Swords Against the Shadowland

EIGHTEEN FESTIVAL’S END

Wrapped in his cloak, the Gray Mouser skulked through the shadows by the rutted road that ran parallel to the river. His keen eyes searched the riverbank. He sniffed the air. He listened, but except for the tranquil purling of that black ribbon of water, the night kept its silence.

Thin lips moved in a soundless curse.

Bad enough that Fafhrd had attempted to sneak past a sleeping Mouser without waking him. The Mouser's ego still smarted at that insult. Why, not so much as a rat, nay a roach on the floor, could slip by without stirring the Mouser, so lightly did he sleep!

But to actually have lost the great log-foot in the winding alleys east of Nun Street!

A brow furrowed under a gray hood, and one gray-gloved fist ground against a gloved palm. Disgusted with himself, the Mouser shook his head and prayed to Mog that Fafhrd hadn't purposefully given him the slip. He imagined the arrogant lummox crouching behind some barrel, chuckling to himself, then darting right into the shadows when the Mouser went left.

The Mouser knew he'd never hear the end of it, nor live down the shame if his partner had, indeed, tricked him.

Maybe he should have just stayed behind and spared himself potential embarrassment.

He scowled at another thought. What if Fafhrd was just sneaking out for some woman or a taste of the grape? Why partner or no partner, the Mouser would crown that splendid red head with the nearest wine-pot!

The thought of wine made him thirsty. Licking dry lips, he glided through thick grass down the riverbank’s gentle slope to the river's edge. Bending low, he put his fingers into the softly flowing water. Its strange warmth surprised him. Marveling, he drew his hand out and thrust it back in again, sending small ripples dancing into the darkness.

Blood warm, he thought morbidly. With a curious trepidation, he raised his wet fingers and put them in his mouth. Only water. He chided himself for an overly imaginative fool. Cupping one palm, he took a deeper drink and wiped his hand on his cloak as he rose.

Far down the shore, the faint light of a campfire glimmered. Gypsies, he expected. Still, lacking any other sense of Fafhrd's direction, he crept toward that flickering glow.

The fire reminded him sadly of Demptha's great burned library and the blaze at Sadaster's estate. So many books—so much knowledge lost. His heart ached at the loss, and his chest swelled with anger.

Yet, what was gained by anger alone? Once again, he put his mind to work searching for answers to questions he could barely form, convinced that Malygris alone was no longer their only foe. Sadaster and Demptha, he murmured to himself.

What was the connection?

Concealed by the grass and the darkness, a narrow drainage ditch crossed the Mouser's path, carrying sewage and run-off from the edge of the city to the river. The Mouser's next step landed several inches lower than anticipated, and his foot slipped in a black slime. The world tilted, and the sky spun sharply clockwise. Choking back an outcry, the Mouser toppled sideways with a muted splash.

Muttering curses, he dragged himself up and scrambled out of the ditch. A miasma swam in his nostrils. Mud covered his garments, saturated them. Disgust wrinkling his face, he shook black filth from his hands and fingers. "Capricious gods!" he grumbled as he bent down and wiped his hands in the grass. Unsatisfied, he went back to the river's shore and plunged them in the water.

Nothing could be done about his clothes. He sniffed himself and nearly gagged on the stench. Boots, trousers, sleeves, cloak—he took a mental inventory and cursed again. "What a world," he groused. "What a fine, pungent perfume for a dainty fellow like me!"

Muffled voices, born over the water, drew the Mouser's attention from his smelly plight. He turned his head toward the distant campfire again, slowly rising. Now he spied a second, smaller flame. A torch, perhaps?

He chewed his lower lip, listening, and his eyes narrowed suddenly. Despite the distance and the sound-distorting effect of the river, one of those voices carried a familiar note.

Forgetting his condition, he began to run. The sloping ground dipped and rolled under his feet. His sheathed sword slapped his leg, and his hood fell away from his face. In the darkness, he stumbled, caught his balance, and kept running toward the campfire and the voices, which now were shouts, and one of them unmistakably belonged to Fafhrd!

Cast by the campfire, elongated shadows shifted and stirred over the dark sward. At the heart of those shadows, Fafhrd spun and danced like a drunken fool with arms outstretched, hands grasping at the air, head thrown back with a drunkard's fascination for the stars.

