by Fritz Leiber
In the high-windowed assembly hall of the South Barracks, Olegnya Mingolsbane loudly sputter-quavered to a weary audience which following custom had left their weapons outside—the soldiers of Lankhmar had been known to use them on irritating or merely boresome speakers. As he perorated, ‘You who have fought the black behemoth and leviathan, you who have stood firm against Mingol and Mirphian, you who have broken the spear-squares of King Krimaxius and routed his fortressed elephants, that you should be daunted by dirty vermin—’ eight large rat-holes opened high in the back wall and from these sinister orifices a masked battery of crossbow artillery launched their whirring missiles at the aged and impassioned general. Five struck home, one down his gullet, and gargling horridly he fell from the rostrum.
Then the fire of the crossbows was turned on the startled yet lethargic audience, some of whom had been applauding Olegnya’s demise as if it had been a carnival turn. From other high rat-holes actual fire was tossed down in the forms of white phosphorus and flaming, oil-soaked, resin-hearted bundles of rags, while from various low golden rat-holes, noxious vapors brewed in the sewers were bellows-driven.
Groups of soldiers and constables broke for the doors and found them barred from the outside—one of the most striking achievements of the special-missions groups, made possible by Lankhmar having things arranged so that she could massacre her own soldiers in times of mutiny. With smuggled weapons and those of officers, a counter-fire was turned on the rat-holes, but they were difficult targets and for the most part the men of war milled about as helplessly as the worshipers in the Street of the Gods, coughing and crying out more troubled for the present by the stinking vapors and the choking fumes of little flames here and there than by the larger fire-danger.
Meanwhile the black kitten was flattening himself on top of a cask in the granaries area while a party of armed rats trooped by. The small beast shivered with fear, yet was drawn on deeper and deeper into the city by a mysterious urging which he did not understand, yet could not ignore.
Hisvin’s house had in its top floor a small room, the door and window shutters of which were all tightly barred from the inside so that a witness, if there could have been one, would have wondered how this barring had been accomplished in such fashion as to leave the room empty.
A single thick, blue-burning candle, which had somewhat fouled the air, revealed no furniture whatsoever in the room. It showed six wide, shallow basins that were part of the tiled floor. Three of these basins were filled with a thick pinkish liquid across which ever and anon a slow quivering ran. Each pink pool had a border of black dust with which it did not commingle. Along one wall were shelves of small vials, the white ones near the floor, the black ones higher.
A tiny door opened at floor level. Hisvin, Hisvet, and Frix filed silently out. Each took a white vial and walked to a pink pool and then unhesitatingly down into it. The dark dust and pinkish liquid slowed but did not stop their steps. It moved out in sluggish ripples from their knees. Soon each stood thigh-deep at a pool’s center. Then each drained his vial.
For a long instant there was no change, only the ripples intersecting and dying by the candle’s feeble gleam.
Then each figure began to grow while soon the pools were visibly diminished. In a dozen heartbeats they were empty of fluid and dust alike, while in them Hisvin, Hisvet, and Frix stood human-high, dry-shod, and clad all in black.
Hisvin unbarred a window opening on the Street of the Gods, threw wide the shutters, drew a deep breath, stooped to peer out briefly and cautiously, then turned him crouching to the girls.
‘It has begun’ he said somberly. ‘Haste we now to the Blue Audience Chamber. Time presses. I will alert our Mingols to assemble and follow us.’ He scuttled past them to the door. ‘Come!’
Fafhrd drew himself up onto the roof of the temple of the Gods of Lankhmar and paused for a backward and downward look before tackling the belfry, although so far this climb had been easier even than that of the city’s wall.
He wanted to know what all the screaming was about.
Across the street were several dark houses, first among them Hisvin’s, while beyond them rose Glipkerio’s Rainbow Palace with its moonlit, pastel-hued minarets, tallest of them the blue, like a troupe of tall slender dancing girls behind a phalanx of black-robed squat priests.
