Her gloved fingers had encountered and were now uncovering two hard, serrated, semicircular ridges with a half-inch gap between them.
Wetting her lips with her tongue and guiding them with her gloved hands held close beside her cheeks, she pressed them against the dry and gritty pair of lips that closely framed the serrated ridges that opposed and almost touched her own teeth.
Puffing a breath of air ahead of it, she ran her tongue’s wet tip around the inside of the dry lips hers pressed, repeated that tender action and then inhaled.
Her nostrils and foremouth filled with the exciting acrid reek of the Gray Mouser, familiar to her from a long season’s lovemaking.
It made her tremble and shake to realize this was so, that she held between her hands his precious face returned from the grave.
She exhaled to one side that wonder breath, drew in a fresh one from the serpent’s mouth, again clamped her lips down upon his still-dry ones and gently blew that breath deep into him, praying it retained its healing serpent’s character.
“Dearest, beloved,” she heard him croak.
She realized she was staring deep into his eyes, but was so close the two appeared as one.
“Owl eyes,” she replied foolishly, recalling their lovers’ name for that two-equals-one phenomenon.
Then recollecting more of her situation, she said, “Dear Rill, our captain’s back. He’s in my arms and I am feeding him air. Do you work in your hands from behind me and dig and brush the earth away from’s body and speed his freeing from its dreadful grip.”
“I will be very grateful, Rill, I assure you,” the Mouser broke in sotto voce, croaking rather less than he had on “dearest.”
The witch-whore complied, gingerly at first, then with larger strokes as she realized the amount of earth there was to be moved. She found the scoop Cif had dropped and used it to increase the scope of first her right hand, then her crippled left, where the advantage it provided was greater.
Meanwhile Cif continued to brush dirt from his cheeks as she alternately kissed him and fed him air, working her hands nearer to the back of his head and a full embrace, with each stroke freeing more of the margins of his eye sockets and ears.
The Mouser said, “I’ll keep my eyes closed, Cif, save when you tell me I may open them,” and was emboldened to ask, “And would you be a bit more generous with your perfumed saliva, dear? That is, if you’ve to spare. I’ve been without refreshment all of two days (or is it three, perchance?) save for such moisture as I’ve sucked from stones. Or begged from passing worms.”
“I have,” Rill mentioned ingenuously. “I happen to have been chewing mint the past half hour. The smallest leaves.”
“You are a witch, dear Rill,” Cif commented cattily.
Fafhrd’s lieutenant Skor chose that moment to appear behind Rill, filling the tunnel with his stooped tall form and reporting past her to Cif as commander of the diggings, “The Captain’s returned from wherever he was yesterday and last night, milady. I gather strange things have been happening, some in the sky. He just arrived by dogcart with the Lady Afreyt and with them the child Gale and the Ilthmar cabin-girl.”
At that point he got a good look at what was going on in the tunnel, recognized the Mouser’s face and became speechless. (Later he tried to describe what he saw to Skullick and Pshawri. “She was kissing him out of the sandstone, I tell you, kissing and caressing, working a mighty magic whether she knew it or not. While her sister witch worked a like sorcery upon his bottom half, his nether limbs and members. Our captains are fortunate to enjoy the favor of such women of power.”)
Cif turned her head back toward him and straightened up, bringing the Mouser with her out of the tunnel face and shedding sandy debris.
“Things have been happening here too, as you can see,” she said briskly. “Now hearken, Skor. Return aloft and tell the Lady Afreyt and Captain Fafhrd I wish to speak with them down here. But do not tell them (or anyone up there) of Captain Mouser’s passing strange return, else everyone will be crowding down to view and celebrate the wonder.”
“That’s true enough,” the tall man with thinning hair agreed, doing his best to sound rational.
“Do as she tells you, Skor,” the Mouser put in. “There’s wisdom in her rede.”
