And then for the first time the element of hallucination or pure fantasy entered his vision, for it seemed to him that the worm addressed him in a high piping voice, saying, “O Mortal Man, what guards you? Why cannot I approach you to gnaw your eyeballs?”
Yet at the same time it so convinced the Mouser that he was beguiled into replying in soft gruff tones, “Ho, Fellow Prisoner—”
He got no further. His own voice, however diminished, made such a clamor in the confined space, reverberating back and forth within his skull and jaw, like wind chimes in a hurricane, that both his ears felt deep pain and he almost forgot to breathe.
The unexpectedly powerful vibrations raised by his incautious speaking also appeared to have upset the delicate equilibrium with which he hung in the sea of soil around him, for he noted that the two pebbles and the worm had begun to move upward all together, although he felt no corresponding downward pull upon his ankles. Clearly, he had prematurely attempted too much.
He carefully closed his eyes and reconcentrated all his attention on his slowly breathing in and breathing out, resolutely ignoring the deepening of his entombment.
.12.
Aboveground notable progress had been made in the Mouser search. It had got more organized. Both parties from the barracks had arrived and there was the reassuring presence of young men busily at work, Fafhrd’s big, lean ex-berserks, Northerners like him, and the Mouser’s reformed thieves, compact and wiry. The two dogcarts that had brought water, food, and lumber had been unloaded and the two-bearhound team of one had been unharnessed and ranged about watchfully. A small hot fire had been built and there were the heavy rich odors of mutton soup warming and gravy brewing. Mother Grum and old Ourph huddled beside the blaze.
Fafhrd’s square hole, widened by a foot on each side, had gone deep enough so that the heads of those digging it and feeling through the dirt were below ground level. Fafhrd had given over his job to his trusty lieutenant Skor, a prematurely balding redhead, while Pshawri continued at the same task, assisted now by Mara and Klute. A Northerner stood on the rim and every minute or so drew up a big pail of earth and emptied it to the side in one sweeping throw. The Mouser’s other lieutenant, Mikkidu, and another thief had started to put in the first tier of shoring from above, hammering eight-foot planks side by side with wooden mallets. Two leviathan-oil lanterns in the dark side of the hole glowed upward on their three faces. The full moon was three hours higher than when Skama had been honored by the dance across the Great Meadow.
Fafhrd and Cif stood by the fire, sipping hot gahvey with the two oldsters. It was the first rest he’d taken. Behind him were Gale and Fingers, not drawing attention to themselves, partly for fear of being sent back to Salthaven by the next dogcart as May had been, to reassure their families all the girls were safe. Also in the fireside gahveying group were Afreyt, Groniger, and Rill, the last having run to Elvenhold to summon the other two for conference and, as it turned out, argument.
Afreyt said to Fafhrd, without heat, “Dear man, I deeply admire and respect your loyalty to and regard for your old friend that makes you search for him with such stubborn single-mindedness along one trail only, a trail where your greatest success can hardly be more than the digging up of a corpse. But I question your logic. Since there are other trails—and Groniger and I both attest to that—trails promising a more useful sort of success, if any, why not expend at least half our efforts on those? Nay, why not all?”
“That appears to me to be most closely reasoned,” Groniger put in, seconding.
“You think I was guided by logic and reason in what I did?” Fafhrd asked with a shade of impatience, even contempt, shaking his hook at them. “I saw him sink, I tell you. So did others. Cif felt him go straight down.”
“I too,” from Ourph. “We saw one miracle, why not expect another?”
Afreyt took up, “Yet all of you who saw him sink have admitted, at one time or another since, that he grew insubstantial toward the end. And so did he to Gron and I, I freely admit, in his flight toward Elvenhold. But does not that equality argue for us giving an equal weight to both possibilities?”
