Leiber, Fritz - Saga of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser 06 - Swords and Ice Magic

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Swords and Ice Magic [Book 6 of the "Fafhrd and Gray Mouser" series]

by Fritz Leiber

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*I: The Sadness of the Executioner*

There was a sky that was always gray.

There was a place that was always far away.

There was a being who was always sad.

Sitting on his dark-cushioned, modest throne in his low, rambling

castle in the heart of the Shadowland, Death shook his pale head and pummeled

a little his opalescent temples and slightly pursed his lips, which were the

color of violet grapes with the silvery bloom still on, above his slender

figure armored in chain mail and his black belt, studded with silver skulls

tarnished almost as black, from which hung his naked, irresistible sword.

He was a relatively minor death, only the Death of the World of Nehwon,

but he had his problems. Tenscore flickering or flaring human lives to have

their wicks pinched in the next twenty heartbeats. And although the heartbeats

of Death resound like a leaden bell far underground and each has a little of

eternity in it, yet they do finally pass. Only nineteen left now. And the

Lords of Necessity, who outrank Death, still to be satisfied.

Let's see, thought Death with a vast coolness that yet had a tiny

seething in it, one hundred sixty peasants and savages, twenty nomads, ten

warriors, two beggars, a whore, a merchant, a priest, an aristocrat, a

craftsman, a king, and two heroes. That would keep his books straight.

Within three heartbeats he had chosen one hundred and ninety-six of the

tenscore and unleashed their banes upon them: chiefly invisible, poisonous

creatures within their flesh which suddenly began to multiply into resistless

hordes, here a dark and bulky bloodclot set loose with feather touch to glide

through a vein and block a vital portal, there a long-eroded artery wall

tunneled through at last; sometimes slippery slime oozing purposefully onto

the next footrest of a climber, sometimes an adder told where to wriggle and

when to strike, or a spider where to lurk.

Death, by his own strict code known only to himself, had cheated just a

little on the king. For some time in one of the deepest and darkest corners of

his mind he had been fashioning the doom of the current overlord of Lankhmar,

chiefest city and land in the World of Nehwon. This overlord was a gentle and

tenderhearted scholar, who truly loved only his seventeen cats, yet wished no

other being in Nehwon ill, and who was forever making things difficult for

Death by pardoning felons, reconciling battling brothers and feuding families,

hurrying barges or wains of grain to regions of starvation, rescuing

distressed small animals, feeding pigeons, fostering the study of medicine and

kindred arts, and most simply of all by always having about him, like finest

fountain spray on hottest day, an atmosphere of sweet and wise calm which kept

swords in scabbards, brows unknotted, and teeth unclenched. But now, at this

very instant, by Death's crooked, dark-alleyed plotting hidden almost but not

quite from himself, the thin wrists of the benign monarch of Lankhmar were

being pricked in innocent play by his favoritest cat's needle-sharp claws,

which had by a jealous, thin-nosed nephew of the royal ailurophile been late

last night envenomed with the wind-swift poison of the rare emperor snake of

tropical Klesh.

Yet on the remaining four and especially the two heroes -- Death

assured himself a shade guiltily -- he would work solely by improvisation. In

no time at all he had a vision of Lithquil, the Mad Duke of Ool Hrusp,

watching from high balcony by torchlight three northern berserks wielding saw-

edged scimitars joined in mortal combat with four transparent-fleshed, pink-

skeletoned ghouls armed with poniards and battle-axes. It was the sort of

heavy experiment Lithquil never tired of setting up and witnessing to the

slaughterhouse end, and incidentally it was getting rid of the majority of the

ten warriors Death had ticketed for destruction.

Death felt a less than momentary qualm recalling how well Lithquil had

served him for many years. Even the best of servants must some day be

pensioned off and put to grass, and in none of the worlds Death had heard of,

certainly not Nehwon, was there a dearth of willing executioners, including

passionately devoted, incredibly untiring, and exquisitely fantastic-minded

ones. So even as the vision came to Death, he sent his thought at it and the

rearmost ghoul looked up with his invisible eyes, so that his pink-broidered

black skull-sockets rested upon Lithquil, and before the two guards flanking

the Mad Duke could quite swing in their ponderous shields to protect their

master, the ghoul's short-handled ax, already poised overshoulder, had flown

through the narrowing gap and buried itself in Lithquil's nose and forehead.

