water! — that tempted him. But how do I go about it?” He shook a big finger at Ningauble. “And no more Gentle- Sonning!”
Ningauble paused. Then he said only, “Use your own judgment.”
Sheelba said, “Beware the Black Wall!”
Ningauble said to Fafhrd, “Hold, I have a gift for you,” and held out to him a ragged ribbon a yard long, pinched between the cloth of the wizard's long sleeve so that it was impossible to see the manner of hand that pinched. Fafhrd took the tatter with a snort, crumpled it into a ball, and thrust it into his pouch.
“Have a greater care with it,” Ningauble warned. “It is the Cloak of Invisibility, somewhat worn by many magic usings. Do not put it on until you near the Bazaar of the Devourers. It has two minor weaknesses: it will not make you altogether invisible to a master sorcerer if he senses your presence and takes certain steps. Also, see to it that you do not bleed during this exploit, for the cloak will not hide blood.”
“I've a gift too!” Sheelba said, drawing from out of his black cowl-hole — with sleeve-masked hand, as Ningauble had done — something that shimmered faintly in the dark like…
Like a spiderweb.
Sheelba shook it, as if to dislodge a spider, or perhaps two.
“The Blindfold of True Seeing,” he said as he reached it toward Fafhrd. “It shows all things as they really are! Do not lay it across your eyes until you enter the Bazaar. On no account, as you value your life or your sanity, wear it now!”
Fafhrd took it from him most gingerly, the flesh of his fingers crawling. He was inclined to obey the taciturn wizard's instructions. At this moment he truly did not much care to see the true visage of Sheelba of the Eyeless Face.
The Gray Mouser was reading the most interesting book of them all, a great compendium of secret knowledge written in a script of astrologic and geomantic signs, the meanings of which fairly leaped off the page into his mind.
To rest his eyes from that — or rather to keep from gobbling the book too fast — he peered through a nine- elbowed brass tube at a scene that could only be the blue heaven-pinnacle of the universe where angels flew shimmeringly like dragonflies and where a few choice heroes rested from their great mountain-climb and spied down critically on the antlike labors of the gods many levels below.
To rest his eye from that, he looked up between the scarlet (bloodmetal?) bars of the inmost cage at the most winsome, slim, fair, jet-eyed girl of them all. She knelt, sitting on her heels, with her upper body leaned back a little. She wore a red velvet tunic and had a mop of golden air so thick and pliant that she could sweep it in a neat curtain over her upper face, down almost to her pouting lips. With the slim fingers of one hand she would slightly part these silky golden drapes to peer at the Mouser playfully, while with those of the other she rattled golden castanets in a most languorously slow rhythm, though with occasional swift staccato bursts.
The Mouser was considering whether it might not be as well to try a turn or two on the ruby-crusted golden crank next to his elbow, when he spied for the first time the glimmering wall at the back of the shop. What could its material be? he asked himself. Tiny diamonds countless as the sand set in smoky glass? Black opal? Black pearl? Black moonshine?
Whatever it was, it was wholly fascinating, for the Mouser quickly set down his book, using the nine-crooked spy-tube to mark his place — a most engrossing pair of pages on dueling where were revealed the Universal Parry and its five false variants and also the three true forms of the Secret Thrust — and with only a finger-wave to the ensorceling blonde in red velvet he walked quickly toward the back of the shop.
As he approached the Black Wall he thought for an instant that he glimpsed a silver wraith, or perhaps a silver skeleton, walking toward him out of it, but then he saw that it was only his own darkly handsome reflection, pleasantly flattered by the lustrous material. What had momentarily suggested silver ribs was the reflection of the silver lacings on his tunic.
He smirked at his image and reached out a finger to touch its lustrous finger when — Lo, a wonder! — his hand went into the wall with never a sensation at all save a faint tingling coolth promising comfort like the sheets of a fresh-made bed.
