The Second Book of Lankhmar

dive into. The triviality and low intensity of the curses misled them.
           When all four were together they talked once or twice of supernatural influences on human lives, speaking on the whole more lightly than each felt at heart.
           "Why don't you ask augury of Great Gusorio?" Cif suggested. "Since you are shards of him, he should know all about both of you."
           "He's more a joke than a true presence one might address a prayer to," the Mouser parried, and then riposted, "Why don't you or Afreyt appeal for enlightenment to that witch, or warrior-queen of yours, Skeldir, she of the silver-scale mail and the short dry laugh?"
           "We're not on such intimate terms as that with her, though claiming her as ancestor," Cif answered, looking down diffidently. "I'd hardly know how to go about it."
           Yet that dialogue led Afreyt and Fafhrd to recount the dreams they'd previously shared only with each other. Whereupon all four indulged in inconclusive speculations and guesses. The Mouser and Fafhrd promptly forgot these, but Cif and Afreyt stored them away in memory.
           And although the curses on the Twain were of low intensity, the divine vituperations worked steadily and consumingly. Ensamples: Fafhrd became much interested in a dim hairy star low in the west that seemed to be slowly growing in brightness and luxuriance of mane and to be moving east against the current, and he made a point observing it early each eve. While it was noticed that the busily peering Captain Mouser had a favorite route for checking things out that led from the Sea Wrack, where he'd have a morning nip, to the low point in the lane outside, to the windy corner behind the council hall where he'd collided with Fafhrd, to his men's barracks, and by way of the dormitory's closet, which he'd open and check for mouseholes, to his own room and shelved closet and to the kitchen and pantry, and so to the cesspool behind them of which he was so proud.
           So life went on tranquilly, busily, unenterprisingly in and around Salthaven as spring gave way to Rime Isle's short sharp summer. Their existence was rather like that of industrious lotus eaters, the others taking their cues from the bemused and somewhat absentminded Twain. The only exception to this most regular existence promised to be the day of Midsummer Eve, a traditional Isle holiday, when at the two women's suggestion they planned a feast for all hands (and special Isle friends and associates) in the Great Meadow at Elvenhold's foot, a sort of picnic with dancing and games and athletic competitions.
         15 
           If any could be said to have spent an unpleasant or unsatisfactory time during this period, it was the wizards Sheelba and Ningauble. The cosmic din had quieted down sufficiently for them to be able to communicate pretty well between the one's swamp hut and the other's cave and get some confused inkling of what Fafhrd and the Mouser and their gods were up to, but none of that inkling sounded very logical to them or favorable to their plot. The stupid provincial gods had put some unintelligible sort of curse on their two pet errand boys, and it was working after a fashion, but Mouser and Fafhrd hadn't left Rime Isle, nothing was working out according to the two wizards' wishes, while a disquieting adverse influence they could not identify was moving northwest across the Cold Waste north of the Land of the Eight Cities and the Trollstep Mountains. All very baffling and unsatisfactory.
         16
           At Illik Ving the Death of the Twain joined a caravan bound for No-Ombrulsk, changing their mounts for shaggy Mingol ponies inured to frost, and spent all of Ghosts Moon on that long traverse. Although early summer, there was sufficient chill in the Trollsteps and the foothills of the Bones of the Old Ones and in the plateau of the Cold Waste that lies between these ranges for them to refer frequently to the seed bags of brazen apes and the tits of witches, and hug the cookfire while it lasted, and warm their sleep with dreams of the treasures their intendeds had laid up.
           "I see this Fafhrd as a gold-guarding dragon in a mountain cave," his Death averred. "I'm into his character fully now, I feel. And on to it too."
           "While I dream the Mouser as a fat gray spider," the other echoed, "with silver, amber, and leviathan ivory cached in a score of nooks, crannies,