Before Lithquil could gin crumple, before any of the watchers around

him could nock an arrow to dispatch or menace the assassin, before the naked

slavegirl who was the promised but seldom-delivered prize for the surviving

gladiator could start to draw breath for a squealing scream, Death's magic

gaze was fixed on Horborixen, citadel-city of the King of Kings. But not on

the interior of the Great Golden Palace, though Death got a fleeting glimpse

of that, but on the inwardness of a dingy workshop where a very old man looked

straight up from his rude pallet and truly wished that the cool dawn light,

which was glimmering through window- and lower-crack, would never more trouble

the cobwebs that made ghostly arches and buttresses overhead.

This ancient, who bore the name of Gorex, was Horborixen's and perhaps

all Nehwon's skillfulest worker in precious and military metals and deviser of

cunningest engines, but he had lost all zest in his work or any other aspect

of life for the last weary twelve-month, in fact ever since his great-

granddaughter Eesafem, who was his last surviving kin and most gifted

apprentice in his difficult craft, a slim, beauteous, and barely nubile girl

with almond eyes sharp as needles, had been summarily abducted by the harem

scouts of the King of Kings. His furnace was ice cold, his tools gathered

dust, he had given himself up entirely to sorrow.

He was so sad in fact that Death had thought to add a drop of his own

melancholy humor to the black bile coursing slowly and miserably through the

tired veins of Gorex, and the latter painlessly and instantly expired,

becoming one with his cobwebs.

So! -- the aristocrat and the craftsman were disposed of in no more

than two snaps of Death's long, slender, pearly midfinger and thumb, leaving

only the two heroes.

Twelve heartbeats to go.

Death most strongly felt that, if only for artistry's sake, heroes

should be made to make their exits from the stage of life in the highest

melodramatic style, with only one in fifty score let to die of old age and in

the bed of sleep for the object of irony. This necessity was incidentally so

great that it permitted, he believed as part of his self-set rules, the use of

outwardly perceptible and testifiable magic and need not be puttied over with

realism, as in the case of more humdrum beings. So now for two whole

heartbeats he listened only to the faint simmer of his cool mind, while

lightly massaging his temples again with nacreous knuckles. Then his thoughts

shot toward one Fafhrd, a largely couth and most romantical barbarian, the

soles of whose feet and mind were nonetheless firmly set in fact, particularly

when he was either very sober, or very drunk, and toward this one's lifelong

comrade, the Gray Mouser, perhaps the cleverest and wittiest thief in all

Nehwon and certainly the one with either the bonniest or bitterest self-

conceit.

The still less than momentary qualm which Death experienced at this

point was far deeper and stronger than that which he had felt in the case of

Lithquil. Fafhrd and the Mouser had served him well and in vastly more varied

fashion than the Mad Duke, whose eyes had been fixed on death to the point of

crossedness, making his particular form of ax-dispatch most appropriate. Yes,

the large vagabond Northerner and the small, wry-smiling, eyebrow-arching

cutpurse had been most useful pawns in some of Death's finest games.

Yet without exception every pawn must eventually be snapped up and

tossed in box in the course of the greatest game, even if it have advanced to

the ultimate rank and become king or queen. So Death reminded himself, who

knew that even he himself must ultimately die, and so he set to his

intuitively creative task relentlessly and swifter than ever arrow or rocket

or falling star flew.

After the fleetingest glance southwest toward the vast, dawn-pink city

of Lankhmar, to reassure himself that Fafhrd and the Mouser still occupied a

rickety penthouse atop an inn which catered to the poorer sort of merchants

and faced on Wall Street near the Marsh Gate, Death looked back at the late

Lithquil's slaughter pen. In his improvisations he regularly made a practice

of using materials closest at hand, as any good artist will.

