The Bazaar of the Bizarre
Fritz Leiber
Fritz I'eibn (1910-19gz) is widety consid,ered, one of the found,ing fathers of ty*d and, sorcny fict'ion, tuith his eregantty wite tatei ofFafhid and, tie Grey Mousl ranking besid,e Rabert Howard's coian talzi fm" their impact. His lpscimu fiction is no icss memmabrc, hauing uon the Higo award fir the noaek rhe wanderer and The Big Time. othn nouek iiclud,e conjure wrfe, a tale of modern day witchcraft and, the uses it has in the wita oy academia, and our Lady of Darkness, which won the wtvrrd Fantasy award. A f.fu1ear retrospectiae of his shmt fiction, The Leiber Chronicles, was pubkshed. by Darh Haraest press.
Tnr srnqncn srars of rur Wonro or Nngwon glinted thickl' ab.ve the black-roofed city of Lankhmar, where sword.s clink aimost as often as coins. For once there was no fog.
In the Plaza of Dark Delights, which liis seven brocks south of the Marsh Gale and extends from the Fountain of Dark Abundance to the Shrine of the Black virgin, the shop-ligha glinted upward no more brightly than the stars glinted down. For thlre the vendors of drugs and the peddlers of curiosa and the hawkers of assignations light their stalls and crouching places with foxfire, glowwoi*s, and firepots with tiny single windows, and they conduc"t their business almost as silently as the stars conduct theirs.
There are plenty of raucous spots a-grare with torches in nocturnal Lankhmar, but by immemoriar ff;dition sofr whispers and a pleasant dimness are the rule in the praza of Dark Derights. philosophers often go there solely to mediate, students to dieam, and f,arratic-eyed theologians to spin like spiders abstruse new theories of the Devil and of the other dark forces ruling the universe. And if any of these find a littre illicit fun by the way, their theories and dreams_ and theologies and demonologies are undoubtedly the better for it.
Tonight, however, there was a glaring exception to the darkness rule. From a low doorway with a trefoir" arch nlw-struck through an ancient wall, light spilled into the plaza. Rising above the horizon of
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the pavement like some monstrous moon a-shine with the ray of a -rrrd".or6 sun, the new doorway dimmed almost to extlnction the stars of the other merchants of mystery'
Eerie and unearthly objects for sale spilled out of the doorway a little way with the light, while beside the doorway crouched an avid-faced figure clad in garments never before seen on land or sea . . ' in the world of Nehwon. He wore a hat like a small red pail, b.ggy trousers, and outlandish red boots with upturned toes. His eyes were as predatory as a hawk's, but his smile as cynically and lasciviously cajoling as an ancient satp's.
Now and igain he sprang up and pranced about, sweeping and re-sweeping w:ith a rough long broom the flagstones as if to clean path foi ttre entry of some fantastic emperor, and he often paused in his dance to blow low and loutingly, but always with upglancing eyes, to the crowd gathering in the darkness cross from the doorway and to swing his hand from them toward the interior of the new shop in u g"itrt" of invitation at once servile and sinister'
No one of the crowd had yet plucked up courage to step forward into the glare and enter the shop, or even inspect the rarities set out so caielessly yet temPtingly before it' But the number of fascinated peerers increased momently. There were mutterings of censure ai the dazzling new method of merchandising—the infraction of the Plaza's custom of darkness—but on the whole the complaints were outlveighed by the gasps and murmurings of wonder, admiration, and curiosity kindling even hotter.
The Gray Mouser slipped into the Plaza at the Fountain end as silently ut if he had come to slit a throat or spy on the spies of the overlord. His ratskin moccasins were soundless. His sword scalpel in its mouseskin sheath did not swish ever so faintly against either his tunic or cloak, both of gray silk curiously coarse of weave. The glances he shot about him from under his gray silk hood half thrown back were freighted with menace and a freezing sense of superiority.
ir,*urdiy the Mouser was feeling very much like a schoolboy—a schoolboy in dread of rebuke and a crushing assignment of homework. For in the Mouser's pouch of ratskin was a note scrawled in dark brown squid-ink o. rilu".y fish-skin by sheelba of the Eyeless Face, inviting itte Mouser to be at this spot at this time'-
Sheelba was the Mouser,S supernatural tutor and_when the whim struck sheelba—guardian, and it never did to ignore his invitations, for Sheelba had eyes to track down the unsociable though he did not carry them between his cheeks and forehead'
But the tasks sheelba would set the Mouser at times like these
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were apt to be peculiarly onerous and even noisome—such as procuring nine white cats with never a black hair among themo or stealing five copies of the same book of magic runes from five widely separated sorcerous libraries or obtaining specimens of the dung of four kings living or dead—so the Mouser had come early, to get the bad news as soon as possible, and he had come alone, for he certainly did not want his comrade Fafhrd to stand snickering by while Sheelba delivered his little wizardly homilies to a dutiful Mouser . . . and perchance thought of extra assignments.
Sheelba's note, invisible graven somewhere inside the Mouser's skull, read merely, rMhm the star Akul bedizms the Spire ofRhan, be you by the Fountain of Dark Abundance, and the note was signed only with the little featureless oval which is Sheelba's sigil.
The Mouser glided now through the darkness to the Fountain, which was a squat black pillar from the rough rounded top of which a single black drop welled and dripped every twenty elephant's heartbeats.
The Mouser stood beside the Fountain and, extending a bent hand, measured the altitude of the green star Akul, It had still to drop down the sky seven finger widths more before it would touch the needle-point of the slim star-silhouetted distant minaret of Rhan.
The Mouser crouched doubled-up by the black pillar and then vaulted lightly atop it to see if that would make any great difference in Akul's attitude. It did not.
He scanned the nearby darkness for motionless figures . . . especially that of one robed and cowled like a monk—cowled so deeply that one might wonder how he saw to walk. There were no figures at all.
The Mouser's mood changed. If Sheelba chose not to come courteously beforehand, why he could be boorish too! He strode off to investigate the new bright archdoored shop, of whose infractious glow he had become inquisitively aware at least a block before he had entered the Plaza of Dark Delights.