Immediately below him was the temple’s unroofed yet dark front porch and the low, wide steps leading up to it from the street. Fafhrd had not even tried the verdigrised, copper-bound, worm-eaten doors below him. He had had no mind to go stumbling around hunting for a stairs in the inner dark and dust, where his groping hands might touch mummy-wrapped, black-togaed forms which might not lie still like other dead earth, but stir with crotchety limitless anger, like ancient yet not quite senile kings who did not relish their sleep disturbed at midnight. On both counts, an outside climb had seemed healthier and likewise the awakening of the Gods of Lankhmar, if they were to be wakened, better by a distant bell than by a touch on a skeletal shoulder wrapped in crumbling linen or on a bony foot.
When Fafhrd had begun his short climb, the Street of the Gods had been empty at this end, though from the open doors of its gorgeous temples—the temples of the Gods in Lankhmar—had spilled yellow light and come the mournful sound of many litanies, mixed with the sharper accents of impromptu prayers and beseechings.
But now the street was churning with white-faced folk, while others were still rushing screaming from temple doorways. Fafhrd still couldn’t see what they were running from, and once more he thought of an army of invisibles—after all, he had only to imagine Ghouls with invisible bones—but then he noted that most of the shriekers and churners were looking downward toward their feet and the cobbles. He recollected the eerie pattering which had sent him running away from Silver Street. He remembered what Ningauble had asserted about the huge numbers and hidden source of the army besieging Lankhmar. And he recalled that Clam had been sunk and Squid captured by rats working chiefly alone. A wild suspicion swiftly bloomed in him.
Meanwhile some of the temple refugees had thrown themselves to their knees in front of the dingy fane on which he stood, and were bumping their heads on the cobbles and lower steps and uttering frenzied petitions for aid. As usual, Lankhmar was appealing to her own grim, private gods only in a moment of direst need, when all else failed. While a bold few directly below Fafhrd had mounted the dark porch and were beating on and dragging at the ancient portals.
There came a loud creaking and groaning and a sound of rending. For a moment Fafhrd thought that those below him, having broken in, were going to rush inside. But then he saw them hurrying back down the steps in attitudes of dread and prostrating themselves like the others.
The great doors had opened until there was a hand’s breadth between them. Then through that narrow gap there issued from the temple a torchlit procession of tiny figures which advanced and ranged themselves along the forward edge of the porch.
They were two score or so of large rats walking erect and wearing black togas. Four of them carried lance-tall torches flaming brightly white-blue at their tips. The others each carried something that Fafhrd, staring down eagle-eyed, could not quite discern—a little black staff? There were three whites among them, the rest black.
A hush fell on the Street of the Gods, as if at some secret signal the humans tormenters had ceased their persecutions.
The black-togaed rats cried out shrilly in unison, so that even Fafhrd heard them clearly, ‘We have slain your gods, O Lankhmarts! We are your gods now, O folk of Lankhmar. Submit yourselves to our worldly brothers and you will not be harmed. Hark to their commands. Your gods are dead, O Lankhmarts! We are your gods!’
The humans who had abased themselves continued to do so and to bump their heads. Others of the crowd imitated them.
Fafhrd thought for a moment of seeking something to hurl down on that dreadful little black-clad line which had cowed humanity. But the nasty notion came to him that if the Mouser h
ad been reduced to a fraction of himself and able to live far under the deepest cellar, what could it mean but that the Mouser had been transformed into a rat by wicked magic, Hisvin’s most likely? In slaying any rat, he might slay his comrade.
He decided to stick to Ningauble’s instructions. He began to climb the belfry with great reaches and pulls of his long arms and doublings and straightenings of his still longer legs.
The black kitten, coming around a far corner of the same temple, bugged his little eyes at the horrid tableaux of black-togaed rats. He was tempted to flee, yet moved never a muscle as a soldier who knows he has a duty to perform, though has forgotten or not yet learned the nature of that duty.
15
Glipkerio sat fidgeting on the edge of his seashell-shaped couch of gold. His light battle-ax lay forgot on the blue floor beside him. From a low table he took up a delicate silver wand of authority tipped with a bronze starfish—it was one of several dozen lying there—and sought to play with it nervously. But he was too nervous for that. Within moments it shot out of his hands and clattered musically on the blue floor-tiles a dozen feet away. He knotted his wand-long fingers together tightly, and rocked in agitation.