Lithquil was in mid-crumple. The slavegirl was screaming. The mightiest

of the berserks, his big face contorted by a fighting fury that would never

fade till sheer exhaustion forced it, had just slashed off the bonily pink,

invisibly fleshed head of Lithquil's assassin. And quite unjustly and even

idiotically -- but most of Death's lesser banes outwardly appear to work in

such wise -- a halfscore arrows were winging from the gallery toward

Lithquil's avenger.

Death magicked and the berserk was no longer there. The ten arrows

transfixed empty air, but by that time Death, again following the practice of

economy in materials, was peering once more at Horborixen and into a rather

large cell lit by high, barred windows in the midst of the harem of the King

of Kings. Rather oddly, there was a small furnace in the cell, a quenching

bath, two small anvils, several hammers, many other tools for working metals,

as well as a small store of precious and workaday metals themselves.

In the center of the cell, examining herself in a burnished silver

mirror with almond eyes sharp as needles and now also quite as mad as the

berserk's, there stood a deliciously slender girl of no more than sixteen,

unclad save for four ornaments of silver filigree. She was, in fact, unclad in

extremest degree, since except for her eyelashes, her every last hair had been

removed and wherever such hair had been she was now tattooed in fine patterns

of green and blue.

For seven moons now Eesafem had suffered solitary confinement for

mutilating in a harem fight the faces of the King of Kings' favoritest

concubines, twin Ilthmarts. Secretly the King of Kings had not been at all

displeased by this event. Truth to tell, the facial mutilations of his special

darlings slightly increased their attractiveness to his jaded appetite. Still,

harem discipline had to be kept, hence Eesafem's confinement, loss of all

hairs -- most carefully one at a time -- and tattooing.

The King of Kings was a thrifty soul and unlike many monarchs expected

all his wives and concubines to perform useful work rather than be forever

lolling, bathing, gossiping and brawling. So, it being the work she was

uncontestably best trained for and the one most apt to bring profit, Eesafem

had been permitted her forge and her metals.

But despite her regular working of these and her consequent production

of numerous beauteous and ingenious objects, Eesafem's young mind had become

viciously unhinged from her twelve harem moons, seven of those in lonely cell,

and from the galling fact that the King of Kings had yet to visit her once for

amorous or any other reason, even despite the charming metal gifts she had

fashioned for him. Nor had any other man visited her, excepting eunuchs who

lectured her on the erotic arts -- while she was securely trussed up, else she

would have flown at their pudgy faces like a wildcat, and even at that she

spat at them whenever able -- and gave her detailed and patronizing advice on

her metalworking, which she ignored as haughtily as she did their other

fluting words.

Instead, her creativity, now fired by insane jealousies as well as

racklike aches for freedom, had taken a new and secret turn.

Scanning the silver mirror, she carefully inspected the four ornaments

adorning her slender yet wiry-strong figure. They were two breast cups and two

shin-greaves, all chiefly of a delicate silver filigree, which set off nicely

her green and blue tattooing.

Once her gaze in the mirror wandered overshoulder, past her naked pate

with its finely patterned, fantastical skullcap, to a silver cage in which

perched a green and blue parrot with eye as icily malevolent as her own --

perpetual reminder of her own imprisonment.

The only oddity about the filigree ornaments was that the breast cups,

jutting outward over the nipples, ended in short spikes trained straight

forward, while the greaves were topped, just at the knee, with vertical ebony

lozenges about as big as a man's thumb.

These bits of decor were not very obtrusive, the spikes being stained a

greenish blue, as though to match her tattooing.

So Eesafem gazed at herself with a crafty, approving smile. And so

Death gazed at her with a more crafty one, and one far more coldly approving

than any eunuch's. And so she vanished in a flash from her cell. And before

the blue-green parrot could gin squawk his startlement, Death's eyes and ears

were elsewhere also.

Only seven heartbeats left.

