by Fritz Leiber
‘By right of death—suffered lately or soon—lately by my father, star-smitten and burned to ash—soon by my impious brother, stricken by my sorceries—and who dare not speak for himself, but must fee charlatans—I, Hasjarl, do proclaim myself sole Lord of Quarmall—and of all within it—demon or man!’
Then Hasjarl started to turn, most likely to order forward some of his guards to seize Gwaay’s party, or perhaps to wave an order to his sorcerers to strike them down magically, but in that instant the Mouser clapped his hands together loudly. At that signal, Ivivis, who’d stepped between him and the litter, threw back her cowl and opened her robe and let them fall behind her almost in one continuous gesture—and the sight revealed held everyone spellbound, even Hasjarl, as the Mouser had known it would.
Ivivis was dressed in a transparent black silk tunic—the merest blackly opal gleaming over her pale flesh and slimly youthful figure—but on her face she wore the white mask of a hag, female yet with mouth a-grin showing fangs and with fiercely staring eyes red-balled and white-irised, as the Mouser had swiftly repainted them at the direction of Gwaay, speaking from his silver statua. Long green hair mixed with white fell from the mask behind Ivivis and some thin strands of it before her shoulders. Upright before her in her right hand she held ritualistically a large pruning knife.
The Mouser pointed straight at Hasjarl, on whom the eyes of the mask were already fixed, and he commanded in his deepest voice, ‘Bring that one here to me, oh Witch-Mother!’ and Ivivis stepped swiftly forward.
Hasjarl took a backward step and stared horror-enchanted at his approaching nemesis, all motherly-cannibalistic above, all elfin-maidenly below, with his father’s eyes to daunt him and with the cruel knife to suggest judgment upon himself for the girls he had lustingly done to death or lifelong crippledness.
The Mouser knew he had success within his grasp and there remained only the closing of the fingers.
At that instant there sounded from the other end of the chamber a great muffled gong-note deep as Gwaay’s had been silvery-high, shuddering the bones by its vibrancy. Then from either side of the narrow black archway at the opposite end of the hall from Gwaay’s litter, there rose to the ceiling with a hollow roar twin pillars of white fire, commanding all eyes and shattering the Mouser’s spell.
The Mouser’s most instant reaction was inwardly to curse such superior stage-management.
Smoke billowed out against the great black squares of the ceiling, the pillars sank to white jets, man-high, and there strode forward between them the figure of Flindach in his heavily embroidered robes and with the Golden Symbol of Power at his waist, but with the Cowl of Death thrown back to show his blotched warty face and his eyes like those in Ivivis’ mask. The High Steward threw wide his arms in a proud imploring gesture and in his deep and resonant voice that filled the Ghost Hall recited thus:
‘Oh Gwaay! Oh Hasjarl! In the name of your father burned and beyond the stars, and in the name of your grandmother whose eyes I too bear, think of Quarmall! Think of the security of this your kingdom and of how your wars ravage her. Forego your enmities, abjure your brotherly hates, and cast your lots now to settle the succession—the winner to be Lord Paramount here, the loser instantly to depart with great escort and coffers of treasure, and journey across the Mountains of Hunger and the desert and the Sea of the East and live out his life in the Eastern Lands in all comfort and high dignity. Or if not by customary lot, then let your champions battle to the death to decide it—all else to follow the same. Oh Hasjarl, oh Gwaay, I have spoken.’ And he folded his arms and stood there between the two pale flame pillars still burning high as he.
Fafhrd had taken advantage of the shocks to seize his sword and ax from the ones holding them nervelessly, and to push forward by Hasjarl as if properly to ward him standing alone and unshielded in front of his men. Now Fafhrd lightly nudged Hasjarl and whispered through his bag-mask, ‘Take him up on it, you were best. I’ll win your stuffy loathy catacomb kingdom for you—aye, and once rewarded depart from it swifter ever than Gwaay!’
Hasjarl grimaced angrily at him and turning toward Flindach shouted,—‘I am Lord Paramount here, and no need of lots to determine it! Yes, and I have my arch-magi to strike down any who sorcerously challenge me!—and my great champion to smite to mincemeat any who challenge me with swords!’
Fafhrd threw out his chest and glared about through red-ringed eyeholes to back him up.
