Swords Against the Shadowland (Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar) Read online

  From across the campfire's coals, it looked up. There was nothing to see inside that cowl, but a rasping, almost serpentine voice issued forth as the creature introduced itself.

  "I am Sheelba."

  The Mouser lifted the point of his sword. "This is Scalpel," he said, adding as his other hand touched the hilt of his dagger, "and this is Catsclaw. Come closer if you would make their more intimate acquaintance."

  Fafhrd held his own huge blade level with the Mouser's. "I can smell a woman or a wizard a mile away," he said, scowling, "and your perfume is no dainty orchid juice."

  From out of nowhere came a wind that blew through the coals of the campfire, snatching hot sparks and glowing ash into the air. A spinning vortex swiftly formed about the Mouser and Fafhrd. Like angry, swarming insects the burning bits and pieces flew around and around.

  Then, just as suddenly, the wind ceased, and the coals settled harmlessly back to their original place, and the campfire was just a campfire once more.

  A fit of coughing wracked the creature that called itself Sheelba. "Now that we have each displayed our manhoods," he said quietly, "let us speak of dreams and the reason you find yourselves once more in Lankhmar."

  Sensing no further immediate threat, the Mouser lowered his weapon. The creature plainly desired to talk, rather than fight, and there was something almost pathetic in its uncontrollable coughing and its bent, weakened posture. "I gather," he said at last, "you are the source and cause of both."

  Sheelba nodded. "I sent the dream to occupy and divert your minds while I transported your sleeping forms across the great vastness of space. The story it tells is a true one, but there is more, much more, for you to learn.

  "Malygris killed Sadaster," Fafhrd said. The Northerner squatted down on his haunches and leaned on his sword as he stared across the coals at Sheelba. His eyes gleamed, and his face shone weirdly in the dim, ruddy light.

  Sheelba’s robed form seemed to shake and tremble, but whether from anger, fear, or ill health, the Mouser could not tell.

  "Ah, he fell to a subtle and masterful spell," Sheelba said with grudging admiration. "It should have been beyond Malygris's meager talents, but jealousy and hatred drove him to surpass himself. Sadaster was near death before he even realized the cause of his affliction."

  "I saw Sadaster die," Fafhrd said, grimly remembering his part of the dream. "Some hideous illness seemed to rot him from the inside out. At the end, he was no more than a living skeleton, and finally not even a living one."

  A bitter note sounded in Sheelba’s voice when he spoke. "That is the beauty and horror of Malygris's work," he said. "It begins as a little cough—just a little thing. Sadaster could not defend himself, because he didn't know he was under attack until the spell had already touched him." Sheelba’s voice caught, and the wizard hesitated before finding strength to continue. "Would that it had ended there," he said. "Revenge is, after all, a thing understandable."

  The Mouser eyed the creature before him with suspicion. "Malygris's black art has touched you, too," he said warily.

  Hearing, Fafhrd rose slowly to his full seven-foot height. "It's no sickness that saps your vitality, stranger?" he said. "But evil Lankhmaran magic?"

  Sheelba raised a withered fist and shook it at the sky. "Malygris was brilliant," he hissed, "but utterly inept. He had no true conception of what he had created. The spell possesses a mindless life of its own. It hangs in the ether like an arcane predator, waiting as it waited for Sadaster."

  "Waiting for what?" Fafhrd asked nervously.

  A swallowing sound issued from within the creature's black, faceless hood. "This spell was created to slay a wizard," Sheelba continued at last. "But Malygris, blast his soul, wove no controls into his creation. Now it strikes with purpose at every wizard, every magician, attracted by the simplest acts of legerdemain. Grand sorcerers, herb witches, young girls with their love potions, wearers of charms and talismans—they are all at risk. Indeed, many who walk the streets of Lankhmar are cursed already and know it not."

  A wind sprang up again, and the Mouser's gaze shot toward the coals of the dwindling campfire, but this was seemingly a natural wind, no whim of Sheelba's, and the coals and ash performed no tricks, but stayed in their bed.

  "Is there no counter-spell?" the Gray One asked. "No way to undo what has been done?"

  Sheelba bent down over the campfire. A long-fingered hand snatched up one of the coals and popped it inside the hood as if it were a snack, a delicacy to be savored. Sheelba gulped, then belched.

