by Fritz Leiber
Mog said, smiling lopsidedly because of his partially arachnid jaw structure, ‘They seem to have chosen their punishment.’
‘The torture of hope!’ Issek chimed eagerly, catching on. ‘We grant them their wishes—’
‘—and then leave the rest to the girls,’ Mog finished.
‘You can’t trust women,’ Kos asserted darkly.
‘On the contrary, my dear fellow,’ Mog said, ‘when a god’s in good form, he can safely trust his worshippers, female and male alike, to do all the work. And now, gentlemen, on with our thinking caps!’
Kos scratched his thickly matted head vigorously, dislodging a louse or two.
Whimsically, and perhaps to put a few obstacles between themselves and the girls presumably now rushing toward them, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser chose to leave the Silver Eel by its kitchen door, something they’d never done once before in all their years of patronage.
The door was low and heavily bolted, and when those were shot still wouldn’t budge. And the new cook, who was deaf and dumb, left off his stuffing of a calf’s stomach and came over to make gobbling noises and flap his arms in gestures of protest or warning. But the Mouser pressed two bronze agols into his greasy palm while Fafhrd kicked the door open. They prepared to stride out into the dismal lot covered by the eroded ashes of the tenement where the Mouser had dwelt with Ivrian (and she and Fafhrd’s equally dear Vlana had burned) and also the ashes of the wooden garden house of mad Duke Danius, which they’d once stolen and occupied for a space—the dismal and ill-omened lot which they’d never heard of anyone building on since.
But when they’d ducked their heads and gone through the doorway, they discovered that construction of a sort had been going on (or else that they’d always seriously underestimated the depth of the Silver Eel) for instead of on empty ground open to sky, they found themselves in a corridor lit by torches held in brazen hands along each wall.
Undaunted, they strode forward past two closed doors.
‘That’s Lankhmar City for you,’ the Mouser observed. ‘You turn your back and they’ve put up a new secret temple.’
‘Good ventilation, though,’ Fafhrd commented on the absence of smoke.
They followed the corridor around a sharp turn…and stopped dead. The split-level chamber facing them had surprising features. The sunken half was close-ceilinged and otherwise gave the impression of being far underground, as if its floor were not eight finger-joints deeper than the raised section but eighty yards. Its furniture was a bed with a coverlet of violet silk. A thick yellow silk cord hung through a hole in the low ceiling.
The chamber’s raised half seemed the balcony or battlement of a tower thrust high above Lankhmar’s smog, for stars were visible in the black upper background and ceiling.
On the bed, silver-blonde head to its foot, slim Hisvet lay prone but upthrust on her straightened arms. Her robe of fine silk, yellow as desert sunlight, was out-dented by her pair of small high breasts, but depended freely from the nipples of those, leaving unanswered the question of whether there were three more pairs arranged symmetrically below.
While against starry night (or its counterfeit), her dark hair braided with scrubbed copper wire, Frix stood magnificently tall and light-footed (though motionless) in her silken robe violet as a desert’s twilight before dawn.
Fafhrd was about to say, ‘You know, we were just talking about you,’ and the Mouser was about to tread on his instep for being so guileless, when Hisvet called to the latter, ‘You again!—intemperate dirksman. I told you never even to think of another rendezvous with me for two years’ space.’
Frix said to Fafhrd, ‘Beast! I told you I played with a member of the lower orders only on rare occasions.’
Hisvet tugged sharply on the silken cord. A heavy door dropped down in the men’s faces from above and struck its sill with a great and conclusive jar.
Fafhrd lifted a finger to his nose, explaining ruefully, ‘I thought the door had taken off the tip. Not exactly a loving reception.’
The Mouser said bravely, ‘I’m glad they turned us off. Truly, it would have been too soon, and so a bore. On with our girl hunt!’
