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able to finish another jug of wine during their supervising. Next tightly
blindfold the two-score carriers -- this was the only difficult part of the
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operation, requiring all the Mouser's adroit, confident cajoling and Fafhrd's
easy though somewhat ominous and demanding friendliness -- and guide and goad
the forty of the impromptu porters as they pantingly and sweatingly carried
the house. They went south down empty Carter Street and west up Bones Alley
(the garden house fortunately being rather narrow, three smallish rooms in a
row) to the empty lot behind the Silver Eel, where after Fafhrd had hurled
aside three stone blocks there was space to ease it down. Then it only
remained to guide the still blindfolded carriers back to the Marsh Gate, give
them their gold and buy them their wine -- a big jug apiece seemed wisest to
blot out memory -- then rush back in the pinkening dawn to buy from Braggi,
the tavernmaster, the worthless lot behind the Silver Eel, reluctantly chop
off with Fafhrd's fighting axe the garden house's ridgepole and beam-horns,
throw water and then disguising ashes onto the roof and walls (without thought
of what evil omen this was, recalling Vlana and Ivrian), finally stagger
inside and collapse into sleep on the naked floor before even looking around.
When they woke next evening, the place turned out to be quite nice inside, the
two end-rooms each a thick-carpeted bedroom with highly erotic murals filling
the walls. The Mouser puzzled as to whether Duke Danius shared his
garden-concubines with a friend or else rushed back and forth between the two
bedrooms all by himself. The central room was a most couth and sedate
living room with several shelves of expensively bound stimulating books and a
fine larder of rare jugged foods and wines. One of the bedrooms even had a
copper bathtub -- the Mouser appropriated that one at once -- and both
bedrooms had privies easily cleaned out below by a parttime and out-dwelling
houseboy they hired that night from the Eel.
The theft was highly successful, they had no trouble from Lankhmar's
brown-cuirassed and generally lazy guardsmen, no trouble from Duke Danius --
if he hired house-spies, they botched their not-too-easy job. And for several
days the Gray Mouser and Fafhrd were very happy in their new domicile, eating
and drinking up Danius' fine provender, making the quick run to the Eel for
extra wine, the Mouser taking two or three perfumed, soapy, oily, slow baths a
day, Fafhrd going every two days to the nearest public steam-bath and putting
in a lot of time on the books, sharpening his already considerable knowledge
of High Lankhmarese, Ilthmarish, and Quarmallian.
By slow degrees, Fafhrd's bedroom became comfortably sloppy, the
Mouser's quite fussily tidy and neat -- it was simply their real natures
expressing themselves.
After a few days Fafhrd discovered a second library, most cunningly concealed,
of books dealing with nothing but death, books at complete variance with the
other supremely erotic volumes. Fafhrd found them equally educational, while
the Gray Mouser amused himself by picturing Duke Danius pausing to scan a few
paragraphs about strangulation or Kleshite jungle poisons while dashing back
and forth between his two bedrooms and their two or more girls.
However, they didn't invite any girls to their charming new home and perhaps
for a very good reason, because after half a moon or so the ghost of slim
Ivrian began to appear to the Mouser and the ghost of tall Vlana to
Fafhrd, both spirits perhaps raised from their remaining mineral dust drifting
around-about, and even plastered on the outer walls. The girl-ghosts never
spoke, even in faintest whisper, they never touched, even so much as by the
brush of a single hair; Fafhrd never spoke of Vlana to the Mouser, nor the
Mouser to Fafhrd of Ivrian. The two girls were invariably invisible,
inaudible, intangible, yet they were there.
Secretly from each other, each man consulted witches, witch doctors,
astrologers, wizards, necromancers, fortune tellers, reputable physicans,
priests even, seeking a cure for their ills (each desiring to see more of his
dead girl or nothing at all), yet finding none.
Within three moons the Mouser and Fafhrd -- very easy-amiable to each other,
very tolerant on all matters, very quick to crack jokes, smiling far more than
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was their wont -- were both rapidly going mad. The Mouser realized this one
gray dawn when the instant he opened his eyes a pale, two-dimensional
Ivrian at last appeared and gazed sadly at him one moment from the ceiling and
then utterly vanished.
Big drops of sweat beaded his entire face and head from hairline down on all
sides; his throat was acid, and he gagged and retched. Then with one fling of
his right arm, he threw off all his bedclothes and raced naked out of his
bedroom and across the living room into Fafhrd's.
The Northerner wasn't there.
He stared at the tousled, empty bed for a long time. Then he drank at one
swallow half a bottle of fortified wine. Then he brewed himself a pot of
burningly hot, triple-strength gahveh. As he gulped it down, he found himself
violently shivering and shaking. He threw on a wool robe and belted it tightly
around him, drew on his wool boots, then still shivered and shook as he
finished his still-steaming gahveh.
All day long he paced the living room or sprawled in one of its big chairs,
alternating fortified wine and hot gahveh, awaiting Fafhrd's return, still
shaking from time to time and pulling his warm robe tighter around him.
But the Northerner never appeared.
When the windows of thin and ash-dusty horn yellowed and darkened in the late
afternoon, the Mouser began to think in a more practical fashion of his
plight. It occurred to him that the one sorcerer he had not consulted about
his horrible Ivrian hang-up -- just conceivably because that was the one
sorcerer he believed might not be a faker and quack -- was Sheelba of the
Eyeless Face, who dwelt in a five-legged hut in the Great Salt Marsh
immediately east of Lankhmar.
He whipped off his woolen stuff and speedily donned his gray tunic of coarsely
woven silk, his ratskin boots, belted on his slim sword Scalpel and his dagger
Cat's Claw (he'd early noted that Fafhrd's ordinary clothes and sword Graywand
and dagger Heartseeker were gone), caught up his hooded cloak of the same
material as his tunic, and fled from the dreadful little house in vast, sudden
fear that Ivrian's sad ghost would appear to him again and then, without
talking or touching, again vanish.
It was sunset. The houseboy from the Eel was cleaning out the privies.
The Mouser asked, rather wildly and fiercely, "Seen Fafhrd today?"
The lad started back. "Yes," he said. "He rode off at dawn on a big white
horse."
"Fafhrd doesn't own a horse," the Mouser said harshly and dangerously.
Again the lad started back. "It was the biggest horse I've ever seen.
It had a brown saddle and harness, studded with gold."
The Mouser snarled and half drew Scalpel from her mouseskin scabbard.
Then, beyond the lad, he saw, twinkling and gleaming in the gloom, a huge,
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