Swords Against Wizardry by Fritz Leiber ...
Swords Against Wizardry by Fritz Leiber ...
Swords Against Wizardry by Fritz Leiber ...
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impetuous, but you can at least wait while the moon creeps the width of a star. I<br />
asked you to promise me you would descend Stardock at dawn."<br />
There was a rather long silence in the dark.<br />
"Well?" she prompted. "What shuts your mouth?" she queried impatiently.<br />
"You've shown no such indecision in certain other matters. Time wastes, the<br />
moon sails."<br />
"Hirriwi," Fafhrd said softly, "I must climb Stardock."<br />
"Why?" she demanded ringingly. "The poem has been fulfilled. You have your<br />
reward. Go on, and only frigid fruitless perils await you. Return, and I'll guard<br />
you from the air -- yes, and your companion too -- to the very Waste." Her sweet<br />
voice faltered a little. "O Faffy, am I not enough to make you forego the conquest<br />
of a cruel mountain? In addition to all else, I love you -- if I understand rightly<br />
how mortals use that word."<br />
"No," he answered her solemnly in the dark. "You are wondrous, more<br />
wondrous than any wench I've known -- and I love you, which is not a word I<br />
bandy -- yet you only make me hotter to conquer Stardock. Can you understand<br />
that?"<br />
Now there was silence for a while in the other direction.<br />
"Well," she said at length, "you are masterful and will do what you will do.<br />
And I have warned you. I could tell you more, show you reasons counter, argue<br />
further, but in the end I know I would not break your stubbornness -- and time<br />
gallops. We must mount our own steeds and catch up with the moon. Kiss me<br />
again. Slowly. So."<br />
* * * *<br />
The Mouser lay across the foot of the bed under the amber globes and<br />
contemplated Keyaira, who lay lengthwise with her slender apple-green<br />
shoulders and tranquil sleeping face propped <strong>by</strong> many pillows.<br />
He took up the corner of a sheet and moistened it with wine from a cup set<br />
against his knee and with it rubbed Keyaira's slim right ankle so gently that there<br />
was no change in her narrow bosom's slow-paced rise and fall. Presently he had<br />
cleared away all the greenish unguent from a patch as big as half his palm. He<br />
peered down at his handiwork. This time he expected surely to see flesh, or at<br />
least the green cosmetic on the underside of her ankle, but no, he saw through the<br />
irregular little rectangle he'd wiped only the bed's tufted coverlet reflecting the<br />
amber light from above. It was a most fascinating and somewhat unnerving<br />
mystery.<br />
He glanced questioningly over at Hrissa who now lay on an end of the low<br />
table, the thin-glassed, fantastic perfume bottles standing around her, while she<br />
contemplated the occupants of the bed, her white tufted chin set on her folded<br />
paws. It seemed to the Mouser that she was looking at him with disapproval, so<br />
he hastily smoothed back unguent from other parts of Keyaira's leg until the<br />
peephole was once more greenly covered.<br />
There was a low laugh. Keyaira, propped on her elbows now, was gazing at<br />
him through slitted heavy-lashed eyelids.<br />
"We invisibles," she said in a humorous voice truly or feignedly heavy with<br />
sleep, "show only the outward side of any cosmetic or raiment on us. It is a<br />
mystery beyond our seers."<br />
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