  "After much work and diligent study," he said with grim satisfaction, "I have found the counter-charm. However ..." He paused, and the hood lifted ever so slightly until the Mouser felt the power of unseen eyes directly upon him, peering from the blackness contained in those folds of cloth. "There is one ingredient which I must have, and which you must steal for me."

  Fafhrd bristled. "Steal?" he said. "Steal? You mistake us, sir!" He glanced at his gray-clad companion with a hurt expression. "We do not steal! We liberate. We pilfer. We purloin and even filch. But we do not steal!"

  The Mouser ignored Fafhrd’s comments. He peered closely at the strange figure on the other side of the coals. "You wear desperation like a pair of new boots," he said. "Uncomfortably. I, too, feel a sudden pinching on my soles."

  Sheelba’s voice was a serpentine hiss. "Even here in the Great Marsh, far beyond the city's walls, his wretched curse reaches." That black, empty cowl turned upward toward the skies, and a long sigh issued forth. "I will die from this evil unless you two bring me what I need."

  Fafhrd puffed out his chest as his gaze narrowed contemptuously. "Us?" he said, his voice gruff. "Do you take us for errand boys?"

  "I take you for the best thieves and adventurers ever to pass through Lankhmar’s gates," the wizard answered. He raised a withered finger to stem their surprise. "Oh yes. Though I live in the swamps and marshes, nothing transpires in the City of the Black Toga that I don't know about. I am called Sheelba of the Eyeless Face. Yet I have eyes, and they are everywhere, and my ears, too. I know your reputations, as I know your deeds and your skills."

  Fafhrd's contemptuous expression yielded to a prideful grin. "Indeed?" he said more pleasantly.

  The Gray Mouser frowned. His companion was such an easy target for flattery, but his own suspicions were running in dangerous directions. His right hand tightened imperceptibly around Scalpel's hilt, though he wondered what good his blade could do to a being with power enough to transport two grown men halfway around Nehwon. "What is this errand you would have us run?" he asked, "and tell us if we have a choice in the matter?"

  Sheelba stretched out his hand above the coals, which began to crackle and spark with new flame. Then with a whooshing roar, the flame shot up into a writhing column nearly as tall as Fafhrd.

  The Mouser jumped back, whipping out his sword with one hand, shielding his face from the heat with the other.

  The fiery shaft quivered wildly, lighting up the landscape, coloring the sky with a blood-red hue. Two smaller prominences exploded from either side of the column, and each in turn sprouted fingers of flame. Those arms and hands began to move up and down, shaping fire as if it were potters clay. Wherever the hands touched, the flames turned silver and took seemingly solid substance.

  From his dream, the Mouser recognized the form and features of the wizard called Malygris as they emerged from the fire. In only moments, a gleaming silver statue stood where the campfire had been. A penumbra of flame danced around its edges, then flickered out.

  "It's alive!" Fafhrd cried in alarm, raising his sword defensively as the statue's head turned to take them in with a gaze.

  "Because Malygris is alive from moment to moment in my thoughts," Sheelba explained. "Have no fear, Northerner. This is only a construct. The real Malygris is hiding somewhere in Lankhmar."

  "Hiding?" the Mouser said.

  Sheelbas empty cowl nodded, and his words dripped with disdain as he spoke. "Too late
, the bumbling fool realizes what he has done, but he hasn't the knowledge or skill to unmake what he has made. Frankly, it's taken me a year to research a counter-measure, and I am many times his match in wizardry." He paused abruptly, seeming to choke on the last word before a bout of coughing seized him. His cloaked frame shook with the strain, and he wheezed for breath.

  Despite his reservations, the Mouser started forward to help in whatever manner he could, but Sheelba held up a hand, refusing any offer of support.

  "You must roust Malygris from whatever hole he has crawled into," Sheelba said, his voice noticeably weaker, when he could speak again. "My life is not the only one at stake. Many others will die if you deny me. Anyone who uses magic or is touched by it—even the simplest charms—is at risk." He pointed to the gleaming image of Malygris with a shaky finger. "No one is immune, not man, woman, or child. I have the spell that can stop this madness, and I have all the ingredients for it save one."

