He brought her slowly down toward him, as a man might put a wineskin to his mouth, tantalizing himself. Their skins met. Their lips poised.
Fafhrd became aware of a profound silence above, around, below, as if the very earth were holding her breath. It frightened him.
They kissed, drinking deeply of each other, and his fear was drowned.
They parted for breath. Fafhrd reached out and pinched the lamp’s wick so that the flame fled and the tent was dark except for the cold silver of dawn seeping in by cranny and crack. His fingers stung. He wondered why he’d done it—they’d loved by lamplight before. Again fear came.
He clasped Vlana tightly in the hug that banishes all fears.
And then of a sudden—he could not possibly have told why—he was rolling over and over with her toward the back of the tent. His hands gripping her shoulders, his legs clamping hers together, he was hurling her sideways over him and then himself over her in swiftest alteration.
There was a crack like thunder and the jolt of a giant’s fist hammered against the granite-frozen ground behind them, where the middle of the tent became nothing high, while the hoops above them leaned sharply that way, drawing the tent’s leather skin after.
They rolled into the racked garments spilling down. There was a second monster crack followed by a crashing and a crunching like some super-giant beast snapping up a behemoth and crunching it between its jaws. Earth quivered for a space.
Then all was silent after that great noise and ground-shaking, except for the astonishment and fear buzzing in their ears. They clutched each other like terrified children.
Fafhrd recovered himself first. “Dress!” he told Vlana and squirmed under the back of the tent and stood up naked in the biting cold under the pinkening sky.
The great bough of the snow sycamore, its crystals dashed off in a vast heap, lay athwart the middle of the tent, pressing it and the pallet beneath into the frozen earth.
The rest of the sycamore, robbed of its great balancing bough, had fallen entire in the opposite direction and lay mounded around with shaken-off crystals. Its black, hairy, broken-off roots were nakedly exposed.
All the crystals shone with a pale flesh-pink from the sun.
Nothing moved anywhere, not even a wisp of breakfast smoke. Sorcery had struck a great hammerstroke and none had noted it except the intended victims.
Fafhrd, beginning to shake, slithered under again. Vlana had obeyed his word and was dressing with an actress’s swiftness. Fafhrd hurried into his own garments, piled so providentially at this end of the tent. He wondered if he had been under a god’s directions in doing that and in snuffing out the lamp, which else by now would have had the crushed tent flaming.
His clothes felt colder than the icy air, but he knew that would change.
He crawled with Vlana outside once more. As they stood up, he faced her toward the fallen bough with the great crystal heap around it and said, “Now laugh at the witchy powers of my mother and her coven and all the Snow Women.”
Vlana said doubtfully, “I see only a bough that was overweighted with ice.”
Fafhrd said, “Compare the mass of crystals and snow that was shaken off that bough with those elsewhere. Remember: hide your thoughts!”
Vlana was silent.
A black figure was racing toward them from the traders’ tents. It grew in size as it grotesquely bounded.
Vellix the Venturer was gasping as he stamped to a stop and seized Vlana’s arms. Controlling his breathing, he said, “I dreamed a dream of you struck down and pashed. Then a thunderclap waked me.”
Vlana answered, “You dreamed the beginning of the truth, but in a matter like this, almost is as good as not at all.”
Vellix at last saw Fafhrd. Lines of jealous anger engraved his face and his hand went to the dagger at his belt.
“Hold!” Vlana commanded sharply. “I had indeed been mashed to a mummy, except that this youth’s senses, which ought to have been utterly engrossed in something else, caught the first cues of the bough’s fall, and he whipped me out of death’s way in the very nick. Fafhrd’s his name.”
Vellix changed his hand’s movement into part of a low bow, sweeping his other arm out wide.
“I am much indebted to you, young man,” he said warmly, and then after a pause, “for saving the life of a notable artiste.”
By now other figures were in view, some hurrying toward them from the nearby actors’ tents, others at the doors of the far-off Snow Tribe’s tents and not moving at all.
