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glares and glitters on the roofs of Tyre winked out. The Temple of Melkarth
loomed black against the fading sky. The last canopy was being taken down, and
most of the merchants were more than halfway across the mole. There was still
only one figure moving shoreward.
"Weren't seven nights with Chloe enough for you?" asked Fafhrd. "Besides, it
isn't she you'll be wanting when we kill the adept and get this spell off us."
"That's as it may be," retorted the Mouser. "But remember we have to catch
our adept first. And it's not only I whom Chloe's company could benefit."
A faint shout drew their attention across the darkling water to where a lateen-
rigged trader was edging into the Egyptian Harbor. For a moment they thought
the landward end of the mole had been emptied. Then the figure moving away
from the city came out sharp and black against the sea, a slight figure, not
burdened like the slaves.
"Another fool leaves sweet Tyre at the wrong time," observed the Mouser.
"Just think what a woman will mean in those cold mountains we're going to,
Fafhrd, a woman to prepare dainties and stroke your forehead."
Fafhrd said, "It isn't your forehead, little man, you're thinking of."
The cool wind came again, and the packed sand moaned at its passing. Tyre
seemed to crouch like a beast against the threats of darkness. A last merchant
searched the ground hurriedly for some lost article.
Fafhrd put his hand on his horse's shoulder and said, "Come on."
The Mouser made a last point. "I don't think Chloe would insist on taking the
slave girl to oil her feet, that is, if we handled it properly."
Then they saw that the other fool leaving sweet Tyre was coming toward
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r r
them, and that it was a woman, tall and slender, dressed in stuffs that seemed to
melt into the waning light, so that Fafhrd found himself wondering whether she
truly came from Tyre or from some aerial realm whose inhabitants may venture
to earth only at sunset. Then, as she continued to approach at an easy, swinging
stride, they saw that her face was fair and that her hair was raven; and the
Mouser's heart gave a great leap, and he felt that this was the perfect
consummation of their waiting, that he was witnessing the birth of an Aphrodite,
not from the foam but the dusk, for it was indeed his dark-haired Ahura of the
wine shops, no longer staring with cold, shy curiosity, but eagerly smiling.
Fafhrd, not altogether untouched by similar feelings, said slowly, "So you are
the woman who came when she was ready."
"Yes," added the Mouser gaily, "and did you know that in a minute more
you'd have been too late."
--------
_4: The Lost City_
During the next week, one of steady northward journeying along the fringe of
the desert, they learned little more of the motives or history of their mysterious
companion than the dubious scraps of information Chloe had provided. When
asked why she had come, Ahura replied that Ningauble had sent her, that
Ningauble had nothing to do with it and that it was all an accident, that certain
dead Elder Gods had dreamed her a vision, that she sought a brother lost in a
search for the Lost City of Ahriman; and often her only answer was silence, a
silence that seemed sometimes sly and sometimes mystical. However, she stood
up well to hardship, proved a tireless rider, and did not complain at sleeping on
the ground with only a large cloak snuggled around her. Like some especially
sensitive migratory bird, she seemed possessed of an even greater urge than their
own to get on with the journey.
Whenever opportunity offered, the Mouser paid assiduous court to her,
limited only by the fear of working a snail change. But after a few days of this
tantalizing pleasure, he noticed that Fafhrd was vying for it. Very swiftly the two
comrades became rivals, contesting as to who should be the first to offer Ahura
assistance on those rare occasions when she needed it, striving to top each other's
brazenly boastful accounts of incredible adventures, constantly on the alert lest
the other steal a moment alone. Such a spate of gallantry had never before been
known on their adventurings. They remained good friends -- and they were aware
of that -- but very surly friends -- and they were aware of that too. And Ahura's
shy, or sly, silence encouraged them both.
They forded the Euphrates south of the ruins of Carchemish, and struck out
for the headwaters of the Tigris, intersecting but swinging east away from the
route of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand. It was then that their surliness came
to a head. Ahura had roamed off a little, letting her horse crop the dry herbage,
while the two sat on a boulder and expostulated in whispers, Fafhrd proposing
that they both agree to cease paying court to the girl until their quest was over,
the Mouser doggedly advancing his prior claim. Their whispers became so heated
that they did not notice a white pigeon swooping toward them until it landed with
a downward beat of wings on an arm Fafhrd had flung wide to emphasize his
willingness to renounce the girl temporarily -- if only the Mouser would.
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r r
Fafhrd blinked, then detached a scrap of parchment from the pigeon's leg,
and read, "There is danger in the girl. You must both forgo her."
The tiny seal was an impression of seven tangled eyes.
"Just _seven_ eyes," remarked the Mouser. "Pah, he is modest." And for a
moment he was silent, trying to picture the gigantic web of unknown strands by
which the Gossiper gathered his information and conducted his business.
But this unsuspected seconding of Fafhrd's argument finally won from him a
sulky consent, and they solemnly pledged not to lay hand on the girl, or each in
any way to further his cause, until they had found and dealt with the adept.
They were now in townless land that caravans avoided, a land like
Xenophon's, full of chill misty mornings, dazzling noons, and treacherous
twilights, with hints of shy, murderous, mountain-dwelling tribes recalling the
omnipresent legends of "little people" as unlike men as cats are unlike dogs.
Ahura seemed unaware of the sudden cessation of the attentions paid her,
remaining as provocatively shy and indefinite as ever.
The Mouser's attitude toward Ahura, however, began to undergo a gradual
but profound change. Whether it was the souring of his inhibited passion, or the
shrewder insight of a mind no longer a-bubble with the fashioning of
compliments and witticisms, he began to feel more and more that the Ahura he
loved was only a faint spark almost lost in the darkness of a stranger who daily
became more riddlesome, dubious, and even, in the end, repellent. He
remembered the other name Chloe had given Ahura and found himself brooding
oddly over the legend of Hermaphroditus bathing in the Carian fountain and
becoming joined in one body with the nymph Salmacis. Now when he looked at
Ahura he could see only the avid eyes that peered secretly at the world through a
crevice. He began to think of her chuckling soundlessly at night at the mortifying
spell that had been laid upon himself and Fafhrd. He became obsessed with [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]