The Second Book of Lankhmar

he saw Groniger dancing a jig. Only old Ourph, for some reason, did not join in the merriment. Once he caught the old Mingol looking at him sadly.
           And so the celebration began that lasted half the night and involved much drinking and eating and impromptu cheering and dancing and parading round and about and in and out. And the longer it went on, the more grotesque the cavorting and footstamping marches got, and all of it to the rhythm of the vindictive little rhyme that still went on resounding deep in the Mouser's mind, the tune to which everything was beginning to dance: "Storm clouds thicken round Rime Isle. Nature brews her blackest bile. Monsters quicken, nightmares foal, niss and nicor, drow and troll." Those lines in particular seemed to the Mouser to describe what was happening just now — a birth of monsters. (But where were the trolls?) And so on (the rhyme) until its doomful and monstrously compelling end: "Mingols to their deaths must go, down to weedy hell below, never draw an easy breath, suffer an unending death, everlasting pain and strife, everlasting death in life. Mingol madness ever burn! Never peace again return!"
           And through it all the Mouser maintained his perhaps glassy-eyed smile and jaunty, insolent air of supreme self-confidence, he answered one repeated question with, "No, I'm no orator — never had any training — though I've always liked to talk," but inwardly he seethed with curiosity. As soon as he got a chance. he asked Cif, "Whatever did I say to bring them around, to change their minds so utterly?"
           "Why, you should know," she told him.
           "But tell me in your own words," he said.
           She deliberated. "You appealed entirely to their feelings, to their emotions," she said at last, simply. "It was wonderful."
           "Yes, but what exactly did I say? What were my words?"
           "Oh, I can't tell you," she protested. "It was so all of a piece that no one thing stood out — I've quite forgotten the details. Content you, it was perfect."
           Later on he ventured to inquire of Groniger, "At what point did my arguments begin to persuade you?"
           "How can you ask that?" the grizzled Rimelander rejoined, a frown of honest puzzlement furrowing his brow. "It was all so supremely logical, clearly and coldly reasoned. Like two and two makes four. How can one point to one part of arithmetic as being more compelling than another?"
           "True, true," the Mouser echoed reluctantly, and ventured to add, "I suppose it was the same sort of rigorous logic that persuaded you to accept the gods Odin and Loki?"
           "Precisely," Groniger confirmed.
           The Mouser nodded, though he shrugged in spirit. Oh, he knew what had happened all right, he even checked it out a little later with Rill.
           "Where did you light your torch?" he asked.
           "At the god's fire, of course," she answered. "At the god's fire in the Flame Den." And then she kissed him. (She wasn't too bad at that either, even though there was nothing to the whole kissing business.) Yes, he knew that the god Loki had come out of the flames and possessed him for a while (as Fafhrd had perhaps once been possessed by the god Issek back in Lankhmar) and spoken through his lips the sort of arguments that are so convincing when voiced by a god or delivered in time of war or comparable crisis — and so empty when proclaimed by a mere mortal on any ordinary occasion.
           And really there was no time for speculation about the mystery of what he'd said, now that there was so much to be done, so many life-and-death decisions to be made, so many eventful trains of action to be guided to their conclusions — once these folk had got through celebrating and taken a little rest.
           Still, it would be nice to know just a little of what he'd actually said, he thought wistfully. Some of it might even have been clever. Why in heaven's name, for instance, and to illustrate what, had he taken the queller out of his pouch and whirled it around his head?
           He had to admit it was rather pleasant being possessed by a god (or would be if one could remember any of it) but it did leave one feeling empty, that is, except for the ever-present Mingols-to-their-deaths jingle — that he'd never get shut of, it seemed.

             * * * *

           Next morning Fafhrd's band got their