Swords Of Lankhmar

He bought from a street vendor a small tankard of charcoal-heated ale to occupy the time while his dread and gasping faded. When his dry throat had been warmly and bitterly wetted, he gazed east two squares down the Street of the Gods to the Marsh Gate and then west more glittering blocks than he could clearly see.

It seemed to him that all Lankhmar was gathered here tonight by light of flaring torch and lamp and horn-shielded candle — and pole-lofted flare — praying and strolling, moaning and drinking, munching, and whispering fearful gossip. He wondered why the rats had spared this street only. Were they even more afraid of men's gods than men were?

At the Marsh Gate end of the Street of the Gods were only the hutments of the newest, poorest, and most slum-suited Gods _in_ Lankhmar. Indeed most of the congregations here were mere curbside gatherings about some scrawny hermit or leather-skinned death-skinny priest come from the deserts of the Eastern Lands.

The Mouser turned the other way and began a slow and twisty stroll through the hush-voiced mob, here greeting an old acquaintance, there purchasing a cup of wine or a noggin of spirits from a street seller, for the Lankhmarts believe that religion and minds half-fuddled, or at least drink-soothed, go nicely together.

Despite momentary temptation, he successfully got by the intersection with Whore Street, tapping the dart in his temple to remind himself that erotic experience would end in futility. Although Whore Street itself was dark, the girls young and old were out in force tonight, doing their business in the shadowed porticos, workmanlike providing man's third most potent banishment of fears after prayers and wine.

The farther he got from the Marsh Gate, the wealthier and more richly served became the Gods _in_ Lankhmar whose establishments he passed — churches and temples now, some even with silver-chased pillars and priests with golden chains and gold-worked vestments. From the open doors came rich yellow light and heady incense and the drone of chanted curses and prayers — all against the rats, so far as the Mouser could make them out.

Yet the rats were not altogether absent from the Street of the Gods, he began to note. Tiny black heads peered down from the roofs now and again, while more than once he saw close-set amber-red eyes behind the grill of a drain in the curb.

But by now he had taken aboard enough wine and spirits not to be troubled by such trifles, despite his recent fright, and his memory wandered off to the strange season, years ago, when Fafhrd had been the penniless, shaven acolyte of Bwadres, sole priest of Issek of the Jug, and he himself had been lieutenant to the racketeer Pulg, who preyed on all priests and prayerful folk.

He returned to his complete senses near the Hlal end of the Street of the Gods, where the temples are all golden-doored and their spires shoot sky-high and the priests' robes are rainbow expanses of jewels. Around him was a throng of folk almost as richly clad, and now through a break in it he suddenly perceived, under green velvet hood and high-piled, silver-woven black hair, the merry-melancholy face of Frix with dark eyes upon him. Something pale brown and small and irregularly shaped dropped noiselessly from her hand to the pavement, here of ceramic bricks mortised with brass. Then she turned and was gone. He rushed after her, snatching up the small square of ball-crumpled parchment she'd dropped, but two aristos and their courtesans and a merchant in cloth of gold got shoulderingly in his way, and when he had broken free of them, resolutely curbing his wine-fired temper to avoid a duel, and got out of the press, no hooded green velvet robe was to be seen, or any woman in any guise looking remotely like Frix.

He smoothed the crumpled parchment and read it by the light of a low-swinging, horn-paned oil street lamp.

_Be of hero-like patience and courage. _

_Your dearest desire will be fulfilled _

_beyond your daringest expectations,_

_and all enchantments lifted._

_Hisvet _

He looked up and discovered he was past the last luxuriously gleaming, soaring temple of the Gods _in_ Lankhmar and facing the lightless low square fane with its silent square bell-tower of the Gods _of_ Lankhmar, those brown-boned, black-togaed ancestor-deities, whom the Lankhmarts never gather to worship, yet fear and revere in their inmost sleeping minds beyond the sum of all the other gods and devils in Nehwon.