by Fritz Leiber
But all such personal plights and predicaments, ominous night-sights and sleepwalks, were soon almost forgot, became hazy in memory, as the extent of the general calamity was realized and a desperate rush to correct it began.
There were loved ones to be chafed, lost sheep to be succored—aye, and half-frozen shepherds too and other sleepers-out—cold ovens to be cleared of summer stowage and fired, kindling cut and seacoal shovelled, winter clothes dug from the bottoms of chests, strained moorings doubled and trebled of ships tossing at their docks and anchors, hatches battened in roofs and decks, lone dwellers visited.
When there was time for talk and wondering, some guessed that Khahkht the Wizard of Ice was on a rampage, others that the invisible winged Princes of lofty Stardock were out raiding, or—alarmist!—that the freezing glacial streams had at last tunnelled through Nehwon’s crust and dowsed her inner fires. Cif and Afreyt looked to find answers at the full moon ceremony, and when Mother Grum and the Senior Council cancelled it on grounds of inclement weather (it being held outdoors), went on with their preparations anyway. Mother Grum raised no objections, believing in freedom of worship, but the Council refused it formal sanction.
So, it was no great wonder that the congregation that gathered before the chimes-arch of the open Moon Temple, with its twelve stone columns marking the year’s twelve moons, was such a small one: in the main, exactly those who had dined at Afreyt’s the previous evening and been pressed to attend by her and Cif. Those two were there, of course, being ringleaders of the outlaw rite, snug in their winter-priestess garb of white fur-hooded robes, mittens, and wool-lined ramskin boots. The five girls came as obedient novices, though it would have been hard to keep them away from what they considered a prize adventure. They wore like gear, only with shorter capes, so that from time to time their rosy knees showed, and the weird weather made Fingers’s lamb’s hide yashmak and gloves highly appropriate. Fafhrd and Mouser came as their ladies’ lovers, although they’d spent a hard day working, first at Afreyt’s, then at their barracks. Both looked a little distant-minded, as though each had begun to remember the nightmares that had accompanied their strange nightcrawlings. Skullick and Pshawri turned up with them. Presumably their captains had reinforced with commands the entreaties of their captains’ mistresses, though Pshawri had an oddly intent look, and even the carefree Skullick a concerned one.
Ourph had not been pressed by anyone to attend, in view of his great age, but he was there nevertheless, close-wrapped in dark Mingol furs, with conical black-fur cap and sealskin boots to which small Mingol snowshoes were affixed.
Harbor master Groniger too, whose atheism might have been expected to keep him away. He said in explanation, ‘Witchery is always my business. Though arrant superstition, three out of four times it’s associated with crime—piracy and mutiny at sea, all manner of ill-workings on land. And don’t tell me about you moon priestesses being white witches, not black. I know what I know.’
And in the end Mother Grum showed up herself, fur-bundled to the ears and waddling on snowshoes larger than Ourph’s. ‘It’s my duty as coven mistress,’ she grumbled, ‘to get you out of any scrapes your wild behavior gets you into and to see that in any case no one tries to stop you.’ She glared amiably at Groniger.
With her came Rill the Harlot, also a moon priestess, whose maimed left hand gave her a curious sympathy (unmixed with lechery, or so ’twas thought) with Fafhrd, who’d lost his entirely.
These fifteen, irregularly grouped, stood looking east across the sharp-serrated snow-shedding gables of the small, low, close-set houses of Salthaven, awaiting moonrise. They rapidly shuffled their feet from time to time to warm them. And whenever they did, the massy gray slabs of the sacred wind chime chain-hung from the lofty single-bone leviathan-jaw arch seemed to vibrate faintly yet profoundly in sympathy, or in memory of their earlier hollow clanking when the gale had blown, or perhaps in anticipation of the Goddess’s near apparition.
When the low glow of that approach intensified toward a central area above the toothed roofs, the nine females drew somewhat apart from the six males, turning their backs on them and crowding together closely, so that the invocatory words Afreyt whispered might not be overheard by the men, nor the holy objects Cif drew from under her wide cloak and showed around be glimpsed by them.