He looked at his hand inside the wall and — Lo, another wonder — it was all a beautiful silver faintly patterned with tiny scales. And though his own hand indubitably, as he could tell by clenching it, it was scarless now and a mite slimmer and longer fingered — altogether a more handsome hand than it had been a moment ago.
He wriggled his fingers and it was like watching small silver fish dart about — fingerlings!
What a droll conceit, he thought, to have a dark fish-pond or rather swimming pool set on its side indoors, so that one could walk into the fracious erect fluid quietly and gracefully, instead of all the noisy, bouncingly athletic business of diving!
And how charming that the pool should be filled not with wet soppy cold water, but with a sort of moon-dark essence of sleep. An essence with beautifying cosmetic properties too — a sort of mudbath without the mud. The Mouser decided he must have a swim in this wonder pool at once, but just then his gaze lit on a long high black couch toward the other end of the dark liquid wall, and beyond the couch a small high table set with viands and a crystal pitcher and goblet.
He walked along the wall to inspect these, his handsome reflection taking step for step with him.
He trailed his hand in the wall for a space and then withdrew it, the scales instantly vanishing and the familiar old scars returning.
The couch turned out to be a narrow high-sided black coffin lined with quilted black satin and piled at one end with little black satin pillows. It looked most invitingly comfortable and restful — not quite as inviting as the Black Wall, but very attractive just the same; there was even a rack of tiny black books nested in the black satin for the occupant's diversion and also a black candle, unlit.
The collation on the little ebony table beyond the coffin consisted entirely of black foods. By sight and then by nibbling and sipping the Mouser discovered their nature: thin slices of a very dark rye bread crusted with poppy seeds and dripped with black butter; slivers of charcoal-seared steak; similarly broiled tiny thin slices of calf's liver sprinkled with dark spices and liberally pricked with capers; the darkest grape jellies; truffles cut paper thin and mushrooms fried black; pickled chestnuts; and of course, ripe olives and black fish eggs — caviar. The black drink, which foamed when he poured it, turned out to be stout laced with the bubbly wine of Ilthmar.
He decided to refresh the inner Mouser — the Mouser who lived a sort of blind soft greedy undulating surface-life between his lips and his belly — before taking a dip in the Black Wall.
Fafhrd re-entered the Plaza of Dark Delights walking warily and with the long tatter that was the Cloak of Invisibility trailing from between left forefinger and thumb and with the glimmering cobweb that was the Blindfold of True Seeing pinched even more delicately by its edge between the same digits of his right hand. He was not yet altogether certain that the trailing gossamer hexagon was completely free of spiders.
Across the Plaza he spotted the bright-mouthed shop — the shop he had been told was an outpost of the deadly Devourers — through a ragged gather of folk moving about restlessly and commenting and speculating to one another in harsh excited undertones.
The only feature of the shop Fafhrd could make out at all clearly at this distance was the red-capped red- footed baggy-trousered porter, not capering now but leaning on his long broom beside the trefoil-arched doorway.
With a looping swing of his left arm Fafhrd hung the Cloak of Invisibility around his neck. The ragged ribband hung to either side down his chest in its wolfskin jerkin only halfway to his wide belt which supported longsword and short-axe. It did not vanish his body to the slightest degree that he could see and he doubted it worked at all. Like many another thaumaturge, Ningauble never hesitated to give one useless charms, not for any treacherous reason, necessarily, but simply to improve one's morale. Fafhrd strode boldly toward the shop.
The Northerner was a tall, broad-shouldered, formidable-looking man — doubly formidable by his barbaric dress and weaponing in supercivilized Lankhmar — and so he took it for granted that the ordinary run of city folk stepped out of his way; indeed it had never occurred to him that they should not.
He got a shock. All the clerks, seedy bravos, scullery folk, students, slaves, second-rate merchants and second-class courtesans who would automatically have moved aside for him (though the last with a saucy swing of the hips) now came straight at him, so that he had to dodge and twist and stop and even sometimes dart back to avoid being toe-tramped and bumped. Indeed one fat pushy proud-stomached fellow almost carried away his
