The Knight and Knave of Swords (39 page)

She judged she had another hour of face work in her before she lost her freshness and must give place to Rill, who now assisted her and only had been below for half an hour.

But now 'twas time for one of the quarter-hourly checks she made.

"Cover the lamp," she called back to Rill.

The lady with the crippled left hand pulled up around the coolly burning lamp a thick black sack and drew it together at the top.

The tunnel grew black as pitch.

Cif stared ahead and this time seemed to see, floating at eye level, a phosphorescent yellow mask such as she'd seen the Mouser wearing in the dream she'd had the first night of the cold. It was dim but truly seemed there.

Letting fall the scoop and withdrawing her left hand from her pouch, she dug her gloved fingers into the sandy face where the mask was drifting. It stayed there, did not fade out or waver, but grew brighter. The featureless black ovals that were its eyes seemed to stare back at her commandingly.

"Uncover the lamp," she managed to enunciate.

Rill obeyed, not trusting herself to ask questions. Almost with a rush the white light flooded back, revealing Cif staring fiercely at the tunnel face. Rill could no longer contain herself.

"You think...?" she managed to ask in a voice fraught with awe.

"We'll soon know," the other replied, drawing back her clawed right hand and driving it into the loosened sand of the tunnel face at the level of her chin, twisting it this way and that, back and forth, feeling around before withdrawing it. (Small chunks and grains showered around.) She repeated this action twice, but on the second occasion paused with her hand still dug in.

Her gloved fingers had encountered and were now uncovering two hard, serrated, semicircular ridges with a half-inch gap between them.

Wetting her lips with her tongue and guiding them with her gloved hands held close beside her cheeks, she pressed them against the dry and gritty pair of lips that closely framed the serrated ridges that opposed and almost touched her own teeth.

Puffing a breath of air ahead of it, she ran her tongue's wet tip around the inside of the dry lips hers pressed, repeated that tender action and then inhaled.

Her nostrils and foremouth filled with the exciting acrid reek of the Gray Mouser, familiar to her from a long season's lovemaking.

It made her tremble and shake to realize this was so, that she held between her hands his precious face returned from the grave.

She exhaled to one side that wonder breath, drew in a fresh one from the serpent's mouth, again clamped her lips down upon his still-dry ones and gently blew that breath deep into him, praying it retained its healing serpent's character.

"Dearest, beloved," she heard him croak.

She realized she was staring deep into his eyes, but was so close the two appeared as one.

"Owl eyes," she replied foolishly, recalling their lovers' name for that two-equals-one phenomenon.

Then recollecting more of her situation, she said, "Dear Rill, our captain's back. He's in my arms and I am feeding him air. Do you work in your hands from behind me and dig and brush the earth away from's body and speed his freeing from its dreadful grip."

"I will be very grateful, Rill, I assure you," the Mouser broke in
sotto voce
, croaking rather less than he had on "dearest."

The witch-whore complied, gingerly at first, then with larger strokes as she realized the amount of earth there was to be moved. She found the scoop Cif had dropped and used it to increase the scope of first her right hand, then her crippled left, where the advantage it provided was greater.

Meanwhile Cif continued to brush dirt from his cheeks as she alternately kissed him and fed him air, working her hands nearer to the back of his head and a full embrace, with each stroke freeing more of the margins of his eye sockets and ears.

The Mouser said, "I'll keep my eyes closed, Cif, save when you tell me I may open them," and was emboldened to ask, "And would you be a bit more generous with your perfumed saliva, dear? That is, if you've to spare. I've been without refreshment all of two days (or is it three, perchance?) save for such moisture as I've sucked from stones. Or begged from passing worms."

"I have," Rill mentioned ingenuously. "I happen to have been chewing mint the past half hour. The smallest leaves."

"You
are
a witch, dear Rill," Cif commented cattily.

Fafhrd's lieutenant Skor chose that moment to appear behind Rill, filling the tunnel with his stooped tall form and reporting past her to Cif as commander of the diggings, "The Captain's returned from wherever he was yesterday and last night, milady. I gather strange things have been happening, some in the sky. He just arrived by dogcart with the Lady Afreyt and with them the child Gale and the Ilthmar cabin-girl."

