With a jingle of bells but no other sound, a dogcart and pair drew up beyond her—without driver, so far as Fingers could see.
Cif walked out to it, stepped aboard, took the whip from its vertical socket and, sitting very erect, cracked it once high in the air.
Fingers came out from behind Fafhrd’s robe and hurried to the door in time to see Cif and her small vehicle moving west beneath the barely diminished descending disk of Satyrs Moon as the two big dogs bore them off toward the spot where they sought Captain Mouser. For a long moment Fingers enjoyed the feeling of being a member of this household of silently occupied witchwomen.
But then the drip of the thaw reminded her of her own quest. She fetched Fafhrd’s robe from its peg, and hanging it over her left arm and leaving the house door open behind her, as Cif had, Fingers circled the dwelling and headed out across the open field toward the sea, treading the steaming grass and feeling the caress of the soft south wind that set its seal on the great change of weather.
The moon was directly behind her now. She walked straight up the long shadow of herself it cast, which stretched to the low moondial. Overhead the brighter stars could be discerned, though dimmed by their moon mistress. To the southeast a cloud bank was rising to cover them.
As Fingers watched, a slender single cloud separated itself from the bank and headed toward her. It came coasting down out of the night sky, moving a little faster than the balmy breeze which drove on its fellows and lightly stroked her. The last of the moonlight shone brightly on its swan-rounded prow and sleek straight sides—for it truly did look more like a delicate ship of the air than any proper cloud of aqueous vapor should, so that a spider-webbing shiver of wonder and gossamer fear went along Fingers’s rosy flesh beneath her belted robe and she crouched a little and went more softly.
She was nearing the moondial now, passing it just to the south. Where its curving gnomon did not shadow it, its moon-pale round crawled with Rimic runes and half-familiar figures.
Beyond the dial, a bare spearcast distant, the eerie ship-cloud came coasting down, moving in a direction opposite to the girl, and settled to a stop.
At the same instant, almost as if it were part of the same movement, Fingers spread Fafhrd’s robe across the wet grass ahead of her and gently stretched herself out upon it so that the moondial’s low curb was sufficient to conceal her. She held still, intently studying the strange cloud’s pale hull.
The last bright splinter of Satyrs Moon vanished behind Rime Isle’s central peaks. At the opposite end of the sky the dawn glow grew.
From a direction midway between out of the cloud ship there came the doleful music of a flute and small drum sounding a funeral march.
Simultaneously and silently there thrust down out of the heart of the cloud and touched down a third of the distance between it and Fingers a light gangplank which appeared broad enough for two to go abreast.
Then down this travelway as the dawn lightened and the music swelled there came slowly and solemnly a small procession headed by two slim girls in garments of close-fitting black, like pages, and bearing the flute and small drum from which the sad notes came.
Following these there came two by two and footing with a grave dignity six slender women in the black hoods and formfitting robes of the nuns of Lankhmar whose plackets showed the pastel tints of underthings of violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red.
Upon their shoulders they bore with ease and great solicitude a black-draped, wide-shouldered, slender-hipped tall male form.
Following these there strolled a final slim, tall, black-clad female figure in brimless conical hat and veils of a priestess of the Gods of Lankhmar. She bore a long wand tipped with a tiny, glowing pentagram, with which she sketched an endless row of hieroglyphs upon the twilit air.
Fingers, watching the strange funeral from her hidden point of vantage, could not name their language.
As the procession debouched upon the meadow, it swung west. When the turn had been fully completed, the figure of the priestess lifted her wand in a gesture of command, bringing the dim star to a stop. Instantly the girl-pages stopped their playing, the nuns their dancing forward march, and Fingers felt herself seized by a paralysis that rendered her incapable of speech and froze her every muscle save those controlling the direction in which she looked.
In a concerted movement the nuns lifted the corpse they carried on high, brought it down to the grass with an uncomfortable swiftness, and then twitched aloft the empty shroud.
The point where they had deposited the corpse was just out of Fingers’s range of vision, but there was nothing the girl could do about that except grow cold and shiver.
Nor did it help when the priestess lowered her wand.
One by one the nuns knelt with hands out of view and performed a not overlong manipulation, then each dipped her head briefly out of sight and finally all rose together.
One by one the six nuns did this thing.
The priestess touched the last nun’s shoulder with her wand to attract her attention and handed her a white silken ribbon. The latter knelt, and when she rose no longer had the ribbon in her hand.
With more speed than solemnity, the priestess once again raised her star-tipped wand, the page-girls struck up a jolly quick-step, the nuns briskly folded the shroud they’d borne so solemnly, the whole procession about-faced and quick-marched back aboard the cloud ship no less swiftly than it takes to write it down, and the crew set sail.
And still Fingers could not move one.
In the interval the sky had brightened markedly, sunrise was close at hand, and as the cloud-ship sailed away west at a surprisingly fast rate, it and its crew, momentarily less substantial, were suddenly on the verge of fading out, while the music gave way to a ripple of affectionate laughter.
Fingers felt all constraints lift from her muscles. She darted forward, and the next moment, it seemed, was looking down into the very shallow depression wherein the dancing nuns had laid their mortal burden.
There on a bed of new-sprung milky mushrooms stretched out serenely the tall, handsome, faintly smiling form of the man she knew as Captain Fafhrd and toward whom she felt such a puzzling mixture of feelings. He was doubly naked because recently close-shaven everywhere, save for eyebrows and lashes, and those trimmed short, and quite unclad except for ribbons of the six spectral colors and white tied in big bows around his limp genital member.
“Keepsakes of his six lady loves who were his pallbearers, or dancers, and from their mistress or chieftainess,” the girl pronounced wisely.
And noting the organ’s extreme flaccidity and the depth of satisfaction in his smile, she added with professional approval, “And loved most thoroughly.”
At first she felt a strong pang of grief, thinking him dead, but a closer look showed his chest to be gently rising and falling, and also brought her within range of his warm exhalation.
She prodded him gently in the chest over his breastbone, saying, “Wake up, Captain Fafhrd.”
The warmth of his skin surprised her, though not enough to make her think of fever.
The smoothness of his skin truly startled her. It was shaved more closely than she’d thought possible, with sharpest eastern steel. Bending down just as the new-risen sun sent out a wave of brightness, she could see only the faintest copper-pink flecks as of fresh-scoured metal. Yesterday she’d noticed gray and white hairs among the red. He’d merited Gale’s “Uncle” fully. But now—the effect was of rejuvenation, the skin looked babyish, fair as hers was. He continued to smile in his sleep.
Fingers gripped him firmly by the shoulders and shook him.
“Wake up, Captain Fafhrd,” she cried. “Arise and shine!” Then, in an impish mood, irked by this smile, which now began to seem merely foolish and stupid, “Cabin-girl Fingers reporting for duty.”
She knew that was wrong as soon as she heard herself utter it, when in response to her shaking he reared up into a sitting position, though without opening his eyes or changing expression. Suddenly these things became frightening.
To give herself time to think about the situation and consider what to do next, Fingers returned to fetch his robe from where she’d left it spread out on the wet grass back at the moondial. She doubted he’d want to be seen naked, and certainly not wearing his ladies’ colors. Yet the sun was up and at any moment Gale, Afreyt, or some visitor might appear.
“For although your ladies playing nuns had every right to mark you as their lover—seeing you’d been most free (I think) with all of them, that does not mean I have to go along with their naughty joke, though I do think it funny,” the girl said as she came hurrying with his robe, speaking aloud because she thought he really did still sleep and wanted in any case to check upon this fact.