by Fritz Leiber
‘All clear, as yet,’ he called softly overshoulder. ‘Nary a tiger ray nor black hog-nose showing. No fish of size at all.
‘None the less,’ he added, ‘if you take my reed, you’ll try to spot and snag the gift you intend Captain Mouser on your first dive, before you’ve roiled the fine sand or roused a man-eater. Foot-steer for the likeliest wreck, scanning carefully ahead for treasure-glints, then swiftly snatch, were the best way. Anything metal’d be a fine memento for him of his scuppering the Sunwise Mingol fleet whilst saving the Rimer ships. Don’t set your heart on finding the golden Whirlpool Queller itself—’ his voice grew loving ‘—the twelve-edged skeleton cube small as a girl’s fist, with the cindery black torch end wedged within it that holds all that’s left in Nehwon of the stranger god Loki who maddened us Rimers a year and five moons ago when Maelstrom last time spumed and spun. Small swift profits are surest, as I’ve more than once heard your captain tell mine when he thinks Fafhrd’s dreaming too big.’
Pshawri replied to this glib palaver with never a word or sign, nor did aught else to break his measuredly deep breathing, his surfeit-feast of air. Finally he lifted his face to gaze tranquilly beyond Skullick at the Rime Isle coast, mostly low-lying, except to the north, where the volcano Darkfire faintly fumed and dimmer ice-streaked crags loomed beyond.
His gaze went up and south from the volcano to where five neat shapely clouds had come coursing out of the west like a small fleet of snowy-sailed, high-castled galleons.
Skullick, who’d been copying Pshawri’s peerings burst out with, ‘I’ll swear I’ve seen those same five clouds before.’
Pshawri used the breath in one of his slow exhalations to say somewhat dreamily, ‘You think clouds have beings and souls, like men and ships?’
‘Why not?’ responded Skullick. ‘I think that all things do bigger than lice. In any case, these five presage a change in weather.’
But Pshawri’s gaze had dropped to the Isle’s south corner, where the White Crystal Cliffs sheltered the low red and yellow roofs of Salthaven; beyond them, the low hump of Gallows Hill and the lofty leaning rock needle of Elvenhold. His expression hardly changed, yet a shrewd searcher might have seen, added to his tranquillity, the solemnity of one who perhaps looks on cozy shores for the last time.
Without breaking the rhythm of his breathing, he rummaged the small pile of his clothes beside him, found a moleskin belt-pouch, withdrew a somewhat grimy folded sheet with broken seal of green wax with writing in violet ink, unfolded and perused it swiftly—as one who reads not for the first time.
He refolded the sheet, remarking evenly to Skullick, ‘If, against all likelihood, aught should befall me now, I’d like Captain Mouser to see this.’ He touched the broken seal before returning the item to the moleskin pouch.
Skullick frowned, but then bethought himself and simply nodded.
Hoisting the nearest small leadstone boulder and clasping it to his waist, Pshawri slowly stood up. Skullick rose too, still forbearing to speak.
Then Lieutenant Pshawri, serene-visaged, stepped over Kringle’s side with no more fuss than one who goes into the next room.
Before his swift and almost splashless transition from the realm of the winds to that of the cold currents, Skullick remembered to call after him merrily, ‘Sneeze and choke, burst a blood vessel!’
As the water took them, Pshawri felt the boulder grow lighter, so that his right hand alone was enough to hug it close. Opening his eyes to the rushing fluid, he looped his left arm loosely round the anchor line beside him, directing his descent toward the rock cluster.
He looked down. The bottom seemed still far away. Then as the water tightened its grip on him, he saw the rock cluster slowly open into a five-petalled dark flower with a circle of pale sand at its heart.
The wrecks around came plainer into view so that he could make out the green weed-furred skull of the bow-stallion of the nearest, but disregarding Skullick’s advice, Pshawri directed his descent toward the centre of the circle of virgin sand, where he discerned something, a slightly darker point.
As the water squeezed him tight, then tighter yet, and there began a pulsing in his ears, and he felt the first urge to blow out his breath, he unhooked his arm from the anchor line and coasted down between the huge jagged rocks, let go the stone, and thrusting down both hands before him, seized on the central something.
