"Shake a leg, Lazybones!" he heard the Mouser call in the same rasping tones. The Gray One must have caught a cold from the Marsh's damp or — the Fates forfend! — a fever from its miasmas.
"Tether your mount to the thorn stump," the Mouser continued gruffly. "There's food for her there and a water pool. Then come up. Speed, speed!"
Fafhrd obeyed without word or waste motion, for the drumming had become very loud.
As he leaped and caught hold of the blue window's bottom and drew himself up to it, the blue glow went out. He scrambled inside onto the reed-carpeted floor of whatever it was and swiftly squirmed around so he was looking back the way he'd come.
The Mingol mare was invisible in the dark below. The causeway's top glowed faintly in the moonlight.
Then round a cluster of thorn trees came speeding the three black riders, the drumming of the twelve hooves thunderous now. Fafhrd thought he could make out a fiendish phosphorescent glow around the nostrils and eyes of the tall black horses and he could faintly discern the black cloaks and hoods of the riders streaming in the wind of their speed. With never a pause they passed the point where he'd left the causeway and vanished behind another thorn grove to the west. He let out a long-held breath.
"Now get away from the door and brace yourself," a voice that wasn't the Mouser's at all grated over his shoulder. "I've got to be there to pilot this rig."
The hairs that had just lain down on Fafhrd's neck erected themselves again. He had more than once heard the rock-harsh voice of Sheelba of the Eyeless Face, though never seen, let alone entered, his fabulous hut. He swiftly hitched himself to one side, back against wall. Something smooth and round and cool touched the back of his neck. A wall-hung skull, it almost had to be.
A black figure crawled into the space he'd just vacated. Dimly silhouetted in the doorway, its edge touched by moonlight, he saw a black cowl.
"Where's the Mouser?" Fafhrd asked with a wheeze in his voice.
The hut gave a violent lurch. Fafhrd grabbed gropingly for and luckily found two wall posts.
"In trouble. _Deep_-down trouble," Sheelba answered curtly. "I did his voice to make you jump lively. As soon as you've fulfilled whatever geas Ningauble has laid upon you — bells, isn't it? — you must go instantly to his aid."
The hut gave a second lurch and a third, then began to rock and pitch somewhat like a ship, but in a swift rhythm and more joltingly, as if one were in a howdah on the slant back of a drunken giant giraffe.
"Go instantly where?" Fafhrd demanded, somewhat humbly.
"How should I know and why should I tell you if I did? I am not your wizard. I'm just taking you to Lankhmar by secret ways as a favor to that paunchy, seven-eyed, billion-worded dilettante in sorcery who thinks himself my colleague and has gulled you into taking him as mentor," the harsh voice responded from the hood. Then, relenting some-what, though growing gruffer, "Overlord's palace, most likely. Now shut up."
The rocking of the hut and also its speed increased. Wind pushed in, flapping the edge of Sheelba's hood. Flashes of moon-dappled marsh shot by.
"Who were those riders after me?" Fafhrd asked, clinging to his wall posts. "Ilthmar brigands? Acolytes of the grisly, scythe-armed lord?"
No reply.
"What _is_ it all about?" Fafhrd persisted. "Grand assault by a near numberless yet nameless host on Lankhmar. Nameless black riders. The Mouser deep-buried and woefully shrunk, yet alive. A tin whistle maybe summoning War Cats who are dangerous to the blower. None of it makes sense."
The hut gave a particularly vicious lurch. Sheelba still said not a word. Fafhrd grew seasick and devoted himself to hanging on.
Glipkerio, nerving himself, poked his pansy-wreathed, gold-ringleted head on its long neck through the kitchen door's leather curtains and blinking his weak yellow-irised eyes at the fire's glare, grinned an archly amiable, foolish grin.
Reetha, chained once more by the neck, sat cross-legged in front of the fire, head a-droop. Surrounded by four other maids squatting on their heels, Samanda nodded in her great chair. Yet now, though no noise had been made, her snores broke off, she opened her pig-eyes toward Glipkerio, and said familiarly, "Come in, little overlord, don't stand there like a bashful giraffe. Have the rats got you scared too? Be off to your cots, girls."
Three maids instantly rose. Samanda snatched a long pin from her sphere-dressed hair and lightly jabbed awake the fourth, who had been asleep on her heels.
