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“I see,” Afreyt said absently, as though lost in sudden thought.

“You've stopped doing my back,” the girl observed.

“Because it's done,” the other said. “It's pink all over. Tell me, child, did your mother Friska escape from Quarmall all by herself?"

“No, Lady, she had her friend Ivivis with her, whom I grew to calling aunt in Tovilyis,” Fingers explained, turning back so she faced the narrow gray door again, its outlines visible once more through the thinning steam. “They were smuggled out of Quarmall by their lovers, two mercenary warriors quitting the service of Quarmal and his two sons. The cavern world of Quarmall's no easy place to escape from, Lady, deep, secret, and mysterious. Fugitives are recaptured or die strangely. In the ports that rim the Inner Sea — Lankhmar, Ilthmar, Kvarch Nar, Ool Hrusp — it's deemed as fabulous a place as this Rime Isle."

“What happened to the two mercenaries who were your mother's and aunt's lovers and worked their escape?” Afreyt inquired.

“Ivivis quarreled with hers, and upon reaching Tovilyis, enlisted in the Guild of Free Women. My mother was nearing her time (my time, it was) and elected to stay with her friend. Her lover (my father) left her money and swore to return some day, but of course never did."

There was a flurry of knocking and the narrow gray door opened and closed, admitting Gale, who peered around eagerly through the thinning steam.

“Has Uncle Fafhrd flown back down from the sky?” she demanded. “Why didn't you wake me? Those are his things outside, Aunty Afreyt!"

“Not yet,” that lady told her, “but there have been messages of sorts from him, or so it seems. After you two were sleeping, May brought me Fafhrd's belt, which she'd found hanging on a berry bush as though fallen from the sky. Her words, though she'd not heard your tale. I sent her and others hunting and went out myself, and there were soon discovered his two boots (one on a roof) and dirk and small-ax, which had split the council hall's weathercock."

“He cast them down to lighten ship when he got above the fog.” Gale rushed to conclusions.

“That's the best guess I've heard,” Afreyt said, reaching the dipper to Gale, handle first. “Renew the steam,” she directed. “One cup."

The girl obeyed. There was a gentler sizzling, and warm steam came billowing up around them again.

“Maybe he's waiting for tonight's fog,” the girl suggested. “I'm much more worried about Uncle Mouser."

“The digging goes on and another clue's been unearthed — a sharpened iron tik (Lankhmar's least coin) such as the Gray One habitually carries on his person. So Cif told me when she was here early afternoon to bathe and change, while you two were still asleep. There'd been some difficulty about the air, but your aunt took care of it."

“They'll find him,” Gale assured her.

“I share both your hopes for both the Captains,” Fingers put in, returning somewhat to formality.

“Fafhrd will be all right,” Gale asserted confidently. “You see, I think he needs the fog to buoy him up, at least until he gets started stroking well, and the fog will be back before dawn. He'll swim down then."

“Gale thinks her uncle can do anything,” Afreyt explained, scrubbing her vigorously. “He's her hero."

“He certainly is,” the girl maintained aggressively. “And because he's my uncle, there can't be anything between us to spoil it when I'm fully grown up."

“Truly a hero has many lady loves: whores, innocents, princesses,” Fingers observed in tones that were both earnest and worldly wise. “That's one of the first things my mother told me."

“Friska?” Afreyt checked.

“Friska,” Fingers confirmed, and then bethought herself of a compliment that would sustain the worldly mood which she enjoyed. “I must say, Lady, that I greatly admire the coolness and lack of jealousy with which you regard your lover's previous attachments. For Captain Fafhrd is surely a hero — I suspected as much when he began so swiftly and resolutely to dig for his friend and set the rest of us all helping. I became completely certain when he took off so blithely into the sky on his friend's service."

“I don't know about all that,” Afreyt replied, eyeing Fingers somewhat dubiously, “especially my coolness toward love rivals of whatever age or condition. Though it's true Fafhrd's had an awful many sweethearts, to hear him talk (the Mouser the same), and not only from those classes you mention, but really weird ones like the Ghouless Kreeshkra and that wholly invisible snowmount Princess Hirriwi and (for Mouse) that eight-tit slinky Hisvet — everything from demonesses to mermaids and shimmersprites.” Warming to it, she continued, “But I think Cif and I are a match for them, at least in quality if not numbers. We've bedded gods ourselves — or at least arranged for their bedding,” she added correctively and a bit guiltily, remembering.

Listening to this recital, Gale seemed to get a bit uneasy, certainly wide-eyed. Fingers put an arm around her shoulders, saying, “So you see, little one, it is better to have one's hero a friend and uncle only, is it not?"

Afreyt couldn't resist saying, “Aren't you overdoing the wise old aunt a bit?” Then, recalling Fingers's circumstances, she dropped her smile, adding, “But I was forgetting… you know what."

Fingers nodded gravely and fetched a sigh that she thought suitable for A Cabin-girl Against Her Will. Then she gave a squeal. Gale had yanked her hair.

“I don't know about Uncle Fafhrd,” the Rimish girl told her, making a face, “but I certainly want you as a friend and not an aunty!"

“And now it's time we stopped talking heroes and she-devils and got back to worrying about two real men,” Afreyt picked that moment to announce. “Come on, I'll rinse you."

And taking up the water container, she poured a gush each on the blond and reddish heads, then emptied it over her own head.

23

Returning back to that same eventful day's darksome beginning, we find Fafhrd trudging frantically east by leviathan light from the lamp he carried and with a feather-footedness and hectic lightheadedness that puzzled and alarmed him, across the frosty Great Meadow toward fog-blanketed Salthaven and the horizon beyond, paling with the imminent dawn. His anxiety for the Mouser in desperate plight, his selfish urge to shuck off that bondage, and his wishful hope for a miracle solution to this problem… these three feelings balled up unendurably within him, so that he lifted the brown brandy jug in his right hand to his teeth and fixed them around the protruding cork, biting into it, and drew the jug from off it, spat the cork aside, and downed two swallows that were like lightning brands straight down his throat.

Then yielding to an unanticipated yet imperative impulse, born perhaps of the two blazing swigs, he scanned the sky ahead above the fog.

And, lo, the miracle! For a wide stream of brightness, traveling up the pale sky from the impending sun, called his attention to a small fleet of on-cruising clouds. And as he inspected those five pearl-gray white-edged shapes with a sharp clear vision that was like youth returned, he discerned that the midmost was shaped like a large slender pinnace with towering stern-castle driven by a single translucent sail that bellied smoothly toward him, by all signs a demigalleon of the cloud queendom of Arilia, fable no longer.

And as if there had resounded in his ear a single chime, infinitely stirring and sweet, of the silver bell with which they'd sound the watches upon such a vessel, the knowledge came to him — a message and more — that his old comrade-mistress Frix was aboard her, captaining her crew. And the confident determination was born on him to join her there. And his concern for the Mouser and what Afreyt and his men expected of him dropped away, and he no longer worried about the girls Fingers and Gale following him, and his footsteps grew carefree and light as those of his youth on a Cold Corner hunting morn. He took a measured sup of brandy and skipped ahead.