At that point he got a good look at what was going on in the tunnel, recognized the Mouser's face and became speechless. (Later he tried to describe what he saw to Skullick and Pshawri. "She was kissing him out of the sandstone, I tell you, kissing and caressing, working a mighty magic whether she knew it or not. While her sister witch worked a like sorcery upon his bottom half, his nether limbs and members. Our captains are fortunate to enjoy the favor of such women of power.")

Cif turned her head back toward him and straightened up, bringing the Mouser with her out of the tunnel face and shedding sandy debris.

"Things have been happening here too, as you can see," she said briskly. "Now hearken, Skor. Return aloft and tell the Lady Afreyt and Captain Fafhrd I wish to speak with them down here. But do
not
tell them (or
anyone
up there) of Captain Mouser's passing strange return, else everyone will be crowding down to view and celebrate the wonder."

"That's true enough," the tall man with thinning hair agreed, doing his best to sound rational.

"Do as she tells you, Skor," the Mouser put in. "There's wisdom in her rede."

"Don't
you
return down here, of course," Cif continued. "Take charge up there, maintain order, and keep the dragon breathing." She nodded toward the pulsing white snow-serpent piping. "Here, take the ring of command off my top middle fingers and wear it on your thumb." She held out the hand on which was Fafhrd's ring. He obeyed. She had an afterthought. "Send the two girls down also, Fingers and Gale. Else they'll make mischief while your hands are full."

"Hearkening in obedience," Skor responded, bowing to Cif as he turned around and made off speedily.

"That last thought of yours was inspired, my dear," the Mouser said breezily, turning from Rill to Cif. "Mischief? Yes, indeed!—for it turns out that the Ilthmar cabin-girl Fingers is the assassin sent to wipe out her father Fafhrd by reciting an outlandish death spell—sent out by our old enemy Quarmal, Lord of Quarmall, as I learned when I breakfasted there
al fresco
this morn's morn on cave dew, boreworm bread, and toadstool wine—and spied on Quarmal in his most secret lair."

"Fingers Fafhrd's get?" Rill remarked. "I suspected it from the red hair. And there's a definite facial resemblance. And something about her cool manner..."

The Mouser nodded emphatically. "Though, to be fair to Fingers, I don't think she knew what she was doing—old Quarmal had her most securely hypnotized. Fortunately I learned at the same time how to scotch his spells ('twas as easy as snap your fingers, and as hard) by observing him foil at the last moment his son Igwarl's murder by
his
sister Issa, which he had masterminded for purposes of instruction. (He makes a positive religion of treachery and mistrust, the old man does.) If I hadn't studied his finger-snapping trick and been able to repeat it perfectly, Fafhrd would be dead as mutton by his daughter's unknowing agency. Whereas, if we can trust Skor, he's as fit as a fiddle."

"My, my," observed Cif, "we
have
managed to keep busy underground, haven't we?"

"You
do
know more about the worser side of human nature than any man I know. Or woman for that matter," Rill chimed in.

The Mouser shrugged apologetically. The comic gesture caused him to really look at himself and his garments for the first time since coming out of the wall.

His reaction caused Cif and Rill to do the same thing.

His gray jerkin, which had been stout, thick cloth when last observed by any of them, had somehow grown fine as gossamer and quite translucent, while his exposed skin looked as if it had been pumiced.

As if on his journey underground he had endured for hours a blasting sandstorm, suffering such wear and tear as might be accounted for by a trip to Quarmall. The
strangeness
of it all gripped their minds.

At that long moment Fafhrd appeared in the tunnel, followed closely by Fingers and Afreyt, with a wide-eyed Gale bringing up the rear. He was wearing a winter jacket with attached hood fallen away behind, revealing his close-shaven pate.

"I
knew
you had been found," he said excitedly. "I read it in Skor's face when he returned with Cif's summons. Though he's fooled the rest, I think. Make no mistake, it was a good idea to keep it a secret for a bit. There are things to be said before we face a celebration. It appears that I owe you my life, old friend—and my child her memory as well. Look here, you rogue, however did you learn old Quarmal's finger-snapping dodge?"