With a natural caution, the Mouser stopped just beyond the reach of the light and crouched in the grass. Only an idiot rushed headlong into a fight without assessing the situation, and he considered himself no idiot.

But was this a fight? Though he had clearly heard two voices before, he saw no foe. Fafhrd shouted and cursed, and as the Mouser watched, the Northerner flung himself on the ground, twitching and kicking.

In horror, the Mouser cursed caution and prepared to rush to Fafhrd's side.

Before he could move, a chilling laugh rang out. "I can make this torment last all night," a voice said. "Tell me! Did you touch Laurian?"

The Mouser flattened himself in the grass, his gaze searching. At the very eastern edge of the campfire's glow, barely visible in the night, a figure stood with grim expression and bitter eyes, one arm extended, fingers clutching air in a menacing gesture.

Malygris!

The Mouser knew the wizard instantly and without doubt. Breath caught in his throat, and excitement quickened his heart. Here at last was their foe!

The wizard took a single step toward Fafhrd, crossing the tenuous border of darkness to stand just within the light of the campfire. His skin gleamed silver and orange, and the glow filled his angry gaze, lending it a queer quality.

The Mouser almost gasped aloud, recalling an image of Malygris that Sheelba had conjured from a campfire in the dark of night. For an instant, image and man made a perfect match, right down to the arrogant pose.

Then Malygris moved again and the match shattered. For one thing, the man was clothed in rags, and the Mouser noted the way he nursed an injured arm.

Fafhrd thrust his huge sword into the ground. Using it like a crutch, he attempted to rise and made it to his knees. "How long will your torment last?" he shouted in answer.

The Mouser ceased to listen. He rolled away from the edge of the light into deeper darkness. When he thought himself safely invisible, he rose and circled around behind Malygris, putting himself between the wizard and the city.

Fafhrd continued to shout, and his gaze darted off at strange angles as he reacted to things the Mouser couldn't see. Yet the Northerner climbed unsteadily to his feet and leaned on the sword.

Achieving the position he preferred, the Mouser drew his slender blade and crept down the easy slope, his boots making no sound in the soft grass and spongy earth. Malygris's broad back offered itself. If Fafhrd held the wizard's attention just a little longer, Scalpel would draw the precious, needed drop of heart-blood. Then let Sheelba work his magic and end this nightmare!

The wizard howled with a soul-deep pain and anger that froze the Mouser in his tracks before he could strike the fatal thrust. Then, clutching suddenly at that injured arm, Malygris howled a second time.

The Mouser saw his chance. Raising his sword, he rushed forward.

"Small payment for the suffering you've brought," Fafhrd cried grimly.

So suddenly did Malygris spin about that the Mouser was caught off-guard. The wizard ran straight into him, barely avoiding the rapier's deadly point. The impact whirled the Mouser about, and he crashed to the ground on his rump.

For a brief moment, Malygris loomed above him, an expression of dark rage on his face. The Mouser caught a glimpse of a dagger sprouting from the injured arm and a black, spreading smear on the sleeve. Blood!

The sight reminded him of his purpose. Clumsily, he thrust upward with his sword.

Growling like a cornered animal, the wizard disappeared before the Mouser's open eyes. The Mouser leaped to his feet again. Swinging his thin sword like a whip, he slashed desperately at the air where his foe had been.

A huge shadow fell over the earth as a figure blotted out the fire's glow. "My dagger for an appetizer!" Fafhrd roared fiercely. "Here comes the banquet!"

His great sword whistled down at the Mouser's head. In astonishment, the Mouser danced lithely back, and his rapier came up not to meet the larger blade, but at an angle to deflect it.

"There you are!" he cried, wondering how Malygris had come by his partner's weapon, for it was the wizard who attacked him, and there was no sign of Fafhrd. He eyed the massive sword, which looked improbably heavy in Malygris's thinly gnarled hands. "I see you're ready to dance. How fortunate for you there's still a place on my card!"

The Mouser lunged forward in a straight thrust, bending his back knee almost to the earth to come under the great sword. With surprising speed, the larger sword smashed downward, blocking his effort, turning his point aside with such force the Mouser barely kept his grip.

