Swords Against the Shadowland (Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar) Read Free

just as suddenly, the wind ceased, and the coals settled harmlessly back to their original place, and the campfire was just a campfire once more.
    A fit of coughing wracked the creature that called itself Sheelba. "Now that we have each displayed our manhoods," he said quietly, "let us speak of dreams and the reason you find yourselves once more in Lankhmar."
    Sensing no further immediate threat, the Mouser lowered his weapon. The creature plainly desired to talk, rather than fight, and there was something almost pathetic in its uncontrollable coughing and its bent, weakened posture. "I gather," he said at last, "you are the source and cause of both."
    Sheelba nodded. "I sent the dream to occupy and divert your minds while I transported your sleeping forms across the great vastness of space. The story it tells is a true one, but there is more, much more, for you to learn.
    "Malygris killed Sadaster," Fafhrd said. The Northerner squatted down on his haunches and leaned on his sword as he stared across the coals at Sheelba. His eyes gleamed, and his face shone weirdly in the dim, ruddy light.
    Sheelba’s robed form seemed to shake and tremble, but whether from anger, fear, or ill health, the Mouser could not tell.
    "Ah, he fell to a subtle and masterful spell," Sheelba said with grudging admiration. "It should have been beyond Malygris's meager talents, but jealousy and hatred drove him to surpass himself. Sadaster was near death before he even realized the cause of his affliction."
    "I saw Sadaster die," Fafhrd said, grimly remembering his part of the dream. "Some hideous illness seemed to rot him from the inside out. At the end, he was no more than a living skeleton, and finally not even a living one."
    A bitter note sounded in Sheelba’s voice when he spoke. "That is the beauty and horror of Malygris's work," he said. "It begins as a little cough—just a little thing. Sadaster could not defend himself, because he didn't know he was under attack until the spell had already touched him." Sheelba’s voice caught, and the wizard hesitated before finding strength to continue. "Would that it had ended there," he said. "Revenge is, after all, a thing understandable."
    The Mouser eyed the creature before him with suspicion. "Malygris's black art has touched you, too," he said warily.
    Hearing, Fafhrd rose slowly to his full seven-foot height. "It's no sickness that saps your vitality, stranger?" he said. "But evil Lankhmaran magic?"
    Sheelba raised a withered fist and shook it at the sky. "Malygris was brilliant," he hissed, "but utterly inept. He had no true conception of what he had created. The spell possesses a mindless life of its own. It hangs in the ether like an arcane predator, waiting as it waited for Sadaster."
    "Waiting for what?" Fafhrd asked nervously.
    A swallowing sound issued from within the creature's black, faceless hood. "This spell was created to slay a wizard," Sheelba continued at last. "But Malygris, blast his soul, wove no controls into his creation. Now it strikes with purpose at every wizard, every magician, attracted by the simplest acts of legerdemain. Grand sorcerers, herb witches, young girls with their love potions, wearers of charms and talismans—they are all at risk. Indeed, many who walk the streets of Lankhmar are cursed already and know it not."
    A wind sprang up again, and the Mouser's gaze shot toward the coals of the dwindling campfire, but this was seemingly a natural wind, no whim of Sheelba's, and the coals and ash performed no tricks, but stayed in their bed.
    "Is there no counter-spell?" the Gray One asked. "No way to undo what has been done?"
    Sheelba bent down over the campfire. A long-fingered hand snatched up one of the coals and popped it inside the hood as if it were a snack, a delicacy to be savored. Sheelba gulped, then belched.
    "After much work and diligent study," he said with grim satisfaction, "I have found the counter-charm. However ..." He paused, and the hood lifted