Then, when a dazzlingly white fingernail clipping of the orb’s self, serrated by the teeth of the central-most roof, showed, there was a general sigh of recognition and fulfillment which was echoed inanimately by an intensification of the chimes’ real or imagined low vibrations, and the groups broke up and intermingled and joined hands in one long line, the girls leading with May at their head, the rest linked at random, and the whole company began a slow rhythmic circling of the Temple, twice all the way around, then interweaving the carven stone moon pillars—that of the Snow, the Wolf, the Seed, the Witch, the Ghost, the Murderer, the Thunder, the Satyr, the Harvest, the Second Witch, the Frost, and the Lovers—by sixes, by fours, by threes, by two, and individually.
The girls wove their way one after the other, linked hand to hand, gracefully as in a dream. Old Ourph footed it agilely, stamping out the time, while Mother Grum moved briskly for all her fat and with a surprisingly sure rhythm. Rill brought up the rear, swinging a leviathan-oil lamp, unlit, from her maimed hand.
As the moonlight slowly strengthened, Fingers marvelled somewhat fearfully at the strange Rimish runes and savage scenes carved in the thick moon pillars. Gale squeezed her hand reassuringly and told her in whispered snatches how they represented the adventures of the legendary witch queen Skeldir when she descended into the Underworld to get the help that enabled her to turn back the three dire Simorgyan invasions in the Isle’s olden days.
When the seven slow mystic circlings had been completed and the glaringly white orb of Skama (the Goddess’s holiest name) fully arisen, so that sky-black hugged her all around, May led the weaving line out across the great meadow to the west, moving forward confidently in the full moonshine. For a short way the shadows of the twelve pillars and the jaw-hung chime accompanied them, then they launched out one by one across the trackless moonlit expanse, the frozen and snow-dusted grass crackling under their feet. May followed a serpentine course, veering now left, now right, that copied their last pillar-weaving, but went straight west, their shadows preceding them.
And then Afreyt called out in vibrant tones the sacred name, ‘Skama!’ and they all began to chant, in time to their dancing advance, the first song to the Goddess:
‘Twelve faces has our Lady of the Dark
As she walks nightly ’cross her starry park:
Snow, Wolf, and Seed Moon, Witches, Ghosts, and Knife,
The Murderer’s badge; six more of dark and light:
Thunder, Lust, Harvest, Witches second life;
Then end the year with Frost and Lovers bright;
Queen of the Night and Mistress of the Dark
In your black veils and clinging silver sark.’
Their voices fell silent for five beats, Afreyt again called, ‘Skama!’ and they began Her second song, their steps becoming longer and more gliding to suit the changed rhythm:
‘These be your signets, dread Mistress of Mystery:
Rain bow and bubble, the flame and the star,
Night bee and glow wasp, volcano, cool history,
Things that are hintings of wonders afar;
Comet and hailstone and strange turns of history,
Queen of the Darkness and Lamp of the Night,
Lover of Terror, cruel and sisterly—
Crone, Girl, and Mother, arise in your white!’
A four-beat pause, once more ‘Skama!’ from Afreyt, and now their dance became a rapid and stamping one, as though they advanced to the pounding of a drum:
‘Snow Moon, Wolf Moon, Seed Moon, Witch Moon;
Ghost Moon, Knife Moon, Blast Moon, Lust Moon;
Sickle, Witch Two, Frost Moon, Fuck Moon.
Skama beckons, Skeldir goes down
By the lightless narrow stoneway,
Buried Rimish fashion feet first,
Bravely facing poison monsters,
Treading serpents with her bare feet;
Through dry earth and solid rock;
Sinks like ghost into the granite;
Skeldir’s courage fails, she falters—
When she spies the moon below her,
In the heart of darkness, light!’
This time Afreyt let twenty beats go by before giving her invocation, and the hand-linked linear company began a repetition of the three songs while they continued their curving and countercurving westward advance. A little toward the north Elvenhold loomed, a pale stout needle of rock and scrub heather to whose square top the strongest bow could not loft arrow. Two moons ago, on fateful Midsummer Day, all of them save Fingers and Ourph had picnicked there. While toward the south began a series of low rolling hills, at first mere swells in the sea of moonlit grass. And toward these hills May now began to lead their way, an overall southward veering of the dancing line.
