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    The Unholy Grail
    The Unholy Grail
    The Unholy Grail
    Ebook38 pages37 minutes

    The Unholy Grail

    By Fritz Leiber

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    About this ebook

    Three things warned the wizard’s apprentice that something was wrong: first the deep-trodden prints of iron-shod hooves along the forest path—he sensed them through his boots before stooping to feel them out in the dark; next, the eerie drone of a bee unnaturally abroad by night; and finally, a faint aromatic odor of burning.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilder Publications, Inc.
    Release dateOct 26, 2017
    ISBN9781515418597
    The Unholy Grail
    Author

    Fritz Leiber

    Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) was the highly acclaimed author of numerous science fiction stories and novels, many of which were made into films. He is best known as creator of the classic Lankhmar fantasy series. Leiber has won many awards, including the coveted Hugo and Nebula, and was honored as a lifetime Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

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      Book preview

      The Unholy Grail - Fritz Leiber

      The Unholy Grail

      ©2017 Positronic Publishing

      Cover Image © Can Stock Photo / Netfalls

      All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except for brief quotations for review purposes only.

      ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-1859-7

      The Unholy Grail

      Three things warned the wizard’s apprentice that something was wrong: first the deep-trodden prints of iron-shod hooves along the forest path—he sensed them through his boots before stooping to feel them out in the dark; next, the eerie drone of a bee unnaturally abroad by night; and finally, a faint aromatic odor of burning. Mouse raced ahead, dodging tree trunks and skipping over twisted roots by memory and by a bat’s feeling for rebounding whispers of sound. Gray leggings, tunic, peaked hood and streaming cloak made the slight youth, skinny with asceticism, seem like a rushing shadow.

      The exaltation Mouse had felt at the successful completion of his long quest and his triumphal return to this sorcerous master, Glavas Rho, now vanished from his mind and gave way to a fear he hardly dared put into thoughts. Harm to the great wizard, whose mere apprentice he was?—My Gray Mouse, still midway in his allegiance between white magic and black, Glavas Rho had once put it—no, it was unthinkable that that great figure of wisdom and spiritual might should come to harm. The great magician . . . (There was something hysterical about the way Mouse insisted on that great, for to the world Glavas Rho was but a hedge-wizard, no better than a Mingol necromancer with his second-sighted spotted dog or a conjurer beggar of Quarmall) . . . the great magician and his dwelling were alike protected by strong enchantments no impious outsider could breach—not even (the heart of Mouse skipped a beat) the lord paramount of these forests, Duke Janarrl, who hated all magic, but white worse than black.

      And yet the smell of burning was stronger now and Glavas Rho’s low cottage was built of resinous wood.

      There also vanished from Mouse’s mind the vision of a girl’s face, perpetually frightened yet sweet—that of Duke Janarrl’s daughter Ivrian, who came secretly to study under Glavas Rho, figuratively sipping the milk of his white wisdom side by side with Mouse. Indeed, they had privately come to call each other Mouse and Misling, while under his tunic Mouse carried a plain green glove he had teased from Ivrian when he set forth on his quest, as if he were her armored and beweaponed knight and not a swordless wizardling.

      By the time Mouse reached the hilltop clearing he was breathing hard, not from exertion.

      There the gathering light showed him at a glance the hoof-hacked garden of magic herbs, the overturned straw beehive, the great flare of soot sweeping up the smooth surface of the vast granite boulder that sheltered the wizard’s tiny house.

      But even without the dawn light he would have seen the fire-shrunken beams and fire-gnawed posts a-creep with red ember-worms

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