"All the more reason to act swiftly," the Mouser said, "while the hot anger in our hearts shields us against the fear of what we must do."
Despite his paleness, Fafhrd grinned at Demptha. "The Mouser makes his prettiest speeches when he's mad." He threw back his head and laughed.
The streets of the Festival District were virtually empty. Even the taverns had shut up their doors and windows. Through the cracks of the shutters, muted lamplight filtered, and sometimes a silhouetted face peered suspiciously out.
A few blocks away, perhaps in the neighboring Plaza District, someone wandered through the streets calling, "Plague! Plague!" And from another voice farther away came the same cry. The echoes of those voices bouncing among the buildings conspired to trick the ears, and in the black hour after midnight, it seemed that some evil chorus was at work.
Leaving the taverns of the Festival District behind, Demptha Negatarth set a determined pace on the road that ran in the shadow of the Great Marsh Wall. On one side of the street, warehouses loomed, seemingly at unnatural angles, as if the earth had somehow tilted under them, and slanted rooftops seemed on the verge of sliding off the walls that supported them. Their windows, like square black eyes, seemed to watch the street and the odd trio that passed by, and huge doors gaped like black mouths.
Every shape and sight possessed an ominous air on this morbid night, and every slightest sound seemed a warning cry. The capricious wind felt like an unexpected breath on the back of the neck or the side of the face, and the smell of death hung over all like a tenuous perfume.
Thick clouds raced across the sky like massive phantoms, bringing an unseasonable chill, sending dust from the streets swirling.
High on the great wall's rampart, a nervous guard shouted down for them to identify themselves.
Fafhrd responded with a rude gesture. "Identify this!" he called back.
At last, they reached a familiar warehouse. The Mouser ran ahead of Demptha, down the narrow alleyway, and tugged open the door. With one hand on Graywand, Fafhrd slipped past the Mouser and entered the warehouse first. Following, Demptha stepped on the Mouser's foot.
A sharp breath hissed between the Mouser's lips as he bit back a curse.
"Sorry," Demptha whispered.
The Mouser continued to mutter under his breath as he pulled the door closed and slid home a wooden bolt. Now they were sealed inside. Little relief or consolation in that, however. The darkness inside the structure felt more imposing, more impenetrable, than the darkness in the streets.
"Over here," Demptha called.
Tugging on Fafhrd's sleeve, the Mouser limped to the corncrib that concealed Demptha's personal staircase to the underworld. He well remembered the last time he used that stair and recalled the horrible screaming, the numbing fear, the empty room, and a lot of vanished sick people.
"What happened in the Temple of Hates?" he asked abruptly as he balanced with his booted toes on the very edge of the first step. "What became of Mish and all your sick patients?"
"I don't know," came Demptha's pensive answer. "I left Jesane in charge while I stepped out for some air." He paused as if wondering whether to say more. At last he continued. "Strangest thing," he muttered, his voice dropping with a mixture of embarrassment and shame. "As it had so many nights of late, a heavy fog rolled in. Yet, this one seemed to bring with it peculiar thoughts and odd stirrings. An old whore came walking down the road in the midst of it. The lowest class of street-walker, working late I suppose. Suddenly I was diddling her on the very doorstep of the Rat God's temple!"
"Laurian's handiwork again," Fafhrd said with a sad shake of his head. Abruptly he changed the subject as he peered into the black stairwell. "You know I'm not a superstitious man, Mouser. But if your plan is to descend into this hole without any kind of light, I'd like a few moments to change your mind."
"Feel around in the corner near your foot, Fafhrd," Demptha instructed. "You should find an old lantern, battered and rusted, as if it had been discarded and forgotten years ago. But if you shake it, you'll find the reservoir still contains a small amount of oil."
Fafhrd crouched low and explored the corner of the crib with a broad sweep of his hand, encountering the lantern lying on its side. Holding it close to his ear, he shook it and smiled at the sloshing sound it made.
"How do you expect to fire the wick?" the Mouser asked.
Demptha Negatarth gave a low, mocking chuckle. "As some wise friend once said, wizards are stingy with their secrets."
A small flame sprang suddenly from the lantern's wick. An orange glow lit up Fafhrd's startled face. Hiding his own surprise, the Mouser blinked at the sudden light. Though it was hard to be sure, he thought he saw a tiny rain of fine black powder above the wick before Demptha withdrew his hand.
"A mere trick of prestidigitation," he scoffed, assuming a professional disinterest, though in truth he was considerably impressed.
"Your friend asked for light," Demptha replied with the slightest of smiles. "Not miracles."
Seizing the lantern by its bail, the Mouser turned the wick as high as it would go and lowered the glass shield around it. Then, drawing slender Scalpel from its sheath, he led the way down the narrow steps.
Demptha followed, and Fafhrd brought up the rear. The Northerner's great body nearly filled the tiny tunnel at the bottom. He bent low, and still his head brushed the ceiling. He thumped the close walls on either side with his fists.
"A worm burrowing through the earth has more room," he grumbled.
"But a worm lacks your charm and good nature," the Mouser said impatiently as he lifted the light high and started forward.
"Not to mention my good looks," Fafhrd shot back.
"The tunnels below Lankhmar are not always so cramped," Demptha explained as he gave Fafhrd's arm a sympathetic pat. "Some, however, are worse."
They stopped talking then. Their small light quivered, intimidated by the blackness ahead, but the Mouser pricked the dark with the point of his rapier and pushed it back with each nervously determined step. He felt the weight of Ivrian's pearl on the back of his right hand where he had thrust it under his glove and thought of her down here somewhere with Malygris— and with something still more dreadful.
The tunnel merged into another, then another. At last Fafhrd could stand straight as he walked. He gave a soft cough, stifling it as best he could with his hand. "Were I not already at Death's door," he whispered, "the quailing in my heart would send me clawing right up to the surface world again."
The Mouser said nothing. The same crushing fear that had filled these passages before still permeated them. He could barely breathe, for the choking hand of it held him by the throat. Only the thought of Ivrian drew him on.
The softest weeping rose from Demptha. "My poor Jesane," he murmured. "Even with her brave heart, she must have run from this terror, abandoning her charges."
"It caught up with her," the Mouser said, tight-lipped.
Against the strangling dark, they pressed on. Demptha's weeping ceased as they emerged into a cavern. "Is this the way to the Temple of Hates?" the Mouser asked doubtfully, for it lacked the look of the cavern that led to that place.
Demptha moved past the Mouser, turning his gaze toward the high ceiling, then all around as he walked to the very edge of the lantern's light and touched a stalagmite that stood twice his height. He shook his head. "This is wrong," he said, and a new fear shadowed his face as he turned back toward the light. "Yet it can't be. We came by the proper route."
"What is this mist rising from the ground?" Fafhrd said apprehensively.
The Mouser fairly jumped as he glanced downward at a creeping vapor that curled around his boots. Everywhere he looked, as far as the lantern let him see, a fine cold smaze seeped up through the cavern floor and filtered into the air, diffusing the quality of the lantern's light, leeching away the faint warmth it offered.