  "Return to Lankhmar City," Fafhrd murmured. His mouth set itself in a firm, tight line as he clenched his jaw. Clearly, he found the idea as distasteful as the Mouser. "But if we do this thing for you, creature, we are hirelings, not errand boys. What rate of pay do you offer?"

  "Ever the businessman," the Mouser muttered. "Ever an eye to profit."

  Sheelba ignored Fafhrd, turning to the Mouser. "You understand, don't you, Gray One?" he whispered, leveling one frail finger near the Mouser's nose. "You see the choices."

  With lightning quickness, the Mouser reached out and caught that finger, expecting to snap it like the twig it resembled. Instead, it bent bonelessly backward toward the wizard's wrist, and if it caused Sheelba any pain at all, he gave no sign of it. "Bah!" he cried, releasing the useless grip and stepping back.

  The image of Malygris quietly watched everything with its silver eyes.

  "What is it, Mouser?" Fafhrd said, moving closer to his friend, his gaze sweeping back and forth distrustfully from the silver statue to the brown-cloaked wizard. "You have better instincts for sorcery than I, and the look upon your face . . . !"

  "He speaks of choices," the Mouser shouted angrily, "but this Sheelba has left us no choice at all!"

  "Of course you have choices," Sheelba answered with icy calm. "You can walk away right now. In a couple of months you might even make it back to the Mountains of the Elders where I called you from. You might even find your treasure where you left it."

  The statue of Malygris glanced toward Fafhrd, grinned, then did its best to wipe the grin away.

  Sheelba’s voice took on a nastier edge. "You might even live a long and happy life."

  "Might, might, might," the Mouser shot back, "More likely, we'll cough our guts up like you're doing now and rot to death!" He slammed Scalpel back into its mouseskin sheath. "Put your sword away, Fafhrd," he said. "We don't dare gut him, much as I'd love to!"

  "Couldn't we nick him a little, here and there?" the Northerner suggested, his sword still in his hand. Plainly, though, he didn't understand the situation.

  The Mouser explained it to him. "Transporting us from the Elder Mountains all the way to Lankhmar took a mighty spell," he said. "Our very bodies passed through the magical ether from that point to this. There is every chance that Malygris's damnable spell has touched us."

  Fafhrd stared at the Mouser, his lips pursed thoughtfully as he weighed the implications of his comrade’s speech. "So," he said at last, swallowing as he turned to Sheelba of the Eyeless Face. "What is this last ingredient we're all so desperate for?"

  The wizard's twisted finger resumed its natural shape, and he folded his hands together as if giving thanks for reasonable minds. As he did so, the Mouser's slender blade floated up from its sheath without any help from its owner, then through the air to prick the heart of the silver statue.

  As it withdrew, a tiny bit of flame flickered on the end of the sword, then died, leaving not so much as a scorch mark on the metal.

  "The final and most necessary ingredient," Sheelba whispered. "Bring me a single drop of Malygris's heart-blood."

  "Why can't it ever be just a cup of sugar or a pound of salt?" Fafhrd grumbled, frowning again.

  "So we are not errand boys at all, Fafhrd," the Mouser spat as he snatched his sword out of the air and returned it to its sheath. He kept his hand on it this time so it could not fly free again. "We are assassins."

  The Northerner turned his gaze in the direction of Lankhmar City, and the Mouser's followed. It was still too far away and much too dark to see its soaring walls, but memories of that hated place were enough to draw them both like beacons. "I must admit, Mouser," Fafhrd said slowly, "if what this Sheelba says is true, no one ever more deserved killing."

  "Then let us do it quickly, my friend," the Mouser agreed. "Find Malygris and steal his heart's blood, then put this vile city behind us once more."

  "Steal?" Fafhrd began. "Steal?"

  The Mouser was in no mood for his companion's bluster. He turned back to Sheelba, but the faceless creature was no longer there, nor was the silver statue of Malygris. Far out on the marshy expanse, barely visible against the starlight, Sheelba’s elevated hut walked away on its stilted legs toward the deeper swamps.

  TWO

  SUNLIGHT AND SHADOWS

  Muttering curses under his breath, the Mouser watched Sheelba's hut walk away. Those strange, stilted legs made wide, graceful strides, yet it moved soundlessly until it disappeared in the darkness.

  "Giddiyup, house," Fafhrd said in quiet wonder as he sheathed his great sword. "I guess this means we go on to Lankhmar after all."

