Such a sweet, strong, sensible, ravishing woman, Cif, when not godstruck. Lord, what troublesome, demanding and captious employers gods were, never a-quiet. (It was safe to think such thoughts, he told himself, gods couldn’t read your thoughts—everyone had their privacy—though they could overhear your slightest word spoken in undertone—and doubtless make deductions from your starts and grimaces.)
Up from the depths of his skull came the wearisome compulsive chant, “Mingols to their deaths must go,” and he was almost gaateful to the malicious little jingle for occupying his mind troubled by the vagaries of gods and women.
The air grew chilly and soon they were at the icefall and in front of it a dead scrubby tree and a mounded upthrust of dark purplish rock, almost black, and in its midst a still blacker opening wide and tall as a door.
Cif said, “This was not here last year,” and Mother Grum growled, “The glacier, receding, has uncovered it,” and Rill cried, “The flame leans toward the cave!” and Cif said, “Go we down,” and Hilsa quavered, “It’s dark,” and Mother Grum rumbled, “Have no fear. Dark is sometimes best light, and down best way go up.”
The Mouser wasted no time on words, but broke three branches from the dead tree (Loki-torch might not last forever) and shouldering them, followed swiftly after the women into the rock.
* * * *
Fafhrd doggedly climbed the last, seemingly endless slope of icy stone below Mount Hellglow’s snowline. Orange light from the sun near setting beat on his back without warmth, and bathed the mountainside and the dark peak above with its wispy smoke blowing east. The rock was tough as diamond with frequent hand-holds—made for climbing—but he was weary and beginning to condemn himself for having abandoned his men in peril (it amounted to that) to come on a wild romantical goose-chase.
Wind blew from the west, crosswise to his climb.
This was what came of taking a girl on a dangerous expedition and listening to women—or one woman, rather. Afreyt had been so sure of herself, so queenly-commanding—that he’d gone along with her against his better judgment. Why, he was chasing after Mara now mostly for fear of what Afreyt would think of him if aught befell the girl. Oh, he knew all right how he’d justified himself this morning in giving himself this job rather than sending a couple of his men. He’d jumped to the conclusion it was Prince Faroomfar had kidnapped Mara and he’d had the hope (in view of what Afreyt and Cif had told about heing rescued from Khahkht’s wizardry by flying mountain-princesses) that Princess Hirriwi, his beloved of one glorious night long gone, would come skimming along sightlessly on her invisible fish-of-air to offer him her aid against her hated brother.
That was another trouhle with women, they were never there when you wanted or really needed them. They helped each other, all right, but they expected men to do all sorts of impossible feats of derring-do to prove themselves worthy of the great gift of their love (and what was that when you got down to it?—a fleeting clench-and-wriggle in the dark, illuminated only by the mute, incomprehensible perfection of a dainty breast, that left you bewiidered and sad).
The way grew steeper, the light redder, and his muscles smarted. The way it was going. darkness would catch him on the rock-face, and then for two hours at least the mountain would hide the rising moon.
Was it solely on Afreyt’s account that he was seeking Mara? Wasn’t it also because she had the same name as his first young sweetheart whom he’d ahandoned with his unborn child when he’d left Cloud Corner as a youth to go off with yet another woman, whom he’d in turn abandoned—or led unwittingly to her death, really the same thing? Wasn’t he seeking to appease that earlier Mara by rescuing this child one? That was yet another trouble with women, or at least the women you loved or had loved once—they kept on making you feel guilty, even beyond their deaths. Whether you loved them or not, you were invisibly chained to every woman who’d ever kindled you.
And was even that the deepest truth about himself going after the girl Mara?—he askcd himselt forcing his analysis into the next devious cranny, even as he forced his numbing hands to seek out the next holds on the still steepening face in the dirty red light.
Didn’t he really quicken at thought of her. Just as god Odin did in his senile lubricity? Wasn’t he and no other chasing after Faroomfar because he thought of the prince as a lecherous rival for this delicate tidbit of girl flesh?
