When the Sea King's Away
by FRITZ LEIBER
Stripped to his loincloth, underbelt, and with amulet pouch
a-dangle under his chin, the Gray Mouser stretched lizard-like
along the bowsprit of the sloop Black Treasurer and
stared straight down into the hole in the sea. Sunlight un-strained
by slightest wisp of cloud beat hotly on his deep-tanned
back, but his belly was cold with the magic of the
thing.
All round about, the Inner Sea lay calm as a lake of mer-cury
in the cellar of a wizard's castle. No ripple came from
the unbounded horizon to south, east and north, nor re-bounded
from the endless vertically-fluted curtain of creamy
rock that rose a bowshot to the west and was a good three
bowshots high, which the Mouser and Fafhrd had only yes-terday
climbed and atop which they had made a frightening
discovery. The Mouser could have thought of those matters,
or of the dismal fact that they were becalmed with little food
and less water (and a tabooed cask of brandy) a weary sail
west from Ool Hrusp, the last civilized port on this coast—
or uncivilized either. He could have wondered about the se-ductive
singing that had seemed to come from the sea last
night, as of female voices softly improvising on the themes
of waves hissing against sand, gurgling melodiously among
rocks, and screaming wind-driven against icy coasts. Or he
could perhaps best have pondered on Fafhrd's madness of
yesterday afternoon, when the large Northerner had suddenly
started to babble dogmatically about finding for himself and
the Mouser "girls under the sea" and had even begun
to trim his beard and brush out his brown otterskin tunic and
polish his best male costume jewelry so as to be properly
attired to receive the submarine girls and arouse their desires.
There was an old Simorgyan legend, Fafhrd had insisted,.according to which, on the seventh day of the seventh moon of the seventh year of the Sevens-Cycle, the king of the sea
journeyed to the other end of the earth, leaving his opales-cently
beautiful green wives and faintly silver-scaled slim
concubines free to find them lovers if they could . . . and
this, Fafhrd had stridently asserted, he knew by the spectral
calm and other occult tokens, was the place of the sea king's home and the eve of the day!
In vain had the Mouser pointed out to him that they had not sighted an even faintly feminine-looking fish in days,
that there were absolutely no islets or beaches in view suit-able
for commerce with mermaids or for the sunbathing and
primping of loreleis, that there were no black hulks whatever
of wrecked pirate ships drifting about that might conceivably
have fair captives imprisoned below decks and so technically
"under the sea," that the region beyond the deceptive cur-tain-
wall of creamy rock was the last from which one could
expect girls to come, that—to sum it up—the Black Treas- urer had not fetched the faintest sort of girl-blink either to
starboard or larboard for weeks. Fafhrd had simply replied
with crushing conviction that the sea king's girls were there
down below, that they were now preparing a magic channel
or passageway whereby air-breathers might visit them, and
that the Mouser had better be ready like himself to hasten
when the summons came.
The Mouser had thought that the heat and dazzle of the
unremitting sun—together with the sudden intense yearnings
normal to all sailormen long at sea—must have deranged
Fafhrd, and he had dug up from the hold and unsuccessfully
coaxed the Northerner to wear a wide-brimmed hat and
slitted ice-goggles. It had been a great relief to the Mouser
when Fafhrd had fallen into a profound sleep with the com-ing
of night, though then the illusion—or reality—of the
sweet siren-singing had come to trouble his own tranquility.
Yes, the Mouser might well have thought of any of these
matters, Fafhrd's prophetic utterances in particular, while he
lay poised but unsweating in the hot sun along the stout bow-sprit
of the Black Treasurer, yet the fact is that he had
mind only for the jade marvel so close that he could almost
reach down a hand and touch the beginning of it.
It is well to approach all miracles and wonders by gradual
stages or degrees, and we can do this by examining another.aspect of the glassy seascape of which the Mouser also might
well have been thinking—but wasn't.
Although untroubled by swell, wavelet, or faintest ripple or quiver, the Inner Sea around the sloop was not per-fectly
flat. Here and there, scatteredly, it was dimpled with
small depressions about the size and shape of shallow saucers,
as if giant invisible featherweight water-beetles were stand-ing
about on it—though the dimples were not arranged in
any six-legged or four-legged or even tripod patterns. More-over,
a slim stalk of air seemed to go down from the center of each dimple for an indefinite distance into the water,
quite like the tiny whirlpool that sometimes forms when the
turquoise plug is pulled in the brimful golden bathtub of the
Queen of the East (or the drain unstoppered in a bathtub of
any humbler material belonging to any lowlier person)—ex-cept
that there was no whirling of water in this case and the air-stalks were not twisted and knotted but straight, as though
scores of slim-bladed rapiers with guards like shallow sau-cers
but all as invisible as air had been plunged at random
into the motionless waters around the Black Treasurer. Or
as though a sparse forest of invisible lily pads with straight invisible stems had sprung up around the sloop.
Imagine such an air-stalked dimple magnified so that the
saucer was not a palm's breadth but a good spearcast across and the rodlike sword-straight stalk not a fingernail's width
but a good four feet; imagine the sloop slid prow-foremost
down into that shallow depression but stopping just short
of the center and floating motionless there; imagine the bowsprit of the slightly tilted ship projecting over the exact
center of the central tube or well of air; imagine a small, stal- wart, nutbrown man in a gray loincloth lying along the
bowsprit, his feet braced against the foredeck rails, and
looking straight down the tube . . . and you have the Gray Mouser's situation exactly!