By the songs’ second repetition islands of gorse and furze were appearing in the grassy ocean. May led between them toward a somewhat higher hill.
‘Our destination?’ Fingers asked Gale, softly singing the question into the song they were on.
‘Yes,’ Gale replied in murmured snatches while swaying to the song. ‘In old times had a gallows. Then ’twas the ghost god Odin’s hill when he counselled Aunt Afreyt. I was one of his handmaids.’
FINGERS: What did you have to do?
GALE: For one thing, I was his cabingirl, you could say.
FINGERS: You were? You said he was a ghost. Was he solid enough for such things?
GALE: Enough. He wanted all sorts of touching, both do and be done by.
FINGERS: Gods are just like men. Your aunt let you?
GALE: It was very important information she was getting from him. Helped save Rime Isle. Also, I braided nooses for him. He made us wear them around our necks.
FINGERS: That sounds scary. Dangerous.
GALE: It was. That’s how Uncle Fafhrd lost his left hand. He was wearing them all around his left wrist in that battle I told you about. When Odin and the gallows vanished up into the sky, the nooses all tightened to nothing and shot up after—and Uncle Fafhrd’s hand with them.
FINGERS: Really scary. If you’d kept them round your necks—
GALE: Yes. Later, when Aunt Cif and Mother Grum purified the hill and cut down the bower where May and Mara and I had loved up the old god, they changed its name from Gallows to Goddess Hill, and we’ve been holding the summer full-moon rites on it.
MARA: Whatever are you two whispering about? I can see Aunt Afreyt frowning at you.
They instantly took up the song, which by now was another.
‘The little demons!’ Afreyt whispered to Fafhrd in a not particularly angry voice.
He turned back toward her and nodded, though even less concerned than she, just as he’d sometimes been chanting tonight and sometimes not, as the mood took him.
The chill air was very still and fantastically clear. It occurred to Fafhrd that he had never in his life seen the full moon shine so bright, not even from Stardock. At that instant, as though some hidden cord of weakness deep in his vitals had been shrewdly plucked, he felt a spasm of unmanning faintness flurry through him, a feeling of insubstantiality, as if the world were about to fade away from him, or he from the world. It was all he could do to stand upright and not shake.
As the weird qualm receded somewhat, he looked along the curving line of brightly lit moonlit faces to learn if it were something others had felt. Halfway up the hill the five girls moved on slowly in line, chanting raptly. Fingers, nearest of them but for Gale, looked toward him, but tranquilly, as though she’d simply sensed his gaze upon her. Next closest after the girls, Pshawri, dutifully chanting, or at least moving his lips. Finally, not five feet away, the Mouser, making not even pretence of chanting, seemingly lost in a brown study, but very much at ease, hood thrown back to bare his close-cropped head to the frosty air, while Fafhrd’s covered his ears.
Looking on his other side he saw, in orderly succession and absorbed in the ceremony: Afreyt, Groniger, Skullick, old Ourph the Mingol, Cif, fat Mother Grum the Witch, and Rill the Harlot.
And then Fafhrd looked at Cif again (she must have started) and saw that she was now staring past him, her pale face of a sudden contorted with an expression of incredulous horror.
He whipped around and saw, on his side, one face fewer than there’d been before. While he’d been looking in the other direction, the Mouser had gone away somewhere and his fingers dropped away unfelt from the hook that was the Northerner’s left hand.
And then he noticed that Pshawri, with an expression on his face not unlike that of Cif’s, was staring at the Northerner’s knees as if the Gray Mouser’s young lieutenant were stupefiedly witnessing some horrifying miracle. Fafhrd looked down and saw that the Mouser had indeed dropped away! Straight down feet first into the frozen earth so he was buried upright to his waist and was no taller than a dwarf. Impossible! But there it was.
Just then, as if some subterranean being gripping the Mouser’s ankles had given another mighty yank, Fafhrd’s comrade swiftly sank another half yard so he was buried to the chin like a Mingol traitor whom vengeful mates will leisurely dispatch by bowling rocks at his head and leaden-weighted skulls, though only after his concubines have been allowed (or forced) to kiss him one time each full on the lips.
