The First Book of Lankhmar

by Fritz Leiber

  From a great tray of strangely hued and shaped mushrooms set before him like sweetmeats, the Mouser disdainfully selected and nibbled cautiously at the most normal looking, a gray one. Its perfumy savor masking bitterness offended him, and he spat it surreptitiously into his palm and dropped that hand under the table and flicked the wet chewed fragments to the floor. Then, while he sucked his cheek sourly, the fingers of both his hands began to play as slowly and nervously with the hilts of his sword Scalpel and his dagger Cat’s Claw as his mind played with his boredoms and murky wonderings.

  Along each side of the long narrow table, in great high-backed chairs widely spaced, sat six scrawny old men, bald or shaven of dome and chin, and chicken-fluted of jowl, and each clad only in a neat white loincloth. Eleven of these stared intently at nothing and perpetually tensed their meager muscles until even their ears seemed to stiffen, as though concentrating mightily in realms unseen. The twelfth had his chair half turned and was playing across a far corner of the table the board-game that made the occasional tiny rutching noises. He was playing it with the Mouser’s employer Gwaay, ruler of the Lower Levels of Quarmall and younger son to Quarmal, Lord of Quarmall.

  Although the Mouser had been three days in Quarmall’s depths he had come no closer to Gwaay than he was now, so that he knew him only as a pallid, handsome, soft-spoken youth, no realer to the Mouser, because of the eternal dimness and the invariable distance between them, than a ghost.

  The game was one the Mouser had never seen before and quite tricky in several respects.

  The board looked green, though it was impossible to be certain of colors in the unending twilight of the torches, and it had no perceptible squares or tracks on it, except for a phosphorescent line midway between the opponents, dividing the board into two equal fields.

  Each contestant started the game with twelve flat circular counters set along his edge of the board. Gwaay’s counters were obsidian-black, his ancient opponent’s marble-white, so the Mouser was able to distinguish them despite the dimness.

  The object of the game seemed to be to move the pieces randomly forward over uneven distances and get at least seven of them into your opponent’s field first.

  Here the trickiness was that one moved the pieces not with the fingers but only by looking at them intently. Apparently, if one gazed only at a single piece, one could move it quite swiftly. If one gazed at several, one could move them all together in a line or cluster, but more sluggishly.

  The Mouser was not yet wholly convinced that he was witnessing a display of thought-power. He still suspected threads, soundless air-puffings, surreptitious joggings of the board from below, powerful beetles under the counters, and hidden magnets!—for Gwaay’s pieces at least could by their color be some sort of lodestone.

  At the present moment Gwaay’s black counters and the ancient’s white ones were massed at the central line, shifting only a little now and then as the push-of-war went first a nail’s breadth one way, then the other. Suddenly Gwaay’s rearmost counter circled swiftly back and darted toward an open space at the board’s edge. Two of the ancient’s counters formed a wedge and thrust across the midline through the weak point thus created. As the ancient’s two detached counters returned to oppose them, Gwaay’s end-running counter sped across. The game was over—Gwaay gave no sign of this, but the ancient began fumblingly to return the pieces to their starting positions with his fingers.

  ‘Ho, Gwaay, that was easily won!’ the Mouser called out cockily. ‘Why not take on two of them together? The oldster must be a sorcerer of the Second Rank to play so weakly—or even a doddering apprentice of the Third.’

  The ancient shot the Mouser a venomous gaze. ‘We are, all twelve of us, sorcerers of the First Rank and have been from our youth,’ he proclaimed portentously. ‘As you should swiftly learn were one of us to point but a little finger against you.’

  ‘You have heard what he says,’ Gwaay called softly to the Mouser without looking at him.

  The Mouser, daunted no whit, at least outwardly, called back, ‘I still think you could beat two of them together, or seven—or the whole decrepit dozen! If they are of First Rank, you must be of Zero or Negative Magnitude.’

  The ancient’s lips worked speechlessly and bubbled with froth at that affront, but Gwaay only called pleasantly, ‘Were but three of my faithful magi to cease their sorcerous concentrations, my brother Hasjarl’s sendings would burst through from the Upper Levels and I would be stricken with all the diseases in the evil compendium, and a few others that exist in Hasjarl’s putrescent imagination alone—or perchance I should be erased entirely from this life.’