Silently, except for a single swift-stifled squeal from the pricked one, the four maids bobbed a bow at Glipkerio, two at Samanda, and hurried out like so many wax mannequins. Reetha looked around wearily. Glipkerio wandered about, looking anywhere but at her, his chin a-twitch, his long fingers jittery, twining and untwining.
"The restless bug bite you, little overlord?" Samanda asked him. "Shall I make you a hot poppy-posset? Or would you like to see her whipped?" she asked, jerking a thick thumb toward Reetha. "The inquisitors ordered me not to, but of course if you should command me — "
"Oh, no, no, no, of course not," Glipkerio protested. "But speaking of whips, I've some new ones in my private collection I'd like to show you, dear Samanda, including one reputedly from Far Kiraay coated with rough-ground glass, if only you'd come with me. Also a handsomely embossed six-tined silver bull prod from — "
"Oh, so it's company you want, like all the other scared ones," Samanda told him. "Well, I'd be willing to oblige you, little overlord, but the 'quisitors told me I must keep an eye all night on this wicked girl, who's in league with the rats' leader."
Glipkerio hemmed and hawed, finally said, "Well, you could bring her along, I suppose, if you really have to."
"So I could," Samanda agreed heartily, at last levering her black-dressed bulk from her chair. "We can test your new whips on her."
"Oh, no, no, _no_," Glipkerio once more protested. Then frowning and also writhing his narrow shoulders, he added thoughtfully, "Though there are times when to get the hang of a new instrument of pain one simply must…"
"…simply must," Samanda agreed, unsnapping the silver chain from Reetha's collar and snapping on a short leash. "Lead the way, little overlord."
"Come first to my bedroom," he told her. "I'll go ahead to get my guardsmen out of the way." And he made off at his longest, toga-stretching stride.
"No need to, little overlord, they know all about your habits," Samanda called after him, then jerked Reetha to her feet. "Come, girl! — you're being mightily honored. Be glad I'm not Glipkerio, or you'd be rubbed with cheese and shoved down-cellar for the rats to nibble."
When they finally arrived through empty silk-hung corridors at Glipkerio's bed-chamber, he was standing in mingled agitation and irritation before its open, jewel-studded, thick oaken door, his black toga a-rustle from his nervous jerking.
"There weren't any guardsmen for me to warn off," he complaced. "It seems my orders were stupidly misinterpreted, extended farther than I'd intended, and my guardsmen have all gone off with the soldiers and constables to the South Barracks."
"What need you of guardsmen when you have _me_ to protect you, little overlord?" Samanda answered boisterously, slapping a truncheon hanging from her belt.
"That's true," he agreed, only a shade doubtfully, and twitched a large and complex golden key from a fold of his toga. "Now let's lock the girl in here, Samanda, if you please, while we go to inspect my new acquisitions."
"And decide which to use on her?" Samanda asked in her loud coarse voice.
Glipkerio shook his head as if in shocked disapproval, and looking at last at Reetha, said in grave fatherly tones, "No, of course not, it is only that I imagine the poor child would be bored at our expertise."
Yet he couldn't quite keep a sudden eagerness from his tones, nor a furtive gleam from his eyes.
Samanda unsnapped the leash and pushed Reetha inside.
Glipkerio warned her in last-minute apprehension, "Don't touch my night-draught now," pointing at a golden tray on a silver nig
ht table. Crystal flagons sat on the tray and also a long-stemmed goblet filled with pale apricot-hued wine.
"_Don't touch one thing_, or I'll make you beg for death," Samanda amplified, suddenly all unhumorously brutal. "Kneel at the foot of the bed on knees and heels with head bent — servile posture three — and don't move a muscle until we return."
As soon as the thick door was closed and its lock softly thudded shut and the golden key chinkingly withdrawn on the other side, Reetha walked straight to the night table, worked her cheeks a bit, spat into the night-draught, and watched the bubbly scum slowly revolve. Oh if she only had some hairs to drop in it, she yearned fiercely, but there seemed to be no fur or wool in the room and she had been shaved this very morning.
