by Fritz Leiber
The ivory eyelids did not flicker, but the edges of the teeth showed in what he fancied was a deliberate, flickery smile.
He was never more certain than at this moment that Ahura was a man.
The embers crunched behind him.
Turning, the Mouser saw only the streak of gleaming steel poised above Fafhrd’s head, motionless for a moment, as if with superhuman forbearance a god should give his creature a chance before loosing the thunderbolt.
The Mouser ripped out his own slim sword in time to ward the titan blow. From hilt to point, the two blades screamed.
And in answer to that scream, melting into, continuing, and augmenting it, there came from the absolute calm of the west a gargantuan gust of wind that sent the Mouser staggering forward and Fafhrd reeling back, and rolled Ahura across the place where the embers had been.
Almost as suddenly the gale died. As it died, something whipped batlike toward the Mouser’s face and he grabbed at it. But it was not a bat, or even a large leaf. It felt like papyrus.
The embers, blown into a clump of dry grass, had perversely started a blaze. To its flaring light he held the thin scrap that had fluttered out of the infinite west.
He motioned frantically to Fafhrd, who was clawing his way out of a scrub pine.
There was squid-black writing on the scrap, in large characters, above the tangled seal.
‘By whatever gods you revere, give up this quarrel. Press onward at once. Follow the woman.’
They became aware that Ahura was peering over their abutting shoulders. The moon came gleamingly from behind the small black tatter of cloud that had briefly obscured it. She looked at them, pulled together chiton and gown, belted them with her cloak. They collected their horses, extricated the fallen camel from the cluster of thorn bushes in which it was satisfiedly tormenting itself, and set out.
After that the Lost City was found almost too quickly; it seemed like a trap or the work of an illusionist. One moment Ahura was pointing out to them a boulder-studded crag; the next, they were looking down a narrow valley choked with crazily-leaning, moon-silvered monoliths and their accomplice shadows.
From the first it was obvious that ‘city’ was a misnomer. Surely men had never dwelt in those massive stone tents and huts, though they may have worshipped there. It was a habitation for Egyptian colossi, for stone automata. But Fafhrd and the Mouser had little time to survey its entirety, for without warning Ahura sent her horse clattering and sliding down the slope.
Thereafter it was a harebrained, drunken gallop, their horses plunging shadows, the camel a lurching ghost, through forests of crude-hewn pillars, past teetering single slabs big enough for palace walls, under lintels made for elephants, always following the elusive hoof-beat, never catching it, until they suddenly emerged into clear moonlight and drew up in an open space between a great sarcophagus-like block or box with steps leading up to it and a huge, crudely man-shaped monolith.
But they had hardly begun to puzzle out the things around them before they became aware that Ahura was gesturing impatiently. They recalled Ningauble’s instructions and realized that it was almost dawn. So they unloaded various bundles and boxes from the shivering, snapping camel, and Fafhrd unfolded the dark, cobwebby shroud of Ahriman and wrapped it around Ahura as she stood wordlessly facing the tomb, her face a marble portrait of eagerness, as if she sprang from the stone around her.
While Fafhrd busied himself with other things, the Mouser opened the ebony chest they had stolen from the False Laodice. A fey mood came upon him and, dancing cumbrously in imitation of a eunuch serving man, he tastefully arrayed a flat stone with all the little jugs and jars and tiny amphorae that the chest contained. And in an appropriate falsetto he sang:
‘I laid a board for the Great Seleuce,
I decked it pretty and abstruse;
And he must have been pleased,
For when stuffed, he wheezed,
“As punishment castrate the man.”’
‘You thee, Fafhrd,’ he lisped, ‘the man had been cathtwated ath a boy, and tho it wath no punithment at all. Becauthe of pweviouth cathtwathion—’
‘I’ll castrate your wit-engorged top end,’ Fafhrd cried, raising the next implement of magic, but thought better of it.
Then Fafhrd handed him Socrates’ cup and, still prancing and piping, the Mouser measured into it the mummy powder and added the wine and stirred them together and, dancing fantastically toward Ahura, offered it to her. When she made no movement, he held it to her lips and she greedily gulped it without taking her eyes from the tomb.