To be in the Mouser's situation and peering down the tube was very fascinating indeed, an experience calculated
to drive other thoughts out of any man's mind—or even any woman's! The water here, a bowshot from the creamy rock-wall,
was green, remarkably clear, but too deep to allow a view of the bottom—soundings taken yesterday had shown
it to vary between six score and seven score feet. Through
this water the well-size tube went down as perfectly circular and as smooth as if it were walled with glass; and indeed
the Mouser would have believed that it was so walled—that.the water immediately around it had been somehow frozen or hardened without altering in transparency—except that
at the slightest noise, such as the Mouser's coughing, little
quiverings would run up and down it in the form of series
of ring-shaped waves. What power prevented the tremendous weight of the Sea
from collapsing the tube in an instant, the Mouser could not begin to imagine. Yet it was endlessly fascinating to peer down it. Sunlight transmitted through the sea water illuminated it to a con-siderable
depth brightly if greenishly, and the circular wall
played odd tricks with distance. For instance, at this moment
the Mouser, peering down slantwise through the side of the
tube, saw a thick fish as long as his arm swimming around it and nosing up to it. The shape of the fish was very familiar yet he could not at once name it. Then, thrusting his head out to one side and peering down at the same fish through the clear water alongside the tube, he saw that the
fish was three times the length of his body—in fact, a shark.
The Mouser shivered and told himself that the curved wall
of the tube must act like the reduction lenses used by a few artists in Lankhmar.
On the whole, though, the Mouser might well have de- cided in the end that the vertical tunnel in the water was an
illusion born of sun-glare and suggestion and have put on the
ice-goggles and stuffed his ears with wax against any more
siren-singing and then perhaps swigged at the forbidden
brandy and gone to sleep, except for certain other circum- stances footing the whole affair much more firmly in reality.
For instance, there was a knotted rope securely tied to the bowsprit and hanging down the center of the tube, and this
rope creaked from time to time with the weight on it, and also there were threads of black smoke coming out of the watery hole (these were what made the Mouser cough), and
last but not least there was a torch burning redly far down
in the hole—so far down its flame looked no bigger than a
candle's—and just beside the flame, somewhat obscured by
its smoke and much tinied by distance, was the upward- peering face of Fafhrd!
The Mouser was inclined to take on faith the reality of
anything Fafhrd got mixed up with, certainly anything that
Fafhrd got physically into—the near-seven-foot Northerner
was much too huge a hulk of solid matter to be picturable as strolling arm-in-arm with illusions..The events leading up to the reality-footing facts of the
rope, the smoke, and Fafhrd down the air-well had been
quite simple. At dawn the sloop had begun to drift myste-riously
among the water dimples, there being no perceptible
wind or current. Shortly afterwards it had bumped over the
lip of the large saucer-shaped depression and slid to its
present position with a little rush and then frozen there, as
though the sloop's bowsprit and the hole were mutually de-sirous
magnetic poles coupling together. Thereafter, while
the Mouser had watched with eyes goggling and teeth a-chat-ter,
Fafhrd had sighted down the hole, grunted with stolid
satisfaction, slung the knotted rope down it, and then pro-ceeded
to array himself, seemingly with both war and love
in mind—pomading his hair and beard, perfuming his
hairy chest and armpits, putting on a blue silk tunic under the
gleaming one of otterskin and all his silver-plated necklaces,
armbands, brooches and rings as well, but also strapping long-sword
and axe to his sides and lacing on his spiked boots.
Then he had lit a long thin torch of resinous pine in the
gallery firebox, and when it was flaming bravely he had, de- spite the Mouser's solicitous cries and tugging protests, gone
out on the bowsprit and lowered himself into the hole, using
thumb and forefinger of his right hand to grip the torch and
the other three fingers of that hand, along with his left hand,
to grip the rope. Only then had he spoken, calling on the
Mouser to make ready and follow him if the Mouser were
more hot-blooded man than cold-blooded lizard.
The Mouser had made ready to the extent of stripping off
most of his clothing—it had occured to him it would be
necessary to dive for Fahrd when the hole became aware of
its own impossibility and collapsed—and he had fetched to
the foredeck his own sword Scalpel and dagger Cat's Claw
in their case of oiled sealskin with the notion they might be
needed against sharks. Thereafter he had simply poised on
the bowspirit, as we have seen, observing Fafhrd's slow
descent and letting the fascination of it all take hold of him.
At last he dipped his head and called softly down the
hole, "Fafhrd, have you reached bottom yet?" frowning at
the ring-shaped ripples even this gentle calling sent traveling
down the hole and up again by reflection.
"WHAT DID YOU SAY?"
Fafhrd's answering bellow, concentrated by the tube
and coming out of it like a solid projectile, almost blasted
the Mouser off the bowsprit. Far more terrifying, the ring-.ripples accompanying the bellow were so huge they almost seemed to close off the tube—narrowing it from four to two or three feet at any rate and dashing a spray of drops up
into the Mouser's face as they reached the surface, lifting the
rim upward as if the water were elastic, and then were re- flected down the tube again.
The Mouser closed his eyes in a wince of horror, but
when he opened them the hole was still there and the giant ring-ripples were beginning to abate.
Only a shade more loudly than the first time, but much
more poignantly, the Mouser called down, "Fafhrd, don't do that again!"
"WHAT?"
This time the Mouser was prepared for it—just the same it was most horrid to watch those huge rings traveling up
and down the tube in an arrow-swift green peristalsis. He
firmly resolved to do no more calling, but just then Fafhrd
started to speak up the tube in a voice of more rational
volume—the rings produced were hardly thicker than a
man's wrist. "Come on, Mouser! It's easy! You only have to drop the last six feet!"
"Don't drop it, Fafhrd!" the Mouser instantly replied.
"Climb back up!"
"I already have! Dropped, I mean. I'm on the bottom.
Oh, Mouser . . . !"
The last part of Fafhrd's call was in a voice so infused with a mingled awe and excitement that the Mouser im-mediately
asked back down, "What? 'Oh, Mouser'—what?"
"It's wonderful, it's amazing, it's fantastic!" the reply came
back from below—this time very faintly all of a sudden, as
if Fafhrd had somehow gone around an impossible bend or
two in the tube. "What is, Fafhrd?" the Mouser demanded—and this time
his own voice raised moderate rings. "Don't go away, Fafhrd.
But what is down there?"
"Everything!" the answer came back, not quite so faint
this time. "Are there girls?" the Mouser queried.
"A whole world!"
