by Fritz Leiber
VI: Trapped In the Sea of Stars
Fafhrd the educated barbarian and his constant comrade the Gray (Grey?) Mouser, city-born but wizard-tutored in the wilds, had in their leopard-boat Black Racer sailed farther south in the Outer Sea along the Quarmallian or west coast of Lankhmar continent than they had ever ventured before, or any other honest mariner they knew.
They were lured on by a pair of shimmer-sprights, as they are called, a breed of will-o'-the-wisps which men deem infallible guides to lodgements of precious metals, if only one have a master hunter's patience and craft to track them down, by reason of which they are also called treasure-flies, silver-moths, and gold-bugs. This pair had a coppery pink seeming by day and a silvery black gleam by night, promising by those hues a trove of elektrum and still dearer, because massier, white gold. They most resembled restlessly flowing, small bedsheets of gossamer. They fluttered ceaselessly about the single mast, darting ahead, drifting behind. Sometimes they were almost invisible, faintest heat-blurs in the pelting fire of the near-vertical sun, ghostliest shimmers in the dark of night and easily mistaken for reflections of the White Huntress’ light on sea and sail, the moon now being near full. Sometimes they moved as sprightly as their name, sometimes they drooped and lagged, but ever moved on. At such times they seemed sad (or melancholy, Fafhrd said, one of his favorite moods). On other occasions they became (if ears could be trusted) vocal with joy, filling the air about the leopard-boat with faint sweet jargonings, whispers ‘twixt wind and speech, and long ecstatic purrs.
By the Gray Mouser's and Fafhrd's calculations, Black Racer had now left behind Lankhmar continent to loadside, and the hypothetical Western continent far, far to steerside, and struck out due south into the Great Equatorial Ocean (sometimes called — but why? — the Sea of Stars) that girdles Nehwon and is deemed wholly dire and quite uncrossable by Lankhmarts and Easterners alike, who in their sailings hug the southern coasts of the northern continents, so that one would have thought the doughtiest sailors would have ere this turned back.
But there was, you see, another reason besides the hope of vast riches — and not chiefly their great courage either, by any means — that Fafhrd and the Mouser kept sailing on in the face of unknown perils and horrid legendary of monsters that crunched ships, and currents swifter than the hurricane, and craterous maelstroms that swallowed vastest vessels in one gulp and even sucked down venturesome islands. It was a reason they spoke of seldom to each other and then only most guardedly, in low tones after long silence in the long silent watches of the night. It was this: that on the edge of darkest sleep, or sluggishly rousing from sail-shadowed nap by day, they briefly saw the shimmer-sprights as beautiful, slim, translucent girls, mirror-image twins, with loving faces and great, glimmering wings. Girls with fine hair like gold or silver clouds and distant eyes that yet brimmed with thought and witchery, girls slim almost beyond belief yet not too slim for the act of love, if only they might wax sufficiently substantial, which was something their smiles and gazes seemed to promise might come to pass. And the two adventurers felt a yearning for these shimmer-girls such as they had never felt for mortal woman, so that they could no more turn back than men wholly ensorcelled or stark lockjawed mad.
That morning as their treasure-sprights led them on, looking like rays of rainbow in the sun, the Mouser and Fafhrd were each lost in his secret thoughts of girls and gold, so that neither noted the subtle changes in the ocean surface ahead, from ripply to half smooth with odd little long lines of foam racing east. Suddenly the gold-bugs darted east and the next instant something seized the leopard-boat's keel so that she veered strongly east with a bound like that of the lithe beast for which her class of craft was named. The tall mast was almost snapped and the two heroes were nearly thrown to the deck, and by the time they had recovered from their surprise the Black Racer was speeding east, the twin shimmer-sprights winging ahead exultantly, and the two heroes knew that they were in the grip of the Great Eastward Equatorial Current and that it was no fable. Momentarily forgetting their aerial maybe-girls, they moved to steer north out of it, Fafhrd leaning on the tiller while the Mouser saw to the large single sail, but at that moment a northwest wind struck from astern with gale force, almost driving the Black Racer under as it drove her deeper and deeper south into the current. This wind was no mere gust but steadily mounted to storm force, so that it would infallibly have torn their sail away ere they could furl it save that the current below was carrying them east almost as fast as the wind harried them on above.
