The bizarre sight that greeted him when he reached his goal stopped him on the stony threshold. Standing shin-deep and stark naked in a steaming marble tub shaped like a ridgy seashell, Hasjarl was berating and haranguing the great roomful around him. And every man jack of them—sorcerers, officers, overseers, pages bearing great fringy towels and dark red robes and other apparel—was standing quakingly still with cringing eyes, except for the three slaves soaping and laving their Lord with tremulous dexterity.
Fafhrd had to admit that Hasjarl naked was somehow more consistent—ugly everywhere—a kobold birthed from a hot-spring. And although his grotesque child-pink torso and mismated arms were a-writhe and a-twitch in a frenzy of apprehension, he had dignity of a sort.
He was snarling, “Speak, all of you, is there a precaution I have forgotten, a rite omitted, a rat-hole overlooked that Gwaay might creep through? Oh, that on this night when demons lurk and I must mind a thousand things and dress me for my father’s obsequies, I should be served by wittols! Are you all deaf and dumb? Where’s my great champion, who should ward me now? Where are my scarlet grommets? Less soap there, you—take that! You, Essem, are we guarded well above?—I don’t trust Flindach. And Yissim, have we guards enough below?—Gwaay is a snake who’ll strike through any gap. Dark Gods, defend me! Go to the barracks, Yissim, get more men, and reinforce our downward guards—and while you’re there, I mind me now, bid them continue Friska’s torture. Wring the truth from her! She’s in Gwaay’s plots—this night has made me certain. Gwaay knew my father’s death was imminent and laid invasion plans long weeks agone. Any of you may be his purchased spies! Oh where’s my champion? Where are my scarlet grommets?”
Fafhrd, who’d been striding forward, quickened his pace at mention of Friska. A simple inquiry at the torture chamber would reveal her escape and his part in it. He must create diversions. So he halted close in front of pink wet steaming Hasjarl and said boldly, “Here is your champion, Lord. And he counsels not sluggy defense, but some swift stroke at Gwaay! Surely your mighty mind has fashioned many a shrewd attacking stratagem. Launch you a thunderbolt!”
It was all Fafhrd could do to keep speaking forcefully to the end and not let his voice trail off as his attention became engrossed in the strange operation now going on. While Hasjarl crouched stock-still with head a-twist, an ashen-faced bath-slave had drawn out Hasjarl’s left upper eyelid by its lashes and was inserting into the hole in it a tiny flanged scarlet ring or grommet no bigger than a lentil. The grommet was carried on the tip of an ivory wand as thin as a straw, and the whole deed was being done by the slave with the anxiety of a man refilling the poison pouches of an untethered rattlesnake—if such an action might be imagined for purposes of comparison.
However, the operation was quickly completed, and then on the right eye too—and evidently with perfect satisfaction, since Hasjarl did not slash the slave with the soapy wet lash still dangling from his wrist—and when Hasjarl straightened up he was grinning broadly at Fafhrd.
“You counsel me well, champion,” he cried. “These other fools could do nothing but shake. There is a stroke long-planned that I’ll try now, one that won’t violate the obsequies. Essem, take slaves and fetch the dust—you know the stuff I mean—and meet me at the vents! Girls, sluice these suds off with tepid water. Boy, give me my slippers and my toweling robe!—those other clothes can wait. Follow me, Fafhrd!
But just then his red-grommeted gaze lit on his four-and-twenty bearded and hooded sorcerers standing apprehensive by their chairs.
“Back to your charms at once, you ignoramuses!” he roared at them. “I did not tell you to stop because I bathed! Back to your charms and send your plagues at Gwaay—red, black and green, nose drip and bloody rot—or I will burn your beards off to the eyelashes as prelude to more dire torturings! Haste, Essem! Come, Fafhrd!”
The Gray Mouser at that same moment was returning from his closet with Ivivis when Gwaay, velvet-shod and followed by barefoot slaves, came around a turn in the dim corridor so swiftly there was no evading him.
