Swords Against the Shadowland (Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar)

by Robin Wayne Bailey

Fafhrd pulled away, wracked by a fit of coughing. As if cold water had been thrown on the Mouser, he jumped to his feet. The Northerner stood a few paces off, bent double, hands braced weakly on knees. A thin black phlegm trailed from his lips to the grass.

  With a handful of his gray cloak, the Mouser wiped Fafhrd's mouth. "You know I'm not a superstitious man," Fafhrd muttered.

  "Of course not," the Mouser answered as he wiped the rest of his partner's sweating face. His own concerns thrust aside, he repressed a shiver of fear as he cared for the big Northerner. Fafhrd burned with fever; his garments were soaked with perspiration, and a constant, unceasing quiver shook that massive frame. "You're a paragon of enlightened civilization," he added.

  Fafhrd swallowed, unable to rise from his bent posture. "If you're going to insult me," he said, his voice little more than a croak, "then we'll part company right here."

  "Don't even think of that, Fafhrd Red-Hair," the Mouser answered bluntly, and again the thought that had raced through his mind so often of late struck him again: what would I do without half my soul?

  "You know I'm not a superstitious man," Fafhrd repeated as he pushed one hand into the purse on his belt. "But if I had a tik-penny, I'd buy a favor from the gods." He drew out a handful of glimmering rings and necklaces. "I don't think there's any luck in a dead woman's treasure."

  "Then buy your favor with that," the Mouser said grimly.

  Fafhrd's fist tightened about the jewels, and he closed his eyes in prayer. Stiffly, painfully, he straightened. Opening his eyes, he drew back his left arm, turned toward the cobalt glow of the approaching sun, and let fly. The weird pre-dawn light caught the gems and bits of gold and silver as they arced high above the marsh. For an instant, the air flashed and sparkled.

  If the gems fell to earth, or if some divine hand snatched them in mid-flight, the Mouser could not swear, for something else distracted him. Against that strange velvet blueness, he spied a distant silhouette, a vague half-glimpsed shape, there for a moment, then gone. Yet his heart leaped with hope.

  Still clutching bloody Catsclaw, he put his clean arm around Fafhrd. "Come on," he urged, supporting his friend. "Come on, walk with me."

  "Where?" Fafhrd asked, drawing himself erect, doing his best to hide the pain on his pale face.

  "Toward the sun," the Mouser said, starting off with one eye on his partner.

  "Why didn't you just say you wanted the jewels before I threw them away?" Fafhrd grumbled. "You'll never find them in this grass."

  "To hell with the jewels," the Mouser answered as they moved forward.

  Fafhrd snorted indignantly. "I don't want any more favors from that quarter."

  Despite himself, the Mouser smiled. There was the Fafhrd he knew best, quick-witted and spirited in the face of disaster. He fairly ran, skipping a few paces ahead of his partner as he pushed his way through the tall grass. Up a small, rolling rise they made their way with the Mouser hugging the bloody dagger protectively to his chest.

  "There it is!" the Mouser called back to Fafhrd. "I knew I saw it!" Staring up the rise, he cupped one hand to his mouth and called, "Sheelba! Sheelba, you transfigured, green-blooded, black-hearted, wizard-spawned accident of your mother! Come out! We're here!"

  Sheelba’s black hut perched on its stilted legs at the dawn-lit summit. The wind that shivered over the marsh rustled its grass-thatched roof and teased the flap of cloth that covered its squat doorway. Nothing else moved around the hut. No lamp or candlelight shone from within.

  A black circle on the earth near the hut marked where a fire once had burned. The ashes, however, were long dead and cold. "Sheelba?" the Mouser called again, eliciting no answer. He exchanged a nervous look with Fafhrd, then turned cautiously toward the ladder that rose to the hut's entrance and put one hand on the rung.

  The hut gave a quiver. The Mouser snatched his hand away in shock and surprise. The rung was warm, pulsing! And though it looked like bamboo wood, it felt like. . . . Something else.

  Sheelba’s hut was alive.

  "Problem?" Fafhrd asked quietly from the dead ashes of the old fire.

  "No problem," the Mouser answered nervously. "None at all." He stared up at the black doorway again, and now it looked to him like a mouth, and the flap curling in the breeze so much like a tongue licking its lips in anticipation of a morsel.

