Swords and Ice Magic

dreads. Once Fafhrd fancied unseen fliers battling overhead, as if in fabulous aerial extension of the sea war of his and Mouser's craft ‘gainst iceship huge. Once Mouser seemed to see black sails of two great fleets. Both masters cheered their men, kept them alive.

Sometimes Sea Hawk and Flotsam were far apart in their parallel flight north, quite out of sight and hail. Sometimes they came together enough to see glints of each other. And once so close their captains could trade words.

Fafhrd hailed in bursts (they were whispers in Mouser's ears), “Ho, Small One! Heard you Stardock's fliers? Our mountain princesses… fighting with Faroomfar?”

The Mouser shouted back, “My ears are frostbit. Have you sighted… other foe ships… besides monstreme?”

Fafhrd: Monstreme? What's that?

Mouser: That ill astern. My word's analogous… to bireme… quadrireme. Monstreme! — rowed by monsters.

Fafhrd: A monstreme in full gale. An awful thought! (He looked astern at it.)

Mouser: Monstreme in monsoon… would be awfuler.

Fafhrd: Let's not waste breath. When will we raise Rime Isle?

Mouser: I had forgot we had a destination. What time think you?

Fafhrd: First bell in second dogwatch. Sunset season.

Mouser: It should get lighter… when this black sun sets.

Fafhrd: It ought to. Damn the double dark!

Mouser: Damn the dimidiate halved white astern! What's its game?

Fafhrd: Freeze fast to us, I wot. Then kill by cold, else board us.

Mouser: That's great, I must say. They should hire you.

So their shouts trailed off — a joy at first, but soon a tiredness. And they had their men to care for. Besides, it was too risky, ships so close.

There passed a weary and nightmarish time. Then to the north, where nought had changed all the black day of plunging into it, Fafhrd marked a dark red glow. Long while he doubted it, deemed it some fever in his frozen skull. He noted Afreyt's slender face bobbing among his thoughts. At his side Skor asked him, “Captain, is that a distant fire dead ahead? Our lost sun about to rise in north?” At last Fafhrd believed in the red glow.

Aboard Flotsam, the Mouser, racked by the poisons of exhaustion and barely aware, heard Fafhrd whisper, “Mouser, ahoy. Look ahead. What do you see?” He realized it was a mighty shout diminished by black silence and the gale, and that Sea Hawk had come close again. He could see glints from the shields affixed along her side, while astern the monstreme was close too, looming like a leprously opalescent cliff arock. Then he looked ahead.

After a bit, “A red light,” he wheezed, then forced himself to bellow the same words alee, adding, “Tell me what is it. And then let me sleep.”

“Rime Isle, I trow,” Fafhrd replied across the gap.

“Are they burning her down?” the Mouser asked.

The answer came back faintly and eerily. “Remember… on the gold pieces… a volcano?” The Mouser didn't believe he'd heard aright his comrade's next cry after that one, until he'd made him repeat it. Then, “Sir Pshawri!” he called sharply, and when that one came limping up, hand to bandaged head, he ordered, “Heave bucket overside on line and haul it up. I want waves’ sample. Swiftly, you repulsive cripple!”

Somewhat later, Pshawri's eyebrows rose as his captain took the sloshing bucket he proffered and set it to his lips and uptilted it, next handed it back to Pshawri, swished around his teeth the sample he'd taken into his mouth, made a face, and spat to lee.

The fluid was far less icy than the Mouser had expected, almost tepid — and saltier than the water of the Sea of Monsters, which lies just west of the Parched Mountains that hide the Shadowland. He wondered for a mad moment if they'd been magicked to that vast, dead lake. ‘Twould fit with monstreme. He thought of Cif.

There was impact. The deck tilted and did not rock back. Pshawri dropped the bucket and screamed.

The monstreme had thrust between the smaller ships and instantly frozen to them with its figurehead (living or dead?) of sea monster hacked or born of ice, its jaws agape betwixt their masts, while from the lofty deck high overhead there pealed down Fafhrd's laughter, monstrously multiplied.

The monstreme visibly shrank.

At one stride went the dark. From the low west the true sun burst forth, warmly lighting the bay in which they lay and striking an infinitude of golden gleams from the great, white, crystalline cliff to steerside, down which streaming water rushed in a thousand streams and runnels. A league or so beyond it rose a conical mountain down whose sides flowed glaring scarlet and from whose jaggedly truncated summit brilliant vermilion flames streamed toward the zenith, their dark smoke carried off northeastward by the wind.

Pointing at it with outthrown arm, Fafhrd called, “See, Mouser, the red glow.”

Straight ahead, nearer than the cliff and drifting steadily still nearer, was a town or small unwalled city of low buildings hugging gentle hills, its waterfront one long low wharf, where a few ships were docked and a small crowd was assembled quietly. While to the west, rounding out the bay, there were more cliffs, the nearer bare dark rock, the farther robed in snow.

Facing the city, Fafhrd said, “Salthaven.”

Studying the steaming, streaming, glittering white cliff and fiery peak beyond, the Mouser remembered the two scenes on his golden coins, all spent. This reminded him of the four silver coins he'd not been able to spend because they'd been snatched from his table at the Eel by the battered server, and of the two scenes on their faces: an iceberg and a monster. He turned round.

The monstreme was gone. Or rather, its last dissolving shards were sinking into the tranquil waters of the bay without sound or commotion, save that a little steam was rising.

Half-hurled, half-self-magicked from the monstreme's bridge, where It had been gazing out in triumph over the welter of dire, frigid forms on the decks below, Its mind obsessed with evil, back into Its cramped black sphere, Khahkht cursed in voice like Fafhrd's which midway became again a croak, “Damn to the depths of Hell Rime Isle's strange gods! Their day will come, their dooms! Which now devise I whilst I snugly sleep….” It whipped the lid off the water-walled sun and spoke a spell that rotated the sphere until the sun was topmost, the Great Subequatorial Desert nethermost. It briefly fanned the former hot and then curled up in the latter and closed Its eyes, muttering, “…for even Khahkht is cold.” While on tall Stardock, Great Oomforafor listened to the news of the defeat, or setback rather, and of his dear daughters’ further treacheries, as told him by his furious, bedraggled son Prince Faroomfar, who'd been hurled back much as Khahkht.

As the Mouser turned back to the great white cliff, he realized that it must be made entire of salt — hence the seaport-name — and that the hot, volcanic waters coursing down it were dissolving it, which did much to account for the warm saltiness of ocean hereabouts and the swift melting of the frost monstreme. The last made all of magic ice, he mused, both stronger and weaker than the ordinary — as magic itself than life.

Fafhrd and he, looking toward the long wharf as they experienced sweetest relief and their ships drew steadily closer to it, saw two slender figures of different heights standing somewhat apart from the other seaside welcomers, who by that token and their proud attitudes and quietly rich garb — blue-gray the one, rust-red the other — must be individuals high in the councils of Rime Isle.

VIII: Rime Isle

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser supervised the mooring of Sea Hawk and Flotsam by bow and stern lines made fast round great wooden bollards, then sprang nimbly ashore, feeling unutterably weary, yet knowing that as captains they should not show it. They made their way to each other, embraced, then turned to face the crowd of Rime Isle men who had witnessed their dramatic arrival standing in a semicircle around the length of dock where their battered and salt-crusted ships were now moored.

Beyond the crowd stretched the houses of Salthaven port — small, stout and earth-hugging, as befitted this