Fa{hrd the Northerner opened one wine-heavy eye and without moving his head scanned half the small firelit room in which he slept naked. He shut that eye, opened the other, and scanned the other half.
There was no sign of the Mouser an).where. So far so good! If his luck held, he would be able to get through tonight's embarrassing business without being jeered at by the small gray rogue.
He drew from under his stubbly check a square of violet serpent-hide pocked with tiny pores so that when he held it beween his
292 — The Bazaar of the Bizarre
eyes and the dancing fire it made stars. Studied for a time, these stars spelled out obscurely the message'. Whcn Rhan-dagger stabs the d.arkness in Akul-heart, seek ytru the Source of the Black DroPs'
Drawn boldly across the prickholes in an orange-browrr like dried blood—in fact spanning the violet square—was a seven*armed swastika, which is one of the sigils of Ningauble of the Seven Eyes.
Fafhrd had no difficulty in interpreting the Source of the Black Drops as the Fountain of Dark Abundance. He had become wearily familiar with such cryptic poetic language during his boyhood as a scholar of the singing skalds.
Ningauble sto;d to Fafhrd very much as Sheelba stood to the Mouser except that the Seven-Eyed One was a somewhat more pretentious ar.hirnug., whose taste in the thaumaturgical tasks he set Fafhrd ran in larger directions, such as the slaying of dragons, the sinking of four-masted magic ships, and the kidnapping of ogre-guarded enchanted queens.
AIso, Ningauble was given to quiet realistic boasting, especially about the grandeur of his vast cavern-home, whose stony serpent-wisting back corridors led, he often averred, to all spots in space and time—provided Ningauble instructed one beforehand exactly how to step those rocky crooked low-ceilinged passageways'
Fafhrd was driven by no great desire to learn Ningauble's formulas and enchantments, as the Mouser was driven to learn Sheelba's, but the Septinocular One had enough holds on the Northerner, based on the latter's weaknesses and past misdeeds, so that Fafhrd had always to listen patiently to Ningauble's wizardly admonishments and vaunting sorcerous chit-chat—but not, lf humanly or inhumanly possible, while the Gray Mouser was present to snigger and grin.
Mlanwhile, Fafhrd standing before the fire, had been whipping' slapping, and belting various garments and weapons and orna*."t onto his huge brawny body with its generous stretches of thick short curling ied-gold hairs. When he opened the outer door and. also booted and helmeted now, glanced down the darkling alleyway preParatory to leaving and noted only the hunch-backed chestnut vendor a-squat by his brazier at the next corner, one would have sworn that when he did stride forth toward the Plaza of Dark Delights it would be with the clankings and thunderous tread of a siege-tower approaching a thick-walled city'
instead thi lyn*-.ured old chestnut vendor, who was also a spy of the Overlord, had to swallow down his heart when it qame sliding crooked,ly up his throat as Faftrrd rushed Past him, tall as a pine tree, swift as the wind, and silent as a ghost'
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The Mouser elbowed aside two gawkers with shrewd taps on the floating rib and strode across the dark flagstones toward the garishly bright shop with its doorway like an upended heart. It occurred to him they must have had masons working like fiends to have cut and plastered that archway so swiftly. He had been past here this afternoon and noted nothing but blank wall.
The outlandish porter with the red cylinder hat and twisty red shoe-toes came frisking out to the Mouser with his broom and then went curtsying back as he reswept a path for this first customer with many an obsequious bow and smirk.
But the Mouser's visage was set in an expression of grim and all-skeptical disdain. He paused at the heaping of objects in front of the door and scanned it with disapproval. He drew Scalpel from its thin gray sheath and with the tip of the long blade flipped back the cover on the topmost of a pile of musty books. Without going any closer he briefly scanned the first page, shook his head, rapidly turned a half dozen more pages with Scalpel's tip, using the sword as if it were a teacher's wand to point out words here and there— because they were ill-chosen, to judge from his expression—and then abruptly closed the book with another sword-flip.
Next he used Scalpel's tip to lift a red cloth hanging from a table behind the books and peer under it suspiciously, to rap contemptuously a glass jar with a human head floating in it, to touch disparagingly several other objects and to waggle reprovingly at a foot-chained owl which hooted at him solemnly from its high perch.
He sheathed Scalpel and turned toward the porter with a sour, lifted-eyebrow look which said—nay, shouted—plainly, "Is tfras all you have to offer? Is this garbage your excuse for defiling the Dark Plaza with glare?"
Actually the Mouser was mightily interested by every least item which he had glimpsed. The book, incidentally, had been in a script which he not only did not understand, but did not even recognize.
Three things were very clear to the Mouser: first, that this stuff offered here for sale did not come from anywhere in the World of Nehwon, no, not even from Nehwon's farthest outback; second, that all this stuff was, in some way which he could not yet define, extremely dangerous; third, that all this stuff was monstrously fascinating and that he, the Mouser, did not intend to stir from this place until he had personally scanned, studied, and if need be tested, every last intriguing item and scrap.
At the Mouser's sour grimace, the porter went into a contrlsion of wheedling and fawning caperings, seemingly torn between a desire to kiss the Mouser's foot and to point out with flamboyant caressing gestures every object in his shop.
294 — The Bazaar of the Blzmre
He ended by bowing so low that his chin brushed the Pavement, sweeping an ape-long arm toward the interior of the shop, and gibbering in atrocious Lankhmarese, "Every object to pleasure the flesh and senses and imagination of man. wonders undreamed. very cheap, very cheap! Yours for a penny! The Bazaar of the Bizarre. Please to inspect, oh king!"
The Mouser yawned a very long yawn with the back of his hand to his mouth, next he looked around him again with the weary, patient, worldly smile of a duke who knows he must put up with many boredoms to encourage business in his demesne, finally he shrugged faintly and entered the shop'
Behind him the porter went into a jigging delirium of glee and began to re-sweep the flagstones like a man maddened with delight.
fnside, the firit thing the Mouser saw was a stack of slim books bound in gold-lined fine-grained red and violet leather'
The second was a rack of gleaming lenses and slim brass tubes calling to be peered through.
ffre ttrira was a slim dark-haired girl smiling at him mysteriously from a gold-barred cage that swung from the ceiling'
Beyond that cage hung others with bars of silver and strange green, ruby, orange, ultramarine, and purple metals'
Fafhrd saw the Mouser vanish into the shop just as his left hand touched the rough chill pate of the Fountain of Dark Abundance and as Akul pointed precisely on Rhan-top as if it were that needle-spire's green-lensed pinnacle-lantern.