The Mouser sighed. The moment had come, he knew, as
it always did, when outward circumstances and inner urges
commanded an act, when curiosity and fascination tipped the
scale of caution, when the lure of a vision and an adventure.became so great and deep-hooking that he must respond to it
or have his inmost self-respect eaten away. Besides, he knew from long experience that the only way
to extricate Fafhrd from the predicaments into which he got
himself was to go fetch the perfumed and be-sworded lout!
So the Mouser sprang up lightly, clipped to his underbelt
his sealskin-cased weapons, hung beside them in loops a short
length of knotted line with a slip-noose tied in one end,
made sure that the sloop's hatches were securely covered and
even that the galley fire was tightly boxed, rattled off a short scornful prayer to the Gods of Lankhmar, and lowered him-self
off the bowsprit and down into the green hole. The hole was chilly and it smelt of fish, smoke, and
Fafhrd's pomade. The Mouser's main concern as soon as he
got in it, he discovered to his surprise, was not to touch its
glassy sides. He had the feeling that if he so much as lightly
brushed it, the water's miraculous "skin" would rupture and he would be engulfed—rather as an oiled needle floating on
a bowl of water in its tiny hammock of "water skin" is en-gulfed
and sinks when one pinks it. He descended rapidly
knot by knot, supporting himself by his hands, barely touch-ing
his toes to the rope below, praying there would be no
sway and that he would be able to check it if it started. It
occurred to him he should have told Fafhrd to guy the rope at the bottom if he possibly could and above all have warned
him not to shout up the tube while the Mouser descended—
the thought of being squeezed by those dread water-rings
was almost too much to bear. Too late now!—any word
now would only too surely bring a bellow from the North- erner in reply.
First fears having been thus inspected though by no means banished, the Mouser began to take some note of his sur-roundings.
The luminous green world was not just one emerald blank as it had seemed at first. There was life in it,
though not in the greatest abundance: thin strands of
scalloped maroon seaweed, near-invisible jellyfish trailing
their opalescent fringes, tiny dark skates hovering like bats,
small silvery backboned fish gliding and darting—some of
them, a blue-and-yellow-ringed and black-spotted school, even contesting lazily over the Black Treasurer's morning
garbage, which the Mouser recognized by a large pallid beef- bone Fafhrd had gnawed briefly before tossing overside.
Looking up, he was hard put not to gasp in horror. The
hull of the sloop, pressing down darkly though pearled with.bubbles, looked seven times higher above him than the distance he had descended by his count of the knots. Look-ing
straight up the tube, however, he saw that the circle of deep blue sky had not shrunk correspondingly while the
bowsprit bisecting it was still reassuringly thick. The curve
of the tube had shrunk the sloop as it had the shark. The illusion was most weird and foreboding, nonetheless.
And now as the Mouser continued his swift descent, the
circle overhead did grow smaller and more deeply blue, be- coming a cobalt platter, a peacock saucer, and finally no
more than a strange ultramarine coin that was the converging
point of the tube and rope and in which the Mouser thought
he saw a star flash. The Gray One puffed a few rapid kisses toward it, thinking how like they were to a drowning man's
last bubbles. The light dimmed. The colors around him
faded, the maroon seaweed turned gray, the fish lost their
yellow rings, and the Mouser's own hands became blue as
those of a corpse. And now he began to make out dimly the sea bottom, at the same extravagant distance below as
the sloop was above, though immediately under him the
bottom was oddly veiled or blanketed and only far off could
he make out rocks and ridged stretches of sand.
His arms and shoulders ached. His palms burned. A mon- strously fat grouper swam up to the tube and followed him down it, circling. The Mouser glared at it menacingly and it
turned on its side and opened an impossibly large moon-cres-cent
of mouth. The Mouser saw the razor teeth and realized
it was the shark he'd seen or another like it, tinied by the
lens of the tube. The teeth clashed, some of them inside the
tube, only inches from his side. The water's "skin" did not
rupture disastrously, although the Mouser got the eerie impres-sion
that the "bite" was bleeding a little water into the tube. The shark swam off to continue its circling at a
moderate distance and the Mouser refrained from any more menacing looks.
Meanwhile the fishy smell had grown stronger and the smoke must have been getting thicker too, for now the
Mouser coughed in spite of himself, setting the water-rings
shooting up and down. He fought to suppress an anguished
curse—and at that moment his toes no longer touched rope.
He unloosed the extra coil from his belt, went down three
more knots, tightened the slip-noose above the second knot
from the bottom, and continued on his way..Five handholds later his feet found a footing in cold muck.
He gratefully unclenched his hands, working his cramped
fingers, at the same time calling "Fafhrd!" softly but angrily.
Then he looked around.
He was standing in the center of a large low tent of air, which was floored by the velvety sea-muck in which he had
sunk to his ankles and roofed by the leadenly gleaming
undersurface of the water—not evenly though, but in swells
and hollows with ominous downward bulges here and there.
The air-tent was about ten feet high at the foot of the tube. Its diameter seemed at least twenty times that, though
exactly how far the edges extended it was impossible to
judge for several reasons: the great irregularity of the tent's
roof, the difficulty of even guessing at the extent of some
outer areas where the distance between water-roof and muck- floor was measurable in inches, the fact that the gray light
transmitted from above hardly permitted decent vision for
more than two dozen yards, and finally the circumstance
that there was considerable torch-smoke in the way here and there, writhing in thick coils along the ceiling, collecting
in topsy-turvey pockets, though eventually gliding sluggishly
up the tube. What fabulous invisible "tent-poles" propped up the
oceans-heavy roof the Mouser could no more conceive than the force that kept the tube open.
Writhing his nostrils distastefully, both at the smoke and
the augmented fishy smell, the Mouser squinted fiercely
around the tent's full circumference. Eventually he saw a
dull red glow in the black smudge where it was thickest, and
a little later Fafhrd emerged. The reeking flame of the pine
torch, which was still no more than half consumed, showed
the Northerner bemired with seamuck to his thighs and
hugging gently to his side with his bent left arm a dripping
mess of variously gleaming objects. He was stooped over
somewhat, for the roof bulged down where he stood.
