by Fritz Leiber
There were perhaps fewer masks than might have been expected, for most Lords of Quarmall lived very long and had sons late. Yet there were also a considerable many, since Quarmall was such an ancient rulership. The oldest masks were of a brown almost black and not wax at all but the cured and mummified face skins of those primeval autocrats. The arts of flaying and tanning had early been brought to an exquisite degree of perfection in Quarmall and were still practiced with jealously prideful skill.
Quarmal dropped his gaze from the mask to his lightly-robed body. He was a lean man, and his hips and shoulders still gave evidence that once he had hawked, hunted, and fenced with the best. His feet were high-arched, and his step was still light. Long and spatulate were his knob-knuckled fingers, while fleshy muscular palms gave witness to their dexterity and nimbleness, a necessary advantage to one of his calling. For Quarmal was a sorcerer, as were all the Lords of Quarmall from the eon-mighty past. From childhood up through manhood each male was trained into his calling, like some vines are coaxed to twist and thread a difficult terrace.
As Quarmal returned from the window to attend his duties he pondered on his training. It was unfortunate for the House of Quarmall that he possessed two instead of the usual single heir. Each of his sons was a creditable necromancer and well skilled in other sciences pertaining to the Art; both were exceedingly ambitious and filled with hatred. Hatred not only for one another but for Quarmal their father.
Quarmal pictured in his mind Hasjarl in his Upper Levels below the Keep and Gwaay below Hasjarl in his Lower Levels…Hasjarl cultivating his passions as if in some fiery circle of Hell, making energy and movement and logic carried to the ultimate the greatest goods, constantly threatening with whips and tortures and carrying through those threats, and now hiring a great brawling beast of a man to be his sworder…Gwaay nourishing restraint as if in Hell’s frigidest circle, trying to reduce all life to art and intuitive thought, seeking by meditation to compel lifeless rock to do his bidding and constrain Death by the power of his will, and now hiring a small gray man like Death’s younger brother to be his knifer…Quarmal thought of Hasjarl and Gwaay, and for a moment a strange smile of fatherly pride bent his lips, and then he shook his head, and his smile became stranger still, and he shuddered very faintly.
It was well, thought Quarmal, that he was an old man, far past his prime, even as magicians counted years, for it would be unpleasant to cease living in the prime of life, or even in the twilight of life’s day. And he knew that sooner or later, in spite of all protecting charms and precautions, Death would creep silently on him or spring suddenly from some unguarded moment. This very night his horoscope might signal Death’s instant escapeless approach; and though men lived by lies, treating truth’s very self as lie to be exploited, the stars remained the stars.
Each day Quarmal’s sons, he knew, grew more clever and more subtle in their usage of the Art which he had taught them. Nor could Quarmal protect himself by slaying them. Brother might murder brother, or the son his sire, but it was forbidden from ancient times for the father to slay his son. There were no very good reasons for this custom, nor were any needed. Custom in the House of Quarmall stood unchallenged, and it was not lightly defied.
Quarmal bethought him of the babe sprouting in the womb of Kewissa, the childlike favorite concubine of his age. So far as his precautions and watchfulness might have enforced, that babe was surely his own—and Quarmal was the most watchful and cynically realistic of men. If that babe lived and proved a boy—as omens foretold it would be—and if Quarmal were given but twelve more years to train him, and if Hasjarl and Gwaay should be taken by the fates or each other…
Quarmal clipped off in his mind this line of speculation. To expect to live a dozen more years with Hasjarl and Gwaay growing daily more clever-subtle in their sorceries—or to hope for the dual extinguishment of two such cautious sprigs of his own flesh—were vanity and irrealism indeed!
He looked around him. The preliminaries for the casting were completed, the instruments prepared and aligned; now only the final observations and their interpretation were required. Lifting a small leaden hammer Quarmal lightly struck a brazen gong. Hardly had the resonance faded when the tall, richly appareled figure of a man appeared in the arched doorway.
