As if in some grotesque ritual procession, they sailed out into the night, bearing a fortune in their claws: necklaces, brooches, rings and pins of gold, silver, and electrum set with all colors of jewels, palely rich in the moonlight.
After the last three for whom no jewels were left vanished, Atya raised her black-draped arms toward the two outjutting sculptures of winged women, as if imploring a miracle, gave voice to a mad lonely wail, recklessly sprang from the altar, and ran after the birds.
The Mouser did not strike, but followed her, his sword dangerously close. Together they plunged into the embrasure. There was another cry, and after a little the Mouser returned alone and came over to Fafhrd. He cut Fafhrd's bonds, and pulled away the chair, helping him up. The injured falconer did not move, but lay whimpering softly.
“She sprang into the Hlal?” asked Fafhrd, his throat dry. The Mouser nodded.
Fafhrd dazedly rubbed his forehead. But his mind was clearing, as the effects of the poison waned.
“Even as the names were the same,” he mumbled softly. “Atya and Tyaa!”
The Mouser went toward the altar and began to saw at the lashings of the cutpurse. “Some of your men tried to pepper me tonight, Stravas,” he said lightly. “I had no easy time eluding them and finding my way up the choked stairs.”
“I am sorry for that — now,” said Stravas.
“They were your men too, I suppose, who went jewel-stealing to Muulsh's house tonight?”
Stravas nodded, uncramping loosened limbs. “But I hope we're allies now,” he answered, “although there's no loot to share, except for some worthless glass and gew gaws.” He laughed grimly. “Was there no way to get rid of those black demons without losing all?”
“For a man plucked from the beak of death, you are very greedy, Stravas,” said the Mouser. “But I suppose it's your professional training. No, I for one am glad the birds have fled. Most of all I feared they would get out of hand — as would surely have happened had I killed Atya. Only she could control them. Then we'd have died surely. Observe how Fafhrd's arm is swollen.”
“Perhaps the birds will bring the treasure back,” said Stravas hopefully.
“I do not think so,” answered the Mouser.
Two nights later, Muulsh, the moneylender, having learned something of these matters from a broken-armed falconer who had long been employed to care for his wife's songbirds, sprawled comfortably on the luxurious bed in his wife's room. One pudgy hand clasped a goblet of wine, the other that of a pretty maid who had been his wife's hairdresser.
“I never really loved her,” he said, pulling the demurely smiling wench toward him. “It was only that she used to goad and frighten me.”
The maid gently disengaged her hand.
“I just want to hang the coverings on those cages,” she explained. “Their eyes remind me of hers.” And she shivered delicately under her thin tunic.
When the last songbird was shrouded and silent, she came back and sat on his knee.
Gradually the fear left Lankhmar. But many wealthy women continued to wear silver cages over their features, considering it a most enchanting fashion. Gradually style altered the cages to soft masks of silver network.
And some time afterward the Mouser said to Fafhrd, “There is a thing I have not told you. When Atya leaped into the Hlal, it was full moonlight. Yet somehow my eyes lost her as she fell, and I saw no splash whatever, although I peered closely. Then, as I lifted my head, I saw the end of that ragged procession of birds across the moon. Behind them came, I thought, a very much larger bird, flapping strongly.”
“And you think…” asked Fafhrd.
“Why, I think Atya drowned in the Hlal,” said the Mouser.
