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queenly tall a handsome red-haired woman dressed in jewels and behind her a
trim second female in maid's black tunic collared and cuffed with white.
"'Tis Ivlis in her beauty from the past, for whom I stole Ohmphals'
erubescent fingertips," the Mouser whispered in stupefaction. "And now she's
got herself a peck more gems."
"And that is Freg, her maid, looking no older," Fafhrd whispered back hoarsely
in dream-drugged wonderment.
"But what's she doing here in Thieves' House?" the Mouser pressed, his whisper
feverish, "where women are forbidden and contemned. As if _she_ were
grandmaster of the Guild ... grand-mistress ... goddess ... worshipped.... Is
Thieves' Guild upside down?...all Nehwon turvy-topsy...?"
Ivlis looked up at them across the heads of her kneeling followers. Her green
eyes narrowed. She casually lifted her fingers to her lips, then flicked them
sideways twice, indicating to the Mouser that he should silently keep going in
that direction and not return.
With a slow unloving smile, Freg made exactly the same gesture to
Fafhrd, but even more idly seeming, as if humming a chorus. The two men
obeyed, but with their gazes trailing behind them, so that it was with
complete surprise, almost with starts of fear, that they found they had walked
blindly into a room of rare woods embellished with intricate carvings, with a
door before them and doors to either side, and in the one of the latter
nearest the Mouser a freshly nubile girl with wicked eyes, in a green robe of
shaggy toweling cloth, her black hair moist, and in the one nearest Fafhrd two
slim blondes a-smile with dubious merriment and wearing loosely the black
hoods and robes of nuns of Lankhmar. In nightmare's fullest grip they realized
that this was the very same garden house of Duke Danius, haunted by their
earliest deepest loves, impiously reconstituted from the ashes to which the
sorcerer Sheelba had burned it and profanely refurbished with all the trinkets
wizard Ningauble had magicked from it and scattered to the four winds; and
that these three night-fillies were Ivmiss Ovartamortes, niece of Karstak
like-named, Lankhmar's then overlord, and Fralek and Fro, mirror-twin
daughters of the death-crazed duke, the three she-colts of the dark to whom
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they'd madly turned after losing even the ghosts of their true loves in
Shadowland. Fafhrd was wildly thinking in unvoiced sound, "Fralek and Fro, and
Freg, Friska and Frix -- what is this Fr'-charm on me?" while through the
Mouser's mind was skipping likewise, "Ivlis, Ivmiss, Ivivis (_three_ Iv's --
and there's e'en an Iv in Hisvet) -- who are these girl-lets of the Iv?" (Near
the Life Pole, the gods Mog, Issek, and Kos were working at the top of their
bent, crying out to each other new girl-discoveries with which to torment
their lapsed worshippers. The crowd of spectator gods around them was now
large.)
And then the Mouser bethought him with a shiver that he had not listed amongst
his girl-lings of the Iv the archgirl of them all, fair Ivrian, forever lost
in Death's demesne. And Fafhrd likewise shook. And the night-
fillies flanking them pouted and made moues at them, and they were fairly
catapulted into the midst of a pavilion of wine-dark silk, beyond whose
unstirring folds showed the flat black horizons of the Shadowland.
Beauteous, slate-visaged Vlana spat full in Fafhrd's face, saying, "I
told you I'd do that if you came back," but fair Ivrian only eyed the Mouser
with never a sign or word.
And then they were back in the betorched corridor, more hurried along it than
hurrying, and the Mouser envied Fafhrd death's spittle inching down his cheek.
And girls were flashing by like ghosts, unheedingly -- Mara of
Fafhrd's youth, Atya who worshipped Tyaa, bovine-eyed Hrenlet, Ahura of
Seleucia, and many many more -- until they were feeling the utter despair that
comes with being rejected not by one or a few loves, but by all. The
unfairness of it alone was enough to make a man die.
Then in the rush one scene lingered awhile: Alyx the Picklock garbed in the
scarlet robes and golden tiara a-swarm with rubies of the archpriest of an
eastern faith, and kneeling before her costumed as clerk Lilyblack, the
Mouser's girlish leman from his criminous days, intoning, "Papa, the heathen
rage, the civilized decay," and the transvestite archpriestess pronouncing,
"All men are enemies..." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]