Swords Against the Shadowland (Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar) (38 page)

Out of that vest pocket came a deck of cards. Demptha Negatarth bent them sharply in his fingers and scattered them through the air.

"You swore not to interfere!" the images of Malygris screamed.

"I swore not to warn Sadaster," Demptha Negatarth answered. "And I've paid the price. Your damned curse is beyond your control. It destroyed my daughter, and now it's poisoned me. I'll see you dead for it, and pour your heart’s blood myself into a vessel for these adventurers."

Demptha's tarot cards flew with unnatural accuracy. Touched by the cards, the images of Malygris vanished, leaving only a single image—Malygris, himself.

Seething with rage, the wizard extended his good arm toward Demptha, but before he could cast any spell, one of the fluttering cards landed on his outstretched hand.

Immediately, the painting on the card came to frightening life. A glittering bird, seemingly formed all of crystal and jewels, sank talons into Malygris's flesh. Shimmering wings with razor-sharp facets beat furiously at his face, and an emerald beak flashed at his eyes.

Malygris screamed in pain and terror, and the bird grew larger. Now its wings beat the air. Malygris swung his arms wildly, trying to fight free as the creature struggled to lift him bodily into the air.

Above him, the red ribbon appeared again, glowing a deeper, uglier shade, pulsing and throbbing with unholy life. Lengthening and lengthening, it wrapped around Malygris and the bird both, muffling the wizard's screams and the bird's angry caws, extinguishing them.

Around and around the ribbon flashed until it was no longer a ribbon at all, but a huge ball, a bubble of blackly crimson hue through which only the vaguest shadows of Malygris and the bird could be seen still locked in combat.

"What enchantment is this?" Fafhrd asked, rising and backing away from the bubble until he stood at the Mouser's side. Free from Malygris's power, he looked himself again.

"Not mine," answered Demptha Negatarth with bitterness and puzzlement.

Then from out of the shrubbery, another figure emerged.

"Ivrian!" the Mouser cried.

She paid him no attention, but ran straight to the bubble of red light. Without thinking, the Mouser leaped to intercept her, but his hands closed only on a string of pearls around her neck before she entered that evil glow.

Flying through the air, Fafhrd hit him from the side, his arms locking tight about the Mouser's waist as they fell to the ground in a tangled heap. "Ivrian!" the Mouser cried again.

Within that luminous orb, a winsome silhouette seemed to turn his way.

Slowly, the orb sank into the earth, taking wizard and bird and girl. Its bloody light faded, leaving them in darkness and a chilling quiet.

The Mouser stared forlornly at the place where the orb had been. On the grass nearby a few pearls glimmered. He opened his fist. On his palm lay a few more pearls, and a few strands of soft blond hair.

Fafhrd began to speak. "Mouser . . . ?"

In the distance, Aarth's great bell began to peel, and the sound of it froze them. Twelve times it rang, then a pause and an extra final note that vibrated across the city.

"Midnight," Demptha Negatarth whispered, "and Festival's end."

NINETEEN

SHADOWLAND

T
he Mouser spun toward Demptha Negatarth. "What did he mean, you swore not to interfere?"
 

Demptha frowned as he hung his old head. He looked pathetically small suddenly in the too-large corporal's uniform he wore. Slowly, stiffly, he bent and retrieved the helmet that lay on the ground nearby.

"Nuulpha!" he called loudly, straightening. "Nuulpha!" Then, licking his lower lip, he finally met the Mouser's hard stare. "When Jesane was four summers old she developed a blood disease. My magic couldn't help her, but Malygris had a spell. He came to me in the night and offered it. Not only could it halt the effects of aging—you saw that in your dream of Laurian—but used in another manner, it could hold back death indefinitely."

"Wizards are stingy with their secrets," Fafhrd said scornfully. "He just gave you this powerful enchantment?"

Demptha Negatarth shook his head. "We bargained. He gave me the spell to save my daughter’s life. In exchange, I swore never to interfere in any of his undertakings. I knew it was a promise I would one day regret. Malygris was never to be trusted, and even then, I suspected his hatred for Sadaster, who was my friend. But to save Jesane's life, I dealt with the devil when he appeared on my doorstep."