IX: The Prince of Pain-ease
The big barbarian Fafhrd, outcast of the World of Nehwon's Cold Waste and forever a foreigner in the land and city of Lankhmar, Nehwon's most notable area, and the small but deadly swordsman the Gray Mouser, a stateless person even in careless, unbureaucratic Nehwon, and man without a country (that he knew of), were fast friends and comrades from the moment they met in Lankhmar City near the intersection of Gold and Cash Streets. But they never shared a home. For one obvious thing, they were by nature, except for their companionship, loners; and such are almost certain to be homeless. For another, they were almost always adventuring, tramping, or exploring, or escaping from the deadly consequences of past misdeeds and misjudgments. For a third, their first and only true loves — Fafhrd's Vlana and the Mouser's Ivrian — were foully murdered (and bloodily though comfortlessly revenged) the first night the two young men met, and any home without a best-loved woman is a chilly place. For a fourth, they habitually stole all their possessions, even their swords and daggers, which they always named Graywand and Heartseeker and Scalpel and Cat's Claw, no matter how often they lost them and pilfered replacements — and homes are remarkably difficult to steal. Here, of course, one does not count tents, inn- lodgings, caves, palaces in which one happens to be employed or perhaps the guest of a princess or queen, or even shacks one rents for a while, as the Mouser and Fafhrd briefly and later did in an alley near the Plaza of Dark Delights.
Yet after their first trampings and gallopings of Nehwon, after their second, mostly womanless, adventures in and about Lankhmar — for the memories of Ivrian and Vlana haunted them for years — and after their ensorceled voyage across the Outer Sea and back, and after their encounters with the Seven Black Priests and with Atya and Tyaa, and their second return to Lankhmar, they did for a few brief moons share a house and home, although it was a rather small and, naturally, stolen one, and the two women in it ghosts only, and its location — because of the morbid mood they also shared — most dubious and dire.
Coming one night half drunk by way of Plague Court and Bones Alley from the tavern at Cash and Whore named the Golden Lamprey to an inn of most merry yet most evil recollection called the Silver Eel — on Dim Lane, this, halfway between Cheap and Carter — they spied behind it the still uncleared cinders and blackened, tumbled stones of the tenement where their first loves Ivrian and Vlana had, after many torments, been burned to white ashes, some atomies of whom they might even now be seeing by the murky moonlight.
Much later that night and much more drunk, they wandered north beyond the Street of the Gods to the section of the aristocrats by the Sea Wall and east of the Rainbow Palace of Lankhmar's Overlord Karstak Ovartamortes. In the estate of Duke Danius, the Mouser spied through the spiked wall and now by brighter moonlight — the air there being cleansed of night-smog by the gentle north seawind — a snug, trim, well-polished, natural wooden garden house with curvingly horned ridgepole and beam-ends, to which abode he took a sudden extreme fancy and which he even persuaded Fafhrd to admire. It rested on six short cedar posts which in turn rested on flat rock. Nothing then would do but rush to Wall Street and the Marsh Gate, hire a brawny two-score of the inevitable nightlong idlers there with a silver coin and big drink apiece and promise of a gold coin and bigger drink to come, lead them to Danius’ dark abode, pick the iron gate-lock, lead them warily in, order them heave up the garden house and carry it out — providentially without any great creakings and with no guards or watchmen appearing. In fact, the Mouser and Fafhrd were able to finish another jug of wine during their supervising. Next tightly blindfold the two-score carriers — this was the only difficult part of the operation, requiring all the Mouser's adroit, confident cajoling and Fafhrd's easy though somewhat ominous and demanding friendliness — and guide and goad the forty of the impromptu porters as they pantingly and sweatingly carried the house. They went south down empty Carter Street and west up Bones Alley (the garden house fortunately being rather narrow, three smallish rooms in a row) to the empty lot behind the Silver Eel, where after Fafhrd had hurled aside three stone blocks there was space to ease it down. Then it only remained to guide the still blindfolded carriers back to the Marsh Gate, give them their gold and buy them their wine — a big jug apiece seemed wisest to blot out memory — then rush back in the pinkening dawn to buy from Braggi, the tavernmaster, the worthless lot behind the Silver Eel, reluctantly chop off with Fafhrd's fighting axe the garden house's ridgepole and beam-horns, throw water and then disguising ashes onto the roof and walls (without thought of what evil omen this was, recalling Vlana and Ivrian), finally stagger inside and collapse into sleep on the naked floor before even looking around.