He mgftt have followed the Mouser, he might have done no such thin!, he certainly would have pondered the briefly glimpsed event, bu"t just then there came from behind him a long low "Hssssst!"
Fafhrd turned like a giant dancer and his longsword Graywand came out of its sheath swiftly and rather more silently than a snake emerges from its hole.
Tei arm lengths behind him, in the mouth of an alleyway darker than the Dark Plaza would have been without its new commercial moon, Fafhrd dimly made out two robed and deeply cowled frgures poised side by side.
one cowl held darkness absolute. Even the face of a Negro of Klesh might have been exPected to shoot ghostly bronze gleams' But here there were none.
In the other cowl there nested seven very faint pale greenish glows. They moved about restlessly, sometimes circling each other' iwirrgirrg mazl1y. Sometimes one of the seven horizontally oval gleairs ivould grow a little brighter, seemingly as it moved forward ioward the mouth of the cowl—or a little darker, as it drew back.
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Fafhrd sheathed Graywand and advanced toward the figures. still fulq him, they retreated slowly and silently down the alGy.
Fafhrd followed as they receded. He felt a stirring of interesr. . . and of other feelings. To meet his own supernaturul ,n.rrto, alone might be only a bore and. a mild nervoui strain; but it wourd be hard for anyone entirely to repress a shiver of awe at encountering at one and the same time both Ningauble of the seven Eyes anI Sheelba of the Eyeless Face.
Moreover, that those nvo bitter wizardly rivals would have joined forces, that they should apparentry be operating together in amity. . . Something of great note must be afoott fneie was no doubting that.
The Mouser meantime was experiencing the smuggest, most mind-teasing, most exotic enjoyments imaginable. The sleekly leather-bound gold-stamped books turned o..t to contain scripts srranger far than that in the book whose pages he had flipped outside— scripts that looked like skeletal beasts, cloud swiris, and twisry-branched bushes and trees—but for a wonder he could read. them all without the least difficulty.
The books dealt in the fullest detail with such marters as the private life of devils, the secret histories of murderous cults, arrd— these were illustrated—the proper dueling techniques to employ against sword-armed demons and the crotic tricks of lamias, suc-cubi, bacchantes, and hamadryads.
The lenses and brass tubes, some of the latter of which were as fantastically crooked as if they were periscopes for seeing over the walls and through the barred windowi of other unive.ses, "showed at first only delightful jeweled patterns, but after a bit the Mouser was able to see through them into all sorts of interesting places: the treasure-room of dead kings, the bedchambers of living queens, council-crlpts of rebel angels, and the closets in which thJ gods hid plans for worlds too frighteningly fantastic to risk creating.
As for the quaintly crad slim girrs in their prayfully wid"ely-barred cages, well, they were pleasant pillows on whiih io r"rt eyes momentarily fatigued by book-scanning and tube_peering.
Ever and anon one of the girls would *hi.tl" siftly at the Mouser and then point cajolingly or imploringry or with languorous hint-ings at a jeweled crank set in the wall whereby her cag"e, suspended on a gleaming chain running through gleaming p,rli.yr, could be lowered to the floor.
At these invitations the Mouser would smile with a bland amorousness and nod and softly wave a hand from the fingerhinge as if to whisper, "Later . . . later. Be patient."
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After all, girls had a way of blotting out all lesser, but not thereby despicable, delights. Girls were for dessert.
Ningauble and sheelba receded down the dark alleyway with Fafh;d following them until the latter lost patience and, somewhat conquering his unwilling awe, called out nervously, 'well, are you going to kiep on fleeing me backward until we all pitch into the Cr.ui Salt Marsh? What do you want of me? What's it all about?"
But the two cowled figures had already stopped, as he could perceive by the starlight and the glow of a few high windows, and now it seemed to Fafhrd that they had stopped a moment before he had called out. A gpical sorcerers' trick for making one feel awkward! He gnawed his lip in the darkness. It was ever thus!
"Oh My Gentle Son ..." Ningauble began in his rnost sugary-priestly tones, the dim puffs of his seven eyes now hanging in his co*t as steadily and glowing as mildly as the Pleiades seen late on a summer nighr through a greenish mist rising from a lake freighted with blue vitriol and corrosive gas of salt-
,,I asked what it's all about!" Fafhrd interrupted harshly. Already convicted of impatience, he might as well go the whole hog'
"Let me put it as a hypothetical case," Ningauble replied imper-turbably. "Let us suPpose' My Gentle Son, that there is a man in a universe and that i *ost evil force comes to this universe from another universe, or perhaps from a congeries of universes, and that this man is a brave man who wants to defend his universe and who counts his life as a trifle and that moreover he has to counsel him a very wise and prudent and public-spirited uncle who knows all about these matteis which I have been hypothecating—"
,"The Devourers menace Lankhmar!" Sheelba rapped out in a voice as harsh as a tree cracking and so suddenly that Fafhrd almost started—and for all we know, Ningauble too'
Fafhrd waited a moment to avoid giving false impressions and then switched his gaze to sheelba. His eyes had been growing accustomed to the darkness and he saw much more now than he had seen at the alley's mouth, yet he still saw not one jot more than absolute blackness inside Sheelba's cowl'
"\Arho are the Devourers?" he asked.
It was Ningauble, however, who replied, "The Devourers are the most accomplished merchants in all the manly universes—so accomplished, indeed, that they sell only trash' There is a deep necessity in this, for the Devourers must occupy all their cunning in perfecting their methods of selling and so have not an instant to spare in co-nsidering the worth of what they sell. Indeed, they dare not concern them;lves with such matters for a moment, for fear of losing
Fritz leiber —zg7
their golden touch—and yet such are their skills that their wares are utterly irresistible, indeed the finest wares in all the many universes—if you follow me?"