Yet keep it he did. With a flick of his wrist, he slashed his sword point at his opponent's hand, hoping to disarm with a cut. But Malygris moved marginally faster and turned the blow on the great sword's tangs.

Undaunted, the Mouser attacked. With three swift, skipping steps he drove the wizard toward the river. Malygris retreated adroitly, dodging the first thrust, ducking the second, turning the third away with the flat of his sword.

Then the Mouser's eyes widened in surprise. The wizard— brazen fool!—attacked him straight on! The great sword whirled in his hands, becoming a dazzling blur that gleamed red and gold in the firelight. The Mouser scrambled back from a fierce attack, pressed to defend against a blade that could smash his own slender weapon into pieces.

The great sword sang down toward his head again. With delicate artistry, the Mouser's Scalpel flashed out and kissed it away. At the same time, the Mouser danced in close. Catching the front of Malygris's tunic in his empty hand, he attempted to head-butt his foe.

A massive hand came up and caught his face. Steel fingers squeezed. The Mouser felt himself lifted and flung bodily through the air. Managing to roll on the soft ground, he came up in a ready crouch with a greater respect for his enemy.

Malygris advanced, then stopped with a sour expression on his face. Reaching up, he pinched his nostrils shut. "Piss and spit, man!" he cursed in a loud nasal voice. "Your stench is worse than your swordplay! Did you shit your pants in fear of me?"

Stunned by this pronouncement, the Mouser sniffed himself. He coughed at the assault on his sensibilities. The smell of the ditch still clung. "It's a fair effluvia," he answered defensively. "Five silver smerduks an ounce, and all the rage with the dandies in the palace." He blinked, welcoming a chance to get his breath before the fight resumed. "How came you by my partner's sword?"

Malygris's right eyebrow shot up. "I was about to ask how you come by that toothpick the Gray Mouser calls a weapon. Or how you suddenly happen to speak with his same smirking, half-witted sarcasm?"

"Half-witted . . . ?" With narrowing eyes, the Mouser took a tighter grip on the hilt of his sword. "Well, this is certainly my very sword, Scalpel. But I shall be happy to give you a little of it."

His foe took a defensive posture. "Then mine is the more generous nature, for this is my sword, Graywand, and you shall have half its length!"

Yet no sooner had the wizard completed his boast than he fell back in a sudden fit of coughing. Gripped in both hands, the great sword wavered uncertainly. And though he struggled to keep his gaze upon the Mouser, the wizard's eyes widened with a quiet inner fear. He coughed harder, a deep wracking sound that issued from the depths of his lungs, and a thin scarlet spittle stained the corner of his lip.

Slowly, the Gray Mouser lowered his sword. A chill of understanding and subtle horror passed through him. "And how is it," he said in a low voice, "that you cough with the same resonant note as Fafhrd Red-Hair did early this morning and again in his sleep this early evening?"

Malygris's eyes flashed even through the sickness that filled them. "Play me no more games, madman! I am Fafhrd Red-Hair!"

"I know," the Mouser said softly, sheathing his sword. "And do you not recognize your own blood-and-oath bound comrade?"

The point of the great sword dipped to the ground. Fafhrd, wrapped in the illusory appearance of Malygris, stared strangely. "Mouser?" he said.

The air around Fafhrd trembled as with heat-shimmer. Malygris, his angry demeanor, his rags and all melted away like vapor, leaving the tall copper-haired Northerner in his place. For a long moment, he gaped at the Mouser. Then his open mouth closed, and he leaned wearily on the sword he called Graywand.

"I thought you were Malygris," he said, shaking his huge head in confusion. Then his voice turned bitter as he wiped his lip and shot a look toward the city. "He fooled us with another of his damned illusions to make good his escape."

"He worked his magic on us both," the Mouser admitted. "To my eyes you were the image of him. Only the sound of your coughing stayed my hand, else I would have run you through."

The rightward corner of Fafhrd's mouth curled upward in a grin or a sneer. "Spoken boldly, for a man dumped on his rump in the combat. I would surely have taken your head had I not noted the familiar tenor of your boasting. Only that stayed my hand, that and your gut-churning stench, which would keep any man at a distance." He waved a hand under his nose and rolled his eyes in a mock-faint. "Your smell surpasses ..."

