The Second Book of Lankhmar

made, she wormed her way off the bed — it seemed important to make no stir — and drew on her short robe and soft fur boots.
           After a moment's study and thought, she dropped the thin sheet back across Gale's frowsy supine sprawl and stole from the room.
           Passing the bedroom where Cif and Afreyt lodged, she heard sounds of someone rising and turned down the stairs, tiptoeing next the wall to avoid the treads creaking.
           Arriving in the banked warmth of the dark kitchen, she smelled gahvey heating and heard footsteps above and behind her. Without haste she made her way to the door of the bath and concealed herself behind Fafhrd's robe of coarse toweling hanging beside it, in such a way as to be able to observe without herself being seen, she trusted.
           It was Cif descended the stairs, dressed for the day's work. The short woman threw wide the outer door and the sounds of the thaw came in and the low white beams of the setting moon. Standing in them, she set to her lips a thin whistle and blew — without audible results, but Fingers judged a signal had been sent.
           Then Cif went to the banked fire, poured herself a mug of gahvey and took it back to the doorway where she sipped and waited. For a while she gazed straight at Fingers. But if Cif saw the girl, the woman made no sign.
           With a jingle of bells but no other sound, a dogcart and pair drew up beyond her — without driver, so far as Fingers could see.
           Cif walked out to it, stepped aboard, took the whip from its vertical socket and, sitting very erect, cracked it once high in the air.
           Fingers came out from behind Fafhrd's robe and hurried to the door in time to see Cif and her small vehicle moving west beneath the barely diminished descending disk of Satyrs Moon as the two big dogs bore them off toward the spot where they sought Captain Mouser. For a long moment Fingers enjoyed the feeling of being a member of this household of silently occupied witchwomen.
           But then the drip of the thaw reminded her of her own quest. She fetched Fafhrd's robe from its peg, and hanging it over her left arm and leaving the house door open behind her, as Cif had, Fingers circled the dwelling and headed out across the open field toward the sea, treading the steaming grass and feeling the caress of the soft south wind that set its seal on the great change of weather.
           The moon was directly behind her now. She walked straight up the long shadow of herself it cast, which stretched to the low moondial. Overhead the brighter stars could be discerned, though dimmed by their moon mistress. To the southeast a cloud bank was rising to cover them.
           As Fingers watched, a slender single cloud separated itself from the bank and headed toward her. It came coasting down out of the night sky, moving a little faster than the balmy breeze which drove on its fellows and lightly stroked her. The last of the moonlight shone brightly on its swan-rounded prow and sleek straight sides — for it truly did look more like a delicate ship of the air than any proper cloud of aqueous vapor should, so that a spider-webbing shiver of wonder and gossamer fear went along Fingers's rosy flesh beneath her belted robe and she crouched a little and went more softly.
           She was nearing the moondial now, passing it just to the south. Where its curving gnomon did not shadow it, its moon-pale round crawled with Rimic runes and half-familiar figures.
           Beyond the dial, a bare spearcast distant, the eerie ship-cloud came coasting down, moving in a direction opposite to the girl, and settled to a stop.
           At the same instant, almost as if it were part of the same movement, Fingers spread Fafhrd's robe across the wet grass ahead of her and gently stretched herself out upon it so that the moondial's low curb was sufficient to conceal her. She held still, intently studying the strange cloud's pale hull.
           The last bright splinter of Satyrs Moon vanished behind Rime Isle's central peaks. At the opposite end of the sky the dawn glow grew.
           From a direction midway between out of the cloud ship there came the doleful music of a flute and small drum sounding a funeral march.
           Simultaneously and silently there thrust down out of the heart of the cloud and touched down a third of the distance between it and Fingers a light