Fafhrd replied, a little tiredly. “I’m bothered myself by those impressions of the Mouser fading. In view of them, the idea of also searching for him elsewhere on Rime Isle seems sensible, and when I sent Gib the Mingol back with the second dogcart for more lumber, you heard me tell him to fetch some rag of the Mouser’s and the two scent dogs if available.”
Cif spoke up. “I keep wondering if there’s not some way to use, in hunting Mou, the golden queller Pshawri brought up from the Maelstrom. It’s enwedged with the black cinder of god Loki, whom I’m convinced is responsible for Mou’s present plight. A most treacherous and madly malevolent deity, as I learned in my dealings with him.”
“You’re right about that last,” Mother Grum agreed darkly, but before she could say more, Skor yelled up from the hole, “Captain, I’ve uncovered something buried seven feet deep you’ll want to see. Will send it up.”
Fafhrd moved quickly to the rim, took something off the top of the next bucketload drawn up, shook it out and then closely inspected it.
“It’s the Mouser’s cowl which he wore tonight,” he announced to them all triumphantly. “Now tell me he didn’t sink straight down into the ground here!”
Cif snatched it from him and confirmed the identification.
Afreyt called “Snowtreader!” and knelt by the shoulder of the white bearhound who came up, working her fingers deep in his great ruff and speaking earnestly in his shaggy ear. He took a thoughtful snuff of the dirt-steeped garment and began to move about questingly, muzzle to the ground. He came to the hole, gazed down into it searchingly for a long moment, his eyes green in the lampglow, then sat down on the rim, lifted his muzzle to the moon and howled long and dolorously like a trumpet summoning mourners to a hero’s funeral.
.13.
It was well that the Gray Mouser had the lifelong habit, whenever he woke from slumber, of assessing his situation as fully as possible before making the least move. After all, there might always be murderous enemies lurking about waiting for him to betray his exact location by an unguarded movement or exclamation, so as to slay him before he had his wits about him.
And it attests to his presence of mind that when he discovered himself to be everywhere confined by grainy dirt and simultaneously recalled the stages by which he had arrived at this dismal predicament, he did not waste energy and invite inquiry by frantic reactions, he simply continued to pursue his thoughts and explore his surroundings, so far as the latter was possible.
To the best of his recollection his second downward slide or glide through the ground had not lasted long, and after coming to rest a second time, he had concentrated so exclusively on the task of breathing a sufficiency of earth-trapped air to stay alive and hold at bay the impulse to gasp that the dark monotony of his occupation had by gradual stages hypnotized him into sleep.
And now, awake again and feeling somewhat refreshed, though perceptibly chilled, he was still breathing regularly, shallowly, slowly—no impulse to pant—with his tongue busy at intervals, keeping his barely parted lips moist and fending off intrusive dirt. Why, this was good! It showed that the whole operation had become sufficiently automatic for him safely to gain the rest he might well need if his incarceration underground proved overlong—which might well be the case, he must admit.
He noticed now that although his arms lay flat against his sides, they had during his second descent—each bent at the elbow and his hands pushed upward by the sandy soil through which he’d descended—crawled up the front of his body toward his waist, so the fingers of his right now rested against the scabbard of his dagger Cat’s Claw, a contact he found reassuring. He set himself to working his fingers up the scabbard, pausing to regularize his breathing whenever it became the least bit labored. When his fingers finally reached their goal, he was surprised to discover they touched, not the dagger’s crosspiece and grip, but a section of the sharp, narrow blade near the tip. The sandy soil encasing him, rubbing upward against his body as he’d descended, had also almost carried the dagger entirely out of its sheath.
He pondered this new circumstance, wondering if he should attempt to return the strayed weapon to its scabbard by drawing it down a little at a time by its blade pinched between his forefinger and thumb, lest some further sliding on his part separate him from it altogether, a prospect that alarmed him. Or should he try to work his hand up farther still and grip its hilt so as to have it ready for action should some unforeseen change in his situation ever permit him to use it? This line of operations appealed to him most, though promising to involve more work.