Now it may be that in the world of Nehwon there are gods of whom even

Death does not know and who from time to time take pleasure in putting

obstacles in his path. Or it may be that Chance is quite as great a power as

Necessity. At any rate, on this particular morning Fafhrd the Northerner, who

customarily snoozed till noon, waked with the first dull silvery shaft of dawn

and took up his dear weapon Graywand, naked as he, and blearily made his way

from his penthouse pallet out onto the roof, where he began to practice all

manner of swordstrokes, stamping his feet in his advances and from time to

time uttering battleshouts, unmindful of the weary merchants he waked below

him into groaning, cursing, or fright-quivering life. He shivered at first

from the chill, fishy dawnmist from the Great Salt Marsh, but soon was

sweating from his exercise, while his thrusts and parries, perfunctory to

begin with, grew lightning-swift and most authoritative.

Except for Fafhrd, it was a quiet morning in Lankhmar. The bells had

not yet begun to toll, nor the deep-throated gongs resound for the passage of

the city's gentle overlord, nor the news been bruited about of his seventeen

cats netted and hustled to the Great Gaol, there in separate cages to await

trial.

It also happened that on this same day the Gray Mouser had waked till

dawn, which usually found him an hour or so asleep. He curled in penthouse

corner on a pile of pillows behind a low table, chin in hand, a woolly gray

robe huddled around him. From time to time he wryly sipped sour wine and

thought even sourer thoughts, chiefly about the evil and untrustworthy folk he

had known during his mazily crooked lifetime. He ignored Fafhrd's exit and

shut his ears to his noisy prancings, but the more he wooed sleep, the further

she drew away.

The foamy-mouthed, red-eyed berserk materialized in front of Fafhrd

just as the latter assumed the guard of low tierce, swordhand thrust forward,

down, and a little to the right, sword slanting upward.

He was astounded by the apparition, who, untroubled by sanity's

strictures, instantly aimed at the naked Northerner's neck a great swipe with

his saw-edged scimitar, which looked rather like a row of short, broad-bladed

daggers forged side to side and freshly dipped in blood -- so that it was pure

automatism made Fafhrd shift his guard to a wellbraced high carte which

deflected the berserk's sword so that it whished over Fafhrd's head with

something of the sound of a steel rod very swiftly dragged along a fence of

steel pickets, as each razor-edged tooth in turn met the Northerner's blade.

Then reason took a hand in the game and before the berserk could begin

a back-handed return swipe, Graywand's tip made a neat, swift counterclockwise

circle and flicked upward at the berserk's sword-wrist, so that his weapon and

hand went flying harmlessly off. Far safer, Fafhrd knew, to disarm -- or

dishand? -- such a frenziedly fell opponent before thrusting him through the

heart, something Fafhrd now proceeded to do.

Meantime the Mouser was likewise astounded by the abrupt, entirely non

sequitur appearance of Eesafem in the center of the penthouse. It was as if

one of his more lurid erotic dreams had suddenly come to solid life. He could

only goggle as she took a smiling step toward him, knelt a little, carefully

faced her front at him, and then drew her upper arms close to her sides so

that the filigree band which supported her breast cups was compressed. Her

almond eyes flashed sinister green.

What saved the Mouser then was simply his lifelong antipathy to having

anything sharp pointed at him, be it only the tiniest needle -- or the

playfully menacing spikes on exquisite silver breast cups doubtless enclosing

exquisite breasts. He hurled himself to one side just as with simultaneous

_zings_ small but powerful springs loosed the envenomed spikes as though they

were crossbow quarrels and buried them with twin _zaps_ in the wall against

which he had but now been resting.

He was scrambling to his feet in an instant and hurled himself at the

girl. Now reason, or perhaps intuition, told him the significance of her

grasping toward the two black lozenges topping her silver greaves. Tackling

her, he managed to get to them before her, withdraw the twin, black-handled

stilettos, and toss them beyond Fafhrd's tousled pallet.

