The very walls seemed to retreat into the deepening darkness. The ceiling, too, arched away from vision. Still the vapor rose, growing thicker, hiding the floor and the tops of their feet, climbing their ankles and shin bones.
The Mouser shivered as he lifted the lantern higher. "I think the way lies there," he said, pointing to the rightward side of the cavern with his sword. "I'm sure I saw the opening of another tunnel."
Every sense screamed to turn away, but the Mouser fixed his gaze ahead, and his comrades followed. Could this be one of Malygris's illusions? 'he briefly wondered. Then he dismissed that consideration. Their true foe, he felt sure, still remained unknown— and unnamed.
To his small relief, the passage on the far side of the cavern lay exactly where he thought it should. Yet, as he shone the lantern's light upon its threshold, he hesitated, alerted by a shadow.
An emaciated figure lurched from the tunnel into the cavern. Bulging, jaundiced eyes glared with a horrible light from a thinly bearded face.
"Mish!" Demptha Negatarth cried over the Mouser's shoulder as he recognized his missing friend, and the Mouser also gaped with surprise—a mistake.
With a sweep of his arm, Mish knocked the Mouser's sword away. A hand of astonishing strength seized the Mouser's tunic and flung him crashing to the rocky ground. His head struck against a towering stalagmite, filling his eyes with sparks of colored fire. The lantern rattled loudly and rolled to a stop against a jutting stone; the wick hissed; veiled beneath cold white vapor, the quivering flame threatened to go out.
"Turn away!" Mish howled at the Mouser. Then his unnatural gaze locked on Demptha Negatarth. His hands shot out. Catching the old wizard by the throat, he squeezed. "Ten more!" he cried.
Fafhrd leaped around Demptha, who stood in his way. Graywand whisked from its sheath as he moved, and the blade flashed.
Mish screamed. Stumbling back, he held up twin stumps of severed arms. Again he screamed, and the sound of his pain echoed desperately against the walls of earth and stone.
Demptha screamed, too, and fell to the ground, wrestling with the hands that still stubbornly tried to throttle him.
Fafhrd struck again. Swinging with all his fear-driven might, he sliced off Mish's head and sent it smashing against the same stalagmite where the Mouser struggled to sit up. It landed in his gray-clad lap between his very knees.
A sound of repulsion gurgled in the Mouser's throat. Hurling the head away, he scrambled to save the lantern.
Mish's corpse fell. It kept on falling, as if the mist were water, and a feathery white wave closed over it. Ripping free the hands that gripped him, Demptha dropped them into the unnatural stuff, and they too sank away as if into a rippling lake.
Rising with the lantern in one hand, his sword in the other, the Mouser walked cautiously to the spot and poked the rapier into it. The point scraped on solid stone. Licking his lips, looking to his comrades, he stamped his feet upon the place.
"Dance this way with that light," Fafhrd said, "and look at this." He held Graywand's broad blade to the amber glow. It gleamed cleanly. "No blood."
"Whatever that was," the Mouser said to Demptha, "it wasn't Mish." Yet in his heart, he wasn't so sure. He couldn't discount the radical change in Ivrian, once his true love.
Entering the new tunnel, the Mouser steeled himself against the terror that permeated this strange labyrinth. Once again, the stone walls pressed close, and the ceiling slanted gradually lower and lower. The mist thickened as they advanced, and the small lantern became virtually useless. Unable to see more than a few feet ahead, the Mouser waved his sword before him, tapping first one wall and then the other.
Suddenly metal rang on metal. The Mouser felt a shock rise up through his sword and into his arm. Barely keeping a grip on his weapon's hilt, he leaped back, colliding with an unwary Demptha. "Fall back! Fall back!" he cried. Shoving the lantern into Demptha's hands, he drew his dagger, Catsclaw.
A figure brandishing shield and a long dirk rushed screaming out of the fog at the Mouser. Behind that ferocious warrior, from the narrow tunnel, came four more, similarly armed. Blocking the dirk's thrust with Scalpel, he brought his foot up against the nearest shield and kicked the closest foe back into his companions.
The Mouser's eyes snapped wide. He recognized the face that appeared just over that shield rim. "The Ilthmarts!" he shouted. "The dead Ilthmarts!"
"Ilthmarts behind us, too!" Fafhrd answered grimly. "Five more!" There was no room in the tunnel for Graywand. He drew his dagger, instead. Bellowing a mighty roar, he charged straight into the five, slashing with the thin blade and smashing with his fists, using his huge body to clear a retreat back into the larger cavern.
Pushing Demptha Negatarth before him, the Mouser leaped past Fafhrd's victims before they could stir to their feet. "Out! Out!" he shouted at the wizard. "And take care to guard that light!"
A booming laugh filled the cavern as Fafhrd emerged and freed Graywand. Thrusting Demptha aside, he called to his partner as the Mouser emerged. "Hah, a good battle is a cure for the numbing fear-stink that fills this blasted maze!"
"Personally, I'm insulted," the Mouser answered diffidently. "Ilthmarts—and Ilthmarts we've already beaten."
Fafhrd laughed again and twirled Graywand in a showy one-handed arc as he fell back into a defensive posture. "It would be rude of me to point out that Laurian's magic defeated them when they had us cornered like a pair of rats."
"A treacherous slander!" the Mouser scoffed. "She merely interfered while I was catching my second wind."
A host of battlecries sounded, and the Ilthmart warriors charged into the cavern. Fafhrd met the first one, knocking him aside with a ringing blow on a shield. The second warrior tripped over the first, smacking his chin on the rocky floor. The third leaped screaming over the first two. With a dancer’s grace, the Mouser dropped to one knee and thrust upward, piercing flesh with Scalpel's point.
The fourth and fifth squeezed out behind the third. Both charged the Mouser. The rapier edge of Catsclaw swept in a sidewise arc, slipping beneath a shield to slice a muscled thigh before the Mouser rolled aside and jumped to his feet.
The rest of the Ilthmarts rushed clumsily from the narrow tunnel, pushing and shoving each other as they emerged. "Eight more!" they shouted. "Eight more for the Shadowland!"
"These fools can't count!" Fafhrd laughed as he waded into them, swinging left and right with Graywand. "We are but three!"
A dirk flashed through the air toward the Mouser. With a flick of his blade, he batted it aside in mid-flight, and with an advancing lunge, pushed his point through the throat of the thrower.
"Seven more!"
The odd count caught the Mouser's attention. Whirling about, he spied the Ilthmart that had voiced it. That warrior loomed over a cowering Demptha, dirk upraised, prepared to strike a death blow.
"No!" the Mouser shouted, too far away to help.
But Demptha did not cower. He merely stooped to set the lantern safely aside. Even as the Ilthmart stabbed downward, Demptha reached into his left sleeve. Out came a packet. Black powder showered over the Ilthmart. Bright star-like sparks flared, and a hideous scream tore through the cavern. Shield, dirk, clothes, and Ilthmart all burst into white flame.
Shielding his eyes against the sudden painful brightness and the crackling heat, the Mouser ran to Demptha's side and pulled him up. "Stay behind me!" he ordered.
On the distant side of the cavern, partially obscured by the gray vapor, a silhouetted Fafhrd gave a forceful shout. Graywand's blade and elaborate hilt sparkled like blue lightning as he cleaved an arc through the air and drove the sword through the final Ilthmart’s shoulder and deep into his torso, carving the man nearly in half.