Swords and Ice Magic

herbs, corn cakes made of costly Lankhmar grain, and light wine of Ilthmar, conversation had ranged around the recent volcanic eruptions and attendant and merely coincidental events. and their consequences, particularly the general shortage of money. Salthaven had suffered some damage from the earthquake and more from the resultant fire. The council hall had survived but the Salt Herring tavern had been burned to the ground with its Flame Den. ('Loki was a conspicuously destructive god,” the Mouser observed, “especially where his master, fire, was involved.” “lt was an unsavory haunt,” Groniger opined.) In Cold Harbor, three turf roofs had collapsed, unoccupied of course because everyone had been taking part in the defensive demonstration at the time. The Salthaven Islers had begun their homeward journey next day, the litter being used to carry Fafhrd. “So some mortal got some use of it besides the girls,” Afreyt remarked. “It was a haunted-seeming conveyance.” Fafhrd allowed, “But I was feverish.”

But it was the short store of cash, and the contrivances adopted to increase that. which they chiefly talked about. Skor had found work for himself and the other berserks for a while helping the Islers harvest drift-timber from the Beach of Bleached Bones, but there had not been the anticipated glut of Mingol wrecks. Fafhrd talked of manning Flotsam with some of his men and bringing back from Ool Plerns a cargo of natural wood. ('When you're entirely recovered, yes,” Afreyt said.) The Mouser's men had gone to work as fishermen bossed by Pshawri, and had been able to feed both crews and sometimes have a small surplus left to sell. Strangely, or perhaps not so, the monster catches made during the great run had all spoiled, despite their salting-down, and gone stinking bad, worse than dead jellyfish, and had had to be burned. (Cif said, “I told you Khahkht magicked that run — and so they were phantom fish in some sense, tainted by his touch, no matter how solid-seeming.') She and Afreyt had sold Sprite to Rill and Hilsa for a tidy sum; the two professionals’ adventure on Flotsam, amazingly, had given them a taste for the sea-life and they were now making a living as fisherwomen, though not above turning a trick at their old trade in off hours. Hilsa was out night-fishing this very evening with Mother Grum. Even the foe had fallen on hard times. Two of the three fore-raiding Sea-Mingol galleys that had rowed off south had put into Salthaven three weeks later in great distress, having been battered about by storms and then becalmed, after having fled off unprovisioned. The crew of one had been reduced to eating their sacred bow-stallion, whilc that of the other had so far lost their fanatic pride along with their madness that they had sold theirs to “Mayor” Bomar, who wanted to be the first Rime Isle man (or “foreigner') to own a horse, but succeeded only in breaking his neck on his first attempt to ride it. (Pshawri commented “He was—absit omen— a somewhat overweening man. He tried to take away from me command of Sea Hawk.')

Groniger claimed that Rime Isle, meaning the council chiefly, was as badly off as anyone. The bluff harbor master, seemingly more hard-headed and skeptical than ever for his one experience of enchantment and the supernatural, made a point of taking a very hard line with Afreyt and Cif and a very dim view of the latter's irregular disbursements from the Rime treasury in the isle's defense. (Actually he was their best friend on the council, but he had his crustiness to maintain.) “And then there's the gold Cube of Square Dealing,” he reminded her accusingly, “gone forever!” She smiled. Afreyt served them hot gahveh, an innovation in Rimeland, for they'd decided to make an early evening of it what with tomorrow's sailing.

“I wouldn't he too sure of that,” Skor said. “Working around the Beach of Bleached Bones you get the feeling that everything washes ashore there, eventually.”

“Or we could dive for it,” Pshawri proposed.

“What? — and get Loki-cinder back with it?” the Mouser asked, chuckling. He looked toward Groniger. “Then you'd still be a cloudy-headed god's-man, you old atheist!”

“That's as may be,” the Isler retorted. “Afreyt said I was a troll-giant for a space, too. But here I am.”

“I doubt you'd find it, dove you never so deep,” Fafhrd averred softly, his gaze on the leather stall covering his still bandaged stump. “I think Loki-cinder vanished out of Nehwon-world entire, and many another curious thing with it — the queller (after it had done its work) that had become his home (Gods love gold) and Odin-ghost and some of his appurtenances.”

Rill, beside him, touched the stall with her burnt hand which had been almost as long as his stump in healing. It had created a certain sympathy between them.

“You'll wear a hook on it?” she asked.

He nodded. “Or a socket for various tools, utensils, and instruments. There are possibilities.”

Old Ourph said, sipping his steaming gahveh, “It was strange how closely the two gods were linked, so that when one departed, the other went.”

“When Cif and I first found them, we thought they were one,” Afreyt told him.

“We saved their lives,” Cif asserted. “We were very good hosts, on the whole, to both of them.” She caught Rill's eye, who smiled.

“When you save a suicide, you take upon yourself responsibilities,” Afreyt said, her eyes drifting toward Fafhrd's stump. “If on his next attempt, he takes others with him, it's your doing.”

“You're gloomy tonight, Lady Afreyt,” the Mouser suggested, “and reason too curiously. When you set out in that mood there's no end to the places you can go, eh, Fafhrd? We set out to be captains, and seem in process of becoming merchants. What next? Bankers? — or pirates?”

“As much as you like of either,” Cif told him meaningly, “as long as you remember the council holds Pshawri and your men here, hostage for you.”

“As mine will be for me, when I seek that timber,” Fafhrd said. “The pines at Ool Plerns are very green and tall.”

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