Then Fafhrd came with the sprig from the Babylonian Tree of Life, which still felt marvelously fresh and firm-leafed to his touch, as if the Mouser had only snipped it a moment ago. And he gently pried open her clenched fingers and placed the sprig inside them and folded them again.
Thus ready, they waited. The sky reddened at the edge and seemed for a moment to grow darker, the stars fading and the moon turning dull. The outspread aphrodisiacs chilled, refusing the night breeze their savor. And the woman continued to watch the tomb, and behind her, seeming to watch the tomb too, as if it were her fantastic shadow, loomed the man-shaped monolith, which the Mouser now and then scrutinized uneasily over his shoulder, being unable to tell whether it were of primevally crude workmanship or something that men had laboriously defaced because of its evil.
The sky paled until the Mouser could begin to make out some monstrous carvings on the side of the sarcophagus—of men like stone pillars and animals like mountains—and until Fafhrd could see the green of the leaves in Ahura’s hand.
Then he saw something astounding. In an instant the leaves withered and the sprig became a curled and blackened stick. In the same instant Ahura trembled and grew paler still, snow pale, and to the Mouser it seemed that there was a tenuous black cloud forming around her head, that the riddlesome stranger he hated was pouring upward like a smoky jinni from her body, the bottle.
The thick stone cover of the sarcophagus groaned and began to rise.
Ahura began to move toward the sarcophagus. To the Mouser it seemed that the cloud was drawing her along like a black sail.
The cover was moving more swiftly, as if it were the upper jaw of a stone crocodile. The black cloud seemed to the Mouser to strain triumphantly toward the widening slit, dragging the white wisp behind it. The cover opened wide. Ahura reached the top and then either peered down inside or, as the Mouser saw it, was almost sucked in along with the black cloud. She shook violently. Then her body collapsed like an empty dress.
Fafhrd gritted his teeth, a joint cracked in the Mouser’s wrist. The hilts of their swords, unconsciously drawn, bruised their palms.
Then, like an idler from a day of bowered rest, an Indian prince from the tedium of the court, a philosopher from quizzical discourse, a slim figure rose from the tomb. His limbs were clad in black, his body in silvery metal, his hair and beard raven and silky. But what first claimed the sight, like an ensign on a masked man’s shield, was a chatoyant quality of his youthful olive skin, a silvery gleaming that turned one’s thoughts to fishes’ bellies and leprosy—that, and a certain familiarity.
For the face of this black and silver stranger bore an unmistakable resemblance to Ahura.
5 Anra Devadoris
Resting his long hands on the edge of the tomb, the newcomer surveyed them pleasantly and nodded as if they were intimates. Then he vaulted lightly over and came striding down the steps, treading on the shroud of Ahriman without so much as a glance at Ahura.
He eyed their swords. ‘You anticipate danger?’ he asked, politely stroking the beard which, it seemed to the Mouser, could never have grown so bushily silky except in a tomb.
‘You are an adept?’ Fafhrd retorted, stumbling over the words a little.
The stranger disregarded the question and stopped to study amusedly the zany array of aphrodisiacs.
‘Dear Ningauble,’ he murmured, ‘is surely the father of all seven-eyed Lechers
. I suppose you know him well enough to guess that he had you fetch these toys because he wants them for himself. Even in his duel with me, he cannot resist the temptation of a profit on the side. But perhaps this time the old pander had curtsied to destiny unwittingly. At least, let us hope so.’
And with that he unbuckled his sword belt and carelessly laid it by, along with the wondrously slim, silver-hilted sword.
The Mouser shrugged and sheathed his own weapon, but Fafhrd only grunted.
‘I do not like you,’ he said. ‘Are you the one who put the swine-curse on us?’
The stranger regarded him quizzically.
‘You are looking for a cause,’ he said. ‘You wish to know the name of an agent you feel has injured you. You plan to unleash your rage as soon as you know. But behind every cause is another cause, and behind the last agent is yet another agent. An immortal could not slay a fraction of them. Believe me, who have followed that trail further than most and who have had some experience of the special obstacles that are placed in the way of one who seeks to live beyond the confines of his skull and the meager present—the traps that are set for him, the titanic enmities he awakens. I beseech you to wait a while before warring, as I shall wait before answering your second question. That I am an adept I freely admit.’