The Blue Audience Chamber was lit only by a few guttering, soot-runneled candles. The central curtains had been raised, but this doubling of the room’s length only added to its gloom. The stairway going up into the blue minaret was a spiral of shadows. Beyond the dark archways leading to the porch, the great gray spindle balancing atop the copper chute gleamed mysteriously in the moonlight. A narrow silver ladder led up to its manhole, which stood open.
The candles cast on the blue-tiled inner wall several monstrous shadows of a bulbous figure seeming to bear two heads, the one atop the other. It was made by Samanda, who stood watching Glipkerio with stolid intentness, as one watches a lunatic up to tricks.
Finally Glipkerio, whose own gaze never ceased to twitch about at floor level, especially at the foot of blue curtains masking arched blue doorways, began to mumble, softly at first, then louder and louder, ‘I can’t stand it any more. Armed rats loose in the palace. Guardsmen gone. Hairs in my throat. That horrid girl. That indecent hairy jumping jack with the Mouser’s face. No butler or maid to answer my bell. Not even a page to trim the candles. And Hisvin hasn’t come. Hisvin’s not coming! I’ve no one. All’s lost! I can’t stand it. I’m leaving! World, adieu! Nehwon, goodbye! I seek a happier universe!’
And with that warning, he dashed toward the porch—a streak of black toga from which a lone last pansy petal fluttered down.
Samanda, clumping after him heavily, caught him before he could climb the silver ladder, largely because he couldn’t get his hands unknotted to grip the rungs. She gasped him round with a huge arm and led him back toward the audience couch, meanwhile straightening and unslipping his fingers for him and saying, ‘Now, now, no boat trips tonight, little master. It’s on dry land we stay, your own dear palace. Only think: tomorrow, when this nonsense is past, we’ll have such lovely whippings. Meanwhile to guard you, pet, you’ve me, who am worth a regiment. Stick to Samanda!’
As if taking her at her literal word, Glipkerio, who had been confusedly pulling away, suddenly threw his arms around her neck and almost managed to seat himself upon her great belly.
A blue curtain had billowed wide, but it was only Glipkerio’s niece Elakeria in a gray silk dress that threatened momently to burst at the seams. The plump and lascivious girl had grown fatter than ever the past few days from stuffing herself with sweets to assuage her grief at her mother’s broken neck and the crucifixion of her pet marmoset, and even more to still her fears for herself. But at the moment a weak anger seemed to be doing the work of honey and sugar.
‘Uncle!’ she cried. ‘You must do something at once! The guardsmen are gone. Neither my maid nor page answered my bell, and when I went to fetch them, I found that insolent Reetha—wasn’t she to be whipped?—inciting all the pages and maids to revolt against you, or do something equally violent. And in the crook of her left arm sat a living gray-clad doll waving a cruel little sword—surely it was he who crucified Kwe-Kwe!—urging further enormities. I stole away unseen.’
‘Revolt, eh?’ Samanda scowled, setting Glipkerio aside and unsnapping whip and truncheon from her belt. ‘Elakeria, look out for Uncle here. You know, boat trips,’ she added in a hoarse whisper, tapping her temple significantly. ‘Meanwhile I’ll give those naked sluts and minions a counter-revolution they’ll not forget.’
‘Don’t leave me!’ Glipkerio implored, throwing himself at her neck and lap again. ‘Now that Hisvin’s forgot me, you’re my only protection.’
A clock struck the quarter hour. Blue drapes parted and Hisvin came in with measured steps instead of his customary scuttling. ‘For good or ill, I come upon my instant,’ he said. He wore his black cap and toga and over the latter a belt from which hung ink-pot, quill-case, and a pouch of scrolls. Hisvet and Frix came close after him, in sober silken black robes and stoles. The blue drapes closed behind them. All three black-framed faces were grave.
Hisvin paced toward Glipkerio, who somewhat shamed into composure by the orderly behavior of the newcomers was standing beanpole tall on his own two gold-sandaled feet, had adjusted a little the disordered folds of his toga, and straightened around his golden ringlets the string of limp vegetable matter which was all that was left of his pansy wreath.
