Sheelba

Sheelba of the Eyeless Face er en trollmann i Fritz Leibers fantasi-bokserie The Swords Series.

• Introduksjon
• Første møte med Fafhrd og the Gray Mouser
• Første møte med Sheelba
• Første møte med Ningauble
• The Gray Mousers løfte til Sheelba

Introduksjon

I den første boken i Swords-serien forteller Fritz Leiber om hovedpersonene og hvordan de ble til:

Author's Introduction

This is Book One of the Saga of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, the greatest swordsmen ever to be in this or any other universe of fact or fiction, more skillful masters of the blade even than Cyrano de Bergerac, Scar Gordon, Conan, John Carter, D'Artagnan, Brandoch Daha, and Anra Devadoris. Two comrades to the death and black comedians for all eternity, lusty, brawling, wine-bibbing, imaginative, romantic, earthy, thievish, sardonic, humorous, forever seeking adventure across the wide world, fated forever to encounter the most deadly of enemies, the most fell of foes, the most delectable of girls, and the most dire of sorcerers and supernatural beast and other personages.

One enchanted evening, Harry Otto Fischer created Fafhrd and the Mouser, and their patron wizards Ningauble of the Seven Eyes and Sheelba of the Eyeless Face, and - with the author's help - the city of Lankhmar. But the author has done and written all the rest, save for 10,000 words of 'The Lords of Quarmall' written by Fischer.

There follow this book, in exact order of the adventures, Swords against Death, Swords in the Mist, Swords Against Wizardry, (containing the Lords of Quarmall), and The Swords of Lankhmar.

--Fritz Leiber, San Francisco, June 4, 1973

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Første møte med Fafhrd og the Gray Mouser

Slik møter vi Fafhrd og the Gray Mouse i seriens første bok, Swords and Deviltry:

In Lankhmar on one murky night, if we can believe the runic books of Sheelba of the Eyeless Face, there met for the first time those two dubious heroes and whimsical scoundrels, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Fafhrd's origins were easy to percieve in his near seven-foot height an limber-looking ranginess, his hammered ornaments and huge longsword: he was clearly a barbarian from the Cold Waste north even of the Eight Cities and the Trollstep Mountains. The Mouser's antecedents were more cryptic and hardly to be deduced from his childlike stature, gray garb, mouse-skin hood shadowing flat swart face, and deceptively dainty rapier; but somewhere about him was the suggestion of cities and the south, the dark streets and also the sun-drenched spaces. As the twain eyed each other challengingly through the murky fog lit indirectly by distant torches, they were already dimly aware that they were two long-sundered, matching fragments of a greater hero and that each had found a comrade who would outlast a thousand quests and a lifetime - or a hundred lifetimes - of adventuring.

No one at that moment could have guessed that the Gray Mouse was once named Mouse, or that Fafhrd had recently been a youth whose voice was by training high-pitched, who wore white furs only, and who still slept in his mother's tent although he was eighteen.

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Første møte med Sheelba

De to heltene møter Sheelba of the Eyeless Face for første gang i historien The Circle Curse fra bok 2, Swords Against Death:

'Ho, Fafhrd!' a deep voice grated above the thunder's growl and the wind's roar and the rattle of the rain.

The tall swordsman turned his head sharply south.

'Hist, Gray Mouser!'

The small swordsman did likewise.

Close by the southern side of the road a rather large, rounded hut stood on five narrow posts. The posts had to be tall, for Causey Road ran high here yet the floor of the hut's low, rounded doorway looked straight at the tall swordsman's head.

This was nothing very strange, except that all men know that none dwell in the venomous Great Salt Marsh, save for giant worms, poison eels, water cobras, pale spindle-legged swamp rats, and the like.

Blue lightning glared, revealing with great clarity a hooded figure crouched inside the low doorway. Each fold and twist of the figure's draperies stood out as precisely as in an iron engraving closely viewed.

But the lightning showed nothing whatsoever inside the hood, only inky blackness.

Thunder crashed.

[...]

The two swordsmen realized that they were striding along steadily all this while and the hut still abreast them. So it must be walking along with them on its posts, or legs rather. And now that they were aware of this, they could see those five thin wooden members swinging and knee-bending.

[...]

Fafhrd halted.

So did the Mouser.

So did the hut.

The two swordsmen turned toward the low doorway, facing it squarely.

Simultaneously with deafening thunderclap, a great bolt of lightning struck close behind them. It jolted their bodies, shocked their flesh thrillingly and painfully, and it illumined the hut and its dweller brighter than day, yet still revealed nothing inside the dweller's hood.

