[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
their climb and quite ready to throw themselves down and rest while they
surveyed the landscape of grassland and stunted trees that they knew to be
characteristic of other parts of this most lonely peninsula stretching
southwestward between the Inner and Outer Seas.
Instead they had found ... nothing. Worse than nothing, in a way, if that were
possible. The longed-for top proved to be the merest edge of rock, three feet
wide at the most and narrower some places, while on the other side the rock
descended even more precipitously than on the side which they had climbed --
indeed it was deeply undercut in large areas -- and for an equal or rather
somewhat greater distance. From the foot of this dizzying drop a wilderness of
waves, foam and rocks extended to the horizon.
They had found themselves clinging a-straddle to a veritable rock curtain,
paper-thin in respect to its height and horizontal extent, between the Inner
and what they realized must be the Outer Sea, which had eaten its way across
the unexplored peninsula in this region but not yet quite broken through. As
far as eye could see in either direction the same situation obtained, though
the Mouser fancied he could make out a thickening of the wall in the direction
of Ool Hrusp.
Fafhrd had laughed at the surprise of the thing -- gargantuan bellows of mirth
that had made the Mouser curse him silently for fear the mere vibrations of
his voice might shatter and tumble down the knife-edged saddle on which they
perched. Indeed the Mouser had grown so angry with Fafhrd's laughter that he
had sprung up and nimbly danced a jig of rage on the rock-
ribbon, thinking meanwhile of wise Sheelba's saying: "Know it or not, man
treads between twin abysses a tightrope that has neither beginning nor end."
Having thus expressed their feeling of horrified shock, each in his way, they
had surveyed the yeasty sea below more rationally. The amount of surf and the
numbers of emergent rocks showed it to be more shallow for some distance out
-- even likely, Fafhrd had opined, to drain itself at low tide, for his
moon-lore told him that tides in this region of the world must at the moment
be near high. Of the emergent rocks, one in particular stood out: a thick
pillar two bowshots from the curtain wall and as high as a four-story house.
The pillar was spiraled by ledges that looked as if they were in part of human
cutting, while set in its thicker base and emerging from the foam there
appeared an oddly crisscrossed weed-fringed rectangle that looked mightily
like a large stout door -- though where such a door might lead and who would
use it were perplexing questions indeed.
Then, since there was no answering that question or others, and since there
was clearly no fresh water or game to be had from this literal shell of a
coast, they had descended back to the Inner Sea and the Black Treasurer,
though now each time they had driven a piton it had been with the fear that
the whole wall might split and collapse.
"'Ware rocks!"
Fafhrd's warning cry pulled the Mouser out of his waking memory-dream -
- dropped him in a split instant as if it were from the upper reaches of the
creamy curtain-wall to a spot almost an equal distance below its sea-gnarled
base. Just ahead of him three thick lumpy daggers of rock thrust down
Page 40
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
inexplicably through the gray watery ceiling of the tunnel. The Mouser
shudderingly wove his head past them, as Fafhrd must have, and then looking
beyond his comrade he saw more rocky protuberances encroaching on the tunnel
from all sides -- saw, in fact, as he strode on, that the tunnel was changing
from one of water and muck to one roofed, walled and floored with solid rock.
The water-born light faded away behind them, but the increasing
phosphorescence natural to the animal life of a sea cavern almost compensated
for it, boldly outlining their wet stony way and here and there glowing with
especial brilliance and variety of color from the bands, portholes, feelers
and eye-rings of many a dying fish and crawler.
The Mouser realized they must be passing far under the curtain-wall he and
Fafhrd had climbed yesterday and that the tunnel ahead must be leading under
the Outer Sea they had seen tossing with billows. There was no longer that
immediate oppressive sense of a crushing weight of ocean overhead or of
brushing elbows with magic. Yet the thought that if the tube, tent and tunnel
behind them should collapse, then a great gush of solid water would rush into
the rock tunnel and engulf them, was in some ways even worse. Back under the
water roof he'd had the feeling that even if it should collapse he might reach
the surface alive by bold swimming and conceivably drag the cumbered Fafhrd up
with him. But here they'd be hopelessly trapped.
True, the tunnel seemed to be ascending, but not enough or swiftly enough to
please the Mouser. Moreover, if it did finally emerge, it would be to that
shattering welter of foam they'd peered down at yesterday. Truly, the
Mouser found it hard to pick between his druthers, or even to have any
druthers at all. His feelings of depression and doom gradually sank to a new
and perhaps ultimate nadir, and in a desperate effort to wrench them up he
deliberately imagined to himself the zestiest tavern he knew in Lankhmar -- a
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]