“Very well,” Mor said. “And now you will obey me by following me to the dream tent for ritual purification.”

“I am not defiled,” Fafhrd announced. “Moreover, I purify myself after my own fashion, one also agreeable to the gods.”

There were clucks of shocked disapproval from all Mor's coven. Fafhrd had spoken boldly, but his head was still bent, so that he did not see their faces, and their entrapping eyes, but only their long-robed white forms, like a clump of great birches.

Mor said, “Look me in the eyes.”

Fafhrd said, “I fulfill all the customary duties of a grown son, from food-winning to sword-guarding. But as far as I can ascertain, looking my mother in the eyes is not one of those duties.”

“Your father always obeyed me,” Mor said ominously.

“Whenever he saw a tall mountain, he climbed her, obeying no one but himself,” Fafhrd contradicted.

“Yes, and died doing so!” Mor cried, her masterfulness controlling grief and anger without hiding them.

Fafhrd said hardly, “Whence came the great cold that shattered his rope and pick on White Fang?”

Amidst the gasps of her coven, Mor pronounced in her deepest voice, “A mother's curse, Fafhrd, on your disobedience and evil thinking!”

Fafhrd said with strange eagerness, “I dutifully accept your curse, Mother.”

Mor said, “My curse is not on you, but on your evil imaginings.”

“Nevertheless, I will forever treasure it,” Fafhrd cut in. “And now, obeying myself, I must take leave of you, until the wrath-devil has let you go.”

And with that, head still bent down and away, he walked rapidly toward a point in the forest east of the home tents, but west of the great tongue of forest that stretched south almost to Godshall. The angry hissings of Mor's coven followed him, but his mother did not cry out his name, nor any word at all. Fafhrd would almost rather that she had.