Swords Against the Shadowland (Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar) (28 page)

Flinging open the garden doors, he made his way through a darkened foyer and found the stairs to the upper floor. The library doors hung crookedly on their hinges. He rushed inside.

Sameel cradled Laurian in her arms on the carpet. She turned a tear-streaked face toward him. "Malygris?" she asked hopefully.

"Gone," he answered. "Laurian?"

Sameel brushed hair from her mistress's face. "She's with Sa-daster now."

Fafhrd picked up the scabbard he had cast aside and sheathed Sadaster's sword. A new anger welled up within him as he clenched his fist around the hilt. "Why?" he raged. "Why did she challenge him alone? We should have planned it together, chosen the time ..."

Sameel smiled wanly. "You didn't know Laurian."

/ know she's dead,
Fafhrd nearly snapped. Instead, he bit his tongue and shook his head. "She should have let us help."

Sameel leaned her head forward until it touched Laurian's brow. "I helped," she whispered. "Didn't I, mistress?"

"What?" Crouching down beside her, Fafhrd lifted her chin, forced her to look at him.

She gave a weak laugh that sent a new chill through Fafhrd. "She asked me for a favor," she said, turning her face away. "Something important, something that would insure Malygris's coming."

Fafhrd knelt closer, confused as well as angry, but suddenly frightened again as he peered at Sameel and perceived in her a new, desperate quality. It seemed as if her mind were unhinging. He started to speak again, but she put up a hand to stop his lips.

A moment of lucidity settled upon her face, and in her eyes he saw a sadness so deep it set his soul to aching. "Don't ask," she said, her words feather-soft, her breath herb-sweet. "The answer might hurt too much. And I will never tell."

Her eyes fluttered, and her head sank down upon Laurian's head again.

"Sameel?" he said.

She didn't answer.

A dark stain spread slowly across the carpet beneath Laurian's body. Fafhrd stared, puzzled. Too much blood for Malygris's wounds, and Laurian hadn't been stabbed. He noted how gingerly Sameel supported her mistress's limp form in her left; arm. His eyes spied Laurian's dagger so close at hand.

With a despairing cry, he caught the hidden arm and tugged it free. "What have you done?"

Blood swelled freely from the vein she had opened lengthwise and properly. It ran over her palm, through her fingers, dripped into Laurian's dark hair, into Laurian's shut eyes.

Sameel pulled her arm away and hugged it to her bare breast. "All the kindness, all the joy I have known in this world flowed from my mistress and my master," she said. An eerie happiness filled her voice. "They will need me in the Shadowland."

A hollow silence settled through the room. Fafhrd's eyes burned, and his heart threatened to burst. Kneeling, clutching his sword as if it were a holy relic, he banged his head again and again on the pommelstone.

Looking up, Sameel touched his knee. A dull light, swiftly fading, lingered in her eyes as she sought his gaze. "I didn't mean that—not all the joy," she whispered. She spoke his name once, then leaned down to wrap her mistress in a final embrace.

All through their night together, she had called him only,
my lord.

Fafhrd raised his fists and screamed in rage and pain. For a long time he remained beside them, awash in memories, paralyzed by old and new regrets. Then, carrying both women, he placed Laurian on her velvet chair and arranged Sameel on her mistress's lap.

Closing the two halves of the silver sarcophagus around them, Fafhrd sat down and leaned his head against it.

After a time, he got to his feet, collected his breeches and other garments from Sameel's room, and dressed. While Malygris breathed, he would save his grief, and hoard his anger like a treasure of incalculable worth.

Meanwhile, there was the Mouser to find.

Carefully he closed the gates of the estate and stepped into the street outside. A soft breeze blew through the avenue, sweeping away a misty fog. Hugging himself beneath his cloak, he turned southward.

But before he went far, a harsh mirth echoed down the night, freezing him in mid-step. Even with its bitter edge, he knew that peeling laugh. "Vlana?" he said, casting a searching gaze about.

