Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser wander into our world
Ack. That's more of Ningauble than I really needed to see, thank you.
Not quite Fritz Leiber at his very best, but that's okay. Even his lesser stories are as good as what most pulp writers reached at their peak. "Adept's Gambit" is an oddball in the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series; it was the first to be written but it wasn't published until 1947 when Arkham House released NIGHT'S BLACK AGENTS, a collection of chillers from Leiber. (A very cool anthology by the way, later reprinted in part by Ballantine. "The Man Who Never Grew Young", "The Dreams of Anton Moreland", "Diary In the Snow"... all great horror stories, but "Adept's Gambit" was left out, maybe for space considerations.)
Following Lovecraft's death in 1937, Leiber wrote in heavy references to the Cthulhu Mythos as a tribute but later removed them. Even so, the final version has many references to the Elder Gods and the odd concept that hearty laughter has great mystical power. Hmm...
"Adept's Gambit" is set in our so-called real world, where we find Fafhrd and the Mouser running around the harbor of Tyre; the story is packed with references to Thebes, Lebanon, Babylon and Antioch and to Aphrodite, Astarte, Odin and Ahriman. I'm glad Leiber didn't spend the time to rewrite this and insert reference to areas around Lankhmar and his own home-grown deities. When writers start to revise and update their earlier work, it often comes out more polished but loses much of youthful zest and excess that made the stories fun in the first place. When Fafhrd tells someone to "Go spit down Fenris' throat!", it's a colorful oath that shouldn't be tampered with.
When collected in SWORDS IN THE MIST for the series of Ace paperbacks, a little framing vignette was added that showed our heroes taking the wrong turn while tramping through Bottomless Caves in search of Ningauble and emerging in our world (where Lankhmar seems like a faint dream). Fair enough. Fafhrd and the Mouser seem the sort to go on an interdimensional vacation now and then, and they always end up back home sooner or later.
We start with Fafhrd suffering a sudden curse of "Pig-trickery". When he gets too cozy with a young woman, she abruptly transforms into an actual pig. (Getting drenched in water restores her original form, no harm done.) This puts a serious crimp in the big barbarian's romantic exploits, and when the same thing happens to the Gray Mouser only worse (his ladies transmogrify into giant snails...!), it's obvious something must be done. So, with great reluctance, they trudge off to force themselves to visit Fafhrd's sorcerous patron, Ningauble of the Seven Eyes.
Ningauble is one of my favorite wizards in fantasy fiction. A pot-bellied creature entirely concealed in a robe, with a hood from which eyes on stalks emerge to peer in different directions. he is concerned not with conquering the world or challenging the gods but with Gossip. He loves juicy rumours and scandals, and the Mouser always entertains with ribald stories of what the well-endowed dwarf was up to with the three virgin priestesses, that sort of thing. The fact that Mouser improvises these yarns as he goes along doesn't matter. (If he's still around today, Ningauble is probably reading the tabloids feverishly and taping DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES.)
As usual, the long-winded Ningauble is not much help at first. But he does grudgingly give our heroes a set of daunting tasks to undertake before going on a quest that will rid them of their romantic plight. They must fetch the Shroud of Ahriman (which is guarded by twelve skilled swordsmen), they must obtain powdered mummy of the Demon Pharoah (which is owned by a woman who demands carnal service for a portion of the powder; she ends up a hideous chimera, half pig and half snail, by the way), then retrieve the cup from which Socrates drank and other unpleasant chores. Then they must set sail "to the Lost City of Ahriman that lies east of Armenia."
Just to further complicate the affair, the two must be accompanied by "the woman who comes when she is ready". That is, one who gets going at once rather than makes the men wait. Sheesh. This turns out to be an exotic and enigmatic dark-haired damsel called Ahura, who never explains her purposes but who does show up on time. So the party is underway....
Even this early in his writing career, Leiber shows a wonderful knock for inserting humor at just the right moments without ruining the action or suspense. He throws in little asides which aren't strictly necessary to the plot but which are charming in themselves. (When a furious woman throws a dagger at Fafhrd, "he absentmindedly deflected it upward with his copper goblet, so that it struck full in the mouth of a wooden satyr on the wall, giving that deity the appearance of absentmindedly picking his teeth.")
