The Knight and Knave of Swords

1

Late one nippy afternoon of early Rime Isle spring, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser slumped pleasantly in a small booth in Salthaven's Sea Wrack Tavern. Although they'd been on the Isle for only a year, and patronizing this tavern for an eight-month, the booth was recognized as theirs when either was in the place. Both men had been mildly fatigued, the former from supervising bottom repairs to Seahawk at the new moon's low tide — and then squeezing in a late round of archery practice, the latter from bossing the carpentering of their new warehouse-and-barracks — and doing some inventorying besides. But their second tankards of bitter ale had about taken care of that, and their thoughts were beginning to float free.

Around them they heard the livening talk of other recuperating laborers. At the bar they could see three of their lieutenants grousing together — Fafhrd-tall Skor, and the somewhat reformed small thieves Pshawri and Mikkidu. Behind it the keeper lit two thick wicks as the light dimmed as the sun set outside.

Frowning as he pared a thumbnail with razor-keen Cat's Claw, the Mouser said, “I am minded of how scarce seventeen moons gone we sat just so in Silver Eel Tavern in Lankhmar, deeming Rime Isle a legend. Yet here we are."

“Lankhmar,” Fafhrd mused, drawing a wet circle with the firmly socketed iron hook that had become his left hand after the day's bow bending, “I've heard somewhere of such a city, I do believe. ‘Tis strange how oftentimes our thoughts do chime together, as if we were sundered halves of some past being, but whether hero or demon, wastrel or philosopher, harder to say."

“Demon, I'd say,” the Mouser answered instantly, “a demon warrior. We've guessed at him before. Remember? We decided he always growled in battle. Perhaps a were-bear."

After a small chuckle at that, Fafhrd went on, “But then (that night twelve moons gone and five in Lankhmar) we'd had twelve tankards each of bitter instead of two, I ween, yes, and lacing them too with brandy, you can bet — hardly to be accounted best judges ‘twixt phantasm and the veritable. Yes, and didn't two heroines from this fabled isle next moment stride into the Eel, as real as boots?"

Almost as if the Northerner hadn't answered, the small, gray-smocked, gray-stockinged man continued in the same thoughtful reminiscent tones as he'd first used, “And you, liquored to the gills — agreed on that! — were ranting dolefully about how you dearly wanted work, land, office, sons, other responsibilities, and e'en a wife!"

“Yes, and didn't I get one?” Fafhrd demanded. “You too, you equally then-drunken destiny-ungrateful lout!” His eyes grew thoughtful also. He added, “Though perhaps comrade or co-mate were the better word — or even those plus partner."

“Much better all three,” the Mouser agreed shortly. “As for those other goods your drunken heart was set upon — no disagreement there! — we've got enough of those to stuff a hog! — except, of course, far as I know, for sons. Unless, that is, you count our men as our grown-up unweaned babes, which sometimes I'm inclined to."

Fafhrd, who'd been leaning his head out of the booth to look toward the darkening doorway during the latter part of the Mouser's plaints, now stood up, saying, “Speaking of them, shall we join the ladies? Cif and Afreyt's booth ‘pears to be larger than ours."

“To be sure. What else?” the Mouser replied, rising springily. Then, in a lower voice, “Tell me, did the two of them just now come in? Or did we blunder blindly by them when we entered, sightless of all save thirst quench?"

Fafhrd shrugged, displaying his palm. “Who knows? Who cares?"

“They might,” the other answered.

2

Many Lankhmar leagues east and south, and so in darkest moonless night, the archmagus Ningauble conferred with the sorceress Sheelba at the edge of the Great Salt Marsh. The seven luminous eyes of the former wove many greenish patterns within his gaping hood as he leaned his quaking bulk perilously downward from the howdah on the broad back of the forward-kneeling elephant which had borne him from his desert cave, across the Sinking Land through all adverse influences, to this appointed spot. While the latter's eyeless face strained upward likewise as she stood tall in the doorway of her small hut, which had traveled from the Marsh's noxious center to the same dismal verge on its three long rickety (but now rigid) chicken legs. The two wizards strove mightily to outshout (outbellow or outscreech) the nameless cosmic din (inaudible to human ears) which had hitherto hindered and foiled all their earlier efforts to communicate over greater distances. And now, at last, they strove successfully!

Ningauble wheezed, “I have discovered by certain infallible signs that the present tumult in realms magical, botching my spells, is due to the vanishment from Lankhmar of my servitor and sometimes student, Fafhrd the barbarian. All magics dim without his credulous and kindly audience, while high quests fail lacking his romantical and custard-headed idealisms."

Sheelba shot back through the murk, “While I have ascertained that my ill-spells suffer equally because the Mouser's gone with him, my protégé and surly errand boy. They will not work without the juice of his brooding and overbearing malignity. He must be summoned from that ridiculous rim-place of Rime Isle, and Fafhrd with him!"

“But how to do that when our spells won't carry? What servitor to trust with such a mission to go and fetch ‘em? I know of a young demoness might undertake it, but she's in thrall to Khahkht, wizard of power in that frosty area — and he's inimical to both of us. Or should the two of us search out in noisy spirit realm to be our messenger that putative warlike ascendant of theirs and whom forebear known as the Growler? A dismal task! Where'er I look I see naught but uncertainties and obstacles—"

“I shall send word of their whereabouts to Mog the spider god, the Gray One's tutelary deity! — this din won't hinder prayers,” Sheelba interrupted in a harsh, clipped voice. The presence of the vacillating and loquacious over-sighted wizard, who saw seven sides to every question, always roused her to her best efforts. “Send you like advisors to Fafhrd's gods, stone-age brute Kos and the fastidious cripple Issek. Soon as they know where their lapsed worshippers are, they'll put such curses and damnations on them as shall bring them back squealing to us to have those taken off."

“Now why didn't I think of that?” Ningauble protested, who was indeed sometimes called the Gossiper of the Gods. “To work! To work!"

3

In paradisiacal Godsland, which lies at the antipodes of Nehwon's death pole and Shadowland, in the southernmost reach of that world's southernmost continent, distanced and guarded from the tumultuous northern lands by the Great eastward-rushing Equatorial Current (where some say swim the stars), sub-equatorial deserts, and the Rampart Mountains, the gods Kos, Issek, and Mog sat somewhat apart from the mass of more couth and civilized Nehwonian deities, who objected to Kos's lice, fleas, and crabs, and a little to Issek's effeminacy — though Mog had contacts among these, as he sarcastically called ‘em, “higher beings."

Sunk in divine somnolent broodings, not to say almost deathlike trances, for prayers, petitions, and even blasphemous nametakings had been scanty of late, the three mismatched godlings reacted at once and enthusiastically to the instantaneously transmitted wizard missives.

“Those two ungodly swording rogues!” Mog hissed softly, his long thin lips stretched slantwise in a half spider grin. “The very thing! Here's work for all of us, my heavenly peers. A chance to curse again and to bedevil."

“A glad inspiro that, indeed, indeed!” Issek chimed, waving his limp-wristed hands excitedly. “I should have thought of that! — our chiefest lapsed worshippers, hidden away in frosty and forgotten far Rime Isle, farther away than Shadowland itself, almost beyond our hearing and our might. Such infant cunning! Oh, but we'll make them pay!"

“The ingrate dogs!” Kos grated through his thick and populous black beard. “Not only casting us off, their natural heavenly fathers and rightful da's, but forsaking all decent Nehwonian deities and running with atheist men and gone a-whoring after stranger gods beyond the pale! Yes, by my lights and spleen, we'll make ‘em suffer! Where's my spiked mace?"

(On occasion Mog and Issek had been known to have to hold Kos down to keep him from rushing ill-advised out of Godsland to seek to visit personal dooms upon his more disobedient and farther-strayed worshippers.)

“What say we set their women against them, as we did last time?” Issek urged twitteringly. “Women have power over men almost as great as gods do."

Mog shook his humanoid cephalothorax. “Our boys are too coarse-tasted. Did we estrange from them Afreyt and Cif, they'd doubtless fall back on amorous arrangements with the Salthaven harlots Rill and Hilsa — and so on and so on.” Now that his attention had been called to Rime Isle, he had easy knowledge of all overt things there — a divine prerogative. “No, not the women this time, I ween."

“A pox on all such subtleties!” Kos roared. “I want tortures for ‘em! Let's visit on ‘em the strangling cough, the prick-rot, and the Bloody Melts!"

“Nor can we risk wiping them out entirely,” Mog answered swiftly. “We haven't worshippers to spare for that, you fire-eater, as you well know. Thrift, thrift! Moreover, as you should also know, a threat is always more dreadful than its execution. I propose we subject them to some of the moods and preoccupations of old age and of old age's bosom comrade, inseparable though invisible-seeming — Death himself! Or is that too mild a fear and torment, thinkest thou?"

“I'll say not,” Kos agreed, suddenly sober. “I know that it scares me. What if the gods should die? A hellish thought."

“That infant bugaboo!” Issek told him peevishly. Then turning to Mog with quickening interest, “So, if I read you right, old Arach, let's narrow your silky Mouser's interests in and in from the adventure-beckoning horizon to the things closest around him: the bed table, the dinner board, the privy, and the kitchen sink. Not the far-leaping highway, but the gutter. Not the ocean, but the puddle. Not the grand view outside, but the bleared windowpane. Not the thunder-blast, but the knuckle crack — or ear-pop."

Mog narrowed his eight eyes happily. “And for your Fafhrd, I would suggest a different old-age curse, to drive a wedge between them so they can't understand or help each other, that we put a geas upon him to count the stars. His interests in all else will fade and fail; he'll have mind only for those tiny lights in the sky."

“So that, with his head in the clouds,” Issek pictured, catching on quick, “he'll stumble and bruise himself again and again, and miss all opportunities of earthly delights."

“Yes, and make him memorize their names and all their patterns!” Kos put in. “There's busy-work for an eternity. I never could abide the things myself. There's such a senseless mess of stars, like flies or fleas. An insult to the gods to say that we created them!"

“And then, when those two have sufficiently humbled themselves to us and done suitable penance,” Issek purred, “we will consider taking off or ameliorating their curses."

“I say, leave ‘em on always,” Kos argued. “No leniency. Eternal damnation! — that's the stuff!"

“That question can be decided when it arises,” Mog opined. “Come, gentlemen, to work! We've some damnations to devise in detail and deliver."

