Two of his appetites now satisfied, the third returned to the Mouser more hotly. Hand-holding became suddenly merely tantalizing and Ivivis’ pale green tunic no more an object for admiration and for compliments to her, but only a barrier to be got rid of as swiftly as possible and with the smallest necessary modicum of decorousness.
Himself taking the lead, he drew her as directly as he could recall the route, and with little speech, toward the closet he had preempted for his loot, two levels below Gwaay’s Hall of Sorcery. At last he found the corridor he sought, one hung to either side with thick purple arras and lit by infrequent copper chandeliers which hung each from the rock ceiling on three copper chains and held three thick black candles.
This far Ivivis followed him with only the fewest flirtatious balkings and a minimum of wondering, innocent-eyed questions as to what he intended and why such haste was needful. But now her hesitations became convincing, her eyes began to show a genuine uneasiness, or even fearfulness, and when he stopped by the arras-slit before the door to his closet and with the courtliest of lecherous smirks he could manage indicated to her that they had reached their destination, she drew sharply back, stifling an exclamation with the flat of her hand.
“Gray Mouser,” she whispered rapidly, her eyes at once frightened and beseeching, “there is a confession I should have made earlier and now must make at once. By one of those malign and mocking coincidences which haunt all Quarmall, you have chosen for your hidey hole the very chamber where—”
Well it was for the Gray Mouser then that he took seriously Ivivis’ look and tone, that he was by nature sense-aware and distrustful, and in particular that his ankles now took note of a slight yet unaccustomed draft from under the arras. For without other warning a fist pointed with a dark dagger punched through the arras-slit at his throat.
With the edge of his left hand, which had been raised to indicate to Ivivis their bedding-place, the Mouser struck aside the black-sleeved arm.
The girl exclaimed, not loudly, “Klevis!”
With his right hand the Mouser caught hold of the wrist going by him and twisted it. With his spread left hand he simultaneously rammed his attacker in the armpit.
But the Mouser’s grip, made by hurried snatch, was imperfect. Moreover, Klevis was not minded to resist and have his arm dislocated or broken in that fashion. Spinning with the Mouser’s twist, he also went into a deliberate forward somersault.
The net result was that Klevis lost his cross-gripped dagger, which clattered dully on the thick-carpeted floor, but tore loose unhurt from the Mouser and after two more somersaults came lightly to his feet, at once turning and drawing rapier.
By then the Mouser had drawn Scalpel and his dirk Cat’s Claw too, but held the latter behind him. He attacked cautiously, with probing feints. When Klevis counterattacked strongly, he retreated, parrying each fierce thrust at the last moment, so that again and again the enemy blade went whickering close by him.
Klevis lunged with especial fierceness. The Mouser parried, high this time and not retreating. In an instant they were pressed body to body, their rapiers strongly engaged near their hilts and above their heads.
By turning a little, the Mouser blocked Klevis’ knee driven at his groin. While with the dirk Klevis had overlooked, he stabbed the other from below, Cat’s Claw entering just under Klevis’ breastbone to pierce his liver, gizzard, and heart.
Letting go his dirk, the Mouser nudged the body away from him and turned.
Ivivis was facing them, with Klevis’ punching-dagger gripped ready for a thrust.
The body thudded to the floor.
“Which of us did you propose to skewer?” the Mouser asked.
“I don’t know,” the girl answered in a flat voice. “You, I suppose.”
The Mouser nodded. “Just before this interruption, you were saying, ‘The very chamber where—’ What?”
“— where I often met Klevis, to be with him,” she replied.
Again the Mouser nodded. “So you loved him and—”
“Shut up, you fool!” she interrupted. “Is he dead?” There were both deep concern and exasperation in her voice.
The Mouser backed along the body until he stood at the head of it. Looking down, he said, “As mutton. He was a handsome youth.”
For a long moment they eyed each other like leopards across the corpse. Then, averting her face a little, Ivivis said, “Hide the body, you imbecile. It tears my heartstrings to see it.”