The real draw of the series, of course, is the relationship between the two heroes. Fafhrd was based on Leiber himself and the Mouser on his longtime friend, Harry Fischer; the two characters simmered and developed for years before being set on paper. Our heroes have actual personalities, with strange quirks and moods and the full range of human emotion. We can believe that they are close comrades, even when they get on each other's nerves. They are more lifelike and multi-dimensional than any characters from swords and sorcery who come to mind. Fafhrd and the Mouser can be grim fighting machines when needed and goofy pals trading tall tales in taverns when they get a chance.
The one drawback to the story comes toward the end. The big mystery of what that adept was who jumped out of a tomb to give the Mouser the toughest swordfight of his career, and what that sorceror's relationship was with the mysterious woman Ahura is revealed as they head for the forbidden Castle of Mist. Unfortunately, it's done in a lengthy autobiographical monologue from Ahura that just acts as a speed bump. The flashback is well-written and might be fine as a separate tale on its own, but I thought it brought the story to a slow drag until it was over and the action started up again. And frankly, it didn't need as much detail. Leiber is funniest when he relates his heroes minor adventures in a few sentences that provide a great image and let us figure out what really happened.
Even with this one misgiving, I found "Adept's Gambit" a joy to read. I love tiny bits of business such as the Mouser ready to start a duel, only to see a message written in black crayon on his sword, "I do not approve of this step you are taking. Ningauble" (which he annoyedly wipes off). The camel who gets into a flask of aphrodisiac (with embarrasing results) is not something you're likely to read about in Robert E. Howard or Tolkien. And the paragraph where it is explained why Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are not better known to historians or folklorists is priceless:
"Material relating to them has, on the whole, been scanted by annalists, since they were heroes too disreputable for classic myth, to cryptically independent to let themselves be tied to a folk, too shifty and improbable in their adventurings to please the historian, too often involved with a riff-raff of dubious demons, unfrocked sorcerors and discredited deities - a veritable underworld of the supernatural." These two are not at all heroic legends like Conan or Kull, or infamous like Elric, but just working guys trying to get by in a whacky universe and you have to love them for it.
_
Not quite Fritz Leiber at his very best, but that's okay. Even his lesser stories are as good as what most pulp writers reached at their peak. "Adept's Gambit" is an oddball in the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series; it was the first to be written but it wasn't published until 1947 when Arkham House released NIGHT'S BLACK AGENTS, a collection of chillers from Leiber. (A very cool anthology by the way, later reprinted in part by Ballantine. "The Man Who Never Grew Young", "The Dreams of Anton Moreland", "Diary In the Snow"... all great horror stories, but "Adept's Gambit" was left out, maybe for space considerations.)
Following Lovecraft's death in 1937, Leiber wrote in heavy references to the Cthulhu Mythos as a tribute but later removed them. Even so, the final version has many references to the Elder Gods and the odd concept that hearty laughter has great mystical power. Hmm...
"Adept's Gambit" is set in our so-called real world, where we find Fafhrd and the Mouser running around the harbor of Tyre; the story is packed with references to Thebes, Lebanon, Babylon and Antioch and to Aphrodite, Astarte, Odin and Ahriman. I'm glad Leiber didn't spend the time to rewrite this and insert reference to areas around Lankhmar and his own home-grown deities. When writers start to revise and update their earlier work, it often comes out more polished but loses much of youthful zest and excess that made the stories fun in the first place. When Fafhrd tells someone to "Go spit down Fenris' throat!", it's a colorful oath that shouldn't be tampered with.
When collected in SWORDS IN THE MIST for the series of Ace paperbacks, a little framing vignette was added that showed our heroes taking the wrong turn while tramping through Bottomless Caves in search of Ningauble and emerging in our world (where Lankhmar seems like a faint dream). Fair enough. Fafhrd and the Mouser seem the sort to go on an interdimensional vacation now and then, and they always end up back home sooner or later.
We start with Fafhrd suffering a sudden curse of "Pig-trickery". When he gets too cozy with a young woman, she abruptly transforms into an actual pig. (Getting drenched in water restores her original form, no harm done.) This puts a serious crimp in the big barbarian's romantic exploits, and when the same thing happens to the Gray Mouser only worse (his ladies transmogrify into giant snails...!), it's obvious something must be done. So, with great reluctance, they trudge off to force themselves to visit Fafhrd's sorcerous patron, Ningauble of the Seven Eyes.