Then a league to the south they saw three waterspouts traveling east together, gray pillars stretching halfway from earth to sky, at thrice Black Racer's speed at least, indicating that the current was still swifter there. As the two still-astonished sailormen perforce accepted their plight — helpless in the twin grasp of furiously speeding water and air as if their craft were frozen to the sea — the Gray Mouser cried out, “O Fafhrd, now I can well believe that metaphysical fancy that the whole universe is water and our world but one wind-haunted bubble in it.”
From where white-knuckled he gripped the tiller, Faf replied, “I'll grant, what with those ‘spouts and all this flying foam, it seems right now there's water everywhere. Yet still I can't believe that philosopher's dream of Nehwon-world a bubble, when any fool can see the sun and moon are massy orbs like Nehwon thousands of leagues distant in the high air, which must be very thin out there, by the by.
“But man, this is no time for sophistries. I'll tie the tiller, and while this weird calm lasts (born of near equal speeds of current and wind, and as if the air were cut away before and closing in behind) let's triple-reef the sail and make all snug.”
As they worked, the three waterspouts vanished in the distance ahead, to be replaced by a group of five more coming up fast from astern — somewhat nearer this time, for all the while Black Racer was being driven gradually but relentlessly south. From almost overhead the midday sun beat down fiercely, for the storm wind blowing near hurricane force had brought no clouds or opaque air with it — in itself a prodigy unparalleled in the recollection of the Mouser or even Fafhrd, a widely sailed man. After several futile efforts to steer north out of the mighty current (which resulted only in the following storm wind shifting perversely north a point or two, driving them deeper south) the two men gave over, thereby admitting their complete inability at present to influence their leopard boat's course.
“At this rate,” Fafhrd opined, “we'll cross the Great Equatorial Ocean in a matter of month or two. Lucky we're well provisioned.”
The Mouser replied dolefully, “If Racer holds together a day amidst those ‘spouts and speeds, I'll be surprised.”
“She's a stout craft,” Fafhrd said lightly. “Just think, Small Gloomy One, the southern continents, unknown to man! We'll be the first to visit ‘em!”
“If there are any such. And our planks don't split. Continents? — I'd give my soul for one small isle.”
“The first to reach Nehwon's south pole!” Fafhrd daydreamed on. “The first to climb the southern Stardocks! The first to loot the treasures of the south! The first to find what land lies at antipodes from Shadowland, realm of Death! The first—”
The Mouser quietly removed himself to the other side of the shortened sail from Fafhrd and cautiously made his way to the prow, where he wearily threw himself down in a narrow angle of shadow. He was dazed by wind, spray, exertion, the needling sun, and sheer velocity. He dully watched the coppery pinkish shimmer-sprights, which were holding position with remarkable steadiness for them at mast height a ship's length ahead.
After a while he slept and dreamed that one of them detached itself from the other, and came down and hovered above him like a long rosy spectrum and then became a fond- and narrow-visaged green-eyed girl in his arms, who loosened his clothing with slim fingers cool as milk kept in a well, so that looking down closely he saw the nipples of her dainty breasts pressing like fresh-scoured copper thimbles into the curly dark hair on his
chest. And she was saying softly and sweetly, head bent forward like his, lips and tongue brushing his ear, “Press on, press on. This is the only way to Life and immortality and paradise.” And he replied, “My dearest love, I will.”
He woke to Fafhrd's shout and to a fugitive but clear, though almost blinding, vision of a female face that was narrow and beautiful, but otherwise totally unlike that of the douce girl of his dream. A sharp, imperious face, wildly alive, made all of red-gold light, the irises of her wide eyes vermilion.
He lifted up sluggishly. His jerkin was unlaced to his waist and pushed back off his shoulders.
“Mouser,” Fafhrd said urgently, “when I first glimpsed you but now, you were all bathed in fire!” Gazing stupidly down, the Mouser saw twin threads of smoke rising from his matted chest where the nipples of his dream had pressed into it. And as he stared at the gray threads, they died. He smelled the stink of burning hair.
He shook his head, blinked, and pushed himself to his feet. “What a strange fancy,” he said to Fafhrd. “The sun must have got in your eye. Say, look there!”
