The First Book of Lankhmar

reached one of its climaxes, but Hasjarl did not mark it.
           He said softly, "Open your eyes, Brother. I want you to speak once before I slay you."
           There was no reply from Gwaay — not a motion, not a whisper, not a bubble of retching.
           "Very well," Hasjarl said harshly, "then die a prim shut-mouth," and he drove down the dagger.
           It stopped violently a hairbreadth above Gwaay's upper cheek, and the muscles of Hasjarl's arm driving it were stabbingly numbed by the jolt they got.
           Gwaay did open his eyes then, which was not very pleasant to behold since there was nothing in them but green ichor.
           Hasjarl instantly closed his own eyes, but continued to peer down through the holes in his upper lids.
           Then he heard Gwaay's voice like a silver mosquito by his ear saying, "You have made a slight oversight, dear brother. You have chosen the wrong weapon. After our father's burning you swore to me my life was sacrosanct — until you killed me by crushing. 'Until I crush it out,' you said. The gods hear only our words, Brother, not our intentions. Had you come lugging a boulder, like the curious gnome you are, you might have accomplished your aim."
           "Then I'll have you crushed!" Hasjarl retorted angrily, leaning his face closer and almost shouting. "Aye, and I'll sit by and listen to your bones crunch — what bones you have left! You're as great a fool as I, Gwaay, for you too after our father's funeral promised not to slay me. Aye, and you're a greater fool, for now you've spilled to me your little secret of how you may be slain."
           "I swore not to slay you with spells or steel or venom or with my hand," the bright insect voice of Gwaay replied. "Unlike you, I said nothing at all of crushing." Hasjarl felt a strange tingling in his flesh while in his nostrils there was an acrid odor like that of lightning mingling with the stink of corruption.
           Suddenly Gwaay's hands thrust up to the palms out of his overly rich bedclothes. The flesh was shredding from the finger bones which pointed straight up, invokingly.
           Hasjarl almost started back, but caught himself. He'd die, he told himself, before he'd cringe from his brother. He was aware of strong forces all about him.
           There was a muffled grating noise and then an odd faintly pattering snowfall on the coverlet and on Hasjarl's neck ... a thin snowfall of pale gritty stuff ... grains of mortar....
           "Yes, you will crush me, dear brother," Gwaay admitted tranquilly. "But if you would know how you will crush me, recall my small special powers ... or else look up !"
           Hasjarl turned his head, and there was the great black basalt slab big as the litter rushing down, and the one moment of life left Hasjarl was consumed in hearing Gwaay say, "You are wrong again, my comrade."
           Fafhrd stopped a sword-slash in midcourse when he heard the crash and the Mouser almost nicked him with his rehearsed parry. They lowered their blades and looked, as did all others in the central section of the Ghost Hall.
           Where the litter had been was now only the thick basalt slab mortar-streaked with the litter-poles sticking out from under, and above in the ceiling the rectangular white hole whence the slab had been dislodged. The Mouser thought, That's a larger thing to move by thinking than a checker or jar, yet the same black substance.
           Fafhrd thought, Why didn't the whole roof fall? — there's the strangeness.
           Perhaps the greatest wonder of the moment was the four tread-slaves still standing at the four corners, eyes forward, fingers locked across their chests, although the slab had missed them only by inches in its falling.
           Then some of Hasjarl's henchmen and sorcerers who had seen their Lord sneak to the litter now hurried up to it but fell back when they beheld how closely the slab approached the floor and marked the tiny rivulet of blood that ran from under it. Their minds quailed at the thought of those brothers who had hated each other so dearly, and now their bodies locked in an obscene interpenetrating and commingling embrace.
           Meanwhile Ivivis came running to the Mouser and Friska to Fafhrd to bind up their wounds, and were astonished and mayhap a shade irked to be told there were none. Kewissa and Brilla came too and Fafhrd with one arm around Friska reached out the