Fafhrd gazed back at the Mouser with a grimace and shrug, then squatting one-legged until the knee of his bound-up leg touched the floor, .advanced half ‘his face past the doorjamb. After a bit, without otherwise chang-ing position, he beckoned the Mouser to approach. The latter slowly thrust half his face past the jamb, just above Fafhrd’s.
What they saw was a room somewhat smaller than that of ‘the great map and lit by central lamps that burnt blue-white instead of customary yellow. The floor was marble, darkly colorful and complexly whorled. The dark walls were hung with astrological and anthropomantic charts and instruments of magic and shelved with crypti-cally labeled porcelain jars and also with vitreous flasks and glass pipes of the oddest shapes, some filled with colored fluids, but many gleamingly empty. At the foot of the walls, where the shadows were thickest, broken and discarded stuff was irregularly heaped, as if swept out of the way and forgot, and here and ‘there opened a large rathole.
In the center ‘of the room and brightly illuminated by contrast was a long table with thick top and many stout legs. The Mouser thought fleetingly of a centipede and then of ‘the bar at the Eel, for the table top was densely stained and scarred by many a spilt elixir and many a deep black burn by fire or acid or both.
In the midst of the table an alembic was working. The lamp’s flame deep blue, this one kept a-~oil in the large crystal cucurbit a dark, viscid fluid with here and there diamond glints. From out of the thick, .seething stuff, strands of a darker vapor streamed upward to crowd through the cucurbit’s narrow mouth and stain—oddly, with bright scarlet—the transparent head and then, dead black now, flow down the narrow pipe from the head into a spherical crystal receiver, larger even than the cucurbit, and there curl and weave about like so many coils of living black cord—an endless, skinny, ebon serpent.
Behind the left end of the table stood a tall, yet hunch-backed man in black robe and hood, which shadowed more than hid a face of which ‘the most prominent features were a long, thick, pointed nose with out-jutting, almost chinless mouth. His complexion was sallow-gray like sandy clay. A short-haired, bristly, gray beard grew high on his wide cheeks. From under a receding forehead and bushy gray brows, wide-set eyes looked intently down at an age-browned scroll, which his disgustingly small clubhands, knuckles big, short backs gray-bristled, ceaselessly unrolled and rolled up again. The only move his eyes ever made, besides the short side-to-side one as he read the lines he was rapidly intoning, was an occasional glance at the alembic.
On the other end of the table, beady eyes darting from the sorcerer to the alembic and back again, crouched a small black beast, the first glimpse of which made Fafhrd dig fingers painfully into the Mouser’s shoulder and the latter almost gasp, but not from the pain. It was most like a rat, yet it had a higher forehead and closer-set eyes, while its forepaws, which it constantly rubbed together in what seemed restless glee, looked like tiny copies of the sorcerer’s clubhands.
Simultaneously yet independently, Fafhrd and the Mouser each became certain it was the beast which had gutter-escorted Slivikin and his mate, then fled, and each recalled what lvrian had said about a witch’s familiar and Vlana about the likelihood of Krovas employing a warlock.
The tempo of ‘the incantation quickened; the blue-white flames brightened and hissed audibly; the fluid in ‘the cucurbit grew thick as lava; great bubbles formed and loudly broke; the black rope in the receiver writhed like a nest of snakes; there was an increasing sense of invisible presences; the supernatural tension grew almost unendur-able, and Fafhrd and the Mouser were hard put to keep silent the open-mouthed gapes by which they now breathed, and each feared his heartbeat could be heard yards away.
Abruptly the incantation peaked and broke off, like a drum struck very hard, then instantly silenced by palm and fingers outspread against the head. With a bright flash and dull explosion, cracks innumerable appeared in the cucurbit; its crystal became white and opaque, yet it did not shatter or drip. The head lifted a span, hung there, fell back. While two black nooses appeared among the coils in the receiver and suddenly narrowed until they were only two big black knots.
The sorcerer grinned, let the end of the parchment roll up with a snap, and shifted his gaze from the receiver to his familiar, while the latter chittered shrilly and ‘bounded up and down in rapture.
