The Knight and Knave of Swords fagm-7

by Fritz Leiber

  “My, my,” observed Cif, “we have managed to keep busy underground, haven't we?"

  “You do know more about the worser side of human nature than any man I know. Or woman for that matter,” Rill chimed in.

  The Mouser shrugged apologetically. The comic gesture caused him to really look at himself and his garments for the first time since coming out of the wall.

  His reaction caused Cif and Rill to do the same thing.

  His gray jerkin, which had been stout, thick cloth when last observed by any of them, had somehow grown fine as gossamer and quite translucent, while his exposed skin looked as if it had been pumiced.

  As if on his journey underground he had endured for hours a blasting sandstorm, suffering such wear and tear as might be accounted for by a trip to Quarmall. The strangeness of it all gripped their minds.

  At that long moment Fafhrd appeared in the tunnel, followed closely by Fingers and Afreyt, with a wide-eyed Gale bringing up the rear. He was wearing a winter jacket with attached hood fallen away behind, revealing his close-shaven pate.

  “I knew you had been found,” he said excitedly. “I read it in Skor's face when he returned with Cif's summons. Though he's fooled the rest, I think. Make no mistake, it was a good idea to keep it a secret for a bit. There are things to be said before we face a celebration. It appears that I owe you my life, old friend — and my child her memory as well. Look here, you rogue, however did you learn old Quarmal's finger-snapping dodge?"

  “Why, by traveling underground to his buried city, of course, and spying on him,” the Mouser replied airily. “And studying his maps,” he added. “Either I did that in the body or else my ka did in horn-gate dreams. If his boreworms got to me, and I believe they did, it argues for the former."

  “Oh well,” Fafhrd said philosophically, “boreworms don't kill, only excruciate."

  “And then only if you're awake while they're entering you,” Fingers piped up consolingly. “But truly, Uncle Mouser, I'm grateful to you beyond words for saving my father's life and me from parricide and madness."

  “Tut, tut, child! No need for melodrama. I believe you,” the Mouser said, “and entreat your pardon for my earlier doubts. You are the daughter of your mother Friska, truly, who resisted all my efforts to seduce her, which were neither few nor unskillful, to my recollection."

  “I believe you,” Fingers assured him. “As she's oft told me, your seduction attempts were responsible for her friend (and your lover, Uncle Mouser) Ivivis quitting the escape party at Tovilyis and persuading my mother to quit with her and have me there."

  “I truly planned to get gold and return to Tovilyis and rejoin her,” Fafhrd apologized. “But something always intervened, generally the absence of gold."

  “Friska never blamed you,” Fingers assured him. “She always came to your defense when Aunt Ivivis made you the target of one of her tirades. Aunty would say, ‘He should have stayed with you and let the little jackanapes go on alone,’ and Mother would answer, ‘That would have been too much to hope for. Remember, they're lifelong comrades.’”

  “Friska was always most forgiving,” Fafhrd averred. “Just as Fingers is to you, Mouser,” he added, shaking his middle digit under the Gray One's nose. “Do you realize that that terrible treble fingersnap that saved my life almost slew Fingers at the same time? Stretching her senseless and unconscious across the bench where we'd sat watching you emerge from earth like a pale vengeful mole — was knocked out myself as well, stretched out across my daughter on the bench. As Afreyt here can attest, who was a full quarter hour eliciting from either of us the least sign of life."

  “That's most true, masters,” the tall blonde averred, her violet eyes flashing. “I breathed for Fafhrd fully that long before his wits returned. Meanwhile Gale, who'd awakened and come downstairs fortuitously, performed a like service for Fingers."

  “Yes, I did that,” the child confirmed, “and when you came to, you beast, you bit my nose, like an ungrateful and confused kitten."

  “You should have spanked me,” the girl from Ilthmar told her piously.

  “I'll remember that at the first opportunity,” Gale threatened darkly.

  “For that matter, I lost consciousness myself completely at the climax,” the Mouser asserted, getting back into the game. “So much depended on getting those fingersnaps of old Quarmal just right, each one a little louder than the last. It literally took everything out of me, so that my task accomplished, I sank back into the earth like a dying ghost, to be transported here by whatever potent agency has guided my long journey, and await dear Cif's revivifying kiss."