If the hood had been empty, the draperies at its back would have been shown clearly. But no, there was only that oval of ebon darkness, which even the levinbolt could not illumine.

[...]

Lightning shone from beyond the hut and thunder crackled. The storm was moving inland, south from the road.

The hood that held darkness drew back a little and slowly shook from side to side, once, twice, thrice. The harsh voice intoned, fainter because Fafhrd's and the Mouser's ears were still somewhat deafened and a-ring from that father of thunderstrokes:

'Never and forever are neither for men,
You'll be returning again and again.'

Then the hut was moving inland too on its five spindly legs. It turned around, so that its door faced away from them, and its speed increased, its legs moving nimbly as those of a cockroach, and was soon lost amongst the tangle of thorn and seahawk trees.

So ended the first encounter of the Mouser and his comrade Fafhrd with Sheelba of the Eyeless Face.

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Første møte med Ningauble

Fafhrd og the Gray Mouser møter Ningauble of the Seven Eyes for første gang i historien The Circle Curse i bok 2, Swords Against Death:

There was a little cough, no more than a clearing of throat, in the dark behind them. They did not otherwise move, but their hair stirred at its roots, so close and intimate had been that mere animality, because of a measuredly attention-asking quality about it.

Then as one they turned head over shoulder and looked back at the black mouth of the rocky corridor. After a bit it seemed to each of them that he could see seven small, faint green glows swimming in the dark there and lazily changing position, like seven fireflies hovering, but with their light steadier and far more diffuse, as if each firefly wore a cloak made of several layers of gauze.

Then a voice sugary and unctuous, senescent though keen - a voice like a quavering flute - spoke from amidst those dimmest glows, saying, 'Oh my sons, begging the question of that hypothetical western continent, on which I do not propose to enlighten you, there is yet one place in Nehwon you have not searched for forgetfullness since the cruel deaths of your beloved girls.'

'And what place may that be?' the Mouser asked softly after a long moment and with the slightest stammer. 'And who are you?'

'The city of Lankhmar, my sons. Who I am, besides your spiritual father, is a private matter.'

'We have sworn a great oath against ever returning to Lankhmar,' Fafhrd growled after a bit, the growl low and just a shade defensive and perhaps even intimidated.

'Oaths are made to be kept only until their purpose be fulfilled,' the fluty voice responded. 'Every geas is lifted at last, every self-set rule repealed. Otherwise orderliness in life becomes a limitation to growth; discipline, chains; integrity, bondage and evil-doing. You have learned what you can from the world. You have graduated from that huge portion of Nehwon. It now remains that you take up your postgraduate studies in Lankhmar, highest university of civilized life here.'

The seven faint glows were growing still dimmer now and drawing together, as if retreating down a corridor.

'We won't go back to Lankhmar,' Fafhrd and the Mouser replied, speaking as one.

The seven glows faded altogether. So fainlty the two men could barely hear it - yet hear it they did - the fluty voice inquired, 'Are you afraid?' Then they heard a grating of rock, a very faint sound, yet somehow ponderous.

So ended the first encounter of Fafhrd and his comrade with Ningauble of the Seven Eyes.

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The Gray Mousers løfte til Sheelba

Fafhrd og the Gray Mouser får etterhvert hver sin oppdragsgiver og støttespiller i trollmennene Ningauble og Sheelba. Det skjer i historien The Price of Pain-ease i bok 2, Swords Against Death. Skjønt trollmenn er ikke fornøyd før de får full kontroll:

Dusk deepened. After a much longer bit, the Mouser said in a low, broken voice, 'O Sheelba, great magician, grant me a boon or else I shall go mad. Give me back my beloved Ivrian, give me her entire, or else rid me of her altogether, as if she had never been. Do either of those and I will pay any price you set.'

In a grating voice like the clank of small boulders moved by a sullen surf, Sheelba said from his doorway, 'Will you faithfully serve me as long as you live? Do my every lawful command? On my part, I promise not to call on you more than once a year, or at most twice, not demand more than three moons out of thirteen of your time. You must swear to me by Fafhrd's bones and your own that, one, you will use any strategem, no matter how shameful and degrading, to get me the Mask of Death from the Shadowland, and that, two, you will slay any being who seeks to thwart you, whether it be your unknown mother or the Great God himself.'

After a still longer pause the Mouser said in a still smaller voice, 'I promise.'

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