The five waterspouts had drawn far ahead and had been replaced by two groups (of three and four respectively) swiftly overtaking Black Racer from astern, the four rather distant, the three appallingly close, so that they could see clearly the structure of each: pillars of wild gray water almost a ship's length thick and towering up to thrice mast height, where each broke off abruptly.
And in the farther distance they could now see still more groups of speeding spouts, and most distant-dim yet speediest of all a gigantic single one that looked leagues thick. A-prow the twin shimmer-sprights led on.
“'Tis passing strange,” Fafhrd averred.
“Does one speak of a covey of waterspouts?” the Mouser wanted to know. “Or a pride? A congeries? A fountain? Or — yes! — a tower! A tower of waterspouts!”
The day passed and half the night, and their weird situation of eastward speeding held — and Black Racer held together. The sea was slick and moving in long low swells across which blew thin, long, pale lines of foam. The wind was hurricane force at very least, but the velocity of the Great Equatorial Current had increased to match it.
Overhead, nearly at mast-top, the full moon shone down, scantily scattered about with stars. Her White Huntress light showed the smooth surface of the racing sea to be outdinted near and far by towers of waterspouts racing by in majestical array and yet with fantastical celerity, as if they somehow profited far more from the speed of the current than did Black Racer. At mast height and ship's length ahead, the twin shimmer-sprights flew on like flags of silver lace against the dark. All almost silently.
“Fafhrd,” the Gray Mouser spoke very softly, as if reluctant to break the silver moonlight's spectral spell, “Tonight I clearly see that Nehwon is a vast bubble rising through waters of eternity, with continents and isles afloat inside.”
“Yes, and they'd move around — the continents, I mean — and bump each other,” Fafhrd said, softly too, albeit a little gruffly. “That is, providing they'd float at all. Which I most strongly doubt.”
“They move all orderly, in pre-established harmony,” the Mouser replied. “And as for buoyancy, think of the Sinking Land.”
“But then where'd be the sun and moon and stars and planets nine?” Fafhrd objected. “All in a jumble in the bubble's midst? That's quite impossible — and ridiculous.”
“I'm getting to the stars,” the Mouser said. “They're all afloat in even stricter pre-established harmony in the Great Equatorial Ocean, which as we've seen this day and night, speeds around Nehwon's waist once each day — that is, in its effects on the waterspouts, not on Racer. Why else, I ask you, is it also called the Sea of Stars?”
Fafhrd blinked, momentarily impressed against his will. Then he grinned. “But if this ocean's all afloat with stars,” he demanded, “why can't we see ‘em all about our ship? Riddle me that, O Sage!”
The Mouser smiled back at him, very composedly.
“They're all of ‘em inside the waterspouts,” he said, “which are gray tubes of water pointing toward heaven — by which I mean, of course, the antipodes of Nehwon. Look up, bold comrade mine, at arching sky and heaven's top. You're looking at the same Great Equatorial Ocean we're afloat in, only halfway around Nehwon from Black Racer. You're looking down (or up, what skills it?) the tubes of the waterspouts there, so you can see the star at bottom of each.”
“I'm looking at the full moon too,” Fafhrd said. “Don't try to tell me that's at the bottom of a waterspout!”
“But I will,” the Mouser responded gently. “Recall the gigantic spout like speeding mesa we briefly saw far south of us last noon? That was the moonspout, to invent a word. And now it's raced to sky ahead of us, in half day since.”
“Fry me for a sardine!” Fafhrd said with great feeling. Then he sought to collect his comprehension. “And those folk on Nehwon's other side — up there — they're seeing a star at the bottom of each waterspout now around us here?”
“Of course not,” the Mouser said patiently. “Sunlight drowns out their twinkles for those folk. It's day up there, you see.” He pointed at the dark near the moon. “Up there, you see, they're bathed in highest noon, drenched in the light of sun, which now is somewhere near us, but hid from us by the thick walls of his sunspout, to coin a word wholly analogous to moonspout.”
“Oh, monstrous!” Fafhrd cried. “For if it's day up there, you little fool, why can't we see it here? Why can't we see up there Nehwon lands bathed in light with bright blue sea around ‘em? Answer me that!”
