by Fritz Leiber
Looking sharply down along his legs and beyond his feet, he saw the blue-streaked chalky form of Sister Pain advancing toward him in a tigerish rush with talons spread out to either side of her grinning narrow face and eyes aglow with red sadistic fire.
Confirming an earlier intuition of his as well as his guess about the tunnels, without any physical effort on his part, but a tremendous mental one, he began to move away from her at the same speed with which she came horrendously on, so that they both were flashing through the grainy yet utterly unresistant earth at nightmare speed, and Ississi’s figure vanished behind them in a trice…
No, not quite. For it seemed to the Mouser that at that point his pursuer paused for an instant while her blue-pied flesh drank up the other’s pale green substance, superadding Ississi’s fishy duties to her own dire hungers before coming again horrifically on.
He was dearly tempted to glance forward to get some clue to where they were hastening beneath the Outer Sea, for they were trending deeper, yet dared not do so for fear that in trying to dodge some barely glimpsed seeming obstacle, he’d dash himself into the rocky walls flashing by so close. No, best trust himself to whatever mighty power gripped him. However blind, it knew more than he.
There whipped past the dark mouth of an intersecting tunnel leading southward if he’d kept his bearings, he judged. To Simorgya? In which case, whither did this branch he was careening through extend? To No-Ombrulsk? Beyond that, under land, to the Sea of Monsters? To the dread Shadowland itself, abode of Death?
What use to speculate when he had yielded up control of his movements to the whirlwind? Against all reasonable expectations, he found his great speed lulling despite the pearly flash and fleeting glow of sea fossils. Perhaps at this very moment, for all he knew, he was breathing softly back in a snug grave in Rime Isle and dreaming this dream. Even the Great God Himself must have had moments while creating the universe or ’verses when He was absolutely certain He was dreaming. All’s well, he mused. He dropped off.
18
Cif insisted on repeating Pshawri’s next reading as their dowsing led them back across the Great Meadow, dangling the cinder cube from her own left-hand ring finger and thumb, and when she got the same result as he had, decided they should alternate taking readings thereafter. He submitted to this arrangement with proper grace, but couldn’t quite conceal his nervousness whenever the magic pendulum was out of his hands, at such times watching her like a hawk.
‘You’re jealous of me about the Captain, aren’t you?’ she rallied the young lieutenant, though not teasingly.
He considered that soberly and answered with equal frankness, ‘Well, yes, Lady, I am—though in no way challenging your own far greater and different claim on his concern. But I did meet him before you did, when he recruited me in Lankhmar for his band before ever he outfitted Flotsam and set sail for Rime Isle.’
‘You forget,’ she corrected him gently, ‘that before your enlistment the Lady Afreyt and I journeyed to Lankhmar to hire him and Fafhrd in the Isle’s defence, though on that occasion we were swiftly raped back to this polar clime by Khahkht’s icy blast.’
‘That’s true,’ he allowed. ‘Nevertheless…’ He seemed to think better of it.
‘Nevertheless what?’
‘I was going to say,’ he told her somewhat haltingly, ‘that I think he was aware of me before that time. After all, we were both freelance thieves, though he infinitely my superior, and that means a lot in Lankhmar, where the Guild’s so strong, and there were other reasons…Well, anyway, I knew his reputation.’
Cif had just completed a reading and clutched the cinder cube in her right hand, not having yet put it in her pouch nor passed it on to him for like securing. She was about to ask Pshawri, ‘What other reasons?’ but instead lost herself in study of his broody features, which were just becoming visible in the gray light without help of the white glow of the lamp, which sat on the ground next where she had dowsed.
Only Astarion, Nehwon’s brightest star, was still a pale dot in the dawn-violet heavens, and would soon be gone. Ahead of them but off to their left (for their dowsing was gradually turning them south of the path their party had travelled last evening) a blanket of fog risen from the ground hid all of Salthaven but the highest roofs and the pillars and wind-chime arch of the Moon Temple, tinied by distance. The fog lapped higher round those objects as they watched and, although there was no wind, advanced toward them, whitely distilled from earth. Its far edge brightened where the sun would rise, although a squadron of clouds cruising above had not yet caught its rays.