The silence that followed Hasjarl’s boast was cut as if by keenest knife when a voice came piercingly dulcet from the unstirring low mound on the litter, cornered by its four impassive tread-slaves, or from a point just above it.
‘I, Gwaay of the Lower Levels, am Lord Paramount of Quarmall, and not my poor brother there, for whose damned soul I grieve. And I have sorceries which have saved my life from the evilest of his sorceries and I have a champion who will smite his champion to chaff!’
All were somewhat daunted at that seemingly magical speaking except Hasjarl, who giggled sputteringly, twitching a-main, and then as if he and his brother were children alone in a playroom, cried out, ‘Liar and squeaker of lies! Effeminate boaster! Puny charlatan! Where is this great champion of yours? Call him forth! Bid him appear! Oh confess it now, he’s but a figment of your dying thoughts! Oh, ho, ho, ho!’
All began to look around wonderingly at that, some thoughtful, some apprehensive. But as no figure appeared, certainly not a warlike one, some of Hasjarl’s men began to snigger with him. Others of them took it up.
The Gray Mouser had no wish to risk his skin—not with Hasjarl’s champion looking a meaner foe every moment, side armed with ax like Fafhrd and now apparently even acting as counselor to his lord—perhaps a sort of captain-general behind the curtain, as he was behind Gwaay’s—yet the Mouser was almost irresistibly tempted by this opportunity to cap all surprises with a master surprise.
And in that instant there sounded forth again Gwaay’s eerie bell-voice, coming not from his vocal cords, for they were rotted away, but created by the force of his deathless will marshaling the unseen atomies of the air:
‘From the blackest depths, unseen by all, in very center of the Hall—Appear, my champion!’
That was too much for the Mouser. Ivivis had reassumed her hooded black robe while Flindach had been speaking, knowing that the terror of her hag-mask and maiden-form was a fleeting thing, and she again stood beside the Mouser as his acolyte. He handed her his wand in one stiff gesture, not looking at her, and lifting his hands to the throat of his robe, he threw it and his hood back and dropped them behind him, and drawing Scalpel whistling from her sheath leaped forward with a heelstamp to the top of the three steps and crouched glaring with sword raised above head, looking in his gray silks and silver a figure of menace, albeit a rather small one and carrying at his belt a wineskin as well as a dagger.
Meanwhile Fafhrd, who had been facing Hasjarl to have a last word with him, now ripped off his red bag-mask, whipped Graywand screaming from his sheath, and leaped forward likewise with an intimidating stamp.
Then they saw and recognized each other.
The pause that ensued was to the spectators more testimony to the fearsomeness of each—the one so dreadful-tall, the other metamorphosed from sorcerer. Evidently they daunted each other greatly.
Fafhrd was the first to react, perhaps because there had been something hauntingly familiar to him all along about the manner and speech of the Black Sorcerer. He started a gargantuan laugh and managed to change it in the nick into a screaming snarl of, ‘Trickster! Chatterer! Player at magic! Sniffer after spells. Wart! Little Toad!’
The Mouser, mayhap the more amazed because he had noted and discounted the resemblance of the masked champion to Fafhrd, now took his comrade’s cue—and just in time, for he was about to laugh too—and boomed back, ‘Boaster! Bumptious brawler! Bumbling fumbler after girls! Oaf! Lout! Big Feet!’
The taut spectators thought these taunts a shade mild, but the spiritedness of t
heir delivery more than made up for that.
Fafhrd advanced another stamp, crying, ‘Oh, I have dreamed of this moment. I will mince you from your thickening toenails to your cheesy brain!’
The Mouser bounced for his stamp, so as not to lose height going down the steps, and skirled out the while, ‘All my rages find happy vent. I will gut you of each lie, especially those about your northern travels!’
Then Fafhrd cried, ‘Remember Ool Hrusp!’ and the Mouser responded, ‘Remember Lithquil!’ and they were at it.
Now for all most of the Quarmallians knew, Lithquil and Ool Hrusp might be and doubtless were places where the two heroes had earlier met in fight, or battlefields where they had warred on opposing sides, or even girls they had fought over. But in actuality Lithquil was the Mad Duke of the city of Ool Hrusp, to humor whom Fafhrd and the Mouser had once staged a most realistic and carefully rehearsed duel lasting a full half hour. So those Quarmallians who anticipated a long and spectacular battle were in no wise disappointed.
