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ued to well, there shot out through it a slender, whey-
faced youth, his narrow hands clapped over his mouth, under terror-wide 'eyes,
as if to shut in 'screams 'or vomit, and with a broom clamped in an armpit, so
that he seemed a hit like a young warlock about to take to the air. He dashed
past Fafhrd and the Mouser 'and away, his racing footsteps sounding rapid-dull
'on the carpeting and hollow-sharp 'on the 'stairs before dying away.
Fafhrd gazed back at the Mouser with a grimace and shrug, then squatting
one-legged until the knee of his bound-up leg touched the floor, .advanced
half 'his face past the doorjamb. After a bit, without otherwise chang-
ing position, he beckoned the Mouser to approach. The latter slowly thrust
half his face past the jamb, just above
Fafhrd's.
What they saw was a room somewhat smaller than that of 'the great map and lit
by central lamps that burnt blue-white instead of customary yellow. The floor
was marble, darkly colorful and complexly whorled. The dark
walls were hung with astrological and anthropomantic charts and instruments of
magic and shelved with crypti-
cally labeled porcelain jars and also with vitreous flasks and glass pipes of
the oddest shapes, some filled with colored fluids, but many gleamingly empty.
At the foot of the walls, where the shadows were thickest, broken and
discarded stuff was irregularly heaped, as if swept out of the way and forgot,
and here and 'there opened a large rathole.
In the center 'of the room and brightly illuminated by contrast was a long
table with thick top and many stout legs. The Mouser thought fleetingly of a
centipede and then of 'the bar at the Eel, for the table top was densely
stained and scarred by many a spilt elixir and many a deep black burn by fire
or acid or both.
In the midst of the table an alembic was working. The lamp's flame deep blue,
this one kept a-~oil in the large crystal cucurbit a dark, viscid fluid with
here and there diamond glints. From out of the thick, .seething stuff, strands
of a darker vapor streamed upward to crowd through the cucurbit's narrow mouth
and stain--oddly, with bright scarlet--the transparent head and then, dead
black now, flow down the narrow pipe from the head into a spherical crystal
receiver, larger even than the cucurbit, and there curl and weave about like
so many coils of living black cord--an endless, skinny, ebon serpent.
Behind the left end of the table stood a tall, yet hunch-
backed man in black robe and hood, which shadowed more than hid a face of
which 'the most prominent features were a long, thick, pointed nose with
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
out-jutting, almost chinless mouth. His complexion was sallow-gray like sandy
clay. A short-haired, bristly, gray beard grew high on his wide cheeks. From
under a receding forehead and bushy gray brows, wide-set eyes looked intently
down at an age-browned scroll, which his disgustingly small club-
hands, knuckles big, short backs gray-bristled, ceaselessly unrolled and
rolled up again. The only move his eyes ever made, besides the short
side-to-side one as he read the lines he was rapidly intoning, was an
occasional glance at the alembic.
On the other end of the table, beady eyes darting from the sorcerer to the
alembic and back again, crouched a small black beast, the first glimpse of
which made Fafhrd dig fingers painfully into the Mouser's shoulder and the
latter almost gasp, but not from the pain. It was most like a rat, yet it had
a higher forehead and closer-set eyes, while its forepaws, which it constantly
rubbed to-
gether in what seemed restless glee, looked like tiny copies of the sorcerer's
clubhands.
Simultaneously yet independently, Fafhrd and the
Mouser each became certain it was the beast which had gutter-escorted Slivikin
and his mate, then fled, and each recalled what lvrian had said about a
witch's familiar and Vlana about the likelihood of Krovas employing a warlock.
The tempo of 'the incantation quickened; the blue-white flames brightened and
hissed audibly; the fluid in 'the
cucurbit grew thick as lava; great bubbles formed and loudly broke; the black
rope in the receiver writhed like a nest of snakes; there was an increasing
sense of invisible presences; the supernatural tension grew almost unendur-
able, and Fafhrd and the Mouser were hard put to keep silent the
open-mouthed gapes by which they now breathed, and each feared his
heartbeat could be heard yards away.
Abruptly the incantation peaked and broke off, like a drum struck very hard,
then instantly silenced by palm and fingers outspread against the head. With a
bright flash and dull explosion, cracks innumerable appeared in the cucurbit;
its crystal became white and opaque, yet it did not shatter or drip. The head
lifted a span, hung there, fell back. While two black nooses appeared among
the coils in the receiver and suddenly narrowed until they were only two big
black knots.
The sorcerer grinned, let the end of the parchment roll up with a snap, and
shifted his gaze from the receiver to his familiar, while the latter chittered
shrilly and 'bounded up and down in rapture.
"Silence, Slivikin! Comes now your time to race and strain and sweat," the
sorcerer cried, speaking pidgin
Lankhmarese now, but so rapidly and in so squeakingly high-pitched a voice
that Fafhrd and the Mauser could barely follow him. They did, however, both
realize they had been completely mistaken as to 'the identity of Slivi-
kin. In moment of disaster, 'the fat thief had called to the witch-beast for
help rather than to his human com-
rade.
"Yes, master," Slivikin squeaked back no less clearly, in an 'instant revising [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]