“Look there,” the Mouser said, pointing due south, steerside abeam.
Across the moon-silvered gray field of the sea pricked out with speeding towers of waterspouts, almost at the dim distant horizon, Fafhrd saw a solitary gigantic waterspout huge as an island, taller than tallest mesa, moving east at least as swiftly as the rest and as ponderous-relentlessly as a juggernaut of the emperor of the Eastern Lands. The hair rose on the back of Fafhrd’s neck, he was harrowed with fear and wonder, and he said not a word, but only stared and stared as the horrendous thing forged ahead in its immensity.
After a while he began also to feel a great weariness. He looked ahead and a little up at the stiffly flapping silver lace of the twin shimmer-sprights before the prow, taking comfort from their nearness and steadiness as if they were Black Racer’s flags. He slowly lowered himself until he lay prone on the narrow, snugly abutting planks of the deck, his head toward the prow, his chin propped on his hands, still observing the night-sprights.
“You know how groups of stars sometimes wink out mysteriously on clearest Nehwon nights?” the Mouser said lightly and bemusedly.
“That’s true enough, they do,” Fafhrd agreed, somewhat sleepily.
“That must be because the tubes of their waterspout-walls are bent enough, by a strong gale perchance, to hide their light, keep it from getting out.”
Fafhrd mumbled, “If you say so.”
After a considerable pause the Mouser asked in the same tones, “Is it not passing strange to think that in the heart of each dark, gray spout out there dotting the main, there burns (without any heat) a jewel of blinding, purest diamond light?”
Fafhrd managed what might have been a weighty sigh of agreement.
After another long pause the Mouser said reflectively, as one who tidied up loose ends, “It’s easy now to see, isn’t it, that the spouts small and great must all be tubes? For if they were solid water by some strange chance, they’d suck the oceans dry and fill the heavens with heaviest clouds—nay, with the sea! You get my point?”
But Fafhrd had gone to sleep. In his sleep he dreamed and in that dream he rolled over on his back and one of the shimmer-sprights parted from her sister and winged down to flutter close above him: a long and slender, black-haired form, moon pale, appareled in finest silver-shot black lace that witchingly enhanced her nakedness. She was gazing down at him tenderly yet appraisingly, with eyes that would have been violet had there been more light. He smiled at her. She slightly shook her head, her face grew grave, and she flowed down against him head to heel, her wraithlike fingers busy at the great bronze buckle of his heavy belt, while with long, night-cool cheek pressed ‘gainst his fevered one, she whispered softly and yet most clearly in his ear, each word a symbol finely drawn in blackest ink on moon-white paper, “Turn back, turn back, my dearest man, to Shadowland and Death, for that’s the only way to stay alive. Trust only in the moon. Suspect all other prophecies but mine. So now, steer north, steer strongly north.”
In his dream Fafhrd replied, “I can’t steer north, I’ve tried. Love me, my dearest girl,” and she answered huskily, “That’s as may hap, my love. Seek Death to ‘scape from him. Suspect all flaming youth and scarlet shes. Beware the sun. Trust in the moon. Wait for her certain sign.”
At that instant Fafhrd’s dream was snatched from him and he roused numbly to the Mouser’s sharp cries and to the chilling fugitive glimpse of a face narrow, beauteous, and of most melancholy mien, pale violet-blue of hue and with eyes like black holes. This above wraithlike, like-complected figure, and all receding swift as thought amidst a beating of black wings.
Then the Mouser was shaking him by the shoulders and crying out, “Wake up, wake up! Speak to me, man!”
Fafhrd brushed his face with the back of his hand and mumbled, “Wha’ happ’n?”
Crouched beside him, the Mouser narrated rapidly and somewhat breathlessly, “The shimmer-sprights grew restless and ‘gan play about the mast like corposants. One buzzed around me shrilly like a wasp, and when I’d driven it off, I saw the other nosing you from toe to waist to head, then nuzzling your neck. Your flesh grew silver-white, as white as death, the whiles the corposant became your glowing shroud. I greatly feared for you and drove it off.”
Fafhrd’s muddied eyes cleared somewhat whilst the Mouser spoke and when the latter was done, he nodded and said knowingly, “That would be right. She spoke me much of death and at the end she looked like it, poor sibyl.”