  ‘If nine out of twelve must be forever a-guarding you, they can’t get much sleep,’ the Mouser observed, calling back.

  ‘Times are not always so troublous,’ Gwaay replied tranquilly. ‘Sometimes custom or my father enjoins a truce. Sometimes the dark inward sea quiets. But today I know by certain signs that a major assault is being made on the liver and lights and blood and bones and rest of me. Dear Hasjarl has a double coven of sorcerers hardly inferior to my own—Second Rank, but High Second—and he whips them on. And I am as distasteful to Hasjarl, oh Gray Mouser, as the simple fruits of our manure beds are to your lips. Tonight, furthermore, my father Quarmal casts his horoscope in the tower of the Keep, high above Hasjarl’s Upper Levels, so it befits I keep all rat-holes closely watched.’

  ‘If it’s magical helpings you lack,’ the Mouser retorted boldly, ‘I have a spell or two that would frizzle your elder brother’s witches and warlocks!’ And truth to tell the Mouser had parchment-crackling in his pouch one spell—though one spell only—which he dearly wanted to test. It had been given him by his own wizardly mentor and master Sheelba of the Eyeless Face.

  Gwaay replied, more softly than ever, so that the Mouser felt that if there had been a yard more between them he would not have heard, ‘It is your work to ward from my physical body Hasjarl’s sword-sendings, in particular those of this great champion he is reputed to have hired. My sorcerers of the First Rank will shield off Hasjarl’s sorcerous billets-doux. Each to his proper occupation.’ He lightly clapped his hands together. A slim slavegirl appeared noiselessly in the dark archway beyond him. Without looking once at her, Gwaay softly commanded, ‘Strong wine for our warrior.’ She vanished.

  The ancient had at last laboriously shuffled the black-and-white counters into their starting positions, and Gwaay regarded his thoughtfully. But before making a move, he called to the Mouser, ‘If time still hangs heavy on your hands, devote some of it to selecting the reward you will take when your work is done. And in your search overlook not the maiden who brings you the wine. Her name is Ivivis.’

  At that the Mouser shut up. He had already chosen more than a dozen expensive be-charming objects from Gwaay’s drawers and niches and locked them in a disused closet he had discovered two levels down. If this should be discovered, he would explain that he was merely making an innocent preselection pending final choice, but Gwaay might not view it that way and Gwaay was sharp, judging from the way he’d noted the rejected mushroom and other things.

  It had not occurred to the Mouser to preempt a girl or two by locking her in the closet also, though it was admittedly an attractive idea.

  The ancient cleared his throat and said chucklingly across the board, ‘Lord Gwaay, let this ambitious sworder try his sorcerous tricks. Let him try them on me!’

  The Mouser’s spirits rose, but Gwaay only raised palm and shook his head slightly and pointed a finger at the board; the ancient began obediently to think a piece forward.

  The Mouser’s spirits fell. He was beginning to feel very much alone in this dim underworld where all spoke and moved in whispers. True, when Gwaay’s emissary had approached him in Lankhmar, the Mouser had been happy to take on this solo job. It would teach his loud-voiced sword-mate Fafhrd a lesson if his small gray comrade (and brain!) should disappear one night without a word…and then return perchance a year later w
ith a brimful treasure chest and a mocking smile.

  The Mouser had even been happy all the long caravan trip from Lankhmar south to Quarmall, along the Hlal River and past the Lakes of Pleea and through the Mountains of Hunger. It had been a positive pleasure to loll on a swaying camel beyond reach of Fafhrd’s hugeness and disputatious talk and boisterous ways, while the nights grew ever bluer and warmer and strange jewel-fiery stars came peering over the southern horizon.

  But now he had been three nights in Quarmall since his secret coming to the Lower Levels—three nights and days, or rather one hundred and forty-four interminable demi-hours of buried twilight—and he was already beginning in his secretest mind to wish that Fafhrd were here, instead of half a continent away in Lankhmar—or even farther than that if he’d carried out his misty plans to revisit his northern homeland. Someone to drink with, at any rate—and even a roaring quarrel would be positively refreshing after seventy-two hours of nothing but silent servitors, tranced sorcerers, stewed mushrooms, and Gwaay’s unbreakable soft-tongued equanimity.