First Fafhrd aimed three mighty slashing blows, any one enough to cleave the Mouser in twain, but the Mouser deflected each at the last moment strongly and cunningly with Scalpel, so that they whished an inch above his head, singing the harsh chromatic song of steel on steel.
Next the Mouser thrust thrice at Fafhrd, leaping skimmingly like a flying fish and disengaging his sword each time from Graywand’s parry. But Fafhrd always managed to slip his body aside, with nearly incredible swiftness for one so big, and the thin blade would go hurtlessly by him.
This interchange of slash and thrust was but the merest prologue to the duel, which now carried into the area of the dried-up fountain pool and became very wild-seeming indeed, forcing the spectators back more than once, while the Mouser improvised by gushing out some of his thick blood-red toadstool wine when they were momentarily pressed body-to-body in a fierce exchange, so that they both appeared sorely wounded.
There were three in the Ghost Hall who took no interest in this seeming masterpiece of duels and hardly watched it. Ivivis was not one of them—she soon threw back her hood, tore off her hag-mask, and came following the fight close, cheering on the Mouser. Nor were they Brilla, Kewissa and Friska—for at the sound of swords the two girls had insisted on opening their door a crack despite the eunuch’s solicitous apprehensions and now they were all peering through, head above head, Friska in the midst agonizing at Fafhrd’s perils.
Gwaay’s eyes were clotted and the lids glued with ichor, and the tendons were dissolved whereby he might have lifted his head. Nor did he seek to explore with his sorcerous senses in the direction of the fight. He clung to existence solely by the thread of his great hatred for his brother, all else of life was to him less than a shadow-show; yet his hate held for him all of life’s wonder and sweetness and high excitement—it was enough.
The mirror image of that hate in Hasjarl was at this moment strong enough too to dominate wholly his healthy body’s instincts and hungers and all the plots and images in his crackling thoughts. He saw the first stroke of the fight, he saw Gwaay’s litter unguarded, and then as if he had seen entire a winning combination of chess and been hypnotized by it, he made his move without another cogitation.
Widely circling the fight and moving swiftly in the shadows like a weasel, he mounted the three steps by the wall and headed straight for the litter.
There were no ideas in his mind at all, but there were some shadowy images distortedly seen as from a great distances—one of himself as a tiny child toddling by night along a wall to Gwaay’s crib, to scratch him with a pin.
He did not spare a glance for the tread-slaves, and it is doubtful if they even saw, or at least took note of him, so rudimentary were their minds.
He leaned eagerly between two of them and curiously surveyed his brother. His nostrils drew in at the stench, and his mouth contracted to its tightest sphincter yet still smiled.
He plucked a wide dagger of blued steel from a sheath at his belt and poised it above his brother’s face, which by its plagues was almost unrecognizable as such. The honed edges of the dagger were tiny hooks directed back from the point.
The sword-clashing below reached one of its climaxes, but Hasjarl did not mark it.
He said softly, ‘Open your eyes, Brother. I want you to speak once before I slay you.’
There was no reply from Gwaay—not a motion, not a whisper, not a bubble of retching.
‘Very well,’ Hasjarl said harshly, ‘then die a prim shut-mouth,’ and he drove down the dagger.
It stopped violently a hairbreadth above Gwaay’s upper cheek, and the muscles of Hasjarl’s arm driving it were stabbingly numbed by the jolt they got.
Gwaay did open his eyes then, which was not very pleasant to behold since there was nothing in them but green ichor.
Hasjarl instantly closed his own eyes, but continued to peer down through the holes in his upper lids.
Then he heard Gwaay’s voice like a silver mosquito by his ear saying, ‘You have made a slight oversight, dear brother. You have chosen the wrong weapon. After our father’s burning you swore to me my life was sacrosanct—until you killed me by crushing. “Until I crush it out,” you said. The gods hear only our words, Brother, not our intentions. Had you come lugging a boulder, like the curious gnome you are, you might have accomplished your aim.’
‘Then I’ll have you crushed!’ Hasjarl retorted angrily, leaning his face closer and almost shouting. ‘Aye, and I’ll sit by and listen to your bones crunch—what bones you have left! You’re as great a fool as I, Gwaay, for you too after our father’s funeral promised not to slay me. Aye, and you’re a greater fool, for now you’ve spilled to me your little secret of how you may be slain.’
