Swords Against the Shadowland

Before their eyes, his helmet transformed into a spitting black cat. Fangs sank deep into Nuulpha's hand; the beast wrapped itself ferociously around his arm and with razor-sharp talons raked his flesh to red ribbons. Not all his efforts could shake the creature loose.

"Wizard!" Fafhrd shouted, whipping out his sword again.

Once more, the earth began to buck and shake, to lift and roll in wave after wave, and to spin like a child's top. With an awkward and frustrated cry, the Northerner fell and thrashed on the ground. The Mouser, too, toppled helplessly sideways.

"Time to die, fools!" Malygris called. "Time for all to die— you, me, Lankhmar itself. Laurian is lost, so let all be lost!"

The Mouser twisted his head up from the grass and tried to gaze around. Malygris was somewhere close to judge by his voice. Yet, the wizard cloaked himself with still another damned illusion, rendering himself invisible. He twisted his head the other way. Fafhrd and Nuulpha kicked and struggled and twitched to no avail. The cat, at least, was gone. That, too, had only been an illusion.

A deranged voice boomed in the Mouser's ear. "Hear the death-cry of an entire city!"

Immediately the ground turned solid again. The Mouser found himself standing in the middle of a street. Flames leaped up from scores of buildings. The dead lay piled in the gutters and ditches. A cart trundled toward him, stacked with bodies. As it went by, he stared at the pale, horror-stricken faces, the bloody lips and the ruptured eyes. The driver coughed so severely he could barely work the reins and guide his draft-ox.

A trio of wild-eyed men bearing torches dashed past him. "Plague!" they screamed. "Plague!" Kicking open the door of a house, they proceeded to set fire to the interior,

"No!" shrieked an old woman. In her arms, she cradled a small boy. The child hung limp and fragile, weakly coughing. A thin red film trickled from its lips and down its chin as the Mouser stood helplessly by

"It s everything we have!" the old woman cried.

One of the men swung his torch, knocking her into the street. The cart rolled heedlessly across her back, crushing woman and child.

The Mouser fought down his revulsion and gathered his strength. "Illusion!" he cried, squeezing his eyes shut. "It's not real! None of it's real!"

Abruptly he was in the park again, sprawled on the grass, staring up at the sky through the thick trees.

"Isn't it?" Malygris's voice said coldly. "Listen carefully, little one. Listen to the groans of fear that come even now from the other side of the garden walls; now a cry goes up through the city, becomes a chorus; the despairing wails begin to mount."

The Mouser listened, and true enough he thought he heard, like a distant wind, the voices of terror, a lamentation rising in the night.

"Show yourself, coward!" Fafhrd said as he rose uncertainly to his feet. "Let me put another dagger in you."

"I have already won our duel, barbarian," Malygris answered. "I see the streaming mark of my curse upon you."

Fafhrd gave a stricken look and wiped the back of one hand across his mouth. It came away with a red smear.

Farther down the walkway, the darkness flickered in a peculiar manner, as if the wind had rippled a black curtain and parted it. Malygris's thin, bald form appeared, his arms folded into ragged bloodstained sleeves, his eyes burning with madness.

"Perhaps you'd like a preview of things to come," he said, his wild gaze fixed on Fafhrd.

A violent coughing wracked Fafhrd's mighty frame, bending him double as he clutched his chest and throat. His hair turned thin, lost its luster, and began to fall out. He spit blood into his hands; crimson spotted his lips and chin, the front of his tunic. Dark circles formed around his eyes, and the flesh began to hang upon his cheekbones.

Weakened legs gave way beneath him, and he fell gasping for air with spasming lungs. His musculature dissolved away until his bones began to show through bloodless flesh and his ribs showed right through his garments until he appeared little more than a pitifully thrashing skeleton with a veil of parchment draped over it.

A desperate mewling issued from Fafhrd's dehydrated lips, and he raised a supplicating hand toward the Mouser.

"Stop it!" the Mouser cried. In horror, he watched as Fafhrd's bloody teeth dropped out of his head. Drawing his dagger, Catsclaw, he prepared to throw, but suddenly there were three images of Malygris, then six, then nine, then more than the Mouser could count, all arrayed before him like an impossible, ragged army.

He screamed in frustration. Scooping up a handful of pebbles from the walkway, he flung them. Every image of Malygris reacted exactly the same, raising one arm to shield a laughing face.