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minds believed. The black web muffled a little a repetition of the eerie,
wailing call, which came from the seventh door ahead and this .time ended in a
gleeful chittering and cackling as insane as the emotions of the two
attackers.
Here, too, doors were thudding shut. In an ephemeral flash of rationality, it
occurred to the Mouser that it was not he and Fafhrd the thieves feared, for
they had not been seen yet, but rather Hristomilo and his magic, even though
working in defense of Thieves' House.
Even the map room, whence counterattack would most likely erupt, was closed
off by a huge 'oaken, iron-studded door.
They were now twice slashing the black, clinging, rope-
thick spider web for every single step they drove them-
selves forward. While midway between the map and magic rooms, there was
forming on the inky web, ghostly at first but swiftly growing more
substantial, a black spider as big as a wolf.
The Mauser slashed heavy cobweb before it, dropped back two steps, then buried
himself at it in 'a high leap.
Scalpel thrust through it, striking amidst its eight new-
formed jet eyes, and it collapsed like a daggered bladder, loosing a vile
stink.
Then he and Fafhrd were looking into the magic room, the 'alchemist's chamber.
It was much as they had seen it before, except some things were doubled, or
multiplied
even further.
On the long table two blue-boiled cucurbits bubbled and roiled, their heads
shooting out a solid, writhing rope more swiftly than moves the black
swamp-cobra, which can run down a man and not into twin receivers, but into
the open air of the room (if any of the air in Thieves'
House could have been called open then) to weave a barrier between their
swords and Hristomilo, who once more stood tall though hunch-backed over his
sorcerous, brown parchment, though this time his exultant gaze was chiefly
fixed on Fafhrd and the Mouser, with only an occasional downward glance at the
text of the spell he drummingly intoned.
While at the other end of the table, in web-free space, there bounced not only
Slivikin, but also a huge rat match-
ing him in size in all members except the head.
From the ratholes at the foot of the walls, red eyes glittered 'and gleamed in
pairs.
With a bellow of rage Fafhrd began slashing at the black barrier, but the
ropes were replaced from the cucurbit heads as swiftly as he sliced them,
while the cut ends, instead of drooping slackly, now 'began to strain hungrily
toward him like constrictive snakes or strangle-
vines.
He suddenly shifted Graywand to his left hand, drew his long knife and buried
it at the sorcerer. Flashing toward its mark, it cut through three strands,
was de-
flected and slowed by a fourth and fifth, almost halted by a sixth, and ended
hanging futilely in the curled grip of a seventh.
Hristomilo laughed cacklingly--and grinned, showing his huge upper incisors,
while Slivikin chittered in ecstasy and bounded the higher.
"The Mouser hurled Cat's Claw with no better result worse, indeed, since his
action gave two darting smog-
strands time to curl hamperingly around his sword-hand and stranglingly around
his neck. Black rats came racing out of the big holes at the cluttered base of
the walls.
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Meanwhile other strands snaked around Fafhrd's ankles, knees and left arm,
almost toppling him. But even as he fought for balance, he jerked Vlana's
dagger from his belt and raised it over his shoulder, its silver hilt glowing,
its blade brown with dried rat's-blood.
The grin left Hristomilo's face as he saw it. The sor-
cerer screamed strangely and importuningly then, and drew back from his
parchment and .the table, and raised clawed clubhands to ward off doom.
Vlana's dagger sped unimpeded through the black web its strands even seemed to
part for it and betwixt the sorcerer's warding hands, to bury itself to the
hilt in his right eye.
He screamed thinly in dire agony and clawed 'at his face.
The black web writhed as if in death spasm.
The cucurbits shattered as one, spilling their lava on the scarred table,
putting out the blue flames even as the thick wood of the table began to smoke
a little at the
lava's edge. Lava dropped 'with plops on the dark marble floor.
With a faint, final scream Hristomilo pitched forward, hands clutched to 'his
eyes above 'his jutting nose, silver dagger-hilt protruding between his
fingers.
The web grew faint, like wet ink washed with a gush of clear water.
The Mouser raced forward and transfixed Slivikin and the huge rat with one
thrust of Scalpel before the beasts knew what was happening. They too died
swiftly with thin screams, while all the other rats turned tail and fled back
down their holes swift almost as black lightning.
Then the last trace of night-smog or sorcery-smoke vanished, and Fafhrd and
the Mouser found themselves standing alone with three dead bodies amidst a
profound silence .that seemed to fill not only this room but all
Thieves' House. Even the cucurbit-lava had ceased to move, was hardening, -and
the wood of the table no longer smoked.
Their madness was gone and all their rage, too--vented to the last red atomy
and glutted to more 'than satiety.
They had no more urge to kill Krovas or any other thieves than to swat flies.
With horrified inner-eye Fafhrd saw the pitiful face of the child-thief
he'd skewered in his lunatic anger.
Only their grief remained with them, diminished not one whit, but rather
growing greater--that and an ever more swiftly growing revulsion from all that
was around them: the dead, the disordered magic room, all Thieves'
House, all of the city of Lankhmar to its last stinking alleyway. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]