They returned past the mute flames held in bronze hands to the second of the two closed doors. It opened at a touch to reveal another dual chamber and in it their loves Reetha and Kreeshkra, whom only short months ago they’d been seeking near the Sea of Monsters, until they were trapped in the Shadowland and barely escaped back to Lankhmar. To the left, in muted sunlight on a couch of exquisitely smoothed dark wood, Reetha reclined quite naked. Indeed, extremely naked, for as the Mouser noted, she’d kept up her habit, inculcated when she’d been slave of a finicky overlord, of regularly shaving all of herself, even her eyebrows. Her totally bare head, held at a pert angle, was perfectly shaped and the Mouser felt a surge of sweet desire. She was cuddling to her tender bosom a very emaciated-seeming but tranquil animal, which the Mouser suddenly realized was a cat, hairless save for its score of whiskers bristling from its mask.
To the right, in dark night a-dance with the light of campfire and on a smooth shale shore of what Fafhrd recognized to be, by the large white-bearded serpents sporting in it, the Sea of Monsters, sat his beloved Kreeshkra, more naked even than Reetha. She might have been a disquieting sight to some (naught but an aristocratically handsome skeleton), except that the flames near which she sat struck dark blue gleams from the sweetly curved surfaces of her transparent flesh casing her distinguished bones.
‘Mouser, why have you come?’ Reetha cried out somewhat reproachfully. ‘I’m happy here in Eevamarensee, where all men are as hairless by nature (our household animals too) as I am by my daily industry. I love you dearly still, but we can’t live together and must not meet again. This is my proper place.’
Likewise, bold Kreeshkra challenged Fafhrd with ‘Mud Man, avaunt! I loved you once. Now I’m a Ghoul again. Perhaps in future time…But now, begone!’
It was well neither Fafhrd nor Mouser had stepped across the threshold, for at those words this door slammed in their faces too, and this time stuck fast. Fafhrd forbore to kick it.
‘You know, Mouser,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘We’ve been enamored of some strange ones in our time. But always most intensely interesting,’ he hastened to add.
‘Come on, come on,’ the Mouser enjoined gruffly. ‘There are other fish in the sea.’
The remaining door opened easily too, though Fafhrd pushed it somewhat gingerly. Nothing startling, however, came into view this time, only a long dark room, empty of persons and furniture, with a second door at the other end. Its only novel feature was that the right-hand wall glowed green. They walked in with returning confidence. After a few steps they became aware that the glowing wall was thick crystal enclosing pale green, faintly clouded water. As they watched, continuing to stroll, there swam into view with lazy undulations two beautiful mermaids, the one with long golden hair trailing behind her and a sheathlike garb of wide-meshed golden fishnet, the other with short dark hair parted by a ridgy and serrated silver crest. They came close enough for one to see the slowly pulsing gills scoring their necks where they merged into their sloping, faintly scaled shoulders, and farther down their bodies those discreet organs which contradict the contention, subject of many a crude jest, that a man is unable fully to enjoy an unbifurcated woman (though any pair of snakes in love tell us otherwise). They swam closer still, their dreamy eyes now wide and peering, and the Mouser and Fafhrd recognized the two queens of the sea they had embraced some years past while deep diving from their sloop Black Treasurer.
What the wide-peering fishy eyes saw evidently did not please the mermaids, for they made faces and with powerful flirts of their long finny tails retreated away from the crystal wall through the greenish water, whose cloudiness was increased by their rapid movements, until they could no longer be seen.
Turning to the Mouser, Fafhrd inquired, eyebrows alift, ‘You mentioned other fish in the sea?’
With
a quick frown the Mouser strode on. Trailing him, Fafhrd mused puzzledly, ‘You said this might be a secret temple, friend. But if so, where are its porters, priests, and patrons other than ourselves?’
‘More like a museum—scenes of distant life. And a piscesium, or piscatorium,’ his comrade answered curtly over shoulder.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Fafhrd continued, quickening his steps, ‘there’s too much space here we’ve been walking through for the lot behind the Silver Eel to hold. What has been builded here?—or there?’
The Mouser went through the far door. Fafhrd was close behind.
In Godsland Kos snarled, ‘The rogues are taking it too easily. Oh, for a thunderbolt!’
Mog told him rapidly, ‘Never you fear, my friend, we have them on the run. They’re only putting up appearances. We’ll wear them down by slow degrees until they pray to us for mercy, groveling on their knees. That way our pleasure’s greater.’
‘Quiet, you two,’ Issek shrilled, waving his bent wrists, ‘I’m getting another girl pair!’