‘It must be cold for the Captain down there below,’ Pshawri breathed with an involuntary shudder.
‘You are most deeply concerned about him, aren’t you?’ Cif observed. ‘Beyond the ordinary. I’ve noticed it for the past fortnight. Ever since you received a missive inscribed in violet ink and sealed with green wax, carried on the last trader before Weasel in from Lankhmar.’
‘You have sharp eyes, Lady,’ he voiced.
‘I saw it when Captain Mouser emptied the mail pouch. What is it, Pshawri?’
He shook his head. ‘With all respect, Lady, it is a matter that concerns solely the Captain and myself—and one other. I cannot speak of it without his leave.’
‘The Captain knows about it?’
‘I do not think so. Yet I can’t be sure.’
Cif would have continued her queries, although Pshawri’s reluctance to answer more fully seemed genuine and deep-rooted—and more than a little mysterious—but at that moment the five from the fire caught up with them and the mood for exchanging confidences was lost. In fact, Cif and Pshawri felt rather on exhibition, for during the next couple of dowsings each of the newcomers had to see for themselves close up the wonder of the heavy cube cinder hanging out of true, straining away from the shaft head definitely though slightly. In the end even sceptical Groniger was convinced.
‘I must believe my eyes,’ he said grudgingly, ‘though the temptation not to is strong.’
‘It’s harder to believe such things by day,’ Rill pointed out. ‘Much easier at night.’
Mother Grum nodded. ‘Witchcraft is so.’
The sun had emerged by then, beating a yellow path to them across the top of the fog, which strangely persisted.
And both Cif and Pshawri had to answer questions about the cord’s subtle vibrations imperceptible to sight.
‘It’s just there,’ she said, ‘a faint thrilling.’
‘I can’t tell you how I know it’s from the Captain,’ he had to admit. ‘I just do.’
Groniger snorted.
‘I wish I could be as sure as Pshawri,’ Cif told them at that. ‘For me it doesn’t sign his name.’
Two more dowsings brought them within sight of Rime Isle’s south coast. They prepared to dowse a third time a few paces short of where the meadow grew bare and sloped down rockily and rather sharply for some ten more paces to the narrow beach lapped by the wavelets of the Outer Sea. To the west this small palisade grew gradually steeper and approached the vertical. To the east the stubborn fog reached to within a bowshot of them. Farther off they could spy rising from its whiteness the tops of the masts of the ships riding at anchor in Salthaven’s harbour or docked at its wharves.
It was Pshawri’s turn to dangle the cube cinder. He seemed somewhat nervous, his movements faster, though steady enough as he locked into position with legs bent, right eye centred over the finger juncture pinching the cord.
Cif and Rill both crouched on their knees close by, so as to observe the pendulum from the side at eye level. They seemed about to make an observation, but Pshawri from his superior vantage point forestalled them.
‘The bob no longer pulls southeast,’ he rapped out in a quick strident voice, ‘but drags down straight and true.’
There were low hisses of indrawn breaths and a ‘Yes!’ from Rill. Cif suggested at once that she repeat his reading, and he gave her the pendulum without demur, though hi
s nervousness seemed to increase. He stationed himself between her and the water. The others completed a ragged circle around her. Rill still crouched close.
After a pause, ‘Still straight down,’ Cif said, with another ‘Yes,’ from Rill. ‘And the vibration.’
Skullick uncorked with, ‘If the bob slanting means he’s moving in that direction, then straight down says that Captain Mouser is below us but not moving just now.’
Cif lifted her eyes toward the speaker. ‘If it is the Captain.’
‘But the how of all this?’ Groniger asked wonderingly, shaking his head.
‘Look,’ Rill said in a strange voice. ‘The bob is moving again.’
They all eyed another wonder. The bob was swinging back and forth between the direction of the shaft head and the sea, but at least five times as slowly as the period of a pendulum of that length. It crawled its swing.
There was some awe in Skullick’s usually irreverent voice. ‘As if he were pacing back and forth down there. Right now.’
