The Second Book of Lankhmar

they wished it — it should he returned to the treasury house to take again its rightful place among the golden Ikons of Reason, as the Sextuple Square or Cube of Square Dealing.
           But Mother Grum averred that the addition of the cinder had transformed the Cube into a magical weapon of might to be entrusted to the witchy coven she headed, which happened to include several moon priestesses.
           Rill seconded her, saying, "I held the cinder when it was yet a torch lit at Loki's fire, and its flame bent sideways, pointing us out the path that led us to the god's new lair in the flame wall at the back of the caverns fronting the root of the volcano Darkfire. Might there not be a like virtue in the cinder to show us the way to Captain Mouser now he is underground?"
           Cif broke in eagerly, "Let's dowse for him with it! Suspend the Queller on a cord and move it about the hole and watch what happens. This should tell us if he has deviated from straight-down sinking like the shaft, in which direction he is going. What think you all?"
           "I'll tell you this, Lady," Pshawri said rapidly, "when Captain Mouser rebuked me yesternight for meddling with the Maelstrom, I felt the cube vibrate through my pouch against my leg, as though there were some occult link between the Queller and the captain, though neither he nor anyone knew then I had recovered it."
           The faint tintinnabulation of tiny harness bells shaken briskly drew all Cif's listeners' and finally her own gaze east, away from the moon, to where a bobbing cart lamp told of the imminent arrival of a dogteam from the barracks.
           But neither the jingling bells nor the earlier talk penetrated very deeply into the vast melancholy reverie into which Fafhrd had slowly sunk as he nursed his chilling brandied gahvey and rested his aching bones in the half tent's shadows.
           It had begun just as he'd gingerly seated himself on the foot of Mara's and Klute's cot with the sudden vivid memory — startling in its power — of another occasion, almost two decades gone, when he'd had to work furiously for seeming hours to rescue the Mouser from death's closest grip and in the end had had to drag the Gray One screaming and kicking from his intended coffin. It had all happened in the sorcery-built magic emporium of those cosmic peddlers of filth, the Devourers, and there had been no rest periods on that occasion either. Fafhrd had first endlessly and most resourcefully to argue with their two cantankerous and elephant-brained wizardly mentor-masters Sheelba of the Eyeless Face and Ningauble of the Seven Eyes just to get the all-essential means and information to achieve the rescue and then battle interminably and with brilliantly devised instant stratagems against a tireless iron statue, a devilish two-handed longsword of blued steel — not to mention gaudy giant spiders whom his obscenely ensorcelled comrade saw as beauteous supple girls in scanty velvet dresses.
           But that time the Mouser had been present all the while, playing the fool, calling out zany comments to the battlers, and even slain the statue in the end by splitting its massive head with Fafhrd's ax, thinking the weapon was a jester's bladder, while he, Fafhrd, had been the one being buried under the double weight of wizards' words and crushing iron blows. But this time the Mouser simply vanished without frills or fanfare, swallowed by earth in fashion most conclusive without warning, without shroud or coffin to shield him from the ground's cruel cold grip, and without words, foolish or otherwise, except that piteous, gasped out "Help me, Fafhrd," before his mouth was stopped by hungry upward-gliding clay. And now that he was gone, there was no fighting to be done to get him back, no mighty battling with sword or words, but only very slow, laborious scraping and digging, careful, methodical, and which seemed to make sense and hold out hope only so long as one was doing it. As soon as you stopped digging, you realized what a last-chance, forlorn-hope, desperate rescue attempt it really was — to believe a man could somehow breathe long enough underground, like a Kleshite ghoul or Eastern Lands fakir, for you to tunnel your way to him. Pitiful! Why, Fafhrd'd only been able to persuade himself and the others to it because no one had a better idea — and because they all (some of 'em, anyway) needed busy-work to keep at bay the