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down. Then it only remained to guide the still blindfolded carriers back to the
Marsh Gate, give them their gold and buy them their wine -- a big jug apiece
seemed wisest to blot out memory -- then rush back in the pinkening dawn to buy
from Braggi, the tavernmaster, the worthless lot behind the Silver Eel, reluctantly
chop off with Fafhrd's fighting axe the garden house's ridgepole and beam-horns,
throw water and then disguising ashes onto the roof and walls (without thought
of what evil omen this was, recalling Vlana and Ivrian), finally stagger inside and
collapse into sleep on the naked floor before even looking around.
When they woke next evening, the place turned out to be quite nice inside,
the two end-rooms each a thick-carpeted bedroom with highly erotic murals
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filling the walls. The Mouser puzzled as to whether Duke Danius shared his
garden-concubines with a friend or else rushed back and forth between the two
bedrooms all by himself. The central room was a most couth and sedate living
room with several shelves of expensively bound stimulating books and a fine
larder of rare jugged foods and wines. One of the bedrooms even had a copper
bathtub -- the Mouser appropriated that one at once -- and both bedrooms had
privies easily cleaned out below by a parttime and out-dwelling houseboy they
hired that night from the Eel.
The theft was highly successful, they had no trouble from Lankhmar's brown-
cuirassed and generally lazy guardsmen, no trouble from Duke Danius -- if he
hired house-spies, they botched their not-too-easy job. And for several days the
Gray Mouser and Fafhrd were very happy in their new domicile, eating and
drinking up Danius' fine provender, making the quick run to the Eel for extra
wine, the Mouser taking two or three perfumed, soapy, oily, slow baths a day,
Fafhrd going every two days to the nearest public steam-bath and putting in a lot
of time on the books, sharpening his already considerable knowledge of High
Lankhmarese, Ilthmarish, and Quarmallian.
By slow degrees, Fafhrd's bedroom became comfortably sloppy, the Mouser's
quite fussily tidy and neat -- it was simply their real natures expressing
themselves.
After a few days Fafhrd discovered a second library, most cunningly
concealed, of books dealing with nothing but death, books at complete variance
with the other supremely erotic volumes. Fafhrd found them equally educational,
while the Gray Mouser amused himself by picturing Duke Danius pausing to scan
a few paragraphs about strangulation or Kleshite jungle poisons while dashing
back and forth between his two bedrooms and their two or more girls.
However, they didn't invite any girls to their charming new home and
perhaps for a very good reason, because after half a moon or so the ghost of slim
Ivrian began to appear to the Mouser and the ghost of tall Vlana to Fafhrd, both
spirits perhaps raised from their remaining mineral dust drifting around-about,
and even plastered on the outer walls. The girl-ghosts never spoke, even in
faintest whisper, they never touched, even so much as by the brush of a single
hair; Fafhrd never spoke of Vlana to the Mouser, nor the Mouser to Fafhrd of
Ivrian. The two girls were invariably invisible, inaudible, intangible, yet they were
there.
Secretly from each other, each man consulted witches, witch doctors,
astrologers, wizards, necromancers, fortune tellers, reputable physicans, priests
even, seeking a cure for their ills (each desiring to see more of his dead girl or
nothing at all), yet finding none.
Within three moons the Mouser and Fafhrd -- very easy-amiable to each
other, very tolerant on all matters, very quick to crack jokes, smiling far more
than was their wont -- were both rapidly going mad. The Mouser realized this one
gray dawn when the instant he opened his eyes a pale, two-dimensional Ivrian at
last appeared and gazed sadly at him one moment from the ceiling and then
utterly vanished.
Big drops of sweat beaded his entire face and head from hairline down on all
sides; his throat was acid, and he gagged and retched. Then with one fling of his
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