41
" Let kings stack their treasure houses ceiling-high, and merchants burst their vaults with hoarded coin, and fools envy them. I have a treasure that outvalues theirs. A diamond as big as a man’s skull. Twelve rubies each as big as the skull of a cat. Seventeen emeralds each as big as the skull of a mole. And certain rods of crystal and bars of orichalcum. Let Overlords swagger jewel-bedecked and queens load themselves with gems, and fools adore them. I have a treasure that will outlast theirs. A treasure house have I builded for it in the far southern forest, where the two hills hump double, like sleeping camels, a day’s ride beyond the village of Soreev. “A great treasure house with a high tower, fit for a king’s dwelling—yet no king may dwell there. Immediately below the keystone of the chief dome my treasure lies hid, eternal as the glittering stars. It will outlast me and my name, I, Urgaan of Angarngi. It is my hold on the future. Let fools seek it. They shall win it not. For although my treasure house be empty as air, no deadly creature in rocky lair, no sentinel outside anywhere, no pitfall, poison, trap, or snare, above and below the whole place bare, of demon or devil not a hair, no serpent lethal-fanged yet fair, no skull with mortal eye a-glare, yet have I left a guardian there. Let the wise read this riddle and forbear. "
― Fritz Leiber , Swords Against Death (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser #2)
51
" Fafhrd said, “You were a drunken idiot-genius indeed tonight, even if I was a drunken clodhopper. Lashing up my leg! Tying up our swords so we couldn’t use ’em save as clubs!” The Mouser shrugged. “Yet that sword-tying doubtless saved us from committing a number of murders tonight.” Fafhrd retorted, a little hotly, “Killing in fight isn’t murder.” Again the Mouser shrugged. “Killing is murder, no matter what nice names you give. Just as eating is devouring, and drinking guzzling. Gods, I’m dry, famished, and fatigued! Come on, soft cushions, food, and steaming gahveh! "
― Fritz Leiber , Swords and Deviltry (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser #1)
53
" Still—” Tigerishka temporized—"are things I will tell.” Then, at court-stenographer speed, and a little singsong, as if it were very boring to her: “I come superior galactic culture. Read minds, throw thoughts, sail hyperspace, live forever if want, blow up suns—all that sort stuff. Look like animal—resume ancestral shapes. Make brains small but really huge—(psychophysiosubmicrominiaturization! We stay superior.) You not believe? So listen. Plants eat inorganic: they superior! Animals eat plants: they superior. Cats eat fresh meat: we most superior! Monkeys try eat everything: a mess!” Then without pause: “Wanderer sail hyperspace. Yes, star photos, I know. Need fuel—much matter for converters. Your moon good woodpile. Smash, pulverize, dredge. We fuel up, then go. No need you monkeys get hot and bothered. "
― Fritz Leiber , The Wanderer
58
" After “the business” (which turned out to be much more complicated than had been anticipated, evolving from a fairly simple affair of Sidonian smugglers into a glittering intrigue studded with Cilician pirates, a kidnapped Cappadocian princess, a forged letter of credit on a Syracusian financier, a bargain with a female Cyprian slave-dealer, a rendezvous that turned into an ambush, some priceless tomb-filched Egyptian jewels that no one ever saw, and a band of Idumean brigands who came galloping out of the desert to upset everyone’s calculations) and after Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser had returned to the soft embraces and sweet polyglot of the seaport ladies, pig-trickery befell Fafhrd once more, this time ending in a dagger brawl with some men who thought they were rescuing a pretty Bithynian girl from death by salty and odorous drowning at the hands of a murderous red-haired giant—Fafhrd had insisted on dipping the girl, while still metamorphosed, into a hogshead of brine remaining from pickled pork. "
― Fritz Leiber , Swords in the Mist
60
" Fafhrd and the Mouser thought of Karnak and its obelisks, of the Pharos lighthouse, of the Acropolis, of the Ishtar Gate in Babylon, of the ruins of Khatti, of the Lost City of Ahriman, of those doomful mirage-towers that seamen see where are Scylla and Charybdis. Of a truth, the architecture of the strange structure varied so swiftly and to such unearthly extremes that it was lifted into an insane stylistic realm all its own. Mist-magnified, its twisted ramps and pinnacles, like a fluid face in a nightmare, pushed upward toward where the stars should have been. "
― Fritz Leiber , Swords in the Mist
