by Fritz Leiber
The Mouser, left alone with Ahura, found his glibness put to the test in saving her sanity by a barrage of small talk, mostly well-spiced Tyrian gossip, but including a wholly apocryphal tale of how he and Fafhrd and five small Ethiopian boys once played Maypole with the eyestalks of a drunken Ningauble, leaving him peering about in the oddest directions. (The Mouser was wondering why they had not heard from their seven-eyed mentor. After victories Ningauble was always particularly prompt in getting in his demands for payment; and very exacting too — he would insist on a strict accounting for the three missing aphrodisiac containers.)
The Mouser might have been expected to take advantage of this opportunity to press his suit with Ahura, and if possible assure himself that he was now wholly free of the snail curse. But, her hysterical condition aside, he felt strangely shy with her, as if, although this was the Ahura he loved, he were now meeting her for the first time. Certainly this was a wholly different Ahura from the one with whom they had journeyed to the Lost City, and the memory of how he had treated that other Ahura put a restraint on him. So he cajoled and comforted her as he might have some lonely Tyrian waif, finally bringing two funny little hand-puppets from his pouch and letting them amuse her for him.
And Ahura sobbed and stared and shivered, and hardly seemed to hear what nonsense the Mouser was saying, yet grew quiet and sane-eyed and appeared to be comforted.
When Fafhrd eventually returned with the still-giddy camel and the outraged mare, he did not interrupt, but listened gravely, his gaze occasionally straying to the dead adept, the black monolith, the stone city, or the valley's downward slope to the north. High over their heads a flock of birds was flying in the same direction. Suddenly they scattered wildly, as if an eagle had dropped among them. Fafhrd frowned. A moment later he heard a whirring in the air. The Mouser and Ahura looked up too, momentarily glimpsed something slim hurtling downward. They cringed. There was a thud as a long whitish arrow buried itself in a crack in the pavement hardly a foot from Fafhrd and stuck there vibrating.
After a moment Fafhrd touched it with shaking hand. The shaft was crusted with ice, the feathers stiff, as if, incredibly, it had sped for a long time through frigid supramundane air. There was something tied snugly around the shaft. He detached and unrolled an ice-brittle sheet of papyrus, which softened under his touch, and read, “You must go farther. Your quest is not ended. Trust in omens. Ningauble."
Still trembling, Fafhrd began to curse thunderously. He crumpled the papyrus, jerked up the arrow, broke it in two, threw the parts blindly away. “Misbegotten spawn of a eunuch, an owl, and an octopus!” he finished. “First he tries to skewer us from the skies, then he tells us our quest is not ended — when we've just ended it!"
The Mouser, well knowing these rages into which Fafhrd was apt to fall after battle, especially a battle in which he had not been able to participate, started to comment coolly. Then he saw the anger abruptly drain from Fafhrd's eyes, leaving a wild twinkle which he did not like.
“Mouser!” said Fafhrd eagerly. “Which way did I throw the arrow?"
“Why, north,” said the Mouser without thinking.
“Yes, and the birds were flying north, and the arrow was coated with ice!” The wild twinkle in Fafhrd's eyes became a berserk brilliance. “Omens, he said? We'll trust in omens all right! We'll go north, north, and still north!"
The Mouser's heart sank. Now would be a particularly difficult time to combat Fafhrd's long-standing desire to take him to “that wondrously cold land where only brawny, hot-blooded men may live and they but by the killing of fierce, furry animals" — a prospect poignantly disheartening to a lover of hot baths, the sun, and southern nights.
“This is the chance of all chances,” Fafhrd continued, intoning like a skald. “Ah, to rub one's naked hide with snow, to plunge like walrus into ice-garnished water. Around the Caspian and over greater mountains than these goes a way that men of my race have taken. Thor's gut, but you will love it! No wine, only hot mead and savory smoking carcasses, skin-toughening furs to wear, cold air at night to keep dreams clear and sharp, and great strong-hipped women. Then to raise sail on a winter ship and laugh at the frozen spray. Why have we so long delayed? Come! By the icy member that begot Odin, we must start at once!"
