The Second Book of Lankhmar

ever heard," the tall Northerner intoned, "of those sinuous earth-hued tropical Kleshite ghouls with hands like spades that burrow beneath cemeteries and their environs, silently emerge behind you, then seize you and drag you down before you can gather your wits to oppose it, digging more swiftly than the armadillo? One such, it's said, subterraneously pursued a man whose house lay by a lich-field and took him in his own cellar, which doubtless had a feature much like that. " And he directed his comrade's attention to an unflagged area, just behind the bench on which they sat, that showed dark sandy loam and was large enough to have taken the passage of a broad-shouldered man.
           "Afreyt tells me," he explained, "it's been left that way to let the cellar breathe — a most necessary ventilation in this clime."
           The Mouser regarded the gap in the flagging with considerable distaste, arching his brows and wrinkling his nostrils, then recovered his mug from the stout central table before them and took a gut-shivering slug. He shrugged. "Well, tropic ghouls are unlikely here in polar clime. But now I'm reminded — hast ever heard tell? — of that Ool Hrusp prince who so feared his grave, abhorring earth, that he lived his whole life (what there was of it) in the topmost room of a lofty tower twice the height of the mightiest trees of the Great Forest where Ool Hrusp is situated?"
           "What happened to him in the end?" Fafhrd duly inquired.
           "Why, although he dwelt secure two thousand leagues from the edge of the desert southeast of the Inner Sea and with all that water between to distance him, a monstrously dense sandstorm born on a typhoon wind sought him out, turned the green canopy of the forest umber, sifted his stone eyrie full, and suffocated him."
           From upstairs came a smothered cry.
           "My story must have carried," the Mouser observed. "The girls seem to have returned."
           He and Fafhrd looked at each other with widening eyes.
           "We promised we'd watch the roast," the latter said.
           "And when we came down here," the other continued, "we told ourselves we'd go up and check and baste it after a space."
           Then both together, chiming darkly, "But you forgot."
           There was a swift patter of footsteps — more than one pair — on the cellar stairs. Somehow five slender girls came down into the cool historic glow without tripping or colliding. The first four wore sandals of white bearhide, near identical knee-length tunics of fine white linen and yashmacks of the same material, hiding most of their hair and all of their faces below their eyes, whose merry flashing nevertheless showed they were all grinning.
           The fifth, who was the slenderest, went barefoot in a shorter white-belted white tunic of coarser weave and wore a yashmack of reversed white unshorn lamb's hide and, despite the weather, gloves of the same material. Her gaze seemed grave.
           All but she tore off their yashmacks together, showing them to be Afreyt's flaxen-haired nieces May, Mara, and Gale, and Cif's niece Klute, who was raven-tressed.
           But Fafhrd and Mouser knew that already. The two had risen. May danced toward them excitedly. "Uncle Fafhrd! We've had an adventure!"
           Following at her heels, Mara cut in, "We were almost kidnapped aboard an Ilthmar trader that was a secret slaver!"
           "Anything could have happened to us!" Gale exulted, taking her turn. "Imagine! They say Eastern princes will pay fortunes for twelve-year-old blond virgins!"
           "Only, our new friend escaped from the trader and warned Aunts Cif and Afreyt," black-haired Klute topped her triumphantly, looking back toward the fifth girl, who hadn't come forward or unyashmacked. "She'd been kidnapped herself at Tovilyis and been a prisoner on Weasel all Satyrs Moon!"
           Gale grabbed back the news-telling with, "But she's a novice of Skama just like us. Tovilyis coven. Her mother was a priestess of the moon."
           "And she's a princess herself too!" May topped them all. "A really-truly princess of south Lankhmar land!"
           "You can tell she's a princess," Mara fairly shrieked, "because she always wears gloves!"
           "Don't squeal like a piglet, Mara," May reproved, seeing a surer way to hog attention, and for a longer time. "Girls, we have omitted to