Ningauble is one of my favorite wizards in fantasy fiction. A pot-bellied creature entirely concealed in a robe, with a hood from which eyes on stalks emerge to peer in different directions. he is concerned not with conquering the world or challenging the gods but with Gossip. He loves juicy rumours and scandals, and the Mouser always entertains with ribald stories of what the well-endowed dwarf was up to with the three virgin priestesses, that sort of thing. The fact that Mouser improvises these yarns as he goes along doesn't matter. (If he's still around today, Ningauble is probably reading the tabloids feverishly and taping DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES.)
As usual, the long-winded Ningauble is not much help at first. But he does grudgingly give our heroes a set of daunting tasks to undertake before going on a quest that will rid them of their romantic plight. They must fetch the Shroud of Ahriman (which is guarded by twelve skilled swordsmen), they must obtain powdered mummy of the Demon Pharoah (which is owned by a woman who demands carnal service for a portion of the powder; she ends up a hideous chimera, half pig and half snail, by the way), then retrieve the cup from which Socrates drank and other unpleasant chores. Then they must set sail "to the Lost City of Ahriman that lies east of Armenia."
Just to further complicate the affair, the two must be accompanied by "the woman who comes when she is ready". That is, one who gets going at once rather than makes the men wait. Sheesh. This turns out to be an exotic and enigmatic dark-haired damsel called Ahura, who never explains her purposes but who does show up on time. So the party is underway....
Even this early in his writing career, Leiber shows a wonderful knock for inserting humor at just the right moments without ruining the action or suspense. He throws in little asides which aren't strictly necessary to the plot but which are charming in themselves. (When a furious woman throws a dagger at Fafhrd, "he absentmindedly deflected it upward with his copper goblet, so that it struck full in the mouth of a wooden satyr on the wall, giving that deity the appearance of absentmindedly picking his teeth.")
The real draw of the series, of course, is the relationship between the two heroes. Fafhrd was based on Leiber himself and the Mouser on his longtime friend, Harry Fischer; the two characters simmered and developed for years before being set on paper. Our heroes have actual personalities, with strange quirks and moods and the full range of human emotion. We can believe that they are close comrades, even when they get on each other's nerves. They are more lifelike and multi-dimensional than any characters from swords and sorcery who come to mind. Fafhrd and the Mouser can be grim fighting machines when needed and goofy pals trading tall tales in taverns when they get a chance.
The one drawback to the story comes toward the end. The big mystery of what that adept was who jumped out of a tomb to give the Mouser the toughest swordfight of his career, and what that sorceror's relationship was with the mysterious woman Ahura is revealed as they head for the forbidden Castle of Mist. Unfortunately, it's done in a lengthy autobiographical monologue from Ahura that just acts as a speed bump. The flashback is well-written and might be fine as a separate tale on its own, but I thought it brought the story to a slow drag until it was over and the action started up again. And frankly, it didn't need as much detail. Leiber is funniest when he relates his heroes minor adventures in a few sentences that provide a great image and let us figure out what really happened.
Even with this one misgiving, I found "Adept's Gambit" a joy to read. I love tiny bits of business such as the Mouser ready to start a duel, only to see a message written in black crayon on his sword, "I do not approve of this step you are taking. Ningauble" (which he annoyedly wipes off). The camel who gets into a flask of aphrodisiac (with embarrasing results) is not something you're likely to read about in Robert E. Howard or Tolkien. And the paragraph where it is explained why Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are not better known to historians or folklorists is priceless:
"Material relating to them has, on the whole, been scanted by annalists, since they were heroes too disreputable for classic myth, to cryptically independent to let themselves be tied to a folk, too shifty and improbable in their adventurings to please the historian, too often involved with a riff-raff of dubious demons, unfrocked sorcerors and discredited deities - a veritable underworld of the supernatural." These two are not at all heroic legends like Conan or Kull, or infamous like Elric, but just working guys trying to get by in a whacky universe and you have to love them for it.
_