Swords Against the Shadowland

"She has no one," Demptha Negatarth said, coming to his side. "We found her an hour ago unconscious in an alley. Perhaps we'll locate relatives in time."

"Or perhaps not?" the Mouser said grimly.

Again, Demptha turned that potent gaze upon the Mouser. "You know her?"

The Mouser shook his head, fighting the emotion that tried to choke him. "No," he answered. "She came into the Silver Eel a few nights ago selling dollies."

Nuulpha bent down beside the child for a closer look. "I remember," he said as he brushed the strand from her cheek and wiped her face with a corner of the blanket. "You bought them all—her poppets, she called them."

The Mouser's hands clenched into tight fists. "How can Rokkarsh turn his back on this? How can he turn a blind eye?"

Jesane spoke with surprising bitterness. "Since when did an Overlord, or any of the Great Families, give a damn for the common people and the poor?" She turned to the rest of the room, waving her arms as she shouted. "Be quiet, everyone! Be quiet! Listen!"

Except for a muffled cough, the entire chamber grew silent.

As if from far away a softly merry music came. The play of pipes and the beat of a dumbek swelled, but distantly, then faded only to be replaced by lutes and tambourines and bells. Those, too, faded against the swell of laughter and voices and more music.

A hacking cough in the chamber set off a chorus of coughing. Someone began to cry, and someone else cooed gentle words of consolation.

Jesane turned back to the Mouser, her eyes burning with fury. "That is the Midsummer Festival above our heads. From hundreds of miles around, people are pouring into Lankhmar, bringing goods to trade, spending money, pouring untold wealth into city tills and coffers. But should word spread that a plague held sway in Lankhmar—festival or no festival, do you think they would come then?"

Nuulpha rose, his face appearing suddenly weary, his demeanor haggard. "Rokkarsh has turned no blind eye, my friend," he said. "People have been quietly disappearing in Lankhmar for some time. A few, we have brought down here to care for in hidden safety. More lie in the Overlord's secret lime pits far outside the city, and any who dare to hint or speak of a plague are swiftly seized. They, too, disappear."

Trembling with anger, Jesane raised a hand to her mouth, turned her head away, and coughed.

With a worried look, Demptha Negatarth took her hand in his and patted it. "Come, daughter. Rest awhile and have some broth. You've done enough this day."

"There's more to do," she said stubbornly, freeing her hand and brushing back her hair. Still, she allowed a tight smile. "But I'll take the broth."

The Mouser watched as she left them. A few paces away, she paused beside a column to speak to someone.

A shadow of a memory flitted through his mind—something in the juxtaposition of her silhouette beside that column. He tried to grasp it again, but ghost-like, it slipped away.

"Your daughter?" the Mouser said, turning back to Demptha Negatarth.

A deep grief settled over the old man's features. "Tainted by my magicks," he said in a voice thick with regret. "This illness has changed her, made her harder and stronger than most men. Yet, I am more proud of her than I have ever been."

The Mouser nodded, turning for one more glimpse of her. "Grief is nothing if not a sword," he said.

Demptha Negatarth tugged at the Mouser's sleeve. "Grief we have in plenty," he said, leading the Mouser again toward a long table at the farthest end of the chamber. "It is you, I think, who will provide the sword."

On the table lay a deck of Lankhmaran tarot cards. Two cards, separated from the rest, lay exposed faces up. As Demptha Negatarth gestured, the Mouser bent for a closer look.

"I believe they represent you and your comrade," Demptha Negatarth pronounced.

But the Mouser wasn't looking at the cards. He ran a hand along the table, and again memory flashed through his mind. He stared up at the low ceiling, listened with straining ears to the music from the street far above. Turning, the torches and lamps seemed to dim as he gazed around. He remembered the columns, remembered the music, the chamber. The table—he remembered alembics and decanters and phials, a red smoke.

Malygris.

"The Temple of Hates," he whispered.

Demptha Negatarth and Nuulpha regarded him queerly. "What?" the old man said.

"The Temple of Hates," the Mouser repeated, recalling all the details of his dream. "This is where it all began." He leaned on the table, eyes squeezed tightly shut as the dream washed over him again, and the others backed a step away, leaving him alone, as if afraid to interrupt something they didn't understand.

When it was over, when the dream passed, he opened his eyes again, but he saw nothing, nothing but the pair of cards in the center of that table where foul instruments once had set, where evil, midwifed by a madman, had sprung to writhing life.