‘Maybe he’s found a sea tunnel,’ Mother Grum suggested.
‘Those fables,’ Groniger growled.
Without warning the gold-glinting dark-coloured bob jumped seaward to taut cord’s length from Cif’s hand. She gave a quick hiss of pain and it sped on, trailing its cord like a comet’s tail and narrowly missing Rill’s head.
In a diving catch Pshawri interposed the cupped palm of his right hand, which it smote audibly. He clapped his other hand across it as he himself rolled over and came to his feet with both hands tightly cupped together, as if they caged a small animal or large insect, the cord dangling from between them, and walked back to Cif while the rest watched fascinatedly.
Skullick said, almost religiously, ‘As if, after pacing, the Captain shot off through solid earth under the sea like a bolt of lightning. If such can be imagined.’
Groniger just shook his head, a study in sorely tried skepticism.
Pshawri said to Cif, lifting his elbows, ‘Lady, would you please unbutton my pouch for me?’
She was studying the red-scored pads of her left ring finger and thumb, where the cord had taken skin as it had jerked away from between them, but she quickly complied with his instructions, being careful not to use these two digits in the process.
He plunged his cupped hands into his pouch and went on saying, ‘Now tie the cord around the button—no, through the central button hole of the pouch flap. Use a square knot. Although it is not moving now, this thing is best securely confined. I don’t trust it anymore, no matter what it’s told us.’
Cif followed the further instructions without argument, saying, ‘I thoroughly agree with you, Lieutenant Pshawri. In fact, I don’t think the cinder cube has been tracing the Mouser’s movements underground at all, except perhaps at first to start us off.’
The knot was firmly tied. As Pshawri withdrew his hands she closed the flap on the pouch and he buttoned its three buttons.
‘Then to what power do you think it’s responding?’ Rill asked, getting to her feet.
‘To Loki’s,’ Cif averred. ‘I think he wants to lead us on a wild goose chase across the sea. It has all the earmarks of his handiwork: a fascinating lure, strange developments mixed with painful surprises.’ She popped her injured finger and thumb into her mouth and sucked them.
‘It does seem like his tricksy behaviour,’ Rill agreed.
‘He’s an outlaw god, all right,’ Mother Grum nodded. ‘And vengeful. Likely the one who sent Captain Mouser down.’
‘What’s more,’ mumbled Cif, talking around her fingers, ‘I think I know the way to scotch his plots and perhaps return the Mouser to us.’
‘Dowsers ahoy!’ a bright new voice called out. They turned and saw Afreyt coming briskly across the Meadow carrying a hamper woven of reeds.
She went on, ‘There’s news from the digging I thought you all should know, but Cif especially. By the way, where’s Fafhrd?’
‘We haven’t seen him, Lady,’ Pshawri told her.
‘Why should he be here?’ Groniger asked blankly.
‘Why, he left off digging to rest and think alone,’ Afreyt explained as she reached them and set the hamper on the grass. ‘But then Udall and another saw him take a jug and lamp and head out after you. They had nothing to do and watched him until he was halfway to you, Udall said.’
‘We’ve none of us seen him,’ Cif assured her.
‘But then where are Gale and Fingers?’ Afreyt next asked. ‘Their cot in the shelter tent was empty and their clothes gone that had been warming beside the fire. I thought they must have followed after Fafhrd, like they’d been doing all night.’
‘We haven’t seen pelt or paws of them either,’ Cif insisted. ‘But what’s this news you promised?’
‘But then where in Nehwon…’ Afreyt began, looking around at the others. They all shook their heads. She told herself, ‘Leave it,’ and Cif, ‘This should please you, I think. We’d driven the sideways corridor about fifteen paces in…the digging went faster than straight down—it was a soft sand stretch—and the shoring was easier, despite the added task of roofing…when we found this embedded halfway up the face.’
And she handed Cif a grit-flecked dirk scabbard.
‘Cat’s Claw’s?’
‘The same.’
‘Right!’ Cif said as she examined it eagerly.
‘And it was lying horizontal, point end toward us,’ Afreyt went on, ‘as if the earth had torn it from his belt as he was being dragged or somehow gotten along, or as though he had left it that way as a clue for us.’
