The Second Book of Lankhmar

thimbles into the curly dark hair on his chest. And she was saying softly and sweetly, head bent forward like his, lips and tongue brushing his ear, "Press on, press on. This is the only way to Life and immortality and paradise." And he replied, "My dearest love, I will."
           He woke to Fafhrd's shout and to a fugitive but clear, though almost blinding, vision of a female face that was narrow and beautiful, but otherwise totally unlike that of the douce girl of his dream. A sharp, imperious face, wildly alive, made all of red-gold light, the irises of her wide eyes vermilion.
           He lifted up sluggishly. His jerkin was unlaced to his waist and pushed back off his shoulders.
           "Mouser," Fafhrd said urgently, "when I first glimpsed you but now, you were all bathed in fire!" Gazing stupidly down, the Mouser saw twin threads of smoke rising from his matted chest where the nipples of his dream had pressed into it. And as he stared at the gray threads, they died. He smelled the stink of burning hair.
           He shook his head, blinked, and pushed himself to his feet. "What a strange fancy," he said to Fafhrd. "The sun must have got in your eye. Say, look there!"
           The five waterspouts had drawn far ahead and had been replaced by two groups (of three and four respectively) swiftly overtaking Black Racer from astern, the four rather distant, the three appallingly close, so that they could see clearly the structure of each: pillars of wild gray water almost a ship's length thick and towering up to thrice mast height, where each broke off abruptly.
           And in the farther distance they could now see still more groups of speeding spouts, and most distant-dim yet speediest of all a gigantic single one that looked leagues thick. A-prow the twin shimmer-sprights led on.
           "'Tis passing strange," Fafhrd averred.
           "Does one speak of a covey of waterspouts?" the Mouser wanted to know. "Or a pride? A congeries? A fountain? Or — yes! — a tower! A tower of waterspouts!"
           The day passed and half the night, and their weird situation of eastward speeding held — and Black Racer held together. The sea was slick and moving in long low swells across which blew thin, long, pale lines of foam. The wind was hurricane force at very least, but the velocity of the Great Equatorial Current had increased to match it.
           Overhead, nearly at mast-top, the full moon shone down, scantily scattered about with stars. Her White Huntress light showed the smooth surface of the racing sea to be outdinted near and far by towers of waterspouts racing by in majestical array and yet with fantastical celerity, as if they somehow profited far more from the speed of the current than did Black Racer . At mast height and ship's length ahead, the twin shimmer-sprights flew on like flags of silver lace against the dark. All almost silently.
           "Fafhrd," the Gray Mouser spoke very softly, as if reluctant to break the silver moonlight's spectral spell, "Tonight I clearly see that Nehwon is a vast bubble rising through waters of eternity, with continents and isles afloat inside."
           "Yes, and they'd move around —the continents, I mean — and bump each other," Fafhrd said, softly too, albeit a little gruffly. "That is, providing they'd float at all. Which I most strongly doubt."
           "They move all orderly, in pre-established harmony," the Mouser replied. "And as for buoyancy, think of the Sinking Land."
           "But then where'd be the sun and moon and stars and planets nine?" Fafhrd objected. "All in a jumble in the bubble's midst? That's quite impossible — and ridiculous."
           "I'm getting to the stars," the Mouser said. "They're all afloat in even stricter pre-established harmony in the Great Equatorial Ocean, which as we've seen this day and night, speeds around Nehwon's waist once each day — that is, in its effects on the waterspouts, not on Racer . Why else, I ask you, is it also called the Sea of Stars?"
           Fafhrd blinked, momentarily impressed against his will. Then he grinned. "But if this ocean's all afloat with stars," he demanded, "why can't we see 'em all about our ship? Riddle me that, O Sage!"
           The Mouser smiled back at him, very composedly.
           "They're all of 'em inside the waterspouts," he said, "which are gray tubes of water pointing toward heaven — by