4

Back at the Sea Wrack Tavern, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser had, despite the latter's apprehensions, been invited to join with and buy a round of bitter ale for their lady-friends Afreyt and Cif, leading and sometimes office-holding citizens of Rime Isle, spinster-matriarchs of otherwise scionless dwindling old families in that strange republic, and Fafhrd's and the Mouser's partners and co-adventurers of a good year's standing in questing, business, and (this last more recently) bed. The questing part had consisted of the almost bloodless routing from the Isle of an invading naval force of maniacal Sea-Mingols, with the help of twelve tall berserks and twelve small warrior-thieves the two heroes had brought with them, and the dubious assistance of the two universes-wandering hobo gods Odin and Loki, and (minor quest) a small expedition to recover certain civic treasures of the Isle, a set of gold artifacts called the Ikons of Reason. And they had been hired to do these things by Cif and Afreyt, so business had been mixed with questing in their relationship from the very start. Other business had been a merchant venture of the Mouser (Captain Mouser for this purpose) in Fafhrd's galley Seahawk with a mixed crew of berserks and thieves, and goods supplied by the ladies, to the oft-frozen port of No-Ombrulsk on Nehwon mainland — that and various odd jobs done by their men and by the women and girls employed by and owing fealty to Cif and Afreyt.

As for the bed part, both couples, though not yet middle-aged, at least in looks, were veterans of amorous goings-on, wary and courteous in all such doings, entering upon any new relationships, including these, with a minimum of commitment and a maximum of reservations. Ever since the tragic deaths of their first loves, Fafhrd's and the Mouser's erotic solacing had mostly come from a very odd lot of hard-bitten if beauteous slave-girls, vagabond hoydens, and demonic princesses, folk easily come by if at all and even more easily lost, accidents rather than goals of their weird adventurings; both sensed that anything with the Rime Isle ladies would have to be a little more serious at least. While Afreyt's and Cif's love-adventures had been equally transient, either with unromantic and hard-headed Rime Islanders, who are atheistical realists even in youth, or with sea-wanderers of one sort or another, come like the rain — or thunder-squall, and as swiftly gone.

All this being considered, things did seem to be working out quite well for the two couples in the bed area.

And, truth to tell, this was a greater satisfaction and relief to the Mouser and Fafhrd than either would admit even to himself. For each was indeed beginning to find extended questing a mite tiring, especially ones like this last which, rather than being one of their usual lone-wolf forays, involved the recruitment and command of other men and the taking on of larger and divided responsibilities. It was natural for them, after such exertions, to feel that a little rest and quiet enjoyment was now owed them, a little surcease from the batterings of fate and chance and new desire. And, truth to tell, the ladies Cif and Afreyt were on the verge of admitting in their secretest hearts something of the same feelings.

So all four of them found it pleasant during this particular Rime Isle twilight to take a little bitter ale together and chat of this day's doings and tomorrow's plans and reminisce about their turning of the Mingols and ask each other gentle questions about the times before they'd all four met — and each flirt privily and cautiously with the notion that each now had two or three persons on whom they might always rely fully, rather than one like-sexed comrade only.

During the course of this gossiping Fafhrd mentioned again his and the Mouser's fantasy that they were halves — or perhaps lesser fractions, fragments only — of some noted or notorious past being, explaining why their thoughts so often chimed together.

“That's odd,” Cif interjected, “for Afreyt and I have had like notion and for like reason: that she and I were spirit-halves of the great Rimish witch-queen Skeldir, who held off the Simorgyans again and again in ancient times when that island boasted an empire and was above the waves instead of under them. What was your hero's name — or mighty rogue's? — if that likes you better."

“I know not, lady, perhaps he lived in times too primitive for names, when man and beast were closer. He was identified by his battle growling — a leonine cough deep in the throat whene'er he entered an encounter."

“Another like point!” Cif noted. “Queen Skeldir announced her presence by a short dry laugh — her invariable utterance when facing dangers, especially those of a sort to astound and confound the bravest."

“Gusorio's my name for our beastish forebear,” the Mouser threw in. “I know not what Fafhrd thinks. Great Gusorio. Gusorio the Growler."

“Now he begins to sound like an animal,” Afreyt broke in. “Tell me, have you ever been granted vision or dream of this Gusorio, or heard perhaps in darkest night his battle growl?"

But the Mouser was studying the dinted table top. He bent his head as his gaze traveled across it.

“No, milady,” Fafhrd answered for his abstracted comrade. “At least not I. It's something we heard of a witch or fortune-teller, figment, not fact. Have you ever heard Queen Skeldir's short dry laugh, or had sight of that fabled warrior sorceress?"

“Neither I nor Cif,” Afreyt admitted, “though she is in the Isle's history parchments."

But even as she answered him, Fafhrd's questioning gaze strayed past her. She looked behind and saw the Sea Wrack's open doorway and the gathering night.

Cif stood up. “So it's agreed we dine at Afreyt's in a half hour's time?"

The two men nodded somewhat abstractedly. Fafhrd leaned his head to the right as he continued to stare past Afreyt, who with a smile obligingly shifted hers in the opposite direction.

The Mouser leaned back and bent his head a little more as his gaze trailed down from the tabletop to its leg.

Fafhrd observed, “Astarion sets soon after the sun these nights. There's little time to observe her."

“God forbid I should stand in the evening star's way,” Afreyt murmured humorously as she too arose. “Come, cousin."

The Mouser left off watching the cockroach as it reached the floor. It had limped interestingly, lacking a mid leg. He and Fafhrd drank off their bitters, then slowly followed their ladies out and down the narrow street, the one's eyes thoughtfully delving in the gutter, as if there might be treasure there, the other's roving the sky as the stars winked on, naming those he knew and numbering, by altitude and direction, those he didn't.

5

Their work well launched, Sheelba retired to Marsh center and Ningauble toward his cavern, the understorm abating, a good omen. While the three gods smiled, invigorated by their cursing. The slum corner of Heaven they occupied now seemed less chilly to Issek and less sweatily enervating to Kos, while Mog's devious mind spider-stepped down more pleasant channels.

Yes, the seed was well planted, and left to germinate in silence, might have developed as intended, but some gods, and some sorcerers too, cannot resist boasting and gossiping, and so by way of talkative priests and midwives and vagabonds, word of what was intended came to the ears of the mighty, including two who considered themselves well rid of Fafhrd and the Mouser and did not want them back in Lankhmar at all. And the mighty are great worriers and spend much time preventing anything that troubles their peace of mind.

And so it was that Pulgh Arthonax, penurious and perverse overlord of Lankhmar, who hated heroes of all description — but especially fair-complected big ones like Fafhrd — and Hamomel, thrifty and ruthless grand master of the Thieves Guild there, who detested the Mouser generally as a freelance competitor and particularly as one who had lured twelve promising apprentices away from the Guild to be his henchmen — these two took counsel together and commissioned the Assassins’ Order, an elite within the Slayers’ Brotherhood, to dispatch the Twain in Rime Isle before they should point toe toward Lankhmar. And because Arth-Pulgh and Hamomel were both most miserly magnates and insatiably greedy withal, they beat down the Order's price as far as they could and made it a condition of the commission that three-fourths of any portable booty found on or near the doomed Twain be returned to them as their lawful share.

So the Order drew up death warrants, chose by lot two of its currently unoccupied fellows, and in solemn secret ceremony attended only by the Master and the Recorder, divested these of their identities and rechristened them the Death of Fafhrd and the Death of the Gray Mouser, by which names only they should henceforth be known to each other and within the profession until the death warrants were served and their commissions fulfilled.

6

Next day repairs to Seahawk continued, the low tide repeating, Witches Moon being only one day old. During a late morning break Fafhrd moved apart from his men a little and scanned the high bright sky toward north and east, his gaze ranging. Skor ventured to follow him across the wet sand and copy his peerings. He saw nothing in the gray-blue heavens, but experience had taught him his captain had exceptionally keen eyesight.

“Sea eagles?” he asked softly.

Fafhrd looked at him thoughtfully, then smiled, shaking his head, and confided, “I was imagining which stars would be there, were it now night."

Skor's forehead wrinkled puzzledly. “Stars by day?"

Fafhrd nodded. “Yes. Where think you the stars are by day?"

“Gone,” Skor answered, his forehead clearing. “They go away at dawn and return at evening. Their lights are extinguished — like winter campfires! for surely it must be cold where the stars are, higher than mountaintops. Until the sun comes out to warm up things, of course."

Fafhrd shook his head. “The stars march west across the sky each night in the same formations which we recognize year after year, dozen years after dozen, and I would guess gross after gross. They do not skitter for the horizon when day breaks or seek out lairs and earth holes, but go on marching with the sun's glare hiding their lights — under cover of day, one might express it."

“Stars shining by day?” Skor questioned, doing a fair job of hiding his surprise and bafflement. Then he caught Fafhrd's drift, or thought he did, and a certain wonder appeared in his eyes. He knew his captain was a good general who made a fetish of keeping track of the enemy's position, especially in terrain affording concealment, as forest on land or fog at sea. So by his very nature his captain had applied the same rule to the stars and studied ‘em as closely as he'd traced the movements of the Mingol scouts fleeing across Rime Isle.

Though it was strange thinking of the stars as enemies. His captain was a deep one! Perhaps he did have foes among the stars. Skor had heard rumor that he'd bedded a queen of the air.

7

That night as the Gray Mouser and Cif leisurely prepared for bed in her low-eaved house tinted a sooty red on the northwestern edge of Salthaven City, and whilst that lady busied herself at her mirrored dressing table, the Mouser himself sitting on bed's edge set his pouch upon a low bedside table and withdrew from it a curious lot of commonplace objects — curious in part because they were so commonplace — and arranged them in a line on the table's dark surface.

Cif, made curious by the slow regularity of his movements she saw reflected cloudily in the sheets of silver she faced, took up a small flat black box and came over and sat herself beside him.

The objects included a toothed small wooden wheel as big almost as a Sarheenmar dollar with two of the teeth missing, a finch's feather, three lookalike gray round pebbles, a scrap of blue wool cloth stiff with dirt, a bent wrought-iron nail, a hazelnut, and a dinted small black round that might have been a Lankhmar tik or Eastern halfpenny.

Cif ran her eye along them, then looked at him questioningly. He said, “Coming here from the barracks at first eve, a strange mood seized me. Low in the sunset glow the new moon's faintest and daintiest silver crescent had just materialized like the ghost of a young girl — and just in the direction of this house, at that, as though to signal your presence here — but somehow I had eyes only for the gutter and the pathside. Which is where I found those. And a remarkable lot they are for a small northern seaport. You'd think Ilthmar at least…” He shook his head.

“But why collect ‘em?” she queried. Like an old ragpicker, she thought.

He shrugged. “I don't know. I think I thought I might find a use for them,” he added doubtfully.

She said, “They do look like oddments that might be involved in casting a spell."

He shrugged again, but added, “They're not all what they seem. That, for instance—” he pointed at one of three gray spherelets “—is not a pebble like the other two, but a lead slingshot, perhaps one of my own."

Struck by his thrusting finger, that rolled off the table and hit the terrazzo floor with a little dull yet dinky thud, as if to prove his observation.

As he recovered it, he paused with his eyes close to the floor to study first the crushed black marble of the terrazzo flecked with dark red and gold, and second Cif's near foot, which he then drew up onto his lap and studied still more minutely.