She unstoppered the most tempting of the crystal flagons and carried it about with her, swigging daintily, as she examined the room, paneled with rare woods from the Eight Cities, and its ever rarer treasures, pausing longest at a heavy golden casket full of cut but unset jewels — amethysts, aquamarines, sapphires, jades, topazes, fire opals, rubies, gimpels, and ice emeralds — which glittered and gleamed like the shards of a shattered rainbow.
She also noted a rack of women's clothes, cut for some-one very tall and thin, and — surprising beside these evidences of effeminacy — a rack of browned-iron weapons.
She glanced over several shelves of blown-glass figurines long enough to decide that the most delicate and costly-looking was, almost needless to say, that of a slim girl in boots and scanty jacket wielding a long whip. She flicked it off its shelf, so that it shattered on the polished floor and the whip went to powder.
What could they do to her that they weren't planning to do already? — she asked herself with a tight smile.
She climbed into the bed, where she stretched and writhed luxuriously, enjoying to the full the feel of the fine linen sheets against her barbered limbs, body, and head, and now and again trickling from the crystal flagon a few nectarous drops between her playfully haughty-shaped lips. She'd be damned, she told herself, if she'd drink enough to get dead drunk before the last possible instant. Thereafter Samanda and Glipkerio might find themselves hard-put to torment a limp body and blacked-out mind with any great pleasure to themselves.
Chapter Thirteen
The Mouser, reclining on his side in his litter, the tail of one of the fore-rats swaying a respectful arm's length from his head, noted that, without leaving the Fifth Level, they had arrived at a wide corridor stationed with pike-rats stiffly on guard and having thirteen heavily curtained doorways. The first nine curtains were of white and silver, the next of black and gold, the last three of white and gold.
Despite his weariness and grandiose feeling of security, the Mouser had been fairly watchful along the trip, suspecting though not very seriously that Skwee or Lord Null might have him followed — and then there was Hreest to be reckoned with, who might have discovered some clue at the water-privy despite the highly artistic job the Mouser felt he had done. From time to time there had been rats who might have been following his litter, but all these had eventually taken other turns in the mazy corridors. The last to engage his lazy suspicions had been two slim rats clad in black silken cloaks, hoods, masks, and gloves, but these without a glance toward him now disappeared arm-in-arm through the black-and-gold curtains, whispering together in a gossipy way.
His litter stopped at the next doorway, the third from the end. So Skwee and Siss outranked Grig, but he out-ranked Lord Null. This might be useful to know, though it merely confirmed the impression he had got at the council.
He sat, then stood up with the aid of his staff, rather exaggerating his leg cramp now, and tossed the fore-rat a corn-wreathed silver coin he had selected from Grig's purse. He assumed that tips would be the custom of any species of being whatever, in particular rats. Then without a backward look he hobbled through the heavy curtains, noting in passing that they were woven of fine soft gold wire and braided fine white silk threads. There was a short, dim passageway similarly curtained at the other end. He pushed through the second set of curtains and found himself alone in a cozy-feeling but rather shabby square room with curtained doorways in each of the other three walls and lit by a bronze-caged fire-beetle over each doorway. There were two closed cupboards, a writing desk with stool, many scrolls in silver containers that looked suspiciously like thimbles from the human world, crossed swords and a battle-ax fixed to the dingy walls, and a fireplace in which a single giant coal glowed redly through its coat of white ash. Above the fireplace, or rather brazier-nook, emerged from the wall a bronze-ringed hemisphere about as big as the Mouser's own rat-size head. The hemisphere was yellowish, with a large greenish-brown circle on it, and centered in this circle a black one. with a qualm of horror, the Mouser recognized it as a mummified human eye.
In the center of the room was a pillowed couch with the high back support of one who does a lot of reading lying down, and beside the couch a sizable low table with nothing on it but three bells, one copper, one silver, and one gold.
Putting his horror out of mind, for it is a singularly useless emotion, the Mouser took up the silver bell and rang it vigorously, deciding to see what taking the middle course would bring.
He had little more time than to decide that the room was that of a crusty bachelor with studious inclinations when there came backing through the curtains in the rear wall a fat old rat in spotless long white smock with a white cap on his head. This one turned and showed his silver snout and bleared eyes, and also the silver tray he was carrying, on which were steaming plates and a large steaming silver jug.