The Mouser stifled a groan. “Ah, blood-brother,” he intoned, not a whit less brazen-voiced, “my heart leaps even more than yours at the thought of nerve-quickening snow and all the other niceties of the manly life I have long yearned to taste. But" — here his voice broke sadly—"we forget this good woman, whom in any case, even if we disregard Ningauble's injunction, we must take safely back to Tyre."
He smiled inwardly.
“But I don't want to go back to Tyre,” interrupted Ahura, looking up from the puppets with an impishness so like a child's that the Mouser cursed himself for ever having treated her as one. “This lonely spot seems equally far from all builded places. North is as good a way as any."
“Flesh of Freya!” bellowed Fafhrd, throwing his arms wide. “Do you hear what she says, Mouser? By Idun, that was spoken like a true snow-land woman! Not one moment must be wasted now. We shall smell mead before a year is out. By Frigg, a woman! Mouser, you are good for one so small, did you not notice the pretty way she put it?"
So it was bustle about and pack and (for the present, at least, the Mouser conceded) no way out of it. The chest of aphrodisiacs, the cup, and the tattered shroud were bundled back onto the camel, which was still busy ogling the mare and smacking its great leathery lips. And Fafhrd leaped and shouted and clapped the Mouser's back as if there were not an eon-old dead stone city around them and a lifeless adept warming in the sun.
In a matter of moments they were jogging off down the valley, with Fafhrd singing tales of snowstorms and hunting and monsters big as icebergs and giants as tall as frost mountains, and the Mouser dourly amusing himself by picturing his own death at the hands of some overly affectionate “great strong-hipped” woman.
Soon the way became less barren. Scrub trees and the valley's downward trend hid the city behind them. A surge of relief which the Mouser hardly noticed went through him as the last stony sentinel dipped out of sight, particularly the black monolith left to brood over the adept. He turned his attention to what lay ahead — a conical mountain barring the valley's mouth and wearing a high cap of mist, a lonely thunderhead which his imagination shaped into incredible towers and spires.
Suddenly his sleepy thoughts snapped awake. Fafhrd and Ahura had stopped and were staring at something wholly unexpected — a low wooden windowless house pressed back among the scrubby trees, with a couple of tilled fields behind it. The rudely carved guardian spirits at the four corners of the roof and topping the kingposts seemed Persian, but Persian purged of all southern influence — ancient Persian.
And ancient Persian too appeared the thin features, straight nose, and black-streaked beard of the aged man watching them circumspectly from the low doorway. It seemed to be Ahura's face he scanned most intently — or tried to scan, since Fafhrd mostly hid her.
“Greetings, Father,” called the Mouser. “Is this not a merry day for riding, and yours good lands to pass?"
“Yes,” replied the aged man dubiously, using a rusty dialect. “Though there are none, or few, who pass."
“Just as well to be far from the evil stinking cities,” Fafhrd interjected heartily. “Do you know the mountain ahead, Father? Is there an easy way past it that leads north?"
At the word “mountain” the aged man cringed. He did not answer.
“Is there something wrong about the path we are taking?” the Mouser asked quickly. “Or something evil about that misty mountain?"
The aged man started to shrug his shoulders, held them contracted, looked again at the travelers. Friendliness seemed to fight with fear in his face, and to win, for he leaned forward and said hurriedly, “I warn you, sons, not to venture farther. What is the steel of your swords, the speed of your steeds, against — but reme
mber" — he raised his voice—"I accuse no one.” He looked quickly from side to side. “I have nothing at all to complain of. To me the mountain is a great benefit. My fathers returned here because the land is shunned by thief and honest man alike. There are no taxes on this land — no money taxes. I question nothing."
“Oh, well, Father, I don't think we'll go farther,” sighed the Mouser wilily. “We're but idle fellows who follow our noses across the world. And sometimes we smell a strange tale. And that reminds me of a matter in which you may be able to give us generous lads some help.” He chinked the coins in his pouch. “We have heard a tale of a demon that inhabits here — a young demon dressed in black and silver, pale, with a black beard."
