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.
From his hours of sitting at the foot of the table, Fafhrd had learned that most of the spells were designed to inflict a noisome disease upon Gwaay: the Black Plague, the Red Plague, the Boneless Death, the Hairless Decline, the Slow Rot, the Fast Rot, the Green Rot, the Bloody Cough, the Belly Melts, the Ague, the Runs, and even the footling Nose Drip. Gwaay’s own sorcerers, he gathered, kept warding off these malefic spells with counter-charms, but the idea was to keep on sending them in hopes that the opposition would some day drop their guard, if only for a few moments.
Fafhrd rather wished Gwaay’s gang were able to reflect back the disease-spells on their dark-robed senders. He had become weary even of the abstruse astrologic signs stitched in gold and silver on those robes, and of the ribbons and precious wires knotted cabalistically in their heavy beards.
Hasjarl, his magicians disciplined into a state of furious busyness, opened wide his eyes for a change and with only a preliminary lip-writhe called to Fafhrd, “So you want action, eh, Fafhrd boy?”
Fafhrd, mightily irked at the last epithet, planted an elbow on the table and wagged that hand at Hasjarl and called back, “I do. My muscles cry to bulge. You’ve strong-looking arms, Lord Hasjarl. What say you we play the wrist game?”
Hasjarl tittered evilly and cried, “I go but now to play another sort of wrist game with a maid suspected of commerce with one of Gwaay’s pages. She never screamed even once … then. Wouldst accompany me and watch the action, Fafhrd?” And he suddenly shut his eyes again with the effect of putting on two tiny masks of skin—yet shut them so firmly there could be no question of his peering through the lashes.
Fafhrd shrank back in his chair, flushing a little. Hasjarl had divined Fafhrd’s distaste for torture on the Northerner’s first night in Quarmall’s Upper Levels and since then had never missed an opportunity to play on what Hasjarl must view as Fafhrd’s weakness.
To cover his embarrassment, Fafhrd drew from under his tunic a tiny book of stitched parchment pages. The Northerner would have sworn that Hasjarl’s eyelids had not flickered once since closing, yet now the villain cried, “The sigil on the cover of that packet tells me it is something of Ningauble of the Seven Eyes. What is it, Fafhrd?”
“Private matters,” the latter retorted firmly. Truth to tell, he was somewhat alarmed. The contents of the packet were such as he dared not permit Hasjarl see. And just as the villain somehow knew, there was indeed on the top parchment the bold black figure of a seven-fingered hand, each finger bearing an eye for a nail—one of the many signs of Fafhrd’s wizardly patron.