For that matter, wasn’t it Afreyt’s girlishness—her slenderness dcspite her height, her small and promising breasts, her tales of childhood make-believe maraudings with Cif, her violet-eyed romancing, her madcap bravado—that had attractcd him even in far-off Lankhmar? That and her Rime Isle silver had chained him, and set him on the whole unsuitable course of becoming a responsible captain of men—he who had been all his days a lone wolf with lone-leopard comrade Mouser. Now he’d revertcd back to it, abandoning his men. (Gods grant Skor keep his head and that some at least of his disciplines and preachments of prudence had taken effect!) But oh, this lifelong servitude to girls whimsical, innocent. calculating, icicle-eyed and hearted, fleeting, tripping little demons! White, slim-necked, sharp-toothed, restlessly bobbing weasels with the soulful eyes of lemurs!
His blindly reaching hand closed on emptiness and he realized that in his furious self-upbraiding he’d reached the apex of the slope without knowing it. With belated caution he lifted his head until his eyes looked just over the edge. The sun’s last dark red beams showed him a shale-scattered ledge some ten feet wide and then the mountain going up again precipitous and snowless. Opposite him in that new face was a great recess or cavern-mouth as wide as the ledge and twice that height. It was very dark inside that great door but he could make out the bright red of Mara’s cloak, its hood raised, and within the hood, shadowed by it, her small face, very pale-cheeked, very dark-eyed—really, a smudge in darkness staring toward him.
He scrambled up, peering around suspiciously, then moved toward her, softly calling her name. She did not reply with word or sign though continuing to stare. There was a warm, faintly sulfurous breeze blowing out of the mountain and it ruffled her cloak.
Fafhrd’s steps quickened and with a swift-growing anticipation of unknown horror whirled the cloak aside to reveal a small grinning skull set atop a narrow-shouldered wooden cross about four feet high.
Fafhrd moved backwards to the ledge, breathing heavily. The sun had set and the gray sky seemed wider and more palely bright without its rays. The silence was deep. He looked along the ledge in both directions, fruitlessly, then he stared into the cave again and his jaw tightened. He took flint and iron, opened the tinder-pouch, and kindled a torch. Then holding it high in his left hand and his unbelted axe gently a-swing in his right, he walked forward into the cave and toward the mountain’s heart, past the eerie diminutive scarecrow, his foot avoiding its stripped-away red cloak, along the strangely smooth-walled passageway wide and tall enough for a giant, or a winged man.
* * * *
The Mouser hardly knew how long he’d been closely following the four godstruck females through the strangely tunnel-like cave that was leading them deeper and deeper under the glacier toward the heart of the volcanic mountain Darkfire. Long enough, at any rate, for him to have split and slivered the larger ends of the three dead branches he was carrying, so they would kindle readily. And certainly long enough to become very weary of the Mingols death-chant, or Mingol-jingle, that was now not only resounding in his mind but being spoken aloud by the four rapt women as if it were a marching, or rather scurrying song, just as Groniger’s men had seemed to do. Of course in this case he didn’t have to ask himself where they’d got it, for they’d all originally heard it with him night before last in the Flame Den, when Loki god had seemed to speak from the fire, but that didn’t make it any easier to endure or one whit less boresome.
At first he’d tried to reason with Cif as she hurried along with the others like a mad maenad, arguing the unwisdom of venturing so recklessly into an uncharted cavern, but she’d only pointed at Rill’s torch and said, “See how it strains ahead. The god commands us,” and gone back to her chanting.
Well, there was no denying that the flame was bending forward most unnaturally when it should have been streaming back with their rapid advance—and also lasting longer than any torch should. So the Mouser had had to go back to memorizing as well as he could their route through the rock which, chill at first, as one would expect from the ice above, was now perceptibly warmer, while the heating air carried a faint brimstone stench.