by Fritz Leiber
‘When I balked at some of their directions and demands, they set boreworms to me.’
‘Monstrous!’ Fafhrd exclaimed. Afreyt frowned at him and flirted an admonitory hand for silence while the Mouser laid a remindful finger across his blandly smiling lips.
Fingers continued, ‘As you may know, those bristly gray caterpillars, though feeding solely on wood, will flee the light if brought outside their tunnels by wriggling into the nearest crevice or small orifice, whether it be in inert material or living flesh, thereafter writhing deeper and deeper until they starve for lack of dead wood or proper food. My instructress told me they’re sometimes used to break in or discipline new whores, young or older, since they mostly do no lasting damage, only excruciate.’
‘So there were boreworms—’ the Mouser began, instantly clapping his hand over his mouth.
‘So I complied, recalling my mother’s rule, Fit in!—and learned another sort of finger-work and other skills besides, until I earned the grudging praise of my young instructress. I did not seek to excel her, since I needed friends and she was my chief watchdog when we were in ports. I did not, for example, copy her signature, which also accounted for her nickname, and which was to blow into her hand before she used it in her work. I walked my fingers upon the bodies of those I serviced, keeping up a glib patter as I approached the target area, about my hand being a lost and ensorcelled princess, conjured tiny, who marvelled innocently at all the items she encountered in her little world and the actions that she was moved to perform upon them. The sailors relished that. It fed their fancy.
‘So occupied, and under Hothand’s hard and watchful eye, I first saw the docks of Lankhmar, forest-girt Kvarch Nar, Ool Hrusp, and other cities on the Inner Sea.
‘I also early came to the conclusion that my period of sandbagged unconsciousness had been prolonged with drugs, not for hours but days at least. For as soon as I’d been able to examine myself at leisure, I’d discovered that my head hair had grown and my skin paled as much as it had during my fortnight’s seclusion before my novice’s initiation, while all my body hairs had been tweaked out. But what else had happened during this period, and if I’d been prisoned at one place or carried about before being taken aboard Weasel, I could never learn, nor would (or perhaps could) Hothand tell me. There was in my mind only a weltering sea of dark nightmarish impressions I couldn’t decipher.
‘Hothand became my friend, but not to the point where she invited me to desert with her at Ool Plerns. I think she might have, except she knew that losing both cabingirls would be a sure way to ensure a desperately determined pursuit. In fact, before she left she tied me up most securely (she was expert at that) and gagged me, saying mysteriously, before she kissed me goodbye, “I am doing this for your own good, little Fingers. It may save you a beating.”
‘And indeed I was not beaten, but when Weasel next docked, at No-Ombrulsk before our long reach here, I was confined below, tethered to timber by a chain and an iron-studded locked collar to which the captain alone held the key. It had previously chained his pursuit hound until the bitch died on Weasel’s last voyage but this.
‘I’ve never felt lonelier than I did on the long wearisome sail that next came. At the worst moments I’d comfort myself by remembering Hothand’s last kiss, though hating her madly at the same time. I also determined to escape ship at Rime Isle (which I’d always before thought a fable) no matter how strange and savage its inhabitants.’ She looked around at them all and her eyes twinkled. ‘I knew that my first step must be to do all in my power to ensure I was not again chained below. So no longer having to fear Hothand’s resentment, I devoted all my ingenuity and imagination to heightening and prolonging the ecstasies of all I serviced, though not long enough, of course, in the case of crewmen, to offend captain or officers if such were about. And sympathize with them all, goes without saying, in a motherly way, working to increase the area of familiarity and trust among us.
‘With the result that when we finally raised Rime Isle and docked in Salthaven, I was allowed on deck for a short look and a breath, though under guard. I soon decided the shorefolk were civil and humane, but I pretended fear and distaste of all I saw, which helped persuade my captors there was little risk of my sneaking off.
‘When you, May and Gale, joined those peering at the newly arrived ship, I soon was hearing indecently lustful whispers from all the Weasel’s crew around me.’
‘Really?’
‘Truly?’