‘I swore not to slay you with spells or steel or venom or with my hand,’ the bright insect voice of Gwaay replied. ‘Unlike you, I said nothing at all of crushing.’
Hasjarl felt a strange tingling in his flesh while in his nostrils there was an acrid odor like that of lightning mingling with the stink of corruption.
Suddenly Gwaay’s hands thrust up to the palms out of his overly rich bedclothes. The flesh was shredding from the finger bones which pointed straight up, invokingly.
Hasjarl almost started back, but caught himself. He’d die, he told himself, before he’d cringe from his brother. He was aware of strong forces all about him.
There was a muffled grating noise and then an odd faintly pattering snowfall on the coverlet and on Hasjarl’s neck…a thin snowfall of pale gritty stuff…grains of mortar…
‘Yes, you will crush me, dear brother,’ Gwaay admitted tranquilly. ‘But if you would know how you will crush me, recall my small special powers…or else look up!’
Hasjarl turned his head, and there was the great black basalt slab big as the litter rushing down, and the one moment of life left Hasjarl was consumed in hearing Gwaay say, ‘You are wrong again, my comrade.’
Fafhrd stopped a sword-slash in midcourse when he heard the crash and the Mouser almost nicked him with his rehearsed parry. They lowered their blades and looked, as did all others in the central section of the Ghost Hall.
Where the litter had been was now only the thick basalt slab mortar-streaked with the litter-poles sticking out from under, and above in the ceiling the rectangular white hole whence the slab had been dislodged. The Mouser thought, That’s a larger thing to move by thinking than a checker or jar, yet the same black substance.
Fafhrd thought, Why didn’t the whole roof fall?—there’s the strangeness.
Perhaps the greatest wonder of the moment was the four tread-slaves still standing at the four corners, eyes forward, fingers locked across their chests, although the slab had missed them only by inches in its falling.
Then some of Hasjarl’s henchmen and sorcerers who had seen their Lord sneak to the litter now hurried up to it but fell back when they beheld how closely the slab approached the floor and marked the tiny rivulet of blood that ran from under it. Their minds
quailed at the thought of those brothers who had hated each other so dearly, and now their bodies locked in an obscene interpenetrating and commingling embrace.
Meanwhile Ivivis came running to the Mouser and Friska to Fafhrd to bind up their wounds, and were astonished and mayhap a shade irked to be told there were none. Kewissa and Brilla came too and Fafhrd with one arm around Friska reached out the wine-bloody hand of the other and softly closed it around Kewissa’s wrist, smiling at her friendlily.
Then the great muffled gong-note sounded again and the twin pillars of white flame briefly roared to the ceiling to either side of Flindach. They showed by their glare that many men had entered by the narrow archway behind Flindach and now stood around him: stout guardsmen from the companies of the Keep with weapons at the ready, and several of his own sorcerers.
As the flame-pillars swiftly shrank, Flindach imperiously raised hand and resonantly spoke:
‘The stars which may not be cheated foretold the doom of the Lord of Quarmall. All of you heard those two’—he pointed toward the shattered litter—‘proclaim themselves Lord of Quarmall. So the stars are twice satisfied. And the gods, who hear our words to each tiniest whisper, and order our fates by them, are content. It remains that I reveal to you the next Lord of Quarmall.’
He pointed at Kewissa and intoned, ‘The next Lord of Quarmall but one sleeps and waxes in the womb of her, wife of the Quarmal so lately honored with burnings and immolations and ceremonious rites.’
Kewissa shrank, and her blue eyes went wide. Then she began to beam.
Flindach continued, ‘It still remains that I reveal to you the next Lord of Quarmall, who shall tutor Queen Kewissa’s babe until he arrives at manhood a perfect king and all-wise sorcerer, under whom our buried realm will enjoy perpetual inward peace and outward-raiding prosperity.’
Then Flindach reached behind his left shoulder. All thought he purposed to draw forward the Cowl of Death over his head and brows and hideous warty winy cheeks for some still more solemn speaking. But instead he grasped his neck by the short hairs of the nape and drew it upward and forward and his scalp and all his hair with it, and then the skin of his face came off with his scalp as he drew his hand down and to the side, and there was revealed, sweat-gleaming a little, the unblemished face and jutting nose and full mobile smiling lips of Quarmal, while his terrible blood-red white-irised eyes gazed at them all mildly.