The Mouser interrupted him. "It's Malygris's curse, isn't it?" he said. "It's touched you, too." He bit his lip. A band tightened around his chest, and breath failed him for a moment as he regarded the only man he had ever deigned to call friend.

Then something exploded inside him. He stamped his foot in the grass and smashed his fists on his thighs. "Did you think you could keep it secret?" he raged. "Why didn't you tell me?"

His shouts rolled over the water, and the night carried his accusing words far up and down the riverbanks. He didn't care who heard; Malygris was gone, escaped, and out of the Mouser's thoughts completely. Fafhrd alone mattered.

Not Malygris, not all of Lankhmar, not Sheelba. Only Fafhrd.

"How would I have profited by telling you?" Fafhrd answered with a restrained tension that betrayed his own turmoil. "The only thing you can do is what we've tried and failed so far to do—kill the creator of this dismal curse and take a drop of his heart's blood to the one who can effect a cure."

"And you thought you could do that best by sneaking off without me?" The Mouser shook his fists at the sky. Half-blinded by anger and a sense of betrayal he knew in his heart to be misplaced, he seized up the burning torch and hurled it toward the river, then scattered the campfire with a sweeping kick. Hot ash and sparks spiraled around him and upward into the dark night. "We are partners, Fafhrd—or we are nothing!"

Fafhrd coughed again and hung his head. From deep-shadowed eyes made strange by the remaining pieces of fireglow he fixed the Mouser with a hard look. He put one hand on his chest as if to measure his own heartbeat.

"This is no way for a man to die," he said, his voice little more than a whisper. "I feel it eating at me inside, like a tiny worm whose appetite is endless." He extended one hand toward his partner. "My grip is weaker. My breath is shorter. I don't have Sadaster’s magic to stave off the outward symptoms, nor his blindness to what is really happening." He swallowed. "I left you behind to spare you this."

"You can't spare me!" The Mouser fairly screamed. "The risk is already before me. Did Sheelba not transport me as he did you? Did Laurian's ill-considered spell not drive me to . . ."

Abruptly he shut up, and just as abruptly he mastered all his rage and fear. Such an emotional outburst shamed him. Fafhrd needed his friendship and his sword arm—not anger that should rightly be directed at their enemy.

Reaching over a shoulder, he felt his upper back where the red welts of Liara's velvet whip still stung his flesh. "Well, never mind what it drove me to," he said at last, forcing a little chuckle as he went to Fafhrd's side, "though you'd love to hear the tale."

Frowning, Fafhrd backed off a step and held up a hand. "I face a horrible enough end," he warned. "I beg you, come no closer lest I choke on your reek!"

A grin broke over the Mouser's face and he flung his arms wide. "Then let it be a mercy killing!" he cried.

With that, he leaped upon Fafhrd, wrapping arms and legs about his partner's torso, clinging and laughing and waggling his head under Fafhrd's nose while the Northerner made all manner of gagging and retching noises and tried to wrestle free.

Finally they fell upon the ground, and Fafhrd lay still, eyes wide and staring, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth—a morbidly funny impersonation of death.

The Mouser straddled Fafhrd's chest. "Now my stink is all over you," he announced victoriously.

Fafhrd's eyes snapped closed; his head rolled limply to the side. "The curse in my body is bowing and scraping in the presence of a more potent and horrible force," he whispered.

"Maybe I can drive it out completely," the Mouser suggested. Making a wad of the muddiest part of his cloak, he pressed it to Fafhrd's nose.

Fafhrd's gag this time was genuine. With bunching muscles, he flung his partner off and got to his feet. "Physician, the cure is worse than the disease." He snatched up his sword from where it had fallen and pushed the blade into the sheath on his belt.

The Mouser picked himself up from the grass, straightened his cloak on his shoulders, and turned serious once more. With a grim note he answered, "Then together let's seek out the recommended medicine."

By unspoken agreement, they turned away from the river and strode up the shallow slope toward the city. After only a few paces, they stopped again. Something gleamed in the grass. Bending down, Fafhrd retrieved his dagger. He held it up. The remaining light from the scattered campfire shone on the wetly incarnadined blade.

Fafhrd growled low in his throat, then opened his mouth and drew the blade over his tongue and licked the blood away. "It's only from his arm," he said sternly, "yet it may have an effect."

