The two heroes each spent a delightful weekend with his lady of the week.

“I don't know why I do things like this,” Hisvet said, lisping faintly and touching the Mouser intimately as they lay side by side supine on silken sheets. “It must be because I loathe you.”

“A pleasant and even worthy encounter,” Frix confessed to Fafhrd in similar situation. “It is my hang-up to enjoy playing, now and then, with the lower animals. Which some would say is a weakness in a queen of the air.”

Their weekend done, Fafhrd and the Mouser were automatically magicked back to Lankhmar, encountering one another in Cheap Street near Nattick Nimblefinger's narrow and dirty-looking dwelling. The Mouser was his right size again.

“You look sunburned,” he observed to his comrade.

“Space-burned, it is,” Fafhrd corrected. “Frix lives in a remarkably distant land. But you, old friend, look paler than your wont.”

“Shows what three days underground will do to a man's complexion,” the Mouser responded. “Come, let's have a drink at the Silver Eel.”

Ningauble in his cave near Ilthmar and Sheelba in his mobile hut in the Great Salt Marsh each smiled, though lacking the equipment for that facial expression. They knew they had laid one more obligation on their protégés.

IV: The Bait

Fafhrd the Northerner was dreaming of a great mound of gold.

The Gray Mouser the Southerner, ever cleverer in his forever competitive fashion, was dreaming of a heap of diamonds. He hadn't tossed out all of the yellowish ones yet, but he guessed that already his glistening pile must be worth more than Fafhrd's glowing one.

How he knew in his dream what Fafhrd was dreaming was a mystery to all beings in Nehwon, except perhaps Sheelba of the Eyeless Face and Ningauble of the Seven Eyes, respectively the Mouser's and Fafhrd's sorcerer-mentors. Maybe, a vast, black basement mind shared by the two was involved.