Swords and Ice Magic fagm-6

by Fritz Leiber

  “I know, I know,” she said sharply, “and I'm pleased. But you were paid for that — and shall get further pay in Rime Isle gold as services are rendered. As for the council, the wizardries of Khahkht have lulled their suspicions — I doubt not that today's fish-run is his work, tempting their cupidity.”

  “And my comrade and I have suffered from his wizardries too, I trow,” Fafhrd said. “Nevertheless, you told us at the Silver Eel in Lankhmar that you spoke with the voice of Rime Isle, and now it appears that you speak only for Cif and yourself in a council of — what is it, twelve?”

  “Did you expect your task to be all easy sailing?” she flared at him. “Art unacquainted with set-backs and adverse gales in quests? Moreover, we do speak with the voice of Rime Isle, for Cif and I are the only councilpersons who have the old glory of Rime Isle at heart — and we are both full council members, I assure you, only daughters inheriting house, farms and council membership from fathers after (in Cif's case) sons died. We played together as children in these hills, she and I, reviving Rime Isle's greatness in our games. Or sometimes we'd be pirate queens and rape the Isle. But chiefly we'd imagine ourselves seizing power in the council, forcibly putting down all the other members.”

  “So much violence in little girls?” Fafhrd couldn't help putting in. “I think of little girls as gathering flowers and weaving garlands whilst fancying themselves little wives and mothers—”

  “—and put them all to the sword and cut their wives’ throats!” Afreyt finished. “Oh, we gathered flowers too, sometimes.”

  Fafhrd chuckled, then his voice grew grave. “And so you've inherited full council membership. Groniger always mentions you with respect, though I think he has suspicions of something between us — and now you've somehow discovered a stray old god or two whom you think you can trust not to betray you, or delude you with senile ravings, and he's told you of a great two-pronged Mingol invasion of Rime Isle preparatory to world conquest, and on the strength of that you went to Lankhmar and hired the Mouser and me to be your mercenary captains, using your own fortunes for the purpose, I fancy—”

  “Cif is the council treasurer,” she assured him with a meaningful crook of her lips. “She's very good at figures and accounts — as I am with the pen and words, the council's secretary.”

  “And yet you trust this god,” Fafhrd pressed on, “this old god who loves gallows and seems to draw strength from them. Myself, I'm very suspicious of all old men and gods. In my experience they're full of lechery and avarice — and have a long lifetime's experience of evil to draw on in their twisty machinations.”

  “Agreed,” Afreyt said. “But when all's said and done, a god's a god. Whatever nasty itches his old heart may have, whatever wicked thoughts of death and doom, he must first be true to his god's nature: which is, to hear what we say and hold us to it, to speak truth to man about what's going on in distant places, and to prophecy honestly — though he may try to trick us with words if we don't listen to him very carefully.”

  “That does agree with my experience of the breed,” Fafhrd admitted. “Tell me, why is this called the Hill of the Eight-Legged Horse?”

  Without a blink at the change of subject, Afreyt replied, “Because it takes four men to carry a coffin or the laid-out corpse of one who's been hanged — or died any other way. Four men — eight legs. You might have guessed.”

  “And what is this god's name?”

  Afreyt said: “Odin.”

  Fafhrd had the strangest feeling at the gong-beat sound of that simple name — as if he were on the verge of recalling memories of another lifetime. Also, it had something of the tone of the gibberish spoken by Karl Treuherz, that strange otherworlder who had briefly come into the lives of Fafhrd and the Mouser astride the neck of a two-headed sea serpent whilst they were in the midst of their great adventure-war with the sapient rats of Lankhmar Below-Ground. Only a name — yet there was the feeling of walls between world disturbed.

  At the same time he was looking into Afreyt's wide eyes and noting that the irises were violet, rather than blue as they had seemed in the yellow torchlight of the Eel — and then wondering how he could see any violet at all in anything when that tone had some time ago faded entirely from the sky, which was now full night except that the moon a day past full had just now lifted above the eastern highland.