“Don’t you return down here, of course,” Cif continued. “Take charge up there, maintain order, and keep the dragon breathing.” She nodded toward the pulsing white snow-serpent piping. “Here, take the ring of command off my top middle fingers and wear it on your thumb.” She held out the hand on which was Fafhrd’s ring. He obeyed. She had an afterthought. “Send the two girls down also, Fingers and Gale. Else they’ll make mischief while your hands are full.”
“Hearkening in obedience,” Skor responded, bowing to Cif as he turned around and made off speedily.
“That last thought of yours was inspired, my dear,” the Mouser said breezily, turning from Rill to Cif. “Mischief? Yes, indeed!—for it turns out that the Ilthmar cabin-girl Fingers is the assassin sent to wipe out her father Fafhrd by reciting an outlandish death spell—sent out by our old enemy Quarmal, Lord of Quarmall, as I learned when I breakfasted there al fresco this morn’s morn on cave dew, boreworm bread, and toadstool wine—and spied on Quarmal in his most secret lair.”
“Fingers Fafhrd’s get?” Rill remarked. “I suspected it from the red hair. And there’s a definite facial resemblance. And something about her cool manner…”
The Mouser nodded emphatically. “Though, to be fair to Fingers, I don’t think she knew what she was doing—old Quarmal had her most securely hypnotized. Fortunately I learned at the same time how to scotch his spells (’twas as easy as snap your fingers, and as hard) by observing him foil at the last moment his son Igwarl’s murder by his sister Issa, which he had masterminded for purposes of instruction. (He makes a positive religion of treachery and mistrust, the old man does.) If I hadn’t studied his finger-snapping trick and been able to repeat it perfectly, Fafhrd would be dead as mutton by his daughter’s unknowing agency. Whereas, if we can trust Skor, he’s as fit as a fiddle.”
“My, my,” observed Cif, “we have managed to keep busy underground, haven’t we?”
“You do know more about the worser side of human nature than any man I know. Or woman for that matter,” Rill chimed in.
The Mouser shrugged apologetically. The comic gesture caused him to really look at himself and his garments for the first time since coming out of the wall.
His reaction caused Cif and Rill to do the same thing.
His gray jerkin, which had been stout, thick cloth when last observed by any of them, had somehow grown fine as gossamer and quite translucent, while his exposed skin looked as if it had been pumiced.
As if on his journey underground he had endured for hours a blasting sandstorm, suffering such wear and tear as might be accounted for by a trip to Quarmall. The strangeness of it all gripped their minds.
At that long moment Fafhrd appeared in the tunnel, followed closely by Fingers and Afreyt, with a wide-eyed Gale bringing up the rear. He was wearing a winter jacket with attached hood fallen away behind, revealing his close-shaven pate.
“I knew you had been found,” he said excitedly. “I read it in Skor’s face when he returned with Cif’s summons. Though he’s fooled the rest, I think. Make no mistake, it was a good idea to keep it a secret for a bit. There are things to be said before we face a celebration. It appears that I owe you my life, old friend—and my child her memory as well. Look here, you rogue, however did you learn old Quarmal’s finger-snapping dodge?”
“Why, by traveling underground to his buried city, of course, and spying on him,” the Mouser replied airily. “And studying his maps,” he added. “Either I did that in the body or else my ka did in horn-gate dreams. If his boreworms got to me, and I believe they did, it argues for the former.”
“Oh well,” Fafhrd said philosophically, “boreworms don’t kill, only excruciate.”
“And then only if you’re awake while they’re entering you,” Fingers piped up consolingly. “But truly, Uncle Mouser, I’m grateful to you beyond words for saving my father’s life and me from parricide and madness.”
“Tut, tut, child! No need for melodrama. I believe you,” the Mouser said, “and entreat your pardon for my earlier doubts. You are the daughter of your mother Friska, truly, who resisted all my efforts to seduce her, which were neither few nor unskillful, to my recollection.”
“I believe you,” Fingers assured him. “As she’s oft told me, your seduction attempts were responsible for her friend (and your lover, Uncle Mouser) Ivivis quitting the escape party at Tovilyis and persuading my mother to quit with her and have me there.”