The First Book of Lankhmar

otherwise move, but their hair stirred at its roots, so close and intimate had been that tiny noise, and so indicative of intelligence rather than mere animality, because of a measuredly attention-asking quality about it.
           Then as one they turned head over shoulder and looked at the black mouth of the rocky corridor. After a bit it seemed to each of them that he could see seven small, faint green glows swimming in the dark there and lazily changing position, like seven fireflies hovering, but with their light steadier and far more diffuse, as if each firefly wore a cloak made of several layers of gauze.
           Then a voice sugary and unctuous, senescent though keen — a voice like a quavering flute — spoke from amidst those dimmest glows, saying, "Oh my sons, begging the question of that hypothetical western continent, on which I do not propose to enlighten you, there is yet one place in Nehwon you have not searched for forgetfulness since the cruel deaths of your beloved girls."
           "And what place may that be?" the Mouser asked softly after a long moment and with slightest stammer. "And who are you?"
           "The city of Lankhmar, my sons. Who I am, besides your spiritual father, is a private matter."
           "We have sworn a great oath against ever returning to Lankhmar," Fafhrd growled after a bit, the growl low and just a shade defensive and perhaps even intimidated.
           "Oaths are made to be kept only until their purpose be fulfilled," the fluty voice responded. "Every geas is lifted at last, every self-set rule repealed. Otherwise orderliness in life becomes a limitation to growth; discipline, chains; integrity, bondage and evil-doing. You have learned what you can from the world. You have graduated from that huge portion of Nehwon. It now remains that you take up your postgraduate studies in Lankhmar, highest university of civilized life here."
           The seven faint glows were growing still dimmer now and drawing together, as if retreating down the corridor.
           "We won't go back to Lankhmar," Fafhrd and the Mouser replied speaking as one.
           The seven glows faded altogether. So faintly the two men could barely hear it — yet hear it each did — the fluty voice inquired, "Are you afraid?" Then they heard a grating of rock, a very faint sound, yet somehow ponderous.
           So ended the first encounter of Fafhrd and his comrade with Ningauble of the Seven Eyes.
           After a dozen heartbeats, the Gray Mouser drew his slim, arm-and-a-half-long sword, Scalpel, with which he was accustomed to draw blood with surgical precision, and followed its glittering tip into the rocky corridor. He strode very deliberately, with a measured determination. Fafhrd went after, but more cautiously, with many a hesitation, holding the point of his heavier sword Graywand, which he yet handled most nimbly in strife, close to the stony floor and wagging it from side to side. The seven glows in their lazy swayings and bobbings had mightily suggested to him the heads of large cobras raised up to strike. He reasoned that cave cobras, if such existed, might well be phosphorescent like abyssal eels.
           They had penetrated somewhat farther under the mountainside than Fafhrd had on his first inspection — their slow pace enabling their eyes to accommodate better to the relative darkness — when with a slight, high-pitched shiver, Scalpel jarred vertical rock. Waiting without a word where they stood, their cave vision improved to the point where it became indisputable, without any more sword-testing at all, that the corridor ended where they were, wanting hole big enough even for a speaking serpent to glide away, let alone a being rightfully capable of speech. The Mouser pressed and then Fafhrd threw his weight against the rock ahead at several points, but it held firm as purest mountain heart. Nor had they missed any side tracks, even of the narrowest, or any pits or roof-holes on the way — a point they doubly checked going out.
           Back at their bedrolls, their horses still tranquilly nibbling brown grass at the cavern's mouth, Fafhrd said abruptly, "What we heard speak, it was an echo."
           "How have an echo without a voice?" the Mouser demanded with peevish impatience. "As well have a tail without a cat. I mean, a living tail."
           "A small snow snake greatly resembles the animated tail of a