The Mouser nodded. "If only to make you hungry for the more potent stuff."

Once again, they took to the alleyways and backstreets of nighted Lankhmar. Hooded, with hands on their weapon hilts, they kept to the shadows and sought the empty ways with Crypt Court their destination, there to consider the next course of action. Moving soundlessly past darkened shops and old, rat-infested tenements, they came finally to the warehouses and towering silos that bordered Grain Street.

"We're not returning to Crypt Court," the Mouser announced suddenly. With a pinched look and a furrowed brow, he led the way into the broad open lane, forsaking the gloomy alleys, and headed northward at a rapid pace. "We're going to the Festival District, and to the House of Night Cries."

Fafhrd grimaced. "Surely, Mouser, we face more important tasks than the slaking of your perverted lusts."

The Mouser barely listened. His mind worked furiously as he turned a corner and started down Barter Street, which would take them to the Garden of Dark Delights and thence to Face-of-the-Moon Street. It all had begun in the Festival District, beneath its streets in the Temple of Hates. There Malygris had concocted the evil spell that Sheelba and Demptha Negatarth both said should have been beyond his meager conjurer's skill.

Who, then, had aided him?

Ivrian. The name rang in his head like the bitter pealing of a broken bell. He no longer thought of her as Liara, for he had no doubt that she was, indeed, Ivrian, whom he had once called his true love.

Affection and desire had blinded him to any part she played in this mysterious adventure. But Fafhrd's illness and the desperateness of the situation now opened his eyes. More than a year ago, he had seen Ivrian dead, her corpse chewed to bloody ruin by rats, then consumed by fire.

Yet she lived!

Malygris and Ivrian—he did not yet know the connection, but he felt intuitively there must be one.

Just so, he knew that Sadaster and Demptha Negatarth shared a connection—the spells they used to keep wife and daughter young beyond their years.

Convinced they were pieces of the same puzzle, he quickened his step. The answers lay with Ivrian!

"Here's another piece of the puzzle for you," Fafhrd said when the Mouser had explained his reasoning. He grabbed his gray comrade's arm and jerked him to a halt in the middle of the street. Raising one arm, he pointed down a narrow sidestreet.

Vlana, or her ghost, beckoned to them from the shadows. A milky nimbus of unnatural light surrounded her form. She swayed her hips to some unheard music, and her arms undulated with fluid, serpentine motions. Black hair swept about her kohl-eyed face, stirred and lifted by a wind neither Fafhrd nor the Mouser felt.

Some pain seemed to stab at Fafhrd's heart. Clutching his chest, he lurched toward her like a man entranced. "Vlana!" he cried. "True love!"

The Mouser caught a piece of Fafhrd's cloak and jerked. A loud gasping, gagging noise issued from Fafhrd's throat as the clasp unexpectedly choked him. Like a man snapped rudely awake, he stopped and spun about.

"Don't look at her!" the Mouser shouted. Catching hold of Fafhrd's arms, he gave him a shake. "Don't you see? She only means to delay us!" He looked up into Fafhrd's eyes. Then, jaw slack with new revelation, he stepped back and slapped his forehead.

"That's what they are supposed to do," he cried, shaking Fafhrd again. "Vlana and Ivrian have done nothing but delay us and prevent us from looking for Malygris."

Fafhrd mumbled as he looked back over his shoulder to the dancing Vlana. "I thought she was one of Malygris's illusions," he admitted. "But I'm not sure!" His voice rose, thick with emotion. "I let her die, Mouser. I let the rats and the fire eat her ivory flesh side by side with your own Ivrian!"

"And someone cruelly uses the guilt we feel," the Mouser answered in a voice turned cold, "to turn us from our real task— finding Malygris." He, too, stared with Fafhrd down the sidestreet. Vlana stood still now, dancing no more, an accusing look upon her pale face.

The Mouser's voice softened somewhat. "I tell you, Fafhrd, she is no more than a decoy. Run off and chase her through the night if you must. But I will not be turned aside."

The Northerner hung his head, and with his eyes squeezed tightly shut, pushed past the Mouser. His feet shuffled in the road for a few steps, then moved with determination. Breathing a sigh of relief, the Mouser took his place at Fafhrd's side, and they continued on to the Festival District.