Flindach was Master of the Magicians. His duties were many but not easily apparent. His power carefully concealed was second only to that of Quarmal. A wearied cruelty sat upon his dark visage, giving him an air of boredom which ill matched the consuming interest he took in the affairs of others. Flindach was not a comely man: a purple wine mark covered his left cheek, three large warts made an isosceles triangle on his right, while his nose and chin jutted like those of an old witch. Startlingly, with an effect of mocking irreverence, his eyes were ruby-whited and pearly-irised like those of his lord; he was a younger offspring of the same mer-woman who had birthed Quarmal—after Quarmal’s father had done with her and, following one of Quarmal’s bizarre customs, had given her to his Master of the Magicians.
Now those eyes of Flindach, large and hypnotically staring, shifted uneasily as Quarmal spoke: ‘Gwaay and Hasjarl, my sons, work today on their respective Levels. It would be well if they were called into the council room this night. For it is the night on which my doom is to be foretold. And I sense premonitorily that this casting will bear no good. Bid them dine together and permit them to amuse one another by plotting at my death—or by attempting each other’s.’
He shut his lips precisely as he finished and looked more evil than a man expecting Death should look. Flindach, used to terrors in the line of business, could scarcely repress a shudder at the glance bestowed on him; but remembering his position he made the sign of obeisance, and without a word or backward look departed.
The Gray Mouser did not once remove his gaze from Flindach as the latter strode across the domed dim sorcery chamber of the Lower Levels until he reached Gwaay’s side. The Mouser was mightily intrigued by the warts and wine mark on the cheeks of the richly-robed witch-faced man and by his eerie red-whited eyes, and he instantly gave this charming visage a place of honor in the large catalog of freak-faces he stored in his memory vaults.
Although he strained his ears, he could not hear what Flindach said to Gwaay or what Gwaay answered.
Gwaay finished the telekinetic game he was playing by sending all his black counters across the midline in a great rutching surge that knocked half his opponent’s white counters tumbling into his loinclothed lap. Then he rose smoothly from his stool.
‘I sup tonight with my beloved brother in my all-revered father’s apartments,’ he pronounced mellowly to all. ‘While I am there and in the escort of great Flindach here, no sorcerous spells may harm me. So you may rest for a space from your protective concentrations, oh my gracious magi of the First Rank.’ He turned to go.
The Mouser, inwardly leaping at the chance to glimpse the sky again, if only by chilly night, rose springily too from his chair and called out, ‘Ho, Prince Gwaay! Though safe from spells, will you not want the warding of my blades at this dinner party? There’s many a great prince never made king ’cause he was served cold iron ’twixt the ribs between the soup and the fish. I also juggle most prettily and do conjuring tricks.’
Gwaay half turned back. ‘Nor may steel harm me while my sire’s hand is stretched above,’ he called so softly that the Mouser felt the words were being lobbed like feather balls barely as far as his ear. ‘Stay here, Gray Mouser.’
His tone was unmistakably rebuffing, nevertheless the Mouser, dreading a dull evening, persisted, ‘There is also the matter of that serious spell of mine of which I told you, Prince—a spell most effective against magi of the Second Rank and lower, such as a certain noxious brother employs. Now were a good time—’
‘Let there be no sorcery tonight!’ Gwaay cut him off sternly, though speaking hardly louder than before. ‘’Twere an insult to my sire and to his great servant Flindach here, a Master of Magicians, even to thin
k of such! Bide quietly, swordsman, keep peace, and speak no more.’ His voice took on a pious note. ‘There will be time enough for sorcery and swords, if slaying there must be.’
Flindach nodded solemnly at that, and they silently departed. The Mouser sat down. Rather to his surprise, he noted that the twelve aged sorcerers were already curled up like pillbugs on their sides on their great chairs and snoring away. He could not even while away time by challenging one of them to the thought-game, hoping to learn by playing, or to a bout at conventional chess. This promised to be a most glum evening indeed.
Then a thought brightened the Mouser’s swarthy visage. He lifted his hands, cupping the palms, and clapped them lightly together as he had seen Gwaay do.
The slim slavegirl Ivivis instantly appeared in the far archway. When she saw that Gwaay was gone and his sorcerers slumbering, her eyes became bright as a kitten’s. She scampered to the Mouser, her slender legs flashing, seated herself with a last bound on his lap, and clapped her lissome arms around him.