She nodded solemnly at the two girls and went on, ‘I pretended to be angry with them, wanting barbarian girls when they had me, but that night I confessed to the captain how much I would enjoy teaching you with his aid the arts in which Hothand had instructed me and disciplining you when you turned balky, complaining I’d had no one to humiliate since becoming chief cabingirl. He said he’d like to please me but that kidnapping you would be too risky. I kept on wheedling him, however, and he finally told me it would be another matter if I went ashore and lured you to come aboard secretly without telling anyone. I pretended to be terrified of setting foot on savage Rime Isle, but in the end I let him persuade me.
‘So that’s how I was able to escape from Weasel and warn you, dear Lady Afreyt and Lady Cif,’ Fingers concluded with a doubtful smile.
‘You see?’ the Mouser broke his enforced silence almost gleefully. ‘She planned the whole kidnapping herself! Or at least forced the Weasel’s captain to sharpen his plans. It’s the old saw, “A devious plot? Some woman wove it!”’
‘But she only did it in order to—’ Cif began furiously.
Afreyt said simultaneously, ‘Captain Mouser, with all respect, you are impossible!’
Cif rebegan, ‘She only employed the tricksy guile you would yourself in like situation.’
‘That’s pure truth,’ Fafhrd confirmed. ‘Guest Fingers, you are the Princess of Plotters. I never heard a braver tale.’ Then, sotto voce to Afreyt, ‘I declare, Mouser gets more stubborn-cranky every day. He can’t have shaken the old-age curse. That would explain it.’
Mara piped up, ‘You wouldn’t really have enjoyed beating us, would you, Fingers?’
KLUTE: I bet she would. With a dogwhip! The pursuit hound’s.
GALE: No, she wouldn’t, she’d think of something worse, like putting boreworms up our noses.
MAY: Or in our ears!
KLUTE: Or maybe in our salad.
GALE: Or up our—
AFREYT: Children! That’s quite enough. Go and fetch out our dinners, all of you. Quickly. Fingers, please help them.
They trooped off excitedly, beginning to whisper as they reached the kitchen.
7
Afreyt said, ‘And while we’re eating our dinners, Mouser, I hope you won’t—’
But he interrupted, ‘Oh, I know well enough when you’re all against me. I’ll be wordless willingly. Let me tell you, it’s hard work being the voice of prudence and good sense when you’re all being noble and generous and riding your liberal hobby horses recklessly.’
Cif smiled with a shrug and one eye toward heaven. ‘Just the same, I’d feel better if you’d go a little further than just being quiet and—’
‘Why not?’ he demanded hugely with the ghost of a growl. ‘Break one, break all. Princess Fingers,’ he called, ‘would your majesty please approach me?’
The girl put down the covered tray of hotcakes she’d just carried in and turned toward him with eyes lowered respectfully. ‘Yes, sir?’
He said, ‘My friends here tell me I should take your right hand.’ She extended hers. He took it, saying, ‘Princess, I admire your courage and cunning, in which latter quality they tell me you resemble myself. Good guesting and all that!’ and he squeezed. She hid a wince as she smiled up at him. He held on. ‘But hear this, royalty: no matter how clever you are, you’re not as clever as I am. And if, through you, any of these girls, or any of my other friends should come to harm, remember you will have me to answer to.’
She replied
, ‘That’s a proviso I’ll accept and abide by most happily, sir,’ and with a little bow she hurried back to the kitchen.
‘Bring out four more settings,’ Afreyt called after her. ‘I see Groniger coming in company from the headland. Who are those walk beside him, Fafhrd?’
‘Skullick and Pshawri,’ he told her, scanning the group moving down toward them out of the last sunset gleam, ‘come to make report to us of the day’s accomplishments. And old Ourph—these days the ancient Mingol often suns his old bones up there where he can scan both the harbour to the south and the sleepy Maelstrom to the east beyond.’
The last sun patch upon the headland darkened and the misty moon at once seemed to grow brighter above the four oncomers.
‘They hurry on apace,’ Cif commented. ‘Old Ourph as well, who commonly lags behind.’
Afreyt assured herself the girl’s task was done and extra places set. ‘Then fall to, all of you, with the Goddess’s blessing. Else we’ll never start feeding.’
They had sampled the pickled and spiced and nibbled garden-fresh radishes and were chomping roast lamb and sweet mint conserves by the time the four striders drew nigh. Simultaneously the cloud ceiling swiftly went lemon pale with reflected light from the setting or set sun, like a soft sustained trumpet peal of welcome. Their faces showed sudden clear in the afterglow, as if they’d all unmasked.