It felt smoothly cubical in form, yet with something grainy and rough-wedged inside its twelve edges. It was surprisingly massy for its size, resisting movement. He rubbed an edge along his thigh. Just before the cloud of loamy sand raised by his feet and the stone’s plunge engulfed it, he saw along the rubbed edged a yellowish gleam. He brought it against his waist, found the mouth of the fishnet bag by the feel of the reed circlet, and thrust in his trophy.
At the same time a dry voice seemed to say in his ear, ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ and he felt a sharp pang of guilt, as if he’d just committed a theft or rape.
Fighting down a surge of panic, he straightened his body, thrusting his hands high above his head, and with a threshing of his legs and a powerful downward sweep of his palms, drove upward out of the sand cloud, between the savage rocks, and toward the light.
At the same moment Skullick, who’d been following all this as best he might from seventeen fathoms above, saw fully a half-dozen similar sand puffs erupt from the quiescent green-tinged sand plain of wrecks all around and a like number of black hog-nosed sharks, each about as big as Kringle’s shadow, streak toward the rock cluster and the tiny swimming figure above it.
Pshawri stroked upward alongside the anchor line, feeling he climbed a cliff, his gaze fixed on Kringle’s small spindle shape. Blood pounded in his ears and to hold his breath was pain. Yet as the spindle shape grew larger, he thought to stroke so as to rotate his body for a cautionary scan around and down.
He had not completed a half turn when he saw a black shape driving up toward him head-on.
It speaks well for Pshawri’s presence of mind that he completed his rotation, making sure there was no nearer attacker to deal with, before facing the hog-nose.
Continuing to coast upward, threshing his legs a little, he drew his dirk. There was yet barely time to thrust his right hand through the loop of the pommel thong before he gripped it.
The scene darkened. He aimed the dirk, his arm bent just a little, at the up-rushing mask which somewhat resembled that of a great black boar.
His shoulder was jolted, his arm wrenched, a long black shape was hurtling past, rough hide scraped his hip and side, then he was driving upward again with strong palm-sweeps toward Kringle’s hull, very large now though the scene remained strangely darkened.
He felt a blessed surge of relief as he broke surface close alongside and grasped for the gunwale. But in the same instant he felt himself strongly gripped under the shoulders and powerfully heaved upward, his legs flying, and he heard the clash of jaws.
Skullick, his rescuer, saw a red line start out on the mallet snout of the black shark as the beast breached, bit air, then sneezed before falling back—and also the red points that began to fleck his comrade’s side as he lowered him to the deck.
Pshawri’s spent legs were wobbly yet he managed to stand. He saw that the first of the five fish-shaped clouds hid the sun. It had veered north, as though curious about the Maelstrom and determined to inspect it, and the other four had followed it in line. A strong breeze from the southwest explained this and chilled Pshawri, so he was glad for the large rough towel Skullick tossed his way.
‘A goodly tickle you gave him in the nose, my boyo,’ that one congratulated. ‘He’ll sneeze longer than you bleed where he scraped you, never you fear. But, by Kos, Pshawri, how they all came after you! You’d no sooner raised sand than they were up and streaking in from far and near. Like lean black watchdogs!’ He appealed incredulously, ‘Think you they felt your stone-abetted impact through the sand so far? By Kos, they must have!’
‘There was more than one?’ Pshawri asked, shivering as he spoke for the first time since his dive.
‘More? I counted full five blacks at the end, besides two tiger rays. I told you it was more dangerous than you dreamed, and now events have proved me sevenfold right. You’re lucky to have got out with your life, lucky you found no treasure to delay you. A few moments more and you’d not have been facing one shark, but three or four!’
Pshawri had been about to display his golden find for his comrade’s admiration when Skullick’s words not only told him the latter hadn’t seen him make it, but also reawakened the strange pang of guilt and foreboding he’d felt below.
While hurrying into his clothes, a process in which he was speeded by the quickening breeze and absence of sun, he managed to switch the slimy cube from the uneasy revealment of the net bag to the revealing concealment of his moleskin belt pouch, while Skullick scanned the sky.