“Who spoke?” the Mouser asked. “What sibyl?”
“The shimmer-girl, of course,” Fafhrd told him. “You know what I mean.”
He stood up. His belt began to slip. He stared down wide-eyes at the undone buckle, then drew it up and hooked it together swiftly.
“Fafhrd, I don’t know what you’re talking of,” the Mouser denied, his expression suddenly hooded. “Girl? What girl? Art seeing mirages? Has lack of erotic exercise addled your wits? Have you turned moon-mad lunatic?”
At this point Fafhrd had to speak most sharply and shrewdly to the Mouser to get him to admit that he—the Mouser—had suspected for days that the shimmer-sprights were girls, albeit girls with a strong admixture of the supernatural, insofar as any admixture of anything is able to affect the essential girlness of any such being, which isn’t much.
But the Mouser did eventually make the admission although his mind had not the edge-of-sleep honesty of Fafhrd’s and tended to drift off to musings on his bubble-cosmos. Yet under strong prompting by Fafhrd he even confessed to his encounter with the sun-red vermilion-eyed shimmer-girl last noon, when he’d looked afire, and upon Fafhrd’s insistence recalled the exact words she’d said to him in dream.
“Your red girl spoke of Life and pressing on south to immortality and paradise,” Fafhrd summed up thoughtfully, “whilst my dark dear talked of Death and turning back north toward Shadowland and Lankhmar and Cold Waste.” Then, with swift-growing excitement and utter amazement at his own insight, “Mouser, I see it all! There are two different pairs of shimmer-girls! The daytime ones (you spoke with one of those) are children of the sun and messengers from the fabled Land of Gods at Nehwon’s Life Pole. While the night-timers, replacing them from dusk to dawn, are minions of the moon, White Huntress’ daughters, owing allegiance to the Shadowland, which lies across the world from the Life Pole.”
“Fafhrd, hast thou thought,” the Mouser spoke from a brown study, “how nicely calculated must be the height and diameter of each waterspout-tube, so that the star at its bottom is seen from every spot in other half of Nehwon (up there, when it’s night there) but from no spot in our half down here?—which incidentally explains why stars are brightest at zenith, you see all of each, not just a lens or biconvex meniscus. It seems to argue that some divinity must—” At that point the impact of Fafhrd’s words at last sank in and he said in tones less dreamy, “Two different sets of girls? Four girls in all? Fafhrd, I think you’re overcomplicating things. By Ildritch’s Scimitar—”
“There are two sets of girl twins,” Fafhrd overrode him. “That much is certain though all else be lies. And mark you this, Small Man, your sun-girls mean us ill though seeming to promise good, for how reach immortality and paradise except by dying? How reach Godsland except by perishing? The whiles the sun, pure light or no, is baleful, hot, and deadly. But my moon-girls, seeming to mean us ill, intend good only—being at once as cool and lovely as the moon. She said to me in dream, ‘Turn back to Death,’ which sounds dire. But you and I have lived with Death for dozen years and ta’en no lasting hurt—just as she said herself, ‘for that’s the only way to stay alive. Seek Death to ‘scape from him!’ So steer we north at once!—as she directed. For if we keep on south, deeper and deeper into torrid realm of sun (‘Beware the sun,’ she said!) we’ll die for sure, betrayed by your false, lying girls of fire. Recall, her merest touch made your chest smoke. While my girl said, ‘Suspect all flaming youth and scarlet shes,’ capping my argument.”
“I don’t see that at all,” the Mouser said. “I like the sun myself. I always have. His searching warmth is best of medicines. It’s you who love the cold and clammy dark, you Cold Waste savage! My girl was sweet and fiery pink with life, while yours was gloomy-spoken and as livid as a corpse, on your own admission. Take her word for things? Not I. Besides, by Ildritch’s Scimitar—to get back to that—the simplest explanation is always the best as well as the most elegant. There are two shimmer-girls only, the one I spoke in dream and the one you spoke—not four buzzing about bewilderingly and changing guard at dawn and dusk, to our and their confusion. The two girls—only two!—look the same in outward seeming—copper by day, silver by night—but inwardly mine is angel, yours deadly valkyr. As was revealed in dream, your surest guide.”