Fafhrd silently faded back into a dark side passage as Hasjarl came hurrying along the torchlit corridor beside a richly robed official with hideously warted and mottled face and red eyeballs, on whose other side strode a pallid comely youth with strangely ancient eyes. Fafhrd had never before met Flindach or, of course, Gwaay.
Hasjarl was clearly in a pet, for he was grimacing insanely and twisting his hands together furiously as though pitting one in murderous battle against the other. His eyes, however, were tightly shut. As he stamped swiftly part, Fafhrd thought he glimpsed a bit of tattooing on the nearest upper eyelid.
Fafhrd heard the red-eyeballed one say, ‘No need to run to your sire’s banquet-board, Lord Hasjarl. We’re in good time.’ Hasjarl answered only a snarl, but the pale youth said sweetly, ‘My brother is ever a baroque pearl of dutifulness.’
Fafhrd moved forward, watched the three out of sight, then turned the other way and followed the scent of hot iron straight to Hasjarl’s torture chamber.
It was a wide, low-vaulted room and the brightest Fafhrd had yet encountered in these murky, misnamed Upper Levels.
To the right was a low table around which crouched five squat brawny men more bandy-legged than Hasjarl and masked each to the upper lip. They were noisily gnawing bones snatched from a huge platter of them, and swilling ale from leather jacks. Four of the masks were black, one red.
Beyond them was a fire of coals in a circular brick tower half as high as a man. The iron grill above it glowed redly. The coals brightened almost to white, then grew more deeply red again, as a twisted half-bald hag in tatters slowly worked a bellows.
Along the walls to either side, there thickly stood or hung various metal and leather instruments which showed their foul purpose by their ghostly hand-and-glove resemblance to various outer surfaces and inward orifices of the human body: boots, collars, masks, iron maidens, funnels, and the like.
To the left a fair-haired pleasingly plump girl in white under tunic lay bound to a rack. Her right hand in an iron half-glove stretched out tautly toward a machine with a crank. Although her face was tear-streaked, she did not seem to be in present pain.
Fafhrd strode toward her, hurriedly slipping out of his pouch and onto the middle finger of his right hand the massy ring Hasjarl’s emissary had given him in Lankhmar as token from his master. It was of silver, holding a large black seal on which was Hasjarl’s sign: a clenched fist.
The girl’s eyes widened with new fears as she saw Fafhrd coming.
Hardly looking at her as he paused by the rack, Fafhrd turned toward the table of masked messy feasters, who were staring at him gape-mouthed by now. Stretching out toward them the back of his right hand, he called harshly yet carelessly, ‘By authority of this sigil, release to me the girl Friska!’ From mouth-corner he muttered to the girl, ‘Courage!’
The black-masked creature who came hurrying toward him like a terrier appeared either not to recognize at once Hasjarl’s sign or else not to reason out its import, for he said only, wagging a greasy finger, ‘Begone, barbarian. This dainty morsel is not for you. Think not to quench your rough lusts here. Our Master—’
Fafhrd cried out, ‘If you will not accept the authority of the Clenched Fist one way, then you must take it the other.’ Doubling up the hand with the ring on it, he smashed it against the torturer’s suet-shining jaw so that he stretched himself out on the dark flags, skidded a foot, and lay quietly.
Fafhrd turned at once toward the half-risen feasters and slapping Graywand’s hilt but not drawing it, he planted his knuckles on his hips and, addressing himself to the red mask he barked out rather like Hasjarl, ‘Our Master of the Fist had an afterthought and ordered me to fetch the girl Friska so that he might continue her entertainment at dinner for the amusement of those he goes to dine with. Would you have a new servant like myself report to Hasjarl your derelictions and delays? Loose her quickly and I’ll say nothing.’ He stabbed a finger at the hag by the bellows, ‘You!—fetch her outer dress.’
The masked ones sprang to obey quickly enough at that, their tucked-up masks falling over their mouths and chins. There were mumblings of apology, which he ignored. Even the one he had slugged got groggily to his feet and tried to help.
The girl had been released from her wrist-twisting device, Fafhrd supervising, and she was sitting up on the side of the rack when the hag came with a dress and two slippers, the toe of one stuffed with oddments of ornament and such. The girl reached for them, but Fafhrd grabbed them instead and, seizing her by the left arm, dragged her roughly to her feet.
