The Second Book of Lankhmar

foreboding he'd felt below.
           While hurrying into his clothes, a process in which he was speeded by the quickening breeze and absence of sun, he managed to switch the slimy cube from the uneasy revealment of the net bag to the revealing concealment of his moleskin belt pouch, while Skullick scanned the sky.
           "See how the weather shifts," that one called. "What witch has whistled up this frigid wind? Cold from the south, at any rate southwest — unnatural. Mark how that line of clouds that hides the sun veers widdershins. Lucky you did not find the whirlpool-queller, or else we'd have the spinning of that element to deal with. As it is, I fear our presence irks the Maelstrom. Up anchor, cully, hoist sail and away! We'll find your captain's gift another day!"
           Pshawri was happy to spring to with a will. Relentless action left less time for feeling strange guilts and thinking crazy thoughts about clouds. And the calm waters, though wind-ruffled, showed no other signs of movement.
         3
           In jam-packed Godsland, which lies lofty and mountaingirt near Nehwon's south pole, a handsome young god, who had been drawing crowds in the stranger's pavilion by sleeping entranced for seventeen months, woke with an enraged shout that seemed loud enough to reach the Shadowland at Godsland's antipodes, and that momentarily deafened half the divinities and all the demi-divinities in his heavenly audience.
           Among the latter were Fafhrd's and the Gray Mouser's three particular godlings — brutal Kos, spiderish Mog, and the limp-wristed Issek — who had been teased to come witness the feat of supernal hibernation not only out of sheer curiosity, but also from intimations that the handsome young sleeping stranger and his record-breaking trance were somehow involved with their two most illustrious (though often backsliding) worshippers. The three reacted variously to the ear-splitting cry. Issek covered his while Kos dug a little finger into one.
           And now it became apparent that Loki's piercing shout had indeed reached the Shadowland, for the slender, seemingly youthful, opalescent-fleshed figure of Death, or its simulacrum, appeared at the foot of the silken bier on which the angry young god crouched, and the two were seen by the deafened divinities to hold converse together, Loki fiercely commanding, Death raising objections, placating, temporizing, though nodding repeatedly and smiling winningly at the same time.
           Yet despite the latter's amiable behavior there were shrinkings back among the members of the motley heavenly host, for even in Godsland Death is not a popular figure nor widely trusted.
           Fafhrd's and Mouser's three oddly matched godlings, who had earlier wormed their way quite close to the red-draped bier, regained their audition in time to hear Loki's last summary command:
           "So be it then, sirrah! So soon as all the essential formalities of your paltry world are satisfied and necessary niggling conditions met — so soon and not one instant later! — I want the impious mortal who consigned me to deep watery oblivion to be sent a like distance underground. It is commanded!"
           With a final bow and strange obsequious look, Nehwon's Death (or its simulacrum) said softly, "Hearkening in obedience," and vanished.
           "I like that!" quick-witted Mog remarked in an indignant ironic undertone to his two cronies. "Out of sheer spite toward the Gray Mouser for his dunking, this vagabond Loki proposes to rob us of one of our chief worshippers."
           After a face-saving haughty glare around (for Death's departure had been snubbingly abrupt), Loki slid off the bier to confer in urgent whispers with another stranger god, dignified but elderly to the point of doddering, who responded with rather senile-seeming nods and shrugs.
           "Yes," Issek replied venomously to Mog. "And now, see, he's trying to persuade his comrade, old Odin, to demand of Death a like doom for Fafhrd."
           "No, I doubt that," Kos protested. "The dodderer has already revenged himself on Fafhrd by taking his left hand. And he's had no indignities visited on him to reawaken his ire. He's hung on here while his comrade slept because he has nowhere better to go."
           "I'd not count on that," Mog said morosely. "Meanwhile, what's to do about the clear threat to the Mouser? Protest to Death