  Determinedly, the Mouser shot out his hand, grasped a ladder rung, and began to climb. "I'll bite you right back," he promised under his breath.

  "What's that?" Fafhrd called.

  The Mouser didn't answer. He climbed to the doorway, which was just a doorway after all, and pushed back the cloth covering, which was thankfully just a cloth covering. Or so it seemed. How could he be sure, after this adventure, that anything was really what it seemed anymore?

  The cloth fell behind him as he rose to stand on the thinly carpeted floor. He had expected darkness, but the moment he stepped upon the rugs, a perfect crystal ball mounted upon an elaborately worked gold pedestal ignited with a soft white glow.

  At a glance, the Mouser appraised the pedestal's potential value, estimated its weight, and judged the chances of carrying it off. Then he chided himself. Now was not the time for such thoughts.

  The interior of the hut was a single circular space. A large chair and foot cushion dominated one area. A table with a silver tea samovar and a small cup stood beside it. A shelf of books and scrolls occupied another area. A pallet of braided rushes and blankets served for a simple bed. The rest of the space was given over to trunks, and racks of herbs, strange bottles, old candle stubs, and a surprisingly massive worktable draped with a plain white cloth.

  The worktable caught the Mouser's attention. Upon it, a flask lay overturned amid the shards of a broken alembic, and the candles on either end of the table had burned completely down into their holders.

  In the center of the workspace stood a wide crystal crucible that gleamed and glittered as if it had been cut and hollowed from one half of an impossibly large diamond. The light from the crystal ball burned on its facets and cast rainbow images all across the workspace and around the hut. The Mouser's jaw dropped as he beheld it. With an awesome reverence, he crept across the carpets toward the beautiful vessel, one hand extended, not to steal it, but just for the joy and honor of touching so great a rarity.

  Yet halfway across the room, he froze. Just below the edge of the table's drapery, he spied a booted foot and a tiny fraction of a black robe's hem.

  "What a dump," Fafhrd commented, poking his head through the doorway from the ladder and looking around.

  "Take a closer look," the Mouser suggested as he eased cautiously behind the worktable. He caught his breath. Cursing, he dropped to his knees.

  A figure in black robes and a hood lay face down, partially concealed by the table drapery, as if he had caught it as he fell and dragged some of it with him. The Mouser had no doubt that it was Sheelba. He grasped the wizard by the shoulders and turned him over, surprised by the slight weight and the brittle bone of the body inside the robes.

  A raspy whisper issued from within the hood, as a skeletally thin hand reached trembling up to draw the hood even closer and so conceal whatever was within. "Wizard-spawned accident of my mother?" Sheelba rasped.

  The Mouser shrugged, greatly relieved to find the wizard alive. "Rhetorical excess," he said.

  Fafhrd bent over the Mouser to peer down at Sheelba. The rainbows from the diamond crucible filled his eyes and hid the worry in them. "Let's get him to his bed."

  Sheelba raised a hand and grasped at the table drapery. "No," he insisted. His words came haltingly, painfully through lips as dry as parchment. "I smell the blood of our enemy on you. Help me up, that we might end this nightmare." Before he could say more, he gave a sigh. His fingers relaxed their grip in the drapery, and his hand slipped to the floor.

  "Sheelba?" the Mouser said. No answer came from within the black hood. Over his shoulder, he spoke to Fafhrd. "The samovar has water or tea. Fill t
he cup and bring it."

  Sheelba stirred again even as Fafhrd moved. "Water be damned," he murmured. "I've lain here for days too weak to move. Bring wine from the black trunk with the copper hinges. Bring the jug." This time, he grasped the Mouser's tunic. "Get me on my feet, Gray One."

  The Mouser slipped his clean arm under the wizard's shoulders. Sheelba weighed so little he had no trouble lifting him up. Fafhrd stood ready with the jug in one hand, the small cup in the other. "A cupful first," he said, holding it close to Sheelba's Hps and tipping it. "The jug if you keep it down."

  But Sheelba did no more than wet his lips before he pushed Fafhrd away. He leaned upon the worktable, his hands on either side of the crucible. Fiery rainbows danced on the thinly translucent skin that stretched over his knuckles. Even the faceless darkness within his hood began to fill with color. "I feared you would not succeed in time," he said. "But you have—barely. The ingredients are mixed. Add Malygris's blood to the potion, and your victory is complete."

