The Second Book of Lankhmar

now, beside the white cloud-ship, showing only its keel. There were five gulls around him. Then the mists from below came between us. I thought you should know, Aunt Afreyt. But since it was on the way to the diggings, we decided to tell Aunt Cif first."
           Fingers added, "I saw what she saw, gentles. But Captain Fafhrd was very far off then. It could have been a very large marine bird — a sea mandragon escorted by five sea hawks."
           The listeners looked at each other.
           "This rings true," Afreyt said quite softly. "I feared that Fafhrd was fey when he was last down the shaft."
           "You believe what these girls tell us?" Groniger asked only somewhat incredulously.
           "To be sure she does," Mother Grum answered.
           "But why would he go to air folk," Skullick wanted to know, "to get advice on someone lost underground?"
           "You can't guess the designs of a fey one," Rill told him.
           "But what of the Gray Mouser now?" Cif addressed Afreyt. "As Fafhrd's spokeswoman, what say you to sending Pshawri to Darkfire?"
           "Let him go, of course, and luck with him. Luck and quietus to Loki," that lady responded without hesitation. "Here's provisions for you, Lieutenant." From her hamper she gave him a small loaf and a hard sausage and the near empty sweet-wine jug, which would do to carry cool water he'd get at Last Spring on the way.
           After a quick glance to assure himself the others were otherwise occupied, Pshawri said to Afreyt in a low voice, "Lady, would you add to your kindnesses one further favor?" and when she nodded, handed her a folded paper indited in violet ink with broken green seals. "Keep this for me. Should I not return (such things happen), give it to Captain Fafhrd, if he's back. Otherwise read it yourself — and show it to Lady Cif at your discretion."
           "I'll do that," she said softly, and then resuming her normal voice, called, "Cif dear, you'll take over for Fafhrd and me at the digging. I'll give you Fafhrd's ring."
           "Can you doubt it?" Cif replied, turning back from Mother Grum, with whom she'd been conferring.
           Afreyt went on, "For it's now my turn to do some thinking about a lost one — and to see that these two outwearied girls do some sound sleeping. I'll take them to your place, Cif, and see to all there. Skama, shield me from feyness, except it be your inspiration."
           So without more ceremony the three parties separated: Pshawri north toward distant, smoke-trailing Darkfire; Cif, Skullick, and Rill back to the diggings; Afreyt, Groniger, and the weary old and young pairs to Salthaven.
           Trudging with the last party, and suddenly looking every bit as tired as Afreyt had described her, Fingers recited as by someone already asleep and dreaming,
           "After the dog has eaten out his heart,
           The cat his liver, and his secret parts
           Uprooted and devoured by the hog,
           He shall sleep sounder then than any log,
           A shadow prince enrobed by moonlit fog."
           "Was that your brother, Princess?" Gale asked, wrinkling her nose. "You know the nicest poems, I must say."
           After a moment Afreyt inquired thoughtfully, "But what kind of a poem was it, dear Fingers? Where did it come from?"
           Still somewhat in a sleepy singsong, the weary child responded, "It is the augmented third stanza of a Quarmallian death spell effective only in its entirety." She shook her head and blinked her eyes and came more awake. "Now how did I know that?" she asked. "My mother was born in Quarmall, that is true, but that was another of the things we weren't supposed to tell most people."
           "Yet she taught you this Quarmall death spell," Afreyt stated.
           Fingers shook her head decidedly. "My mother never dealt in death spells, nor taught me any. She is a white witch, truly." She looked puzzledly at Gale and then up at Afreyt and asked, "Why does a memory wink off whenever you try to watch it closely? Is it because we cannot live forever?"
         19
           As consciousness next glimmered, glowed, and then shone noontide bright in the Gray Mouser's skull, he would have been certain he was dreaming, for in his nostrils was the smell of Lankhmar earth, richly redolent of the grainfields, the Great Salt Marsh, the river Hlal, the ashes of