The Mouser pointed curtly at the table. The cook, for so he seemed to be, set the tray there and then came hesitantly toward the Mouser, as if to help him off with his robe. The Mouser waved him away and pointed sternly at the rear doorway. He'd be damned if he'd go to the trouble of lisping in Grig's own home. Besides, servants might have a sharper ear than colleagues for a false voice. The cook bowed bumblingly and departed.
The Mouser settled himself gratefully on the couch, deciding against removing as yet his gloves or boots. Now that he was reclining, the latter bothered him hardly at all. However, he did remove his mask and placed it close by — it was good to get more than a squinty view of things — and set to at Grig's dinner.
The steaming jug turned out to contain mulled wine. It was most soothing to his raw, dry throat and wearied nerves, though excessively aromatic — the single black clove bobbing in the jug was large as a lime and the cinnamon stick big as one of the parchment scrolls. Then, using Cat's Claw and the two-tined fork provided, he began cutting up and devouring the steaming cutlets of beef — for his nose told him it was that and not, for instance, baby. From another steaming plate he sampled one of the objects that looked like small sweet potatoes. It turned out to be a single grain of boiled wheat. Likewise, one of the yellowish cubes about as big as dice proved a grain of coarse sugar, while the black balls big as the end joint of his thumb were caviar. He speared them one at a time with his fork and munched, alternating this with mouthfuls of the beef. It was very strange to eat good tender beef, the fibers of which were thick as his fingers.
Having consumed the meaty portions of Grig's dinner and drunk all the mulled wine, the Mouser resumed his mask and settled back to plot his escape to Lankhmar Above. But the golden bell kept teasing his thoughts away from practical matters, so he reached out and rang it. Yield to curiosity without giving the mind time to get roiled, was one of his mottoes.
Hardly had the sweet _chinks_ died away when the heavy curtains of one of the side doors parted and there appeared a slim straight rat — or ratess, rather, he judged — dressed in robe, hood, mask, slippers and gloves all of fine lemon yellow silk.
This one, holding the curtains parted, looked toward him and said softly, "Lord Grig, your mistress awaits you."
The Mouser's first reaction was one of gratified conceit. So Grig did have a mistress, and his spur-of-the-moment answer to Skwee's "
Wife?" question at the council had been a brilliant stroke of intuition. Whether human-large or rat-small, he could outsmart anyone. He possessed Mouser-mind, unequaled in the universe.
Then the Mouser stood up and approached the slender, yellow-clad figure. There was something cursedly familiar about her. He wondered if she were the ratess in green he'd seen leading short-leashed the brace of shrews. She had a pride and poise about her.
Using the same stratagem he had with the cook, he silently pointed from her to the doorway that she should precede him. She acquiesced and he followed close behind her down a dim twisty corridor.
And cursedly attractive too, he decided, eyeing her slender silhouette and sniffing her musky perfume. Rather belatedly, he reminded himself that she was a rat and so should waken his uttermost repugnance. But was she necessarily a rat? He had been transformed in size, why not others? And if this were merely the maid, what would the mistress be? Doubtless lard-fat or hag-hairy, he told himself cynically. Still his excitement grew.
Sparing a moment's thought to orient himself, he discovered that the side door they'd gone out by led toward the black-curtained apartments of Lord Null — presumably — rather than to those of Siss and Skwee.
At last the yellow-clad ratess parted gold-heavy black drapes, then light violet silken ones. The Mouser passed her and found himself staring about through the notched eye-holes of Grig's mask at a large bedroom, beautifully and delicately furnished in many ways, yet the weirdest and perhaps the most frightening he had ever seen.
It was draped and carpeted and ceilinged and upholstered all in silver and violet, the latter color the exact complement of the yellow of his conductress' gowning. It was lit indirectly from below by narrow deep tanks of slimy glow-worms big as eels, set against the walls. Against these tanks were several vanity tables, each backed by its large silver mirror, so that the Mouser saw more than one reflection of his white-robed self and his slim cicerone, who had just let the silken violet curtains waft together again. The tabletops were strewn with cosmetics and the tools of beauty, variously colored elixirs and tiny cups — all except one, near a second silver-draped door, which held nothing but two score or so black and white vials.
Swords Of Lankhmar[Мечи Ланкмара] fagm-5 Page 20