‘It proves that Captain Mouser’s down below, all right,’ Skullick voiced.
‘It does give weight to the two earlier findings of the dirk and cowl,’ Groniger admitted.
‘And so you can understand,’ Afreyt went on, ‘why I wanted to tell Fafhrd about it at once. And you, of course, Cif. But what’s been happening with the dowsing? What’s brought you here to the coast? You surely haven’t traced him this far—or have you?’
So Cif told Afreyt how the dowsing had gone and how the bob had tried to escape on the last trial of its powers and was no longer trusted, and also her guess that Loki was behind it all.
Afreyt commented at that, ‘Fafhrd himself warned me the evidence from dowsing would be uncertain and ambiguous compared with the clues got from actual digging, which he thought should be kept up in any case, to hold open an exit from the underworld for the Gray One at the same point he’d entered it. And you may very well be right about Loki trying to lead us astray. He was a tricksy god, as you know better than I, loving destruction above all else. For that matter, old Odin wasn’t reliable either, taking Fafhrd’s hand after the loving worship we’d provided him.’
Pshawri interposed, ‘Lady Cif, just before the Lady Afreyt joined us, you said you’d thought of a way to foil Loki’s plots and clear the way for Captain Mouser’s return.’
Cif nodded. ‘Since the cube cinder is of no use to us as a talisman, I think that one of us should take it and hurl it into the flame pit, the molten lava lake of volcano Darkfire, hopefully returning god Loki to his proper element and perchance assuaging his ire against the Captain.’
‘And lose forever one of Rime Isle’s ikons, the Gold Cube of Square Dealing?’ Groniger protested.
‘That gold’s for ever tainted with the stranger god’s essence,’ Mother Grum informed him, ‘something I cannot exorcise. Cif’s rede is good.’
‘A golden ikon can be refashioned and resanctified,’ old Ourph pointed out. ‘Not so a man.’
‘I cannot muster argument against such action, though it seems to me sheerest superstition,’ said Groniger wearily. ‘This morn’s events have taken me out of my own element of reason.’
‘And if it must be done,’ Cif went on, ‘you, Pshawri, are the one to attempt it. You raped the cube cinder from the Maelstrom’s maw. You should be the one returns it to the fire.’
‘If the damned thing will let itself be hurled i
nto the flame pit,’ Skullick burst out, his irreverence at last regenerated. ‘You’ll hurl it and it’ll take flight the gods know where.’
‘I’ll find a way to constrain it, never fear,’ the young lieutenant assured him, an uncustomary iron in his voice. He turned to Cif.
‘From my heart’s depths I thank you, Lady, for that task. When I wrested that accursed object from the whirlpool, I do now believe I doomed Captain Mouser to his present plight. It is my dearest desire to wipe out that fault.’
‘Now wait a moment, all of you,’ Afreyt cut in. ‘I am myself inclined to agree with you about the Queller and Darkfire. It strikes me as the wise thing to do. But this is a step may mean the life or death of Captain Mouser. I do not think that we should take it without the agreement of Captain Fafhrd, his lifelong comrade and forever. I wear his ring, it’s true, yet in this matter would not speak for him. So I come back to it: where’s Fafhrd?’
‘Who are these coming toward us from Salthaven?’ Rill interrupted in an arresting voice. ‘If I don’t mistake their identities, they may bring news bearing on that question.’
The fog blanket to the east was finally breaking up and shredding under the silent bombardment of the sun’s bright beams, although the latter were losing a little of their golden strength as the orb mounted and the sky became heavy. Through the white rags and tatters two slight and white-clad figures trudged: who waved their hands and broke into a run upon seeing that they were observed. As they drew closer it was to be seen that the redhead’s eyes were large in her small face but the silver-blonde’s larger still.
‘Aunt Afreyt!’ Gale called as soon as they got near. ‘We’ve had a great adventure and we’ve got the most amazing news to tell!’
‘Never mind that now,’ Afreyt answered somewhat shortly. ‘Tell us, where’s Fafhrd?’