"Blubber brain!" the Mouser greeted him. "Put out that
torch before we smother! We can see better without it. Oh
oaf, to blind yourself with smoke for the sake of light!"
To the Mouser there was obviously only one sane way to
extinguish the torch—jab it in the wet muck underfoot—
but Fafhrd, though evidently most agreeable to the Mouser's
suggestion in a vacantly smiling way, had another idea..Despite the Mouser's anguished cry of warning, he casually thrust the flaming stick into the watery roof.
There was a loud hissing and a large downward puff of
steam, and for a moment the Mouser thought his worst dreads
had been realized, for an angry squirt of water from the quenching point struck Fafhrd in the neck. But when the
steam cleared it became evident that the rest of the sea was
not going to follow the squirt, at least not at once; though
now there was an ominous lump, like a rounded tumor, in the root where Fafhrd had thrust the torch, and from it water ran steadily in a stream thick as a quill, digging a tiny
crater where it struck the muck below.
"Don't do that!" the Mouser commanded in unwise fury.
"This?" Fafhrd asked gently, poking a finger through the ceiling next to the dripping bulge. Again came the angry
squirt, diminishing at once to a trickle, and now there were
two bulges closely side by side, quite like breasts.
"Yes, that—not again," the Mouser managed to reply, his
voice distant and high because of the self-control it took him
not to rage at Fafhrd and so perhaps provoke even more reckless probings.
"Very well, I won't," the Northerner assured him. "Though," he added, gazing thoughtfully at the twin streams,
"it would take those dribblings years to fill up this cavity."
"Who speaks of years down here?" the Mouser snarled at
him. "Dolt! Iron Skull! What made you lie to me? 'Every-thing'
was down here, you said—'a whole world.' And what
do I find? Nothing! A miserable little cramp-roofed field of
stinking mud!" And the Mouser stamped a foot in rage, which only splashed him foully, while a puffed, phosphores-cent-
whiskered fish expiring on the mire looked up at him
reproachfully.
"That rude treading," Fafhrd said softly, "may have burst the silver-filigreed skull of a princess. 'Nothing,' say you?
Look you then, Mouser, what treasure I have digged from
your stinking field." And as he came toward the Mouser, his big feet gliding
gently through the top of the muck for all the spikes on his
boots, he gently rocked the gleaming things cradled in his
left arm and let the fingers of his right hand drift gently
among them. "Aye," he said, "jewels and gauds undreamed by those
who sail above, yet all teased by me from the ooze while I sought another thing."."What other thing, Gristle Dome?" the Mouser demanded harshly, though eyeing the gleaming things hungrily. "The path," Fafhrd said a little querulously, as if the Mouser must know what he meant. "The path that leads from some corner or fold of this tent of air to the sea king's girls. These things are a sure promise of it. Look you, here, Mouser." And he opened his bent left arm a little and lifted out most delicately with thumb and finger-tips a life-size metallic mask. Impossible to tell in that drained gray light whether the metal were gold or silver or tin or even bronze and whether the wide wavy streaks down it, like the tracks of blue-green sweat and tears, were verdigris or slime. Yet it was clear that it was female, patrician, all-knowing yet alluring, loving yet cruel, hauntingly beautiful. The Mouser snatched it eagerly yet angrily and the whole lower face crumpled in his hand, leaving only the proud forehead and the eyeholes star- ing at him more tragically than eyes.
The Mouser flinched back, expecting Fafhrd to strike him, but in the same instant he saw the Northerner turning away and lifting his straight right arm, index finger a-point, like a slow semaphor. "You were right, oh Mouser!" Fafhrd cried joyously. "Not only my torch's smoke but its very light blinded me. See! See the path!" The Mouser's gaze followed Fafhrd's pointing. Now that the smoke was somewhat abated and the torch-flame no longer shot out its orange rays, the patchy phosphorescence of the muck and of the dying sea-things scattered about had become clearly visible despite the muted light filtering from above. The phosphorescence was not altogether patchy, however. Beginning at the hole from which the knotted rope hung, a path of unbroken greenish-yellow witch-fire a long stride in width led across the muck toward an unpromising-looking corner of the tent of air where it seemed to disappear. "Don't follow it, Fafhrd," the Mouser automatically en- joined, but the Northerner was already moving past him, taking long dreamlike strides. By degrees his cradling arm unbent and one by one his ooze-won treasures began to slip from it into the muck. He reached the path and started along it, placing his spike-soled feet in the very center. "Don't follow it, Fafhrd," the Mouser repeated—a little.hopelessly, almost whiningly, it must be admitted. "Don't
follow it, I say. It leads only to squidgy death. We can still
go back up the rope, aye, and take your loot with us . . ." But meanwhile he himself was following Fafhrd and
snatching up, though more cautiously than he had the
mask, the objects his comrade let slip. It was not worth the
effort, the Mouser told himself as he continued to do it:
though they gleamed enticingly, the various necklaces, tiaras, filigreed breast-cups and great-pinned brooches weighed no
more and were no thicker than plaitings of dead ferns. He
could not seem to equal Fafhrd's delicacy and they fell apart
at his touch. Fafhrd turned back to him a face radiant as one who dreams sleeping of ultimate ecstasies. As the last ghost- gaud slipped from his arm, he said, "They are nothing—
no more than the mask—mere sea-gnawed wraiths of treas- ure. But oh, the promise of them, Mouser! Oh, the promise!" And with that he turned forward again and stooped under a large downward bulge in the low leaden-hued roof. The Mouser took one look back along the glowing path to
the small circular patch of sky-light with the knotted rope
falling in the center of it. The twin streams of water com- ing from the two "wounds" in the ceiling seemed to be run- ning more strongly—where they hit, the muck was splashing. Then he followed Fafhrd.