The young Lord of the Lower Levels seemed preternaturally calm and controlled, yet with the impression that under the calm was naught but quivering excitement and darting thought—so much so that it would hardly have surprised the Mouser if there had shone forth from Gwaay an aura of Blue Essence of Thunderbolt. Indeed, the Mouser felt his skin begin to prickle and sting as if just such an influence were invisibly streaming from his employer.
Gwaay scanned the Mouser and the pretty slavegirl in a flicker and spoke, his voice dancing rapid and gaysome.
“Well, Mouser, I can see you’ve sampled your reward ahead of time. Ah, youth and dim retreats and pillowed dreams and amorous hostessings—what else gilds life or makes it worth the guttering sooty candle? Was the girl skillful? Good! Ivivis, dear, I must reward your zeal. I gave Divis a necklace—would you one? Or I’ve a brooch shaped like a scorpion, ruby-eyed—”
The Mouser felt the girl’s hand quiver and chill in his and he cut in quickly with, “My demon speaks to me, Lord Gwaay, and tells me it’s a night when the Fates walk.”
Gwaay laughed. “Your demon has been listening behind the arras. He’s heard tales of my father’s swift departure.” As he spoke a drop formed at the end of his nose, between his nostrils. Fascinated, the Mouser watched it grow. Gwaay started to lift the back of his hand to it, then shook it off instead. For an instant he frowned, then laughed again.
“Aye, the Fates trod on Quarmall Keep tonight,” Gwaay said, only now his gay rapid voice was a shade hoarse.
“My demon whispers me further that there are dangerous powers abroad this night,” the Mouser continued.
“Aye, brother love and such,” Gwaay quipped in reply, but now his voice was a croak. A look of great startlement widened his eyes. He shivered as with a chill, and drops pattered from his nose. Three hairs came loose from his scalp and fell across his eyes. His slaves shrank back from him.
“My demon warns me we’d best use my Great Spell quickly against those powers,” the Mouser went on, his mind returning as always to Sheelba’s untested rune. “It destroys only sorcerers of the Second Rank and lower. Yours, being of the First Rank, will be untouched. But Hasjarl’s will perish.”
Gwaay opened his mouth to reply, but no words came forth, only a moaning nightmarish groan like that of a mute. Hectic spots shone forth high on his cheeks, and now it seemed to the Mouser that a reddish blotch was crawling up the right side of his chin, while on the left black spots were forming. A hideous stench became apparent. Gwaay staggered and his eyes brimmed with a greenish ichor. He lifted his hand to them, and its back was yellowish crusted and red-cracked. His slaves ran.
“Hasjarl’s sendings!” the Mouser hissed. “Gwaay’s sorcerers still sleep! I’ll rouse ‘em! Support him, Ivivis!” And turning he sped like the wind down corridor and up ramp until he reached Gwaay’s Hall of Sorcery. He entered it, clapping and whistling harshly between his teeth, for true enough the twelve scrawny loinclothed magi were still curled snoring on their wide high-backed chairs. The Mouser darted to each in turn, righting and shaking him with no gentle hands and shouting in his ear, “To your work! Anti-venom! Guard Gwaay!”
Eleven of the sorcerers roused quickly enough and were soon staring wide-eyed at nothingness, though with their bodies rocking and their heads bobbing for a while from the Mouser’s shaking—like eleven small ships just overpassed by a squall.
He was having a little more trouble with the twelfth, though this one was coming awake, soon would be doing his share, when Gwaay appeared of a sudden in the archway with Ivivis at his side, though not supporting him. The young Lord’s face gleamed as silvery clear in the dimness as the massy silver mask of him that hung in the niche above the arch.
“Stand aside, Gray Mouser, I’ll jog the sluggard,” he cried in a rippingly bright voice and snatching up a small obsidian jar tossed it toward the drowsy sorcerer.
It should have fallen no more than halfway between them. Did he mean to wake the ancient by its shattering? the Mouser wondered. But then Gwaay stared at it in the air and it quickened its speed fearfully. It was as if he had tossed up a ball, then batted it. Shooting forward like a bolt fired point-blank from a sinewy catapult it shattered the ancient’s skull and spattered the chair and the Mouser with his brains.