But he couldn't resist a final glance over his shoulder. Vlana, or whatever she was, had disappeared.

A few blocks further, and they reached the edge of the Festival District. The streets, which should have yet been crowded with celebrants, merchants and entertainers, instead were quiet, nearly empty. A now familiar pallid fear marked the faces of the few pedestrians they encountered. Shops were closed. The kiosks had been taken down. The taverns remained open, but the busiest hosted only a squad of off-duty soldiers, and the noise that issued even from that seemed muted and nervous.

The magic that had compelled such a carnal frenzy the night before had exacted a toll of suspicion and uncertainty from the citizens. Many had stayed home tonight; some had left the city early to return to their farms and villages.

A man suddenly leaped from behind a rain barrel to block their path. Round, wide eyes filled with the light of madness glared at them from a sallow, too-thin face. His wild hair jutted from his head at all angles, and clothes that once were finely made hung on him in tatters.

"Good sirs, don't go any further!" came a sibilant whisper. The man paused and shot fearful looks over his bony shoulders before turning back to Fafhrd and the Mouser. "There's plague in the district! Plague!" He hesitated again, then thrust a hand forward. Keeping his voice low, he added, "That'll be a tik-penny for the warning."

"We know," Fafhrd answered. Delicately, he put his hand to his mouth and gave a sharp cough, then another.

The beggar's eyes grew even wider, and his knees began to shake. When Fafhrd coughed a third time, he turned and fled down the street, disappearing around a corner.

"That didn't sound like a very genuine cough," the Mouser commented.

"I didn't feel like parting with a tik-penny," Fafhrd said with a wink and a shrug.

Skirting the edge of the Garden of Dark Delights, they came to Face-of-the-Moon Street. The Mouser preceded Fafhrd up the pebbled walkway, past the elaborate lawn sculptures, and up the marble steps. Small oil lamps suspended on bronze pegs burned on either side of the door tonight, their flames shielded by glass globes.

"Stand here," the Mouser said, positioning Fafhrd against the wall where he'd be just out of sight when the door opened. "When I hook the fish, you net him."

Seizing the brass knocker, the Mouser slammed it twice against the plate. In a moment, the door opened. The Mouser pushed back his hood and smiled at the hugely muscled, bald warrior that served the house as guardian and doorman.

"Good evening, you over-grown jackass. Remember me?"

The doorman growled. "Yes, little man. I threw you out on your drunken head last night."

He reached for the Mouser with large, grasping hands. When the Mouser backed up a step, the doorman followed. Fafhrd tapped him on the shoulder and, when he turned, smashed his own huge fist against the doorman's jaw.

The doorman's eyes glazed, but his lips parted in a weak grin. "Thank you, sir. May I have another?" Half-heartedly, he raised a fist to strike back, but Fafhrd's blow had achieved its purpose. The Mouser dropped to his hands and knees behind the doorman's legs, and Fafhrd gave a push. Over the doorman went into the bushes beside the high marble steps.

"A mightier blow I couldn't have delivered myself," the Mouser said, brushing his hands. "Now for Ivrian and a few answers!"

Yet before they could enter the house, a startled gasp spun them about. At the gateway to the marbled path, wrapped in a walking cloak, Ivrian stood still as a deer and stared nervously at them both. Then she bolted back into the street.

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser bounded down the steps in pursuit, reaching the street just in time to see the girl dash into the Garden of Dark Delights. They charged after her. A flash of a heel led them through the shadows; a swish of a cloak drew them deeper still into the park.

Abruptly, Fafhrd grabbed the Mouser's arm and jerked him to a halt. "You know I'm not a cautious man by nature," he whispered, peering around. "But this situation, in the parlance of my distant northern cousins, stinks."

A familiar voice called out from behind them. "The only stink here," it said, "clings to the two of you!"

Fafhrd whirled, the great sword he called Graywand sweeping from its sheath in one smooth motion.

The Mouser held up a hand. "Captain!" he cried in greeting as he turned.

"I was having a drink at a tavern," Nuulpha said. The faint moonlight glinted on his corporal's helmet as he pushed back his hood. "I thought I saw you skulking past, so I followed."

"How fares that fat, spend-thrift wife of yours?" Fafhrd asked, sheathing his blade again.