At this last statement the Mouser felt another light-headed impulse to behave fantastically, this time in mimicry of a magician. Here was the rare creature on whom he could test the rune against adepts in his pouch! He wanted to hum a death spell between his teeth, to flap his arms in an incantational gesture, to spit at the adept and spin widder-shins on his left heel thrice. But he too chose to wait.
‘There is always a simple way of saying things,’ said Fafhrd ominously.
‘But there is where I differ with you,’ returned the adept, almost animatedly. ‘There are no ways of saying certain things, and others are so difficult that a man pines and dies before the right words are found. One must borrow phrases from the sky, words from beyond the stars. Else were all an ignorant, imprisoning mockery.’
The Mouser stared at the adept, suddenly conscious of a monstrous incongruity about him—as if one should glimpse a hint of double-dealing in the curl of Solon’s lips, or cowardice in the eyes of Alexander, or imbecility in the face of Aristotle. For although the adept was obviously erudite, confident, and powerful, the Mouser could not help thinking of a child morbidly avid for experience, a timid, painfully curious small boy. And the Mouser had the further bewildering feeling that this was the secret for which he had spied so long on Ahura.
Fafhrd’s sword-arm bulged, and he seemed about to make an even pithier rejoinder. But instead he sheathed his sword, walked over to the woman, held his fingers to her wrists for a moment, then tucked his bearskin cloak around her.
‘Her ghost has gone only a little way,’ he said. ‘It will soon return. What did you do to her, you black and silver popinjay?’
‘What matters what I’ve done to her or you, or me?’ retorted the adept, almost peevishly. ‘You are here, and I have business with you.’ He paused. ‘This, in brief, is my proposal: that I make you adepts like myself, sharing with you all knowledge of which your minds are capable, on condition only that you continue to submit to such spells as I have put upon you and may put upon you in future, to further our knowledge. What do you say to that?’
‘Wait, Fafhrd!’ implored the Mouser, grabbing his comrade’s arm. ‘Don’t strike yet. Let’s look at the statue from all sides. Why, magnanimous magician, have you chosen to make this offer to us, and why have you brought us out here to make it, instead of getting your yes or no in Tyre?’
‘An adept,’ roared Fafhrd, dragging the Mouser along, ‘offers to make me an adept! And for that I should go on kissing swine! Go spit down Fenris’ throat!’
‘As to why I have brought you here,’ said the adept coolly, ‘there are certain limitations on my powers of movement, or at least on my powers of satisfactory communication. There is, moreover, a special reason, which I will reveal to you as soon as we have concluded our agreement—though I may tell you that, unknown to yourselves, you have already aided me.’
‘But why pick on us? Why?’ persisted the Mouser, bracing himself against Fafhrd’s tugging.
‘Some whys, if you follow them far enough, lead over the rim of reality,’ replied the black and silver one. ‘I have sought knowledge beyond the dreams of ordinary men; I have ventured far into the darkness that encircles minds and stars. But now, midmost of the pitchy windings of that fearsome labyrinth, I find myself suddenly at my skein’s end. The tyrant powers who ignorantly guard the secret of the universe without knowing what it is, have scented me. Those vile wardens of whom Ningauble is the merest agent and even Ormadz a cloudy symbol, have laid their traps and built their barricades. And my best torches have snuffed out, or proved too flickery-feeble. I need new avenues of knowledge.’
He turned upon them eyes that seemed to be changing to twin holes in a curtain. ‘There is something in the inmost core of you, something that you, or others before you, have close-guarded down the ages. Something that lets you laugh in a way that only the Elder Gods ever laughed. Something that makes you see a kind of jest in horror and disillusionment and death. There is much wisdom to be gained by the unraveling of that something.’
‘Do you think us pretty woven scarves for your slick fingers to fray,’ snarled Fafhrd. ‘So you can piece out that rope you’re at the end of, and climb all the way down to Niflheim?’