“A strangely symmetric pentapod coral outcrop from sea's bottom,” he observed, and planted a slow kiss upon the base of her big toe, insinuated the tip of his tongue between it and the next.

“There's an eel nosed around in my reef,” she murmured.

Laying his cheek upon her ankle, he sighted up her leg. She was wearing a singlet of fine brown linen that tied between her legs. He said, “Your hair has exactly the same tints as are in the flooring."

She said, “You think I didn't select the marble for crushing with that in mind? Or add in the gold flakes? Here's a present of sorts for you.” And she pushed the small flat black box down her leg toward him from her groin to her knee.

He sat up to inspect it, though keeping her foot in his lap.

On the black fabric lining it, there lay like a delicate mist cloud the slender translucent bladder of a fish.

Cif said, “I am minded to experience your love fully tonight. Yet not as fully, mind you, as to wish that we fashion a daughter together."

The Mouser said, “I've seen the like of this made of thinnest leather well oiled."

She said, “Not as effectual, I believe."

He said, “To be sure, here, it would be something from a fish, this being Rime Isle. Tell me, did harbor master Groniger fashion this, as thrifty with the Isle's sperm as with its coins?” Then he nodded.

He reached over and drew her other foot up on his lap also. After saluting it similarly, he rested the side of his face on both her ankles and sighted up the narrow trough between her legs. “I am minded,” he said dreamily but with a little growl in his voice, “to embark on another slow and intensely watchful journey, mindful of every step, such as that by which I arrived at this house this eve."

She nodded, wondering idly if the growl were Gusorio's, but it seemed too faint for that.

8

In the bow of a laden grainship sailing north from Lankhmar across the Inner Sea to the land of the Eight Cities, the Death of Fafhrd, who was tall and lank, dire as a steel scarecrow, said to his fellow passenger, “This incarnation likes me and likes me not. ‘Tis a balmy journey now but it'll be long and by all accounts cold as witchcunt at the end, albeit summer. Arth-Pulgh's a mean employer, and unlucky. Hand me a medlar from the sack."

The Death of the Gray Mouser, lithe as a weasel and forever smiling, replied, “No meaner nor no curster than Hamomel. Working for whom, however, is the pits. I've not yet shaken down to this persona, know not its likings. Reach your own apples."

9

A week later, the evening being unseasonably balmy and Witches Moon at first quarter near the top of the sky, a hemispherical silver goblet brimful of stars and scattering them dimmed by moonwine all over the sky as it descended toward the lips of the west, drawn down by the same goddess who had lifted it, Afreyt and Fafhrd after supping alone at her violet-tinted pale house on Salthaven's northern edge were minded to wander across the great meadow in the direction of Elvenhold, a northward slanting slim rock spire two bowshots high, chimneyed and narrowly terraced, that thrust from the rolling fields almost a league away to the west.

“See how her tilt,” Fafhrd observed of that slender mountainlet, “directs her at the dark boss of the Targe—” (naming the northernmost constellation in the Lankhmar heavens) “—as if she were granite arrow aimed at skytop by the gods of the underworld."

“Tonight the earth is full of the heat of these gods’ forges, pressing summer scents from spring flowers and grasses. Let's rest awhile,” Afreyt answered, and truly although it was not yet May Eve, the heavy air was more like Midsummer's. She touched his shoulder and sank to the herby sward.

After a stare around the horizon for any sky wanderer on verge of rise or set, Fafhrd seated himself by her right side. A low lurhorn sounded faintly from the town behind them or the sea beyond that.

“Night fishers summoning the finny ones,” he hazarded.

“I dreamed last night,” she said, “that a beast thing came out of the sea and followed me dripping salt drops as I wandered through a dark wood. I could see its silver scales between the dark boles in the gloom. But I was not afeared, and it in turn seemed to respond to this cue, for the longer it followed me the less it became like a beast and the more like a sea-person, and come not to work a hurt on me but to warn me."

“Of what?” and when she was silent, “Its sex?"

“Why, female—” she answered at once, but then becoming doubtful, “—I think. Had it sex? I wonder why I did not wait for it to catch up, or perhaps turn sudden and walk toward it? I think I felt, did I so, and although I feared it not, it would turn to a beast again, a deep-voiced beast."

“I too dreamed strangely last night, and my dream strangely chimed with yours, or was it by day I dreamed? For I have begun to do that,” Fafhrd announced, dropping himself back at full length on the springy sward, the better to observe the seven spiraled stars of the Targe. “I dreamt I was pent in the greatest of castles with a million dark rooms in it, and that I searched for Gusorio (for that old legend between the Mouser and me is sometimes more than a joke) because I'd been solemnly told, perchance in a dream within the dream, that he had a message for me."

She turned and leaned over him, her eyes staring deep into his as she listened. Her palely golden hair fell forward in two sweeping smooth cascades over her shoulders. He readjusted his position slightly so that five of the stars of Targe rose in a semicircle from her forehead (his eyes straying now and again toward her shadowed throat and the silver cord lacing together the sides of her violet bodice) and he continued, “In the twelve times twelve times twelfth room there stood at the far door a figure clad all in silver-scale mail (there's our dreams chiming) but its back was toward me and the longer I looked at it, the taller and skinnier it seemed than Gusorio should be. Nevertheless I cried out to it aloud and in the very instant of my calling knew that I'd made an irreparable mistake and that my voice would work a hideous change in it and to my harm. See, our dreams clink again? But then, as it started to turn, I awoke. Dearest princess, did you know that the Targe crowns you?” And his right hand moved toward the silver bow drooping below her throat as she bent down to kiss him.

But as he enjoyed those pleasures and their continuations and proliferations while the moon sank, which pleasures were greatly enhanced by their starry background, the far ecstasies complementing the near, he marveled how these nights he seemed to be walking at once toward brightest life and darkest death, while through it all Elvenhold loomed in the low distance.

10

“No question on it, Captain Mouser's changed,” Pshawri said with certainty, yet also amazedly and apprehensively, to his fellow lieutenant Mikkidu as they tippled together two evenings later in a small booth of the Sea Wrack. “Here's yet another example if't be needed. You know the care he has for our grub, to see that cookie doesn't poison us. Normally he'll taste a spoon of stew, say what it lacks or not, even order it dumped (that happened once, remember?) and go dancing off. Yet this very afternoon I spied him standing before the roiling soup kettle and staring into it for as long as it takes to stow Flotsam's mainsail and then rig it again, watching it bubble and seethe with greatest interest, the beans and fish flakes bobbing and the turnips and carrots turning over, as though he were reading there auguries and prognostics on the fate of the world!"

Mikkidu nodded. “Or else he's trotting about bent over like Mother Grum, seeing things even an ant ignores. He had me stooping about after him over a route that could have been the plan of a maze, pointing out in turn a tangle of hair combings, a penny, a pebble, a parchment scrap scribbled with runic, mouse droppings, and a dead cockroach."

“Did he make you eat it?” asked Pshawri.

Mikkidu shook his head wonderingly. “No chewings… and no chewings out either. He only said at the end, when my legs had started to cramp, ‘I want you to keep these matters in mind in the future.’”

“And meantime Captain Fafhrd—” the two semi-rehabilitated thieves looked up. Skor from the next booth had thrust over his balding head, worry-wrinkled, which now loomed above them “—is so busy keeping watch on the stars by night — and by day too, somehow — that it's a wonder he can navigate Salthaven without breaking his neck. Think you some evil wight has put a spell on both?"

Normally the Mouser's and Fafhrd's men were mutually rivalrous, suspicious, and disparaging of each other. It was a measure of their present concern for their captains that they pooled their knowledge and took frank counsel together.

Pshawri shrugged as hugely as one so small was able. “Who knows? ‘Tis such footling matters, and yet…"

“Chill ills abound here,” Mikkidu intoned. “Khahkht the Wizard of Ice, Stardock's ghost fliers, sunken Simorgya…"

11

At the same moment Cif and Afreyt, in the former's sauna, chatted together with even greater but more playful freedom. Afreyt confided with mock grandeur, “I'll have you know that Fafhrd compared my nipplets to stars."

Cif chortled midst the steam and answered coarsely with mock pride, “The Mouser likened my arse hole to one. And to the stem dimple of a pome. And his own intrusive member to a stiletto! Whate'er ails them doesn't show in bed."

“Or does it?” Afreyt questioned laughingly. “In my case, stars. In yours, fruits and cutlery too."

12

As the Deaths of Fafhrd and the Mouser jounced on donkeyback at the tail of a small merchant troop to which they'd attached themselves traveling through the forested land of the Eight Cities from Kvarch Nar to Illik Ving, Witches Moon being full, the former observed, “The trouble with these long incarnations as the death of another is that one begins to forget one's own proper persona and best interests, especially if one be a dedicated actor."

“Not so, necessarily,” the other responded. “Rather, it gives one a clear head (what head clearer than Death's?) to observe oneself dispassionately and examine without bias the terms of the contract under which one operates."

“That's true enough,” Fafhrd's Death said, stroking his lean jaw while his donkey stepped along evenly for a change. “Why think you this one talks so much of booty we may find?"

“Why else but that Arth-Pulgh and Hamomel expect there will be treasure on our intendeds or about them? There's a thought to warm the cold nights coming!"

“Yes, and raises a nice question in our order's law, whether we're being hired principally as assassins or robbers."

“No matter that,” Death of the Mouser summed up. “We know at least we must not hit the Twain until they've shown us where their treasure is."

“Or treasures are, more like,” the other amended, “if they distrust each other, as all sane men do."

13

Coming in opposite directions around a corner behind Salthaven's council hall after a sharp rain shower, the Mouser and Fafhrd bumped into each other because the one was bending down to inspect a new puddle while the other studied the clouds retreating from arrows of sunshine. After grappling together briefly with sharp growls that turned to sudden laughter, Fafhrd was shaken enough from his current preoccupations by this small surprise to note the look of puzzled and wondrous brooding that instantly replaced the sharp friendly grin on the Mouser's face — a look that was undersurfaced by a pervasive sadness.

His heart was touched and he asked, “Where've you been keeping yourself, comrade? I never seem to see you to talk to these past days."

“ ‘Tis true,” the Mouser replied with a sharp grimace, “we do seem to be operating on different levels, you and I, in our movings around Salthaven this last moon-wax."