On the other side of the bulge the ceiling rose again to more than head-height, but the walls of the tent narrowed in
sharply. Soon they were treading along a veritable tunnel
in the water, a leaden arch-roofed passageway no wider than
the phosphorescently yellow-green path that floored it. The
tunnel curved just enough now to left, now to right, so that there was no seeing any long distance ahead. From time to time the Mouser thought he heard faint whistlings and moan-ings
echoing along it. He stepped over a large crab that was
backing feebly and saw beside it a dead man's hand emerging from the glowing muck, one shred-fleshed finger pointing the way they were taking. Fafhrd half turned his head and muttered gravely, "Mark
me, Mouser, there's magic in this somewhere!" The Mouser thought he had never in his life heard a less necessary remark. He felt considerably depressed. He had long given up his puerile pleadings with Fafhrd to turn back —he knew there was no way of stopping Fafhrd short of.grappling with him, and a tussle that would invariably send them crashing through one of the watery walls of the tunnel was by no means to his liking. Of course, he could always
turn back alone. Still . . .
With the monotony of the tunnel and of just putting one
foot after the other into the clinging muck and withdrawing
it with a soft plop, the Mouser found time to become op-pressed,
too, with the thought of the weight of the water overhead. It was as though he walked with all the ships
of the world on his back. His imagination would picture
nothing but the tunnel's instant collapse. He hunched his head
into his shoulders, and it was all he could do not to drop
to his elbows and knees and then stretch himself face down
in the muck with the mere anticipation of the event.
The sea seemed to grow a little whiter ahead and the
Mouser realized the tunnel was approaching the under-reaches
of the curtain-wall of creamy rock he and Fafhrd
had climbed yesterday. The memory of that climb let his
imagination escape at last, perhaps because it fitted with
the urge that he and Fafhrd somehow lift themselves out of
their present predicament.
It had been a difficult ascent, although the pale rock had
proved hard and reliable, for footholds and ledges had been
few and they had had to rope up and go by way of a branch-ing
chimney, often driving pitons into cracks to create a
support where none was—but they had had high hopes of
finding fresh water and game, too, likely enough, so far west
of Ool Hrusp and its hunters. At last they had reached the
top, aching and a little blown from their climb and quite
ready to throw themselves down and rest while they surveyed
the landscape of grassland and stunted trees that they knew
to be characteristic of other parts of this most lonely penin-sula
stretching southwestward between the Inner and Outer
Seas.
Instead they had found . . . nothing. Worse than nothing,
in a way, if that were possible. The longed-for top proved
to be the merest edge of rock, three feet wide at the most
and narrower some places, while on the other side the rock
descended even more precipitously than on the side which
they had climbed—indeed it was deeply undercut in large
areas—and for an equal or rather somewhat greater distance.
From the foot of this dizzying drop a wilderness of waves,
foam and rocks extended to the horizon.
They had found themselves clinging a-straddle to a ver-.itable rock curtain, paper-thin in respect to its height and
horizontal extent, between the Inner and what they realized
must be the Outer Sea, which had eaten its way across the
unexplored peninsula in this region but not yet quite broken
through. As far as eye could see in either direction the same
situation obtained, though the Mouser fancied he could make
out a thickening of the wall in the direction of Ool Hrusp.
Fafhrd had laughed at the surprise of the thing—gargan-tuan
bellows of mirth that had made the Mouser curse him
silently for fear the mere vibrations of his voice might
shatter and tumble down the knife-edged saddle on which
they perched. Indeed the Mouser had grown so angry with
Fafhrd's laughter that he had sprung up and nimbly danced a
jig of rage on the rock-ribbon, thinking meanwhile of wise Sheelba's saying: "Know it or not, man treads between twin
abysses a tightrope that has neither beginning nor end."
Having thus expressed their feelings of horrified shock,
each in his way, they had surveyed the yeasty sea below
more rationally. The amount of surf and the numbers of
emergent rocks showed it to be more shallow for some
distance out—even likely, Fafhrd had opined, to drain itself
at low tide, for his moon-lore told him that tides in this re-gion
of the world must at the moment be near high. Of the
emergent rocks, one in particular stood out: a thick pillar
two bowshots from the curtain-wall and as high as a four-story
house. The pillar was spiraled by ledges that looked as if
they were in part of human cutting, while set in its thicker
base and emerging from the foam there appeared an oddly
criss-crossed weed-fringed rectangle that looked mightily like
a large stout door—though where such a door might lead and who would use it were perplexing questions indeed.
Then, since there was no answering that question or others
and since there was clearly no fresh water or game to be had
from this literal shell of a coast, they had descended back to
the Inner Sea and the Black Treasurer, though now each
time they had driven a piton it had been with the fear that
the whole wall might split and collapse ... " 'Ware rocks!"
Fafhrd's warning cry pulled the Mouser out of his waking
memory-dream—dropped him in a split instant as if it were,
from the upper reaches of the creamy curtain-wall to a spot
almost an equal distance below its sea-gnawed base. Just
ahead of him three thick lumpy daggers of rock thrust down
inexplicably through the gray watery ceiling of the tunnel..The Mouser shudderingly wove his head past them, as Fafhrd must have, and then looking beyond his comrade he saw
more rocky protuberances encroaching on the tunnel from
all sides—saw, in fact, as he strode on, that the tunnel was
changing from one of water and muck to one roofed, walled
and floored with solid rock. The water-borne light faded
away behind them, but the increasing phosphorescence nat-ural
to the animal life of a sea cavern almost compensated
for it, boldly outlining their wet stony way and here and there
glowing with especial brilliance and variety of color from the bands, portholes, feelers and eye-rings of many a dying
fish and crawler.
The Mouser realized they must be passing far under the
curtain-wall he and Fafhrd had climbed yesterday and that
the tunnel ahead must be leading under the Outer Sea they
had seen tossing with billows. There was no longer that im-mediate
oppressive sense of a crushing weight of ocean over-head
or of brushing elbows with magic. Yet the thought that
if the tube, tent and tunnel behind them should collapse, then
a great gush of solid water would rush into the rock-tunnel
and engulf them, was in some ways even worse. Back under
the water roof he'd had the feeling that even if it should
collapse he might reach the surface alive by bold swimming
and conceivably drag the cumbered Fafhrd up with him.