Pressing her cheek to Fafhrd’s, as if in formal gratitude, Vlana whispered rapidly, “Remember my plan for tonight and for all our future rapture. Do not depart a jot from it. Efface yourself.”
Fafhrd managed, “Beware ice and snow. Act without thought.”
To Vellix, Vlana said more distantly, though with courtesy and kindness, “Thank you, sir, for your concern for me, both in your dreams and your wakings.”
From out a fur robe, whose collar topped his ears, Essedinex greeted with gruff humor, “It’s been a hard night on tents.” Vlana shrugged.
The women of the troupe gathered around her with anxious questions and she talked with them privately as they walked to the actors’ tent and went in through the girls’ door-flap.
Vellix frowned after her and pulled at his black moustache.
The male actors stared and shook their heads at the beating the hemicylindrical tent had taken.
Vellix said to Fafhrd with warm friendliness, “I offered you brandy before and now I’d guess you need it. Also, since yestermorning I’ve had a great desire to talk with you.”
“Your pardon, but once I sit I will not be able to stay awake for a word, were they wise as owls’, nor for even a brandy swig,” Fafhrd answered politely, hiding a great yawn, which was only half feigned. “But I thank you.”
“It appears I am fated always to ask at the wrong time,” Vellix commented with a shrug. “Perhaps at noon? Or midafternoon?” he added swiftly.
“The latter, if it please you,” Fafhrd replied and rapidly walked off, taking great strides toward the trading tents. Vellix did not seek to keep up with him.
Fafhrd felt more satisfied than he ever had in his life. The thought that tonight he would forever escape this stupid snow world and its man-chaining women almost made him nostalgic about Cold Corner. Thought-guard! he told himself. Feelings of eerie menace or else his hunger for sleep turned his surroundings spectral, like a childhood scene revisited.
He drained a white porcelain tankard of wine given him by his Mingol friends Zax and Effendrit, let them conduct him to a glossy pallet hidden by piles of other furs, and fell at once into a deep sleep.
After eons of absolute, pillowy darkness, lights came softly on. Fafhrd sat beside Nalgron his father at a stout banquet table crowded with all savory foods smoking hot and all fortified wines in jugs of earthenware, stone, silver, crystal and gold. There were other feasters lining the table, but Fafhrd could make nothing of them except their dark silhouettes and the sleepy sound of their unceasing talk too soft to be understood, like many streams of murmuring water, though with occasional bursts of low laughter, like small waves running up and returning down a gravelly beach. While the dull clash of knife and spoon against plate and each other was like the clank of the pebbles in that surf.
Nalgron was clad and cloaked in ice-bear furs of the whitest with pins and chains and wristlets and rings of purest silver, and there was silver also in his hair, which troubled Fafhrd. In his left hand he held a silver goblet, which at intervals he touched to his lips, but he kept his eating hand under his cloak.
Nalgron was discoursing wisely, tolerantly, almost tenderly of many matters. He directed his gaze here and there around the table, yet spoke so quietly that Fafhrd knew his conversation was directed at his son alone.
Fafhrd also knew he should be listening intently to every word and carefully stowing away each aphorism, for Nalgron was speaking of courage, of honor, of prudence, of thoughtfulness in giving and punctilio in keeping your word, of following your heart, of setting and unswervingly striving toward a high, romantic goal, of self-honesty in all these things but especially in recognizing your aversions and desires, of the need to close your ears to the fears and naggings of women, yet freely forgive them all their jealousies, attempted trammelings, and even extremest wickednesses, since those all sprang from their ungovernable love, for you or another, and of many a different matter most useful to know for a youth on manhood’s verge.
But although he knew this much, Fafhrd heard his father only in snatches, for he was so troubled by the gauntness of Nalgron’s cheek and by the leanness of the strong fingers lightly holding the silver goblet and by the silver in his hair, and a faint overlay of blue on his ruddy lips, although Nalgron was most sure and even sprightly in every movement, gesture, and word, that he was compelled to be forever searching the steaming platters and bowls around him for especially succulent portions to spoon or fork onto Nalgron’s wide, silver plate to tempt his appetite.