The Mouser bent to collect one of Ivrian's fallen pearls from the grass. "Why didn't you ask Sadaster for the spell?" he questioned.

Demptha's frown deepened. "When Jesane was out of danger, I went to Sadaster, driven by a sense of guilt that I had bargained with his enemy, and he received me cordially. I meant to keep my word to Malygris, I told him, but as a gesture of regret, and in a spirit of atonement, I offered to share this new bit of arcana with him." He gave a short, bitter laugh. "What a joke on me it was—and a shock to my host—to learn that the spell was one of Sadaster's most closely guarded secrets. Not so closely guarded, however, that Malygris had not been able to steal it."

"There at least is the connection I sought," the Mouser mused as he pushed the pearl down inside his right glove. "It must have been Sadaster's spell . . ."—he looked at Demptha—"that very spell in the book that exploded in my hand and set fire to your library."

Fafhrd coughed unpleasantly into his fist, nodding. "I'll wager there was another copy of that same spell in Sadaster's library, which also burned."

Nuulpha came charging up the pebbled walkway, clad only in a loincloth, a soft tunic, and his boots with a brown nondescript cloak thrown around his shoulders. In his arms, he carried a bundle of clothes. "I heard your call," he said to Demptha, and the two men began exchanging clothes.

"My powers are not what they used to be," Demptha explained with some embarrassment as he disrobed. "Dressing in Nuulpha's garments reinforced the illusion that I was Nuulpha. I could never have gotten that close to Malygris, otherwise."

Nuulpha looked to the Mouser as he took his red corporal's cloak from Demptha and put the brown one around the older man. "There were two more fires yesterday. The Patriarch's private library in the Temple of Aarth burned. And Rokkarsh's private rooms in the Rainbow Palace—both small fires and quickly contained." He wriggled into blue pantaloons, and stomped into his boots again, then strapped on the sword belt Demptha had borrowed.

Dressed in simple brown robes, Demptha put on a troubled scowl as he looked at the Mouser. "Another connection there?"

The Mouser pulled up his hood, feeling the need to cloak his face from the others. The tiny weakness growing inside him, Malygris's curse, scared him more than he wanted the others to know. He listened to Fafhrd's ragged cough again and tried to steel himself against his fear.

"We're playing some game," he said at last, "without knowing the rules and without all the pieces. But at last, I know where we'll find the answers. When Malygris's curse touched me I felt something powerful, something Malygris could not possibly have created or conjured, something far beyond his ability. Something old—a terror I've experienced only once before."

"In the tunnels?" Nuulpha whispered in a dry, nervous voice.

The Mouser nodded.

"Tunnels?" Fafhrd noted with a distasteful grimace. "That red ball of light took Malygris under the ground."

"It surprised him as much as us," Demptha said. "He looked frightened."

"Ivrian, on the other hand," the Mouser replied bitterly, "ran to it eagerly." He stamped his foot on the spot where she had stood in that eerie crimson glow. "Wherever Malygris went, we are dead men if we don't follow, Fafhrd. His curse is upon us both."

Demptha stepped closer to the Mouser. "I'm also infected now, and I'll go with you, for I know those tunnels as well as Jesane knew them. Nuulpha, though, is untouched by this damned curse." He turned to the man who, though a soldier in service to the Overlord, had served him so well and faithfully. "Go home to your wife, Nuulpha. She needs you in her final hours."

Nuulpha's expression hardened. He drew his sword half out of its sheath as he appealed to Demptha. "These good men say a drop of blood from the wizard's heart can save her. Let my blade draw that drop and more."

Fafhrd touched Nuulpha's hand and pushed the sword back into its sheath. "I was not with my Vlana when she died," he said, "and I've never yet forgiven myself. If Malygris's hard heart can be pierced, we'll draw the medicine ourselves. Listen to Demptha."

Moving apart from the others, the Mouser kept silent. He too had been absent at that moment when Ivrian and Vlana died, and that guilt also ate at his soul. Only now he found that Ivrian lived, or a cruel version of her. How did he feel about her now? What had happened to his love?

