The remaining door opened easily too, though Fafhrd pushed it somewhat gingerly. Nothing startling, however, came into view this time, only a long dark room, empty of persons and furniture, with a second door at the other end. Its only novel feature was that the right-hand wall glowed green. They walked in with returning confidence. After a few steps they became aware that the glowing wall was thick crystal enclosing pale green, faintly clouded water. As they watched, continuing to stroll, there swam into view with lazy undulations two beautiful mermaids, the one with long golden hair trailing behind her and a sheathlike garb of wide-meshed golden fishnet, the other with short dark hair parted by a ridgy and serrated silver crest. They came close enough for one to see the slowly pulsing gills scoring their necks where they merged into their sloping, faintly scaled shoulders, and farther down their bodies those discreet organs which contradict the contention, subject of many a crude jest, that a man is unable fully to enjoy an unbifurcated woman (though any pair of snakes in love tell us otherwise). They swam closer still, their dreamy eyes now wide and peering, and the Mouser and Fafhrd recognized the two queens of the sea they had embraced some years past while deep diving from their sloop Black Treasurer.
What the wide-peering fishy eyes saw evidently did not please the mermaids, for they made faces and with powerful flirts of their long finny tails retreated away from the crystal wall through the greenish water, whose cloudiness was increased by their rapid movements, until they could no longer be seen.
Turning to the Mouser, Fafhrd inquired, eyebrows alift, “You mentioned other fish in the sea?”
With a quick frown the Mouser strode on. Trailing him, Fafhrd mused puzzledly, “You said this might be a secret temple, friend. But if so, where are its porters, priests, and patrons other than ourselves?”
“More like a museum—scenes of distant life. And a piscesium, or piscatorium,” his comrade answered curtly over shoulder.
“I’ve also been thinking,” Fafhrd continued, quickening his steps, “there’s too much space here we’ve been walking through for the lot behind the Silver Eel to hold. What has been builded here?—or there?”
The Mouser went through the far door. Fafhrd was close behind.
* * * *
In Godsland Kos snarled, “The rogues are taking it too easily. Oh, for a thunderbolt!”
Mog told him rapidly, “Never you fear, my friend, we have them on the run. They’re only putting up appearances. We’ll wear them down by slow degrees until they pray to us for mercy, groveling on their knees. That way our pleasure’s greater.”
“Quiet, you two,” Issek shrilled, waving his bent wrists, “I’m getting another girl pair!”
It was clear from these and other quick gesticulations and injunctions—and from their rapt yet tense expressions—that the three gods in close inward-facing circle were busy with something interesting. From all around other divinities large and small, baroque and classical, noisome and beautiful, came drifting up to comment and observe. Godsland is overcrowded, a veritable slum, all because of man’s perverse thirst for variety. There are rumors among the packed gods there of other and (perish the thought!) superior gods, perhaps invisible, who enjoy roomier quarters on another and (oh woe!) higher level and who (abysmal deviltry!) even hear thoughts, but nothing certain.
Issek cried out in ecstasy, “There, there, the stage is set! Now to search out the next teasing pair. Kos and Mog, help me. Do your rightful share.”
* * * *
The Gray Mouser and Fafhrd felt they’d been transported to the mysterious realm of Quarmall, where they’d had one of their most fantastic adventures. For the next chamber seemed a cave in solid rock, given room-shape by laborious chipping. And behind a table piled with parchments and scrolls, inkwells and quills, sat the two saucy, seductive slavegirls they’d rescued from the cavern-world’s monotonies and tortures: slender Ivivis, supple as a snake, and pleasantly plump Friska, light of foot. The two men felt relief and joy that they’d come home to the familiar and beloved.
Then they saw the room had windows, with sunlight suddenly striking in (as if a cloud had lifted), and was not solid rock but morticed stone, and that the girls wore not the scanty garb of slaves but rich and sober robes, while their faces were grave and self-reliant.