  The Mouser growled, curling his lips and causing the sound to rattle deep in his throat. Wordlessly, he bent and scooped handfuls of damp earth over the coals of the campfire. Then he snatched up his blanket only to throw it down in disgust, finding it sodden with the ground’s moisture.

  Fafhrd only looked at his bedroll, scratched his short red beard, and shrugged.

  As if by unspoken agreement, they turned and walked in the opposite direction from the way Sheelba had gone, the moon and the brighter stars lighting their way. There were few trees and few bushes. The Great Salt Marsh was little more than a sea of grass. In some places, the grass grew tall as their shoulders while in others it barely broke through the spongy earth, alternately creating sharp-bladed forests and vast open stretches.

  Emerging from one such forest, Fafhrd stopped and threw an arm across the Mouser's chest. The Mouser, who had been looking downward at his feet, grunted as if he'd walked into a tree. On the verge of an acid comment, he held his tongue and stared across the expanse that confronted them.

  Farther out across that wet plain, thousands of tiny golden-yellow lights swam in the air, blinking rhythmically as they bobbed and darted and danced, always orbiting, never venturing far from a squat, dome-shaped hive constructed from marsh mud.

  "Glow wasps," Fafhrd whispered uneasily.

  The Mouser nodded as he listened to the low, droning hum the creatures' wings made. The tall grass had muffled the sound before, and it was only upon reaching the clearing's edge that the terrible music had caught his attention.

  Left alone, the insects were no threat, but the venom of a single wasp was potentially lethal. Few men ever had to worry about a single buggie, however. Once enraged, glow wasps attacked in swarms—and being temperamental by nature, it didn't take much to enrage them.

  The two friends slipped silently back into the tall grass, deciding to take a wide course around the open plain and its glow wasp population, and keeping a sharp eye peeled for single hive-scouts.

  The ground became damper. Water began to trickle up around their footsteps. Soon, little pools and thin streams, half hidden by the darkness and thick grass, revealed themselves. The Mouser cursed as, unexpectedly, he sank past his ankle in a muddy patch.

  "Were this not midsummer," Fafhrd said, trying to hide a snicker as his comrade shook mud from his foot, "we'd be wading in muck up to our necks."

  Daybreak beg
an slowly to color the eastern sky while the moon yet lingered low in the west. For a time, dawn painted the marsh with a glimmering chiaroscuro. Waves of grass quivered in a rising breeze, and silvery patches of water rippled. Here and there, gleaming spiderwebs stretched among tall cattail reeds vibrated as the wind murmured through the sticky strands. Birds wheeled gracefully overhead, and unseen creatures, barely perceived by their splashing, scampered or swam away from the immense, elongated shadows that preceded the two advancing human figures.

  When the ground began to rise subtly, the Mouser gave a sigh of relief. Moments later, he stood atop a kind of winding, natural causeway that seemed to divide the marsh. On either side lay moist, grassy expanses, but the earth beneath his feet was fairly packed by centuries of horses' hooves and wagon wheels and the tread of traveling feet.

  "Causey Road," the Mouser said. He pointed westward. The highest tips of the highest towers and pinnacles of Lankhmar could barely be seen by his straining eyes. "We stand upon an artery to the heart of Nehwon."

  Fafhrd had found a stick—a dried reed stalk, actually—and sat down on the roadside to scrape black mud from his boots with it. A sour expression clouded his features. "Lankhmar is the heart of Nehwon?"

  The Mouser nodded. "In all the world there is no city greater."

  "Certainly none I hold in greater scorn," Fafhrd shot back. "The anus is as important to a body as the heart, so if we must speak in metaphors, let Lankhmar be Nehwon's arsehole."

  "You're in a foul mood, to speak of arseholes," the Mouser said.

  Fafhrd was sullen. "Arseholes are foul, and Lankhmar is fouler."

  The Mouser grinned secretly. "Some call the city fair."

  "They are unfair in their judgment," the Northerner answered curtly as he rose and cast aside the stick.

  Walking westward on Causey Road, the two spoke little and kept their thoughts to themselves. The Mouser felt a weighty oppression of spirit as he approached the city, and he could tell from the slump of Fafhrd's mighty shoulders and by the sullen expression on his friend’s face that the Northerner felt the same.