  Besides, it appeared that all Gwaay wanted was a mighty sworder to nullify the threat of this champion Hasjarl was supposed to have hired as secretly as Gwaay had smuggled in the Mouser. If Fafhrd were here, he could be Gwaay’s sworder, while the Mouser would have better opportunity to peddle Gwaay his magical talents. The one spell he had in his pouch—he had got it from Sheelba in return for the tale of the Perversions of Clutho—would forever establish his reputation as an archimage of deadly might, he was sure.

  The Mouser came out of his musings to realize that the slavegirl Ivivis was kneeling before him—for how long she had been there he could not say—and proffering an ebony tray on which stood a squat stone jug and a copper cup.

  She knelt with one leg doubled, the other thrust behind her as in a fencing lunge, stretching the short skirt of her green tunic, while her arms reached the tray forward.

  Her slim body was most supple—she held the difficult pose effortlessly. Her fine straight hair was pale as her skin—both a sort of ghost color. It occurred to the Mouser that she would look very well in his closet, perhaps cherishing against her bosom the necklace of large black pearls he had discovered piled behind a pewter statuette in one of Gwaay’s niches.

  However, she was kneeling as far away from him as she could and still stretch him the tray, and her eyes were most modestly downcast, nor would she even flicker up their lids to his gracious murmurings—which were all the approach he thought suitable at this moment.

  He seized the jug and cup. Ivivis drooped her head still lower in acknowledgment, then flirted silently away.

  The Mouser poured a finger of blood-red, blood-thick wine and sipped. Its flavor was darkly sweet, but with a bitter undertaste. He wondered if it were fermented from scarlet toadstools.

  The black-and-white counters skittered rutchingly in obedience to Gwaay’s and the ancient’s peerings. The pale torch flames bent to the unceasing cool breeze, while the fan-slaves and their splayed bare feet on the leather belts and the great unseen fans themselves on their ponderous axles muttered unendingly, ‘Quarmall…Quarmall is downward tall…Quarmall…Quarmall is all…’

  In an equally vast room many levels higher yet still underground—a windowless room where torches flared redder and brighter, but their brightness nullified by an acrid haze of incense smoke, so that here too the final effect was exasperating dimness—Fafhrd sat at the table’s foot.

  Fafhrd was ordinarily a monstrously calm man, but now he was restlessly drumming fist on thumb-root, on the verge of admitting to himself that he wished the Gray Mouser were here, instead of back in Lankhmar or perchance off on some ramble in the desert-patched Eastern Lands.

  The Mouser, Fafhrd thought, might have more patience to unriddle the mystifications and crooked behavior-ways of these burrowing Quarmallians. The Mouser might find it easier to endure Hasjarl’s loathsome taste for torture, and at least the little gray fool would be someone human to drink with!

  Fafhrd had been very glad to be parted from the Mouser and from his vanities and tricksiness and chatter when Hasjarl’s agent had contacted him in Lankhmar, promising large pay in return for Fafhrd’s instant, secret, and solitary coming. Fafhrd had even dropped a hint to the small fellow that he might take ship with some of his Northerner countrymen who had sailed down across the Inner Sea.

  What he had not explained to the Mouser was that, as soon as Fafhrd was aboard her, the longship had sailed not north but south, coasting through the vast Outer Sea along Lankhmar’s western seaboard.

  It had been an idyllic journey, that—pirating a little now and then, despite the sour objections of Hasjarl’s agent, battling great storms and also the giant cuttlefish, rays, and serpents which swarmed ever thicker in the Outer Sea as one sailed south. At the recollection Fafhrd’s fist slowed its drumming and his lips almost formed a long smile.

  But now this Quarmall! This endless stinking sorcery! This torture-besotted Hasjarl! Fafhrd’s fist drummed fiercely again.

  Rules!—he mustn’t explore downward, for that led to the Lower Levels and the enemy. Nor must he explore upward—that way was to Father Quarmal’s apartments, sacrosanct. None must know of Fafhrd’s presence. He must satisfy himself with such drink and inferior wenches as were available in Hasjarl’s limited Upper Levels. (They called these dim labyrinths and crypts upper!)

  Delays!—they mustn’t muster their forces and march down and smash brother-enemy Gwaay; that was unthinkable rashness. They mustn’t even shut off the huge treadmill-driven fans whose perpetual creaking troubled Fafhrd’s ears and which sent the life-giving air on the first stages of its journey to Gwaay’s underworld, and through other rock-driven wells sucked out the stale—no, those fans must never be stopped, for Father Quarmal would frown on any battle-tactic which suffocated valuable slaves; and from anything Father Quarmal frowned on, his sons shrank shuddering.