Ivivis looked up at the Mouser with inquiry but instant disapproval. “What dost here, figment of my servile past? ‘Tis true, you rescued me from Quarmall foul. For which I paid you with my body’s love. Which ended at Tovilysis when we split. We’re quits, dear Mouser, yes by Mog, we are!” (She wondered why she used that particular oath.)
Likewise Friska looked at Fafhrd and said, “That goes for you too, bold barbarian. You also killed my lover Hovis, you’ll recall—as Mouser did Ivivis’ Klevis. We are no longer simple-minded slaves, playthings of men, but subtile secretary and present treasurer of the Guild of Free Women at Tovilysis. We’ll never love again unless I choose—which I do not today! And so, by Kos and Issek, now begone!” (She wondered likewise why she invoked those particular deities, for whom she had no respect whatever.)
These rebuffs hurt the two heroes sorely, so that they had not the spirit to respond with denials, jests, or patient gallantries. Their tongues clove to their hard palates, their hearts and privates grew chilly, they almost cringed—and they rather swiftly stole from that chamber by the open door ahead … into a large room shaped of bluish ice, or rock of the same hue and translucence and as cold, so that the flames dancing in the large fireplace were welcome. Before this was spread a rug looking wondrously thick and soft, about which were set scatteredly jars of unguents, small bottles of perfume (which made themselves known by their ranging scents), and other cosmetic containers and tools. Furthermore, the invitingly textured rug showed indentations as if made by two recumbent human forms, while about a cubit above it floated two living masks as thin as silk or paper or more thin, holding the form of wickedly pretty, pert girl faces, the one rosy mauvette, the other turquoise green.
Others would have deemed it a prodigy, but the Mouser and Fafhrd at once recognized Keyaira and Hirriwi, the invisible frost princesses with whom they’d once been separately paired for one long, long night in Stardock, tallest of Nehwon’s northron peaks, and knew that the two gaysome girls were reclining unclad in front of the fire and had been playfully anointing each other’s faces with pigmented salves.
Then the turquoise mask leapt up betwixt Fafhrd and the fire, so that dancing orange flames only shone through its staring eye holes and between its now cruel and amused lips as it spoke to him, saying, “In what frowsty bed are you now dead asleep, gross one-time lover, that your squeaking soul can be blown halfway across the world to gape at me? Some day again climb Stardock and in your solid form importune me, I might hark. But now, phantom, depart!”
The mallow mask likewise spoke scornfully to the Mouser, saying in tones as stinging and impelling as the flames seen through its facial orifices, “And you remove too, wraith most pitiful. By Khahkht of the Black Ice and Gara of the Blue—and e’en Kos of the Green—I enjoin it! Blow winds! and out lights all!” Fafhrd and the Mouser were hurt even more sorely by these new rebuffs. Their very souls were shriveled by the feeling that they were indeed the phantoms, and the speaking masks the solid reality.
Nevertheless, they might have summoned the courage to attempt to answer the challenge (though ‘tis doubtful), except that at Keyaira’s last commands they were plunged into darkness absolute and manhandled by great winds and then dumped in a lighted area. A wind-slammed door crashed shut behind them.
They saw with considerable relief that they were not confronting yet another pair of girls (that would have been unendurable) but were in another stretch of corridor lit by clear-flaming torches held in brazen wall brackets in the form of gripping bird-talons, coiling squid-tentacles, and pinching crab-claws. Grateful for the respite, they took deep breaths.
Then Fafhrd frowned deeply and said, “Mark me, Mouser, there’s magic somewhere in all this. Or else the hand of a god.”
The Mouser commented bitterly, “If it’s a god, he’s a thumb-fingered one, the way he sets us up to be turned down.”
Fafhrd’s thoughts took a new tack, as shown by the changing furrows in his forehead. “Mouser, I never squeaked,” he protested. “Hirriwi said I squeaked.”
“Manner of speaking only, I suppose,” his comrade consoled. “But gods! what misery I felt myself, as if I were no longer man at all, and this no more than broomstick.” He indicated his sword Scalpel at his side and gazed with a shake of his head at Fafhrd’s scabbarded Graywand.