  And he slowly shook his head from side to side, raising his brows and parting his hands a little in a gesture of uncomprehending wonder.

  Relaxing then a little from this posture (one got the impression everyone in the tunnel let out a small sigh), he turned with a sweet and gracious smile to Fafhrd and inquired, “But now tell me, old friend, how came you to be parted from your hair? And so very thoroughly, judging from the portions of you I'm able to see. In my underground travels I've lost some skin (and body hair presumably) from friction with sand, gravel, clay, and rock. My garments certainly have suffered a diminishment, as is plain to see. But you, my friend, have not that excuse."

  “Let me answer that,” Afreyt demanded with such resolution that no one, even Fafhrd, seemed inclined to contest her claim. She took a deep breath and addressed, chiefly to the Gray Mouser (though all heard, for she spoke very clearly) the following remarkable extended statement.

  “Dear Captain Mouser, when you first slipped down into the earth early upon the night of Satyrs’ full and the second of the coming of the cold, it was Captain Fafhrd who set us digging after you here on Goddess Hill. Not all of us agreed with his idea, but when the digging turned up evidence of your passage (your hood, your dagger Cat's Claw, et cetera), we were logically compelled to change our minds. The work begun then has now culminated in the rescue of Captain Mouser by the ladies Cif and Rill after today's miraculous survival underground. All honor to Captain Fafhrd for laying the foundations of this wonderful achievement!"

  Gale started to applaud, but none of the others took it up, and when Fingers shook her head at the other girls, she broke off.

  Afreyt resumed her extended statement, ignoring the interruption.

  “It was at this point, I think, that it began to become apparent, dimly at first, that a supernatural power, or powers, were taking a hand in the developing events.

  “In the matter of Captain Mouser, it was the dowsing for him by the Lady Cif and his lieutenant Pshawri which seemed to indicate the Mouser was moving underground at unlikely speeds over incredible distances far beyond the limits of these diggings, even extending out under the Outer Sea.

  “Besides that, there's an altogether amazing action that occurred this morning in the cellar of the Lady Cif's house and which Fingers and I both witnessed: the Mouser's saving of Fafhrd from a horrid outlandish death spell by employment of information he could hardly have obtained anywhere in Nehwon nearer than buried Quarmall.” And she gazed fiercely, almost accusingly, at the Mouser.

  Gale parted her hands to start another round of applause, but then made a face at Fingers and forbore.

  The Mouser endured the steely stare a moment more, then said apologetically, “I'm sorry, Lady Afreyt. I can't fully satisfy your curiosity as to how far I went or all I did below ground. Mostly I recall sucking pebbles to quench my thirst and breathing most shallowly to make best use of the air I scavenged (often having to make do with mephitic gases), and meditating on my sins and those of others (very interesting, some of those). Otherwise I seem to have slept a lot (doubtless a good thing since it reduced my consumption of air) and dreamed some remarkable dreams. So please, Lady Afreyt, continue with your fascinating hypothetical reconstruction of what's happened to us the last two mysterious days — always remembering to end with an explanation of how Fafhrd came to lose his hair. Which was, I believe, the qu
estion you set out to answer in the first place."

  “That's true,” she said. “Well, Captain Mouser, just as a supernatural element entered your movements underground, enabling you to move to far places at fantastic speeds and causing you considerable wear and tear—” she eyed his translucent jerkin “—a like element began to influence Fafhrd, though functioning in the opposite direction, not below ground, but above.

  “Late on the night of Satyrs’ full he got drunk and set out for Salthaven next morning under the influence. For this part of the story we have the evidence of the children Gale and Fingers, who followed him. They saw him set to swimming through the fog and then mount up into the sky in widening spirals.

  “Somewhere aloft above Salthaven he disrobed (to lighten ship, he tells me) and dropped his boots, belt, pouch, bracelet, and other gear, which fell on roofs and treetops, whence they were brought to me yesterday, forming a set of objects not unlike the items Captain Mouser left behind him as he traveled through the earth.