Nodding, the Mouser stooped and rolled the corpse under the arras opposite the closet door. He tucked in Klevis’ rapier beside him. Then he withdrew Cat’s Claw from the body. Only a little dark blood followed. He cleaned his dirk on the arras, then let the hanging drop.
Standing up, he snatched the punching-dagger from the brooding girl and flipped it so that it too vanished under the arras.
With one hand he spread wide the slit in the arras. With the other he took hold of Ivivis’ shoulder and pressed her toward the doorway which Klevis had left open to his undoing.
She instantly shook loose from his grip but walked through the doorway. The Mouser followed. The leopard look was still in both their eyes.
A single torch lit the closet. The Mouser shut the door and barred it.
Ivivis snarled at him, summing it up: “You owe me much, Gray Stranger.”
The Mouser showed his teeth in an unhumorous grin. He did not stop to see whether his stolen trinkets had been disturbed. It did not even occur to him, then, to do so.
Fafhrd felt relief when Friska told him that the darker slit at the very end of the dark, long, straight corridor they’d just entered was the door to the Ghost Hall. It had been a hurrying, nervous trip, with many peerings around corners and dartings back into dark alcoves while someone passed, and a longer trip vertically downward than Fafhrd had anticipated. If they had now only reached the top of the Lower Levels, this Quarmall must be bottomless! Yet Friska’s spirits had improved considerably. Now at times she almost skipped along in her white chemise cut low behind. Fafhrd strode purposefully, her dress and slippers in his left hand, his ax in his right.
The Northerner’s relief in no wise diminished his wariness, so that when someone rushed from an inky tunnel-mouth they were passing, he stroked out almost negligently and he felt and heard his ax crunch halfway through a head.
He saw a comely blond youth, now most sadly dead and his comeliness rather spoiled by Fafhrd’s ax, which still stood in the great wound it had made. A fair hand opened, and the sword it had held fell from it.
“Hovis!” he heard Friska cry. “O gods! O gods that are not here. Hovis!”
Lifting a booted foot, Fafhrd stamped it sideways at the youth’s chest, at once freeing his ax and sending the corpse back into the tunneled dark from which the live man had so rashly hurtled.
After a swift look and listen all about, he turned toward Friska where she stood white-faced and staring.
“Who’s this Hovis?” he demanded, shaking her lightly by the shoulder when she did not reply.
Twice her mouth opened and shut again, while her face remained as expressionless as that of a silly fish. Then with a little gasp she said, “I lied to you, barbarian. I have met Gwaay’s page Hovis here. More than once.”
“Then why didn’t you warn me, wench!” Fafhrd demanded. “Did you think I would scold you for your morals, like some city graybeard? Or have you no regard at all for your men, Friska?”
“Oh, do not chide me,” Friska begged miserably. “Please do not chide me.”
Fafhrd patted her shoulder. “There, there,” he said. “I forget you were shortly tortured and hardly of a mind to remember everything. Come on.”
They had taken a dozen steps when Friska began to shudder and sob together in a swiftly mounting crescendo. She turned and ran back, crying, “Hovis! Hovis, forgive me!”
Fafhrd caught her before three steps. He shook her again, and when that did not stop her sobbing, he used his other hand to slap her twice, rocking her head a little.
She stared at him dumbly.
He said not fiercely but somberly, “Friska, I must tell you that Hovis is where your words and tears can never again reach him. He’s dead. Beyond recall. Also, I killed him. That’s beyond recall too. But you are still alive. You can hide from Hasjarl. Ultimately, whether you believe it or not, you can escape with me from Quarmall. Now come on with me, and no looking back.”
She blindly obeyed, with only the faintest of moanings.
The Gray Mouser stretched luxuriously on the silver-tipped bearskin he’d thrown on the floor of his closet. Then he lifted on an elbow and, finding the black pearls he’d pilfered, tried them against Ivivis’ bosom in the pale cool light of the single torch above. Just as he’d imagined, the pearls looked very well there. He started to fasten them around her neck.