“Yes, but where are your feelings keeping?” Fafhrd prompted. Heart-touched in turn and momentarily impelled to seek to share deepest and least definable difficulties, the Mouser drew Fafhrd to the lane-side and launched out, “If you said I were homesick for Lankhmar, I'd call you liar! Our jolly comrades and grand almost-friends there, yes, even those good not-to-be-trusted female troopers in memory revered, and all their perfumed and painted blazonry of ruby (or mayhap emerald?) lips, delectable tits, exquisite genitalia, they draw me not a whit! Not even Sheelba with her deep diggings into my psyche, nor your spicedly garrulous Ning. Nor all the gorgeous palaces, piers, pyramids, and fanes, all that marble and cloud-capped biggery! But oh…” and the underlook of sadness and wonder became keen in his face as he drew Fafhrd closer, dropping his voice, “…the small things—those, I tell you honest, do make me homesick, aye, yearningly so. The little street braziers, the lovely litter, as though each scrap were sequined and bore hieroglyphs. The hennaed and the diamond-dusted footprints. I knew those things, yet I never looked at them closely enough, savored the details. Oh, the thought of going back and counting the cobblestones in the Street of the Gods and fixing forever in my memory the shape of each and tracing the course of the rivulets of rainy trickle between them! I'd want to be rat size again to do it properly, yes even ant size, oh, there is no end to this fascination with the small, the universe written in a pebble!"

And he stared desperately deep into Fafhrd's eyes to ascertain if that one had caught at least some shred of his meaning, but the big man whose questions had stirred him to speak from his inmost being had apparently lost the track himself somewhere, for his long face had gone blank again, blank with a faint touch of melancholia and eyes wandering doubtfully upward.

“Homesick for Lankhmar?” the big man was saying. “Well, I do miss her stars, I must confess, her southern stars we cannot see from here. But oh…” And now his face and eyes fired for the brief span it took him to say the following words, “…the thought of the still more southern stars we've never seen! The untravelled southern continent below the Middle Sea. Godsland and Nehwon's life pole, and over ‘em the stars a world of men have died and never seen. Yes, I am homesick for those lands indeed!"

The Mouser saw the flare in him dim and die. The Northerner shook his head. “My mind wanders,” he said. “There are a many of good enough stars here. Why carry worries afar? Their sorting is sufficient."

“Yes, there are good pickings now here along Hurricane Street and Salt, and leave the gods to worry over themselves,” the Mouser heard himself say as his gaze dropped to the nearest puddle. He felt his flare die — if it had ever been. “Things will shake down, get done, sort themselves out, and feelings too."

Fafhrd nodded and they went their separate ways.

14

And so time passed on Rime Isle. Witches Moon grew full and waned and gave way to Ghosts Moon, which lived its wraith-short life in turn, and Midsummer Moon was born, sometimes called Murderers Moon because its full runs low and is the latest to rise and earliest to set of all full moons, not high and long like the full moons of winter.

And with the passage of time things did shake down and some of them got done and sorted out after a fashion, meaning mostly that the out of the way became the commonplace with repetition, as it has a way of doing.

Seahawk got fully repaired, even refitted, but Fafhrd's and Afreyt's plan to sail her to Ool Plerns and fell timber there for wood-poor Rime Isle got pushed into the future. No one said, “Next summer,” but the thought was there.

And the barracks and warehouse got built, including a fine drainage system and a cesspool of which the Mouser was inordinately proud, but repairs to Flotsam, though hardly languishing, went slow, and Cif's and his plan to cruise her east and trade with the Ice Gnomes north of No-Ombrulsk even more visionary.

Mog, Kos, and Issek's peculiar curses continued to shape much of the Twain's behavior (to the coarse-grained amusement of those small-time gods), but not so extremely as to interfere seriously with their ability to boss their men effectively or be sufficiently amusing, gallant, and intelligent with their female co-mates. Most of their men soon catalogued it under the heading “captains’ eccentricities,” to be griped at or boasted of equally but no further thought of. Skor, Pshawri, and Mikkidu did not accept it quite so easily and continued to worry and wonder now and then and entertain dark suspicions as befitted lieutenants, men who are supposedly learning to be as imaginatively responsible as captains. While on the other hand the Rime Islers, including the crusty and measuredly friendly Groniger, found it a good thing, indicative that these wild allies and would-be neighbors, questionable protégés of those headstrong freewomen Cif and Afreyt, were settling down nicely into law-abiding and hardheaded island ways. The Gray Mouser's concern with small material details particularly impressed them, according with their proverb: rock, wood, and flesh; all else a lie, or, more simply still:

Mineral, Vegetable, Animal.

Afreyt and Cif knew there had been a change in the two men, all right, and so did our two heroes too, for that matter. But they were inclined to put it down to the weather or some deep upheaval of mood as had once turned Fafhrd religious and the Mouser calculatedly avaricious. Or else — who knows? — these might be the sort of things that happened to anyone who settled down. Oddly, neither considered the possibility of a curse, whether by god or sorcerer or witch. Curses were violent things that led men to cast themselves off mountaintops or dash their children's brains out against rocks, and women to castrate their bed partners and set fire to their own hair if there wasn't a handy volcano to dive into. The triviality and low intensity of the curses misled them.

When all four were together they talked once or twice of supernatural influences on human lives, speaking on the whole more lightly than each felt at heart.

“Why don't you ask augury of Great Gusorio?” Cif suggested. “Since you are shards of him, he should know all about both of you."

“He's more a joke than a true presence one might address a prayer to,” the Mouser parried, and then riposted, “Why don't you or Afreyt appeal for enlightenment to that witch, or warrior-queen of yours, Skeldir, she of the silver-scale mail and the short dry laugh?"

“We're not on such intimate terms as that with her, though claiming her as ancestor,” Cif answered, looking down diffidently. “I'd hardly know how to go about it."

Yet that dialogue led Afreyt and Fafhrd to recount the dreams they'd previously shared only with each other. Whereupon all four indulged in inconclusive speculations and guesses. The Mouser and Fafhrd promptly forgot these, but Cif and Afreyt stored them away in memory.

And although the curses on the Twain were of low intensity, the divine vituperations worked steadily and consumingly. Ensamples: Fafhrd became much interested in a dim hairy star low in the west that seemed to be slowly growing in brightness and luxuriance of mane and to be moving east against the current, and he made a point observing it early each eve. While it was noticed that the busily peering Captain Mouser had a favorite route for checking things out that led from the Sea Wrack, where he'd have a morning nip, to the low point in the lane outside, to the windy corner behind the council hall where he'd collided with Fafhrd, to his men's barracks, and by way of the dormitory's closet, which he'd open and check for mouseholes, to his own room and shelved closet and to the kitchen and pantry, and so to the cesspool behind them of which he was so proud.

So life went on tranquilly, busily, unenterprisingly in and around Salthaven as spring gave way to Rime Isle's short sharp summer. Their existence was rather like that of industrious lotus eaters, the others taking their cues from the bemused and somewhat absentminded Twain. The only exception to this most regular existence promised to be the day of Midsummer Eve, a traditional Isle holiday, when at the two women's suggestion they planned a feast for all hands (and special Isle friends and associates) in the Great Meadow at Elvenhold's foot, a sort of picnic with dancing and games and athletic competitions.

15

If any could be said to have spent an unpleasant or unsatisfactory time during this period, it was the wizards Sheelba and Ningauble. The cosmic din had quieted down sufficiently for them to be able to communicate pretty well between the one's swamp hut and the other's cave and get some confused inkling of what Fafhrd and the Mouser and their gods were up to, but none of that inkling sounded very logical to them or favorable to their plot. The stupid provincial gods had put some unintelligible sort of curse on their two pet errand boys, and it was working after a fashion, but Mouser and Fafhrd hadn't left Rime Isle, nothing was working out according to the two wizards’ wishes, while a disquieting adverse influence they could not identify was moving northwest across the Cold Waste north of the Land of the Eight Cities and the Trollstep Mountains. All very baffling and unsatisfactory.

16

At Illik Ving the Death of the Twain joined a caravan bound for No-Ombrulsk, changing their mounts for shaggy Mingol ponies inured to frost, and spent all of Ghosts Moon on that long traverse. Although early summer, there was sufficient chill in the Trollsteps and the foothills of the Bones of the Old Ones and in the plateau of the Cold Waste that lies between these ranges for them to refer frequently to the seed bags of brazen apes and the tits of witches, and hug the cookfire while it lasted, and warm their sleep with dreams of the treasures their intendeds had laid up.

“I see this Fafhrd as a gold-guarding dragon in a mountain cave,” his Death averred. “I'm into his character fully now, I feel. And on to it too."

“While I dream the Mouser as a fat gray spider,” the other echoed, “with silver, amber, and leviathan ivory cached in a score of nooks, crannies, and corners he scuttles between. Yes, I can play him now. And play with him too. Odd, isn't it, how like we get to our intendeds at the end?"

Arriving at last at the stone-towered seaport, they took lodgings at an inn where badges of the Slayers’ Brotherhood were recognized, and they slept for two nights and a day, recuperating. Then Mouser's Death went for a stroll down by the docks, and when he returned, announced, “I've taken passage for us in an Ool Krut trader. Sails with the tide day after morrow."

“Murderers Moon begins well,” his wraith-thin comrade observed from where he still lay abed.

“At first the captain pretended not to know of Rime Isle, called it a legend, but when I showed him the badge and other things, he gave up that shipmasters’ conspiracy of keeping Salthaven and western ports beyond a trade secret. By the by, our ship's called the Good News."

“An auspicious name,” the other, smiling, responded. “Oh Mouser, and oh Fafhrd, dear, your twin brothers are hastening toward you."

17

After the long morning twilight that ended Midsummer Eve's short night, Midsummer Day dawned chill and misty in Salthaven. Nevertheless, there was an early bustling around the kitchen of the barracks, where the Mouser and Fafhrd had taken their repose, and likewise at Afreyt's house, where Cif and their nieces May, Mara, and Gale had stayed overnight.

Soon the fiery sun, shooting his rays from the northeast as he began his longest loop south around the sky, had burnt the milky mist off all Rime Isle and showed her clear from the low roofs of Salthaven to the central hills, with the leaning tower of Elvenhold in the near middle distance and the Great Meadow rising gently toward it.

And soon after that an irregular procession set out from the barracks. It wandered crookedly and leisurely through town to pick up the men's women, chiefly by trade, at least in their spare time, sailorwives, and other island guests. The men took turns dragging a cart piled with hampers of barley cakes, sweetbreads, cheese, roast mutton and kid, fruit conserves and other Island delicacies, while at its bottom, packed in snow, were casks of the Isle's dark bitter ale. A few men blew woodflutes and strummed small harps.

At the docks Groniger, festive in holiday black, joined them with the news. “The Northern Star out of Ool Plerns came in last even to No-Ombrulsk. I spoke with her master and he said the Good News out of Ool Krut was at last report sailing for Rime Isle one or two mornings after him."

At this point Ourph the Mingol begged off from the party, protesting that the walk to Elvenhold would be too much for his old bones and a new crick in his left ankle, he'd rest them in the sun here, and they left him squatting his skinny frame on the warming stone and peering steadily out to sea past where Seahawk, Flotsam, Northern Star, and other ships rode at anchor among the Island fishing sloops.