‘No time for that now,’ he commanded. ‘We will let Hasjarl decide how he wants you trigged out for the sport,’ and without more ado he strode from the torture chamber, dragging her beside him, though again muttering from mouth-side, ‘Courage.’
When they were around the first bend in the corridor and had reached a dark branching, he stopped and looked at her frowningly. Her eyes grew wide with fright; she shrank from him, but then firming her features she said fearful-boldly, ‘If you rape me, by the way, I’ll tell Hasjarl.’
‘I don’t mean to rape but rescue you, Friska,’ Fafhrd assured her rapidly. ‘That talk of Hasjarl sending to fetch you was but my trick. Where’s a secret place I can hide you for a few days?—until we flee these musty crypts forever! I’ll bring you food and drink.’
At that Friska looked far more frightened. ‘You mean Hasjarl didn’t order this? And that you dream of escaping from Quarmall? Oh stranger, Hasjarl would only have twisted my wrist a little longer, perhaps not maimed me much, only heaped a few more indignities, certainly spared my life. But if he so much as suspected that I had sought to escape from Quarmall…Take me back to the torture chamber!’
‘That I will not,’ Fafhrd said irkedly, his gaze darting up and down the empty corridor. ‘Take heart, girl. Quarmall’s not the wide world. Quarmall’s not the stars and the sea. Where’s a secret room?’
‘Oh, it’s hopeless,’ she faltered. ‘We could never escape. The stars are a myth. Take me back.’
‘And make myself out a fool? No,’ Fafhrd retorted harshly. ‘We’re rescuing you from Hasjarl and from Quarmall too. Make up your mind to it, Friska, for I won’t be budged. If you try to scream I’ll stop your mouth. Where’s a secret room?’ In his exasperation he almost twisted her wrist, but remembered in time and only brought his face close to hers and rasped, ‘Think!’ She had a scent like heather underlying the odor of sweat and tears.
Her eyes went distant then, and she said in a small voice, almost dreamlike, ‘Between the Upper and the Lower Levels there is a great hall with many small rooms adjoining. Once it was a busy and teeming part of Quarmall, they say, but now debated ground between Hasjarl and Gwaay. Both claim it, neither will maintain it, not even sweep its dust. It is called the Ghost Hall.’ Her voice went smaller still. ‘Gwaay’s page once begged me meet him a little this side of there, but I did not dare.’
‘Ha, that’s the very place,
’ Fafhrd said with a grin. ‘Lead us to it.’
‘But I don’t remember the way,’ Friska protested. ‘Gwaay’s page told me, but I tried to forget…’
Fafhrd had spotted a spiral stair in the dark branchway. Now he strode instantly toward it, drawing Friska along beside him.
‘We know we have to start by going down,’ he said with rough cheer. ‘Your memory will improve with motion, Friska.’
The Gray Mouser and Ivivis had solaced themselves with such kisses and caresses as seemed prudent in Gwaay’s Hall of Sorcery, or rather now of Sleeping Sorcerers. Then, at first coaxed chiefly by Ivivis, it is true, they had visited a nearby kitchen, where the Mouse had readily wheedled from the lumpish cook three large thin slices of medium-rare unmistakable rib-beef, which he had devoured with great satisfaction.
At least one of his appetites mollified, the Mouser had consented that they continue their little ramble and even pause to view a mushroom field. Most strange it had been to see, betwixt the rough-finished pillars of rock, the rows of white button-fungi grow dim, narrow, and converge toward infinity in the ammonia-scented darkness.
At this point they had become teasing in their talk, he taxing Ivivis with having many lovers drawn by her pert beauty, she stoutly denying it, but finally admitting that there was a certain Klevis, page to Gwaay, for whom her heart had once or twice beat faster.
‘And best, Gray Guest, you keep an eye open for him,’ she had warned, wagging a slim finger, ‘for certain he is the fiercest and most skillful of Gwaay’s swordsmen.’
Then to change this topic and to reward the Mouser for his patience in viewing the mushroom field, she had drawn him, they going hand in hand now, to a wine cellar. There she had prettily begged the aged and cranky butler for a great tankard of amber fluid for her companion. It had proved to the Mouser’s delight to be purest and most potent essence of grape with no bitter admixture whatever.