The Second Book of Lankhmar

would be natural. Well, Afreyt and I after we'd recovered our breath made our way to the cavern's mouth — and found ourselves looking down on Rime Isle and Salthaven from a point midway up Darkfire. With some little difficulty we made our way home across rock and glacier."
           "The volcano," the Mouser mused. "Again Loki's link with fire." His attention had been drawn back to the hypnotic flames.
           Cif nodded. "Thereafter Loki and Odin kept us informed of the Mingols' progress toward Rime Isle — and your own. Then four days ago Loki began a running account of your encounters with Khahkht's frost monstreme. He made it most vivid — sometimes you'd have sworn he was piloting one of the ships himself. I managed to reserve the Flame Den the succeeding nights (and have it now for the next three days and nights also), so we were able to follow the details of the long flight or long pursuit — which, truth to tell, became a bit monotonous."
           "You should have been there," the Mouser murmured.
           "Loki made me feel I was."
           "Incidentally," the Mouser said casually, "I'd think you'd have rented the Flame Den every night once you'd got your god here."
           "I'm not made of gold," she informed him without rancor. "Besides, Loki likes variety. The brawls that others hold here amuse him — were what attracted him in the first place. Furthermore, it would have made the council even more suspicious of my activities."
           The Mouser nodded. "I thought I recognized a crony of Groniger's playing chess out there."
           "Hush," she counseled him. "I must now consult the god." Her voice had grown a little singsong in the later stages of her narrative and it became more so as, without transition, she invoked, "And now, O Loki god, tell us about our enemies across the seas and in the realms of ice. Tell us of cruel, cold Khahkht, of Edumir of the Widdershin Mingols and Gonov of the Sunwise. Hilsa and Rill, sing with me to the god." And her voice became a somnolent two-toned, wordless chant in which the other women joined: Hilsa's husky voice, Rill's slightly shrill one, and a soft growling that after a bit the Mouser realized came from Mother Grum — all tuned to the fire and its flame-voice.
           The Mouser lost himself in this strange medley of notes and all at once the crackling flame-voice, as if by some dream magic, became fully articulate, murmuring rapidly in Low Lankhmarese with occasional words slipped in that were as hauntingly strange as the god's own name:
           "Storm clouds thicken round Rime Isle. Nature brews her blackest bile. Monsters quicken, nightmares foal, niss and nicor, drow and troll." (Those last four nouns were all strange ones to the Mouser, specially the bell-toll sound of "troll.") "Sound alarms and strike the drum — in three days the Mingols come, Sunwise Mingols from the east, horsehead ship and human beast. Trick them all most cunningly —lead them to the spinning sea, to down-swirling dizzy bowl. Trust the whirlpool, 'ware the troll! Mingols to their deaths must go, down to weedy hell below, never draw an easy breath, suffer an unending death, everlasting pain and strife, everlasting death in life. Mingol madness ever burn! Never peace again return!"
           And the flame-voice broke off in a flurry of explosive crackles that shattered the dream-magic and brought the Mouser to his feet with a great start, his sleepy mood all gone. He stared at the fire, walked rapidly around it, peered at it closely from the other side, then swiftly scanned the entire room. Nothing! He glared at Hilsa and Rill. They eyed him blandly and said in unison, "The god has spoken," but the sense of a presence was gone from the fire and the room as well, leaving behind not even a black hole into which it might have retired — unless perchance (it occurred to the Mouser) it had retired into him, accounting for the feeling of restless energy and flaming thought which now possessed him, while the litany of Mingol doom kept repeating itself over and over in his memory. "Can such things be?" he asked himself and answered himself with an instant and resounding "Yes!"
           He paced back to Cif, who had risen likewise. "We have three days," she said.
           "So it appears," he said. Then, "Know you aught of trolls? What are they?"
           "I was about to ask you that," she replied. "The word's as