by Fritz Leiber
Fafhrd, returning mightily puzzled from the roof, goggled in turn at what he saw. How the devil had the Mouser managed to smuggle in that winsome bit? Oh, well, no business of his. With a courteous, “Pardon me. Pray continue,” he shut the door behind him and tackled the problem of disposing of the berserk's corpse. This was readily achieved by heaving him up and dropping him four storeys onto the vast garbage heap that almost blocked Specter Alley. Next Fafhrd picked up the saw-edged scimitar, pried from it the still-clenched hand, and tossed that after. Then frowning down at the encrimsoned weapon, which he intended to keep as a souvenir, he futilely wondered, “Whose blood?"
(Disposing of Eesafem was hardly a problem capable of any such instant, hand-brushing solution. Suffice it that she gradually lost much of her madness and a little of her hatred of humanity, learned to speak Lankhmarese fluently, and ended up quite happily running a tiny smithy of her own on Copper Court behind Silver Street, where she made beautiful jewelry and sold under the counter such oddments as the finest poison-fanged rings in all Nehwon.)
Meanwhile Death, for whom time moves in a somewhat different fashion than for men, recognized that there remained to him only two heartbeats in which to fill his quota. The extremely faint thrill of excitement he had felt at seeing his two chosen heroes foil his brilliant improvisations — and at the thought that there might be powers in the universe unknown to him and subtler even than his — was replaced by a wry disgust at the realization that there was no longer time enough left for artistry and for indirection and that he must personally take a hand in the business — something he thoroughly detested, since the deus ex machina had always struck him as fiction's — or life's — feeblest device.
Should he slay Fafhrd and the Mouser direct? No, they had somehow outwitted him, which ought in all justice (if there be any such thing) give them immunity for a space. Besides, it would smack now almost of anger, or even resentment. And after his fashion and despite his occasional and almost unavoidable cheating, Death was a sportsman.
With the faintest yet weariest of sighs, Death magicked himself into the royal guardroom in the Great Golden Palace in Horborixen, where with two almost sightlessly swift, mercifully near-instantaneous thrusts, he let the life out of two most noble and blameless heroes whom he had barely glimpsed there earlier, yet ticketed in his boundless and infallible memory, two brothers sworn to perpetual celibacy and also to the rescue of at least one damsel in distress per moon. And so now they were released from this difficult destiny and Death returned to brood sadly on his low throne in his modest castle in the Shadowland and to await his next mission.
The twentieth heartbeat knelled.
II: Beauty and the Beasts
She was undoubtedly the most beautiful girl in Lankhmar, or all Nehwon, or any other world. So Fafhrd, the red-haired Northerner, and the Gray Mouser, that swarthy, cat-faced Southerner, were naturally following her.
Her name, most strangely, was Slenya Akkiba Magus, the most witching brunette in all the worlds, and also, most oddly, the most sorcerous blonde. They knew Slenya Akkiba Magus was her name because someone had called it out as she glided ahead of them up Pinchbeck Alley, which parallels Gold Street, and she hesitated for an instant in that drawing-together fashion one only does when one's name is unexpectedly called out, before gliding on without looking around.
They never saw who called. Perhaps someone on a roof. They looked into Sequin Court as they passed, but it was empty. So was Fools Gold Court.
Slenya was two inches taller than the Gray Mouser and ten shorter than Fafhrd — a nice height for a girl.
“She's mine,” the Gray Mouser whispered with great authority.
“No, she's mine,” Fafhrd murmured back with crushing casualness.
“We could split her,” the Mouser hissed judiciously.
There was a zany logic to this suggestion for, quite amazingly, she was completely black on the right side and completely fair on the left side. You could see the dividing line down her back very distinctly. This was because of the extreme thinness of the dress of beige silk she was wearing. Her two colors split exactly at her buttocks.
On the fair side her hair was completely blonde. On the black side it was all brunette.
At this moment an ebony-black warrior appeared from nowhere and attacked Fafhrd with a brass scimitar.
Drawing his sword Graywand in a rush, Fafhrd parried at a square angle. The scimitar shattered, and the brazen fragments flew about. Fafhrd's wrist whipped Graywand in a circle and struck off his foe's head.
Meanwhile the Mouser was suddenly faced by an ivory-white warrior sprung from another nowhere and armed with a steel rapier, silver-plated. The Mouser whisked out Scalpel, laid a bind on the other's blade, and thrust him through the heart.
The two friends congratulated each other.
Then they looked around. Save for the corpses, Pinchbeck Alley was empty.
Slenya Akkiba Magus had disappeared.
The twain pondered this for five heartbeats and two inhalations. Then Fafhrd's frown vanished and his eyes widened.
“Mouser,” he said. “The girl divided into the two villains! That explains all. They came from the same nowhere.”
“The same somewhere, you mean,” the Mouser quibbled. “A most exotic mode of reproduction, or fission rather.”
