The Mouser slipped his clean arm under the wizard's shoulders. Sheelba weighed so little he had no trouble lifting him up. Fafhrd stood ready with the jug in one hand, the small cup in the other. "A cupful first," he said, holding it close to Sheelba's Hps and tipping it. "The jug if you keep it down."
But Sheelba did no more than wet his lips before he pushed Fafhrd away. He leaned upon the worktable, his hands on either side of the crucible. Fiery rainbows danced on the thinly translucent skin that stretched over his knuckles. Even the faceless darkness within his hood began to fill with color. "I feared you would not succeed in time," he said. "But you have—barely. The ingredients are mixed. Add Malygris's blood to the potion, and your victory is complete."
For the first time, the Mouser bent over the crucible and saw that it contained a still, clear liquid. For a moment, he stared in small confusion, a slight vertigo clawing at his senses. Then he gasped.
The rainbow light that danced about the room came not from the interplay of the crystal ball's glow on the facets of the crucible, but from some strange energies contained within that liquid, energies that swam and swirled languidly, directionless, through a watery suspension.
Half-entranced by the sight, the Mouser raised Catsclaw and his bloody hand over the vessel. All that he had done, all that he and Fafhrd had endured in Lankhmar, had come to this. He saw his own hand rising as if pulled by a string. He saw himself as a puppet, manipulated by another hand greater and more powerful than his own.
And he resented it.
"Plunge it in!" Sheelba rasped. Bony fingers closed around the Mouser's arm and sought weakly to force it downward. "Plunge it in, and save us all!"
The Mouser's jaw knotted, and he gnashed his teeth in anger. The blood on his hand—it stank in his nostrils! Not innocent blood, by any means. Malygris, the jealous and insane fool, had intended to kill, and kill he did. But was he, too, no more than a puppet, playing a part dictated to him, dancing on strings pulled by some greater power?
The Mouser did not doubt it, and the hand that held bloody Catsclaw trembled with rage.
Then Fafhrd doubled over in a fit of coughing. One hand clutching at the edge of the table drapery, he stumbled back. The liquid in the crucible splashed violently. The crucible itself threatened to tip and spill its life-saving contents. Sheelba made a grab for the vessel, but the Mouser brushed his hands aside, caught the rim and saved the potion himself.
Fafhrd's spasm passed, leaving him gasping for breath and pale of face. Wiping a hand over his lips, he looked with fearless eyes toward his partner.
The Mouser nodded to himself as much as to Fafhrd. Then unseen by the others, he rolled his dark and angry eyes toward the roof and beyond. Well-played, you puppet-masters, he thought. Well-played. To save Fafhrd, I’ll dance your jig.
With that, he plunged Catsclaw into the liquid.
The rainbow energies, directionless before as they swam, surged around the blade, entwined around it like fiery serpents. The blood diffused into the liquid, and for a brief moment, the liquid turned scarlet, and the rainbows faded away as if some battle had been lost.
But the scarlet faded in turn, and from within the red water the rainbows rose again. They danced upon the dagger blade, climbed it, licked the blood from the Mouser's hand and sleeve, growing as they fed until bands of colored fire encircled the Gray Mouser.
A spark leaped from those bands, then another, each touching Sheelba and Fafhrd, and the arcanely heatless flames spiraled around and around them. Within those bands, Fafhrd straightened; he drew back his shoulders, and lifted his head, and when he looked across the room at the Mouser, all pain was gone from his bright green eyes.
Within his own body, the Gray Mouser felt a sharp-toothed worm die. For the life of him, though, and for the lives he had won, he could not rejoice. Even as vitality and renewed life flowed back into his frame, his thoughts turned to Ivrian. Ivrian, who was dead. He felt her absence and the distance between them like a horrible, heart-breaking gulf.
He opened his eyes again. Fafhrd stood at the hut’s doorway staring outward. "Come and see this," he said quietly to the Mouser.
"Go on," Sheelba urged. In one hand, he held the jug Fafhrd had fetched. With the other, he lifted the lid of the trunk where he kept his wine. "I have a much better vintage than this, and we have much to celebrate."
"We have nothing to celebrate," the Mouser said bitterly. "But bring your wine. I need a drink."
The Mouser went to the doorway and pushed aside the covering. Fafhrd was already climbing down the ladder, but he kept his gaze toward Lankhmar's distant walls as he descended.
The Mouser leaned in the doorway, beholding a sight like none he had ever seen. Nor would he ever, he knew, see another like it.
Arching across the walls, the spires, and minarets of Nehwon's most ancient and mysterious city, a shimmering aurora blazed against the star-speckled heaven, neatly dividing the black of night in the west from the creeping light of dawn. Brighter, far more spectacular than the northern lights of Fafhrd's cold homeland, more awesome than any common rainbow, it floated in the air like a burning promise that Malygris's curse was forever ended.
A tear rolled down the Gray Mouser's cheek. One tear for all the dead. For Jesane and Demptha Negatarth. For Sadaster and Laurian. For a little blond girl with a straw poppet. For his beloved Ivrian.
He brushed the tear away before Sheelba could see it as he felt the wizard come up behind him. "You used me," he said coldly. "Death used me."
"Nor is that the end of it," Sheelba answered, not without some sympathy in his voice. "Death is only Death after all, and is used in turn by greater powers. That's what truly frightens you. You think you have glimpsed those greater powers."
"Is nothing we do of our own choosing?" the Mouser demanded. "Are we just pawns advanced or sacrificed at Fate's whim?"
"Climb down," Sheelba suggested patiently. He sloshed the bottle of wine he held. "We can all use a drink."
The Mouser obeyed. Weary in body and spirit, he went to Fafhrd's side. It was where he belonged, where he was meant to be. Fafhrd, for whom he would do anything, risk anything.
But did he belong at Fafhrd's side because he chose to be there? Did he have any say at all in where he went, what he did, who he called comrade?
He looked at Fafhrd with blackly resentful eyes.
"I'm thinking of Vlana," Fafhrd whispered, not noticing the hate-filled look of his partner. "The night she first came to Cold Corner with a troupe of actors and dancers, an aurora hung like a curtain in the sky. We joked once that it was the curtain going up on the stage-play that our lives together would make." He paused, though his gaze continued fixed on the blazing vision over Lankhmar. "In my homeland, auroras are considered omens. I've sometimes wondered if the aurora that burned that night over my lovemaking with Vlana was for good or ill."
The hate and anger faded from the Mouser's face. "I know you're not a superstitious man ..." he said.
"I'm not!" Fafhrd interrupted defensively.
"Then forget omens," the Mouser said. "Just cling to Vlana's memory. Hold tight to it, Fafhrd. Keep it like a treasure, or the gods will steal it away from you." He cast his gaze upward.
No sky had ever been more beautiful, or seemed to him more alien. Through that shimmering curtain that hung high above the world like the drapery of some cosmic proscenium he glimpsed subtle shadows and a hint of puppeteers' strings.
"Drink," Sheelba said, wiping the back of his hand over the lower part of his unseen face as he passed the bottle of wine to Fafhrd. "The gods never give thanks to mortals. Such is not the nature of the world. But if it means anything, I thank you."