He felt no small honor at being entrusted with such knowledge. Taking the bag from Nuulpha again, he motioned the corporal to go down. The light shone dimly up from the hole as the Mouser closed the crib door and lowered its heavy lid into place. Descending the first few steps, he lowered the trap door above his head.
The ponderous weight of the earth seemed to close about him, and the smell of dirt and dampness filled his nostrils. A sense of unease settled upon him; he was no mole, and rooting around in the ground held no appeal. Fixing his eyes on the lantern’s glow, he descended as quickly as the heavy bag and the narrow steps allowed.
Nuulpha waited at the bottom, his upturned face betraying a nervousness he hadn't shown before. His shoulders slumped, and he crouched subtly, though his head cleared the tunnel roof by inches.
The Mouser knew how the corporal felt. The darkness possessed an intimidating solidity that the lantern barely penetrated. The closeness of the walls and the low narrow ceiling suffocated, and the earth still bore a fresh-dug odor. He could practically feel, he imagined, the hungry maggots and worms burrowing nearer.
Perhaps because he felt so intensely the absence of his friend, he recalled the words of one of Fafhrd’s songs. Softly he whispered, seeking to buoy his spirits by mocking his own fear as he crept forward into the gloom.
The stale air seemed to shiver, and the lantern's flame reacted with a barely perceptible waver as if some undetectable wind had danced around it. The Mouser's skin crawled, and the hair stood on the nape of his neck.
With a shaking hand, Nuulpha turned up the lantern's wick another notch. The flame brightened a little, but failed to push back the darkness. "Have you no other song?" he grumbled.
"A tisket, a tasket, two bodies in a casket," the Mouser persisted, forcing the words through clenched teeth.
But suddenly he stopped. Catching Nuulpha's arm, he jerked his companion around. "You're trembling," he said. "So am I." He squeezed past Nuulpha, daring to venture a few paces beyond the boundary of the light, then stepped back into its amber circle. "Grown men shivering in the dark," he whispered. He licked his lips thoughtfully, admitting his fear, feeling it growing inside him like a pressure.
"Why am I afraid?" he said, as much to himself as to Nuulpha. "I've been under the earth before. Why does this seem different?"
"My heart is hammering," Nuulpha confessed in a hushed voice. "And there's weakness in my knees. It shames me . . ."
"Then there's shame for both of us," the Mouser said, clapping his friend on the shoulder. He set down the bag of stolen victuals and put a hand over his own heart. "I am almost overwhelmed," he said. "As if I were wading deeper and deeper into some black sea..."
"... About to be dragged down by some unseen tentacled monster ..." Nuulpha added, wiping sweat from his brow.
Rubbing his chin, the Mouser paced to the very edge of the light and stopped with only his toes challenging the horrible border. He squinted into the blackness, half-expecting some red-eyed demon to stare back.
"Eclipses," Nuulpha muttered, picking up the bag and going to the Mouser's side, "a Patriarch's death, all this damnable fog of late—bad omens, all, I tell you."
Forcing down his fear, the Mouser ventured slowly forward. Yet he felt in his bones some pervasive, unseeable change in the tunnels, an unearthly strangeness that tainted the air. Even the very darkness, the shade and texture of the gloom, struck him suddenly as alien.
They emerged finally from the narrow, man-made tunnel into a larger natural cavern. Here, too, the oppressive strangeness dominated. The Mouser stood still and listened. Was it Nuulpha's breathing he heard, or his own? Or was it. . . something else.
He thought of the rats and bats that should have occupied this underworld, the insects and countless crawling creatures. Yet no living thing dwelled here. He remembered wondering if some monster, stalking these grim passages, had eaten the rats. Now he wondered if, following some animal instinct, they simply had fled.
Again, leaving Nuulpha on the tunnel threshold, he stepped beyond the range of the light to turn slowly in the darkness. Above, the ceiling's stalactites glimmered coldly with hints of phosphorescence, of crystal, and mica. In either direction, the cavern walls seemed to vanish, and the black gloom extended into some void, an infinity of fearsome night.
"Glavas Rho," he whispered, invoking the memory of the herb-wizard who, in the absence of father or mother, had raised him through boyhood. "I think you have not prepared me for this."
Nuulpha crept to his side. The lantern's wick was now turned as high as it would go, but the flame and its light seemed smaller than ever. He raised the lantern over his head, surrounding them both in a circle of faint radiance.
The Mouser drew a circle in the air with his left hand, one of the holy signs of his spider-god. "Let no evil thing pass into this glow," he intoned, his black eyes glittering sharply.
"Stop!" Nuulpha cried. The light wavered dramatically as, dropping the foodbag, the corporal clapped a hand around the Mouser's head and over his mouth. Instantly, he released the Mouser again, but spun him around. "You invite Malygris's curse with such careless words!"
Stunned briefly, the Mouser hugged himself against the chill Nuulpha's words caused as he looked up into his comrade's stricken face. "Thank you, Captain," he said, recovering himself. Yet, a thought flashed through his mind—had he just doomed himself with that stupid charm-casting? He turned to stare once more into the void beyond the light, into the darkness that ate at his reason.
"How easy it was to forget myself," he murmured to Nuulpha, "just once. Despite my cautions, despite knowing the danger, I acted according to my nature."
He bit his lip. Did he dare tell Nuulpha more? A double dread shivered through him, fear of Malygris's wasting curse, and of something else—these tunnels and caverns. Something stirred here, something vaster and more inhumanly malevolent than any mere monster of his imagination. He knew it, though he couldn't explain his knowledge.
Whatever it was, it was not Malygris.
"Let's move on," Nuulpha urged, laying a hand gently on the Mouser's shoulder. "Demptha will be glad to receive this food."
Turning, the Mouser forced a grin as he motioned for Nuulpha to lead the way. In truth, he suddenly preferred not to remain in one spot too long down here. "And Jesane?" he asked in a falsely jaunty voice, giving his thoughts to Demptha's daughter. "Will she be glad to receive me?"
Nuulpha snorted, quickening his pace subtly, as if sensing something more than the Mouser at his back. "Despite what your eyes tell you, she's old enough to be your mother."
The Mouser barked a laugh that sounded strained even to his ears. "Liar, and whoreson jealous dog!" he said, slapping Nuulpha's back. "You think you can turn my interest aside so easily? You want her for yourself."
Nuulpha shook his head emphatically. "I have a loving wife," he reminded the Mouser. "She loves to spend my money, loves to order me about, loves to lie around slothfully. . . . But never mind. About Jesane, I speak the truth. She could be your mother. Mine, too, for that matter. And Demptha is a lot older than he looks."