Fafhrd looked hopefully toward sheelba, but since the latter did not this time interrupt with some pithy summation, he nodded to Ningauble.
Ningauble continued, his seven eyes beginning to weave a bit, judging from the movements of the seven g..., glows, *As you might readily deduce, the Devourers possess itt the mightiest magics garnered from the many universes, whilst their asJauir groups are led by the most aggressive wizards imaginable, supremery sr.iuea in all methods of battling, whether it be with the rits, or the feelings, or with the beweaponed body.
"The method of the Devourers is to set up shop in a new worrd and first entice the bravest and the most advent,rr.ro*. and the supplest-minded of its people—who have so much imagination that with just a touch of suggestion they themserves do mosi of the work of selling themselves.
"when these are safely ensnared, the Devourers proceed to deal with the remainder of the population: meaning simpty that they sell and sell and sell!—sell trash and take good monei ana even finer things in exchange."
Ningauble sighed windily and a shade piously. "AIr this is very bad, My Gentle Son," he continued, his eyeglows weaving trypnoti cally in his cowl, "but natural enough in universes adminlstered by such gods as we have—natural enough and perhaps endurable. fl6vpsvs1'"—he paused—"there is worse to come! The Devourers want not only the patronage of all beings in all universes, but_ doubtless because they are afraid someone will some day raise the ever-unpleasant question of the true worth of things—they want all their customers reduced to a state of sravish anJ submissive suggestihility, so that they are fit for nothing whatever but to gawk at and buy the trash the Devourers offer for sale. This means of course that eventually the Devourers' customers will have nothing wherewith to pay the Devourers for their trash, but the Devourer's d.o not seem to be concerned with this eventuality. perhaps they feel that there is always a new universe to exploit. And perhaps there is!"
"Monstrous!" Fa{hrd commented. 'But what do the Devourers gain from all these furious commerciar sorties, all this mad merchandising? What do they really want?"
Ningauble replied, "Tire Devourers want only to amass cash and to raise little ones like themselves to amass more cash and they want to compete with each other at cash-amassing. (Is that coincidentally a city, do you think, Fafhrd? cashamash?) And rhe Devourers wanr
2gB — The Bazaar of tp Bizane
to brood about their great service to the many universes—it is their claim that servile .,r.tott.tt make the most obedient subjects for the gods—and to complain about how the work of amassing cash tortir., their mindr und .rpr.ts their digestions. Beyond this, each of the Devourers also secretly collects and hides away forever, to delight no eyes but his own, all the finest objects and thoughts creut"d by true men and women (and true wizards and true demons) and bought by the Devourers at bankruptcy prices and paid for with trash orlthis is their ultimate preference—with nothing at all."
,,Monstrous indeed!" Fafhrd repeated. "Merchants are ever an evil mystery and these sound the worst. But what has all this to do with me?"
"oh My Gentle son," Ningauble responded, the piety in his voice now tinged with a certain clement disappointment, '!ou force me once again to resort to hypothecating. Let us return to the supposition of this brave man *ho." whole universe is direly menaced and who counts his life a trifle and to the related supposition of this brave man's wise uncle, whose advice the brave man inariably follows—"
,,The Devourers have set up shop in ttre Plaza of Dark Delights!" Sheelba interjected so abrupily in such iron-harsh syllables that this time Fafhrd actually did start. 'You must obliterate this outpost tonight!"
fafnra considered that for a bit, then said, in a tentative sort of voice, 'You will both accompany me' I presume, to aid me with your wizardly sendings and castings in what I can see must be a most Perilous operation, to serve me as a sort of sorcerous artillery and archery corps while I play assault battalion—"
"oh My Gentle son . . ." Ningauble interrupted in tones of deepest disappointment, shaking his head so that his eye-glows jogged in his cowl.
"You must do it alone!" Sheelba rasped'
,without any help at all?" Fafhrd demanded. "No! Get someone else. Get this doltish brave man who always follows his scheming uncleos advice as slavishly as you tell me the Devourers' customers respond to their merchandising. Get himl Bttt as for mg—\e, I say!"
iTh"rr leave us, coward!" Sheelba decreed dourly, but Ningauble only sighed and said quite apologetically, "It was intended that y-ou have a comrade in this quest, a fellow soldier against noisome evil— to wit, the Gray Mouser. But unfortunately he came early to his appointment with my colleague here and was enticed into the shop of the Devourers and is doubtless now deep in their snares' if not already extinct. So you can see that we do take thought for your welfare and have no wish to overburden you with solo quests. F{owevef, My Gentle Son, if it still be your firm resolve ''
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Fafhrd let out a sigh more profound than Ningauble's. 'Very well," he said in gruff tones admitting defeat, "I'll do it for you. Someone will have to pull that poor little gray fool out of the pretty-pretty fire—or the twinkly-twinkly water!—that tempted him' But how do I go about it?" He shook a big finger at Ningauble. 'And no more Gentle-Sonning!"
Ningauble paused. Then he said only, "Use your own judgment."
Sheelba said, "Beware the Black Wall!"
Ningauble said to Fafhrd, "Hold, I have a gift for you," and held out to him a ragged ribbon a yard long, pinched between the cloth of the wizard's long sleeve so that it was impossible to see the manner of hand that pinched. Fafhrd took the tatter with a snort, crumpled it into a ball, and thrust it into his pouch.
"Have a greater care with it," Ningauble warned. "It is the Cloak of Invisibility, somewhat worn by many magic usings. Do not put it on until you near the Bazaar of the Devourers. It has two minor weaknesses: it will not make you altogether invisible to a master sorcerer if he senses your presence and takes certain steps. Also, see to it that you do not bleed during this exploit, for the cloak will not hide blood."
o'I've a gift too!" Sheelba said, drawing from out of his black cowl-hole—with sleeve-masked hand, as Ningauble had 6lsng—something that shimrnered faint\ in the dark like . . .
Like a spiderweb.
Sheelba shook it, as if to dislodge a spider, or perhaps two.
"The Blindfold of True Seeing," he said as he reached it toward Fafhrd. "It shows all things as they really are! Do not lay it across your eyes until you enter the Bazaar. On no account, as you value your life or your sanity, wear it now!"