‘See how the weather shifts,’ that one called. ‘What witch has whistled up this frigid wind? Cold from the south, at any rate southwest—unnatural. Mark how that line of clouds that hides the sun veers widdershins. Lucky you did not find the whirlpool-queller, or else we’d have the spinning of that element to deal with. As it is, I fear our presence irks the Maelstrom. Up anchor, cully, hoist sail and away! We’ll find your captain’s gift another day!’
Pshawri was happy to spring to with a will. Relentless action left less time for feeling strange guilts and thinking crazy thoughts about clouds. And the calm waters, though wind-ruffled, showed no other signs of movement.
3
In jam-packed Godsland, which lies lofty and mountaingirt near Nehwon’s south pole, a handsome young god, who had been drawing crowds in the stranger’s pavilion by sleeping entranced for seventeen months, woke with an enraged shout that seemed loud enough to reach the Shadowland at Godsland’s antipodes, and that momentarily deafened half the divinities and all the demi-divinities in his heavenly audience.
Among the latter were Fafhrd’s and the Gray Mouser’s three particular godlings—brutal Kos, spiderish Mog, and the limp-wristed Issek—who had been teased to come witness the feat of supernal hibernation not only out of sheer curiosity, but also from intimations that the handsome young sleeping stranger and his record-breaking trance were somehow involved with their two most illustrious (though often backsliding) worshippers. The three reacted variously to the ear-splitting cry. Issek covered his while Kos dug a little finger into one.
And now it became apparent that Loki’s piercing shout had indeed reached the Shadowland, for the slender, seemingly youthful, opalescent-fleshed figure of Death, or its simulacrum, appeared at the foot of the silken bier on which the angry young god crouched, and the two were seen by the deafened divinities to hold converse together, Loki fiercely commanding, Death raising objections, placating, temporizing, though nodding repeatedly and smiling winningly at the same time.
Yet despite the latter’s amiable behavior there were shrinkings back among the members of the motley heavenly host, for even in Godsland Death is not a popular figure nor widely trusted.
Fafhrd’s and Mouser’s three oddly matched godlings, who had earlier wormed their way quite close to the red-draped bier, regained their audition in time to hear Loki’s last summary command:
‘So be it then, sirrah! So soon as all the essential formalities of your paltry world are satisfied and necessary niggling conditions met—so soon and not one instant later!—I want the impious mortal who consigned me to deep watery oblivion to be sent a like distance underground. It is commanded!’
With a final bow and strange obsequious look, Nehwon’s Death (or its simulacrum) said softly, ‘Hearkening in obedience,’ and vanished.
‘I like that!’ quick-witted Mog remarked in an indignant ironic undertone to his two cronies. ‘Out of sheer spite toward the Gray Mouser for his dunking, this vagabond Loki proposes to rob us of one of our chief worshippers.’
After a face-saving haughty glare around (for Death’s departure had been snubbingly abrupt), Loki slid off the bier to confer in urgent whispers with another stranger god, dignified but elderly to the point of doddering, who responded with rather senile-seeming nods and shrugs.
‘Yes,’ Issek replied venomously to Mog. ‘And now, see, he’s trying to persuade his comrade, old Odin, to demand of Death a like doom for Fafhrd.’
‘No, I doubt that,’ Kos protested. ‘The dodderer has already revenged himself on Fafhrd by taking his left hand. And he’s had no indignities visited on him to reawaken his ire. He’s hung on here while his comrade slept because he has nowhere better to go.’
‘I’d not count on that,’ Mog said morosely. ‘Meanwhile, what’s to do about the clear threat to the Mouser? Protest to Death this wanton raid by a foreign god on our dwindling congregation?’
‘I’d want to think twice before going that far,’ Issek responded dubiously. ‘Appeals to him have been known to backfire on their makers.’
‘I don’t like dealing with him myself, and that’s a fact,’ Kos seconded. ‘He gives me the cold shivers. Truth to tell, I don’t think you can trust the Powers any further than you can trust foreign gods!’
‘He didn’t seem too happy about Loki’s arrogance toward him,’ Issek put in hopefully. ‘Perhaps things will work out well without our meddling.’ He smiled a somewhat sickish smile.
Mog frowned but spoke no more.
