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us in this evil city, damned by black bones. Oh, Issek, descend to us! Bring
us thy Waters of Peace! We need you, we want you. Oh, Issek, come!"
Such was the power and yearning in that last appeal that the whole crowd of
kneeling worshipers gradually took it up, chanting with all reverence, louder
and louder, in an unendingly repeated, self-hypnotizing response: "We want
Issek! We want Issek!"
It was that mighty rhythmic shouting which finally penetrated to the small
conscious core of Fafhrd's wine-deadened brain where he lay drunk in the dark,
though Bwadres' remarks about dry throats and burning gullets and healing
drops and sips may have opened the way. At any rate, Fafhrd came suddenly and
shudderingly awake with the one thought in his mind: another drink -- and the
one sure memory: that there was some wine left.
It disturbed him a little that his hand was not still on the stone bottle
under the edge of the bed, but for some dubious reason up near his ear.
He reached for the bottle and was outraged to find that he could not move his
arm. Something or someone was holding it.
Wasting no time on petty measures, the large barbarian rolled his whole body
over mightily, with the idea of at once wrenching free from whatever was
holding him and getting under the bed where the wine was.
He succeeded in tipping the bed on its side and himself with it. But that
didn't bother him, it didn't shake up his numb body at all. What did bother
him was that he couldn't sense any wine nearby -- smell it, see it squintily,
bump his head into it ... certainly not the quart or more he remembered having
safeguarded for just such an emergency as this.
At about the same time he became dimly aware that he was somehow
_attached_ to whatever he'd been sleeping on -- especially his wrists and
shoulders and chest.
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However, his legs seemed reasonably free, though somewhat hampered at the
knees, and since the bed happened to have fallen partly on the low table and
with its head braced against the wall, the blind twist-and-heave he gave now
actually brought him to his feet and the bed with him.
He squinted around. The curtained outer doorway was an oblong of lesser
darkness. He immediately headed for it. The bed foiled his first efforts to
get through, bringing him up short in a most exasperating manner, but by
ducking and by turning edgewise he finally managed it, pushing the curtain
ahead of him with his face. He wondered muddily if he were paralyzed, the wine
he'd drunk all gone into his arms, or if some warlock had put a spell on him.
It was certainly degrading to have to go about with one's wrists up about
one's ears. Also, his head and cheeks and chin felt unaccountably chilly --
possibly another evidence of black magic.
The curtain dragged off his head finally, and he saw ahead of him a rather low
archway and -- vaguely and without being at all impressed by them -
- crowds of people kneeling and swaying.
Ducking down again, he lumbered through the archway and straightened up.
Torchlight almost blinded him. He stopped and stood there blinking. After a
bit his vision cleared a little, and the first person he saw that meant
anything to him was the Gray Mouser.
He remembered now that the last person he had been drinking with was the
Mouser. By the same token -- in this matter Fafhrd's maggoty mind worked very
fast indeed -- the Mouser must be the person who had made away with his quart
or more of midnight medicine. A great righteous anger flamed in him and he
took a very deep breath.
So much for Fafhrd and what _he_ saw.
What the _crowd_ saw -- the god-intoxicated, chanting, weeping crowd --
was very different indeed.
They saw a man of divine stature strapped with hands high to a framework of
some sort. A mightily muscled man, naked save for a loincloth, with a shorn
head and face that, marble white, looked startlingly youthful.
Yet with the expression on that marble face of one who is being tortured.
And if anything else were needed (truly, it hardly was) to convince them that
here was the god, the divine Issek, they had summoned with their passionately
insistent cries, then it was supplied when that nearly seven-
foot-tall apparition called out in a deep voice of thunder:
"_Where is the jug?_ WHERE IS THE JUG?"
The few people in the crowd who were still standing dropped instantly to their
knees at that point or prostrated themselves. Those kneeling in the opposite
direction switched around like startled crabs. Two score persons, including
Bwadres, fainted, and of these the hearts of five stopped beating forever. At
least a dozen individuals went permanently mad, though at the moment they
seemed no different from the rest -- including (among the twelve)
seven philosophers and a niece of Lankhmar's High Overlord. As one, the
members of the mob abased themselves in terror and ecstasy -- groveling,
writhing, beating breasts or temples, clapping hands to eyes and peering
fearfully through hardly parted fingers as if at an unbearably bright light.
It may be objected that at least a few of the mob should have recognized the
figure before them as that of Bwadres' giant acolyte. After all, the height
was right. But consider the differences: The acolyte was full-
bearded and shaggy-maned; the apparition was beardless and bald -- and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]