In the dark mouth of an alley, he thought he glimpsed a pale shape, a hint of flashing eyes, a wisp of hair floating about a familiar face. But when he rushed to the spot, no one was there.

FIFTEEN

A FEAST OF FEAR

T
he Mouser peered cautiously around the corner of an old warehouse on Hardstone Street into an alley filled with night's gloom. Adjusting the heavy sack he carried over one shoulder, he cast a glance toward the ponderous silhouette of the city's eastern wall in whose shadow he stood.

An aura of moonlight shimmered above the wall, though the moon had not yet risen above it. Wetting his lips, he slipped into the alley’s deeper blackness.

Halfway into the alley, invisible from the road, Nuulpha sat on a low wooden crate, bent forward, elbows on his knees, lost in thought. Moving soundlessly on soft-booted feet, the Mouser reached out and tapped the corporal on the top of his helmet.

Startled, Nuulpha gasped and fell sideways into the dirt, one hand groping for his sword's hilt. Only the Mouser's toe, placed carefully upon the edge of the crate, kept that from toppling and making an unwanted racket.

"By the Rat God!" Nuulpha whispered anxiously, finally recognizing his friend. "I didn't hear you." With some embarrassment, he rose and brushed himself off.

"What are you doing here?" the Mouser asked in a low voice.

"Waiting for you," Nuulpha answered. "Demptha said you'd left on some errand." He eyed the Mouser's burden. "What's in the bag?"

"Decent food and plenty of it," the Mouser answered, passing the heavy bag to Nuulpha. "Everyone below, including Demptha, looked half-starved. A nobleman named Belit happened to cause me some irritation a night or two ago, so it amused me to strip his larders bare."

"Lord Belit?" Nuulpha gave a soft whistle. "I wish I'd been with you for that."

The Mouser shook his head. "Except for Fafhrd, there's no other man I'd take a-burgling. I'm not fool enough to risk a fight or capture on someone else's clumsiness."

A look of hurt slipped over Nuulpha's features, but the Mouser slapped his arm. "No offense intended. But theft is a solo job, my friend. If you ever take it up, remember that. Trust no one."

Nuulpha adjusted the bag on his shoulder. "But you and the Northerner..."

"That's different," the Mouser said curtly. "I can't explain it, but that big lummox and I know each other in a manner that's not completely natural." He rolled his eyes melodramatically. "Distasteful as I find the idea, sometimes I think we're two halves of some very old soul."

Suddenly he held up a hand for silence and, poised like an animal ready for flight, turned toward the alley's entrance.

The sound of marching feet grew steadily clearer. Then a soft wavering radiance drifted down Hardstone Street. The Mouser loosened his thin sword in its sheath as he pressed himself against the warehouse wall into the deepest shadows.

A squad of six soldiers bearing torches passed by without so much as a glance into the alley. Exhaling a soft breath, the Mouser stole up to the street, peered around the corner of the warehouse, and watched until the squad marched out of sight.

"Let's go inside," the Mouser whispered, returning to Nuulpha. "Don't let the hinges squeak."

"I oiled them," Nuulpha answered, sheathing his own sword and picking up the bag, which he had placed on the ground.

"You're learning," the Mouser said with a nod and a grin. "I'll make a thief of you yet."

Nuulpha led the way a little further down the alley and found the wooden handles of a pair of large doors. Carefully, he opened one just wide enough for them to slip inside. The hinges made no sound at all, but the bottom of the old door, which hung crookedly, scraped softly in the alley dust.

Pulling the door shut, the Mouser reached for the stout four-by-four wooden bar that leaned against the wall nearby. As quietly as possible, he set it in place, sealing the doors. Relaxing a little, he surveyed the warehouse's stark interior. A score of thick square-cut beams supported the low ceiling, standing like anorexic sentinels guarding a vast dusty emptiness.

A few paces away, crouched beside a wooden box, Nuulpha turned up the wick of a lantern. The dim blue flame within brightened, exuding a soft yellow glow that uplit the corporal's sharp-featured face. Seizing the bale, he lifted the lantern in one hand and the bag with the other.

