This interchange of slash and thrust was but the merest prologue to the duel, which now carried into the area of the dried-up fountain pool and became very wild-seeming indeed, forcing the spectators back more than once, while the Mouser improvised by gushing out some of his thick blood-red toadstool wine when they were momentarily pressed body-to-body in a fierce exchange, so that they both appeared sorely wounded.
There were three in the Ghost Hall who took no interest in this seeming masterpiece of duels and hardly watched it. Ivivis was not one of them — she soon threw back her hood, tore off her hag-mask, and came following the fight close, cheering on the Mouser. Nor were they Brilla, Kewissa and Friska — for at the sound of swords the two girls had insisted on opening their door a crack despite the eunuch's solicitous apprehensions and now they were all peering through, head above head, Friska in the midst agonizing at Fafhrd's perils.
Gwaay's eyes were clotted and the lids glued with ichor, and the tendons were dissolved whereby he might have lifted his head. Nor did he seek to explore with his sorcerous senses in the direction of the fight. He clung to existence solely by the thread of his great hatred for his brother, all else of life was to him less than a shadow-show; yet his hate held for him all of life's wonder and sweetness and high excitement — it was enough.
The mirror image of that hate in Hasjarl was at this moment strong enough too to dominate wholly his healthy body's instincts and hungers and all the plots and images in his crackling thoughts. He saw the first stroke of the fight, he saw Gwaay's litter unguarded, and then as if he had seen entire a winning combination of chess and been hypnotized by it, he made his move without another cogitation.
Widely circling the fight and moving swiftly in the shadows like a weasel, he mounted the three steps by the wall and headed straight for the litter.
There were no ideas in his mind at all, but there were some shadowy images distortedly seen as from a great distances — one of himself as a tiny child toddling by night along a wall to Gwaay's crib, to scratch him with a pin.
He did not spare a glance for the tread-slaves, and it is doubtful if they even saw, or at least took note of him, so rudimentary were their minds.
He leaned eagerly between two of them and curiously surveyed his brother. His nostrils drew in at the stench, and his mouth contracted to its tightest sphincter yet still smiled.
He plucked a wide dagger of blued steel from a sheath at his belt and poised it above his brother's face, which by its plagues was almost unrecognizable as such. The honed edges of the dagger were tiny hooks directed back from the point.
The sword-clashing below reached one of its climaxes, but Hasjarl did not mark it.
He said softly, "Open your eyes, Brother. I want you to speak once before I slay you."
There was no reply from Gwaay — not a motion, not a whisper, not a bubble of retching.
"Very well," Hasjarl said harshly, "then die a prim shut-mouth," and he drove down the dagger.
It stopped violently a hairbreadth above Gwaay's upper cheek, and the muscles of Hasjarl's arm driving it were stabbingly numbed by the jolt they got.
Gwaay did open his eyes then, which was not very pleasant to behold since there was nothing in them but green ichor.
Hasjarl instantly closed his own eyes, but continued to peer down through the holes in his upper lids.
Then he heard Gwaay's voice like a silver mosquito by his ear saying, "You have made a slight oversight, dear brother. You have chosen the wrong weapon. After our father's burning you swore to me my life was sacrosanct — until you killed me by crushing. 'Until I crush it out,' you said. The gods hear only our words, Brother, not our intentions. Had you come lugging a boulder, like the curious gnome you are, you might have accomplished your aim."
"Then I'll have you crushed!" Hasjarl retorted angrily, leaning his face closer and almost shouting. "Aye, and I'll sit by and listen to your bones crunch — what bones you have left! You're as great a fool as I, Gwaay, for you too after our father's funeral promised not to slay me. Aye, and you're a greater fool, for now you've spilled to me your little secret of how you may be slain."
"I swore not to slay you with spells or steel or venom or with my hand," the bright insect voice of Gwaay replied. "Unlike you, I said nothing at all of crushing." Hasjarl felt a strange tingling in his flesh while in his nostrils there was an acrid odor like that of lightning mingling with the stink of corruption.
Suddenly Gwaay's hands thrust up to the palms out of his overly rich bedclothes. The flesh was shredding from the finger bones which pointed straight up, invokingly.
Hasjarl almost started back, but caught himself. He'd die, he told himself, before he'd cringe from his brother. He was aware of strong forces all about him.
There was a muffled grating noise and then an odd faintly pattering snowfall on the coverlet and on Hasjarl's neck… a thin snowfall of pale gritty stuff… grains of mortar….
"Yes, you will crush me, dear brother," Gwaay admitted tranquilly. "But if you would know how you will crush me, recall my small special powers… or else _look up_!"
Hasjarl turned his head, and there was the great black basalt slab big as the litter rushing down, and the one moment of life left Hasjarl was consumed in hearing Gwaay say, "You are wrong again, my comrade."
Fafhrd stopped a sword-slash in midcourse when he heard the crash and the Mouser almost nicked him with his rehearsed parry. They lowered their blades and looked, as did all others in the central section of the Ghost Hall.
Where the litter had been was now only the thick basalt slab mortar-streaked with the litter-poles sticking out from under, and above in the ceiling the rectangular white hole whence the slab had been dislodged. The Mouser thought, _That's a larger thing to move by thinking than a checker or jar, yet the same black substance._
Fafhrd thought, _Why didn't the whole roof fall? — there's the strangeness._
Perhaps the greatest wonder of the moment was the four tread-slaves still standing at the four corners, eyes forward, fingers locked across their chests, although the slab had missed them only by inches in its falling.
Then some of Hasjarl's henchmen and sorcerers who had seen their Lord sneak to the litter now hurried up to it but fell back when they beheld how closely the slab approached the floor and marked the tiny rivulet of blood that ran from under it. Their minds quailed at the thought of those brothers who had hated each other so dearly, and now their bodies locked in an obscene interpenetrating and commingling embrace.
Meanwhile Ivivis came running to the Mouser and Friska to Fafhrd to bind up their wounds, and were astonished and mayhap a shade irked to be told there were none. Kewissa and Brilla came too and Fafhrd with one arm around Friska reached out the wine-bloody hand of the other and softly closed it around Kewissa's wrist, smiling at her friendlily.
Then the great muffled gong-note sounded again and the twin pillars of white flame briefly roared to the ceiling to either side of Flindach. They showed by their glare that many men had entered by the narrow archway behind Flindach and now stood around him: stout guardsmen from the companies of the Keep with weapons at the ready, and several of his own sorcerers.
As the flame-pillars swiftly shrank, Flindach imperiously raised hand and resonantly spoke:
"The stars which may not be cheated foretold the doom of the Lord of Quarmall. All of you heard those two" — he pointed toward the shattered litter — "proclaim themselves Lord of Quarmall. So the stars are twice satisfied. And the gods, who hear our words to each tiniest whisper, and order our fates by them, are content. It remains that I reveal to you the next Lord of Quarmall."