  From beyond Afreyt a light voice called tranquilly, attuned to the night, “The god sleeps.”

  One of the girls was standing before the mouth of the bower, a slim white shape in the moonlight, clad only in simple frock that was hardly more than a shift and left one shoulder bare. Fafhrd marvelled that she was not shivering in the chill night air. Her two companions were dimmer shapes behind her.

  “Did he give any trouble, Mara?” Afreyt called. (Fafhrd felt a strange feeling at that name, too.) “Nothing new,” the girl responded.

  Afreyt said, “Well, put on your boots and hooded cloak — May and Gale, you also — and follow me and the foreign gentleman, out of earshot, to Salthaven. You'll be able to visit the god at dawn, May, to bring him milk?”

  “I will.”

  “Your children?” Fafhrd asked in a whisper.

  Afreyt shook her head. “Cousins. Meanwhile,” she said in a voice that was likewise low, but businesslike, “you and I will discuss your instant expedition with the berserks to Cold Harbor.”

  Fafhrd nodded, although his eyebrows rose a little. There was a fugitive movement in the air overhead and he found himself thinking of his and the Mouser's one-time loves, the invisible mountain-princesses Hirriwi and Keyaira, and of their night-riding brother, Prince Faroomfar.

  * * *

  The Gray Mouser saw his men fed and bedded down for the night in their dormitory ashore, not without some fatherly admonitions as to the desirability of prudent behavior in the home port of one's employers. He briefly discussed the morrow's work with Ourph and Pshawri. Then, with a final enigmatic scowl all around, he threw his cloak over his left shoulder, withdrew into the chilly evening, and strolled toward the Salt Herring.

  Although he and Fafhrd had had a long refreshing sleep aboard the Flotsam (declining the shore quarters Groniger had offered them, though accepting for their men), it had been a long, exactingly busy, and so presumably tiring day — yet now, somewhat to his surprise, he felt new life stirring in him. But this new life invading him did not concern itself with his and Fafhrd's many current problems and sage plans for future contingencies, but rather with a sense of just how preposterous it was that for the past three moons he should have been solemnly playing at being a captain of men, fire-breathing disciplinarian, prodigious navigator, and the outlandishly heroic rest of it. He, a thief, captaining thieves, drilling them into sailorly and warlike skills that would be of no use to them whatever when they went back to their old professions — ridiculous! All because a small woman with golden glints in her dark hair and in her green eyes had set him an unheard-of task. Really, most droll.

  Moonlight striking almost horizontally left the narrow street in shadow but revealed the cross-set beams above the Salt Herring's door. Where did they get so much wood in an island so far north? That question at least was answered for him when he pressed on inside. The tavern was built of the gray beams and planks of wrecked or dismantled ships — one wall still had a whaleback curve and he noted in another the borings and embedded shells of sea creatures.

  A slow eyesweep around showed a half dozen oddly sorted mariners quietly drinking and two youngish Islers even more quietly playing chess with chunky stone pieces. He recalled having seen this morning with Groniger the one playing the black.

  Without a word he marched toward the inner room, the low doorway to which was now half occupied by a brawny and warty old hag, sitting bowed over on a low stool, who looked the witch-mother of all unnatural giants and other monsters.

  His Ilthmart host came up beside him, wiping his hands on the towel that was his apron and saying sofly, “Flame Den's taken for tonight — a
private party. You'd only be courting trouble with Mother Grum. What's your pleasure?”

  The Mouser gave him a hard, silent look and marched on. Mother Grum glowered at him from under tangled brows. He glowered back. The Ilthmart shrugged.

  Mother Grum moved back from her stool, bowing him into the inner room. He briefly turned his head, favoring the Ilthmart with a cold superior smile as he moved after her. One of the Islers, lifting a black rook to move it, swung his eyes sidewise to observe, though his head remained motionless and bent over the board as if in deepest thought.

  The inner room had a small fire in it, at any rate, to provide movement to entertain the eye. The large hearth was in the center of the room, a stone slab set almost waist high. A great copper flue (the Mouser wondered what ship's bottom it had helped cover) came down to within a yard of it from out of the low ceiling, and into this flue the scant smoke twistingly flowed. Elsewhere in the room were a few small, scarred tables, chairs for them, and another doorway.