Fafhrd took it from him most gingerly, the flesh of his fingers crawling. He was inclined to obey the taciturn wizard's instructions. At this moment he truly did not much care to see the true visage of Sheelba of the Eyeless Face.
The Gray Mouser was reading the most interesting book of them all, a great compendium of secret knowledge written in a script of astrologic and geomantic signs, the meanings of which fairly leaped off the page into his mind.
To rest his eyes from that—or rather to keep from gobbling the book too fast—he peered through a nine-elbowed brass tube at a scene that could only be the blue heaven-pinnacle of the universe where angels flew shimmeringly like dragonflies and where a few choice heroes rested from their great mountain-climb and spied down critically on the antlike labors of the gods many levels below.
300 — The Bazaar of tlre Pizane
To rest his eye from that, he looked up between the scarlet (bloodmetal?) bars of the inmost cage at the most winsome, slim, fair, jet-eyed girl of them all. She knelt, sitting on her heels, with her upper body leaned back a little. She wore a red velvet tunic and had a mop of golden hair so thick and pliant that she could sweep it in a neat curtain over her upper face, down almost to her pouting lips. With the slim fingers of one hand she would slightly part these silky golden drapes to peer at the Mouser playfully, while with those of the other she rattled golden castanets in a most languorously slow rhythm, though with occasional swift staccato bursts'
The Mouser was considering whether it might not be as well to try a turn or two on the ruby-crusted golden crank next to his elbow, when he spied for the first time the glimmering wall at the back of the shop. What could its material be? he asked hirnself. Tiny diamonds countless as the sand set in smoky glass? Black opal? Black pearl? Black moonshine?
Whatever it was, it was wholly fascinating, for the Mouser quickly set down his book, using the nine-crooked spy-tube to mark his place—a most engrossing pair of Pages on dueling where were ievealed the Universal Parry and its five false variants and also the three true forms of the Secret Thrust—and with only a finger-wave to the ensorceling blonde in red velvet he walked quickly toward the back of the shop.
As he approached the Black wall he thought for an instant that he glimpsed a silver wraith, or perhaps a silver skeleton, walking towird hi- o,rt of it, but then he saw that it was only his own darkly handsome reflection, pleasantly flattered by the lustrous material. What had momentarily suggested silver ribs was the reflection of the silver lacings on his tunic.
He smirked at his image and reached out a finger to touch ils lus trous finger when—Lo, a wonder!—his hand went into the wall with never a sensation at all save a faint tingling coolth promising comfort like the sheets of a fresh-made bed.
He looked at his hand inside the wall and—Lo, another wonder—it was all a beautiful silver faintly patterned with tiny scales. And though his own hand indubitably, as he could tell by clenching it, it was icarless now and a mite slimmer and longer fingered— altogether a more handsome hand than it had been a moment ago.
He wriggled his fingers and it was like watching small silver fish dart about—fingerlings!
What a droll conceit, he thought, to have a dark fishpond or rather swimming pool set on its side indoors, so that one could walk into the fracious erect fluid quietly and gracefully, instead of all the noisy, bouncingly athletic business of diving!
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And how charming that the pool should be filled not with wet soppy cold water, but with a sort of moondark essence of sleep! An essence with beautifftg cosmetic properties too—a sort of mud-bath without the mud. The Mouser decided he must have a swim in this wonder pool at once, but just then his gaze lit on a long high black couch toward the other end of the dark liquid wall, and beyond the couch a small high table set with viands and a crystal pitcher and goblet.
He walked along the wall to inspect these, his handsome reflection taking step for step with him.
He trailed his hand in the wall for a space and then withdrew it, the scales instantly vanishing and the familiar old scars returning'
The couch turned out to be a narrow high-sided black coffin lined with quitted black satin and piled at one end with little black satin pillows. It looked most invitingly comfortable and restful—not quite as inviting as the Black Wall, but very attractive just the same; there was even a rack of tiny black books nested in the black satin for the occupant's diversion and also a black candle, unlit.
The collation on the little ebony table beyond the coffin consisted entirely of black foods. By sight and then by nibbling and sipping the Mouser discovered their nature: thin slices of a very dark rye bread crusted with poppy seeds and dripped with black butter; slivers of charcoal-seared steak; similarly broiled tiny thin slices of calf s liver sprinkled with dark spices and liberally pricked with capers; the darkest grape jellies; truffles cut PaPer thin and mushrooms fried black; pickled chestnuts; and of course, ripe olives and black fish eggs—caviar. The black drink, which foamed when he poured it, turned out to be stout laced with the bubbly wine of Ilthmar.
He decided to refresh the inner Mouser—the Mouser who lived a sort of blind soft greedy undulating surface-life between his lips and his belly—before taking a dip in the Black Wall.
Fafhrd re-entered the Plaza of Dark Delights walking warily and with the long tatter that was the Cloak of Invisibility trailing from between left forefinger and thumb and with the glimmering cobweb that was the Blindfold of True Seeing pinched even more delicately by its edge between the same digits of his right hand. He was not yet altogether certain that the trailing gossamer hexagon was completely free of spiders.
Across the Plaza he spotted the bright-mouthed shop—the shop he had been told was an outpost of the deadly Devourers—through a ragged gather of folk moving about restlessly and commenting and speculating to one another in harsh excited undertones.
302 — The Bazaar of ttp Bizane
The only feature of the shop Fafhrd could make out at all clearly at this distance was the red-capped red-footed baggy-trousered porter, not capering now but leaning on his long broom beside the trefoil-arched doorway.
With a looping swing of his left arm Fafhrd hung the Cloak of Invisibility around his neck. The ragged ribband hung to either side down his chest in its wolfskin je&in only halfway to his wide belt which supported longsword and short-axe. It did not vanish his body to the slightest degree that he could see and he doubted it worked at all. Like many another thaumaturge, Ningauble never hesitated to give one useless charms, not for any treacherous rea' son, necessarily, but simply to improve one's morals. Fathrd strode boldly toward the shop.
The Northerner was a tall, broad-shouldered, formidable-looking man—doubly formidable by his barbaric dress and weaponing in iuperciviliz'ed Lankhmar—and so he took it for granted that the ordinary run of city folk stepped out of his way; indeed it had never occurred to him that they should not.
