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crescent of mouth. The Mouser saw the razor teeth and realized it was the shark
he'd seen or another like it, tinied by the lens of the tube. The teeth clashed, some
of them inside the tube, only inches from his side. The water's "skin" did not
rupture disastrously, although the Mouser got the eerie impression that the "bite"
was bleeding a little water into the tube. The shark swam off to continue its
circling at a moderate distance, and the Mouser refrained from any more
menacing looks.
Meanwhile the fishy smell had grown stronger, and the smoke must have
been getting thicker too, for now the Mouser coughed in spite of himself, setting
the water rings shooting up and down. He fought to suppress an anguished curse
-- and at that moment his toes no longer touched rope. He unloosed the extra coil
from his belt, went down three more knots, tightened the slip-noose above the
second knot from the bottom, and continued on his way.
Five handholds later his feet found a footing in cold muck. He gratefully
unclenched his hands, working his cramped fingers, at the same time calling
"Fafhrd!" softly but angrily. Then he looked around.
He was standing in the center of a large low tent of air, which was floored by
the velvety sea-muck in which he had sunk to his ankles and roofed by the
leadenly gleaming undersurface of the water -- not evenly though, but in swells
and hollows with ominous downward bulges here and there. The air-tent was
about ten feet high at the foot of the tube. Its diameter seemed at least twenty
times that, though exactly how far the edges extended it was impossible to judge
for several reasons: the great irregularity of the tent's roof, the difficulty of even
guessing at the extent of some outer areas where the distance between water-roof
and muck-floor was measurable in inches, the fact that the gray light transmitted
from above hardly permitted decent vision for more than two dozen yards, and
finally the circumstance that there was considerable torch-smoke in the way here
and there, writhing in thick coils along the ceiling, collecting in topsy-turvy
pockets, though eventually gliding sluggishly up the tube.
What fabulous invisible "tent-poles" propped up the ocean's heavy roof the
Mouser could no more conceive than the force that kept the tube open.
Writhing his nostrils distastefully, both at the smoke and the augmented fishy
smell, the Mouser squinted fiercely around the tent's full circumference.
Eventually he saw a dull red glow in the black smudge where it was thickest, and
a little later Fafhrd emerged. The reeking flame of the pine torch, which was still
no more than half consumed, showed the Northerner bemired with sea-muck to
his thighs and hugging gently to his side with his bent left arm a dripping mess of
variously gleaming objects. He was stooped over somewhat, for the roof bulged
down where he stood.
"Blubber brain!" the Mouser greeted him. "Put out that torch before we
smother! We can see better without it. Oh, oaf, to blind yourself with smoke for
the sake of light!"
To the Mouser there was obviously only one sane way to extinguish the torch
-- jab it in the wet muck underfoot -- but Fafhrd, though evidently most agreeable
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to the Mouser 's suggestion in a vacantly smiling way, had another idea. Despite
the Mouser's anguished cry of warning, he casually thrust the flaming stick into
the watery roof.
There was a loud hissing and a large downward puff of steam and for a
moment the Mouser thought his worst dreads had been realized, for an angry
squirt of water from the quenching point struck Fafhrd in the neck. But when the
steam cleared it became evident that the rest of the sea was not going to follow
the squirt, at least not at once, though now there was an ominous lump, like a
rounded tumor, in the roof where Fafhrd had thrust the torch, and from it water
ran steadily in a stream thick as a quill, digging a tiny crater where it struck the
muck below.
"Don't do that!" the Mouser commanded in unwise fury.
"This?" Fafhrd asked gently, poking a finger through the ceiling next to the
dripping bulge. Again came the angry squirt, diminishing at once to a trickle, and
now there were two bulges closely side by side, quite like breasts.
"Yes, _that_ -- not again," the Mouser managed to reply, his voice distant and
high because of the self-control it took him not to rage at Fafhrd and so perhaps
provoke even more reckless probings.
"Very well, I won't," the Northerner assured him. "Though," he added, gazing
thoughtfully at the twin streams, "it would take those dribblings years to fill up
this cavity."
"Who speaks of years down here?" the Mouser snarled at him. "Dolt! Iron
Skull! What made you lie to me? 'Everything' was down here, you said -- 'a whole
world.' And what do I find? Nothing! A miserable little cramp-roofed field of
stinking mud!" And the Mouser stamped a foot in rage, which only splashed him
foully, while a puffed, phosphorescent-whiskered fish expiring on the mire looked
up at him reproachfully.
"That rude treading," Fafhrd said softly, "may have burst the silver-filigreed
skull of a princess. 'Nothing,' say you? Look you then, Mouser, what treasure I
have digged from your stinking field."
And as he came toward the Mouser, his big feet gliding gently through the top
of the muck for all the spikes on his boots, he gently rocked the gleaming things
cradled in his left arm and let the fingers of his right hand drift gently among
them.
"Aye," he said, "jewels and gauds undreamed by those who sail above, yet all
teased by me from the ooze while I sought another thing."
"What other thing, Gristle Dome?" the Mouser demanded harshly, though
eyeing the gleaming things hungrily.
"The path," Fafhrd said a little querulously, as if the Mouser must know what
he meant. "The path that leads from some corner or fold of this tent of air to the
sea-king's girls. These things are a sure promise of it. Look you, here, Mouser."
And he opened his bent left arm a little and lifted out most delicately with thumb
and fingertips a life-size metallic mask.
Impossible to tell in that drained gray light whether the metal were gold or
silver or tin or even bronze and whether the wide wavy streaks down it, like the
tracks of blue-green sweat and tears, were verdigris or slime. Yet it was clear that
it was female, patrician, all-knowing yet alluring, loving yet cruel, hauntingly
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beautiful. The Mouser snatched it eagerly yet angrily and the whole lower face
crumpled in his hand, leaving only the proud forehead and the eyeholes staring at
him more tragically than eyes.
The Mouser flinched back, expecting Fafhrd to strike him, but in the same
instant he saw the Northerner turning away and lifting his straight right arm,
index finger a-point, like a slow semaphore.
"You were right, oh Mouser!" Fafhrd cried joyously. "Not only my torch's
smoke but its very light blinded me. See! See the path!"
The Mouser's gaze followed Fafhrd's pointing. Now that the smoke was
somewhat abated and the torch-flame no longer shot out its orange rays, the
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