  Sidewise together on the edge of the hearth sat two women who looked personable, but used by life. The Mouser had seen one of them earlier in the day (the late afternoon) and judged her a whore. Their somewhat provocative attire now, and the red stockings of one, were consonant with this theory.

  The Mouser went to a table a quarter way around the fire from them, cast his cape over one chair and sat down in another, which commanded both doorways. He knit his fingers together and studied the flames impassively.

  Mother Grum returned to her stool in the doorway, presenting her back to all three of them.

  One of the two whorish-looking women stared into the fire and from time to time fed it with driftwood that sang and sometimes tinged the flames with green and blue and with thorny black twigs that spat and crackled and burned hot orange. The other wove cat's cradles between the spread fingers of her outheld hands on a long loop of black twine. Now and then the Mouser looked aside from the fire at her severe angular creations.

  Neither of the women took notice of the Mouser, but after a while the one feeding the fire stood up, brought a wine jar and two small tankards to his table, poured into one, and stood regarding him.

  He took up the tankard, tasted a small mouthful, swallowed it, set down the tankard, and nodded curtly without looking at her.

  She went back to her former occupation. Thereafter the Mouser took an occasional swallow of wine while studying and listening to the flames. What with their combination of crackling and singing, they were really quite vocal in that rather small, silent room — resembling an eager, rapid, youthful voice, by turns merry and malicious. Sometimes the Mouser could have sworn he heard words and phrases.

  While in the flames, continually renewed, he began to see faces, or rather one face which changed expression a good deal — a youthfully handsome face with very mobile lips, sometimes open and amiable, sometimes convulsed by hatreds and envies (the flames shone green awhile), sometimes almost impossibly distorted, like a face seen through hot air above a very hot fire. Indeed once or twice he had the fancy that it was the face of an actual person sitting on the opposite side of the fire from him, sometimes half rising to regard him through the flames, sometimes crouching back. He was almost tempted to get up and walk around the fire to check on that, but not quite.

  The strangest thing about the face was that it seemed familiar to the Mouser, though he could not place it. He gave up racking his brains over that and settled back, listening more closely to the flame-voice and trying to attune its fancied words to the movements of the flame-face's lips.

  Mother Grum got up again and moved back, bowing. There entered without stooping a lady whose russet cloak was drawn across the lower half of her face, but the Mouser recognized the gold-shot green eyes and he stood up. Cif nodded to Mother Grum and the two harlots, walked to the Mouser's table, cast her cloak atop his, and sat down in the third chair. He poured for her, refilled his own tankard, and sat down also. They drank. She studied him for some time.

  Then, “You've seen the face in the fire and heard its voice?” she asked.

  His eyes widened and he nodded, watching her intently now.

  “But have you guessed why it seems familiar?” He shook his head rapidly, sitting forward, his expression a most curious and expectant frown.

  “It resembles you,” she said flatly.

  His eyebrows went up and his jaw dropped, just a little. That was true! It did remind him of himself — only when he was younger, quite a bit younger. Or as he saw himself in mirror these days only when in a most self-infatuated and vain mood, so that he saw himself as unmarked by age.

  “But do you know why?” she asked him, herself intent now.

  He shook his head.

  She relaxed. “Neither do I,” she said. “I thought you might know. I marked it when I first saw you in the Eel, but as to why — it is a mystery within mysteries, beyond our present ken.”

  “I find Rime Isle a nest of mysteries,” he said meaningfully, “not the least your disavowal of myself and Fafhrd.”

  She nodded, sat up straighter, and said, “So now I think it's high time I told you why Afreyt and I are so sure of a Mingol invasion of Rime Isle while the rest of the council disbelieves it altogether. Don't you?”

  He nodded emphatically, smiling.