He got a shock. All the clerks, seedy bravos, scullery folk, students, slaves, second-rate merChants and second-class courtesans who would automatically have moved aside for him (though the last with a saucy swing of the hips) now came straight at him, so that he had to dodge and twist and stop and even sometimes dart back to avoid being toe-tramPed and bumped. Indeed one fat pushy proudstomached fellow almost carried away his cobweb, which he could see now by the light of the shop was free of spiders—or if there were any spiders still on it, they must be very small.
He had so much to do dodging FaIhrd-blind Lankhmarians that he could not spare one more glance for the shop until he was almost at the door. And then before he took his first close look, he found that he was tilting his head so that his left ear touched the shoulder below it and that he was laying Sheelba's spiderweb across his eyes.
The touch of it was simply like the touch of any cobweb when one runs face into it walking between close-set bushes at dawn. Everything shimmered a bit as if seen through a fine crystal grating, Then the least shimmering vanished, and with it the delicate clinging sensation, and Fafhrd's vision returned to normal—as far as he could tell.
It turned out that the doorway to the Devourers' shop was piled with garbage—garbage of a particularly offensive sort: old bones, dead fish, butcher's offal, moldering gracecloths folded in uneven squares like badly bound uncut books, broken glass and potsherds, splintered boxes, large stinking dead leaves orange-spotted with
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blight, bloody rags, tattered discarded loincloths, large worms nosing about, centipedes a-scuttle, cockroaches a-stagger, maggots a<rawl— and less agreeable things.
Atop all perched a vulture which had lost most of its feathers and seemed to have expired of some anian eczema. At least Fafhrd took it for dead, but then it opened one white-filmed eye.
The only conceivably salable object outside the shop—but it was a most notable exception—was the tall black iron statue, somewhat larger than life-size, of a lean swordsman of dire yet melancholy visage. Standing on its square pedestal beside the door, the statue leaned forward just a little on its long two-handed s:word and regarded the Plaza dolefully.
The statue almost teased awake a recollection in Fafhrd's mind— a recent recollection. he fancied—but then there was a blank in his thoughts and he instantly dropped the puzzle. On raids like this one, relentlessly swift action was paramount. He loosened his axe in its loop, noiselessly whipped out Graywand and, shrinking away from the piled and crawling garbage just a little, entered the Bazaar of the Bizarre,
The Mouser, pleasantly replete with tasty black food and heady black drink, drifted to the Black Wall and thrust in his right arm to the shoulder. He waved it about, luxuriating in the softly flowing coolth and balm—admiring its fine silver scales and more than human handsomeness. He did the same with his right leg, swinging it like a dancer exercising at the bar. Then he took a gently deep breath and drifted farther in.
Faftrrd on entering the Bazaar saw the same piles of gloriously bound books and racks of gleaming brass spy-tubes and crystal lenses as had the Mouser—a circumstance which seemed to overset Ningauble's theory that the Devourers sold only trash.
He also saw the eight beautiful cages of jewel-gleaming metals and the gleaming chains that hung them from the ceiling and went to the jeweled wall cranks.
Each cage held a gleaming, gloriously hued, black-or light-haired spider big as a rather small person and occasionally waving a long jointed claw-handed leg, or softly opening a little and then closing a pair of fanged down-swinging mandibles, while staring steadily at Fafhrd with eight watchful eyes set in two jewel-like rows of four.
Set a spid,er to catch a spider; Fafhrd thought, thinking of his cob. web, and then wondered what the thought meant.
He quickly switched to more practical questions then, but he had barely asked himself whether before proceeding further he should
JU4 — The Bazaar of the Biarre
kill the very exPensive-looking spiders, fit to be the coursing beasts of some jungle empress—another count against Ning's trash-theory!*when he heard a faint splashing from the back of the shop. It reminded him of the Mouser taking a bath—the Mouser loved baths, slow luxurious ones in hot soapy scented oil-dripped water, the small gray sybarite!—and so Fafhrd hurried off in that direction with many a swift upward overshoulder glance.
He was detouring the last cage, a scarlet-metaled one holding the handsomest spider yet, when he noted a book set down with a crooked spy-tube in it—exactly as the Mouser would keep his place in a book by closing it on a dagger.
Fafhrd paused to open the book. Its lustrous white Pages were blank. He put his impalpably cobwebbed eye to the spy-tube' He glimpsed a scene that could only be the smoky red hell-nadir of the irniverse, where dark devils scuttled about like centipedes and where chained folk gazing yearningly upward and the damned writhed in the grip of black serPents whose eyes shone and whose fangs dripped and whose nostrils breathed fire.
A t. diopped tube and book, he heard the faint sonorous quick dull report bl UuUUt.r being expelled from a fluid at its surface. Staring instantly toward the dim back of the shop, he saw at last the pearl-shimmering Black WalI and a silver skeleton eyed with great diamonds receding into it. However, this costly bone-man—once more Ning's trash-theory disproved!—still had one arm sticking partway o,rt of the wall and this arm was not bone, whether silver, white, Lrownish, or pink, but live-looking flesh covered with proper skin.
As the arm sank into the wall, Fafhrd sprang forward as fast as he ever had in his life and grabbed the hand just before it vanished. He knew then he had hold of his friend, for he would recognize anywhere the Mouser's grip, no matter how enfeebled' He tugged, nut it was as if the Mouser were mired in black quicksand. He laid Graywand down and grasped the Mouser by the wrist too and braced his feet against the rough black flags and gave a tremendous heave.
The silver skeleton came out of the wall with a black splash, metamorphosing as it did into a vacant-eyed Gray Mouser who without a look at his friend and rescuer went staggering off in a curve and pitched head over heels into the black coffin.
But before Fafhrd could hoist his comrade from this new gloomy predicament, there was a swift clash of footsteps and there came iacing into the shop, somewhat to Fafhrd's surprise, the tall black iron Jatue. It had forgotten or simply stepped off its pedestal, but it had remembered its two-handed sword, which it brandished about
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most fiercely while shooting searching black glances like iron darts at every shadow and corner and nook.