“Because there are two different kinds of light,” the Mouser said with an almost celestial tranquillity. “Seeming the same by every local test, yet utterly diverse. First, there's direct light, such as we're getting now from moon and stars up there. Second, there is reflected light, which cannot make the really longer journeys, and certainly can't recross — not one faint ray of it — Nehwon's central space to reach us here.”
“Mouser,” Fafhrd said in a very small voice, but with great certainty, “you're not just inventing words, you're inventing the whole business — on the spur of the moment as you go along.”
“Invent the Laws of Nature?” the Mouser asked with a certain horror. “That were far worse than darkest blasphemy.”
“Then in the name of all the gods at once!” Fafhrd demanded in a very large voice, “how can the sun be in a waterspout and not boil it all away in an instant in an explosion vast? Tell me at once.”
“There are some things man was not meant to know,” the Mouser said in a most portentous voice. Then, swiftly switching to the familiar, “or rather, since I am in no way superstitious, there are some things which have not yielded yet to our philosophy. An omission which in this instance I will remedy at once. There are, you see, two different kinds of energy, the one pure heat, the other purest light, which cannot boil the tiniest water-drop — the direct light I've already told you of, which changes almost entirely to heat where e'er it hits, which in turn tells us why reflected light can't make the long trip back through Nehwon's midst. There, have I answered you?”
“Oh damn, damn, damn,” Fafhrd said weakly. Then managing to rally himself, if only desperately for a last time, he asked somewhat sardonically, “All right, all right! But just where then is this floating sun you keep invoking, tucked in his vast adamantine-walled waterspout?”
“Look there,” the Mouser said, pointing due south, steerside abeam.
Across the moon-silvered gray field of the sea pricked out with speeding towers of waterspouts, almost at the dim distant horizon, Fafhrd saw a solitary gigantic waterspout huge as an island, taller than tallest mesa, moving east at least as swiftly as the rest and as ponderous-relentlessly as a juggernaut of the emperor of the Eastern Lands. The hair rose on the back of Fafhrd's neck, he was harrowed with fear and wonder, and he said not a word, but only stared and stared as the horrendous thing forged ahead in its immensity.
A
fter a while he began also to feel a great weariness. He looked ahead and a little up at the stiffly flapping silver lace of the twin shimmer-sprights before the prow, taking comfort from their nearness and steadiness as if they were Black Racer's flags. He slowly lowered himself until he lay prone on the narrow, snugly abutting planks of the deck, his head toward the prow, his chin propped on his hands, still observing the night-sprights.
“You know how groups of stars sometimes wink out mysteriously on clearest Nehwon nights?” the Mouser said lightly and bemusedly.
“That's true enough, they do,” Fafhrd agreed, somewhat sleepily.
“That must be because the tubes of their waterspout-walls are bent enough, by a strong gale perchance, to hide their light, keep it from getting out.”
Fafhrd mumbled, “If you say so.”
After a considerable pause the Mouser asked in the same tones, “Is it not passing strange to think that in the heart of each dark, gray spout out there dotting the main, there burns (without any heat) a jewel of blinding, purest diamond light?”
Fafhrd managed what might have been a weighty sigh of agreement.
After another long pause the Mouser said reflectively, as one who tidied up loose ends, “It's easy now to see, isn't it, that the spouts small and great must all be tubes? For if they were solid water by some strange chance, they'd suck the oceans dry and fill the heavens with heaviest clouds — nay, with the sea! You get my point?”
But Fafhrd had gone to sleep. In his sleep he dreamed and in that dream he rolled over on his back and one of the shimmer-sprights parted from her sister and winged down to flutter close above him: a long and slender, black-haired form, moon pale, appareled in finest silver-shot black lace that witchingly enhanced her nakedness. She was gazing down at him tenderly yet appraisingly, with eyes that would have been violet had there been more light. He smiled at her. She slightly shook her head, her face grew grave, and she flowed down against him head to heel, her wraithlike fingers busy at the great bronze buckle of his heavy belt, while with long, night-cool cheek pressed ‘gainst his fevered one, she whispered softly and yet most clearly in his ear, each word a symbol finely drawn in blackest ink on moon-white paper, “Turn back, turn back, my dearest man, to Shadowland and Death, for that's the only way to stay alive. Trust only in the moon. Suspect all other prophecies but mine. So now, steer north, steer strongly north.”