Swords Against the Shadowland

The Mouser listened. "The Midsummer celebration," he said with dawning awareness.

"We're right under the Festival District," Nuulpha reminded. "We should hear traces of music and laughter."

Grimly, the Mouser continued his search. The temple's acoustics were tricky. The silence might signify nothing more than a lull in the festivities. He put that puzzle aside to concentrate on the present mystery. Moving toward the farthest end of the temple, he shone his light on Demptha's long worktable. "Look," he said, summoning Nuulpha.

Demptha's tarot cards lay scattered over the table and on the floor as if an angry hand had swept the deck aside.

"Demptha would never have left those behind," Nuulpha said with certainty. "He painted them, himself." Bending, the corporal scooped up the fallen cards. Placing them with the others on the table, he assembled them once more into a neat deck. "Maybe he'll come back for them," Nuulpha added doubtfully.

On an impulse, the Mouser turned over the top card. The miniature painting revealed a long banquet table piled high with bones and skulls and body parts. In elaborate high-backed chairs sat a trio of skeletons clutching goblets of blood.

"The Feast of Fear," the Mouser said, dropping the card with a grunt. He went cold inside as a sudden black irony hit him. "I was bringing them a bag of food."

Nuulpha seized a torch from a sconce behind the table and lit it with his candle. "I'll go to Demptha's shop in the morning. Perhaps he'll turn up there."

The Mouser held out no such hope.

They returned with torch and lantern through the tunnels. Neither spoke. The Mouser's thoughts churned. He felt Fafhrd's absence acutely. With the Northerner beside him, he would have known his next move—or they would have figured it out together.

Instead, he felt defeated, stripped of important allies, and no closer to Malygris.

They came to the bag of food where Nuulpha had dropped it. Scowling, the Mouser gave it a savage kick and stormed on. Nuulpha quietly collected it and swung it over his shoulder. Food, after all, was food even in Lankhmar.

At last, they climbed the narrow wooden steps and went through the trap door into the warehouse on Hardstone Street. "Back where we began," the Mouser grumbled while Nuulpha closed the hidden entrance.

"What now, my gray friend?" Nuulpha asked.

The Mouser shrugged in frustration. "Go home to your wife, Nuulpha," he said. "I need time to think. Look for me tomorrow at the Silver Eel."

They left the warehouse together and strode up the alley to Hardstone Street. There, they paused once more, gazing up and down the empty avenue. A thick white fog had descended upon the city while they were underground. "More of this damnable stuff," Nuulpha said with an irritated frown. He poked his torch at the mist. "At least I've a light to find my way home."

The Mouser watched Nuulpha walk northward, his light growing fuzzier and fainter, finally vanishing. Sheathing his sword, he started southward toward the Festival District, lantern swinging at his side.

The fog swirled about him, feather-soft, cool on his face. Its damp touch seemed to dampen his mood as well. Morose, suddenly lonely, he drew up his hood. Nuulpha had a home, a wife and a warm bed waiting. What had the Gray Mouser?

Once in this very city such good fortune had been his. Ivrian, his one true love, had waited for him each evening in the small apartment they had shared above Bones Alley. Laughter and joy had been theirs and love such as he had never known before or since. How delicate and beautiful had been his Ivrian, child-like in her innocence and easy delight. She had showered him with her affection, and he missed her with a pain that threatened to break his heart.

How lucky Nuulpha was and how seemingly oblivious to the blessings that were his.

A sound disturbed his glum meditations. Curiously, he shone his light upon a hay wagon parked in the shadows near an old smithy shop. A handful of hay flew into the air, and a small cascade fell off the end. The wagon's boards commenced a merry creaking.

Extinguishing his light, creeping closer, the Mouser listened to the soft gasping and sharp breaths that rose from the unseen couple in the wagon. With darkness and fog concealing his actions, he approached them. He thought of peering over the side, but instead, he crouched down by a wheel, listened for a moment to their lovemaking, and then quietly slunk away, feeling lonelier than ever.

He thought of Ivrian, his one true love, and remembered her warmth, her sweet beauty. How he missed her! But when his lips formed her name, the sound that came out said, "Liara."

He stopped in the middle of the street, shocked at his mistake, feeling that he had just betrayed Ivrian's memory. But not far behind him, he could still hear the sounds of the couple in the hay wagon. And from that alley just ahead—did he hear another couple?