The First Book of Lankhmar

by Fritz Leiber

  But then he saw a jut of downy male chin in the reddish-blond hair and also a pair of massive silver bracelets of the sort one gained only by pirating. Next the youth picked up the actress and glide-ran away from the Snow Women, who now could see only their victim’s scarlet-stockinged legs. A volley of snowballs struck the rescuer’s back. He staggered a little, then sped determinedly on, still ducking his head.

  The biggest of the Snow Women, one with the bearing of a queen and a haggard face still handsome, though the hair falling to either side of it was white, stopped running and shouted in a deep voice, ‘Come back, my son! You hear me, Fafhrd, come back now!’

  The youth nodded his ducked head slightly, though he did not pause in his flight. Without turning his head, he called in a rather high voice, ‘I will come back, revered Mor my mother…later on.’

  The other women took up the cry of ‘Come back now!’ Some of them added such epithets as ‘Dissolute youth!’ ‘Curse of your good mother Mor!’ and ‘Chaser after whores!’

  Mor silenced them with a curt, sidewise sweep of her hands, palms down. ‘We will wait here,’ she announced with authority.

  The black-turbaned man paused a bit, then strolled after the vanished pair, keeping a wary eye on the Snow Women. They were supposed not to attack traders, but with barbarian females, as with males, one could never tell.

  Fafhrd reached the actors’ tents, which were pitched in a circle around a trampled stretch of snow at the altar end of Godshall. Farthest from the precipice was the tall, conical tent of the Master of the Show. Midway stretched the common actors’ tent, somewhat fish-shaped, one-third for the girls, two-thirds for the men. Nearest Trollstep Canyon was a medium-size, hemicylindrical tent supported on half hoops. Across its middle, an evergreen sycamore thrust a great heavy branch balanced by two lesser branches on the opposite side, all spangled with crystals. In this tent’s semicircular front was a laced entry-flap, which Fafhrd found difficult to open, since the long form in his arms was still limp.

  A swag-bellied little old man came strutting toward him with something of the bounce of youth. This one wore ragged finery touched up with gilt. Even his long gray moustache and goatee glittered with specks of gold above and below his dirty-toothed mouth. His heavily pouched eyes were rheumy and red all around, but dark and darting at center. Above them was a purple turban supporting in turn a gilt crown set with battered gems of rock crystal, poorly aping diamonds.

  Behind him came a skinny, one-armed Mingol, a fat Easterner with a vast black beard that stank of burning, and two scrawny girls who, despite their yawning and the heavy blankets huddled around them, looked watchful and evasive as alley cats.

  ‘What’s this now?’ the leader demanded, his alert eyes taking in every detail of Fafhrd and his burden. ‘Vlana slain? Raped and slain, eh? Know, murderous youth, that you’ll pay high for your fun. You may not know who I am, but you’ll learn. I’ll have reparations from your chiefs, I will! Vast reparations! I have influence, I have. You’ll lose those pirate’s bracelets of yours and that silver chain peeping from under your collar. Your family’ll be beggared, and all your relatives, too. As for what they’ll do to you—’

  ‘You are Essedinex, Master of the Show,’ Fafhrd broke in dogmatically, his high tenor voice cutting like a trumpet through the other’s hoarse, ranting baritone. ‘I am Fafhrd, son of Mor and of Nalgron the Legend-Breaker. Vlana the culture dancer is not raped or dead, but stunned with snowballs. This is her tent. Open it.’

  ‘We’ll take care of her, barbarian,’ Essedinex asserted, though more quietly, appearing both surprised and somewhat intimidated by the youth’s almost pedantic precision as to who was who, and what was what. ‘Hand her over. Then depart.’

  ‘I will lay her down,’ Fafhrd persisted. ‘Open the tent!’

  Essedinex shrugged and motioned to the Mingol, who with a sardonic grin used his one hand and elbow to unlace and draw aside the entry-flap. An odor of sandalwood and closetberry came out. Stooping, Fafhrd entered. Midway down the length of the tent he noted a pallet of furs and a low table with a silver mirror propped against some jars and squat bottles. At the far end was a rack of costumes.