But here they'd be hopelessly trapped.
True, the tunnel seemed to be ascending, but not enough or swiftly enough to please the Mouser. Moreover, if it did
finally emerge, it would be to that shattering welter of foam
they'd peered down at yesterday. Truly, the Mouser found
it hard to pick between his druthers, or even to have any
druthers at all. His feelings of depression and doom gradually
sank to a new and perhaps ultimate nadir, and in a desperate effort to wrench them up he deliberately imagined to him-self
the zestiest tavern he knew in Lankhmar—a great gray
cellar all a-flare with torches, wine streaming and spilling,
tankards and coins a-clink, voices braying and roaring,
poppy fumes a-twirl, naked girls writhing in lascivious dances . ..
"Oh, Mouser .. . !" Fafhrd's deep and feelingful whisper and the North-erner's
large hand against his chest halted the Mouser's
plodding, but whether it fetched his spirit back below the Outer Sea or simply produced a fantastic alteration in its
escapist imagining, the Gray One could not at once be sure..They were standing in the entrance to a vast submarine grotto that rose in multiple steps and terraces toward an
indefinite ceiling from which cascaded down like silver mist
a glow about thrice the strength of moonlight. The grotto
reeked of the sea like the tunnel behind them; it was likewise scattered with expiring fish and eels and small octopuses;
molluscs tiny and huge clustered on its walls and corners
between weedy draperies and silver-green veils; while its
various niches and dark circular doorways and even the
stepped and terraced floor seemed shaped in part at least by the action of rushing waters and grinding sand.
The silver mist did not fall evenly but concentrated itself
in swirls and waves of light on three terraces. The first of these was placed centrally, and only a level stretch and then
a few low ledges separated it from the tunnel's mouth.
Upon this terrace was set a great stone table with weed-fringed
sides and mollusc-crusted legs but level top of grained
and spotted marble polished to what looked an exquisite smoothness. A great golden basin stood on one end of this
table and two golden goblets beside the basin.
Beyond the first terrace rose a second uneven flight of
steps with areas of menacing shadow pressing upon it from
either side. Behind the areas of darkness were a second and
third terrace that the silvery light favored. The one on the
right—Fafhrd's side, to call it that, for he stood to the right
in the tunnel mouth—was walled and arched with mother-of-
pearl, almost as if it were one gigantic shell, and pearly
swells rose from its floor like heaped satin pillows. The one
on the Mouser's side, slightly below, was backed by an arras
of maroon seaweed that fell in wide scalloped strands and
billowed on the floor. From between these twin terraces the
flight of irregular steps or ledges continued upward into a
third area of darkness.
Shifting shadows and dark wavings and odd gleamings
hinted that the three areas of darkness might be occupied;
there was no doubt that the three bright terraces were. On
the upper terrace on Fafhrd's side stood a tall and opulently
beautiful woman whose golden hair rose in spiral masses like
a shell and whose dress of golden fishnet clung to her pale greenish flesh. Her fingers showed greenish webs between
them and on the side of her neck as she turned were faint
scorings like a fish's gills.
On the Mouser's side was a slimmer yet exquisitely fem-inine
creature whose silver flesh seemed to merge into silver.scales on shoulders, back and flanks under her robe of
filmy violet and whose short dark hair was split back from
her low forehead's center by a scalloped silver crest a hand's
breadth high. She too showed the faint neck-scorings and
finger webs.
The third figure, standing a-crouch behind the table, was
sexlessly scrawny, with an effect of wiry old age, and either
gowned or clad closely in jet black. A shock of rope-thick
hair dark red as iron rust covered her head while her gills and finger webs were starkly apparent.
Each of these women wore a metal mask resembling in
form and expression the eaten-away one Fafhrd had found
in the muck. That of the first figure was gold; of the second,
silver; of the third, green-splotched sea-darkened bronze.
The first two women were still, not as if they were part of
a show but as though they were observing one. The scrawny
black sea-witch was vibrantly active, although she hardly
moved on her black-webbed toes except to shift position abruptly and ever so slightly now and then. She held a short
whip in either hand, the. webs folded outside her bent
knuckles, and with these whips she maintained and directed
the swift spinning of a half dozen objects on the polished
table top. What these objects were it was impossible to say,
except that they were roughly oval. Some by their semi-transparency
as they spun might have been large rings or
saucers, others actual tops by their opacity. They gleamed
silver and green and golden and they spun so swiftly and
moved in such swift intersecting orbits as they spun that they
seemed to leave gleaming wakes of spin in the misty air be-hind
them. Whenever one would flag in its spinning and its
true form begin to blink into visibility, she'd bring it back up
to speed again with two or three rapid whip-flips; or should
one veer too close to the table's edge or the golden basin, or
threaten to collide with another, she'd redirect its orbit with
deft lashings; now and again, with incredible skill, she'd flick
one so that it jumped high in the air and then flick it again at
landing so that it went on spinning without a break, leaving
above it an evanescent loop of silvery air-spin.
These whirring objects made the pulsing moans and whis-tles
the Mouser had heard along the tunnel.
As he watched them now and listened to them, the Gray
One became convinced—partly because the silvery curving
tubes of spin made him think of the air shaft he'd rope-climbed
and the air-tunnel he'd plodded—that these spin-.ning things were a crucial part of the magic that had created and held open the path through the Inner Sea behind them,
and that once they should cease whirring then the shaft and
tent and tunnel would collapse and the waters of the Inner
Sea speed through the rock-tunnel into this grotto.
And indeed the scrawny black sea-witch looked to the
Mouser as though she'd been whipping her tops for hours and—more to the point—would be able to keep on whipping
them for hours more. She showed no signs of her exertion save the rhythmic rise and fall of her breastless chest and
the extra whistle of breath through the mouth-slit of her mask and the gape and close of her gills.
