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such matters was still wiped from his mind) but simply as a likely source of the
liquor he craved. With a glad cry he hastened toward it across the Street, his
worshipers scuttling out of his way or moaning in beatific ecstasy when he trod
on them with his naked feet. He caught up the cask and lifted it to his lips.
To the crowd it seemed that Issek was drinking his own coffer -- an unusual
yet undeniably picturesque way for a god to absorb his worshipers' cask offerings.
With a roar of baffled disgust Fafhrd raised the cask to smash it on the
cobbles, whether from pure frustration or with some idea of getting at the liquor
he thought it held is hard to say, but just then the Mouser caught his attention
again. The small man had snatched two tankards of ale from an abandoned tray
and was pouring the heady liquid back and forth between them until the high-
piled foam trailed down the sides.
Tucking the cask under his left arm -- for many drunkards have a curious
prudent habit of absentmindedly hanging onto things, especially if they may
contain liquor -- Fafhrd set out again after the Mouser, who ducked into the
darkness of the nearest portico and then danced out again and led Fafhrd in a
great circle all the way around the roiling congregation.
Literally viewed it was hardly an edifying spectacle -- a large god stumbling
after a small gray demon and grasping at a tankard of beer that just kept eluding
him -- but the Lankhmarians were already viewing it under the guise of two
dozen different allegories and symbolisms, several of which were later written up
in learned scrolls.
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r r
The second time through the portico Issek and the small gray demon did not
come out again. A large chorus of mixed voices kept up expectant and fearful
cries for some time, but the two supernatural beings did not reappear.
Lankhmar is full of mazy alleyways, and this stretch of the Street of the Gods
is particularly rich in them, some of them leading by dark and circuitous routes to
localities as distant as the docks.
But the Issekians -- old-timers and new converts alike -- largely did not even
consider such mundane avenues in analyzing their god's disappearance. Gods
have their own doorways into and out of space and time, and it is their nature to
vanish suddenly and inexplicably. Brief reappearances are all we can hope for
from a god whose chief life-drama on earth has already been played, and indeed
it might prove uncomfortable if he hung around very long, protracting a Second
Coming -- too great a strain on everybody's nerves for one thing.
The large crowd of those who had been granted the vision of Issek was slow in
dispersing, as might well have been expected -- they had much to tell each other,
much about which to speculate and, inevitably, to argue.
The blasphemous attack of Quatch and Wiggin on the god was belatedly
recalled and avenged, though some already viewed the incident as part of a
general allegory. The two bullies were lucky to escape with their lives after an
extensive mauling.
Grilli's corpse was unceremoniously picked up and tossed in next morning's
Death Cart. End of _his_ story.
Bwadres came out of his faint with Pulg bending solicitously over him -- and
it was largely these two persons who shaped the subsequent history of
Issekianity.
To make a long or, rather, complex story simple and short, Pulg became what
can best be described as Issek's grand vizier and worked tirelessly for Issek's
greater glory -- always wearing on his chest the god-created golden emblem of the
Jug as the sign of his office. He did not upon his conversion to the gentle god give
up his old profession, as some moralists might expect, but carried it on with even
greater zeal than before, extorting mercilessly from the priests of all gods other
than Issek and grinding them down. At the height of its success, Issekianity
boasted five large temples in Lankhmar, numerous minor shrines in the same
city, and a swelling priesthood under the nominal leadership of Bwadres, who
was lapsing once more into general senility.
Issekianity flourished for exactly three years under Pulg's viziership. But
when it became known (due to some incautious babblings of Bwadres) that Pulg
was not only conducting under the guise of extortion a holy war on all other gods
in Lankhmar, with the ultimate aim of driving them from the city and if possible
from the world, but that he even entertained murky designs of overthrowing the
gods _of_ Lankhmar or at least forcing them to recognize Issek's overlordship ...
when all this became apparent, the doom of Issekianity was sealed. On the third
anniversary of Issek's Second Coming, the night descended ominous and thickly
foggy, the sort of night when all wise Lankhmarians hug their indoor fires. About
midnight awful screams and piteous howlings were heard throughout the city,
along with the rending of thick doors and the breaking of heavy masonry --
preceded and followed, some tremulously maintained, by the clicking tread of
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r r
bones on the march. One youth who peered out through an attic window lived
long enough before he expired in gibbering madness to report that he had seen
striding through the streets a multitude of black-togaed figures, sooty of hand,
foot and feature and skeletally lean.
Next morning the five temples of Issek were empty and defiled and his minor
shrines all thrown down, while his numerous clergy, including his ancient high
priest and overweeningly ambitious grand vizier, had vanished to the last
member and were gone beyond human ken.
Turning back to a dawn exactly three years earlier we find the Gray Mouser
and Fafhrd clambering from a cranky, leaky skiff into the cockpit of a black sloop
moored beyond the Great Mole that juts out from Lankhmar and the east bank of
the River Hlal into the Inner Sea. Before coming aboard, Fafhrd first handed up
Issek's cask to the impassive and sallow-faced Ourph and then with considerable
satisfaction pushed the skiff wholly underwater.
The cross-city run the Mouser had led him on, followed by a brisk spell of
galley-slave work at the oars of the skiff (for which he indeed looked the part in
his lean near-nakedness) had quite cleared Fafhrd's head of the fumes of wine,
though it now ached villainously. The Mouser still looked a bit sick from his share
in the running -- he was truly in woefully bad trim from his months of lazy
gluttony.
Nevertheless the twain joined with Ourph in the work of upping anchor and
making sail. Soon a salty, coldly refreshing wind on their starboard beam was
driving them directly away from the land and Lankhmar. Then while Ourph
fussed over Fafhrd and bundled a thick cloak about him, the Mouser turned
quickly in the morning dusk to Issek's cask, determined to get at the loot before
Fafhrd had opportunity to develop any silly religious or Northernly-noble qualms
and perhaps toss the cask overboard.
The Mouser's fingers did not find the coin-slit in the top -- it was still quite
dark -- so he upended the pleasantly heavy object, crammed so full it did not even [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]