  Stepping around a brazier from which a thread of pale smoke wreathed, Fafhrd carefully knelt and most gently deposited his burden on the pallet. Next he felt Vlana’s pulse at jaw-hinge and wrist, rolled back a dark lid and peered into each eye, delicately explored with his fingertips the sizable bumps that were forming on jaw and forehead. Then he tweaked the lobe of her left ear and, when she did not react, shook his head and, drawing open her russet robe, began to unbutton the red dress under it.

  Essedinex, who with the others had been watching the proceedings in a puzzled fashion, cried out, ‘Well, of all—Cease, lascivious youth!’

  ‘Silence,’ Fafhrd commanded and continued unbuttoning.

  The two blanketed girls giggled, then clapped hands to mouths, darting amused gazes at Essedinex and the rest.

  Drawing aside his long hair from his right ear, Fafhrd laid that side of his face on Vlana’s chest between her breasts, small as half pomegranates, their nipples rosy bronze in hue. He maintained a solemn expression. The girls smothered giggles again. Essedinex strangledly cleared his throat, preparing for large speech.

  Fafhrd sat up and said, ‘Her spirit will shortly return. Her bruises should be dressed with snow-bandages, renewed when they begin to melt. Now I require a cup of your best brandy.’

  ‘My best brandy—!’ Essedinex cried outragedly. ‘This goes too far. First you must have a help-yourself peep show, then strong drink! Presumptuous youth, depart at once!’

  ‘I am merely seeking—’ Fafhrd began in clear and at last slightly dangerous tones.

  His patient interrupted the dispute by opening her eyes, shaking her head, wincing, then determindedly sitting up—whereupon she grew pale and her gaze wavered. Fafhrd helped her lie down again and put pillows under her feet. Then he looked at her face. Her eyes were still open and she was looking back at him curiously.

  He saw a face small and sunken-cheeked, no longer girlish-young, but with a compact catlike beauty despite its lumps. Her eyes, being large, brown-irised and long-lashed, should have been melting, but were not. There was the look of the loner in them, and purpose, and a thoughtful weighing of what she saw.

  She saw a handsome, fair-complexioned youth of about eighteen winters, wide-headed and long-jawed, as if he had not done growing. Fine red-gold hair cascaded down his cheeks. His eyes were green, cryptic, and as staring as a cat’s. His lips were wide, but slightly compressed, as if they were a door that locked words in and opened only on the cryptic eyes’ command.

  One of the girls had poured a half cup of brandy from a bottle on the low table. Fafhrd took it and lifted Vlana’s head for her to drink it in sips. The other girl came with powder snow folded in woolen cloths. Kneeling on the far side of the pallet, she bound them against the bruises.

  After inquiring Fafhrd’s name and confirming that he had rescued her from the Snow Women, Vlana asked, ‘Why do you speak in such a high voice?’

  ‘I study with a singing skald,’ he answered. ‘They use that voice and are the true skalds, not the roaring ones who use deep tones.’

  ‘What reward do you expect for rescuing me?’ she asked boldly.

  ‘None,’ Fafhrd replied.

  From the two girls came further giggles, quickly cut off at Vlana’s glance.

  Fafhrd added, ‘It was my personal obligation to rescue you, since the leader of the Snow Women was my mother. I must respect my mother’s wishes, but I must also prevent her from performing wrong actions.’

  ‘Oh. Why do you act like a priest or healer?’ Vlana continued. ‘Is that one of your mother’s wishes?’ She had not bothered to cover her breasts, but Fafhrd was not looking at them now, only at the actress’s lips and eyes.

  ‘Healing is part of the singing skald’s art,’ he answered. ‘As for my mother, I do my duty toward her, nor less,
nor more.’

  ‘Vlana, it is not politic that you talk thus with this youth,’ Essedinex interposed, now in a nervous voice. ‘He must—’

  ‘Shut up!’ Vlana snapped. Then, back to Fafhrd, ‘Why do you wear white?’

  ‘It is proper garb for all Snow Folk. I do not follow the new custom of dark and dyed furs for males. My father always wore white.’

  ‘He is dead?’

  ‘Yes. While climbing a tabooed mountain called White Fang.’

  ‘And your mother wishes you to wear white, as if you were your father returned?’

  Fafhrd neither answered nor frowned at that shrewd question. Instead he asked, ‘How many languages can you speak—besides this pidgin-Lankhmarese?’

  She smiled at last. ‘What a question! Why, I speak—though not too well—Mingol, Kvarchish, High and Low Lankhmarese, Quarmallian, Old Ghoulish, Desert-talk, and three Eastern tongues.’