And then the Mouser looked up at Fafhrd with moonlit eyes widening, as if in full realization of his horrid plight, and gasped in piteous appeal, ‘Help me!’ And his tall comrade could only quake and stare.
Fafhrd heard from behind the sound of onrunning footsteps, boots ringing on frozen earth. And for a moment it seemed to him that he could see the moonlit ground through the Mouser’s head, as if the little man were becoming attenuated, insubstantial. Or was that only his strange qualm returning? His own swimming eyes?
And then, as if those subterranean hands were giving another tug, the Mouser began to move downward once again rapidly.
From behind him Cif cast herself full length on the frozen ground, her outstretched hands snatching at the disappearing head.
Fafhrd regained his power of movement and swiftly scanned around in case the Mouser’s ghost were floating off in some other direction. The air seemed full of movement, but nothing substantial when he looked closely.
With three exceptions everyone was staring at Cif or else hurrying toward her, who was now scrabbling through the scant frozen grass, as though frenziedly hunting for a jewel she’d dropped there. Afreyt and Groniger were looking off intently toward Elvenhold. The tall woman pointed at something and the deliberate man nodded in agreement.
While Fingers was staring straight at Fafhrd in cool accusal, as if asking, ‘Why didn’t you save your friend?’
9
From the Gray Mouser’s point of view, what had happened was this:
He’d been staring toward the moon, quite unmindful of the cold and the ceremony, lost in puzzlement as to how he could at once feel so heavy—as though wearied to death and barely able to stay erect, victim of some heatless fever—and yet at the same time so listless-light and insubstantial, as if he were thinning out to become a ghost whom the slightest breeze might blow away. The two feelings didn’t agree at all, yet both were there.
Without warning, he experienced a spasm of strange faintness, like Fafhrd’s but more intense, so that he blacked out completely. It was as if the ground had been taken out from under his feet. When he came to his senses again, he was looking up at his northern comrade, who had never before seemed quite so tall.
He must have simply keeled over, he told himself, and fallen flat. But when he tried to get up, he found he could move neither hand nor foot, bend waist or knee. Was he paralyzed? Everywhere below his neck something gripped him
closely, and when he moved his fingers and thumbs against each other (both hands being imprisoned down by his sides so he couldn’t spread fingers or make a fist), that something felt suspiciously grainy, like raw earth.
In the most horrifying reorientation he’d ever experienced in the course of an eventful life, flat-on-my-back became buried-to-my-neck. Oh dismal! And so incredible that he couldn’t really say whether it was the world, or he, that had moved to effect the dreadful exchange.
Something terribly swift in his mind scanned almost instantaneously the pressures all over his body. Were they slightly greater around his ankles? As if he wore gyves, as if something, or someone gripped both his legs—such as the quicksand nixies Sheelba had warned him against in the Great Salt Marsh. Oh Mog, no!
His gaze traveled up Fafhrd, who seemed tall as a pine, and he gasped out his agonized plea—and the great lout would only goggle and grimace at him, mop and mow in the moonlight, not only withholding help, but also seeming utterly unmindful of the priceless privilege he enjoyed of standing free atop the ground rather than being immured in it!
Beyond Fafhrd he saw Cif running straight at him. If she kept on, she’d boot his face, the mad maenad! He instinctively tried to duck aside and only succeeded in wrenching his neck. And then he felt the grip on his ankles tighten and cold earth mount his chin, as his whole being was drawn downward. He clapped his lips tightly together to keep dirt out, drew one swift breath, then tried to narrow his nostrils, finally closed tight his eyes as his engulfment continued. Last thing he saw was the moon. As the gray glow of it transmitted through his eyelids vanished upward, he felt his pate scratched and his topknot sharply tweaked. Then even that was gone and there remained only a grainy coldness sliding up his cheeks. Strangely, then, it seemed to grow a little warmer and—a very little—looser, so he could puff some of the air trapped in his mouth out into his cheeks. The texture of the stuff scraping his cheeks changed from earth to wool to earth again. He realized his cowl had been dragged upward from around his neck and left buried above him. And then the rough sliding seemed to stop. One other thing he had to admit: the feeling of heaviness that had so long dogged him was completely gone. However closely confined, he seemed now rather to be floating.