Swords and Ice Magic - By Fritz Leiber Page 0,20
will remedy at once. There are, you see, two different kinds of energy, the one pure heat, the other purest light, which cannot boil the tiniest water-drop ― the direct light I've already told you of, which changes almost entirely to heat where e'er it hits, which in turn tells us why reflected light can't make the long trip back through Nehwon's midst. There, have I answered you?”
“Oh damn, damn, damn,” Fafhrd said weakly. Then managing to rally himself, if only desperately for a last time, he asked somewhat sardonically, “All right, all right! But just where then is this floating sun you keep invoking, tucked in his vast adamantine-walled waterspout?”
“Look there,” the Mouser said, pointing due south, steerside abeam.
Across the moon-silvered gray field of the sea pricked out with speeding towers of waterspouts, almost at the dim distant horizon, Fafhrd saw a solitary gigantic waterspout huge as an island, taller than tallest mesa, moving east at least as swiftly as the rest and as ponderous-relentlessly as a juggernaut of the emperor of the Eastern Lands. The hair rose on the back of Fafhrd's neck, he was harrowed with fear and wonder, and he said not a word, but only stared and stared as the horrendous thing forged ahead in its immensity.
After a while he began also to feel a great weariness. He looked ahead and a little up at the stiffly flapping silver lace of the twin shimmer-sprights before the prow, taking comfort from their nearness and steadiness as if they were Black Racer's flags. He slowly lowered himself until he lay prone on the narrow, snugly abutting planks of the deck, his head toward the prow, his chin propped on his hands, still observing the night-sprights.
“You know how groups of stars sometimes wink out mysteriously on clearest Nehwon nights?” the Mouser said lightly and bemusedly.
“That's true enough, they do,” Fafhrd agreed, somewhat sleepily.
“That must be because the tubes of their waterspout-walls are bent enough, by a strong gale perchance, to hide their light, keep it from getting out.”
Fafhrd mumbled, “If you say so.”
After a considerable pause the Mouser asked in the same tones, “Is it not passing strange to think that in the heart of each dark, gray spout out there dotting the main, there burns (without any heat) a jewel of blinding, purest diamond light?”
Fafhrd managed what might have been a weighty sigh of agreement.
After another long pause the Mouser said reflectively, as one who tidied up loose ends, “It's easy now to see, isn't it, that the spouts small and great must all be tubes? For if they were solid water by some strange chance, they'd suck the oceans dry and fill the heavens with heaviest clouds ― nay, with the sea! You get my point?”
But Fafhrd had gone to sleep. In his sleep he dreamed and in that dream he rolled over on his back and one of the shimmer-sprights parted from her sister and winged down to flutter close above him: a long and slender, black-haired form, moon pale, appareled in finest silver-shot black lace that witchingly enhanced her nakedness. She was gazing down at him tenderly yet appraisingly, with eyes that would have been violet had there been more light. He smiled at her. She slightly shook her head, her face grew grave, and she flowed down against him head to heel, her wraithlike fingers busy at the great bronze buckle of his heavy belt, while with long, night-cool cheek pressed 'gainst his fevered one, she whispered softly and yet most clearly in his ear, each word a symbol finely drawn in blackest ink on moon-white paper, “Turn back, turn back, my dearest man, to Shadowland and Death, for that's the only way to stay alive. Trust only in the moon. Suspect all other prophecies but mine. So now, steer north, steer strongly north.”
In his dream Fafhrd replied, “I can't steer north, I've tried. Love me, my dearest girl,” and she answered huskily, “That's as may hap, my love. Seek Death to 'scape from him. Suspect all flaming youth and scarlet shes. Beware the sun. Trust in the moon. Wait for her certain sign.”
At that instant Fafhrd's dream was snatched from him and he roused numbly to the Mouser's sharp cries and to the chilling fugitive glimpse of a face narrow, beauteous, and of most melancholy mien, pale violet-blue of hue and with eyes like black holes. This above wraithlike, like-complected figure, and all receding swift as thought amidst a beating of black