Groniger said laconically, ‘Weasel left harbour. Dappled sky to the north presages a wind to speed her on her way. And there’s news of a rather greater interest,’ he added, glancing down toward bent and wrinkle-visaged Ourph.
When that one didn’t speak at once, or anyone immediately ask, ‘What is it?’ Pshawri launched out with, ‘Before Weasel got off, Captain Mouser, I traded deer pelts and a sable for seven pine planks, two slabs of oak, and peppercorn Cook wanted. We harvested the field of ear-corn and whitewashed the barn. Gilgy seems healed of his sunstroke.’
‘The wood was seasoned?’ Mouser asked testily. Pshawri nodded. ‘Then next time say so. I like conciseness, but not at the expense of precision.’
Skullick took up. ‘Skor had us careen Sea Hawk, Captain Fafhrd, it being Satyrs’ lowest tide, what with moon’s full tomorrow night, and we finished copper-sheathing her steerside. There was a wildfowl hunt. I took Kringle fishing. We caught naught.’
‘Enough,’ Fafhrd said, waving him silent. ‘What’s this news of import, Ourph?’
Afreyt arose, saying, ‘It can wait on courtesy. Gentlemen, join us. There are places set.’
The three others nodded thanks and moved to the well to rinse up, but the ancient Mingol held his ground, bending on Fafhrd a gaze black as his long-skirted tunic and saying portentously, ‘Captain, as I did take my watch upon the headland, in mid-afternoon, the sun being halfway descended to the west, I looked toward the great Maelstrom that for this year and half year, this last six seasons, has been still as mountain lake, unnaturally so, and I saw it ’gin to stir and keep on stirring, slowly, slowly, slowly, as though the sea were thick as witch’s brew.’
To everyone’s surprise, the Mouser cried out a long loud ‘What?’ rising to his feet and glaring direly. ‘What’s that you say, you dismal dodderer? You black spider of ill omen! You dried-up skeleton!’
‘No, Mouser, he speaks true,’ Groniger reproved him, returning to take his place prepared next to the women. ‘I saw it with my own eyes! The currents have come right again at last and Rime Isle’s whirlpool is spinning sluggishly. With any luck—and help of northern storm that’s gathering—she’ll spin ashore the rest of the Mingol wrecks for us to salvage, along with other ships have sunken since. Cheer up, friend.’
The Mouser glowered at him. ‘You calculating miser greedy for gray driftwood gain! No, there are things sea-buried there I would not have fished up again. Hark ye, old Ourph! Ere the ’pool ’gan spin, saw ye any ill-doers sniffing about? I smell wizard’s work.’
‘No wizards, Captain Mou, no one at all,’ the ancient Mingol averred. ‘Pshawri and Skullick—’ he waved toward the two taking places farther down the table ‘—took Kringle there earlier and anchored for a while. They will confirm my statement.’
‘What!’ Again that low-shrieking, long-drawn-out accusatory word sped from the Mouser’s lips as he swung glaring toward the two Ourph had mentioned. ‘You took out Kringle? Meddled in the Maelstrom?’
‘What matter?’ Skullick retorted boldly. ‘I told you we went fishing. We anchored for a while. And Pshawri did one dive.’ Old Ourph nodded. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘Fafhrd can deal with you,’ the Mouser told him dismissingly. Then, focusing on his own man, ‘What mischief were you up to, Pshawri? What were you diving for? What did you hope to find? Plunging in Maelstrom’s midst without my order or permission? What did you bring up with you from the dive?’
Flushing darkly, ‘Captain, you do me wrong,’ Pshawri replied, looking him straight in the eye. ‘Skullick can answer for me. He was there.’
‘He brought up nothing,’ Skullick said flatly. ‘And whatever he might have brought up, I’m sure he would have saved to give to you.’
‘I do not believe you,’ the Mouser said. ‘You’re insubordinate, both of you. With you, Lieutenant Pshawri, I can deal. For the rest of this moon you are demoted to common seaman. At new moon I will reconsider your case. Until then the matter is closed. I wish to hear no more of it.’
Fafhrd spoke from mouth’s corner to Afreyt beside him. ‘Two temper tantrums in one evening! No question, the old-age curse still grips him.’
