaimed. "Fafhrd, come see this!"

The Northerner climbed the stairs while the Mouser waited open-mouthed at the top. With only his head and shoulders above the attic floor, Fafhrd gave a low whistle.

It was hardly an attic at all. Plush scarlet carpets covered the floor. Paintings done by Demptha's hand adorned the wall. A gold samovar stood close by. Another large table dominated the center of the room. Upon it, an array of flasks and alembics glimmered in the light from a pair of candles. A deck of cards lay scattered between the candles.

The bookshelves that covered the wall behind the table revealed an impressive collection of volumes.

"I suspect this is Demptha's
real
work room," the Mouser commented.

A barely audible groan quivered up from the shadows behind the table.

"Demptha?" Taking a tighter grip on his dagger, the Mouser seized one of the candles and moved around the table. Fafhrd came around the other side.

The light fell on a lined and wrinkled face, on a mass of gray hair, and shriveled breasts. Horror and revulsion gripped the Mouser at this unexpected sight, for in that aged visage he recognized another. "Jesane!" he exclaimed, dropping to his knees.

Fafhrd raised an eyebrow. "The daughter?"

Jesane rolled rheumy eyes toward the Mouser. Then her gaze shifted to a book that lay open on the floor just beyond her reach. She strained for it, but the Mouser gathered her up in a cradling embrace. She felt brittle in his arms, this woman who had saved his life, like old parchment.

"What happened to you?" the Mouser cried as he brushed strands of hair from her brow. He searched that face for traces of her former beauty, recalled the sparkle in those once-bright eyes, the strength and vitality of a once-supple body that he had desired. "By all the gods, what happened?"

Jesane's mouth trembled and opened. A thin string of spittle hung suspended between her cracked lips. A brown tongue licked it weakly away. "Shadowland," she whispered, her eyes widening at some horror. She tried to roll free of the Mouser's embrace, tried to reach with twig-like fingers for the book on the floor. "Shadowland is here!"

A dry rattle issued from her throat, and she went limp.

"Dead," the Mouser said, his voice heavy with sadness as he laid her gently down. He picked up the fallen book, intending only to place it on the table. Yet the distinctive calligraphy caught his eye. He lingered over the page where the book was opened.

Before he could read a word, the page exploded in violent flame. The flash singed the Mouser's eyebrows and, but for his glove, would have burned his hand. Instinctively, he dropped the book with a howl.

With unnatural speed, the flames devoured the book and spread to the thick carpet. A streamer of fire shot across the floor straight for the bookshelves.

"No!" Fafhrd shouted, leaping up. He snatched volumes off the shelves, attempting to save them, but each one burst into new flame in his grasp.

The Mouser pulled him away.

"What a loss!" Fafhrd cried. "All that knowledge!"

"We've got to get out of here!" the Mouser insisted, shielding his face from the heat. "This whole place is going to burn!"

They ran down the stairs and out into the street. They didn't stop there. Neither wanted to be found lingering around a sudden fire when soldiers were already seeking the Mouser. They ducked around the next corner. Emerging onto the Street of the Gods, they headed toward the river.

Ahead, drifting over the southwestern rooftops, a column of black smoke climbed into the blue sky. Fafhrd eyed it with a strange expression, then began walking faster and faster. Finally he ran with the Mouser pursuing.

Still a block from this second fire, Fafhrd stopped. "Sadaster's estate," he said, nodding toward the crackling flames. "Another library destroyed."

The Mouser let go a long sigh. The streets were no longer deserted. People thronged the way, watching the great house burn. A water line had formed, not to douse the flames engulfing Sadaster's house, but to protect the buildings around it. Fortunately, the estates in this part of town were well-spaced. There was little chance this fire would spread.

"I wish you could have seen it," Fafhrd whispered. "Such a collection of books."

"Nothing like a fire to draw a crowd," the Mouser muttered. He turned away from the inferno to witness the column of smoke rising over Temple Street.

Let Fafhrd mourn the books. He would mourn Jesane.

SEVENTEEN

WIZARD'S RAGE

S
quads of soldiers came racing down Nun Street, drawn by the crackling flames that engulfed Sadaster's estate. Mindful of the Mouser's status as a wanted man, Fafhrd caught his partner's elbow and quickly pushed him into the thick of the spectators.

The Mouser understood and drew his hood closer about his face. Without drawing attention to themselves, they slipped through the crowd into a narrow, serpentine alley and quick-footed away from the scene, emerging some blocks eastward in Crypt Court.

Tall ramshackle apartment buildings, mostly abandoned, rose on all sides of the square. The structures were among the oldest in Lankhmar, and they showed it, leaning at crazy angles on their ancient, eroded foundations. Sunlight streamed through holes in the roofs, through cracked and weathered walls.

Only the poorest and most desperate Lankhmarans, those at the very nadir of their luck, came here to live. The individual apartments were no more than tiny, cheerless cells—hence the name,
Crypt Court.
The floorings were treacherously rotten and the windows shutterless. A good wind could raise a creaking and a groaning from the wooden beams and set the structures to swaying.

Such was the nature of Lankhmar that its worst tenements stood side by side with its wealthiest neighborhoods, connected sometimes by no more than a narrow road or a few alleyways. At the center of the court, a small cracked fountain gurgled softly. Water from a ceramic pipe trickled into a round pool whose bottom was covered with a mossy, dark green growth. Pushing his cloak back over his shoulders, Fafhrd dipped a hand into the water, and wiped his face and neck. Though he declined to say so to the Mouser, a dull ache banged at the back of his head from the wine he had drunk.

Even here, a smell of smoke hung in the air, evoking memories of Sadaster’s fantastic library, of Laurian, of sweet Sameel and the joy she had given him. He grieved for those books and grieved anew for the ladies. The thought of their bodies burning in that holocaust angered and sickened him.

"I can't get over the way Jesane looked," the Mouser said wearily as he stretched his legs out before him and sat on the fountain's low stone wall. Pursing his lips thoughtfully, he cradled his chin in one palm. His face took on a troubled, faraway look.

"Laurian had the same look when she died," Fafhrd said quietly. "At the end, she seemed to age rapidly, and her beauty faded like a rose in a . . ."—he hesitated before finishing his remark— ... in a fire.

The Mouser drew his legs up and leaned on his knees. "Nuulpha said that Jesane was older than she looked. Demptha, too.

Unconsciously, Fafhrd mirrored the Mouser's posture, leaning his elbows on his knees, cradling his chin as he stared at the cobbled court. "In our dream," he said at last, "Sadaster used enchantment to keep Laurian young."

The Mouser looked up sharply. "You never cease to amaze me, Fafhrd," he said. "You've done what I could not—fit together two pieces of the puzzle."

Fafhrd brightened at the compliment, then frowned. "What puzzle?"