  For the first time, the Mouser bent over the crucible and saw that it contained a still, clear liquid. For a moment, he stared in small confusion, a slight vertigo clawing at his senses. Then he gasped.

  The rainbow light that danced about the room came not from the interplay of the crystal ball's glow on the facets of the crucible, but from some strange energies contained within that liquid, energies that swam and swirled languidly, directionless, through a watery suspension.

  Half-entranced by the sight, the Mouser raised Catsclaw and his bloody hand over the vessel. All that he had done, all that he and Fafhrd had endured in Lankhmar, had come to this. He saw his own hand rising as if pulled by a string. He saw himself as a puppet, manipulated by another hand greater and more powerful than his own.

  And he resented it.

  "Plunge it in!" Sheelba rasped. Bony fingers closed around the Mouser's arm and sought weakly to force it downward. "Plunge it in, and save us all!"

  The Mouser's jaw knotted, and he gnashed his teeth in anger. The blood on his hand—it stank in his nostrils! Not innocent blood, by any means. Malygris, the jealous and insane fool, had intended to kill, and kill he did. But was he, too, no more than a puppet, playing a part dictated to him, dancing on strings pulled by some greater power?

  The Mouser did not doubt it, and the hand that held bloody Catsclaw trembled with rage.

  Then Fafhrd doubled over in a fit of coughing. One hand clutching at the edge of the table drapery, he stumbled back. The liquid in the crucible splashed violently. The crucible itself threatened to tip and spill its life-saving contents. Sheelba made a grab for the vessel, but the Mouser brushed his hands aside, caught the rim and saved the potion himself.

  Fafhrd's spasm passed, leaving him gasping for breath and pale of face. Wiping a hand over his lips, he looked with fearless eyes toward his partner.

  The Mouser nodded to himself as much as to Fafhrd. Then unseen by the others, he rolled his dark and angry eyes toward the roof and beyond. Well-played, you puppet-masters, he thought. Well-played. To save Fafhrd, I’ll dance your jig.

  With that, he plunged Catsclaw into the liquid.

  The rainbow energies, directionless before as they swam, surged around the blade, entwined around it like fiery serpents. The blood diffused into the liquid, and for a brief moment, the liquid turned scarlet, and the rainbows faded away as if some battle had been lost.

  But the scarlet faded in turn, and from within the red water the rainbows rose again. They danced upon the dagger blade, climbed it, licked the blood from the Mouser's hand and sleeve, growing as they fed until bands of colored fire encircled the Gray Mouser.

  A spark leaped from those bands, then another, each touching Sheelba and Fafhrd, and the arcanely heatless flames spiraled around and around them. Within those bands, Fafhrd straightened; he drew back his shoulders, and lifted his head, and when he looked across the room at the Mouser, all pain was gone from his bright green eyes.

  Within his own body, the Gray Mouser felt a sharp-toothed worm die. For the life of him, though, and for the lives he had won, he could not rejoice. Even as vitality and renewed life flowed back into his frame, his thoughts turned to Ivrian. Ivrian, who was dead. He felt her absence and the distance between them like a horrible, heart-breaking gulf.

  He opened his eyes again. Fafhrd stood at the hut’s doorway staring outward. "Come and see this," he said quietly to the Mouser.

  "Go on," Sheelba urged. In one hand, he held the jug Fafhrd had fetched. With the other, he lifted the lid of the trunk where he kept his wine. "I have a much better vintage than this, and we have much to celebrate."

  "We have nothing to celebrate," the Mouser said bitterly. "But bring your wine. I need a drink."

  The Mouser went to the doorway and pushed aside the covering. Fafhrd was already climbing down the ladder, but he kept his gaze toward Lankhmar's distant walls as he descended.

  The Mouser leaned in the doorway, beholding a sight like none he had ever seen. Nor would he ever, he knew, see another like it.

  Arching across the walls, the spires, and minarets of Nehwon's most ancient and mysterious city, a shimmering aurora blazed against the star-speckled heaven, neatly dividing the black of night in the west from the creeping light of dawn. Brighter, far more spectacular than the northern lights of Fafhrd's cold homeland, more awesome than any common rainbow, it floated in the air like a burning promise that Malygris's curse was forever ended.

  A tear rolled down the Gray Mouser's cheek. One tear for all the dead. For Jesane and Demptha Negatarth. For Sadaster and Laurian. For a little blond girl with a straw poppet. For his beloved Ivrian.