  “Almost a year ago to the day,” she said, “Afreyt and I were walking alone upon the moor north of town, as has been our habit since childhood. We were lamenting Rime Isle's lost glories and lost (or man-renounced) gods and wishing for their return, so that the Isle might have surer guidance and foreknowledge of perils. It was a day of changeable winds and weather, the end of spring, not quite yet summer, all the air alive, now bright, now gloomed over, as clouds raced past the sun. We had just topped a gentle rise when we came upon the form of a youth sprawled on his back in the heather with eyes closed and head thrown back, looking as if he were dying or in the last stages of exhaustion — as though he had been cast ashore by the last great wave of some unimaginably great storm on high.

  “He wore a simple tunic of homespun, very worn, and the plainest sandals, worn thin, with frayed thongs, and a very old belt dimly pricked out with monsters, yet from first sight I was almost certain that he was a god.

  “I knew it in three ways. From his insubstantiality — though he was there to the touch, I could almost see the crushed heather through his pale flesh. From his supernal beauty — it was… the flame-face, though tranquil-featured, almost as if in death. And from the adoration I felt swelling in my heart.

  “I also knew it from the way Afreyt acted, kneeling at once like myself beside him across from me — though there was something unnatural in her behavior, betokening an amazing development when we understood it aright, which we did not then. (More of that later.)

  “You know how they say a god dies when his believers utterly fail him? Well, it was as if this one's last worshipper were dying in Nehwon. Or as if — this is closer to it — all his worshippers had died in his own proper world and he whirled out into the wild spaces between the worlds, to sink or swim, survive or perish according to the reception he got in whatever new world whereon chance cast him ashore. I think it within the power of gods to travel between the worlds, don't you? — both involuntarily and also by their own design. And who knows what unpredictable tempests they might encounter in dark mid-journey?

  “But I was not wasting time in speculations on that day of miracles a year ago. No, I was chafing his wrists and chest, pressing my warm cheek against his cold one, prising open his lips with my tongue (his jaw was slack) and with my open lips clamped upon his (and his nostrils clipped between my finger and thumb) sending my fresh, new-drawn breaths deep into his lungs, the meanwhile fervently praying to him in my mind, though I know they say the gods hear only our words, no thoughts. A stranger, happening upon us, might have judged us in the second or third act of lovemaking, I the more feverish seeking to rekindle his ardor.

  “Meanwhile Afreyt (again here's
that unnatural thing I mentioned) seemed to be as busy as I across from me — and yet somehow I was doing all the work. The explanation of that came somewhat later.

  “My god showed signs of life. His eyelids quivered, I felt his chest stir, while his lips began to return my kisses.

  “I uncapped my silver flask and dribbled brandy between his lips, alternating the drops with further kisses and words of comfort and endearment.

  “At last he opened his eyes (brown shot with gold, like yours) and with my help raised up his head, meanwhile muttering words in a strange tongue. I answered in what languages I know, but he only frowned, shaking his head. That's how I knew he was not a Nehwon god — it's natural, don't you think, that a god, all-knowing in his own world, would be at a loss at first, plunged into another? He'd have to take it in.

  “Finally he smiled and lifted his hand to my bosom, looking at me questioningly. I spoke my name. He nodded and shaped his lips, repeated it. Then he touched his own chest and spoke the name ‘Loki.’”

  At that word the Mouser knew feelings and thoughts similar to those of Fafhrd hearing “Odin" — of other lives and worlds, and of Karl Treuherz's tongue and his little Lankhmarese-German, German-Lankhmarese dictionary that he'd given Fafhrd. At the same moment, though for that moment only, he saw the fire-face so like his own in the flames, seeming to wink at him. He frowned wonderingly.

  Cif continued, “Thereafter I fed him crumbs of meat from my script, which he accepted from my fingers, eating sparingly and sipping more brandy, the whiles I taught him words, pointing to this and that. That day Darkfire was smoking thick and showing flames, which interested him mightily when I named it. So I took flint and iron from my script and struck them together, naming ‘fire.’ He was delighted, seeming to gather strength from the sparks and smouldering straws and the very word. He'd stroke the little flames without seeming to take hurt. That frightened me.