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The Second Book of Lankhmar

Titel: The Second Book of Lankhmar Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Fritz Leiber
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paired for one long, long night in Stardock, tallest of Nehwon's northron peaks, and knew that the two gaysome girls were reclining unclad in front of the fire and had been playfully anointing each other's faces with pigmented salves.
           Then the turquoise mask leapt up betwixt Fafhrd and the fire, so that dancing orange flames only shone through its staring eye holes and between its now cruel and amused lips as it spoke to him, saying, "In what frowsty bed are you now dead asleep, gross one-time lover, that your squeaking soul can be blown halfway across the world to gape at me? Some day again climb Stardock and in your solid form importune me, I might hark. But now, phantom, depart!"
           The mallow mask likewise spoke scornfully to the Mouser, saying in tones as stinging and impelling as the flames seen through its facial orifices, "And you remove too, wraith most pitiful. By Khahkht of the Black Ice and Gara of the Blue — and e'en Kos of the Green — I enjoin it! Blow winds! and out lights all!" Fafhrd and the Mouser were hurt even more sorely by these new rebuffs. Their very souls were shriveled by the feeling that they were indeed the phantoms, and the speaking masks the solid reality.
           Nevertheless, they might have summoned the courage to attempt to answer the challenge (though 'tis doubtful), except that at Keyaira's last commands they were plunged into darkness absolute and manhandled by great winds and then dumped in a lighted area. A wind-slammed door crashed shut behind them.
           They saw with considerable relief that they were not confronting yet another pair of girls ( that would have been unendurable) but were in another stretch of corridor lit by clear-flaming torches held in brazen wall brackets in the form of gripping bird-talons, coiling squid-tentacles, and pinching crab-claws. Grateful for the respite, they took deep breaths.
           Then Fafhrd frowned deeply and said, "Mark me, Mouser, there's magic somewhere in all this. Or else the hand of a god."
           The Mouser commented bitterly, "If it's a god, he's a thumb-fingered one, the way he sets us up to be turned down."
           Fafhrd's thoughts took a new tack, as shown by the changing furrows in his forehead. "Mouser, I never squeaked," he protested. "Hirriwi said I squeaked."
           "Manner of speaking only, I suppose," his comrade consoled. "But gods! what misery I felt myself, as if I were no longer man at all, and this no more than broomstick." He indicated his sword Scalpel at his side and gazed with a shake of his head at Fafhrd's scabbarded Graywand.
           "Perchance we dream — " Fafhrd began doubtfully.
           "Well, if we're dreaming, let's get on with it," the Mouser said and, clapping his friend around the shoulders, started them down the corridor. Yet despite these cheerful words and actions, both men felt they were getting more and more into the toils of nightmare, drawing them on will-lessly.
           They rounded a turn. For some yards the right-hand wall became a row of slender dark pillars, irregularly spaced, and between them they could see more random dusky slim shafts and at middle distance a long altar on which light showered softly down, revealing a tall, naked woman stretched on it, and by her a priestess in purple robes with dagger bared in one hand and large silver chalice in the other, who was intoning a litany.
           Fafhrd whispered, "Mouser! the sacrifice is the courtesan Lessnya, with whom I had some dealings when I was acolyte of Issek, years ago."
           "While the other is Ilala, priestess of the like-named goddess, with whom I had some commerce when I was lieutenant to Pulg the extortioner," the Mouser whispered back.
           Fafhrd protested, "But we can't have already come all the way to the temple of Ilala, though this looks like it. It's halfway across Lankhmar from the Eel," while the Mouser recalled tales he'd heard of secret passages in Lankhmar that connected points by distances shorter than the shortest distance between.
           Ilala turned toward them in her purple robes and said with eyebrows raised, "Quiet back there! You are committing sacrilege, trespassing on most holy ritual of the great goddess of all shes. Impious intruders, depart!" While Lessnya lifted on an elbow and looked at them haughtily. Then she lay back again and regarded the ceiling while Ilala plunged her

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