Swords Against Wizardry by Fritz Leiber ...
Swords Against Wizardry by Fritz Leiber ...
Swords Against Wizardry by Fritz Leiber ...
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there was nothing in them but green ichor.<br />
Hasjarl instantly closed his own eyes, but continued to peer down through the<br />
holes in his upper lids.<br />
Then he heard Gwaay's voice like a silver mosquito <strong>by</strong> his ear saying, "You<br />
have made a slight oversight, dear brother. You have chosen the wrong weapon.<br />
After our father's burning you swore to me my life was sacrosanct -- until you<br />
killed me <strong>by</strong> crushing. 'Until I crush it out,' you said. The gods hear only our<br />
words, Brother, not our intentions. Had you come lugging a boulder, like the<br />
curious gnome you are, you might have accomplished your aim."<br />
"Then I'll have you crushed!" Hasjarl retorted angrily, leaning his face closer<br />
and almost shouting. "Aye, and I'll sit <strong>by</strong> and listen to your bones crunch -- what<br />
bones you have left! You're as great a fool as I, Gwaay, for you too after our<br />
father's funeral promised not to slay me. Aye, and you're a greater fool, for now<br />
you've spilled to me your little secret of how you may be slain."<br />
"I swore not to slay you with spells or steel or venom or with my hand," the<br />
bright insect voice of Gwaay replied. "Unlike you, I said nothing at all of<br />
crushing." Hasjarl felt a strange tingling in his flesh while in his nostrils there was<br />
an acrid odor like that of lightning mingling with the stink of corruption.<br />
Suddenly Gwaay's hands thrust up to the palms out of his overly rich<br />
bedclothes. The flesh was shredding from the finger bones which pointed straight<br />
up, invokingly.<br />
Hasjarl almost started back, but caught himself. He'd die, he told himself,<br />
before he'd cringe from his brother. He was aware of strong forces all about him.<br />
There was a muffled grating noise and then an odd faintly pattering snowfall<br />
on the coverlet and on Hasjarl's neck ... a thin snowfall of pale gritty stuff ...<br />
grains of mortar....<br />
"Yes, you will crush me, dear brother," Gwaay admitted tranquilly. "But if you<br />
would know how you will crush me, recall my small special powers ... or else<br />
_look up_!"<br />
Hasjarl turned his head, and there was the great black basalt slab big as the<br />
litter rushing down, and the one moment of life left Hasjarl was consumed in<br />
hearing Gwaay say, "You are wrong again, my comrade."<br />
Fafhrd stopped a sword-slash in midcourse when he heard the crash and the<br />
Mouser almost nicked him with his rehearsed parry. They lowered their blades<br />
and looked, as did all others in the central section of the Ghost Hall.<br />
Where the litter had been was now only the thick basalt slab mortar-streaked<br />
with the litter-poles sticking out from under, and above in the ceiling the<br />
rectangular white hole whence the slab had been dislodged. The Mouser thought,<br />
_That's a larger thing to move <strong>by</strong> thinking than a checker or jar, yet the same<br />
black substance._<br />
Fafhrd thought, _Why didn't the whole roof fall? -- there's the strangeness._<br />
Perhaps the greatest wonder of the moment was the four tread-slaves still<br />
standing at the four corners, eyes forward, fingers locked across their chests,<br />
although the slab had missed them only <strong>by</strong> inches in its falling.<br />
Then some of Hasjarl's henchmen and sorcerers who had seen their Lord<br />
sneak to the litter now hurried up to it but fell back when they beheld how closely<br />
the slab approached the floor and marked the tiny rivulet of blood that ran from<br />
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