Now she seemed for the first time to see him and Fafhrd,
for without leaving off her whipping she thrust her bronze mask toward them, red ropes a-spill across its green-blotched
forehead, and glared at them—hungrily, it seemed. Yet
she made them no other menace, but after a searching scrutiny jerked back her head twice, as if for a sign that
they should go past her. At the same time the green and
silver queens beckoned to them languorously.
This woke the Mouser and Fafhrd from their dazed watch-ing
and they complied eagerly enough, though in passing the
table the Mouser sniffed wine and paused to take up the two
golden goblets, handing one to his comrade. They drained
them despite the green hue of the drink, for the stuff smelt
right and was fiery sweet yet tart.
As he drank, the Mouser saw into the golden bowl. It held no store of green wine, but was filled almost to the
brim with a crystal fluid that might or might not have been
water. On the fluid floated a model, hardly a finger long, of
the hull of a black boat. A tiny tube of air seemed to go
down from its prow. But there was no time for closer looking, for Fafhrd was moving on. The Mouser stepped up into his area of shadow
to the left as Fafhrd had done to the right . . . and as he so
stepped, there sidled from the shadows before him two bluely
pallid men armed each with a pair of wave-edged knives. They were sailors, he judged from their pigtails and shuffling
gait, although they were both naked, and they were indisput- ably dead—by token of their unhealthy color, their care-lessness
of the thick slime streaking them, the way their
bulging eyes showed only whites and the bottom crescent of
the irises, and the fact that their hair, ears, and other.portions of their anatomies looked somewhat fish-chewed.
Behind them waddled a scimitar-wielding dwarf with short
spindle legs and monstrous head and gills—a veritable walk-ing
embryo. His great saucer eyes too were the upturned
ones of a dead thing, which did not make the Mouser feel
any easier as he whisked Scalpel and Cat's Claw out of their
sealskin case, for the three converged on him confidently where he stood and rapidly shifted to block his way as he
sought to circle behind them.
It was probably just as well that the Mouser had at that
moment no attention to spare for his comrade's predica-ment.
Fafhrd's area of shadow was black as ink toward the
wall, and as the Northerner strode through the margin of it
past a ridged and man-sized knob of rock rising from the
ledges and between him and the Mouser, there lifted from the further blackness—like eight giant serpents rearing from
their lair—the thick, sinuous, crater-studded arms of a mon-strous
octopus. The sea-beast's movement must have struck
internal sparks, for it simultaneously flashed into a yellow-streaked
purplish iridescence, showing Fafhrd its baleful eyes
large as plates, its cruel beak big as the prow of an over-turned
skiff, and the rather unlikely circumstance that the
end of each mighty tentacle wrapped powerfully around the
hilt of a gleaming broadsword.
Snatching at his own sword and axe, Fafhrd backed away from the be-weaponed squid against the ridged knob of
rock. Two of the ridges, being the vertical shell-edges of a
mollusc four feet across, instantly closed on the slack of his otterskin tunic, firmly holding him there.
Greatly daunted but determined to live nevertheless, the
Northerner swung his sword in a great figure eight, the lower
loop of which almost nicked the floor, while the upper loop
rose above his head like a tall arching shield. This double-petalled
flower of steel baffled the four blades or so with
which the octopus first came chopping at him rather cau-tiously,
and as the sea monster drew back his arms for
another volley of slashes, Fafhrd's left arm licked out with
his axe and chopped through the nearest tentacle. His adversary hooted loudly then and struck repeatedly
with all his swords, and for a space it looked as though Fa-fhrd's
universal parry must surely be pierced, but then the axe licked out again from the center of the sword-shield,
once, twice, and two more tentacle tips fell and the swords they gripped with them. The octopus drew back then out of.reach and sprayed a great mist-cloud of stinking black ink
from its tube, under cover of which it might work its will
unseen on the pinned Northerner, but even as the blinding
mist billowed toward him Fafhrd hurled his axe at the huge
central head. And although the black fog hid the axe almost
as soon as it left his hand, the heavy weapon must have reached a vital spot, for immediately the octopus hurled its
remaining swords about the grotto at random (fortunately
striking no one although they made a fine clatter) as its ten-tacles
thrashed in dying convulsions. Fafhrd drew a small knife, slashed his otterskin tunic down
the front and across the shoulders, stepped out of it with a
contemptuous wave to the mollusc as if to say, "Have it for
supper if you will," and turned to see how his comrade
fared. The Mouser, bleeding greenly from two trivial wounds
in ribs and shoulder, had just finished severing the major
tendons of his three hideous opponents—this having proved
the only way to immobilize them when various mortal
wounds had slowed them in no way at all nor caused them
to bleed one drop of blood of any color.
He smiled sickishly at Fafhrd and turned with him toward
the upper terraces. And now it became clear that the Green
and Silver Ones were at least in one respect true queens, for
they had not fled the prodigious battles as lesser women
might, but abided them and now waited with arms lightly
outstretched. Their gold and silver masks could not smile,
but their bodies did, and as the two adventurers mounted
toward them from the shadow into the light (the Mouser's little wounds changing from green to red, but Fafhrd's blue
tunic staying pretty inky) it seemed to them that veily finger-webs
and light neck-scorings were the highest points of female beauty. The lights faded somewhat on the upper ter-races,
though not on the lower where the monotonous six-toned
music of the tops kept reassuringly on, and the two
heroes entered each into that dark lustrous realm where all
thoughts of wounds are forgotten and all memories of even
the zestiest Lankhmar wine-cellar grow flat, and the Sea, our cruel mother and loving mistress, repays all debts.
A great soundless jar, as of the rock-solid earth moving,
recalled the Mouser to his surroundings. Almost simultane-ously
the whir of one of the tops mounted to a high-pitched
whine ending in a tinkly crash. The silver light began to
pulse and flicker wildly throughout the grotto. Springing to
his feet and looking down the steps, the Mouser saw a.memory-etching sight: the rust-topped black sea witch whip-ping
wildly at her rebellious tops, which leaped and bounded
about the table like fierce silver weasels, while through the
air around her from all sides but chiefly from the tunnel
there converged an arrow-swift flight of flying fish, skates,
and ribbon-edged eels, all inky black and with tiny jaws agape.