‘Each adept must fray himself, before he may fray others,’ the stranger intoned unsmilingly. ‘You do not know the treasure you keep virgin and useless within you, or spill in senseless laughter. There is much richness in it, many complexities, destiny-threads that lead beyond the sky to realms undreamt.’ His voice became swift and invoking.
‘Have you no itch to understand, no urge for greater adventuring than schoolboy rambles? I’ll give you gods for foes, stars for your treasure-trove, if only you will do as I command. All men will be your animals; the best, your hunting pack. Kiss snails and swine? That’s but an overture. Greater than Pan, you’ll frighten nations, rape the world. The universe will tremble at your lust, but you will master it and force it down. That ancient laughter will give you the might—’
‘Filth-spewing pimp! Scabby-lipped pander! Cease!’ bellowed Fafhrd.
‘Only submit to me and to my will,’ the adept continued rapturously, his lips working so that his black beard twitched rhythmically. ‘All things we’ll twist and torture, know their cause. The lechery of gods will pave the way we’ll tramp through windy darkness ’til we find the one who lurks in senseless Odin’s skull twitching the strings that move your lives and mine. All knowledge will be ours, all for us three. Only give up your wills, submit to me!’
For a moment the Mouser was hypnotized by the glint of ghastly wonders. Then he felt Fafhrd’s biceps, which had slackened under his grasp—as if the Northerner were yielding too—suddenly tighten, and from his own lips he heard words projected coldly into the echoing silence.
‘Do you think a rhyme is enough to win us over to your nauseous titillations? Do you think we care a jot for your high-flown muck-peering? Fafhrd, this slobberer offends me, past ills that he has done us aside. It only remains to determine which one of us disposes of him. I long to unravel him, beginning with the ribs.’
‘Do you not understand what I have offered you, the magnitude of the boon? Have we no common ground?’
‘Only to fight on. Call up your demons, sorcerer, or else look to your weapon.’
An unearthly lust receded, rippling from the adept’s eyes, leaving behind only a deadliness. Fafhrd snatched up the cup of Socrates and dropped it for a lot, swore as it rolled toward the Mouser, whose cat-quick hand went softly to the hilt of the slim sword called Scalpel. Stooping, the adept groped blindly behind him and regained his belt and scabbard, drawing from it a blade that looked as delicate and responsive as a needle. He stood, a lank an
d icy indolence, in the red of the risen sun, the black anthropomorphic monolith looming behind him for his second.
The Mouser drew Scalpel silently from its sheath, ran a finger caressingly down the side of the blade, and in so doing noticed an inscription in black crayon which read, ‘I do not approve of this step you are taking. Ningauble.’ With a hiss of annoyance the Mouser wiped it off on his thigh and concentrated his gaze on the adept—so preoccupiedly that he did not observe the eyes of the fallen Ahura quiver open.
‘And now, Dead Sorcerer,’ said the Gray One lightly, ‘my name is the Gray Mouser.’
‘And mine is Anra Devadoris.’
Instantly the Mouser put into action his carefully weighed plan: to take two rapid skips forward and launch his blade-tipped body at the adept’s sword, which was to be deflected, and at the adept’s throat, which was to be sliced. He was already seeing the blood spurt when, in the middle of the second skip, he saw, whirring like an arrow toward his eyes, the adept’s blade. With a belly-contorted effort he twisted to one side and parried blindly. The adept’s blade whipped in greedily around Scalpel, but only far enough to snag and tear the skin at the side of the Mouser’s neck. The Mouser recovered balance crouching, his guard wide open, and only a backward leap saved him from Anra Devadoris’ second serpentlike strike. As he gathered himself to meet the next attack, he gaped amazedly, for never before in his life had he been faced by superior speed. Fafhrd’s face was white. Ahura, however, her head raised a little from the furry cloak, smiled with a weak and incredulous, but evil joy—a frankly vicious joy wholly unlike her former sly, intangible intimations of cruelty.
But Anra Devadoris smiled wider and nodded with a patronizing gratefulness at the Mouser, before gliding in. And now it was the blade Needle that darted in unhurried lightning attack, and Scalpel that whirred in frenzied defense.