It was clear from these and other quick gesticulations and injunctions—and from their rapt yet tense expressions—that the three gods in close inward-facing circle were busy with something interesting. From all around other divinities large and small, baroque and classical, noisome and beautiful, came drifting up to comment and observe. Godsland is overcrowded, a veritable slum, all because of man’s perverse thirst for variety. There are rumors among the packed gods there of other and (perish the thought!) superior gods, perhaps invisible, who enjoy roomier quarters on another and (oh woe!) higher level and who (abysmal deviltry!) even hear thoughts, but nothing certain.
Issek cried out in ecstasy, ‘There, there, the stage is set! Now to search out the next teasing pair. Kos and Mog, help me. Do your rightful share.’
The Gray Mouser and Fafhrd felt they’d been transported to the mysterious realm of Quarmall, where they’d had one of their most fantastic adventures. For the next chamber seemed a cave in solid rock, given room-shape by laborious chipping. And behind a table piled with parchments and scrolls, inkwells and quills, sat the two saucy, seductive slavegirls they’d rescued from the cavern-world’s monotonies and tortures: slender Ivivis, supple as a snake, and pleasantly plump Friska, light of foot. The two men felt relief and joy that they’d come home to the familiar and beloved.
Then they saw the room had windows, with sunlight suddenly striking in (as if a cloud had lifted), and was not solid rock but morticed stone, and that the girls wore not the scanty garb of slaves but rich and sober robes, while their faces were grave and self-reliant.
Ivivis looked up at the Mouser with inquiry but instant disapproval. ‘What dost here, figment of my servile past? ’Tis true, you rescued me from Quarmall foul. For which I paid you with my body’s love. Which ended at Tovilysis when we split. We’re quits, dear Mouser, yes by Mog, we are!’ (She wondered why she used that particular oath.)
Likewise Friska looked at Fafhrd and said, ‘That goes for you too, bold barbarian. You also killed my lover Hovis, you’ll recall—as Mouser did Ivivis’ Klevis. We are no longer simple-minded slaves, playthings of men, but subtile secretary and present treasurer of the Guild of Free Women at Tovilysis. We’ll never love again unless I choose—which I do not today! And so, by Kos and Issek, now begone!’ (She wondered likewise why she invoked those particular deities, for whom she had no respect whatever.)
These rebuffs hurt the two heroes sorely, so that they had not the spirit to respond with denials, jests, or patient gallantries. Their tongues clove to their hard palates, their hearts and privates grew chilly, they almost cringed—and they rather swiftly stole from that chamber by the open door ahead…into a large room shaped of bluish ice, or rock of the same hue and translucence and as cold, so that the flames dancing in the large fireplace were welcome. Before this was spread a rug looking wondrously thick and soft, about which were set scattered jars of unguents, small bottles of perfume (which made themselves known by their ranging scents), and other cosmetic containers and tools. Furthermore, the invitingly textured rug showed indentations as if made by two recumbent human forms, while about a cubit above it floated two living masks as thin as silk or paper or more thin, holding the form of wickedly pretty, pert girl faces, the one rosy mauvette, the other turquoise green.
Others would have deemed it a prodigy, but the Mouser and Fafhrd at once recognized Keyaira and Hirriwi, the invisible frost princesses with whom they’d once been separately paired for one long, long night in Stardock, tallest of Nehwon’s northron peaks, and knew that the two gaysome girls were reclining unclad in front of the fire and had been playfully anointing each other’s faces with pigmented salves.
Then the turquoise mask leapt up betwixt Fafhrd and the fire, so that dancing orange flames only shone through its staring eye holes and between its now cruel and amused lips as it spoke to him, saying, ‘In what frowsty bed are you now dead asleep, gross one-time lover, that your squeaking soul can be blown halfway across the world to gape at me? Some day again climb Stardock and in your solid form importune me, I might hark. But now, phantom, depart!’
The mallow mask likewise spoke scornfully to the Mouser, saying in tones as stinging and impelling as the flames seen through its facial orifices, ‘And you remove too, wraith most pitiful. By Khahkht of the Black Ice and Gara of the Blue—and e’en Kos of the Green—I enjoin it! Blow winds! and out lights all!’