“Silence, Slivikin! Comes now your time to race and strain and sweat,” the sorcerer cried, speaking pidgin Lankhmarese now, but so rapidly and in so squeakingly high-pitched a voice that Fafhrd and the Mauser could barely follow him. They did, however, both realize they had been completely mistaken as to ‘the identity of Slivikin. In moment of disaster, ‘the fat thief had called to the witch-beast for help rather than to his human comrade.
“Yes, master,” Slivikin squeaked back no less clearly, in an ‘instant revising the Mouser’s opinions about talking animals. He continued in .the same fife-like, fawning tones, “Harkening in obedience, Hristomilo.”
Hristomilo ordered m whiplash pipings, “To your appointed work! See to lit you summon an ample sufficiency of feasters!-I want the bodies stripped to skeletons, so the bruises of the enchanted smog and all evidence of death by suffocation will be vanished utterly. But forget not the loot! On your mission, now—depart!”
Slivikin, who at every command had bobbed his head in manner reminiscent of his bouncing, now squealed, “I’ll see it done!” and gray lightning-like, leaped a long leap to the floor and down an inky rathole.
Hristomilo, rubbing together his disgusting clubhands much as Slivikin had his, cried chucklingly, “What Slevyas lost, my magic has re-won!”
Fafhrd and the Mouser drew back out of the doorway, partly for fear of being seen, partly in revulsion from what they had seen and heard, and in poignant if useless pity for Slevyas, whoever he might be, and for the other unknown victims of the rat-like and conceivably rat-related sorcerer’s deathspells, poor strangers already dead and due to have their flesh eaten from their bones.
Fafhrd wrested the green bottle from the Mouser and, though almost-gagging on the rotten-flowery reek, gulped a large, stinging mouthful. The Mouser couldn’t quite bring himself to do the same, but was comforted by the spirits of wine he inhaled.
Then he saw, beyond Fafhrd, standing before the doorway to the map room, a richly clad man with gold-hilted knife jewel-scabbarded at his side. His sunken-eyed face was prematurely wrinkled by responsibility, overwork, and authority, and framed by neatly cropped black bail and beard. Smiling, he silently beckoned them with a serpentine gesture.
The Mouser and Fafhrd obeyed, the latter returning the green bottle to the former, who recapped it and thrust it under his left elbow with well-concealed irritation.
Each guessed their summoner was Krovas, the Guild’s Grandmaster. Once again Fafhrd marveled, as he hob-bledehoyed along, reeling and belching, how Kos or the Fates were guiding him to his target tonight. The Mouser, more alert and more apprehensive too, was reminding himself that they had been directed by the niche-guards to report to Krovas, so that the situation, if not develop-ing quite in accord with his own misty plans, was still not deviating disastrously.
Yet not even his alertness, nor Fafhrd’s primeval in-stincts, gave them forewarning as they followed Krovas into the map room.
Two steps inside, each of them was shoulder-grabbed and bludgeon-menaced by a pair of ruffians further armed with knives tucked in their belts.
“All secure. Grandmaster,” one of the ruffians rapped out.
Krovas swung the highest-backed chair around and sat down, eyeing them coolly.
“What brings two stinking, drunken beggar-guildsmen into the top-restricted precincts of the masters?” he asked quietly.
The Mouser felt the sweat of relief bead his forehead.
The disguises he bad brilliantly conceived were still working, taking in even the head man, though he had spotted Fafhrd’s tipsiness. Resuming his blind-man manner, he quavered, “We were directed by the guard above the Cheap Street door to report to you in person, great Krovas, the Night Beggarmaster being on furlough for reasons of sexual hygiene. Tonight we’ve made good haul!”
And fumbling in .his purse, ignoring as far as possible the tightened grip on his shoulders, he brought out a golden coin and displayed it tremble-handed.
“Spare me your inexpert acting,” Krovas said sharply.
“I’m not one of your marks. And take that rag off your eyes.”
The Mouser obeyed and stood to attention again inso-far as his pinioning would permit, and smiling the more seeming carefree because of his reawakening uncertain-ties. Conceivably he wasn’t doing quite as brilliantly as he’d ‘thought.
Krovas leaned forward and said placidly yet piercingly, “Granted you were so ordered, why were you spying into a room beyond this one when I spotted you?”