Fafhrd said to Groniger, “I've been here a year and more and it still wonders me that Salthaven is such a busy port while the rest of Nehwon goes on thinking Rime Isle a legend. I know I did for a half lifetime."

“Legends travel on rainbow wings and sport gaudy colors,” the harbormaster answered him, “while truth plods on in sober garb."

“Like yourself?"

“Aye,” Groniger grunted happily.

“And ‘tis not a legend to the captains, guild masters, and kings who profit by it,” the Mouser put in. “Such do most to keep legends alive.” The little man (though not little at all among his corps of thieves) was in a merry mood, moving from group to group and cracking wise and gay to all and sundry.

Skullick, Skor's sub-lieutenant, struck up a berserk battle chant and Fafhrd found himself singing an Ilthmar sea chanty to it. At their next pickup point tankards of ale were passed out to them. Things grew jollier.

A little ways out into the Great Meadow, where the thoroughfare led between fields of early ripening Island barley, they were joined by the feminine procession from Afreyt's. These had packed their contribution of toothsome edibles and tastesome potables in two small red carts drawn by stocky white bearhounds big as small men but gentle as lambs. And they had been augmented by the sailorwives and fisherwomen Hilsa and Rill, whose gift to the feast was jars of sweet-pickled fish. Also by the witch-woman Mother Grum, as old as Ourph but hobbling along stalwartly, never known to have missed a feast in her life's long history.

They were greeted with cries and new singings, while the three girls ran to play with the children the larger procession had inevitably accumulated on its way through town.

Fafhrd went back for a bit to quizzing Groniger about the ships that called at Salthaven port, flourishing for emphasis the hook that was his left hand. “I've heard it said, and seen some evidence for it too, myself, that some of them hail from ports that are nowhere on Nehwon seas I know of."

“Ah, you're becoming a convert to the legends,” the black-clad man told him. Then, mischievously, “Why don't you try casting the ships’ horoscopes with all you've learned of stars of late, naked and hairy ones?” He frowned. “Though there was a black cutter with a white line that watered here three days ago whose home port I wish I could be surer of. Her master put me off from going below, and her sails didn't look enough for her hull. He said she hailed from Sayend, but that's a seaport we've had reliable word that the Sea-Mingols burned to ash less than two years agone. He knew of that, he claimed. Said it was much exaggerated. But I couldn't place his accent."

“You see?” Fafhrd told him. “As for horoscopes, I have neither skill or belief in astrology. My sole concern is with the stars themselves and the patterns they make. The hairy star's most interesting! He grows each night. At first I thought him a rover, but he keeps his place. I'll point him out to you come dark."

“Or some other evening when there's less drinking,” the other allowed grudgingly. “A wise man is suspicious of his interests other than the most necessary. They breed illusions."

The groupings kept changing as they walked, sang, and danced — and played — their way up through the rustling grass. Cif took advantage of this mixing to seek out Pshawri and Mikkidu. The Mouser's two lieutenants had at first been suspicious of her interest in and influence over their captain — a touch of jealousy, no doubt — but honest dealing and speaking, the evident genuineness of her concern, and some furtherance of Pshawri's suit to an Island woman had won them over, so that the three thought of themselves in a limited way as confederates.

“How's Captain Mouser these days?” she asked them lightly. “Still running his little morning checkup route?"

“He didn't today,” Mikkidu told her.

“While yesterday he ran it in the afternoon,” Pshawri amplified. “And the day before that he missed."

Mikkidu nodded.

“I don't fret about him o'er much,” she smiled at them, “knowing he's under watchful and sympathetic eyes."

And so with mutual buttering up and with singing and dancing the augmented holiday band arrived at the spot just south of Elvenhold that they'd selected for their picnic. A portion of the food was laid out on white-sheeted trestles, the drink was broached, and the competitions and games that comprised an important part of the day's program were begun. These were chiefly trials of strength and skill, not of endurance, and one trial only, so that a reasonable or even somewhat unreasonable amount of eating and drinking didn't tend to interfere with performance too much.

Between the contests were somewhat less impromptu dancings than had been footed earlier: island stamps and flings, old-fashioned Lankhmar sways, and kicking and bouncing dances copied from the Mingols.

Knife-throwing came early—"so none will be mad drunk as yet, a sensible precaution,” Groniger approved.

The target was a yard section of mainland tree trunk almost two yards thick, lugged up the previous day. The distance was fifteen long paces, which meant two revolutions of the knife, the way most contestants threw. The Mouser waited until last and then threw underhand as a sort of handicap, or at least seeming handicap, against himself, and his knife embedded deeply in or near the center, clearly a better shot than any of the earlier successful ones, whose points of impact were marked with red chalk.

A flurry of applause started, but then it was announced that Cif had still to throw; she'd entered at the last possible minute. There was no surprise at a woman entering; that sort of equality was accepted on the Isle.

“You didn't tell me beforehand you were going to,” the Mouser said to her.

She shook her head at him, concentrating on her aim. “No, leave his dagger in,” she called to the judges. “It won't distract me."

She threw overhand and her knife impacted itself so close to his that there was a klir of metal against metal along with the woody thud. Groniger measured the distances carefully with his beechwood ruler and proclaimed Cif the winner.

“And the measures on this ruler are copied from those on the golden Rule of Prudence in the Island treasury,” he added impressively, but later qualified this by saying, “Actually, my ruler's more accurate than that ikon; doesn't expand with heat and contract with cold as metals do. But some people don't like to keep hearing me say that."

“Do you think her besting the Captain is good for discipline and all?” Mikkidu asked Pshawri in an undertone, his new trust in Cif wavering.

“Yes, I do!” that one whispered back. “Do the Captain good to be shook up a little, what with all this old-man scurrying and worrying and prying and pointing out he's going in for.” There, he thought, I've spoken it out to someone at last, and I'm glad I did!

Cif smiled at the Mouser. “No, I didn't tell you ahead of time,” she said sweetly, “but I've been practicing — privately. Would it have made a difference?"

“No,” he said slowly, “though I might have had second thoughts about throwing underhand. Are you planning to enter the slinging contest too?"

“No, never a thought of it,” she answered. “Whatever made you think I might?"

Later the Mouser won that one, both for distance and accuracy, making the latter cast so powerful that it not only holed the center of the bull's-eye into the padded target box but went through the heavier back of the latter as well. Cif begged for the battered slug as a souvenir, and he presented it to her with elaborate flourishes.

“ ‘Twould have pierced the cuirass of Mingsward!” Mikkidu fervently averred.

The archery contests were beginning, and Fafhrd was fitting the iron tang in the middle of his bow into the hardwood heading of the leather stall that covered half his left forearm, when he noted Afreyt approaching. She'd doffed her jacket, for the sun was beating down hotly, and was wearing a short-sleeved violet blouse, blue trousers wide-belted with a gold buckle, and purple-dyed short holiday boots. A violet handkerchief confined a little her pale gold hair. A worn green quiver with one arrow in it hung from her shoulder, and she was carrying a big longbow.

Fafhrd's eyes narrowed a bit at those, recalling Cif and the knife throwing. But, “You look like a pirate queen,” he greeted her, and then only inquired, “You're entering one of the contests?"

“I don't know,” she said with a shrug. “I'll watch along through the first."

“That bow,” he said casually, “looks to me to have a very heavy pull, and tall as you are, to be a touch long for you."

“Right on both counts,” she agreed, nodding. “It belonged to my father. You'd be truly startled, I think, to see how I managed to draw it as a stripling girl. My father would doubtless have spanked me soundly if he'd ever caught me at it, or rather lived long enough to do that."

Fafhrd lifted his eyebrows inquiringly, but the pirate queen vouchsafed no more. He won the distance shot handily but lost the target shot (through which Afreyt also watched) by a finger's breadth to Skor's other sub-lieutenant, Mannimark.

Then came the high shot, which was something special to Midsummer Day on Rime Isle and generally involved the loss of the contestant's arrow, for the target was a grassy, nearly vertical stretch on the upper half of the south face of Elvenhold. The north face of the slanting rock tower actually overhung the ground a little and was utterly barren, but the south face, though very steep, sloped enough to hold soil to support herbage, rather miraculously. The contest honored the sun, which reached this day his highest point in the heavens, while the contesting arrows, identified by colored rags of thinnest silk attached to their necks, emulated him in their efforts.

Then Afreyt stepped forward, kicked off her purple boots and rolled up her blue trousers above her knees. She plucked her arrow, which bore a violet silk, from her quiver and threw that aside. “Now I'll reveal to you the secret of my girlish technique,” she said to Fafhrd.

Quite rapidly she sat down facing the dizzy slope, set the bow to her bare feet, laying the arrow between her big toes and holding it and the string with both hands, rolled back onto her shoulders, straightened her legs smoothly, and loosed her shot.

It was seen to strike the slope near Fafhrd's yellow, skid a few yards higher, and then lie there, a violet taunt.

Afreyt, bending her legs again, removed the bow from her feet, and rolling sharply forward, stood up in the same motion.

“You practiced that,” Fafhrd said, hardly accusingly, as he finished screwing the hook back in the stall on his left arm.

She nodded. “Yes, but only for half a lifetime."

“The lady Afreyt's arrow didn't stick in,” Skullick pointed out. “Is that fair? A breath of wind might dislodge it."

“Yes, but there is no wind and it somehow got highest,” Groniger pointed out to him. “Actually, it's accounted lucky in the high shot if your arrow doesn't embed itself. Those that don't sometimes are blown down. Those that do stay up there are never recovered."

“Doesn't someone go up and collect the arrows?” Skullick asked.

“Scale Elvenhold? Have you wings?"

Skullick eyed the rock tower and shook his head sheepishly. Fafhrd overheard Groniger's remarks and gave the harbormaster an odd look but made no other comment at the time.

Afreyt invited both of them over to the red dogcarts and produced a jug of Ilthmar brandy, and they toasted her and Fafhrd's victories — the Mouser's too, and Cif's, who happened along.

“This'll put feathers in your wings!” Fafhrd told Groniger, who eyed him thoughtfully.

The children were playing with the white bearhounds. Gale had won the girls’ archery contest and May the short race.

Some of the younger children were becoming fretful, however, and shadows were lengthening. The games and contests were all over now, and partly as a consequence of that the drinking was heavying up as the last scraps of food were being eaten. Among the whole picnic group there seemed to be a feeling of weariness, but also (for those no longer very young but not yet old) new jollity, as though one party were ending and another beginning. Cif's and Afreyt's eyes were especially bright. Everyone seemed ready to go home, though whether to their own places or the Sea Wrack was a matter of age and temperament. There was a chill breath in the air.

Gazing east and down a little toward Salthaven and the harbor beyond, the Mouser opined that he could already see low mist gathering around the bare masts there, and Groniger confirmed that. But what was the small lone dark figure trudging up-meadow toward them in the face of the last low sunlight?