  Instead, Hasjarl’s war-council must plot years-long campaigns weaponed chiefly with sorcery and envisioning the conquest of Gwaay’s Lower Levels a quarter tunnel—or a quarter mushroom field—at a time.

  Mystifications!—mushrooms must be served at all meals but never eaten or so much as tasted. Roast rat, on the other hand, was a delicacy to be crowed over. Tonight Father Quarmal would cast his own horoscope and for some reason that superstitious starsighting and scribbling would be of incalculable cryptic consequence. All maids must scream loudly twice when familiarities were suggested to them, no matter what their subsequent behavior. Fafhrd must never get closer to Hasjarl than a long dagger’s cast—a rule which gave Fafhrd no chance to discover how Hasjarl managed never to miss a detail of what went on around him while keeping his eyes fully closed almost all the time.

  Perhaps Hasjarl had a sort of short-range second sight, or perhaps the slave nearest him ceaselessly whispered an account of all that transpired, or perhaps—well, Fafhrd had no way of knowing.

  But somehow Hasjarl could see things with his eyes shut.

  This paltry trick of Hasjarl’s evidently saved his eyes from the irritation of the incense smoke, which kept those of Hasjarl’s sorcerers and of Fafhrd himself red and watering. However, since Hasjarl was otherwise a most energetic and restless prince—his bandy-legged misshapen body and mismated arms forever a-twitch, his ugly face always grimacing—the detail of eyes tranquilly shut was peculiarly jarring and shiversome.

  All in all, Fafhrd was heartily sick of the Upper Levels of Quarmall though scarcely a week in them. He had even toyed with the notion of double-crossing Hasjarl and hiring out to his brother or turning informer for his father—although they might, as employers, be no improvement whatever.

  But mostly he simply wanted to meet in combat this champion of Gwaay’s he kept hearing so much of—meet him and slay him and then shoulder his reward (preferably a shapely maiden with a bag of gold in her either hand) and turn his back forever on the accursed dim-tunneled whisper-haunted hill of Quarmall!

  In
an excess of exasperation he clapped his hand to the hilt of his longsword Graywand.

  Hasjarl saw that, although Hasjarl’s eyes were closed, for he quickly pointed his gnarly face down the long table at Fafhrd, between the ranks of the twenty-four heavily-robed, thickly-bearded sorcerers crowded shoulder to shoulder. Then, his eyelids still shut, Hasjarl commenced to twitch his mouth as a preamble to speech and with a twitter-tremble as overture called, ‘Ha, hot for battle, eh, Fafhrd boy? Keep him in the sheath! Yet tell me, what manner of man do you think this warrior—the one you protect me against—Gwaay’s grim man-slayer? He is said to be mightier than an elephant in strength, and more guileful than the very Zobolds.’ With a final spasm Hasjarl managed, still without opening his eyes, to look expectantly at Fafhrd.

  Fafhrd had heard all this sort of worrying time and time again during the past week, so he merely answered with a snort:

  ‘Zutt! They all say that about anybody. I know. But unless you get me some action and keep these old flea-bitten beards out of my sight—’

  Catching himself up short, Fafhrd tossed off his wine and beat with his pewter mug on the table for more. For although Hasjarl might have the demeanor of an idiot and the disposition of a ocelot, he served excellent ferment of grape ripened on the hot brown southern slopes of Quarmall hill…and there was no profit in goading him.

  Nor did Hasjarl appear to take offense—or if he did, he took it out on his bearded sorcerers, for he instantly began to instruct one to enunciate his runes more clearly, questioned another as to whether his herbs were sufficiently pounded, reminded a third that it was time to tinkle a certain silver bell thrice, and in general treated the whole two dozen as if they were a roomful of schoolboys and he their eagle-eyed pedagogue—though Fafhrd had been given to understand that they were all magi of the First Rank.

  The double coven of sorcerers in turn began to bustle more nervously, each with his particular spell—touching off more stinks, jiggling black drops out of more dirty vials, waving more wands, pin-stabbing more figurines, finger-tracing eldritch symbols more swiftly in the air, mounding up each in front of him from his bag more noisome fetishes, and so on.