The black gaze passed Fafhrd without pausing, but halted at Gray-wand lying on the floor. At the sight of that longsword the statue started visibly, snarled its iron lips, narrowed its black eyes. It shot glances more ironly stabbing than before, and it began to move about the shop in sudden zigzag rushes, sweeping its darkly flashing sword in low scythe-strokes.
At that moment the Mouser peeped moon-eyed over the edge of the cof{in, lifted a limp hand and waved it at the statue, and in a soft sly foolish voice cried, 'Yoo-hoo!"
The statue paused in its searchings and scythings to glare at the Mouser in mixed contempt and puzzlement.
The Mouser rose to his feet in the black coffin, swaying drunk-enly, and dug in his pouch.
"Ho, slave!" he cried to the statue with maudlin gaiety, '!our wares are passing passable, ['ll take the girl in red velvet." He pulled a coin from his pouch, goggled at it closely, then pitched it at the statue. "That's one penny. And the nine-crooked spy-tube. That's another penny." He pitched it. "And Gron's Grand Compmdium of Exotic Lore—another penny for you! Yes, and here's one more for supper—very tasty, 'twas. Oh and I almost forgot—here's for tonight's lodging!" He pitched a fifth large copper coin at the demonic black statue and, smiling blissfully, flopped back out of sight. The black quilted satin could be heard to sigh as he sank in it.
Four-fifths of the way through the Mouser's penny-pitching Fafhrd decided it was useless to try to unriddle his comrade's nonsensical behavior and that it would be far more to the point to make use of this diversion to snatch up Graywand. He did so on the instant, but by that time the black statue was fully alert again, if it had ever been otherwise. Its gaze switched to Graywand the instant Faftrrd touched the longsword and it stamped its foot, which rang against the stone, and cried a harsh metallic "Ha!"
Apparently the sword became invisible as Fafhrd grasped it, for the black statue did not follow him with its iron eyes as he shifted position across the room. Instead it swiftly laid down its own mighty blade and caught up a long narrow silver trumpet and set it to its lips.
Fafhrd thought it wise to attack before the statue summoned reinforcements. He rushed straight at the thing, swinging back Graywand for a great stroke at the neck—and steeling himself for an arm-numbing impact.
The statue blew and instead of the alarm blare Fafhrd had expected, there silently puffed out straight at him a great cloud of
306 — The Bazaar of rhe Bizarre
white powder that momentarily blotted out everything, as if it were the thickest of fogs from Illal the River.
Fafhrd retreated, choking and coughing. The demon-blown fog cleared quickly, the white powder falling to the stony floor with ,.rrrnutrrul swiftness, and he could see again to attack, but now the statue apparent\ could see him too, for it squinted straight at him and cried its metallic "Ha!" again and whirled its sword around its iron head preparatory to the charge—rather as if winding itself up.
FaJhrd ** thut his own hands and arms were thickly filmed with the white powdeq which apparently clung to him everywhere except his eyes, doubtless protected by Sheelba's cobweb'
The iron statue came thrusting and slashing in. Fafhrd took the great sword on his, chopped back, and was parried in return. And now the combat arrrr*.d the noisy deadly asPects of a conventional longsword duel, except that Graywand was notched whenever it .urrght the chief force of a stroke, while the statue's somewhat longer *.u!on remained unmarked. Also, whenever Fa1hrd got through the other's guard with a thrust—it was almost impossible to reach him with a slash—it turned out that the other had slipped his lean body or head aside with unbelievably swift and infallible anticipations.
It seemed to Fafhrd—at least at the dmg—the most fell, frustrating, and certainly the most wearisome combat in which he had ever .rig.ged, so he suffered some feelings of hurt and irritation when the Mouser reeled up in his coffin again and leaned an elbow on the black-satinquilted side and rested chin on fist and grinned hugely ar the bittlers and from time to time laughed wildly and shouted such enraging nonsense as, "IJse Secret Thrust Two-and-a-Half, Fafhrd—it's itt in tn. book!" or 'Jump in the oven!—there'd be a master stroke of strategy!" 61—ft1i5 to the t126g—"ftgmember to sweep under his feet, You rogue!"
Backing away from one of Fafhrd's sudden attacks, the statue bumped the table holding the remains of the Mouser's repast—evidentiy its anticipatory abilities did not extend to its rear—2nd *.rrp. of black food and white potsherds and jags of crystal scattered across the floor.
The Mouser leaned out of his coffin and waved a finger waggishly, .You'll have to sweep that up!" he cried and went off into a gale of laughter.
Backing away again, the statue bumped the black coffin. The Mouser o.rty .tupped the demonic figure comradely on the shoulder and called, i's.t lo it again, clown! Brush him down! Dust him off'!"
But the worst was perhaps when, during a brief pause while the combatants gasped and eyed each other dizzily, the Mouser waved
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coyly to the nearest giant spider and called his inane 'Yoo-hoo!" again, following it with, "f'll see you, dear, after the circus."
Fafhrd, parrying with weary desperation a fifteenth or a fiftieth cut at his head, thought bitterly, This comes of trying to rescue small heartlzss madmen who woukl howl at their grandmothers hugged, by bears. Sheelba 's cobweb has shown me the Gray One in his true id,iot nature.
The Mouser had first been furious when the sword-skirling clashed him awake from his black satin dreams, but as soon as he saw what was going on he became enchanted at the wildly comic scene.
For, lacking Sheelba's cobweb, what the Mouser saw was only the zany red-capped porter prancing about in his ridiculous tip-curled red shoes and aiming at Fafhrd, who looked exactly as if he had climbed a moment ago out of a barrel of meal. The only part of the Northerner not whitely dusted was a shadowy dark masklike stretch across his eyes.
What made the whole thing fanrastically droll was that miller-white Fafhrd was going through all the motions-—and emotions!— of a genuine combat with excruciating precision, parrying the broom as if it were some great jolting scimitar or two-handed broadsword even. The broom would go sweeping up and Faftird would gawk at it, giving a marvelous interpretation of apprehensive goggling despite his suangely shadowed eyes. Then the broom would come sweeping down and Fafhrd would brace himself and seem to catch it on his sword only with the most prodigious effort— and then pretend to be jolted back by it!