‘Oh most glorious overlord,’ Hisvin intoned solemnly, ‘I bring you the worst news’—Glipkerio paled and began again to shake—‘and the best.’ Glipkerio recovered somewhat. ‘The worst first. The star whose coming made the heavens right has winked out, like a candle puffed on by a black demon, its fires extinguished by the black swells of the ocean of the sky. In short, she’s sunk without a trace and so I cannot speak my spell against the rats. Furthermore, it is my sad duty to inform you that the rats have already, for all practical purposes, conquered Lankhmar. All your soldiery is being decimated in the South Barracks. All the temples have been invaded and the very Gods of Lankhmar slain without warning in their dry, spicy beds. The rats only pause, out of a certain courtesy which I will explain, before capturing your palace over your head.’
‘Then all’s lost,’ Glipkerio quavered chalk-pale and turning his head added peevishly, ‘I told you so, Samanda! Naught remains for me but the last voyage. World, adieu! Nehwon, farewell! I seek a happier—’
But this time his lunge toward the porch was stopped at once by his plump niece and stout palace mistress, hemming him close on either side.
‘Now hear the best,’ Hisvin continued in livelier accents. ‘At great personal peril I have put myself in touch with the rats. It transpires that they have an excellent civilization, finer in many respects than man’s—in fact, they have been secretly guiding the interests and growth of man for some time—oh ’tis a cozy, sweet civilization these wise rodents enjoy and ’twill delight your sense of fitness when you know it better! At all events the rats, now loving me well—ah, what fine diplomacies I’ve worked for you, dear master!—have entrusted me with their surrender terms, which are unexpectedly generous!’
He snatched from his pouch one of the scrolls in it, and saying, ‘I’ll summarize,’ read: ‘…hostilities to cease at once…by Glipkerio’s command transmitted by his agents bearing his wands of authority…Fires to be extinguished and damage to Lankhmar repaired by Lankhmarts under direction of…et cetera. Damage to ratly tunnels, arcades, pleasances, privies, and other rooms to be repaired by humans. ‘Suitably reduced in size’ should go in there. All soldiers disarmed, bound, confined…and so forth. All cats, dogs, ferrets, and other vermin…well, naturally. All ships and all Lankhmarts abroad…that’s clear enough. Ah, here’s the spot! Listen now. Thereafter each Lankhmart to go about his customary business, free in all his actions and possessions—free, you hear that?—subject only to the commands of his personal rat or rats, who shall crouch upon his shoulder or otherwise dispose themselves on or within his clothing,
as they shall see fit, and share his bed. But your rats,’ he went on swiftly, pointing to Glipkerio, who had gone very pale and whose body and limbs had begun again their twitchings and his features their tics, ‘your rats shall, out of deference to your high position, not be rats at all!—but rather my daughter Hisvet and, temporarily, her maid Frix, who shall attend you day and night, watch and watch, granting your every wish on the trifling condition that you obey their every command. What could be fairer, my dear master?’
But Glipkerio had already gone once more into his, ‘World, adieu! Nehwon, farewell! I seek a—’ meanwhile straining toward the porch and convulsing up and down in his efforts to be free of Samanda’s and Elakeria’s restraining arms. Of a sudden, however, he stopped still, cried, ‘Of course I’ll sign!’ and grabbed for the parchment. Hisvin eagerly led him to his audience couch and the table, meanwhile readying his writing equipment.
But here a difficulty developed. Glipkerio was shaking so that he could hardly hold pen, let alone write. His first effort with the quill sent a comet’s tail of inkdrops across the clothing of those around him and Hisvin’s leathery face. All efforts to guide his hand, first by gentleness, then by main force, failed.
Hisvin snapped his fingers in desperate impatience, then pointed a sudden finger at his daughter. She produced a flute from her black silken robe and began to pipe a sweet yet drowsy melody. Samanda and Elakeria held Glipkerio face down on his couch, the one at his shoulders, the other at his ankles, while Frix, kneeling with one knee on the small of his back began with her fingertips to stroke his spine from skull to tail in time to Hisvet’s music, favoring her left hand with its bandaged palm.
Glipkerio continued to convulse upward at regular intervals, but gradually the violence of these earthquakes of the body decreased and Frix was able to transfer some of her rhythmic strokings to his flailing arms.
