Fritz Leiber: Swords and Ice Magic

They looked down to find Pinchbeck Alley emptier still. The two liches had vanished from the cobbles. Even the chopped-off head was gone from the foot of the wall against which it had rolled.

“An excellent way of disposing of bodies,” Fafhrd said with approval. His ears had caught the tramp and brazen clank of the approaching watch.

“They might have lingered long enough for us to search their pouches and seams for jewels and precious metal,” the Mouser demurred.

“But what was behind it all?” Fafhrd puzzled. “A black-and-white magician?"

“It's bootless to make bricks without straw,” said the Mouser, cutting him short. “Let us hie to the Golden Lamphrey and there drink a health to the girl, who was surely a stunner.”

“Agreed. And we will drink to her appropriately in blackest stout laced with the palest bubbly wine of Ilthmar.”

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were almost dead from thirst. Their horses had died from the same Hell-throated ailment at the last waterhole, which had proved dry. Even the last contents of their waterbags, augmented by water of their own bodies, had not been enough to keep alive the dear dumb equine beasts. As all men know, camels are the only creatures who can carry men for more than a day or two across the almost supernaturally hot arid deserts of the World of Nehwon.

They tramped on south-westward under the blinding sun and over the burning sand. Despite their desperate plight and heat-fevered minds and bodies, they were steering a canny course. Too far south and they would fall into the cruel hands of the emperor of the Eastern Lands, who would find rare delight in torturing them before killing them. Too far east and they would encounter the merciless Mingols of the Steppes and other horrors. West and northwest were those who were pursuing them now. While north and northeast lay the Shadowland, the home of Death himself. So much they well knew of the geography of Nehwon.

Meanwhile, Death grinned faintly in his low castle in the heart of the Shadowland, certain that he had at last got the two elusive heroes in his bony grip. They had years ago had the nerve to enter his domain, visiting their first loves, Ivrian and Vlana, and even stealing from his very castle Death's favorite mask. Now they would pay for their temerity.

Death had the appearance of a tall, handsome young man, though somewhat cadaverous and of opalescent complexion. He was staring now at a large map of the Shadowland and its environs set in a dark wall of his dwelling. On this map Fafhrd and the Mouser were a gleaming speck, like an errant star or fire beetle, south of the Shadowland.

Death writhed his thin, smiling lips and moved his bony fingertips in tiny, cabalistic curves, as he worked a small but difficult magic.

His incantation done, he noted with approval that on the map a southern tongue of the Shadowland was visibly extending itself in pursuit of the dazzling speck that was his victims.

Fafhrd and the Mouser tramped on south, staggering and reeling now, their feet and minds aflame, their faces a-drip with precious sweat. They had been seeking, near the Sea of Monsters and the City of Ghouls, their strayed newest girls, Mouser's Reetha and Fafhrd's Kreeshkra, the latter a Ghoul herself, all her blood and flesh invisible, which made her bonny pink bones stand out the more, while Reetha believed in going naked and shaven from head to toe, a taste which gave the girls a mutual similarity and sympathy.

But the Mouser and Fafhrd had found nothing but a horde of fierce male Ghouls, mounted on equally skeletal horses, who had chased them east and south, either to slay them, or to cause them to die of thirst in the desert or of torture in the dungeons of the King of Kings.

It was high noon and the sun was hottest. Fafhrd's left hand touched in the dry heat a cool fence about two feet high, invisible at first though not for long.

“Escape to damp coolth,” he said in a cracked voice.

They eagerly clambered over the fence and threw themselves down on a blessed thick turf of dark grass two inches high, over which a fine mist was falling. They slept about ten hours.

In his castle Death permitted himself a thin grin, as on his map the south-trending tongue of the Shadowland touched the diamond spark and dimmed it.

Nehwon's greatest star, Astorian, was mounting the eastern sky, precursor of the moon, as the two adventurers awoke, greatly refreshed by their long nap. The mist had almost ceased, but the only star visible was vast Astorian.

The Mouser sprang up agitatedly in his gray hood, tunic, and ratskin shoes. “We must escape backward to hot dryth,” he said, “for this is the Shadowland, Death's homeland.”

“A very comfortable place,” Fafhrd replied, stretching his huge muscles luxuriously on the thick greensward. “Return to the briny, granular, rasping, fiery land-sea? Not I."

“But if we stay here,” the Mouser countered, “we will be will-lessly drawn by devilish and delusive will-o'-the-wisps to the low-walled Castle of Death, whom we defied by stealing his mask and giving its two halves to our wizards Sheelba and Ningauble, an action for which Death is not likely to love us. Besides, here we might well meet our two first girls, Ivrian and Vlana, now concubines of Death, and that would not be a pleasant experience.”

Fafhrd winced, yet stubbornly repeated, “But it is comfortable here.” Rather self-consciously he writhed his great shoulders and restretched his seven feet on the deliciously damp turf. (The “seven feet” refers to his height. He was by no means an octopus missing one limb, but a handsome, red-bearded, very tall barbarian.)

The Mouser persisted, “But what if your Vlana should appear, blue-faced and unloving? Or my Ivrian in like state, for that matter?”

That dire image did it. Fafhrd sprang up, grabbing for the low fence. But lo and behold — there was no fence at hand. In all directions stretched out the damp, dark green turf of the Shadowland, while the soft drizzle had thickened again, hiding Astorian. There was no way to tell directions.

The Mouser searched in his ratskin pouch and drew out a blue bone needle. He pricked himself finding it, and cursed. It was wickedly sharp at one end, round and pierced at the other.

“We need a pool or puddle,” he said.

“Where did you get that toy?” Fafhrd quizzed. “Magic, eh?”

“From Nattick Nimblefingers the Tailor in vasty Lankhmar,” the Mouser responded. “Magic, nay! Hast heard of compass needles, oh wise one?”

Not far off they found a shallow puddle atop the turf. The Mouser carefully floated his needle on the small mirror of clear, placid water. It spun about slowly and eventually settled itself.

“We go that way,” Fafhrd said, pointing out from the pierced end of the needle “South.” For he realized the pricking end must point toward the heart of the Shadowland — Nehwon's Death Pole, one might call it. For an instant he wondered if there were another such pole at the antipodes — perhaps a Life Pole.

“And we'll still need the needle,” the Mouser added, pricking himself again and cursing as he pouched it, “for future guidance.”

“Hah! Wah-wah-wah-hah!” yelled three berserks, emerging like fleet statues from the mist. They had been long marooned in the skirts of the Shadowland, reluctant either to advance to the Castle of Death and find their Hell or Valhalla, or to seek escape, but always ready for a fight. They rushed at Fafhrd and the Mouser, bare-skinned and naked-bladed.

It took the Twain ten heartbeats of clashing sword-fight to kill them, though killing in the domain of Death must be at least a misdemeanor, it occurred to the Mouser — like poaching. Fafhrd got a shallow slash wound across his biceps, which the Mouser carefully bound up.