27
Fingers knew she was dreaming because there was a rainbow in the cave. But that was all right because the six colors were more like those of pastel chalk than light and there was a blackboard at which she was being taught to pleasure Ilthmar sailor-men by her mother and an old, old man, both wearing long black robes and hoods which hid their upper faces.
For teaching, her mother bore her witch's wand and the old man a long silver spoon with which he managed the cleverest demonstrations.
But then, perhaps to illustrate some virtue — persistence? — he began to tap the bowl of his spoon on the hollow top of the desk at which they all three sat. He beat softly with a slow funeral rhythm that fascinated her until that doleful sound was all that was left in the world.
She woke to hear water a-drip, in the same slow beat as the dream-spoon, upon the thin horn pane of a slanting roof window close overhead.
She realized she had grown warm and thrown back her blanket, and as she listened to the drip she thought, The frosty spell has broken. It's the thaw.
From the pillow beside her, Gale, who'd also thrown back her bedclothes, murmured urgently in exactly the same rhythm as the water drops: "Faf-hrd, Faf-hrd, Un-cle Fafhrd."
Which told Fingers that the drops were a message from the engaging red-haired captain, boding his return. And she told herself that she had a closer relationship to him than Gale's or even Afreyt's and must bestir herself and venture out and assure his safe return.
This decision once 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 gangplank which appeared broad enough for two to go abreast.
Then down this travelway as the dawn lightened and the music swelled there came slowly and solemnly a small procession headed by two slim girls in garments of close-fitting black, like pages, and bearing the flute and small drum from which the sad notes came.
Following these there came two by two and footing with a grave dignity six slender women in the black hoods and formfitting robes of the nuns of Lankhmar whose plackets showed the pastel tints of underthings of violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red.
Upon their shoulders they bore with ease and great solicitude a black-draped, wide-shouldered, slender-hipped tall male form.
Following these there strolled a final slim, tall, black-clad female figure in brimless conical hat and veils of a priestess of the Gods of Lankhmar. She bore a long wand tipped with a tiny, glowing pentagram, with which she sketched an endless row of hieroglyphs upon the twilit air.
Fingers, watching the strange funeral from her hidden point of vantage, could not name their language.
As the procession debouched upon the meadow, it swung west. When the turn had been fully completed, the figure of the priestess lifted her wand in a gesture of command, bringing the dim star to a stop. Instantly the girl-pages stopped their playing, the nuns their dancing forward march, and Fingers felt herself seized by a paralysis that rendered her incapable of speech and froze her every muscle save those controlling the direction in which she looked.
In a concerted movement the nuns lifted the corpse they carried on high, brought it down to the grass with an uncomfortable swiftness, and then twitched aloft the empty shroud.
The point where they had deposited the corpse was just out of Fingers's range of vision, but there was nothing the girl could do about that except grow cold and shiver.
Nor did it help when the priestess lowered her wand.
One by one the nuns knelt with hands out of view and performed a not overlong manipulation, then each dipped her head briefly out of sight and finally all rose together.