“And one with a sex alternation,” Fafhrd added. “Perhaps if we examined the corpses—”
They looked down to find Pinchbeck Alley emptier still. The two liches had vanished from the cobbles. Even the chopped-off head was gone from the foot of the wall against which it had rolled.
“An excellent way of disposing of bodies,” Fafhrd said with approval. His ears had caught the tramp and brazen clank of the approaching watch.
“They might have lingered long enough for us to search their pouches and seams for jewels and precious metal,” the Mouser demurred.
“But what was behind it all?” Fafhrd puzzled. “A black-and-white magician?"
“It's bootless to make bricks without straw,” said the Mouser, cutting him short. “Let us hie to the Golden Lamphrey and there drink a health to the girl, who was surely a stunner.”
“Agreed. And we will drink to her appropriately in blackest stout laced with the palest bubbly wine of Ilthmar.”
III: Trapped in the Shadowland
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were almost dead from thirst. Their horses had died from the same Hell-throated ailment at the last waterhole, which had proved dry. Even the last contents of their waterbags, augmented by water of their own bodies, had not been enough to keep alive the dear dumb equine beasts. As all men know, camels are the only creatures who can carry men for more than a day or two across the almost supernaturally hot arid deserts of the World of Nehwon.
They tramped on south-westward under the blinding sun and over the burning sand. Despite their desperate plight and heat-fevered minds and bodies, they were steering a canny course. Too far south and they would fall into the cruel hands of the emperor of the Eastern Lands, who would find rare delight in torturing them before killing them. Too far east and they would encounter the merciless Mingols of the Steppes and other horrors. West and northwest were those who were pursuing them now. While north and northeast lay the Shadowland, the home of Death himself. So much they well knew of the geography of Nehwon.
Meanwhile, Death grinned faintly in his low castle in the heart of the Shadowland, certain that he had at last got the two elusive heroes in his bony grip. They had years ago had the nerve to enter his domain, visiting their first loves, Ivrian and Vlana, and even stealing from his very castle Death's favorite mask. Now they would pay for their temerity.
Death had the appearance of a tall, handsome young man, though somewhat cadaverous and of opalescent complexion. He was staring now at a large map of the Shadowland and its environs set in a dark wall of his dwelling. On this map Fafhrd and the Mouser were a gleaming speck, like an errant star or fire beetle, south of the Shadowland.
Death writhed his thin, smiling lips and moved his bony fingertips in tiny, cabalistic curves, as he worked a small but difficult magic.
His incantation done, he noted with approval that on the map a southern tongue of the Shadowland was visibly extending itself in pursuit of the dazzling speck that was his victims.
Fafhrd and the Mouser tramped on south, staggering and reeling now, their feet and minds aflame, their faces a-drip with precious sweat. They had been seeking, near the Sea of Monsters and the City of Ghouls, their strayed newest girls, Mouser's Reetha and Fafhrd's Kreeshkra, the latter a Ghoul herself, all her blood and flesh invisible, which made her bonny pink bones stand out the more, while Reetha believed in going naked and shaven from head to toe, a taste which gave the girls a mutual similarity and sympathy.
But the Mouser and Fafhrd had found nothing but a horde of fierce male Ghouls, mounted on equally skeletal horses, who had chased them east and south, either to slay them, or to cause them to die of thirst in the desert or of torture in the dungeons of the King of Kings.
It was high noon and the sun was hottest. Fafhrd's left hand touched in the dry heat a cool fence about two feet high, invisible at first though not for long.
“Escape to damp coolth,” he said in a cracked voice.
They eagerly clambered over the fence and threw themselves down on a blessed thick turf of dark grass two inches high, over which a fine mist was falling. They slept about ten hours.
In his castle Death permitted himself a thin grin, as on his map the south-trending tongue of the Shadowland touched the diamond spark and dimmed it.
Nehwon's greatest star, Astorian, was mounting the eastern sky, precursor of the moon, as the two adventurers awoke, greatly refreshed by their long nap. The mist had almost ceased, but the only star visible was vast Astorian.
The Mouser sprang up agitatedly in his gray hood, tunic, and ratskin shoes. “We must escape backward to hot dryth,” he said, “for this is the Shadowland, Death's homeland.”
“A very comfortable place,” Fafhrd replied, stretching his huge muscles luxuriously on the thick greensward. “Return to the briny, granular, rasping, fiery land-sea? Not I."
“But if we stay here,” the Mouser countered, “we will be will-lessly drawn by devilish and delusive will-o'-the-wisps to the low-walled Castle of Death, whom we defied by stealing his mask and giving its two halves to our wizards Sheelba and Ningauble, an action for which Death is not likely to love us. Besides, here we might well meet our two first girls, Ivrian and Vlana, now concubines of Death, and that would not be a pleasant experience.”