He felt the hot sting of tears in his eyes and pulled his hood closer about his face. How could a man stand such confusion?

"Go home, Nuulpha," he said at last, his voice cracking with emotion. "Go home to your wife."

A conflicted look darkened the corporal's features, but he relinquished the grip on his sword's hilt. Shoulders sagging, he said to Demptha, "You've been like a father to me." He squeezed the old man's arm, unable to say more. The graveled path crunched under his boots as he turned and strode away.

Demptha sighed as he watched the corporal depart. "He's been like a son," he said quietly when only the Mouser and Fafhrd could hear. "I don't believe he ever realized that Jesane loved him."

"His wife is truly ill?" Fafhrd asked.

"Near death," Demptha affirmed.

"All the more reason to act swiftly," the Mouser said, "while the hot anger in our hearts shields us against the fear of what we must do."

Despite his paleness, Fafhrd grinned at Demptha. "The Mouser makes his prettiest speeches when he's mad." He threw back his head and laughed.

The streets of the Festival District were virtually empty. Even the taverns had shut up their doors and windows. Through the cracks of the shutters, muted lamplight filtered, and sometimes a silhouetted face peered suspiciously out.

A few blocks away, perhaps in the neighboring Plaza District, someone wandered through the streets calling, "Plague! Plague!" And from another voice farther away came the same cry. The echoes of those voices bouncing among the buildings conspired to trick the ears, and in the black hour after midnight, it seemed that some evil chorus was at work.

Leaving the taverns of the Festival District behind, Demptha Negatarth set a determined pace on the road that ran in the shadow of the Great Marsh Wall. On one side of the street, warehouses loomed, seemingly at unnatural angles, as if the earth had somehow tilted under them, and slanted rooftops seemed on the verge of sliding off the walls that supported them. Their windows, like square black eyes, seemed to watch the street and the odd trio that passed by, and huge doors gaped like black mouths.

Every shape and sight possessed an ominous air on this morbid night, and every slightest sound seemed a warning cry. The capricious wind felt like an unexpected breath on the back of the neck or the side of the face, and the smell of death hung over all like a tenuous perfume.

Thick clouds raced across the sky like massive phantoms, bringing an unseasonable chill, sending dust from the streets swirling.

High on the great wall's rampart, a nervous guard shouted down for them to identify themselves.

Fafhrd responded with a rude gesture. "Identify this!" he called back.

At last, they reached a familiar warehouse. The Mouser ran ahead of Demptha, down the narrow alleyway, and tugged open the door. With one hand on Graywand, Fafhrd slipped past the Mouser and entered the warehouse first. Following, Demptha stepped on the Mouser's foot.

A sharp breath hissed between the Mouser's lips as he bit back a curse.

"Sorry," Demptha whispered.

The Mouser continued to mutter under his breath as he pulled the door closed and slid home a wooden bolt. Now they were sealed inside. Little relief or consolation in that, however. The darkness inside the structure felt more imposing, more impenetrable, than the darkness in the streets.

"Over here," Demptha called.

Tugging on Fafhrd's sleeve, the Mouser limped to the corncrib that concealed Demptha's personal staircase to the underworld. He well remembered the last time he used that stair and recalled the horrible screaming, the numbing fear, the empty room, and a lot of vanished sick people.

"What happened in the Temple of Hates?" he asked abruptly as he balanced with his booted toes on the very edge of the first step. "What became of Mish and all your sick patients?"

"I don't know," came Demptha's pensive answer. "I left Jesane in charge while I stepped out for some air." He paused as if wondering whether to say more. At last he continued. "Strangest thing," he muttered, his voice dropping with a mixture of embarrassment and shame. "As it had so many nights of late, a heavy fog rolled in. Yet, this one seemed to bring with it peculiar thoughts and odd stirrings. An old whore came walking down the road in the midst of it. The lowest class of street-walker, working late I suppose. Suddenly I was diddling her on the very doorstep of the Rat God's temple!"