Just at the light's edge lay a huge crib that might once have served as a corn bin. The Mouser tugged open the lid and pulled back the latticed door before pausing. Pursing his lips, he turned slowly.

"Speaking of my partner," he said quietly, "have you learned anything?"

Nuulpha frowned. "No news at all," he said regretfully. "No one's seen him—the city guards aren't even looking for him. You, however, are a different matter. A certain Corporal Muulsh of the North Barracks is storming all over the city looking for you."

The Mouser drew a finger down his right cheek. "Long scar?" he asked.

Nuulpha nodded. "You know him?"

"A peach of a fellow," the Mouser answered, turning away. He bent to the floor of the corn crib, found a metal ring embedded in the old boards, and curled his gloved fingers around it. Lifting a hidden trap door, he peered down into blackness.

Demptha Negatarth had purchased this abandoned warehouse because of its precise location above one branch of Lankhmar's secret tunnels and had excavated this private access. Down this hole, down these narrow wooden steps, he and his followers came and went, bringing the helpless victims of Malygris's evil magic to hide them from Rokkarsh's night-prowling soldiers.

He felt no small honor at being entrusted with such knowledge. Taking the bag from Nuulpha again, he motioned the corporal to go down. The light shone dimly up from the hole as the Mouser closed the crib door and lowered its heavy lid into place. Descending the first few steps, he lowered the trap door above his head.

The ponderous weight of the earth seemed to close about him, and the smell of dirt and dampness filled his nostrils. A sense of unease settled upon him; he was no mole, and rooting around in the ground held no appeal. Fixing his eyes on the lantern’s glow, he descended as quickly as the heavy bag and the narrow steps allowed.

Nuulpha waited at the bottom, his upturned face betraying a nervousness he hadn't shown before. His shoulders slumped, and he crouched subtly, though his head cleared the tunnel roof by inches.

The Mouser knew how the corporal felt. The darkness possessed an intimidating solidity that the lantern barely penetrated. The closeness of the walls and the low narrow ceiling suffocated, and the earth still bore a fresh-dug odor. He could practically feel, he imagined, the hungry maggots and worms burrowing nearer.

Perhaps because he felt so intensely the absence of his friend, he recalled the words of one of Fafhrd’s songs. Softly he whispered, seeking to buoy his spirits by mocking his own fear as he crept forward into the gloom.

"Lay me down in the cold, dark ground;

Make of the earth a soft round mound;

Worms and maggots gather around

To bear me off to Shadowland."

The stale air seemed to shiver, and the lantern's flame reacted with a barely perceptible waver as if some undetectable wind had danced around it. The Mouser's skin crawled, and the hair stood on the nape of his neck.

"There is a road we all must brave—

King and peasant, saint and knave—

No man is born who is not a slave

To the Lord of Shadowland."

With a shaking hand, Nuulpha turned up the lantern's wick another notch. The flame brightened a little, but failed to push back the darkness. "Have you no other song?" he grumbled.

"A tisket, a tasket, two bodies in a casket," the Mouser persisted, forcing the words through clenched teeth.

But suddenly he stopped. Catching Nuulpha's arm, he jerked his companion around. "You're trembling," he said. "So am I." He squeezed past Nuulpha, daring to venture a few paces beyond the boundary of the light, then stepped back into its amber circle. "Grown men shivering in the dark," he whispered. He licked his lips thoughtfully, admitting his fear, feeling it growing inside him like a pressure.

"Why am I afraid?" he said, as much to himself as to Nuulpha. "I've been under the earth before. Why does this seem different?"

"My heart is hammering," Nuulpha confessed in a hushed voice. "And there's weakness in my knees. It shames me . . ."

"Then there's shame for both of us," the Mouser said, clapping his friend on the shoulder. He set down the bag of stolen victuals and put a hand over his own heart. "I am almost overwhelmed," he said. "As if I were wading deeper and deeper into some black sea..."