Afreyt whispered back, ‘I think he’s taking out on Pshawri what’s left of his strange anger at the Fingers girl.’
PSHAWRI: Captain, you wrong me.
MOUSER: I said ‘No more!’
OURPH: Cap Mou, I singled out your lieutenant and Fafhrd’s sergeant to bear me witness, not accuse ’em of aught.
GRONIGER: We of Rime Isle abhor wizardry, superstition, and ill-speaking all. Life’s bad enough without them.
SKULLICK: There have been some accusations made this eve and ill words spoken—
FAFHRD: An’ so let’s have no more of them. Pipe down, Sergeant!
During these interchanges the Mouser sat scowling straight ahead and, save for his curt admonition, with lips pressed tightly together.
Afreyt got to her feet, drawing Cif up with her, who sat on her other side. ‘Gentlemen,’ she said quietly, ‘this evening you would all gratify me by following Captain Mouser’s wise advice, which as you can see he follows himself, setting us good example, of no more words on this perplexing matter.’ She looked the table around with a particularly asking eye toward Pshawri.
Cif said, ‘And after all, it is Full Moon Day’s Eve.’
‘So please eat up your dinner,’ Afreyt went on, smiling, ‘or I shall think you do not like our cooking.’
‘And replenish your mugs,’ Cif added. ‘In wine’s best wisdom.’
As they sat down, Fafhrd and Groniger applauded lightly in approval and the girls all clapped imitatively.
Old Ourph croaked, ‘It’s true, silence is silver.’
Sitting beside Fingers, May told her, ‘I’ve an extra white tunic I can lend you for tomorrow night.’
On her other side Gale said, ‘And I have a spare yashmak. And I believe Klute has—’
‘Unless, of course,’ May interrupted, ‘you’d want to wear your own things.’
‘No,’ Fingers hastened to say, ‘now I’m on Rime Isle, I want to look like you.’ She smiled.
Cif whispered to Afreyt, ‘It’s a strange thing. I know the Mouser’s behaved like a monster tonight, and yet I can’t help feeling that in some way he’s right about Fingers and Pshawri, that they both lied to us in some way, maybe different ways. She was so cool about it all, almost the way a sleepwalker would talk.
‘And Pshawri—he’s always trying to impress the Mouser and win his praise, which rubs Mouser the wrong way. But a fortnight back, when the last Lankhmar trader came in—the Comet, she w
as—she carried a letter with a green seal for Pshawri, and since then there’s been something new about his clashes with Mouser, something new and heavy.’
Afreyt said, ‘I’ve sensed a different mood in Pshawri myself. Any idea what was in the letter?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then tell me this: This strange feeling you have about the Mouser and the other two, does it come from your own thinking and imaginings, or from the Goddess?’
‘I wish I were sure,’ Cif said as the two of them looked out together at the misted and ghastly bare gibbous moon.
AFREYT: Perchance at tomorrow night’s ceremony she’ll provide an answer.
CIF: We must press her.
8
That night Rime Isle most unaccountably grew wondrous cold and colder still, a blizzardly north wind blowing until the massive driftwood chimes in the leviathan-jaw arch of the Moon Temple clanked together dolefully and all sleepers suffered heavy sense-drugging nightmares, some toilsome and shivery heaving ones. When dawn at last came glimmering through swirls of powder snow, it was revealed that Fafhrd in ill nightcrawler’s grip had somehow worked his way, dragging the covers after, up the maze of silver and brazen rods heading Cif’s grand guest bed until the back of his head pressed the ceiling and he hung as one crucified asleep, while she below, hugging his ankles, dreamt they wandered a wintry waste embraced until a frigid gust parted them and whirled the Northerner high into the ice-gray sky until he seemed no bigger than a struggling gull, and that a like Morphean bondage had drawn the Gray Mouser, naked save for hauled-with sheet, out of and then under the second-best guest bed whereon he and Cif had gone excitingly to their slumbers, and she dreamed that they endlessly traversed shadowy subterranean corridors, their only light an eerie glow emanating from the Mouser’s upper face, as if he wore a narrow glowing mask in which his eyes were horrid pits of darkness, until the Gray One slipped away from her through a trapdoor whereon was writ in phosphorescent Lankhmarese script, ‘The Underworld.’