Thereafter, twining his legs about hers in such fashion that she could

not knee him in the groin, and holding her snapping, spitting head in the

crook of his left arm and by an ear -- after futilely grasping for hair -- and

finally mastering with his right hand the wrists of her two sharp-nailed,

flailing ones, he proceeded by gradual and not unnecessarily brutal steps to

ravage her. As she ran out of spit, she quieted. Her breasts proved to be very

small, but doubly delicious.

Fafhrd, returning mightily puzzled from the roof, goggled in turn at

what he saw. How the devil had the Mouser managed to smuggle in that winsome

bit? Oh, well, no business of his. With a courteous, "Pardon me. Pray

continue," he shut the door behind him and tackled the problem of disposing of

the berserk's corpse. This was readily achieved by heaving him up and dropping

him four storeys onto the vast garbage heap that almost blocked Specter Alley.

Next Fafhrd picked up the saw-edged scimitar, pried from it the still-clenched

hand, and tossed that after. Then frowning down at the encrimsoned weapon,

which he intended to keep as a souvenir, he futilely wondered, "Whose blood?"

(Disposing of Eesafem was hardly a problem capable of any such instant,

hand-brushing solution. Suffice it that she gradually lost much of her madness

and a little of her hatred of humanity, learned to speak Lankhmarese fluently,

and ended up quite happily running a tiny smithy of her own on Copper Court

behind Silver Street, where she made beautiful jewelry and sold under the

counter such oddments as the finest poison-fanged rings in all Nehwon.)

Meanwhile Death, for whom time moves in a somewhat different fashion

than for men, recognized that there remained to him only two heartbeats in

which to fill his quota. The extremely faint thrill of excitement he had felt

at seeing his two chosen heroes foil his brilliant improvisations -- and at

the thought that there _might_ be powers in the universe unknown to him and

subtler even than his -- was replaced by a wry disgust at the realization that

there was no longer time enough left for artistry and for indirection and that

he must personally take a hand in the business -- something he thoroughly

detested, since the deus ex machina had always struck him as fiction's -- or

life's -- feeblest device.

Should he slay Fafhrd and the Mouser direct? No, they had somehow

outwitted him, which ought in all justice (if there be any such thing) give

them immunity for a space. Besides, it would smack now almost of anger, or

even resentment. And after his fashion and despite his occasional and almost

unavoidable cheating, Death was a sportsman.

With the faintest yet weariest of sighs, Death magicked himself into

the royal guardroom in the Great Golden Palace in Horborixen, where with two

almost sightlessly swift, mercifully near-instantaneous thrusts, he let the

life out of two most noble and blameless heroes whom he had barely glimpsed

there earlier, yet ticketed in his boundless and infallible memory, two

brothers sworn to perpetual celibacy and also to the rescue of at least one

damsel in distress per moon. And so now they were released from this difficult

destiny and Death returned to brood sadly on his low throne in his modest

castle in the Shadowland and to await his next mission.

The twentieth heartbeat knelled.

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*II: Beauty and the Beasts*

She was undoubtedly the most beautiful girl in Lankhmar, or all Nehwon,

or any other world. So Fafhrd, the red-haired Northerner, and the Gray Mouser,

that swarthy, cat-faced Southerner, were naturally following her.

Her name, most strangely, was Slenya Akkiba Magus, the most witching

brunette in all the worlds, and also, most oddly, the most sorcerous blonde.

They knew Slenya Akkiba Magus was her name because someone had called it out

as she glided ahead of them up Pinchbeck Alley, which parallels Gold Street,

and she hesitated for an instant in that drawing-together fashion one only

does when one's name is unexpectedly called out, before gliding on without

looking around.

They never saw who called. Perhaps someone on a roof. They looked into

Sequin Court as they passed, but it was empty. So was Fools Gold Court.

Slenya was two inches taller than the Gray Mouser and ten shorter than

Fafhrd -- a nice height for a girl.

"She's mine," the Gray Mouser whispered with great authority.

"No, she's mine," Fafhrd murmured back with crushing casualness.

"We _could_ split her," the Mouser hissed judiciously.