Fafhrd and the Mouser were hurt even more sorely by these new rebuffs. Their very souls were shriveled by the feeling that they were indeed the phantoms, and the speaking masks the solid reality. Nevertheless, they might have summoned the courage to attempt to answer the challenge (though ’tis doubtful), except that at Keyaira’s last commands they were plunged into darkness absolute and manhandled by great winds and then dumped in a lighted area. A wind-slammed door crashed shut behind them.
They saw with considerable relief that they were not confronting yet another pair of girls (that would have been unendurable) but were in another stretch of corridor lit by clear-flaming torches held in brazen wall brackets in the form of gripping bird-talons, coiling squid-tentacles, and pinching crab-claws. Grateful for the respite, they took deep breaths.
Then Fafhrd frowned deeply and said, ‘Mark me, Mouser, there’s magic somewhere in all this. Or else the hand of a god.’
The Mouser commented bitterly, ‘If it’s a god, he’s a thumb-fingered one, the way he sets us up to be turned down.’
Fafhrd’s thoughts took a new tack, as shown by the changing furrows in his forehead. ‘Mouser, I never squeaked,’ he protested. ‘Hirriwi said I squeaked.’
‘Manner of speaking only, I suppose,’ his comrade consoled. ‘But gods! what misery I felt myself, as if I were no longer man at all, and this no more than broomstick.’ He indicated his sword Scalpel at his side and gazed with a shake of his head at Fafhrd’s scabbarded Graywand.
‘Perchance we dream—’ Fafhrd began doubtfully.
‘Well, if we’re dreaming, let’s get on with it,’ the Mouser said and, clapping his friend around the shoulders, started them down the corridor. Yet despite these cheerful words and actions, both men felt they were getting more and more into the toils of nightmare, drawing them on will-lessly.
They rounded a turn. For some yards the right-hand wall became a row of slender dark pillars, irregularly spaced, and between them they could see more random dusky slim shafts and at middle distance a long altar on which light showered softly down, revealing a tall, naked woman stretched on it, and by her a priestess in purple robes with dagger bared in one hand and large silver chalice in the other, who was intoning a litany.
Fafhrd whispered, ‘Mouser! the sacrifice is the courtesan Lessnya, with whom I had some dealings when I was acolyte of Issek, years ago.’
‘While the other is Ilala, priestess of the like-named goddess, with whom I had some commerce when I was lieutenant to Pulg the extortioner,’ the Mouser whispered back.
>
Fafhrd protested, ‘But we can’t have already come all the way to the temple of Ilala, though this looks like it. It’s halfway across Lankhmar from the Eel,’ while the Mouser recalled tales he’d heard of secret passages in Lankhmar that connected points by distances shorter than the shortest distance between.
Ilala turned toward them in her purple robes and said with eyebrows raised, ‘Quiet back there! You are committing sacrilege, trespassing on most holy ritual of the great goddess of all shes. Impious intruders, depart!’ While Lessnya lifted on an elbow and looked at them haughtily. Then she lay back again and regarded the ceiling while Ilala plunged her dagger deep into her chalice and then with it flicked sprinkles of wine (or whatever other fluid the chalice held) on Lessnya’s naked shape, wielding the blade as if it were an aspergillum. She aspersed her thrice—on bosom, loins, and knees—and then resumed her muttered litany, while Lessnya echoed her (or else snored) and the Mouser and Fafhrd stole on along the torchlit corridor.
But they had little time to ponder on the strange geometries and stranger religiosities of their nightmare progress, for now the left-hand wall gave way for a space to a fabulously decorated, large, dim chamber, which they recognized as the official residence room of the Grandmaster of the Thieves’ Guild in Thieves’ House, half Lankhmar City back again from Ilala’s fane. The foreground was filled with figures kneeling away from them in devout supplication toward a thick-topped ebony table, behind which there stood queenly tall a handsome red-haired woman dressed in jewels and behind her a trim second female in maid’s black tunic collared and cuffed with white.
‘’Tis Ivlis in her beauty from the past, for whom I stole Ohmphal’s erubescent fingertips,’ the Mouser whispered in stupefaction. ‘And now she’s got herself a peck more gems.’
‘And that is Freg, her maid, looking no older,’ Fafhrd whispered back hoarsely in dream-drugged wonderment.