The First Book of Lankhmar

it was easy to see that he was dead.
           The Mouser tried again to wake Fafhrd, but the big man's face stayed a marble mask. The Mouser did not feel that Fafhrd was actually there, and the feeling frightened and angered him.
           As he stood nervously puzzling he became aware of slow steps descending the stone stair. Slowly they circled the tower. The sound of heavy breathing was heard, coming in regular spaced gasps. The Mouser crouched behind the tables, his eyes glued on the black hole in the ceiling through which the stair vanished.
           The man who emerged was old and small and bent, dressed in garments as tattered and uncouth and musty-looking as the contents of the room. He was partly bald, with a matted tangle of gray hair around his large ears. When the Mouser sprang up and menaced him with a drawn dagger he did not attempt to flee, but went into what seemed an ecstasy of fear — trembling, babbling throaty sounds, and darting his arms about meaninglessly.
           The Mouser thrust a stubby candle into the brazier, held it to the old man's face. He had never seen eyes so wide with terror — they jutted out like little white balls — nor lips so thin and unfeelingly cruel.
           The first intelligible words that issued from the lips were hoarse and choked; the voice of a man who has not spoken for a long time.
           "You are dead. You are dead!" he cackled at the Mouser, pointing a shaky finger. "You should not be here. I killed you. Why else have I kept the great stone cunningly balanced, so that a touch would send it over? I knew you did not come because the sound lured you. You came to hurt me and to help your friend. So I killed you. I saw the stone fall. I saw you under the stone. You could not have escaped it. You are dead."
           And he tottered toward the Mouser, brushing at him as though he could dissipate the Mouser like smoke. But when his hands touched solid flesh he squealed and stumbled away.
           The Mouser followed him, moving his knife suggestively. "You are right as to why I came," he said. "Give me back my friend. Rouse him."
           To his surprise, the old man did not cringe, but abruptly stood his ground. The look of terror in the unblinking eyes underwent a subtle change. The terror was still there, but there was something more. Bewilderment vanished and something else took its place. He walked past the Mouser and sat down on a stool by the table.
           "I am not much afraid of you," he muttered, looking sideways.
           "But there are those of whom I am very much afraid. And I fear you only because you will try to hinder me from protecting myself against them or taking the measures I know I must take." He became plaintive. "You must not hinder me. You must not."
           The Mouser frowned. The ghastly look of terror — and something more — that warped the old man's face seemed a permanent thing, and the strange words he spoke did not sound like lies.
           "Nevertheless, you must rouse my friend."
           The old man did not answer this. Instead, after one quick glance at the Mouser, he stared vacantly at the wall, shaking his head, and began to talk.
           "I do not fear you. Yet I know the depths of fear. You do not. Have you lived alone with that sound for years on years, knowing what it meant? I have.
           "Fear was born into me. It was in my mother's bones and blood. And in my father's and in my brothers'. There was too much magic and loneliness in this, our home, and in my people. When I was a child they all feared and hated me — even the slaves and the great hounds that before me slavered and growled and snapped.
           "But my fears were stronger than theirs, for did they not die one by one in such a way that no suspicion fell upon me until the end? I knew it was one against many, and I took no chances. When it began, they always thought I would be the next to go!" He cackled at this. "They thought I was small and weak and foolish. But did not my brothers die as if strangled by their own hands? Did not my mother sicken and languish? Did not my father give a great cry and leap from the tower's top?
           "The hounds were the last to go. They hated me most — even more than my father hated me — and the smallest of them could have torn out my throat. They were hungry because there was no one left to feed them. But I lured them into