Just at that moment he received a shock which caused him sharply to revise any opinion he may have entertained about one young female being very much like the next—or one fish, for that matter. Although he had not seen Ississi’s half-smiling lips close up or pucker in any way, he heard a trilling, soft, seductive whistle.
Looking sharply down along his legs and beyond his feet, he saw the blue-streaked chalky form of Sister Pain advancing toward him in a tigerish rush with talons spread out to either side of her grinning narrow face and eyes aglow with red sadistic fire.
Confirming an earlier intuition of his as well as his guess about the tunnels, without any physical effort on his part, but a tremendous mental one, he began to move away from her at the same speed with which she came horrendously on, so that they both were flashing through the grainy yet utterly unresistant earth at nightmare speed, and Ississi’s figure vanished behind them in a trice….
No, not quite. For it seemed to the Mouser that at that point his pursuer paused for an instant while her blue-pied flesh drank up the other’s pale green substance, superadding Ississi’s fishy duties to her own dire hungers before coming again horrifically on.
He was dearly tempted to glance forward to get some clue to where they were hastening beneath the Outer Sea, for they were trending deeper, yet dared not do so for fear that in trying to dodge some barely glimpsed seeming obstacle, he’d dash himself into the rocky walls flashing by so close. No, best trust himself to whatever mighty power gripped him. However blind, it knew more than he.
There whipped past the dark mouth of an intersecting tunnel leading southward if he’d kept his bearings, he judged. To Simorgya? In which case, whither did this branch he was careening through extend? To No-Ombrulsk? Beyond that, under land, to the Sea of Monsters? To the dread Shadowland itself, abode of Death?
What use to speculate when he had yielded up control of his movements to the whirlwind? Against all reasonable expectations, he found his great speed lulling despite the pearly flash and fleeting glow of sea fossils. Perhaps at this very moment, for all he knew, he was breathing softly back in a snug grave in Rime Isle and dreaming this dream. Even the Great God Himself must have had moments while creating the universe or ‘verses when He was absolutely certain He was dreaming. All’s well, he mused. He dropped off.
.18.
Cif insisted on repeating Pshawri’s next reading as their dowsing led them back across the Great Meadow, dangling the cinder cube from her own left-hand ring finger and thumb, and when she got the same result as he had, decided they should alternate taking readings thereafter. He submitted to this arrangement with proper grace, but couldn’t quite conceal his nervousness whenever the magic pendulum was out of his hands, at such times watching her like a hawk.
“You’re jealous of me about the Captain, aren’t you?” she rallied the young lieutenant, though not teasingly.
He considered that soberly and answered with equal frankness, “Well, yes, Lady, I am—though in no way challenging your own far greater and different claim on his concern. But I did meet him before you did, when he recruited me in Lankhmar for his band before ever he outfitted Flotsam and set sail for Rime Isle.”
“You forget,” she corrected him gently, “that before your enlistment the Lady Afreyt and I journeyed to Lankhmar to hire him and Fafhrd in the Isle’s defense, though on that occasion we were swiftly raped back to this polar clime by Khahkht’s icy blast.”
“That’s true,” he allowed. “Nevertheless…” He seemed to think better of it.
“Nevertheless what?”
“I was going to say,” he told her somewhat haltingly, “that I think he was aware of me before that time. After all, we were both freelance thieves, though he infinitely my superior, and that means a lot in Lankhmar, where the Guild’s so strong, and there were other reasons … Well, anyway, I knew his reputation.”
Cif had just completed a reading and clutched the cinder cube in her right hand, not having yet put it in her pouch nor passed it on to him for like securing. She was about to ask Pshawri, “What other reasons?” but instead lost herself in study of his broody features, which were just becoming visible in the gray light without help of the white glow of the lamp, which sat on the ground next where she had dowsed.
Only Astarion, Nehwon’s brightest star, was still a pale dot in the dawn-violet heavens, and would soon be gone. Ahead of them but off to their left (for their dowsing was gradually turning them south of the path their party had traveled last evening) a blanket of fog risen from the ground hid all of Salthaven but the highest roofs and the pillars and wind-chime arch of the Moon Temple, tinied by distance. The fog lapped higher round those objects as they watched and, although there was no wind, advanced toward them, whitely distilled from earth. Its far edge brightened where the sun would rise, although a squadron of clouds cruising above had not yet caught its rays.
“It must be cold for the Captain down there below,” Pshawri breathed with an involuntary shudder.
“You are most deeply concerned about him, aren’t you?” Cif observed. “Beyond the ordinary. I’ve noticed it for the past fortnight. Ever since you received a missive inscribed in violet ink and sealed with green wax, carried on the last trader before Weasel in from Lankhmar.”
“You have sharp eyes, Lady,” he voiced.
“I saw it when Captain Mouser emptied the mail pouch. What is it, Pshawri?”
He shook his head. “With all respect, Lady, it is a matter that concerns solely the Captain and myself—and one other. I cannot speak of it without his leave.”
“The Captain knows about it?”
“I do not think so. Yet I can’t be sure.”
Cif would have continued her queries, although Pshawri’s reluctance to answer more fully seemed genuine and deep-rooted—and more than a little mysterious—but at that moment the five from the fire caught up with them and the mood for exchanging confidences was lost. In fact, Cif and Pshawri felt rather on exhibition, for during the next couple of dowsings each of the newcomers had to see for themselves close up the wonder of the heavy cube cinder hanging out of true, straining away from the shaft head definitely though slightly. In the end even skeptical Groniger was convinced.
“I must believe my eyes,” he said grudgingly, “though the temptation not to is strong.”
“It’s harder to believe such things by day,” Rill pointed out. “Much easier at night.”
Mother Grum nodded. “Witchcraft is so.”
The sun had emerged by then, beating a yellow path to them across the top of the fog, which strangely persisted.
And both Cif and Pshawri had to answer questions about the cord’s subtle vibrations imperceptible to sight.
“It’s just there,” she said, “a faint thrilling.”
“I can’t tell you how I know it’s from the Captain,” he had to admit. “I just do.”
Groniger snorted.
“I wish I could be as sure as Pshawri,” Cif told them at that. “For me it doesn’t sign his name.”
Two more dowsings brought them within sight of Rime Isle’s south coast. They prepared to dowse a third time a few paces short of where the meadow grew bare and sloped down rockily and rather sharply for some ten more paces to the narrow beach lapped by the wavelets of the Outer Sea. To the west this small palisade grew gradually steeper and approached the vertical. To the east the stubborn fog reached to within a bowshot of them. Farther off they could spy rising from its whiteness the tops of the masts of the ships riding at anchor in Salthaven’s harbor or docked at its wharves.
It was Pshawri’s turn to dangle the cube cinder. He seemed somewhat nervous, his movements faster, though steady enough as he locked into position with legs bent, right eye centered over the finger juncture pinching the cord.
Cif and Rill both crouched on their knees close by, so as to observe the pendulum from the side at eye level. They seemed about to make an observation, but Pshawri from his superior vantage point forestalled them.
“The bob no longer pulls southeast,” he rapped out in a quick strident voice, “but drags down straight and true.”
There were low hisses of indrawn breaths and a “Yes!” from Rill. Cif suggested at once that she repeat his reading, and he gave her the pendulum without demur, though his nervousness seemed to increase. He stationed himself between her and the water. The others completed a ragged circle around her. Rill still crouched close.
After a pause, “Still straight down,” Cif said, with another “Yes,” from Rill. “And the vibration.”