"Why, by traveling underground to his buried city, of course, and spying on him," the Mouser replied airily. "And studying his maps," he added. "Either I did that in the body or else my ka did in horn-gate dreams. If his boreworms got to me, and I believe they did, it argues for the former."

"Oh well," Fafhrd said philosophically, "boreworms don't kill, only excruciate."

"And then only if you're awake while they're entering you," Fingers piped up consolingly. "But truly, Uncle Mouser, I'm grateful to you beyond words for saving my father's life and me from parricide and madness."

"Tut, tut, child! No need for melodrama. I believe you," the Mouser said, "and entreat your pardon for my earlier doubts. You are the daughter of your mother Friska, truly, who resisted all my efforts to seduce her, which were neither few nor unskillful, to my recollection."

"I believe you," Fingers assured him. "As she's oft told me, your seduction attempts were responsible for her friend (and your lover, Uncle Mouser) Ivivis quitting the escape party at Tovilyis and persuading my mother to quit with her and have me there."

"I truly planned to get gold and return to Tovilyis and rejoin her," Fafhrd apologized. "But something always intervened, generally the absence of gold."

"Friska never blamed you," Fingers assured him. "She always came to your defense when Aunt Ivivis made you the target of one of her tirades. Aunty would say, 'He should have stayed with you and let the little jackanapes go on alone,' and Mother would answer, 'That would have been too much to hope for. Remember, they're lifelong comrades.'"

"Friska was always most forgiving," Fafhrd averred. "Just as Fingers is to you, Mouser," he added, shaking his middle digit under the Gray One's nose. "Do you realize that that terrible treble fingersnap that saved my life almost slew Fingers at the same time? Stretching her senseless and unconscious across the bench where we'd sat watching you emerge from earth like a pale vengeful mole—was knocked out myself as well, stretched out across my daughter on the bench. As Afreyt here can attest, who was a full quarter hour eliciting from either of us the least sign of life."

"That's most true, masters," the tall blonde averred, her violet eyes flashing. "I breathed for Fafhrd fully that long before his wits returned. Meanwhile Gale, who'd awakened and come downstairs fortuitously, performed a like service for Fingers."

"Yes, I did that," the child confirmed, "and when you came to, you beast, you bit my nose, like an ungrateful and confused kitten."

"You should have spanked me," the girl from Ilthmar told her piously.

"I'll remember that at the first opportunity," Gale threatened darkly.

"For that matter,
I
lost consciousness myself completely at the climax," the Mouser asserted, getting back into the game. "So much depended on getting those fingersnaps of old Quarmal just right, each one a little louder than the last. It literally took everything out of me, so that my task accomplished, I sank back into the earth like a dying ghost, to be transported here by whatever potent agency has guided my long journey, and await dear Cif's revivifying kiss."

And he slowly shook his head from side to side, raising his brows and parting his hands a little in a gesture of uncomprehending wonder.

Relaxing then a little from this posture (one got the impression everyone in the tunnel let out a small sigh), he turned with a sweet and gracious smile to Fafhrd and inquired, "But now tell me, old friend, how came you to be parted from your hair? And so very thoroughly, judging from the portions of you I'm able to see. In my underground travels I've lost some skin (and body hair presumably) from friction with sand, gravel, clay, and rock. My garments certainly have suffered a diminishment, as is plain to see. But you, my friend, have not that excuse."

"Let me answer that," Afreyt demanded with such resolution that no one, even Fafhrd, seemed inclined to contest her claim. She took a deep breath and addressed, chiefly to the Gray Mouser (though all heard, for she spoke very clearly) the following remarkable extended statement.

"Dear Captain Mouser, when you first slipped down into the earth early upon the night of Satyrs' full and the second of the coming of the cold, it was Captain Fafhrd who set us digging after you here on Goddess Hill. Not all of us agreed with his idea, but when the digging turned up evidence of your passage (your hood, your dagger Cat's Claw, et cetera), we were logically compelled to change our minds. The work begun then has now culminated in the rescue of Captain Mouser by the ladies Cif and Rill after today's miraculous survival underground. All honor to Captain Fafhrd for laying the foundations of this wonderful achievement!"

Gale started to applaud, but none of the others took it up, and when Fingers shook her head at the other girls, she broke off.