  Fafhrd nodded. ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Forever why?’

  ‘Because it means you are very civilized,’ he answered.

  ‘What’s so great about that?’ she demanded with a sour laugh.

  ‘You should know, you’re a culture dancer. In any case, I am interested in civilization.’

  ‘One comes,’ Essedinex hissed from the entry. ‘Vlana, the youth must—’

  ‘He must not!’

  ‘As it happens, I must indeed leave now,’ Fafhrd said, rising. ‘Keep up the snow-bandages,’ he instructed Vlana. ‘Rest until sundown. Then more brandy, with hot soup.’

  ‘Why must you leave?’ Vlana demanded, rising on an elbow.

  ‘I made a promise to my mother,’ Fafhrd said without looking back.

  ‘Your mother!’

  Stooping at the entry, Fafhrd finally did stop to look back. ‘I owe my mother many duties,’ he said. ‘I owe you none, as yet.’

  ‘Vlana, he must leave. It’s the one,’ Essedinex stage-whispered hoarsely. Meanwhile he was shoving at Fafhrd, but for all the youth’s slenderness, he might as well have been trying to push a tree off of its roots.

  ‘Are you afraid of him who comes?’ Vlana was buttoning up her dress now.

  Fafhrd looked at her thoughtfully. Then, without replying in any way whatever to her question, he ducked through the entry and stood up, waiting the approach through the persistent mist of a man in whose face anger was gathering.

  This man was as tall as Fafhrd, half again as thick and wide, and about twice as old. He was dressed in brown sealskin and amethyst-studded silver except for the two massive gold bracelets on his wrists and the gold chain about his neck, marks of a pirate chief.

  Fafhrd felt a touch of fear, not at the approaching man, but at the crystals which were now thicker on the tents than he recalled them being when he had carried Vlana in. The element over which Mor and her sister witches had most power was cold—whether in a man’s soup or loins, or in his sword or climbing rope, making them shatter. He often wondered whether it was Mor’s magic that had made his own heart so cold. Now the cold would close in on the dancer. He should warn her, except she was civilized and would laugh at him.

  The big man came up.

  ‘Honorable Hringorl,’ Fafhrd greeted softly.

  For reply, the big man aimed a backhanded uppercut at Fafhrd with his near arm.

  Fafhrd leaned sharply away, slithering under the blow, and then simply walked off the way he had first come.

  Hringorl, breathing heavily, glared after him for a couple of heartbeats, then plunged into the hemicylindrical tent.

  Hringorl was certainly the most powerful man in the Snow Clan, Fafhrd reflected, though not one of its chiefs because of his bullying ways and defiances of custom. The Snow Women hated, but found it hard to get a hold of him, since his mother was dead and he had never taken a wife, satisfying himself with concubines he brought back from his piratings.

  From wherever he’d been inconspicuously standing, the black-turbaned and black-moustached man came up quietly to Fafhrd. ‘That was well done, my friend. And when you brought in the dancer.’

  Fafhrd said impassively, ‘You are Vellix the Venturer.’

  The other nodded. ‘Bringing brandy from Klelg Nar to this mart. Will you sample the best with me?’

  Fafhrd said, ‘I am sorry, but I have an engagement with my mother.’

  ‘Another time then,’ Vellix said easily.

  ‘Fafhrd!’

  It was Hringorl who called. His voice was no longer angry. Fafhrd turned. The big man stood by the tent, then came striding up when Fafhrd did not move. Meanwhile, Vellix faded back and away in a fashion as easy as his speech.

  ‘I’m sorry, Fafhrd,’ Hringorl said gruffly. ‘I did not know you had saved the dancer’s life. You have done me a great service. Here.’ He unclasped from his wrist one of the heavy gold bracelets and held it out.

  Fafhrd kept his hands at his sides. ‘No service whatever,’ he said. ‘I was only saving my mother from committing a wrong action.’

  ‘You’ve sailed under me,’ Hringorl suddenly roared, his face reddening though he still grinned somewhat, or tried to. ‘So you’ll take my gifts as well as my orders.’ He caught hold of Fafhrd’s hand, pressed the weighty torus into it, closed Fafhrd’s lax fingers on it, and stepped back.