At that instant Fafhrd seized him by the shoulder and
jerked him fully around, pointing up the ledges. A silver
lightning-flash showed a great cross-beamed, weed-fringed
door at the head of the rocky stairs. The Mouser nodded
violently—meaning he understood it resembled and must be
the door they had yesterday seen from the ribbony cliff-summit
— and Fafhrd, satisfied his comrade would follow
him, dashed toward it up the ledges.
But the Mouser had a different thought and darted in the
opposite direction in the face of an ominous wet reeking wind.
Returning a dozen lightning-flashes later, he saw the green
and silver queens disappearing into round black tunnel
mouths in the rock to either side of the terrace and then
they were gone.
As he joined Fafhrd in the work of unsettling the cross-bars
of the great weedy door and drawing its massive rusty
bolts, it quivered under a portentous triple knocking as
though someone had smote it thrice with a long-skirted cloak
of chain mail. Water squirted under it and through the lower third of the central vertical crack. The Mouser looked be-hind
him then, with the thought that they might yet have to
seek another avenue of escape . . . and saw a great white- headed pillar of water jetting more than half the height of
the grotto from the mouth of the tunnel connecting with the
Inner Sea. Just then the silver cavern-light went out, but
almost immediately other light spilled from above. Fafhrd
had heaved open half of the great door. Green water foamed
about their knees and subsided. They fought their way
through and as the great door slammed behind them under a
fresh surge of water, they found themselves sloshing about on
a wild beach blown with foam, swimming with surf, and
floored chiefly with large flat water-worn oval rocks like
giants' skipping stones. The Mouser, turned shoreward,
squinted desperately at the creamy cliff two bowshot away,
wondering if they could possibly reach it through the mount-ing
tide and climb it if they did.
But Fafhrd was looking seaward. The Mouser again felt.himself shoulder-grabbed, spun around, and this time dragged
up a curving ledge of the great tower-rock in the base
of which was set the door through which they had just
emerged. He stumbled, cutting his knees, but was jerked ruthlessly on. He decided that Fafhrd must have some very
good reason for so rudely enjoining haste and thereafter
did his best to hurry without assistance at Fafhrd's heels up
the spiraling ramplike ledge. On the second circling he stole a seaward look, gasped, and increased the speed of his mad
dizzy scramble.
The stony beach below was drained and only here and
there patched with huge gouts of spume, but roaring toward
them from outer ocean was a giant wave that looked almost
half as high as the pillar they were mounting—a great white
wall of water flecked with green and brown and studded
with rocks—a wave such as distant earthquakes send charg-ing
across the sea like a massed cavalry of monsters. Behind
that wave came a taller one, and behind that a third taller still.
The Mouser and Fafhrd were three gasping circles higher
when the stout tower shuddered and shook to the crashing
impact of the first giant wave. Simultaneously the landward
door at its base burst open from within and the cavern-traveling
water from the Inner Sea gushed out creamily to be
instantly engulfed. The crest of the wave caught at Fafhrd's
and the Mouser's ankles without quite tripping them or
much slowing their progress. The second and third did
likewise, although they had gained another circle before
each impact. There was a fourth wave and a fifth, but no
higher than the third. The two adventurers reached the
stumpy summit and cast themselves down on it, clutching at
the still-shaking rock and slewing around to watch the shore
—Fafhrd noting the astonishing minor circumstance that the
Mouser was gripping between his teeth in the corner of his
mouth a small black cigar.
The creamy curtain wall shuddered at the impact of the
first wave and great cracks ran across it. The second wave shattered it and it fell into the third with an explosion of
spray, displacing so much salt water that the return wave al-most
swamped the tower, its dirty crest tugging at the
Mouser's and Fafhrd's fingers and licking along their sides.
Again the tower shook and rocked beneath them but did not
fall and that was the last of the great waves. Fafhrd and
the Mouser circled down the spiraling ledges until they caught.up with the declining sea, which still deeply covered the
door at the tower's base. Then they looked landward again,
where the mist raised by the catastrophe was dissipating.
A full half mile of curtain-wall had collapsed from base
to crest, its shards vanishing totally beneath the waves, and
through that gap the higher waters of the Inner Sea were
pouring in a flat sullen tide that was swiftly obliterating the
choppy aftermath of the earthquake waves from the Outer
Sea.
On this wide river in the sea the Black Treasurer ap-peared
from the mist, riding straight toward their refuge
rock.
Fafhrd cursed superstitiously. Sorcery working against
him he could always accept, but magic operating in his
favor he invariably found disturbing.
As the sloop drew near, they dove together into the sea,
reached it with a few brisk strokes, scrambled aboard,
steered it past the rock, and then lost no time in toweling
and dressing their nakedness and preparing hot drink. Soon
they were looking at each other over steaming mugs of grog.
"Now that we've changed oceans," Fafhrd said, "we'll
raise No-ombrulsk in a day with this west wind."
The Mouser nodded and then smiled steadily at his com-rade
for a space. Finally he said, "Well, old friend, are you
sure that is all you have to say?"
Fafhrd frowned. "Well, there's one thing," he replied
somewhat uncomfortably after a bit. "Tell me, Mouser, did
your girl ever take off her mask?"
"Did yours?" the Mouser asked back, eyeing him quizzi- cally.
Fafhrd frowned. "Well, more to the point," he said
gruffly, "did any of it really happen? We lost our swords
and duds but we have nothing to show for it."
The Mouser grinned and took the black cigar from the
corner of his mouth and handed it to Fafhrd.
"This is what I went back for," he said, sipping his grog.
"I thought we needed it to get our ship back, and perhaps
we did."
It was a tiny replica, carved in jet with the Mouser's teeth
marks deeply indenting it near the stern, of the Black Treas-urer.