There was a zany logic to this suggestion for, quite amazingly, she was

completely black on the right side and completely fair on the left side. You

could see the dividing line down her back very distinctly. This was because of

the extreme thinness of the dress of beige silk she was wearing. Her two

colors split exactly at her buttocks.

On the fair side her hair was completely blonde. On the black side it

was all brunette.

At this moment an ebony-black warrior appeared from nowhere and

attacked Fafhrd with a brass scimitar.

Drawing his sword Graywand in a rush, Fafhrd parried at a square angle.

The scimitar shattered, and the brazen fragments flew about. Fafhrd's wrist

whipped Graywand in a circle and struck off his foe's head.

Meanwhile the Mouser was suddenly faced by an ivory-white warrior

sprung from another nowhere and armed with a steel rapier, silver-plated. The

Mouser whisked out Scalpel, laid a bind on the other's blade, and thrust him

through the heart.

The two friends congratulated each other.

Then they looked around. Save for the corpses, Pinchbeck Alley was

empty.

Slenya Akkiba Magus had disappeared.

The twain pondered this for five heartbeats and two inhalations. Then

Fafhrd's frown vanished and his eyes widened.

"Mouser," he said. "The girl divided into the two villains! That

explains all. They came from the same nowhere."

"The same somewhere, you mean," the Mouser quibbled. "A most exotic

mode of reproduction, or fission rather."

"And one with a sex alternation," Fafhrd added. "Perhaps if we examined

the corpses --"

They looked down to find Pinchbeck Alley emptier still. The two liches

had vanished from the cobbles. Even the chopped-off head was gone from the

foot of the wall against which it had rolled.

"An excellent way of disposing of bodies," Fafhrd said with approval.

His ears had caught the tramp and brazen clank of the approaching watch.

"They might have lingered long enough for us to search their pouches

and seams for jewels and precious metal," the Mouser demurred.

"But what was behind it all?" Fafhrd puzzled. "A black-and-white

magician?"

"It's bootless to make bricks without straw," said the Mouser, cutting

him short. "Let us hie to the Golden Lamphrey and there drink a health to the

girl, who was surely a stunner."

"Agreed. And we will drink to her appropriately in blackest stout laced

with the palest bubbly wine of Ilthmar."

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III: Trapped in the Shadowland

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were almost dead from thirst. Their horses

had died from the same Hell-throated ailment at the last waterhole, which had

proved dry. Even the last contents of their waterbags, augmented by water of

their own bodies, had not been enough to keep alive the dear dumb equine

beasts. As all men know, camels are the only creatures who can carry men for

more than a day or two across the almost supernaturally hot arid deserts of

the World of Nehwon.

They tramped on south-westward under the blinding sun and over the

burning sand. Despite their desperate plight and heat-fevered minds and

bodies, they were steering a canny course. Too far south and they would fall

into the cruel hands of the emperor of the Eastern Lands, who would find rare

delight in torturing them before killing them. Too far east and they would

encounter the merciless Mingols of the Steppes and other horrors. West and

northwest were those who were pursuing them now. While north and northeast lay

the Shadowland, the home of Death himself. So much they well knew of the

geography of Nehwon.

Meanwhile, Death grinned faintly in his low castle in the heart of the

Shadowland, certain that he had at last got the two elusive heroes in his bony

grip. They had years ago had the nerve to enter his domain, visiting their

first loves, Ivrian and Vlana, and even stealing from his very castle Death's

favorite mask. Now they would pay for their temerity.

Death had the appearance of a tall, handsome young man, though somewhat

cadaverous and of opalescent complexion. He was staring now at a large map of

the Shadowland and its environs set in a dark wall of his dwelling. On this

map Fafhrd and the Mouser were a gleaming speck, like an errant star or fire

beetle, south of the Shadowland.

Death writhed his thin, smiling lips and moved his bony fingertips in

tiny, cabalistic curves, as he worked a small but difficult magic.

His incantation done, he noted with approval that on the map a southern

tongue of the Shadowland was visibly extending itself in pursuit of the

dazzling speck that was his victims.