“Ourph, I'll be bound,” said Fafhrd. “What's led him to make the hike after all?"

But it was hard to be sure the big Northerner was right; the figure was still far off. Yet the signal for leaving had been given, things were gathered, the carts repacked, and all set out, most staying near the carts, from which drinks continued to be forthcoming. And perhaps these were responsible for a resumption of the morning's impromptu singing and dancing, though now it was not Fafhrd and the Mouser but others who took the lead in this. The Twain, after a whole day of behaving like old times, were slipping back under the curses they knew not of, the one's eyes forever on the ground, with the effect of old age unsure of its footing, the other's on the sky, indicative of old age's absentmindedness.

Fafhrd turned out to be right about the up-meadow trudger, but it was few words they got from Ourph as to why he'd made the hike he'd earlier begged off from.

The old Mingol said only to them, and to Groniger, who happed to be by, “The Good News is in.” Then, eyeing the Twain more particularly, “Tonight stay away from the Sea Wrack."

But he would answer nothing more to their puzzled queries save “I know what I know and I've told it,” and two cups of brandy did not loosen his Mingol tongue one whit.

The encounter put them behind the main party, but they did not try to catch up. The sun had set some time back, and now their feet and legs were lapped by the ground mist that already covered Salthaven and into which the picnic party was vanishing, its singing and strumming already sounding tiny and far off.

“You see,” Groniger said to Fafhrd, eyeing the twilit but yet starless sky while the mist lapped higher around them, “you won't be able to show me your bearded star tonight in any case."

Fafhrd nodded vaguely but made no other answer save to pass the brandy jug as they footed it along: four men walking deeper and deeper, as it were, into a white silence.

18

Cif and Afreyt, very much caught up in the gayety of the evening party, and bright-eyed drunk besides, were among the first to enter the Sea Wrack and encounter arresting silence of another sort, and almost instantly come under the strange, hushing spell of the scene there.

Fafhrd and the Mouser sat at their pet table in the low-walled booth playing backgammon, and the whole tavern frightenedly watched them while pretending not to. Fear was in the air.

That was the first impression. Then, almost at once, Cif and Afreyt saw that Fafhrd couldn't be Fafhrd, he was much too thin; nor the Mouser the Mouser, much too plump (though every bit as agile and supple-looking, paradoxically).

Nor were the faces and clothing and accouterments of the two strangers anything really like the Twain's. It was more their expressions and mannerisms, postures and general manner, self-confident manner, those and the fact of being at that table. The sublime impression the two of them made that they were who they were and that they were in their rightful place.

And the fear that radiated from them with the small sounds of their gaming: the muted rattle of shaken bone dice in one or the other's palm-closed leather cup, the muted clatter as the dice were spilled into one or other of the two low-walled felt-lined compartments of the backgammon box, the sharp little clicks of the bone counters as they were shifted by ones and twos from point to point. The fear that riveted the attention of everyone else in the place no matter how much they pretended to be understanding the conversations they made, or tasting the drinks they swallowed, or busying themselves with little tavern chores. The fear that seized upon and recruited each picnic newcomer. Oh yes, this night something deadly was coiling here at the Sea Wrack, make no mistake about it.

So paralyzing was the fear that it cost Cif and Afreyt a great effort to sidle slowly from the doorway to the bar, their eyes never leaving that one little table that was for now the world's hub, until they were as close as they could get to the Sea Wrack's owner, who with downcast and averted eye was polishing the same mug over and over.

“Keeper, what gives?” Cif whispered to him softly but most distinctly. “Nay, sull not up. Speak, I charge you!"

Eagerly that one, as though grateful Cif's whiplash command had given him opportunity to discharge some of the weight of dread crushing him, whispered them back his tale in short, almost breathless bursts, though without raising an eye or ceasing to circle his rag.

“I was alone here when they came in, minutes after the Good News docked. They spoke no word, but as though the fat one were the lean one's hunting ferret, they scented out our two captains’ table, sat themselves down at it as though they owned it, then spoke at last to call for drink.

“I took it them, and as they got out their box and dice cups and set up their game, they plied me with harmless-seeming and friendly questions mostly about the Twain, as if they knew them well. Such as: How fared they in Rime Isle? Enjoyed they good health? Seemed they happy? How often came they in? Their tastes in drink and food and the fair sex? What other interests had they? What did they like to talk of? As though the two of them were courtiers of some great foreign empire come hither our captains to please and to solicit about some affair of state.

“And yet, you know, so dire somehow were the tones in which those innocent questions were asked that I doubt I could have refused them if they'd asked me for the Twain's heart's blood or my own.

“This too: The more questions they asked about the Twain and the more I answered them as best I might, the more they came to look like… to resemble our… you know what I'm trying to say?"

“Yes, yes!” Afreyt hissed. “Go on."

“In short, I felt I was their slave. So too, I think, have felt all those who came into the Sea Wrack after them, save for old Mingol Ourph, who shortly stayed, somehow then parted.

“At last they sucked me dry, bent to their game, asked for more drink. I sent the girl with that. Since then it's been as you see now."

There was a stir at the doorway through which mist was curling. Four men stood there, for a moment bemused. Then Fafhrd and the Mouser strode toward their table, while old Ourph settled down on his hams, his gaze unwavering, and Groniger almost totteringly sidled toward the bar, like a man surprised at midday by a sleepwalking fit and thoroughly astounded at it.

Fafhrd and the Mouser leaned over and looked down at the table and open backgammon box over which the two strangers were bent, surveying their positions. After a bit Fafhrd said rather loudly, “A good rilk against two silver smerduke on the lean one! His stones are poised to fleet swiftly home."

“You're on!” the Mouser cried back. “You've underestimated the fat one's back game."

Turning his chill blue eyes and flat-nosed skull-like face straight up at Fafhrd with an almost impossible twist of his neck, the skinny one said, “Did the stars tell you to wager at such odds on my success?"

Fafhrd's whole manner changed. “You're interested in the stars?” he asked with an incredulous hopefulness.

“Mightily so,” the other answered him, nodding emphatically.

“Then you must come with me,” Fafhrd informed him, almost lifting him from his stool with one fell swoop of his good hand and arm that at once assisted and guided, while his hook indicated the mist-filled doorway. “Leave off this footling game. Abandon it. We've much to talk of, you and I.” By now he had a brotherly arm — the hooked one, this time — around the thin one's shoulders and was leading him back along the path he'd entered by. “Oh, there are wonders and treasures undreamed amongst the stars, are there not?"

“Treasures?” the other asked coolly, pricking an ear but holding back a little.

“Aye, indeed! There's one in particular under the silvery asterism of the Black Panther that I lust to show you,” Fafhrd replied with great enthusiasm, at which the other went more willingly.

All watched astonishedly, but the only one who managed to speak out was Groniger, who asked, “Where are you going, Fafhrd?” in rather outraged tones.

The big man paused for a moment, winked at Groniger, and smiling said, “Flying."

Then with a “Come, comrade astronomer” and another great arm-sweep, he wafted the skinny one with him into the bulging white mist, where both men shortly vanished.

Back at the table the plump stranger said in loud but winning tones, “Gentle sir! Would you care to take over my friend's game, continue it with me?” Then in tones less formal, “And have you noticed that these mug dints on your table together with the platter burn make up the figure of a giant sloth?"

“Oh, so you've already seen that, have you?” the Mouser answered the second question, returning his gaze from the door. Then, to the second, “Why, yes, I will, sir, and double the bet! — it being my die cast. Although your friend did not stay long enough even to arrange a chouette."

“Your friend was most insistent,” the other replied. “Sir, I take your bet."

Whereupon the Mouser sat down and proceeded to shake a masterly sequence of double fours and double threes so that the skinny man's stones, now his own, fleeted more swiftly to victory than ever Fafhrd had predicted. The Mouser grinned fiendishly, and as they set up the stones for another game, he pointed out to his more thinly smiling adversary in the tabletop's dints and stains the figure of a leopard stalking the giant sloth.

All eyes were now back on the table again save those of Afreyt. And of Fafhrd's lieutenant Skor. Those four orbs were still fixed on the mist-bulging doorway through which Fafhrd had vanished with his strangely unlike doublegoer. Since babyhood Afreyt had heard of those doleful nightwalkers whose appearance, like the banshee's, generally betokened death or near-mortal injury to the one whose shape they mocked.

Now while she agonized over what to do, invoking the witch queen Skeldir and lesser of her own and (in her extremity) others’ private deities, there was a strange growling in her ears — perhaps her rushing blood. Fafhrd's last word to Groniger kindled in her memory the recollection of an exchange of words between those two earlier today, which in turn gave her a bright inkling of Fafhrd's present destination in the viewless fog. This in turn inspired her to break the grip upon her of fear's and indecision's paralysis. Her first two or three steps were short and effortful ones, but by the time she went through the doorway, she was taking swift giant strides.

Her example broke the dread-duty deadlock in Skor, and the lean, red-haired, balding giant followed her in a rush.

But few in the Sea Wrack except Ourph and perhaps Groniger noted either departure, for all gazes were fixed again on the one small table where now Captain Mouser in person contested with his dread were-brother, battling the Islanders’ and his men's fears for them as it were. And whether by smashing attack, tortuous back game, or swift running one like the first, the Mouser kept winning again and again and again.

And still the games went on, as though the series might well outlast the night. The stranger's smile kept thinning. That was all, or almost all.

The only fly in this ointment of unending success was a nagging doubt, perhaps deriving from a growing languor on the Mouser's part, a lessening of his taunting joy at each new win, that destinies in the larger world would jump with those worked out in the little world of the backgammon box.

19

“We have reached the point in this night's little journey I'm taking you on where we must abandon the horizontal and embrace the vertical,” Fafhrd informed his comrade astronomer, clasping him familiarly about the shoulders with left arm, and wagging right forefinger before that cadaver face, while the white mist hugged them both.

The Death of Fafhrd fought down the impulse to squirm away with a hawking growl of disgust close to vomiting. He abominated being touched except by outstandingly beautiful females under circumstances entirely of his own commanding. And now for a full half-hour he had been following his drunken and crazy victim (sometimes much too closely for comfort, but that wasn't his own choosing, Arth forbid) through a blind fog, and mostly trusting the same madman to keep them from breaking their necks in holes and pits and bogs, and putting up with being touched and arm-gripped and back-slapped (often by that doubly disgusting hook that felt so like a weapon), and listening to a farrago of wild talk about long-haired asterisms and bearded stars and barley fields and sheep's grazing ground and hills and masts and trees and the mysterious southern continent until Arth himself couldn't have held it, so that it was only the madman's occasional remention of a treasure or treasures he was leading his Death to that kept the latter tagging along without plunging exasperated knife into his victim's vitals.

