foreign gentleman, out of earshot, to Salthaven. You'll be able to visit the god at dawn, May, to bring him milk?”
“I will.”
“Your children?” Fafhrd asked in a whisper.
Afreyt shook her head. “Cousins. Meanwhile,” she said in a voice that was likewise low, but businesslike, “you and I will discuss your instant expedition with the berserks to Cold Harbor.”
Fafhrd nodded, although his eyebrows rose a little. There was a fugitive movement in the air overhead and he found himself thinking of his and the Mouser's one-time loves, the invisible mountain-princesses Hirriwi and Keyaira, and of their night-riding brother, Prince Faroomfar.
The Gray Mouser saw his men fed and bedded down for the night in their dormitory ashore, not without some fatherly admonitions as to the desirability of prudent behavior in the home port of one's employers. He briefly discussed the morrow's work with Ourph and Pshawri. Then, with a final enigmatic scowl all around, he threw his cloak over his left shoulder, withdrew into the chilly evening, and strolled toward the Salt Herring.
Although he and Fafhrd had had a long refreshing sleep aboard the
Moonlight striking almost horizontally left the narrow street in shadow but revealed the cross-set beams above the Salt Herring's door. Where did they get so much wood in an island so far north? That question at least was answered for him when he pressed on inside. The tavern was built of the gray beams and planks of wrecked or dismantled ships — one wall still had a whaleback curve and he noted in another the borings and embedded shells of sea creatures.
A slow eyesweep around showed a half dozen oddly sorted mariners quietly drinking and two youngish Islers even more quietly playing chess with chunky stone pieces. He recalled having seen this morning with Groniger the one playing the black.
Without a word he marched toward the inner room, the low doorway to which was now half occupied by a brawny and warty old hag, sitting bowed over on a low stool, who looked the witch-mother of all unnatural giants and other monsters.
His Ilthmart host came up beside him, wiping his hands on the towel that was his apron and saying sofly, “Flame Den's taken for tonight — a private party. You'd only be courting trouble with Mother Grum. What's your pleasure?”
The Mouser gave him a hard, silent look and marched on. Mother Grum glowered at him from under tangled brows. He glowered back. The Ilthmart shrugged.
Mother Grum moved back from her stool, bowing him into the inner room. He briefly turned his head, favoring the Ilthmart with a cold superior smile as he moved after her. One of the Islers, lifting a black rook to move it, swung his eyes sidewise to observe, though his head remained motionless and bent over the board as if in deepest thought.
The inner room had a small fire in it, at any rate, to provide movement to entertain the eye. The large hearth was in the center of the room, a stone slab set almost waist high. A great copper flue (the Mouser wondered what ship's bottom it had helped cover) came down to within a yard of it from out of the low ceiling, and into this flue the scant smoke twistingly flowed. Elsewhere in the room were a few small, scarred tables, chairs for them, and another doorway.
Sidewise together on the edge of the hearth sat two women who looked personable, but used by life. The Mouser had seen one of
The Mouser went to a table a quarter way around the fire from them, cast his cape over one chair and sat down in another, which commanded both doorways. He knit his fingers together and studied the flames impassively.
Mother Grum returned to her stool in the doorway, presenting her back to all three of them.
One of the two whorish-looking women stared into the fire and from time to time fed it with driftwood that sang and sometimes tinged the flames with green and blue and with thorny black twigs that spat and crackled and burned hot orange. The other wove cat's cradles between the spread fingers of her outheld hands on a long loop of black twine. Now and then the Mouser looked aside from the fire at her severe angular creations.
Neither of the women took notice of the Mouser, but after a while the one feeding the fire stood up, brought a wine jar and two small tankards to his table, poured into one, and stood regarding him.
He took up the tankard, tasted a small mouthful, swallowed it, set down the tankard, and nodded curtly without looking at her.
She went back to her former occupation. Thereafter the Mouser took an occasional swallow of wine while studying and listening to the flames. What with their combination of crackling and singing, they were really quite vocal in that rather small, silent room — resembling an eager, rapid, youthful voice, by turns merry and malicious. Sometimes the Mouser could have sworn he heard words and phrases.
While in the flames, continually renewed, he began to see faces, or rather one face which changed expression a good deal — a youthfully handsome face with very mobile lips, sometimes open and amiable, sometimes convulsed by hatreds and envies (the flames shone green awhile), sometimes almost impossibly distorted, like a face seen through hot air above a very hot fire. Indeed once or twice he had the fancy that it was the face of an actual person sitting on the opposite side of the fire from him, sometimes half rising to regard him through the flames, sometimes crouching back. He was almost tempted to get up and walk around the fire to check on that, but not quite.
The strangest thing about the face was that it seemed familiar to the Mouser, though he could not place it. He gave up racking his brains over that and settled back, listening more closely to the flame-voice and trying to attune its fancied words to the movements of the flame-face's lips.
Mother Grum got up again and moved back, bowing. There entered without stooping a lady whose russet cloak was drawn across the lower half of her face, but the Mouser recognized the gold-shot green eyes and he stood up. Cif nodded to Mother Grum and the two harlots, walked to the Mouser's table, cast her cloak atop his, and sat down in the third chair. He poured for her, refilled his own tankard, and sat down also. They drank. She studied him for some time.
Then, “You've seen the face in the fire and heard its voice?” she asked.
His eyes widened and he nodded, watching her intently now.
“But have you guessed why it seems familiar?” He shook his head rapidly, sitting forward, his expression a most curious and expectant frown.
“It resembles you,” she said flatly.
His eyebrows went up and his jaw dropped, just a little. That was true! It did remind him of himself — only when he was younger, quite a bit younger. Or as he saw himself in mirror these days only when in a most self- infatuated and vain mood, so that he saw himself as unmarked by age.
“But do you know why?” she asked him, herself intent now.
He shook his head.
She relaxed. “Neither do I,” she said. “I thought you might know. I marked it when I first saw you in the Eel, but as to why — it is a mystery within mysteries, beyond our present ken.”
“I find Rime Isle a nest of mysteries,” he said meaningfully, “not the least your disavowal of myself and Fafhrd.”
She nodded, sat up straighter, and said, “So now I think it's high time I told you why Afreyt and I are so sure of a Mingol invasion of Rime Isle while the rest of the council disbelieves it altogether. Don't you?”