  “For the rest of my narrative I must depend chiefly on the testimony of its principal actor, given to me earlier today after he recovered from Captain Mouser's spell-breaking.

  “To summarize, a short time after lightening ship, Captain Fafhrd was picked up by a cloud-pinnace captained by Queen Frix of Arilia, his one-time paramour, and crewed by a company of her notorious ladies. Being still somewhat under the influence, he was easily enticed into an orgy, during the course of which he was completely shaven, upon the pretext of increasing his pleasure."

  “Half the civilized races of Nehwon believe that firmly and act accordingly,” Fingers commented. “They regard all hair as a disfigurement, eyelashes being the one exception."

  “Don't come the old hooker on me! Or presume to instruct us in the sexual fashions of so-called civilized races, you cabin-girl princess!” Afreyt told her tartly, violet eyes flashing. “So far I've been inclined to forgive you all the evil you've innocently been mixed up with, but it wouldn't take much to make me change my mind and give you that shrewd spanking you have been asking for!"

  The girl drooped her eyes, gave her lips a reproving tap with her fingertips, covered her mouth with a palm and dropped a submissive curtsey. Gale poked her surreptitiously a little above the hips, where the side is soft.

  “But is this true, old friend?” the Mouser asked Fafhrd concernedly. “Pardon me, Lady Afreyt, but I'm somewhat shocked."

  “I am content with Afreyt's statement of my case,” Fafhrd said stolidly, “and grateful to her for saving me embarrassment."

  “Well, then,” the Mouser said, “since we're talking so freely, resolve us: does shaving augment carnal delight? In your case, at any rate?"

  “That's not a suitable question for public discussion,” Fafhrd responded somewhat primly. “Ask me in private and I may give you an answer."

  Afreyt looked at the Mouser sweetly and gave a little nod before continuing her statement.

  “At some point during the night's licentious doings aboard the aerial whorehouse of Queen Frix, Fafhrd succumbed, but whether from an excess of carnal delight, or of brandy and poppy and other narcotic drugs that may have been administered to him, we have no way of knowing.

  “Just before dawn the abominable cloud-pinnace landed on Rime Isle on the headland between Salthaven and the Maelstrom and Fafhrd was given a mock funeral which was secretly observed by his long-lost daughter Fingers."

  The girl, her eyes still downcast, nodded twice, rapidly.

  “With derisive ceremony and soft music,” Afreyt went on, “Fafhrd was laid to rest — abandoned — on a bed of new-sprung mushrooms wet with dew, naked in the dawn's chill save for some ribbons the color of the underclothes of Frix's whores tied in unsightly mockery around his limp member, his flaccid Wand of Eros."

  “Lovers’ Mementos,” Fingers explained, “a custom observed in—” she began, then broke off. “Oh pardon me, Lady Afreyt, I didn't mean to speak, I got carried away…."

  “I am glad to hear you say so,” that one observed neutrally. “When the sinister funmakers had departed, Fingers's first action was to enrobe her father decently, then guide him still in a stupor to Cif's abode and make her hypnotically-enforced attempt upon his life, which was providentially foiled by Captain Mouser's most timely emergence, as I'm sure you've all heard by now."

  “Yes indeed, we've had quite enough of that,” the Gray One said modestly. Then, bowing low, “Thank you, Lady Afreyt, for answering my questions as fully as was possible for you, I'm sure.” Then turning to Fafhrd, “And now, old friend, could you not be induced to add a few words of your own, sort of wrap the whole matter up, as it were?"

  Setting his hands on his hips, Fafhrd replied, “Listen, little man, we've had enough of this nonsense. I recall something you said last winter at the dinner we had for you at the Sea Wrack to celebrate your successful trading voyage to No-Ombrulsk. Cif was teasing you about your erotic involvement (bondage and discipline, et cetera) with the Simorgyan sea demoness Ississi, who almost scuppered you and Seahawk.

  “You replied to her teasing — manfully, it seemed to me (you blushed) — that you had attempted something somewhat beyond your powers.