And at least the loathsome cleavings and enwrappings expressive of brotherly affection that he had made himself submit to had allowed him to ascertain in turn that his intended wore no undergarment of chain mail or plate or scale to interfere with the proper course of things when knife time came. So the Death of Fafhrd consoled himself as he broke away from the taller and heavier man under the legitimate and friendly excuse of more closely inspecting the rock wall they now faced at a distance of no more than four or five yards. Farther off the fog would have hid it.

“You say we're to climb this to view your treasure?” He couldn't quite keep his incredulity out of his voice.

“Aye,” Fafhrd told him.

“How high?” his Death asked him.

Fafhrd shrugged. “Just high enough to get there. A short distance, truly.” He waved an arm a little sideways, as though dispensing with a trifle.

“There's not much light to climb by,” his Death said somewhat tentatively.

Fafhrd replied, “What think you makes the mist whitely luminous an hour after sunset? There's enough light to climb by, never fear, and it'll get brighter as we go aloft. You're a climber, aren't you?"

“Oh, yes,” the other admitted diffidently, not saying that his experience had been gained chiefly in scaling impregnable towers and cyclopean poisoned walls behind which the wealthier and more powerful assassin's targets tended to hide themselves — difficult climbs, some of them, truly, but rather artificial ones, and all of them done in the line of business.

Touching the rough rock and seeing it inches in front of his somewhat blunted nose, the Death of Fafhrd felt a measurable repugnance to setting foot or serious hand on it. For a moment he was mightily minded to whip out dagger and end it instanter here with the swift upward jerk under the breastbone, or the shrewd thrust from behind at the base of the skull, or the well-known slash under the ear in the angle of the jaw. He'd never have his victim more lulled, that was certain.

Two things prevented him. One, he'd never had the feeling of having an audience so completely under his control as he'd had this afternoon and evening at the Sea Wrack. Or a victim so completely eating out of his hand, so walking to his own destruction, as they said in the trade. It gave him a feeling of being intoxicated while utterly sober, it put him into an “I can do anything, I am God” mood, and he wanted to prolong that wonderful thrill as far as possible.

Two, Fafhrd's talk perpetually returning to treasure, and the way the invitation now to climb some small cliff to view it so fitted with his Cold Waste dreams of Fafhrd as a dragon guarding gold in a mountain cavern — these combined to persuade him that the Fates were taking a hand in tonight's happening, the youngest of them drawing aside veil and baring her ruby lips to him and soon the more private jewelry of her person.

“You don't have to worry about the rock, it's sound enough, just follow in my footsteps and my handholds,” Fafhrd said impatiently as he advanced to the cliff's face and mounted it, the hook making harsh metallic clashes.

His Death doffed the short cloak and hood he wore, took a deep breath and, thinking in a small corner of his mind, “Well, at least this madman won't be able to fondle me more while we're climbing — I hope!” went up after him like a giant spider.

It was as well for Fafhrd that his Death (and the Mouser's too) had neglected to make close survey of the landscape and geography of Rime Isle during this afternoon's sail in. (They'd been down in their cabin mostly, getting into their parts.) Otherwise he might have known that he was now climbing Elvenhold.

20

Back in the Sea Wrack the Mouser threw a double six, the only cast that would allow him to bear off his last four stones and leave his opponent's sole remaining man stranded one point from home. He threw up the back of a hand to mask a mighty yawn and over it politely raised an inquiring eyebrow at his adversary.

The Death of the Mouser nodded amiably enough, though his smile had grown very thin-lipped indeed, and said, “Yes, it's as well we write finished to my strivings. Was it eight games, or seven? No matter. I'll seek my revenge some other time. Fate is your girl tonight, cunt and arse hole, that much is proven."

A collective sigh of relief from the onlookers ended the general silence. They felt the relaxation of tension as much as the two players, and to most of them it seemed that the Mouser in vanquishing the stranger had also dispersed all the strange fears that had been loose in the tavern earlier and running along their nerves.

“A drink to toast your victory, salve my defeat?” the Mouser's Death asked smoothly. “Hot gahvey perhaps? With brandy in't?"

“Nay, sir,” the Mouser said with a bright smile, collecting together his several small stacks of gold and silver pieces and funneling them into his pouch, “I must take these bright fellows home and introduce ‘em to their cellmates. Coins prosper best in prison, as my friend Groniger tells me. But sir, would you not accompany me on that journey, help me escort ‘em? We can drink there.” A brightness came into his eyes that had nothing whatever in common with a miser's glee. He continued, “Friend who discerned the tree sloth and saw the black panther, we both know that there are mysterious treasures and matters of interest compared to which these clinking counters are no more than that. I yearn to show you some. You'll be intrigued."

At the mention of “treasure,” his Death pricked up his ears much as his fellow assassin had at Fafhrd's speaking the word. Mouser's would-be nemesis had had his Cold Waste dreams too, his appetites whetted by the privations of long drear journeying, and by the infuriating losses he'd had to put up with tonight as well. And he too had the conviction that the fates must be on his side tonight by now, though for the opposite reason. A man who'd been so incredibly lucky at backgammon was bound to be hit by a great bolt of unluck at whatever feat he next attempted.

“I'll come with you gladly,” he said softly, rising with the Mouser and moving with him toward the door.

“You'll not collect your dice and stones?” the one queried. “'Tis a most handsome box."

“Let the tavern have it as a memorial of your masterly victory,” his Death replied negligently, with a sort of muted grandiloquence. He tossed aside an imaginary blossom.

Ordinarily that would have been too much to the Mouser, arousing all his worst suspicions. Only rogues pretended to be that carelessly munificent. But the madness with which Mog had cursed him was fully upon him again, and he forgot the matter with a smile and a shrug.

“Trifles, all,” he agreed.

In fact the manner of the two of them was so lightly casual for the moment, not to say la-di-da, that they might well have gotten out of the Sea Wrack and lost in the fog without anyone noticing, except of course for old Ourph, whose head turned slowly to watch the Mouser out the door, shook itself sadly, and then resumed its meditations or cogitations or whatever.

Fortunately there were those in the tavern deeply and intelligently concerned for the Mouser, and not bound by Mingolly fatalisms. Cif had no impulse to rush up to the Mouser upon his win. She'd had too strong a sense of something more than backgammon being at stake tonight, too lingering a conviction of something positively unholy about his were-adversary, and doubtless others in the tavern had shared those feelings. Unlike most of those, however, any relief she felt did not take her attention away from the Mouser for an instant. As he and his unwholesome doublegoer exited the doorway, she hurried to it.

Pshawri and Mikkidu were at her heels.

They saw the two ahead of them as dim blobs, shadows in the white mist, as it were, and followed only swiftly enough to keep them barely in sight. The shadows moved across and down the lane a bit, paused briefly, then went on until they were traveling along back of the building, made of gray timbers from wrecked ships, that was the council hall.

Their pursuers encountered no other fog venturers. The silence was profound, broken only by the occasional drip-drip of condensing mist and a few very brief murmurs of conversation from ahead, too soft and fleeting to make out. It was eerie.

At the next corner the shadows paused another while, then turned it.

“He's following his regular morning route,” Mikkidu whispered softly.

Cif nodded, but Pshawri gripped Mik's arm in warning, setting a finger to his lips.

But true enough to the second lieutenant's guess, they followed their quarry to the new-built barracks and saw the Mouser bow his doublegoer in. Pshawri and Mikkidu waited a bit, then took off their boots and entered in stocking feet most cautiously.

Cif had another idea. She stole along the side of the building, heading for the kitchen door.

Inside, the Mouser, who had uttered hardly a dozen words since leaving the Sea Wrack, pointed out various items to his guest and watched for his reactions.

Which threw his Death into a state of great puzzlement. His intended victim had spoken some words about a treasure or treasures, then taken him outside and with a mysterious look pointed out to him a low point in a lane. What could that mean? True, sunken ground sometimes indicated something buried there — a murdered body, generally. But who'd bury a treasure in the lane of a dinky northern seaport, or a corpse, for that matter? It didn't make sense.

Next the gray-clad baffler had gone through the same rigmarole at a corner behind a building of strangely weathered, heavy-looking wood. That had for a moment seemed to lead somewhere, for there'd been an opalescent something lodged in one of the big beams, its hue speaking of pearls and treasure. But when he'd stooped to study it, it had turned out to be only a worthless seashell, worked into the gray wood Arth knew how!

And now the riddlesome fellow, holding a lamp he'd lit, was standing in a bunkroom beside a closet he'd just opened. There didn't seem to be much of anything in it.

“Treasure?” the Mouser's Death breathed doubtfully, leaning forward to look more closely.

The Mouser smiled and shook his head. “No. Mice holes,” he breathed back.

The other recoiled incredulously. Had the brains of the masterly backgammon player turned to mush? Had something in the fog stolen away his wits? Just what was happening here? Maybe he'd best out knife and slay at once, before the situation became too confusing.

But the Mouser, still smiling gleefully, as if in anticipation of wonders to behold, was beckoning with his free hand into a short hall and then a smaller room with two bunks only, while the lamp he held beside his head made shadows crawl around them and slip along the walls.

Facing his Death, he threw open the door of a wider closet, stretched himself to his fullest height and thrust his lamp aloft, as if to say, “Lo!"

The closet contained at least a dozen shallow shelves smoothly surfaced with black cloth, and on them were very neatly arranged somewhere between a thousand and a myriad tiny objects, as if they were so many rare coins and precious gems. As if, yes… but as to what these objects really were… recall the nine oddments the Mouser had laid out on Cif's bed table three months past… imagine them multiplied by ten hundred… the booty of three months of ground peering… the loot of ninety days of floor delving… you'd have a picture of the strange collection the Mouser was displaying to his Death.

And as his Death leaned closer, running his gaze incredulously back and forth along the shelves, the triumphant smile faded from the Mouser's face and was replaced by the same look of desperate wondering he'd had on it when he told Fafhrd of yearning for the small things of Lankhmar.

21

“We've reached our picnic ground,” Afreyt told Skor as they strode through the mist. “See how the sward is trampled. Now cast we about for Elvenhold."

“ ‘Tis done, lady,” he replied as she moved off to the left, he to the right, “but why are you so sure Captain Fafhrd went there?"

“Because he told Groniger he was going flying,” she called to him. “Earlier Groniger had said that none could climb Elvenhold without wings."

“But the Captain could,” Skor, taking her meaning, called back, “for he's scaled Stardock,” thinking, though not saying aloud, But that was before he lost a hand.

Moments later he sighted vertical solidity and was calling out that he'd found what they were seeking. When Afreyt caught up with him by the rock wall, he added, “I've also found proof that Fafhrd and the stranger did indeed come this way, as you deduced they would."

And he held up to her the hooded cloak of Fafhrd's Death.

22

Fafhrd, followed closely by his Death, climbed out of the fog into a world of bone-white clarity. He faced away from the rock to survey it.