The Mouser had never suspected Fafhrd had such a perfected theatric talent, even if it were acting of a rather mechanical sort, lacking the broad sweeps of true dramatic genius, and he whooped with laughter.
Then the broom brushed Fafhrd's should.er and blood sprang out.
Fafhrd, wounded at last and thereby knowing himself unlikely to outendure the black statue—although the latter's iron chest was working now like a bellows—decided on swifter measures. He loosened his hand-axe again in its loop and at the next pause in the fight, both battlers having outguessed each other by retreating simultaneously, whipped it up and hurled it at his adversary's face.
Instead of seeking to dodge or ward off the missile, the black statue lowered its sword and merely wove its head in a tiny circle.
The axe closely circled the lean black head, like a silver wood-tailed comet whipping around a black sun, and came back straight at Fafhrd like a boomerang—and rather more swiftry than Fafhrd had sent it.
308 — Tlre Bazaar of the Bizarre
But time slowed for Fafhrd, then and he half ducked and caught it left-handed as it went whizzing past his cheek'
His thoughts too went for a moment fast as his actions' He thought of hlow his adversary, able to dodge every frontal attack' had not aivoided the table or the coffin behind him. He thought of how the Mouser had not laughed now for a dozen clashes and he looked at him and saw him, thJugh still dazed-seeming' strangely pale and sober-faced, appearing to ttt. with horror at the blood running down Fafhrd's arm.
So crying as heartily and merrily as he could, ..Amuse yourself'! Join in the fun, clown!_here's your slap-stick," Fafhrd tossed the axe toward the Mouser.
Without waiting to see the result of that toss—perhaPs not daring to—he summoned up his last reserves of speed and rushed at the black statue in a circling advance that drove it back toward the coffin.
Without shifting his stupid horrified gaze, the Mouser stuck out a hand at the last possible moment and caught the axe by the handle as it spun lazilY down.
As the black statue retreated near the coffin and poised for what promised to be a stuPendous counterattack' the Mouser leaned out , ro* grinning ioolishly again, sharply rapped its black pate with the axe.
The iron head split like a coconut' but did not come apart' Fafhrd's hand-axe, wedged in it deeply, seemed to turn all at once to iron like the statue Ind its black haft was wrenched out of the Mouser's hand as the statue stiffened up straight and tall'
The Mouser stared at the split head woefully' like a child -who hadn't known knives cut'
The statue brought its great sword flat against its c.!rest, like a staff on which it might lean b-ut did not, and it fell rigidly forward and hit the floor with a ponderous clank'
At that stony-metallic thundering, white wildfire ran across the Black Wall, lightening the whole shop like a distant levin-bolt' and iron-basalt thundering echoed from deep within it'
Fafhrd sheathed Giaywand, dragged ih" Mo,r... out of the black coffin_the frght hadnit left trim itre srrengrh to lift even his small friend—and shouted in his ear, "Come on! Run!"
The Mouser ran for the Black Wall'
Fafhrd snagged his wrist as he went by and plunged toward the arched aoo., dingging the Mouser after him'
The thund., rui.i out and there came a low whistl€, cajolingly sweet.
Wildfrre raced again acloss the Black Wall behind them—much
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more brightly this time, as if a lightning storm were racing toward them.
The white glare striking ahead imprinted one vision indelibly on Fafhrd's brain: the giant spider in the inmost cage pressed against the bloodred bars to gze down at them. It had pale legs and a velvet red body and a mask of sleek thick golden hair from which eight jet eyes peered, while its fanged jaws hanging down in the manner of the wide blades of a pair of golden scissors rattled together in a wild staccato rhythm like castanets.
That moment the cajoling whistle was repeated. It too seemed to be coming from the red and golden spider.
But strangest of all to Fafhrd was to hear the Mouser, dragged unwillingly along behind him, cry out in answer to the whistling, 'Yes, darling, f'm coming. Let me go, Fafhrd! Let me climb to her! Just one kiss! Sweetheart!"
"Stop it, Mouser," Fafhrd growled, his flesh crawling in mid-plunge. "It's a giant spider!"
'Wipe the cobwebs out of your eyes, Fafhrd," the Mouser retorted pleadingly and most unwittingly to the point. "Ir's a gorgeous girl! I'll never see her ticklesome like—and I've paid for her! Sweetheart! "
Then the booming thunder drowned his voice and any more whistling there might have been, and the wildfire came again, brighter than day, and another great thunderclap right on its heels, and the floor shuddered and the whole shop shook, and Fafhrd dragged the Mouser through the trefoil-arched doorway, and there was another great flash and clap.
The flash showed a semicircle of Lankhmarians peering ashen-faced overshoulder as they retreated across the Plaza of Dark Delights from the remarkable indoor thunderstorm that threatened to come out after them.
Fafhrd spun around. The archway had turned to blank wall.
The Bazaar of the Bizarre was gone from the World of Nehwon.
The Mouser, sitting on rhe dank flags where Fafhrd had dragged him, babbled wailfully, "The secrets of time and space! The lore of the gods! The mysteries of Hell! Black nirvana! Red and gold Heaven! Five pennies gone forever!"
Fafhrd set his teeth. A mighty resolve, rising from his many recent angers and bewilderments, crystallized in him.
Thus far he had used Sheelba's cobweb—and Ningauble's ratter too—only to serve others. Now he would use them for himselfl He would peer at the Mouser more closely and at every person he knew. He would study even his own reflection! But most of all, he would stare Sheelba and Ning to their wizardly cores!
There came from overhead a low "Hssst!"
310— The Bazaar of tre Blzarre
As he glanced up he felt something snatched from around his neck andi with the iai.ttett tingling sensation, from off his eyes'
For a moment there was u ihi-met traveling upward and through it he seemed to glimpse distortedly, as through thick glass, a black face with a cobwebby iki.t thut entirely covered mouth and nostrils and eyes.
Then that dubious flash was gone and there were only two cowled heads peering down at him from over the wall top. There was chuckling laughter.
Then both cowled heads drew back out of sight and there was only the edge of the roof and the sky and the stars and the blank wall.