Back in one of the long corridors of his mist-robed mazy low castle under the sunless moist gray skies of the Shadowland, Death thought coolly with half his mind (the other half was busy as always with his eternal work everywhere in Nehwon) of what a stridently impudent god this young stranger Loki was and what a pleasure it would be to break the rules, spit in the face of the other Powers, and carry him off before his last worshipper died.
But as always good taste and sportsmanship prevailed.
A Power must obey the most whimsical and unreasonable command of the least god, insofar as it could be reconciled with conflicting orders from other gods and provided the proprieties were satisfied—that was one of the things that kept Necessity working.
And so although the Gray Mouser was a good tool he would have liked to decide when to discard, Death began with half his mind to plan the doom and demise of that one. Let’s see, a day and a half would be a reasonable period for preparation, consultations, and warnings. And while he was at it, why not strengthen the Gray One for his coming ordeal? There were no rules against that. It would help him if he were heavier, massier in body and mind. Where get the heaviness? Why, from his comrade Fafhrd, of course, nearest at hand. It would leave Fafhrd light-headed and -bodied for a while, but that couldn’t be helped. And then there were the proper and required warnings to think about…
While half Death’s mind was busy with these matters, he saw his Sister Pain slinking toward him from the corridor’s end on bare silent feet, her avid red eyes fixed on his pale slate cool-gray ones. She was slender as he and like complected, except that here and there her opalescence was streaked with blue—and to his great distaste she padded about, as was her wont, in steamy nakedness, rather than decently robed and slippered like himself.
He prepared to stride past her with never a word.
She smiled at him knowingly and said with languorous hisses in her voice, ‘You’ve a choice morsel for me, haven’t you?’
4
While these ominous Nehwonal and supernal events were transpiring that so concerned them, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were relaxedly and unsuspectingly sipping dark brandy by the cool white light, which Rime Islers call history, of a leviathan-oil lamp in the root-and-wine cellar of Cif’s snug Salthaven abode while that lady and Afreyt were briefly gone to the lunar temple at the arctic port-town’s inland outskirts on some business involving the girl acolytes of the Moon Goddess, whose priestesses Cif and Afreyt were, and the girl acolytes their nieces.
Since their slaying of their would-be killers and the lifting of the old-age cur
se, the two captains had been enjoying to the full their considerable relief, leaving the overseeing of their men to their lieutenants, visiting their barracks but once a day (and taking turns even at that—or even having their lieutenants make report to them, a practice to which they’d sunk once or twice lately), spending most of their time at their ladies’ cosier and more comfortable abodes and pleasuring themselves with the sportive activities (including picnicking) which such companionship made possible and to which their recent stints as grumpy and unjoyous old men also inclined them, abetted by the balmy weather of Thunder and Satyrs Moon.
Indeed, today the last had got a bit too much for them. Hence their retreat to the deep, cool, flagstoned cellar, where they were assuaging the melancholy that unbridled self-indulgence is strangely apt to induce in heroes by rehearsing to each other anecdotes of ghosts and horrors.
‘Hast ever heard,’ the tall Northerner intoned, ‘of those sinuous earth-hued tropical Kleshite ghouls with hands like spades that burrow beneath cemeteries and their environs, silently emerge behind you, then seize you and drag you down before you can gather your wits to oppose it, digging more swiftly than the armadillo? One such, it’s said, subterraneously pursued a man whose house lay by a lich-field and took him in his own cellar, which doubtless had a feature much like that.’ And he directed his comrade’s attention to an unflagged area, just behind the bench on which they sat, that showed dark sandy loam and was large enough to have taken the passage of a broad-shouldered man.
‘Afreyt tells me,’ he explained, ‘it’s been left that way to let the cellar breathe—a most necessary ventilation in this clime.’
The Mouser regarded the gap in the flagging with considerable distaste, arching his brows and wrinkling his nostrils, then recovered his mug from the stout central table before them and took a gut-shivering slug. He shrugged. ‘Well, tropic ghouls are unlikely here in polar clime. But now I’m reminded—hast ever heard tell?—of that Ool Hrusp prince who so feared his grave, abhorring earth, that he lived his whole life (what there was of it) in the topmost room of a lofty tower twice the height of the mightiest trees of the Great Forest where Ool Hrusp is situated?’