The top of the mist was a flat white floor stretching east and south to the horizon, unbroken by treetop, chimney or spire of Salthaven, or mast top in the harbor beyond. Overhead the night shone with stars somewhat dimmed by the light of the round moon, which seemed to rest on the mist in the southeast.

“The full of Murderers Moon,” he remarked oratorically, “the shortest and the lowest running full of the year, and come pat on Midsummer Day's Night. I told you there'd be light enough to climb by."

His Death below him savored the appropriateness of the lunar situation but didn't care much for the light. He'd felt securer climbing in the fog with the height all hid. He was still enjoying himself, but now he wanted to get the killing done as soon as Fafhrd revealed where the cave or other treasure spot was.

Fafhrd faced around to the tower again. Soon they were edging up past the grassy stretch. He noted his white-flagged arrow and left it where it was, but when he came to Afreyt's he reached over precariously, snagged it with his hook, and tucked it in his belt.

“How much farther?” his Death called up.

“Just to the end of the grass,” Fafhrd called down. “Then we traverse to the opposite edge of Elvenhold, where there's a shallow cave will give our feet good support as we view the treasure. Ah, but I'm glad you came with me tonight! I only hope the moon doesn't dim it too much."

“How's that?” the other asked, a little puzzled, though considerably enheartened by the mention of a cave.

“Some jewels shine best by their own light alone,” Fafhrd replied somewhat cryptically. Clashing into the next hold, his hook struck a shower of white sparks. “Must be flint in the rock hereabouts,” he observed. “See, friend, minerals have many ways of making light. On Stardock the Mouser and I found diamonds of so clear a water they revealed their shape only in the dark. And there are beasts that shine, in particular glow wasps, diamond-flies, firebeetles, and nightbees. I know, I've been stung by them. While in the jungles of Klesh I have encountered luminous flying spiders. Ah, we arrive at the traverse.” And he began to move sideways, taking long steps.

His Death copied him, hastening after. Foot-holds and hand-holds both seemed surer here, while back at the grass he'd twice almost missed a hold. Beyond Fafhrd he could see what he took to be the dark cave mouth at the end of this face of the rock pylon they'd mounted. Things seemed to be happening more quickly while simultaneously time stretched out for him — sure sign of climax approaching. He wanted no more talk — in particular, lectures on natural history! He loosened his long knife in its scabbard. Soon! Soon!

Fafhrd was preparing to take the step that would put him squarely in front of the shallow depression that looked at first sight like a cave mouth. He was aware that his comrade astronomer was crowding him. At that moment, although the two of them were clearly alone on the face, he heard a short dry laugh, not in the voice of either of them, that nevertheless sounded as if it came from somewhere very close by. And somehow that laugh inspired or stung him into taking, instead of the step he'd planned, a much longer one that took him just past the seeming cave mouth and put his left foot on the end of the ledge, while his right hand reached for a hold beyond the shallow depression so that his whole body would swing out past the end of this face and he would hopefully see the bearded star which was currently his dearest treasure and which until this moment tonight Elvenhold itself had hid from him.

At the same moment his Death struck, who had perfectly anticipated his victim's every movement except the last inspired one. His dagger, instead of burying itself in Fafhrd's back, struck rock in the shallow depression and its blade snapped. Staggered by that and vastly surprised, he fought for balance.

Fafhrd, glancing back, perceived the treacherous attack and rather casually booted his threatener in the thigh with a free foot. By the bone-white light of Murderers Moon, the Death of Fafhrd fell off Elvenhold and, glancingly striking the very steep grassy slope once or twice, was silhouetted momentarily, long limbs writhing, against the floor of white fog before the latter swallowed him up and the scream he'd started. There was a distant thud that nevertheless had a satisfying finality to it.

Fafhrd swung out again around the end of the cliff. Yes, his bearded star, though dimmed by the moonlight, was definitely discernible. He enjoyed it. The pleasure was, somewhat remotely, akin to that of watching a beautiful girl undress in almost-dark.

“Fafhrd!” Then again, “Fafhrd!"

Skor's shout, by Kos, he told himself. And Afreyt's! He pulled himself back on the ledge and, securely footed there, called, “Ahoy! Ahoy below!"

23

Back at the barracks things were moving fast and very nervously, notably on the part of the Mouser's Death. He almost dirked the vaunting idiot on sheer impulse in overpowering disgust at being shown that incredible mouse's museum of trash as though it were a treasure of some sort. Almost, but then he heard a faint shuffling noise that seemed to originate in the building they were in, and it never did to slay when witnesses might be nigh, were there another course to take.

He watched the Mouser, who looked somewhat disappointed now (had the idiot expected to be praised for his junk display?), shut the closet door and beckon him back into the short hall and through a third door. He followed, listening intently for any repetition of the shuffling noise or other sound. The moving shadows the lamp cast were a little unnerving now; they suggested lurkers, hidden observers. Well, at least the idiot hadn't deposited in his trash closet the gold and silver coins he'd won this night, so presumably there was still hope of seeing their “cell mates” and some real treasure.

Now the Mouser was pointing out, but in a somewhat perfunctory way, the features of what appeared to be a rather well-appointed kitchen: fireplaces, ovens, and so forth. He rapped a couple of large iron kettles, but without any great enthusiasm, sounding their dull, sepulchral tones.

His manner quickened a little, however, and the ghost at least of a gleeful smile returned to his lips as he opened the back door and went out into the mist, signing for his Death to follow him. That one did so, outwardly seeming relaxed, inwardly alert as a drawn knife, poised for any action.

Almost immediately the Mouser stooped, grasped a ring, and heaved up a small circular trapdoor, meanwhile holding his lamp aloft, its beams reflecting whitely from the fog but not helping vision much. The Mouser's Death bent forward to look in.

Thereafter things happened very rapidly indeed. There was a scuffling sound and a thud from the kitchen. (That was Mikkidu tripping himself by stepping on the toe of his own stocking.) The Mouser's Death, his nerves tortured beyond endurance, whipped out his dirk and next fell dead across the cesspool mouth with Cif's dagger in his ear, thrown from where she stood against the wall hardly a dozen feet away.

And somewhere, along with these actions, there were a brief growl and a short dry laugh. But those were things Cif and the Mouser claimed afterward to have heard. At the present moment there was only the Mouser still holding his lamp and peering down at the corpse and saying as Cif and Pshawri and Mikkidu rushed up to him, “Well, he'll never get his revenge for tonight's gaming, that's for certain. Or do ghosts ever play backgammon, I wonder? I've heard of them contesting parties at chess with living mortals, by Mog."

24

Next day at the council hall Groniger presided over a brief but well-attended inquest into the demise of the two passengers on the Good News. Badges and other insignia about their persons suggested they were members not only of the Lankhmar Slayers’ Brotherhood, but also of the even more cosmopolitan Assassins’ Order. Under close questioning, the captain of the Good News admitted knowing of this circumstance and was fined for not reporting it to the Rime Isle harbormaster immediately on making port. A bit later Groniger found that they were murderous rogues, doubtless hired by foreign parties unknown, and that they had been rightly slain on their first attempts to practice their nefarious trade on Rime Isle.

But afterward he told Cif, “It's as well that you slew him, and with his dagger in his hand. That way, none can say it was a feuding of newcomers to the Isle with foreigners their presence attracted here. And that you, Afreyt, were close witness to the other's death."

“I'll say I was!” that lady averred. “He came down not a yard from us — eh, Skor? — almost braining us. And with his hand deathgripping his broken dagger. Fafhrd, in future you should be more careful of how you dispose of your corpses."

When questioned about the cryptic warning he'd brought the Mouser and Fafhrd, old Ourph vouched, “The moment I heard the name Good News I knew it was an ill-omened ship, bearing watching. And when the two strangers came off and went into the Sea Wrack, I perceived them as dressed-up, slightly luminous skeletons only, with bony hands and eyeless sockets."

“Did you see their corpses at the inquest so?” Groniger asked him.

“No, then they were but dead meat, such as all living become."

25

In Godsland the three concerned deities, somewhat shocked by the final turn of events and horrified to see how close they'd come to losing their chief remaining worshippers, lifted their curses from them as rapidly as they were able. Other concerned parties were slower to get the news and to believe it. The Assassins’ Order posted the two Deaths as “delayed” rather than “missing,” but prepared to make what compensation might be unavoidable to Arth-Pulgh and Hamomel. While Sheelba and Ningauble, considerably irked, set about devising new stratagems to procure the return of their favorite errand boys and living touchstones.

26

The instant the gods lifted their curses, the Mouser's and Fafhrd's strange obsessions vanished. It happened while they were together with Afreyt and Cif, the four of them lunching al fresco at Cif's. The only outward sign was that the Twain's eyes widened incredulously as they stared and then smiled at nothing.

“What deliciously outrageous idea has occurred to you two?” Afreyt demanded, while Cif echoed, “You're right! And it has to be something like that. We know you two of yore!"

“Is it that obvious?” the Mouser inquired, while Fafhrd fumbled out, “No, it's nothing like that. It's… no, you've all got to hear this. You know that thing about stars I've been having? Well, it's gone!” He lifted his eyes. “By Issek, I can look at the blue sky now without having it covered with the black flyspecks of the stars that would be there now if it were dark!"

“By Mog!” the Mouser exploded. “I had no idea, Fafhrd, that your little madness was so like mine in the tightness of its grip. For I no longer feel the compulsion to try to peer closely at every tiny object within fifty yards of me. It's like being a slave who's set free."

“No more ragpicking, eh?” Cif said. “No more bent-over inspection tours?"

“No, by Mog,” the Mouser asserted, then qualified that with a “Though of course little things can be quite as interesting as big things; in fact, there's a whole tiny world of—"

“Uh-uh, you better watch out,” Cif interrupted, holding up a finger.

“And the stars too are of considerable interest, my unnatural infatuation with ‘em aside,” Fafhrd said stubbornly.

Afreyt asked, “What do you think it was, though? Do you think some wizard cast a spell on you? Perchance that Ningauble you told me of, Fafhrd?"

Cif said, “Yes, or that Sheelba you talk of in your sleep, Mouser, and tell me isn't an old lover?"

The two men had to admit that those explanations were distant possibilities.

“Or other mysterious or even otherworldly beings may have had a hand in it,” Afreyt proposed. “We know Queen Skeldir's involved, bless her, from the warning laughter you heard. And, for all you make light of him, Gusorio. Cif and I did hear those growlings."

Cif said, the look in her eyes half wicked, half serious, “And has it occurred to any of you that, since Skeldir's warnings went to you two men, that you may be transmigrations of her? and we — Skeldir help us! — of Great Gusorio? Or does that shock you?"

“By no means,” Fafhrd answered. “Since transmigration would be such a wonder, able to send the spirit of woman or man into animal, or vice versa, a mere change of sex should not surprise us at all."

27

The backgammon box of the two Deaths was kept at the Sea Wrack as a curiosity of sorts, but it was noted that few used it to play with, or got good games when they did.