"Not well," Nuulpha answered, his voice dropping a note. "Though I speak roughly of her sometimes, she is the reason I serve Demptha Negatarth—in hope of a cure. She too suffers from Malygris's curse."

"Forgive me," Fafhrd said quickly. "I intended no cruelty."

Nuulpha shrugged. Unfastening his chinstrap, he removed his helmet and wiped a hand through his damp black hair. "It's no matter," he said. Then he screamed.

Before their eyes, his helmet transformed into a spitting black cat. Fangs sank deep into Nuulpha's hand; the beast wrapped itself ferociously around his arm and with razor-sharp talons raked his flesh to red ribbons. Not all his efforts could shake the creature loose.

"Wizard!" Fafhrd shouted, whipping out his sword again.

Once more, the earth began to buck and shake, to lift and roll in wave after wave, and to spin like a child's top. With an awkward and frustrated cry, the Northerner fell and thrashed on the ground. The Mouser, too, toppled helplessly sideways.

"Time to die, fools!" Malygris called. "Time for all to die— you, me, Lankhmar itself. Laurian is lost, so let all be lost!"

The Mouser twisted his head up from the grass and tried to gaze around. Malygris was somewhere close to judge by his voice. Yet, the wizard cloaked himself with still another damned illusion, rendering himself invisible. He twisted his head the other way. Fafhrd and Nuulpha kicked and struggled and twitched to no avail. The cat, at least, was gone. That, too, had only been an illusion.

A deranged voice boomed in the Mouser's ear. "Hear the death-cry of an entire city!"

Immediately the ground turned solid again. The Mouser found himself standing in the middle of a street. Flames leaped up from scores of buildings. The dead lay piled in the gutters and ditches. A cart trundled toward him, stacked with bodies. As it went by, he stared at the pale, horror-stricken faces, the bloody lips and the ruptured eyes. The driver coughed so severely he could barely work the reins and guide his draft-ox.

A trio of wild-eyed men bearing torches dashed past him. "Plague!" they screamed. "Plague!" Kicking open the door of a house, they proceeded to set fire to the interior,

"No!" shrieked an old woman. In her arms, she cradled a small boy. The child hung limp and fragile, weakly coughing. A thin red film trickled from its lips and down its chin as the Mouser stood helplessly by

"It s everything we have!" the old woman cried.

One of the men swung his torch, knocking her into the street. The cart rolled heedlessly across her back, crushing woman and child.

The Mouser fought down his revulsion and gathered his strength. "Illusion!" he cried, squeezing his eyes shut. "It's not real! None of it's real!"

Abruptly he was in the park again, sprawled on the grass, staring up at the sky through the thick trees.

"Isn't it?" Malygris's voice said coldly. "Listen carefully, little one. Listen to the groans of fear that come even now from the other side of the garden walls; now a cry goes up through the city, becomes a chorus; the despairing wails begin to mount."

The Mouser listened, and true enough he thought he heard, like a distant wind, the voices of terror, a lamentation rising in the night.

"Show yourself, coward!" Fafhrd said as he rose uncertainly to his feet. "Let me put another dagger in you."

"I have already won our duel, barbarian," Malygris answered. "I see the streaming mark of my curse upon you."

Fafhrd gave a stricken look and wiped the back of one hand across his mouth. It came away with a red smear.

Farther down the walkway, the darkness flickered in a peculiar manner, as if the wind had rippled a black curtain and parted it. Malygris's thin, bald form appeared, his arms folded into ragged bloodstained sleeves, his eyes burning with madness.

"Perhaps you'd like a preview of things to come," he said, his wild gaze fixed on Fafhrd.

A violent coughing wracked Fafhrd's mighty frame, bending him double as he clutched his chest and throat. His hair turned thin, lost its luster, and began to fall out. He spit blood into his hands; crimson spotted his lips and chin, the front of his tunic. Dark circles formed around his eyes, and the flesh began to hang upon his cheekbones.

Weakened legs gave way beneath him, and he fell gasping for air with spasming lungs. His musculature dissolved away until his bones began to show through bloodless flesh and his ribs showed right through his garments until he appeared little more than a pitifully thrashing skeleton with a veil of parchment draped over it.

A desperate mewling issued from Fafhrd's dehydrated lips, and he raised a supplicating hand toward the Mouser.