  Instantly Fafhrd knelt, saying swiftly, ‘I am sorry, but I may not take what I have not rightly won. And now I must keep an engagement with my mother.’ Then he swiftly rose, turned, and walked away. Behind him, on an unbroken crust of snow, the golden bracelet gleamed.

  He heard Hringorl’s snarl and choked-back curse, but did not look around to see whether or not Hringorl picked up his spurned gratuity, though he did find it a bit difficult not to weave in his stride or duck his head a trifle, in case Hringorl decided to throw the massive wristlet at his skull.

  Shortly he came to the place where his mother was sitting amongst seven Snow Women, making eight in all. They stood up. He stopped a yard short. Ducking his head and looking to the side, he said, ‘Here I am, Mor.’

  ‘You took a long while,’ she said. ‘You took too long.’ Six heads around her nodded solemnly. Only Fafhrd noted, in the blurred edge of his vision, that the seventh and slenderest Snow Woman was moving silently backward.

  ‘But here I am,’ Fafhrd said.

  ‘You disobeyed my command,’ Mor pronounced coldly. Her haggard and once beautiful face would have looked very unhappy, had it not been so proud and masterful.

  ‘But now I am obeying it,’ Fafhrd countered. He noted that the seventh Snow Woman was now silently running, her great white cloak a-stream, between the home tents toward the high, white forest that was Cold Corner’s boundary everywhere that Trollstep Canyon wasn’t.

  ‘Very well,’ Mor said. ‘And now you will obey me by following me to the dream tent for ritual purification.’

  ‘I am not defiled,’ Fafhrd announced. ‘Moreover, I purify myself after my own fashion, one also agreeable to the gods.’

  There were clucks of shocked disapproval from all Mor’s coven. Fafhrd had spoken boldly, but his head was still bent, so that he did not see their faces, and their entrapping eyes, but only their long-robed white forms, like a clump of great birches.

  Mor said, ‘Look me in the eyes.’

  Fafhrd said, ‘I fulfill all the customary duties of a grown son, from food-winning to sword-guarding. But as far as I can ascertain, looking my mother in the eyes is not one of those duties.’

  ‘Your father always obeyed me,’ Mor said ominously.

  ‘Whenever he saw a tall mountain, he climbed her, obeying no one but himself,’ Fafhrd contradicted.

  ‘Yes, and died doing so!’ Mor cried, her masterfulness controlling grief and anger without hiding them.

  Fafhrd said hardly, ‘Whence came the great cold that shattered his rope and pick on White Fang?’

  Amidst the gasps of her coven, Mor pronounced in her deepest voice, ‘A mother’s curse, Fafhrd, on your disobedience and evil thinking!’
/>   Fafhrd said with strange eagerness, ‘I dutifully accept your curse, Mother.’

  Mor said, ‘My curse is not on you, but on your evil imaginings.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I will forever treasure it,’ Fafhrd cut in. ‘And now, obeying myself, I must take leave of you, until the wrath-devil has let you go.’

  And with that, head still bent down and away, he walked rapidly toward a point in the forest east of the home tents, but west of the great tongue of forest that stretched south almost to Godshall. The angry hissings of Mor’s coven followed him, but his mother did not cry out his name, nor any word at all. Fafhrd would almost rather that she had.

  Youth heals swiftly, on the skin-side. By the time Fafhrd plunged into his beloved wood without jarring a single becrystalled twig, his senses were alert, his neck-joint supple, and the outward surface of his inner being as cleared for new experience as the unbroken snow ahead. He took the easiest path, avoiding bediamonded thorn bushes to left and huge pine-screened juttings of pale granite to right.

  He saw bird tracks, squirrel tracks, day-old bear tracks; snow birds snapped their black beaks at red snowberries; a furred snow-snake hissed at him, and he would not have been startled by the emergence of a dragon with ice-crusted spines.

  So he was in no wise amazed when a great high-branched pine opened its snow-plastered bark and showed him its dryad—a merry, blue-eyed, blonde-haired girl’s face, a dryad no more than seventeen years old. In fact, he had been expecting such an apparition ever since he had noted the seventh Snow Woman in flight.

  Yet he pretended to be amazed for almost two heartbeats. Then he sprang forward crying, ‘Mara, my witch,’ and with his two arms separated her white-cloaked self from her camouflaging background, and kept them wrapped around her while they stood like one white column, hood to hood and lips to lips for at least twenty heartbeats of the most thuddingly delightful sort.