The two friends congratulated each other.

Then they looked around. Save for the corpses, Pinchbeck Alley was empty.

Slenya Akkiba Magus had disappeared.

The twain pondered this for five heartbeats and two inhalations. Then Fafhrd's frown vanished and his eyes widened.

“Mouser,” he said. “The girl divided into the two villains! That explains all. They came from the same nowhere.”

“The same somewhere, you mean,” the Mouser quibbled. “A most exotic mode of reproduction, or fission rather.”

“And one with a sex alternation,” Fafhrd added. “Perhaps if we examined the corpses—”

They looked down to find Pinchbeck Alley emptier still. The two liches had vanished from the cobbles. Even the chopped-off head was gone from the foot of the wall against which it had rolled.

“An excellent way of disposing of bodies,” Fafhrd said with approval. His ears had caught the tramp and brazen clank of the approaching watch.

“They might have lingered long enough for us to search their pouches and seams for jewels and precious metal,” the Mouser demurred.

“But what was behind it all?” Fafhrd puzzled. “A black-and-white magician?"

“It's bootless to make bricks without straw,” said the Mouser, cutting him short. “Let us hie to the Golden Lamphrey and there drink a health to the girl, who was surely a stunner.”

“Agreed. And we will drink to her appropriately in blackest stout laced with the palest bubbly wine of Ilthmar.”

III: Trapped in the Shadowland

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were almost dead from thirst. Their horses had died from the same Hell-throated ailment at the last waterhole, which had proved dry. Even the last contents of their waterbags, augmented by water of their own bodies, had not been enough to keep alive the dear dumb equine beasts. As all men know, camels are the only creatures who can carry men for more than a day or two across the almost supernaturally hot arid deserts of the World of Nehwon.