"Stop it!" the Mouser cried. In horror, he watched as Fafhrd's bloody teeth dropped out of his head. Drawing his dagger, Catsclaw, he prepared to throw, but suddenly there were three images of Malygris, then six, then nine, then more than the Mouser could count, all arrayed before him like an impossible, ragged army.

He screamed in frustration. Scooping up a handful of pebbles from the walkway, he flung them. Every image of Malygris reacted exactly the same, raising one arm to shield a laughing face.

"This is how it will be for you, defiler!" Malygris said to Fafhrd, his eyes blazing, his voice an angry hiss. "But you'll die slowly, over weeks, perhaps months. Your flesh will rot and drip from your bones, just as it was with Sadaster. You'll curse the day you came between me and Laurian!"

Through a gumless slash of a mouth, Fafhrd managed to answer, "You're insane."

Balancing his dagger carefully by the point, the Mouser folded his legs and sat down on the ground. His eyes narrowed to small slits; he calmed his breathing and let his racing heart slow. It's all illusion, he reminded himself. Fafhrd was not really dying at his feet. Nor did his enemy stand before him in scores.

He had been the pupil and ward of Glavas Rho. The herb-wizard had raised him through boyhood and taught him a thing or two about magic. A simpler form of magic, to be sure, but the Mouser had paid attention to his studies. A discerning eye, he knew, could tell the real from the false.

"Yes, insane!" Malygris agreed. "You destroyed the most precious jewel in Nehwon, my Laurian. Now I will have my revenge!" The wizard barked a short, ugly laugh. "Just imagine when your heart stops, Northerner!"

Fafhrd's bulging eyes snapped wider. A choked gasp of pain forced its way sharply from his lips as he clutched his shrunken chest.

The Mouser remained calm. Subtly, he snatched another pebble and flicked it toward one of the images of Malygris. When it failed to react, he hid a smile. False, he judged. So the unreal images only reacted when the real wizard moved.

"You killed Laurian," Fafhrd croaked. Somehow, as if he too were managing to fight the illusions, he struggled to his hands and knees. "You wrapped your own hands around her silken neck, because she hated you with all her heart! You are the murderer—and the fool."

The Mouser flicked pebbles at three more images, eliminating them in his mind. When he found one that reacted, then his dagger would fly.

"I could have won her," Malygris raged. The images shook their fists at Fafhrd. "But Sadaster stole her from me and dragged her to this cursed city. Sadaster and Lankhmar poisoned her heart against me. Now see how they are punished!"

Malygris thrust his good arm upward, and his fingers strained toward the sky.

High above the treetops, a thin red glow appeared. A ribbon of bloody hue wafted as if on a wind, furling and unfurling on itself, floating gracefully like a thin kite. Yet through the pretty light, it radiated an evil, a soul-shriveling vileness of dark and vast power.

The Mouser stared. The ribbon descended through the trees to swirl a few times about Malygris's upraised hand. It moved then to Fafhrd, but as if with some arcanely primitive power of recognition, it turned away.

Despite himself, the Mouser's heart quailed. That tenuous scarlet veil swept across the lawn. Too late, he leaped to his feet. The red horror poured into his nostrils, into his mouth as he gave an involuntary cry.

In the moment that it touched him, entered him, infected him, he felt a hunger deeper and blacker than anything his mind had ever conceived, a starving void, a ravening gulf, greedy in its need. It swallowed him like a morsel, devoured him.

Then, it spit him out again like chewed gristle and moved on.

The Mouser shivered with fear even as he fought to remain calm. A barely perceptible weakness burrowed in his muscles; he felt it like the tiniest tear in his soul through which his life-force leaked away.

Forgotten in the conflict, Nuulpha rose suddenly from the ground as the red ribbon coiled serpent-like about his throat. If Nuulpha noticed at all, though, he gave no sign of it. And uncoiling, the ribbon rose away from him and faded. Was Nuulpha, then, already infected as well?

The corporal thrust a hand under his crimson cloak and into a vest pocket on his jerkin. "They are mere swordsmen, fool," he said coldly. Only the voice was not that of Nuulpha! The air seemed to ripple around him like water. Illusions and illusions! The image of Nuulpha melted. In his place stood Demptha Negatarth. "And your fight is here."

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."