As the Mouser was saying these things the aged man was edging backward and at the finish he dodged inside and slammed the door, though not before they saw someone pluck at his sleeve. Instantly there came muffled angry expostulation in a girl's voice.
The door burst open. They heard the aged man say “…bring it down upon us all.” Then a girl of about fifteen came running toward them. Her face was flushed, her eyes anxious and scared.
“You must turn back!” she called to them as she ran. “None but wicked things go to the mountain — or the doomed. And the mist hides a great horrible castle. And powerful, lonely demons live there. And one of them—"
She clutched at Fafhrd's stirrup. But just as her fingers were about to close on it, she looked beyond him straight at Ahura. An expression of abysmal terror came into her face. She screamed, “He! The black beard!” and crumpled to the ground.
The door slammed, and they heard a bar drop into place.
They dismounted. Ahura quickly knelt by the girl, signed to them after a moment that she had only fainted. Fafhrd approached the barred door, but it would not open to any knocking, pleas, or threats. He finally solved the riddle by kicking it down. Inside he saw: the aged man cowering in a dark corner; a woman attempting to conceal a young child in a pile of straw; a very old woman sitting on a stool, obviously blind, but frightenedly peering about just the same; and a young man holding an ax in trembling hands. The family resemblance was very marked.
Fafhrd stepped out of the way of the young man's feeble ax-blow and gently took the weapon from him.
The Mouser and Ahura brought the girl inside. At sight of Ahura there were further horrified shrinkings.
They laid the girl on the straw, and Ahura fetched water and began to bathe her head.
Meanwhile, the Mouser, by playing on her family's terror and practically identifying himself as a mountain demon, got them to answer his questions. First he asked about the stone city. It was a place of ancient devil-worship, they said, a place to be shunned. Yes, they had seen the black monolith of Ahriman, but only from a distance. No, they did not worship Ahriman — see the fire-shrine they kept for his adversary Ormadz? But they dreaded Ahriman, and the stones of the devil-city had a life of their own.
Then he asked about the misty mountain and found it harder to get satisfactory answers. The cloud always shrouded its peak, they insisted. Though once toward sunset, the young man admitted, he thought he had glimpsed crazily leaning green towers and twisted minarets. But there was danger up there, horrible danger. What danger? He could not say.
The Mouser turned to the aged man. “You told me,” he said harshly, “that my brother demons exact no money tax from you for this land. What kind of tax, then, do they exact?"
“Lives,” whispered the aged man, his eyes showing more white.
“Lives eh? How many? And when do they come for them?"
“They never come. We go. Maybe every ten years, maybe every five, there comes a yellow-green light on the mountaintop at night, and a powerful calling in the air. Sometimes after such a night one of us is gone — who was too far from the house when the green light came. To be in the house with others helps resist the calling. I never saw the light except from our door, with a fire burning bright at my back and someone holding me. My brother went when I was a boy. Then for many years afterwards the light never came, so that even I began to wonder whether it was not a boyhood legend or illusion.
“But seven years ago,” he continued quaveringly, staring at the Mouser, “there came riding late one afternoon, on two gaunt and death-wearied horses, a young man and an old — or rather the semblances of a young man and an old, for I knew without being told, knew as I crouched trembling inside the door, peering through the crack, that the masters were returning to the Castle Called Mist. The old man was bald as a vulture and had no beard. The young man had the beginnings of a silky black one. He was dressed in black and silver, and his face was very pale. His features were like—” Here his gaze flickered fearfully toward Ahura. “He rode stiffly, his lanky body rocking from side to side. He looked as if he were dead.
“They rode on toward the mountain without a sideward glance. But ever since that time the greenish-yellow light has glowed almost nightly from the mountaintop, and many of our animals have answered the call — and the wild ones too, to judge from their diminishing numbers. We have been careful, always staying near the house. It was not until three years ago that my eldest son went. He strayed too far in hunting and let darkness overtake him.
