The Second Book of Lankhmar

was because of the extreme thinness of the dress of beige silk she was wearing. Her two colors split exactly at her buttocks.
           On the fair side her hair was completely blonde. On the black side it was all brunette.
           At this moment an ebony-black warrior appeared from nowhere and attacked Fafhrd with a brass scimitar.
           Drawing his sword Graywand in a rush, Fafhrd parried at a square angle. The scimitar shattered, and the brazen fragments flew about. Fafhrd's wrist whipped Graywand in a circle and struck off his foe's head.
           Meanwhile the Mouser was suddenly faced by an ivory-white warrior sprung from another nowhere and armed with a steel rapier, silver-plated. The Mouser whisked out Scalpel, laid a bind on the other's blade, and thrust him through the heart.
           The two friends congratulated each other.
           Then they looked around. Save for the corpses, Pinchbeck Alley was empty.
           Slenya Akkiba Magus had disappeared.
           The twain pondered this for five heartbeats and two inhalations. Then Fafhrd's frown vanished and his eyes widened.
           "Mouser," he said. "The girl divided into the two villains! That explains all. They came from the same nowhere."
           "The same somewhere, you mean," the Mouser quibbled. "A most exotic mode of reproduction, or fission rather."
           "And one with a sex alternation," Fafhrd added. "Perhaps if we examined the corpses —"
           They looked down to find Pinchbeck Alley emptier still. The two liches had vanished from the cobbles. Even the chopped-off head was gone from the foot of the wall against which it had rolled.
           "An excellent way of disposing of bodies," Fafhrd said with approval. His ears had caught the tramp and brazen clank of the approaching watch.
           "They might have lingered long enough for us to search their pouches and seams for jewels and precious metal," the Mouser demurred.
           "But what was behind it all?" Fafhrd puzzled. "A black-and-white magician?"
           "It's bootless to make bricks without straw," said the Mouser, cutting him short. "Let us hie to the Golden Lamphrey and there drink a health to the girl, who was surely a stunner."
           "Agreed. And we will drink to her appropriately in blackest stout laced with the palest bubbly wine of Ilthmar."

         III: Trapped in the Shadowland
           Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were almost dead from thirst. Their horses had died from the same Hell-throated ailment at the last waterhole, which had proved dry. Even the last contents of their waterbags, augmented by water of their own bodies, had not been enough to keep alive the dear dumb equine beasts. As all men know, camels are the only creatures who can carry men for more than a day or two across the almost supernaturally hot arid deserts of the World of Nehwon.
           They tramped on south-westward under the blinding sun and over the burning sand. Despite their desperate plight and heat-fevered minds and bodies, they were steering a canny course. Too far south and they would fall into the cruel hands of the emperor of the Eastern Lands, who would find rare delight in torturing them before killing them. Too far east and they would encounter the merciless Mingols of the Steppes and other horrors. West and northwest were those who were pursuing them now. While north and northeast lay the Shadowland, the home of Death himself. So much they well knew of the geography of Nehwon.
           Meanwhile, Death grinned faintly in his low castle in the heart of the Shadowland, certain that he had at last got the two elusive heroes in his bony grip. They had years ago had the nerve to enter his domain, visiting their first loves, Ivrian and Vlana, and even stealing from his very castle Death's favorite mask. Now they would pay for their temerity.
           Death had the appearance of a tall, handsome young man, though somewhat cadaverous and of opalescent complexion. He was staring now at a large map of the Shadowland and its environs set in a dark wall of his dwelling. On this map Fafhrd and the Mouser were a gleaming speck, like an errant star or fire beetle, south of the Shadowland.
           Death writhed his thin, smiling lips and moved his bony fingertips in tiny, cabalistic curves, as he worked a small but difficult magic.
           His incantation done, he