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and tiptoed downstairs without a sound.
But when she stepped out suddenly into full view she found them both faced
away from her on the bench, gazing at the unpaved square of earth, Fafhrd
resting his head against Fingers's chest, "lying in her lap," as it's
expressed, just as the girl started to recite in a small bell-like voice what
she thought was her mother's sleep spell but was in truth, as she had
inadvertently revealed to Gale and Afreyt the second morning of the cold by
reciting its last five individually harmless lines, the direst of Quarmallian
death spells taught her under hypnosis by the infinitely vengeful and devious
Lord Quarmal of Quarmall.
_"Call for the robin red breast and the wren_
_Since o'er shady groves they hover_
_And with leaves and flowers do cover_
_The friendless bodies of unburied men._
_Call unto his funeral dole_
_The ant, the field mouse, and the mole_
_To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm_
_And safe from any savage hurt or harm..."_
As Afreyt heard Fingers recite the first of those eight lines, she saw emerge
vertically upward from the soft earth of the left forefront of the unpaved
square a small serpent's head or tentacle tip, followed almost at once close
to either side by a second and third at the same even rate, then a short
fourth in line at the same short distance to the left, and lastly a thick
fifth erecting alone two inches in front of the rest, and then she saw that
the four serpents' heads or tentacles were joined at their bases to a palm,
and taken with the thick separate member, constituted the fingers and thumb of
a buried hand digging itself upward and bursting from the ground, while down
off it the revealing earth sifted and tumbled.
As Afreyt, all a-shiver at this prodigy, listened to the recitation of the
innocuous-seeming second and third lines and realized that the situation must
be different, with Fafhrd playing a more passive role than she'd suspected, a
second and larger emergence started, that of a head behind and to the right of
the hand and with its hairy earth-mired crown beginning at the level of the
palm.
The forward-facing brow, as it emerged at the same even rate as had the hand,
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showed more bright yellow in its illumination than white leviathan light would
account for, which reminded Afreyt of Cif's dream of the Mouser wearing a
glowing yellow mask and was Afreyt's first clue to the identity of the
underground traveler. By now it was apparent that the escaping hand was
attached to and directed by the rising head, and Afreyt, shaking with terror
at the unnatural sight, at least need not fear the dartings, scuttlings, and
gropings of a hostile, detached, and independently roving hand.
As she heard the child's clear little voice recite the somewhat sinister
fourth line of the Quarmallian death spell, which Afreyt already suspected to
be something of the sort (which Fingers did not as yet), the eyes beneath the
rising brow came into view and opened wide.
Afreyt at once recognized the gray eyes of the Mouser, saw that they were
fixed upon Fafhrd and full of fear for him and that it was the very fear of
death. At that moment she would have given a great deal to know whether
Fafhrd's own eyes were open or closed, if the Mouser had made his deduction
from the expression in them or from his comrade's extreme pallor or other
physical symptom. She did not think (at least as yet) of getting up and
looking for herself -- her awe of what was happening, rather than her fear
(though that was great) kept her frozen.
As a matter of fact his eyes were closed with the spell's workings, which
operated by degrees, line by line, from sleep to death.
Fingers, reciting the death spell Quarmal had taught her hypnotically after
her kidnapping and which she now thought of as a sleep spell of her mother's
(as he'd told her 'twas) saw the same figure emerging from the earth that
Afreyt did, but it did not catch her interest. She hoped it would not
interfere with her recital of the spell and its working on Fafhrd and herself.
Perhaps it was the beginning of a dream they'd share.
The Mouser had last lost consciousness underground spying on old
Quarmal's buried map room and chamber of necromancy while asking himself
questions about Rime Isle.
He came to awareness now with head, shoulders, and one arm emerged into a
familiar cellar on the latter island and with the answers to his questions in
plain view: Fafhrd dying in the arms and against the breasts of his daughter
by (the Quarmallian) slave girl Friska, and the child's unwitting recitation
of the death spell.
Who else could be the assassin indicated by the lone red dot on
Quarmal's world map? And so what Mouser must do at once to save his dearest
friend from life's worst ill -- even before Mou inhaled the unrationed breaths
he longed to, stretched the cramped muscles, or tasted the wine for which his
dry throat cried -- was to countermand that death spell by snapping his
fingers thrice as he'd just now seen Quarmal do to stay the instructional
assassination of his son Igwarl by the latter's sister Issa.
And, if Mou knew anything about the rules of magic and the ways of
Quarmal, those snaps must be perfectly executed, delivered without delay, and
loud as thundercracks -- or else he could go whistle for Faf's life
forevermore.
And so it happened that as Afreyt listened to Fingers recite the idyllic
fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth lines of the spell (but getting closer to
the nasty ones she'd "spelled" to them in her fatigue the second morning of
the cold), the Rime Isle woman was puzzled and nonplused to see the
earth-traveler -- just as there rose into view Mouser's mouth set in a narrow
slit for air scavenging -- wave his limply held free hand vigorously, as if it
were a dusting rag from which he shook the dirt, and then carefully settle the
pad at end of his middle finger against the ball of his thumb above ring and
little finger bent back against the palm, and against which the poised and
powerfully tensed middle finger now flashed down.
It was, quite simply, the loudest fingersnap she'd ever heard. So might a most
impatient god summon a reprehensibly straying angel.
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And as if that prodigious snap were not enough to prove whatever point was
being contested, it was followed with preternatural swiftness by not one, but
two repetitions of the same sound, each one a little louder than the previous
one, which as any knowledgeable gambler knows, is not a bet to be backed, an
achievement to set a wager on.
The Mouser's fingerbolts had their desired effect on the others in the cellar,
including their sender. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]