"Not mine," answered Demptha Negatarth with bitterness and puzzlement.
Then from out of the shrubbery, another figure emerged.
"Ivrian!" the Mouser cried.
She paid him no attention, but ran straight to the bubble of red light. Without thinking, the Mouser leaped to intercept her, but his hands closed only on a string of pearls around her neck before she entered that evil glow.
Flying through the air, Fafhrd hit him from the side, his arms locking tight about the Mouser's waist as they fell to the ground in a tangled heap. "Ivrian!" the Mouser cried again.
Within that luminous orb, a winsome silhouette seemed to turn his way.
Slowly, the orb sank into the earth, taking wizard and bird and girl. Its bloody light faded, leaving them in darkness and a chilling quiet.
The Mouser stared forlornly at the place where the orb had been. On the grass nearby a few pearls glimmered. He opened his fist. On his palm lay a few more pearls, and a few strands of soft blond hair.
Fafhrd began to speak. "Mouser . . . ?"
In the distance, Aarth's great bell began to peel, and the sound of it froze them. Twelve times it rang, then a pause and an extra final note that vibrated across the city.
"Midnight," Demptha Negatarth whispered, "and Festival's end."
NINETEEN
SHADOWLAND
The Mouser spun toward Demptha Negatarth. "What did he mean, you swore not to interfere?"
Demptha frowned as he hung his old head. He looked pathetically small suddenly in the too-large corporal's uniform he wore. Slowly, stiffly, he bent and retrieved the helmet that lay on the ground nearby.
"Nuulpha!" he called loudly, straightening. "Nuulpha!" Then, licking his lower lip, he finally met the Mouser's hard stare. "When Jesane was four summers old she developed a blood disease. My magic couldn't help her, but Malygris had a spell. He came to me in the night and offered it. Not only could it halt the effects of aging—you saw that in your dream of Laurian—but used in another manner, it could hold back death indefinitely."
"Wizards are stingy with their secrets," Fafhrd said scornfully. "He just gave you this powerful enchantment?"
Demptha Negatarth shook his head. "We bargained. He gave me the spell to save my daughter’s life. In exchange, I swore never to interfere in any of his undertakings. I knew it was a promise I would one day regret. Malygris was never to be trusted, and even then, I suspected his hatred for Sadaster, who was my friend. But to save Jesane's life, I dealt with the devil when he appeared on my doorstep."
The Mouser bent to collect one of Ivrian's fallen pearls from the grass. "Why didn't you ask Sadaster for the spell?" he questioned.
Demptha's frown deepened. "When Jesane was out of danger, I went to Sadaster, driven by a sense of guilt that I had bargained with his enemy, and he received me cordially. I meant to keep my word to Malygris, I told him, but as a gesture of regret, and in a spirit of atonement, I offered to share this new bit of arcana with him." He gave a short, bitter laugh. "What a joke on me it was—and a shock to my host—to learn that the spell was one of Sadaster's most closely guarded secrets. Not so closely guarded, however, that Malygris had not been able to steal it."
"There at least is the connection I sought," the Mouser mused as he pushed the pearl down inside his right glove. "It must have been Sadaster's spell . . ."—he looked at Demptha—"that very spell in the book that exploded in my hand and set fire to your library."
Fafhrd coughed unpleasantly into his fist, nodding. "I'll wager there was another copy of that same spell in Sadaster's library, which also burned."
Nuulpha came charging up the pebbled walkway, clad only in a loincloth, a soft tunic, and his boots with a brown nondescript cloak thrown around his shoulders. In his arms, he carried a bundle of clothes. "I heard your call," he said to Demptha, and the two men began exchanging clothes.
"My powers are not what they used to be," Demptha explained with some embarrassment as he disrobed. "Dressing in Nuulpha's garments reinforced the illusion that I was Nuulpha. I could never have gotten that close to Malygris, otherwise."
Nuulpha looked to the Mouser as he took his red corporal's cloak from Demptha and put the brown one around the older man. "There were two more fires yesterday. The Patriarch's private library in the Temple of Aarth burned. And Rokkarsh's private rooms in the Rainbow Palace—both small fires and quickly contained." He wriggled into blue pantaloons, and stomped into his boots again, then strapped on the sword belt Demptha had borrowed.
Dressed in simple brown robes, Demptha put on a troubled scowl as he looked at the Mouser. "Another connection there?"
The Mouser pulled up his hood, feeling the need to cloak his face from the others. The tiny weakness growing inside him, Malygris's curse, scared him more than he wanted the others to know. He listened to Fafhrd's ragged cough again and tried to steel himself against his fear.
"We're playing some game," he said at last, "without knowing the rules and without all the pieces. But at last, I know where we'll find the answers. When Malygris's curse touched me I felt something powerful, something Malygris could not possibly have created or conjured, something far beyond his ability. Something old—a terror I've experienced only once before."
"In the tunnels?" Nuulpha whispered in a dry, nervous voice.
The Mouser nodded.
"Tunnels?" Fafhrd noted with a distasteful grimace. "That red ball of light took Malygris under the ground."
"It surprised him as much as us," Demptha said. "He looked frightened."
"Ivrian, on the other hand," the Mouser replied bitterly, "ran to it eagerly." He stamped his foot on the spot where she had stood in that eerie crimson glow. "Wherever Malygris went, we are dead men if we don't follow, Fafhrd. His curse is upon us both."
Demptha stepped closer to the Mouser. "I'm also infected now, and I'll go with you, for I know those tunnels as well as Jesane knew them. Nuulpha, though, is untouched by this damned curse." He turned to the man who, though a soldier in service to the Overlord, had served him so well and faithfully. "Go home to your wife, Nuulpha. She needs you in her final hours."
Nuulpha's expression hardened. He drew his sword half out of its sheath as he appealed to Demptha. "These good men say a drop of blood from the wizard's heart can save her. Let my blade draw that drop and more."
Fafhrd touched Nuulpha's hand and pushed the sword back into its sheath. "I was not with my Vlana when she died," he said, "and I've never yet forgiven myself. If Malygris's hard heart can be pierced, we'll draw the medicine ourselves. Listen to Demptha."
Moving apart from the others, the Mouser kept silent. He too had been absent at that moment when Ivrian and Vlana died, and that guilt also ate at his soul. Only now he found that Ivrian lived, or a cruel version of her. How did he feel about her now? What had happened to his love?
He felt the hot sting of tears in his eyes and pulled his hood closer about his face. How could a man stand such confusion?
"Go home, Nuulpha," he said at last, his voice cracking with emotion. "Go home to your wife."
A conflicted look darkened the corporal's features, but he relinquished the grip on his sword's hilt. Shoulders sagging, he said to Demptha, "You've been like a father to me." He squeezed the old man's arm, unable to say more. The graveled path crunched under his boots as he turned and strode away.
Demptha sighed as he watched the corporal depart. "He's been like a son," he said quietly when only the Mouser and Fafhrd could hear. "I don't believe he ever realized that Jesane loved him."
"His wife is truly ill?" Fafhrd asked.
"Near death," Demptha affirmed.