Fafhrd and the Mouser tramped on south, staggering and reeling now,

their feet and minds aflame, their faces a-drip with precious sweat. They had

been seeking, near the Sea of Monsters and the City of Ghouls, their strayed

newest girls, Mouser's Reetha and Fafhrd's Kreeshkra, the latter a Ghoul

herself, all her blood and flesh invisible, which made her bonny pink bones

stand out the more, while Reetha believed in going naked and shaven from head

to toe, a taste which gave the girls a mutual similarity and sympathy.

But the Mouser and Fafhrd had found nothing but a horde of fierce male

Ghouls, mounted on equally skeletal horses, who had chased them east and

south, either to slay them, or to cause them to die of thirst in the desert or

of torture in the dungeons of the King of Kings.

It was high noon and the sun was hottest. Fafhrd's left hand touched in

the dry heat a cool fence about two feet high, invisible at first though not

for long.

"Escape to damp coolth," he said in a cracked voice.

They eagerly clambered over the fence and threw themselves down on a

blessed thick turf of dark grass two inches high, over which a fine mist was

falling. They slept about ten hours.

In his castle Death permitted himself a thin grin, as on his map the

south-trending tongue of the Shadowland touched the diamond spark and dimmed

it.

Nehwon's greatest star, Astorian, was mounting the eastern sky,

precursor of the moon, as the two adventurers awoke, greatly refreshed by

their long nap. The mist had almost ceased, but the only star visible was vast

Astorian.

The Mouser sprang up agitatedly in his gray hood, tunic, and ratskin

shoes. "We must escape backward to hot dryth," he said, "for this is the

Shadowland, Death's homeland."

"A very comfortable place," Fafhrd replied, stretching his huge muscles

luxuriously on the thick greensward. "Return to the briny, granular, rasping,

fiery land-sea? Not I."

"But if we stay here," the Mouser countered, "we will be will-lessly

drawn by devilish and delusive will-o'-the-wisps to the low-walled Castle of

Death, whom we defied by stealing his mask and giving its two halves to our

wizards Sheelba and Ningauble, an action for which Death is not likely to love

us. Besides, here we might well meet our two first girls, Ivrian and Vlana,

now concubines of Death, and that would not be a pleasant experience."

Fafhrd winced, yet stubbornly repeated, "But it is comfortable here."

Rather self-consciously he writhed his great shoulders and restretched his

seven feet on the deliciously damp turf. (The "seven feet" refers to his

height. He was by no means an octopus missing one limb, but a handsome, red-

bearded, very tall barbarian.)

The Mouser persisted, "But what _if_ your Vlana should appear, blue-

faced and unloving? Or my Ivrian in like state, for that matter?"

That dire image did it. Fafhrd sprang up, grabbing for the low fence.

But lo and behold -- there was no fence at hand. In all directions stretched

out the damp, dark green turf of the Shadowland, while the soft drizzle had

thickened again, hiding Astorian. There was no way to tell directions.

The Mouser searched in his ratskin pouch and drew out a blue bone

needle. He pricked himself finding it, and cursed. It was wickedly sharp at

one end, round and pierced at the other.

"We need a pool or puddle," he said.

"Where did you get that toy?" Fafhrd quizzed. "Magic, eh?"

"From Nattick Nimblefingers the Tailor in vasty Lankhmar," the Mouser

responded. "Magic, nay! Hast heard of compass needles, oh wise one?"

Not far off they found a shallow puddle atop the turf. The Mouser

carefully floated his needle on the small mirror of clear, placid water. It

spun about slowly and eventually settled itself.

"We go that way," Fafhrd said, pointing out from the pierced end of the

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======================SwordsandIceMagic[Book6ofthe"FafhrdandGrayMouser"series]byFritzLeiber======================Copyright(c)1977byFritzLeiber--------*I:TheSadnessoftheExecutioner*Therewasaskythatwasalwaysgray.Therewasaplacethatwasalwaysfaraway.Therewasabeingwhowasalwayssad.Sittingonhisdark-cushione...

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Leiber, Fritz - Saga of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser 06 - Swords and Ice Magic

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