“And we have seen the black-bearded young man many times, usually at a distance, treading along the skyline or standing with head bowed upon some crag. Though once when my daughter was washing at the stream she looked up from her clothes-pounding and saw his dead eyes peering through the reeds. And once my eldest son, chasing a wounded snow-leopard into a thicket, found him talking with the beast. And once, rising early on a harvest morning, I saw him sitting by the well, staring at our doorway, although he did not seem to see me emerge. The old man we have seen too, though not so often. And for the last two years we have seen little or nothing of either, until—” And once again his gaze flickered helplessly toward Ahura.
Meanwhile the girl had come to her senses. This time her terror of Ahura was not so extreme. She could add nothing to the aged man's tale.
They prepared to depart. The Mouser noted a certain veiled vindictiveness toward the girl, especially in the eyes of the woman with the child, for having tried to warn them. So turning in the doorway he said, “If you harm one hair of the girl's head, we will return, and the black-bearded one with us, and the green light to guide us by and wreak terrible vengeance."
He tossed a few gold coins on the floor and departed.
(And so, although, or rather because her family looked upon her as an ally of demons, the girl from then on led a pampered life, and came to consider her blood as superior to theirs, and played shamelessly on their fear of the Mouser and Fafhrd and Black-beard, and finally made them give her all the golden coins, and with them purchased seductive garments after fortunate passage to a faraway city, where by clever stratagem she became the wife of a satrap and lived sumptuously ever afterwards — something that is often the fate of romantic people, if only they are romantic enough.)
Emerging from the house, the Mouser found Fafhrd making a brave attempt to recapture his former berserk mood. “Hurry up, you little apprentice-demon!” he welcomed. “We've a tryst with the good land of snow and cannot lag on the way!"
As they rode off, the Mouser rejoined good-naturedly, “But what about the camel, Fafhrd? You can't very well take it to the ice country. It'll die of phlegm."
“There's no reason why snow shouldn't be as good for camels as it is for men,” Fafhrd retorted. Then, rising in his saddle and turning back, he waved toward the house and shouted, “Lad! You that held the ax! When in years to come your bones feel a strange yearning, turn your face to the north. There you will find a land where you can become a man indeed."
But in their hearts both knew that this talk was a pretense, that other planets now loomed in their horoscope — in particular one that shone with a greenish-yellow light. As they pressed on up the valley, its silence and the absence of animal and insect life now made sinister, they fe
lt mysteries hovering all around. Some, they knew, were locked in Ahura, but both refrained from questioning her, moved by vague apprehensions of terrifying upheavals her mind had undergone.
Finally the Mouser voiced what was in the thoughts of both of them. “Yes, I am much afraid that Anra Devadoris, who sought to make us his apprentices, was only an apprentice himself and apt, apprentice-wise, to take credit for his master's work. Black-beard is gone, but the beardless one remains. What was it Ningauble said?…no simple creature, but a mystery?…no single identity, but a mirage?"
“Well, by all the fleas that bite the Great Antiochus, and all the lice that tickle his wife!” remarked a shrill, insolent voice behind them. “You doomed gentlemen already know what's in this letter I have for you."
They whirled around. Standing beside the camel — he might conceivably have been hidden, it is true, behind a nearby boulder — was a pertly grinning brown urchin, so typically Alexandrian that he might have stepped this minute out of Rakotis with a skinny mongrel sniffing at his heels. (The Mouser half expected such a dog to appear at the next moment.)
“Who sent you, boy?” Fafhrd demanded. “How did you get here?"
“Now who and how would you expect?” replied the urchin. “Catch.” He tossed the Mouser a wax tablet. “Say, you two, take my advice and get out while the getting's good. I think so far as your expedition's concerned, Ningauble's pulling up his tent pegs and scuttling home. Always a friend in need, my dear employer."
The Mouser ripped the cords, unfolded the tablet, and read:
“Greetings, my brave adventurers. You have done well, but the best remains to be done. Hark to the calling. Follow the green light. But be very cautious afterwards. I wish I could be of more assistance. Send the shroud, the cup, and the chest back with the boy as first payment."
