The Second Book of Lankhmar

"This too: The more questions they asked about the Twain and the more I answered them as best I might, the more they came to look like ... to resemble our ... you know what I'm trying to say?"
           "Yes, yes!" Afreyt hissed. "Go on."
           "In short, I felt I was their slave. So too, I think, have felt all those who came into the Sea Wrack after them, save for old Mingol Ourph, who shortly stayed, somehow then parted.
           "At last they sucked me dry, bent to their game, asked for more drink. I sent the girl with that. Since then it's been as you see now."
           There was a stir at the doorway through which mist was curling. Four men stood there, for a moment bemused. Then Fafhrd and the Mouser strode toward their table, while old Ourph settled down on his hams, his gaze unwavering, and Groniger almost totteringly sidled toward the bar, like a man surprised at midday by a sleepwalking fit and thoroughly astounded at it.
           Fafhrd and the Mouser leaned over and looked down at the table and open backgammon box over which the two strangers were bent, surveying their positions. After a bit Fafhrd said rather loudly, "A good rilk against two silver smerduke on the lean one! His stones are poised to fleet swiftly home."
           "You're on!" the Mouser cried back. "You've underestimated the fat one's back game."
           Turning his chill blue eyes and flat-nosed skull-like face straight up at Fafhrd with an almost impossible twist of his neck, the skinny one said, "Did the stars tell you to wager at such odds on my success?"
           Fafhrd's whole manner changed. "You're interested in the stars?" he asked with an incredulous hopefulness.
           "Mightily so," the other answered him, nodding emphatically.
           "Then you must come with me," Fafhrd informed him, almost lifting him from his stool with one fell swoop of his good hand and arm that at once assisted and guided, while his hook indicated the mist-filled doorway. "Leave off this footling game. Abandon it. We've much to talk of, you and I." By now he had a brotherly arm —the hooked one, this time — around the thin one's shoulders and was leading him back along the path he'd entered by. "Oh, there are wonders and treasures undreamed amongst the stars, are there not?"
           "Treasures?" the other asked coolly, pricking an ear but holding back a little.
           "Aye, indeed! There's one in particular under the silvery asterism of the Black Panther that I lust to show you," Fafhrd replied with great enthusiasm, at which the other went more willingly.
           All watched astonishedly, but the only one who managed to speak out was Groniger, who asked, "Where are you going, Fafhrd?" in rather outraged tones.
           The big man paused for a moment, winked at Groniger, and smiling said, "Flying."
           Then with a "Come, comrade astronomer" and another great arm-sweep, he wafted the skinny one with him into the bulging white mist, where both men shortly vanished.
           Back at the table the plump stranger said in loud but winning tones, "Gentle sir! Would you care to take over my friend's game, continue it with me?" Then in tones less formal, "And have you noticed that these mug dints on your table together with the platter burn make up the figure of a giant sloth?"
           "Oh, so you've already seen that, have you?" the Mouser answered the second question, returning his gaze from the door. Then, to the second, "Why, yes, I will, sir, and double the bet! — it being my die cast. Although your friend did not stay long enough even to arrange a chouette."
           " Your friend was most insistent," the other replied. "Sir, I take your bet."
           Whereupon the Mouser sat down and proceeded to shake a masterly sequence of double fours and double threes so that the skinny man's stones, now his own, fleeted more swiftly to victory than ever Fafhrd had predicted. The Mouser grinned fiendishly, and as they set up the stones for another game, he pointed out to his more thinly smiling adversary in the tabletop's dints and stains the figure of a leopard stalking the giant sloth.
           All eyes were now back on the table again save those of Afreyt. And of Fafhrd's lieutenant Skor. Those four orbs were still fixed on the mist-bulging doorway through which Fafhrd had vanished with his strangely unlike doublegoer. Since babyhood Afreyt had