The Second Book of Lankhmar

There have been some accusations made this eve and ill words spoken-
           Fafhrd: An' so let's have no more of them. Pipe down, Sergeant!
           During these interchanges the Mouser sat scowling straight ahead and, save for his curt admonition, with lips pressed tightly together.
           Afreyt got to her feet, drawing Cif up with her, who sat on her other side. "Gentlemen," she said quietly, "this evening you would all gratify me by following Captain Mouser's wise advice, which as you can see he follows himself, setting us good example, of no more words on this perplexing matter." She looked the table around with a particularly asking eye toward Pshawri.
           Cif said, "And after all, it is Full Moon Day's Eve."
           "So please eat up your dinner," Afreyt went on, smiling, "or I shall think you do not like our cooking."
           "And replenish your mugs," Cif added. "In wine's best wisdom." As they sat down, Fafhrd and Groniger applauded lightly in approval and the girls all clapped imitatively.
           Old Ourph croaked, "It's true, silence is silver."
           Sitting beside Fingers, May told her, "I've an extra white tunic I can lend you for tomorrow night."
           On her other side Gale said, "And I have a spare yashmack. And I believe Klute has — "
           "Unless, of course," May interrupted, "you'd want to wear your own things."
           "No," Fingers hastened to say, "now I'm on Rime Isle, I want to look like you." She smiled.
           Cif whispered to Afreyt, "It's a strange thing. I know the Mouser's behaved like a monster tonight, and yet I can't help feeling that in some way he's right about Fingers and Pshawri, that they both lied to us in some way, maybe different ways. She was so cool about it all, almost the way a sleepwalker would talk.
           "And Pshawri — he's always trying to impress the Mouser and win his praise, which rubs Mouser the wrong way. But a fortnight back, when the last Lankhmar trader came in — the Comet, she was — she carried a letter with a green seal for Pshawri, and since then there's been something new about his clashes with Mouser, something new and heavy."
           Afreyt said, "I've sensed a different mood in Pshawri myself. Any idea what was in the letter?"
           "Of course not."
           "Then tell me this: This strange feeling you have about the Mouser and the other two, does it come from your own thinking and imaginings, or from the Goddess?"
           "I wish I were sure," Cif said as the two of them looked out together at the misted and ghastly bare gibbous moon.
           Afreyt: Perchance at tomorrow night's ceremony she'll provide an answer.
            Cif: We must press her.
         8
           That night Rime Isle most unaccountably grew wondrous cold and colder still, a blizzardly north wind blowing until the massive driftwood chimes in the leviathan-jaw arch of the Moon Temple clanked together dolefully and all sleepers suffered heavy sense-drugging nightmares, some toilsome and shivery heaving ones. When dawn at last came glimmering through swirls of powder snow, it was revealed that Fafhrd in ill nightcrawler's grip had somehow worked his way, dragging the covers after, up the maze of silver and brazen rods heading Cif's grand guest bed until the back of his head pressed the ceiling and he hung as one crucified asleep, while she below, hugging his ankles, dreamt they wandered a wintry waste embraced until a frigid gust parted them and whirled the Northerner high into the ice-gray sky until he seemed no bigger than a struggling gull, and that a like Morphean bondage had drawn the Gray Mouser, naked save for hauled-with sheet, out of and then under the second-best guest bed whereon he and Cif had gone excitingly to their slumbers, and she dreamed that they endlessly traversed shadowy subterranean corridors, their only light an eerie glow emanating from the Mouser's upper face, as if he wore a narrow glowing mask in which his eyes were horrid pits of darkness, until the Gray One slipped away from her through a trapdoor whereon was writ in phosphorescent Lankhmarese script, "The Underworld."
           But all such personal plights and predicaments, ominous night-sights and sleepwalks, were soon almost forgot, became hazy in memory, as the extent of the general calamity was realized and a desperate rush to correct it