Fafhrd winced, yet stubbornly repeated, “But it is comfortable here.” Rather self-consciously he writhed his great shoulders and restretched his seven feet on the deliciously damp turf. (The “seven feet” refers to his height. He was by no means an octopus missing one limb, but a handsome, red-bearded, very tall barbarian.)
The Mouser persisted, “But what if your Vlana should appear, blue-faced and unloving? Or my Ivrian in like state, for that matter?”
That dire image did it. Fafhrd sprang up, grabbing for the low fence. But lo and behold — there was no fence at hand. In all directions stretched out the damp, dark green turf of the Shadowland, while the soft drizzle had thickened again, hiding Astorian. There was no way to tell directions.
The Mouser searched in his ratskin pouch and drew out a blue bone needle. He pricked himself finding it, and cursed. It was wickedly sharp at one end, round and pierced at the other.
“We need a pool or puddle,” he said.
“Where did you get that toy?” Fafhrd quizzed. “Magic, eh?”
“From Nattick Nimblefingers the Tailor in vasty Lankhmar,” the Mouser responded. “Magic, nay! Hast heard of compass needles, oh wise one?”
Not far off they found a shallow puddle atop the turf. The Mouser carefully floated his needle on the small mirror of clear, placid water. It spun about slowly and eventually settled itself.
“We go that way,” Fafhrd said, pointing out from the pierced end of the needle “South.” For he realized the pricking end must point toward the heart of the Shadowland — Nehwon's Death Pole, one might call it. For an instant he wondered if there were another such pole at the antipodes — perhaps a Life Pole.
“And we'll still need the needle,” the Mouser added, pricking himself again and cursing as he pouched it, “for future guidance.”
“Hah! Wah-wah-wah-hah!” yelled three berserks, emerging like fleet statues from the mist. They had been long marooned in the skirts of the Shadowland, reluctant either to advance to the Castle of Death and find their Hell or Valhalla, or to seek escape, but always ready for a fight. They rushed at Fafhrd and the Mouser, bare-skinned and naked-bladed.
It took the Twain ten heartbeats of clashing sword-fight to kill them, though killing in the domain of Death must be at least a misdemeanor, it occurred to the Mouser — like poaching. Fafhrd got a shallow slash wound across his biceps, which the Mouser carefully bound up.
“Wow!” said Fafhrd. “Where did the needle point? I've got turned around.”
They located the same or another puddle-mirror, floated the needle, again found South, and then took up their trek.
They twice tried to escape from the Shadowland by changing course, once east, once west. It was no use. Whatever way they went, they found only soft-turfed earth and the misted sky. So they kept on south, trusting Nattick's needle.
For food they cut out black lambs from the black flocks they encountered, slew, bled, skinned, dressed, and roasted the tender meat over fires from wood of the squat black trees and bushes here and there. The young flesh was succulent. They drank dew.
Death in his low-walled keep continued to grin from time to time at his map, as the dark tongue of his territory kept magically extending southwest, the dimmed spark of his doomed victims in its margin.
He noted that the Ghoulish cavalry originally pursuing the Twain had halted at the boundary of his marchland.
But now there was the faintest trace of anxiety in Death's smile. And now and again a tiny vertical frown creased his opalescent, unwrinkled forehead, as he exerted his faculties to keep his geographical sorcery going.
The black tongue kept on down the map, past Sarheenmar and thievish Ilthmar to the Sinking Land. Both cities on the shore of the Inner Sea were scared unto death by the dark invasion of damp turf and misty sky, and they thanked their degenerate gods that it narrowly bypassed them.
And now the black tongue crossed the Sinking Land, moving due west. The little frown in Death's forehead had become quite deep. At the Swamp Gate of Lankhmar the Mouser and Fafhrd found their magical mentors waiting, Sheelba of the Eyeless Face and Ningauble of the Seven Eyes.
“What have you been up to?” Sheelba sternly asked the Mouser.
“And what have you been doing?” Ningauble demanded of Fafhrd.
The Mouser and Fafhrd were still in the Shadowland, and the two wizards outside it, with the boundary midway between. So their conversation was like that of two pairs of people on opposite sides of a narrow street, on the one side of which it is raining cats and dogs, the other side dry and sunny, though in this instance stinking with the smog of Lankhmar.
“Seeking Reetha,” the Mouser replied, honestly for once.
“Seeking Kreeshkra,” Fafhrd said boldly, “but a mounted Ghoul troop harried us back.”
From his hood Ningauble writhed out six of his seven eyes and regarded Fafhrd searchingly. He said severely, “Kreeshkra, tired of your untameable waywardness, has gone back to the Ghouls for good, taking Reetha with her. I would advise you instead to seek Frix,” naming a remarkable female who had played no small part in the adventure of the rat-hordes, the same affair in which Kreeshkra the Ghoul girl had been involved.
“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,” Sh
eelba 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.
