The First Book of Lankhmar

life's awfulest creature, or by him be killed.
           Yet as they galloped along, Fafhrd couldn't help thinking of how Vlana was ten years older than he, and had looked all of that and more in the Shadowland, while the Mouser's mind couldn't avoid touching the topic of Ivrian's basic silliness and snobbery.
           Yet they both galloped on willfully, wildly, joyfully, toward the blue flame, which grew ever thicker and brighter, until they saw it came from the huge central chimney of an open-gated, open-doored, low, vast black castle on a low long hill.
           They trotted into the palace side by side, the gate and doorway both being wide and neither man recognizing the presence of the other. The black granite wall before them was indented by a wide fireplace in which blue flame shone almost as blindingly as the naked sun and shot its fiercest flame up the chimney, to make the flame they had noted from afar. Before the fireplace stood an ebony chair, cushioned with black velvet, and on that most graceful of seats rested a shining black mask, full-faced, with wide-open eyeholes.
           The eight iron-shod hooves of the white horse and the black one sounded a dead clank on the black flagstones.
           Fafhrd and the Mouser dismounted and moved, respectively, to the north and south sides of the ebony chair, upholstered with black velvet, on which rested the spangled Mask of Death. Perhaps fortunately, at that time Death himself was away, on business or vacation.
           At that instant, both Fafhrd and the Mouser realized he was promise-bound by oath to Ningauble and Sheelba, to slay his comrade. The Mouser whicked out Scalpel. Quite as swiftly Fafhrd whipped out Graywand. They stood face to face, ready to kill each other.
           At that instant a long, glittering scimitar came down between them, swift as light, and the black glittering Mask of Death was cloven precisely in two, black forehead to black chin.
           Then the swift sword of Duke Danius went licking right at Fafhrd. The Northerner barely parried the blow of the mad-eyed aristocrat. The gleaming blade swept back toward the Mouser, who also barely shoved aside the slice.
           Both heroes likely would have been slain — for who in the long run has might to master the insane? — except that at that instant Death himself returned to his customary abode in his black castle in the Shadowland and with his black hands seized Duke Danius by the neck and strangled him dead within seventeen of Fafhrd's heartbeats and twenty-one of the Mouser's — and some hundreds of Danius'.
           Neither of the two heroes dared look at Death. Before that most remarkable and horrid being was a third finished with Danius, his foolish foe, they snatched up a gleaming half of a black mask each, sprang each on his horse, and galloped side by side like twin lunatics of the frantickest sort, ridden even harder than they rode their powerful white and black horses by that cosmically champion jockey Fear, out of the Shadowland southwest by the straightest path possible.
           Lankhmar and her environs, to which they swiftly returned, were no great good to them. Ningauble and Sheelba were both most angry at getting only half a mask apiece, even though it was the mask of the most potent being in all universes known and unknown. The two rather self-centered and somewhat irrational archimages, intent on and vastly enamored of their private war — though they were undoubtedly the cunningest and wisest sorcerers ever to exist in the World of Nehwon — were entirely adamant against the very sound four arguments Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser advanced in their self-defense: one, that they had stuck to the magician-set rules by first making certain to get the Mask of Death (or as much as they could of it) out of the Shadowland at whatever personal cost to themselves and diminishment of their self-respect. For, if they had fought each other, as Rule Two required, they would most likely have simultaneously slain each other, and so not even a sliver of a mask get to Sheel or Ning, while who in his sane senses would take on Death as an opponent? — Danius being a most crushing, present argument here. Two, that half a magical mask is better than none. Three, that each magician having half the mask, both would be forced to quit their stupid war, cooperate in future, and so double their already considerable powers. And, four,