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like a hawk.
"You're jealous of me about the Captain, aren't you?" she rallied the young
lieutenant, though not teasingly.
He considered that soberly and answered with equal frankness, "Well, yes,
Lady, I am -- though in no way challenging your own far greater and different
claim on his concern. But I did meet him before you did, when he recruited me
in Lankhmar for his band before ever he outfitted _Flotsam_ and set sail for
Rime Isle."
"You forget," she corrected him gently, "that before your enlistment the Lady
Afreyt and I journeyed to Lankhmar to hire him and Fafhrd in the
Isle's defense, though on that occasion we were swiftly raped back to this
polar clime by Khahkht's icy blast."
"That's true," he allowed. "Nevertheless..." He seemed to think better of it.
"Nevertheless what?"
"I was going to say," he told her somewhat haltingly, "that I think he was
aware of me before that time. After all, we were both freelance thieves,
though he infinitely my superior, and that means a lot in Lankhmar, where the
Guild's so strong, and there were other reasons ... Well, anyway, I knew _his_
reputation."
Cif had just completed a reading and clutched the cinder cube in her right
hand, not having yet put it in her pouch nor passed it on to him for like
securing. She was about to ask Pshawri, "What other reasons?" but instead lost
herself in study of his broody features, which were just becoming visible in
the gray light without help of the white glow of the lamp, which sat on the
ground next where she had dowsed.
Only Astarion, Nehwon's brightest star, was still a pale dot in the
dawn-violet heavens, and would soon be gone. Ahead of them but off to their
left (for their dowsing was gradually turning them south of the path their
party had traveled last evening) a blanket of fog risen from the ground hid
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all of Salthaven but the highest roofs and the pillars and wind-chime arch of
the Moon Temple, tinied by distance. The fog lapped higher round those objects
as they watched and, although there was no wind, advanced toward them, whitely
distilled from earth. Its far edge brightened where the sun would rise,
although a squadron of clouds cruising above had not yet caught its rays.
"It must be cold for the Captain down there below," Pshawri breathed with an
involuntary shudder.
"You _are_ most deeply concerned about him, aren't you?" Cif observed.
"Beyond the ordinary. I've noticed it for the past fortnight. Ever since you
received a missive inscribed in violet ink and sealed with green wax, carried
on the last trader before _Weasel_ in from Lankhmar."
"You have sharp eyes, Lady," he voiced.
"I saw it when Captain Mouser emptied the mail pouch. What is it, Pshawri?"
He shook his head. "With all respect, Lady, it is a matter that concerns
solely the Captain and myself --and one other. I cannot speak of it without
his leave."
"The Captain knows about it?"
"I do not think so. Yet I can't be sure."
Cif would have continued her queries, although Pshawri's reluctance to answer
more fully seemed genuine and deep-rooted -- and more than a little mysterious
-- but at that moment the five from the fire caught up with them and the mood
for exchanging confidences was lost. In fact, Cif and Pshawri felt rather on
exhibition, for during the next couple of dowsings each of the newcomers had
to see for themselves close up the wonder of the heavy cube cinder hanging out
of true, straining away from the shaft head definitely though slightly. In the
end even skeptical Groniger was convinced.
"I must believe my eyes," he said grudgingly, "though the temptation not to is
strong."
"It's harder to believe such things by day," Rill pointed out. "Much easier at
night."
Mother Grum nodded. "Witchcraft is so."
The sun had emerged by then, beating a yellow path to them across the top of
the fog, which strangely persisted.
And both Cif and Pshawri had to answer questions about the cord's subtle
vibrations imperceptible to sight.
"It's just there," she said, "a faint thrilling."
"I can't tell you how I know it's from the Captain," he had to admit.
"I just do."
Groniger snorted.
"I wish I could be as sure as Pshawri," Cif told them at that. "For me
it doesn't sign his name."
Two more dowsings brought them within sight of Rime Isle's south coast.
They prepared to dowse a third time a few paces short of where the meadow grew
bare and sloped down rockily and rather sharply for some ten more paces to the
narrow beach lapped by the wavelets of the Outer Sea. To the west this small
palisade grew gradually steeper and approached the vertical. To the east the
stubborn fog reached to within a bowshot of them. Farther off they could spy
rising from its whiteness the tops of the masts of the ships riding at anchor
in Salthaven's harbor or docked at its wharves.
It was Pshawri's turn to dangle the cube cinder. He seemed somewhat nervous,
his movements faster, though steady enough as he locked into position with
legs bent, right eye centered over the finger juncture pinching the cord.
Cif and Rill both crouched on their knees close by, so as to observe the
pendulum from the side at eye level. They seemed about to make an observation,
but Pshawri from his superior vantage point forestalled them.
"The bob no longer pulls southeast," he rapped out in a quick strident voice,
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"but drags down straight and true."
There were low hisses of indrawn breaths and a "Yes!" from Rill. Cif suggested
at once that she repeat his reading, and he gave her the pendulum without
demur, though his nervousness seemed to increase. He stationed himself between
her and the water. The others completed a ragged circle around her.
Rill still crouched close.
After a pause, "Still straight down," Cif said, with another "Yes,"
from Rill. "And the vibration."
Skullick uncorked with, "If the bob slanting means he's moving in that
direction, then straight down says that Captain Mouser is below us but not
moving just now."
Cif lifted her eyes toward the speaker. "If it is the Captain."
"But the _how_ of all this?" Groniger asked wonderingly, shaking his head.
"Look," Rill said in a strange voice. "The bob is moving again." They all eyed
another wonder. The bob was swinging back and forth between the direction of
the shaft head and the sea, but at least five times as slowly as the period of
a pendulum of that length. It crawled its swing.
There was some awe in Skullick's usually irreverent voice. "As if he were
pacing back and forth down there. Right now."
"Maybe he's found a sea tunnel," Mother Grum suggested.
"Those fables," Groniger growled.
Without warning the gold-glinting dark-colored bob jumped seaward to taut
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