The Second Book of Lankhmar

him, "Captain, is that a distant fire dead ahead? Our lost sun about to rise in north?" At last Fafhrd believed in the red glow.
           Aboard Flotsam , the Mouser, racked by the poisons of exhaustion and barely aware, heard Fafhrd whisper, "Mouser, ahoy. Look ahead. What do you see?" He realized it was a mighty shout diminished by black silence and the gale, and that Sea Hawk had come close again. He could see glints from the shields affixed along her side, while astern the monstreme was close too, looming like a leprously opalescent cliff arock. Then he looked ahead.
           After a bit, "A red light," he wheezed, then forced himself to bellow the same words alee, adding, "Tell me what is it. And then let me sleep."
           "Rime Isle, I trow," Fafhrd replied across the gap.
           "Are they burning her down?" the Mouser asked.
           The answer came back faintly and eerily. "Remember ... on the gold pieces ... a volcano?" The Mouser didn't believe he'd heard aright his comrade's next cry after that one, until he'd made him repeat it. Then, "Sir Pshawri!" he called sharply, and when that one came limping up, hand to bandaged head, he ordered, "Heave bucket overside on line and haul it up. I want waves' sample. Swiftly, you repulsive cripple!"
           Somewhat later, Pshawri's eyebrows rose as his captain took the sloshing bucket he proffered and set it to his lips and uptilted it, next handed it back to Pshawri, swished around his teeth the sample he'd taken into his mouth, made a face, and spat to lee.
           The fluid was far less icy than the Mouser had expected, almost tepid — and saltier than the water of the Sea of Monsters, which lies just west of the Parched Mountains that hide the Shadowland. He wondered for a mad moment if they'd been magicked to that vast, dead lake. 'Twould fit with monstreme. He thought of Cif.
           There was impact. The deck tilted and did not rock back. Pshawri dropped the bucket and screamed.
           The monstreme had thrust between the smaller ships and instantly frozen to them with its figurehead (living or dead?) of sea monster hacked or born of ice, its jaws agape betwixt their masts, while from the lofty deck high overhead there pealed down Fafhrd's laughter, monstrously multiplied.
           The monstreme visibly shrank.
           At one stride went the dark. From the low west the true sun burst forth, warmly lighting the bay in which they lay and striking an infinitude of golden gleams from the great, white, crystalline cliff to steerside, down which streaming water rushed in a thousand streams and runnels. A league or so beyond it rose a conical mountain down whose sides flowed glaring scarlet and from whose jaggedly truncated summit brilliant vermilion flames streamed toward the zenith, their dark smoke carried off northeastward by the wind.
           Pointing at it with outthrown arm, Fafhrd called, "See, Mouser, the red glow."
           Straight ahead, nearer than the cliff and drifting steadily still nearer, was a town or small unwalled city of low buildings hugging gentle hills, its waterfront one long low wharf, where a few ships were docked and a small crowd was assembled quietly. While to the west, rounding out the bay, there were more cliffs, the nearer bare dark rock, the farther robed in snow.
           Facing the city, Fafhrd said, "Salthaven."
           Studying the steaming, streaming, glittering white cliff and fiery peak beyond, the Mouser remembered the two scenes on his golden coins, all spent. This reminded him of the four silver coins he'd not been able to spend because they'd been snatched from his table at the Eel by the battered server, and of the two scenes on their faces: an iceberg and a monster. He turned round.
           The monstreme was gone. Or rather, its last dissolving shards were sinking into the tranquil waters of the bay without sound or commotion, save that a little steam was rising.
           Half-hurled, half-self-magicked from the monstreme's bridge, where It had been gazing out in triumph over the welter of dire, frigid forms on the decks below, Its mind obsessed with evil, back into Its cramped black sphere, Khahkht cursed in voice like Fafhrd's which midway became again a croak, "Damn to the depths of Hell Rime Isle's strange gods! Their day will come, their dooms! Which now devise I whilst I snugly sleep...." It whipped the lid off the