Swords and Ice Magic

“Frix is a brave, handsome, remarkably cool woman,” Fafhrd temporized, “but how to reach her? She's in another world, a world of air.”

“While I counsel that you seek Hisvet,” Sheelba of the Eyeless Face told the Mouser grimly. The unfeatured blackness in his hood grew yet blacker (with concentration) if that were possible. He was referring to yet another female involved in the rat adventure, in which Reetha also had been a leading character.

“A great idea, Father,” responded the Mouser, who made no bones about preferring Hisvet to all other girls, particularly since he had never once enjoyed her favors, though on the verge of doing so several times. “But she is likely deep in the earth and in her rat-size persona. How would I do it? How, how?'

If Sheel and Ning could have smiled, they would have.

However, Sheelba said only, “It is bothersome to see you both bemisted, like heroes in smoke.'

He and Ning, without conference, collaborated in working a small but very difficult magic. After resisting most tenaciously, the Shadowland and its drizzle retreated east, leaving the Twain in the same sunshine as their mentors. Though two invisible patches of dark mist remained, entering into the flesh of the Mouser and Fafhrd and closing forever around their hearts.

Far eastaways, Death permitted himself a small curse which would have scandalized the high gods, had they heard it. He looked daggers at his map and its shortening black tongue. For Death, he was in a most bitter temper. Foiled again!

Ning and Sheel worked another diminutive wizardry.

Without warning, Fafhrd shot upwards in the air, growing tinier and tinier, until at last he was lost to sight.

Without moving from where he stood, the Mouser also grew tiny, until he was somewhat less than a foot high, of a size to cope with Hisvet, in or out of bed. He dove into the nearest rathole.

Neither feat was as remarkable as it sounds, since Nehwon is only a bubble rising through the waters of infinity.

The two heroes each spent a delightful weekend with his lady of the week.

“I don't know why I do things like this,” Hisvet said, lisping faintly and touching the Mouser intimately as they lay side by side supine on silken sheets. “It must be because I loathe you.”

“A pleasant and even worthy encounter,” Frix confessed to Fafhrd in similar situation. “It is my hang-up to enjoy playing, now and then, with the lower animals. Which some would say is a weakness in a queen of the air.”

Their weekend done, Fafhrd and the Mouser were automatically magicked back to Lankhmar, encountering one another in Cheap Street near Nattick Nimblefinger's narrow and dirty-looking dwelling. The Mouser was his right size again.

“You look sunburned,” he observed to his comrade.

“Space-burned, it is,” Fafhrd corrected. “Frix lives in a remarkably distant land. But you, old friend, look paler than your wont.”

“Shows what three days underground will do to a man's complexion,” the Mouser responded. “Come, let's have a drink at the Silver Eel.”

Ningauble in his cave near Ilthmar and Sheelba in his mobile hut in the Great Salt Marsh each smiled, though lacking the equipment for that facial expression. They knew they had laid one more obligation on their proteges.

IV: The Bait

Fafhrd the Northerner was dreaming of a great mound of gold.

The Gray Mouser the Southerner, ever cleverer in his forever competitive fashion, was dreaming of a heap of diamonds. He hadn't tossed out all of the yellowish ones yet, but he guessed that already his glistening pile must be worth more than Fafhrd's glowing one.

How he knew in his dream what Fafhrd was dreaming was a mystery to all beings in Nehwon, except perhaps Sheelba of the Eyeless Face and Ningauble of the Seven Eyes, respectively the Mouser's and Fafhrd's sorcerer- mentors. Maybe, a vast, black basement mind shared by the two was involved.

Simultaneously they awoke, Fafhrd a shade more slowly, and sat up in bed.

Standing midway between the feet of their cots was an object that fixed their attention. It weighed about eighty pounds, was about four feet eight inches tall, had long straight black hair pendant from head, had ivory-white skin, and was as exquisitely formed as a slim chesspiece of the King of Kings carved from a single moonstone. It looked thirteen, but the lips smiled a cool self-infatuated seventeen, while the gleaming deep eye-pools were first blue melt of the Ice Age. Naturally, she was naked.

“She is mine!” the Gray Mouser said, always quick from the scabbard.

“No, she's mine!” Fafhrd said almost simultaneously, but conceding by that initial “No” that the Mouser had been first, or at least he had expected the Mouser to be first.

“I belong to myself and to no one else, save two or three virile demidevils,” the small naked girl said, though giving them each in turn a most nymphish lascivious look.

“I'll fight you for her,” the Mouser proposed.

“And I you,” Fafhrd confirmed, slowly drawing Graywand from its sheath beside his cot.

The Mouser likewise slipped Scalpel from its ratskin container.

The two heroes rose from their cots.

At this moment, two personages appeared a little behind the girl — from thin air, to all appearances. Both were at least nine feet tall. They had to bend, not to bump the ceiling. Cobwebs tickled their pointed ears. The one on the Mouser's side was black as wrought iron. He swiftly drew a sword that looked forged from the same material.

At the same time, the other newcomer — bone-white, this one — produced a silver-seeming sword, likely steel plated with tin.

The nine-footer opposing the Mouser aimed a skull-splitting blow at the top of his head. The Mouser parried in prime and his opponent's weapon shrieked off to the left. Whereupon, smartly swinging his rapier widdershins, the Mouser slashed off the black fiend's head, which struck the floor with a horrid clank.

The white afreet opposing Fafhrd trusted to a downward thrust. But the Northerner, catching his blade in a counterclockwise bind, thrust him through, the silvery sword missing Fafhrd's right temple by the thinness of a hair.

With a petulant stamp of her naked heel, the nymphet vanished into thin air, or perhaps Limbo.

The Mouser made to wipe off his blade on the cot-clothes, but discovered there was no need. He shrugged. “What a misfortune for you, comrade,” he said in a voice of mocking woe. “Now you will not be able to enjoy the delicious chit as she disports herself on your heap of gold.”

Fafhrd moved to cleanse Graywand on his sheets, only to note that it too was altogether unbloodied. He frowned. “Too bad for you, best of friends,” he sympathized. “Now you won't be able to possess her as she writhes with girlish abandon on your couch of diamonds, their glitter striking opalescent tones from her pale flesh.”

“Mauger that effeminate artistic garbage, how did you know that I was dreaming diamonds?” the Mouser demanded.

“How did I?” Fafhrd asked himself wonderingly. At last he begged the question with, “The same way, I suppose, that you knew I was dreaming of gold.”

The two excessively long corpses chose that moment to vanish, and the severed head with them.

Fafhrd said sagely, “Mouser, I begin to believe that supernatural forces were involved in this morning's haps.”

“Or else hallucinations, oh great philosopher,” the Mouser countered somewhat peevishly.

“Not so,” Fafhrd corrected, “for see, they've left their weapons behind.”

“True enough,” the Mouser conceded, rapaciously eyeing the wrought-iron and tin-plated blades on the floor.