  He brushed the tear away before Sheelba could see it as he felt the wizard come up behind him. "You used me," he said coldly. "Death used me."

  "Nor is that the end of it," Sheelba answered, not without some sympathy in his voice. "Death is only Death after all, and is used in turn by greater powers. That's what truly frightens you. You think you have glimpsed those greater powers."

  "Is nothing we do of our own choosing?" the Mouser demanded. "Are we just pawns advanced or sacrificed at Fate's whim?"

  "Climb down," Sheelba suggested patiently. He sloshed the bottle of wine he held. "We can all use a drink."

  The Mouser obeyed. Weary in body and spirit, he went to Fafhrd's side. It was where he belonged, where he was meant to be. Fafhrd, for whom he would do anything, risk anything.

  But did he belong at Fafhrd's side because he chose to be there? Did he have any say at all in where he went, what he did, who he called comrade?

  He looked at Fafhrd with blackly resentful eyes.

  "I'm thinking of Vlana," Fafhrd whispered, not noticing the hate-filled look of his partner. "The night she first came to Cold Corner with a troupe of actors and dancers, an aurora hung like a curtain in the sky. We joked once that it was the curtain going up on the stage-play that our lives together would make." He paused, though his gaze continued fixed on the blazing vision over Lankhmar. "In my homeland, auroras are considered omens. I've sometimes wondered if the aurora that burned that night over my lovemaking with Vlana was for good or ill."

  The hate and anger faded from the Mouser's face. "I know you're not a superstitious man ..." he said.

  "I'm not!" Fafhrd interrupted defensively.

  "Then forget omens," the Mouser said. "Just cling to Vlana's memory. Hold tight to it, Fafhrd. Keep it like a treasure, or the gods will steal it away from you." He cast his gaze upward.

  No sky had ever been more beautiful, or seemed to him more alien. Through that shimmering curtain that hung high above the world like the drapery of some cosmic proscenium he glimpsed subtle shadows and a hint of puppeteers' strings.

  "Drink," Sheelba said, wiping the back of his hand over the lower part of his unseen face as he passed the bottle of wine to Fafhrd. "The gods never give thanks to mortals. Such is not the nature of the world. But if it means anything, I thank you."

  Fafhrd took a long pull fr
om the bottle and swallowed noisily. "Only three words mean more," he said, passing the bottle to the Mouser.

  Sheelba folded his hands inside his sleeves. "And they are?"

  "I love you," the Mouser answered somberly. Closing his eyes, he conjured the face of his one true love and drank a deep, final toast to her. "At least I had the chance to apologize and ask Ivrian's forgiveness for not being at her side when she died."

  Fafhrd nodded gravely. "And I had the same chance with Vlana. Perhaps I can at last let go of that guilt and pain."

  Sheelba took the bottle back from the Mouser and stoppered it. "There is another price you'll have to pay for that pain-ease," the wizard said sadly. "Another day will come when you will face Death of Nehwon, and it must be as if for the first time. You'll see your women again and make your apologies."

  Fafhrd scoffed. "No need to apologize twice to Vlana. We've made our peace." He put a hand on the Mouser's shoulder and gazed yet again at the dazzling aurora. In the distance, bells were pealing out from all the temples in Lankhmar. "We saved a city, Mouser," Fafhrd said. "Perhaps a world. Who knows how far Malygris's curse might eventually have reached. We've done good work."

  The Mouser moved closer to Sheelba and rubbed a hand wearily over his eyes. "Fafhrd has a good heart," he whispered. "But he doesn't see. Malygris's curse was never out of control. It would have reached only as far as Death of Nehwon allowed it, or only as far as Death's master, Fate, would have allowed." He hugged himself against a cold that clung like a mist to his spirit and knew that he would never feel warm again. "But I see," he said. "I see."

  "You see too much," Sheelba murmured softly, his voice hypnotic. "And though Fafhrd hides it, he sees as well and shares your resentment."

  The Mouser rubbed his eyes again. His lids felt so heavy, and a growing numbness was spreading through his limbs. He turned to look at his partner. Fafhrd slowly slumped to the ground as he watched.

  "I didn't see you drink," the Mouser said thickly. He groped for his sword, but couldn't seem to grasp Scalpel's oddly elusive hilt. "You bastard. What was in the bottle?"