  “Well, so had I, I confess most emphatically, in this business of Frix and her ladies! I met total defeat in a war of pleasure! So let's have no more of it! For today, at least! I'm sorry, Afreyt, but that had to be said."

  “I think so too,” she told him. “Let's all cool down."

  “Before some fresh surprises refire our interest,” Rill put in, who was standing close behind the Mouser in the somewhat crowded section of tunnel.

  Her words were prophetic, for just then Pshawri, coming from the shaft, edged his way into the press. He was still stripped for running, wearing only loincloth, belt, and pouch, carrying over one arm a robe he'd been handed above but not yet donned. When he saw the Mouser, the young lieutenant's weary face lit up wonderfully, but it was Cif to whom he first spoke.

  “Lady,” he said, bowing, “at midnight, following your instructions, I threw into Darkfire's lava pool the talismanic Whirlpool Queller I'd won from the Maelstrom and with which we'd dowsed for Captain Mouser. There was an eruption from which I barely escaped, racing the ensuing weather change south and losing badly. When I crossed the headland I noted Maelstrom had calmed once more."

  “That's wondrous news, brave lieutenant,” Cif replied in a ringing voice. Then turning to the Mouser, who was frowning, she dipped rapidly into her pouch. “Before you say anything, Captain, here's something you should read."

  The Mouser spread the worn violet-inked sheet, but had not got very far before he motioned Fafhrd to come view Freg's letter with him. So they read it side by side and line by line.

  When they got to the bit about the Mouser's tricksiness, Fafhrd muttered, “I always suspected you got at her, you dog,” and he replied, “Cheer up, at least she recognizes your moral superiority."

  “Is that my uncouthness or my love?” the big man grumbled.

  And when they got to the “triads of moles,” Rill, who'd been sneaking glances, could not resist touching with three fingers the three shoulder moles that showed clearly by leviathan light through the worn-to-gossamer fabric of the Mouser's jerkin. When he glared at her, she laughed and said, “Look at mates to these on Pshawri's side. We're packed too close here to hide anything."

  Afreyt lifted the robe from Pshawri's arm and held it for him, saying, “You have my thanks too, Lieutenant.” He thanked her back and let her help him don it.

  The reading done, the Mouser gazed quizzically at Pshawri a long moment.

  “Still want to work for me, son, now I'm your father? I suppose I could pay you off in some way, if that's your choice."

  “Most certainly, sire,” the young man responded. The Mouser spread his arms and they embraced, quite formally to start with.

  “Come,” said Cif, moving past them, “it's time we told the others the good news."

  They followed he
r, the Mouser admiring her dragon's breath system of ventilation and going on to praise the bucket lift in the shaft.

  Halfway along this route, at the floor of the shaft, Mikkidu appeared, bearing one of the Mouser's gray house robes. The Mouser donned it and thanked him, then stepped in the bucket and was drawn up.

  Fafhrd emerged from the tunnel followed by Afreyt and the rest. He drew his hood over his shaven pate, then mounted the shaft swiftly by the ladder of pegs.

  As the Mouser swung off at the top, his loosely assembled men gave a cheer. Fafhrd's joined in, redoubling their shouts as their captain came into view and stood beside the Mouser. As the cheering ebbed, they were able to exchange a few words in private as the late summer midday sun shone down from low in the south.

  Mouser (indicating the shallow mound of dug earth near where they stood): Mikkidu tells me there's talk of renaming Goddess Hill (formerly Gallows Hill), Mount Mouser.

  Fafhrd (a shade resentfully): That's losing no time.

  Mouser: Should I suggest Mount Faf-Mou?

  Fafhrd: Forget it. I must say, you're looking remarkably fit after your incredibly long sojourn buried.

  Mouser: I don't feel that way. I died down there so many times, I doubt I'll ever trust life again.

  Fafhrd: For every time you died, you were reborn. Contrariwise, I think you have become Death's dearest friend.

  Mouser: That's a most dubious distinction. I'm tired of killing.

  Fafhrd: Agreed. Fingers is a joy. She came along barely in time to rescue me from boredom.

  Mouser: I'm doubly fortunate — to have been able to instruct my son before I knew he was one.