Swords Against Wizardry by Fritz Leiber ...

ABBYY PDF Transformer 2.0
Click here to buy
w w w.A BBYY.co m
* * * *
Fafhrd had barely eased himself out of the chimney onto the wide, deep rockroofed
ledge at its top, when a door two yards high, a yard wide, and two spans
thick had silently opened in the rock at the back of the ledge.
The contrast was most remarkable between the roughness of that rock and
the ruler-flat smoothness of the dark stone forming the thick sides of the door
and the lintel, jambs, and threshold of the doorway.
Soft pink light spilled out and with it a perfume whose heavy fumes were
cargoed with dreams of pleasure barges afloat in a rippling sunset sea.
Those musky narcotic fumes, along with the alcoholic headiness of the thin
air, almost made Fafhrd forget his purpose, but touching the black rope was like
touching Hrissa and the Mouser at its other end. He unknotted it from his belt
and prepared to secure it around a stout rock pillar beside the open door. To get
enough rope to make a good knot he had to draw it up quite tight.
But the dream-freighted fumes grew thicker, and he no longer felt the Mouser
and Hrissa in the rope. Indeed, he began to forget his two comrades altogether.
And then a silvery voice -- a voice he knew well from having heard it laugh
once and once chuckle -- called, "Come in, barbarian. Come in to me."
The end of the black rope slipped from his fingers unnoticed and hissed softly
across the rock and down the chimney.
Stooping a little, he went through the doorway which silently closed behind
him just in time to shut out the Mouser's desperate call.
He was in a room lit by pink globes hanging at the level of his head. Their soft
warm radiance colored the hangings and rugs of the room, but especially the pale
spread of the great bed that was its only furniture.
Beside the bed stood a slim woman whose black silk robe concealed all of her
except her face, yet did not disguise her body's sleek curves. A black lace mask hid
the rest of her.
She looked at Fafhrd for seven thudding heartbeats, then sat down on the
bed. A slender arm and hand clothed all in black lace came from under her robe
and patted the spread beside her and rested there. Her mask never wavered from
Fafhrd's face.
He shouldered out of his pack and unbuckled his ax belt.
* * * *
The Mouser finished pounding all the thin blade of his dagger into the crack
by his ear, using the firestone from his pouch for hammer, so that sparks
showered from every cramped stroke of stone against pommel -- small lightning
flashes to match the greater flares still chasing up and down the chimney, while
their thunder crashed an obbligato to the Mouser's taps. Hrissa crouched on his
ankles, and from time to time the Mouser glared at her, as if to say, "Well, cat?"
A gust of snow-freighted wind roaring up the chimney momentarily lifted the
lean shaggy beast a span above him and almost blew the Mouser loose, but he
tightened his pushing muscles still more and the bridge, arching upward a trifle,
held firm.
He had just finished knotting an end of the black rope around the dagger's
crossguard and grip -- and his fingers and forearms were almost useless with
fatigue -- when a window two feet high and five wide silently opened in the back
ABBYY PDF Transformer 2.0
Click here to buy
w w w.A BBYY.co m