Swords in the Mist (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, #3)

by Fritz Leiber

“Yes, my sons, an adept—a master practitioner of blackest magic without faintest blink of light.” The Mouser started. Fafhrd groaned, “Again?” “Again,” Ningauble affirmed. “Though why, save for your connection with the Elder Gods, you should interest those most recondite of creatures, I cannot guess. They are not men who wittingly will stand in the glaringly illuminated foreground of history. They seek—” “But who is it?” Fafhrd interjected. “Be quiet, Mutilator of Rhetoric. They seek the shadows, and surely for good reason. They are the glorious amateurs of high magic, disdaining practical ends, caring only for the satisfaction of their insatiable curiosities, and therefore doubly dangerous. They are …” “But what’s his name?” “Silence, Trampler of Beautiful Phrases. They are in their fashion fearless, irreligiously considering themselves the coequals of destiny and having only contempt for the Demigoddess of Chance, the Imp of Luck, and the Demon of Improbability. In short, they are adversaries before whom you should certainly tremble and to whose will you should unquestionably bow.” “But his name, Father, his name!” Fafhrd burst out, and the Mouser, his impudence again in the ascendant, remarked, “It is he of the Sabihoon, is it not, Father?” “It is not. The Sabihoon are an ignorant fisher folk who inhabit the hither shore of the far lake and worship the beast god Wheen, denying all others,” a reply that tickled the Mouser, for to the best of his knowledge he had just inv...