The Second Book of Lankhmar

humankind. Then in the course of numerous revolts and repressions, the rats transferred their cities underground for privacy and to give them peace and quiet to perfect their culture, but maintaining secret dominion over their servant-slaves." The girl's voice was thoughtful. Her left hand played with a ridgy white seashell embedded in the gray plank on which their sweat dripped. Beside it was a boreworm hole, into which she ran her little finger back and forth. It fitted nicely. She continued, "There's a dark magic known only to the doubly initiated (which mother and I were not) whereby rats and their allies may switch size back and forth between rat and human. The rats' prophets and chiefest allies amongst humankind are numbered among their saints, of whom the recentest to be canonized are St. Hisvin of Lankhmar and his daughter, St. Hisvet, Lankhmar Below being the chiefest city of the rats, although, unlike Ilthmar, the worship of the rat god is forbidden in Lankhmar Above."
           Afreyt handed Fingers a stiff-bristled brush and presented her back, on which the girl, kneeling, got to work industriously. The tall woman asked, "Have you seen representations in Ilthmar of this female saint?"
           "Aye, Lady, there's a carving at her small shrine in the Rat's dockside temple. (Rats were also the first mariners, teaching man the art.) She is depicted nude with her hair in one braid long as her slender self and with eight dainty rat dugs; two centered in small high breasts, the next pair low on her rib cage, two flanking her cord scar, and two close to either side her maiden mound above the leg crease."
           "My, such a multiplicity of charms! One wonders whether to envy or despise." Afreyt chuckled.
           "Her cult's a very popular one, Lady," the girl replied somewhat defensively as she scrubbed away. "She commands demons, it is believed, and has enjoyed the services of Queen Frixifrax of Arilia."
           Afreyt laughed. "Truth to tell, child, I would have been inclined to rate your whole rat tale nonsense, like half the stories fed us Rime Islers dwelling on the edge of things to awe and befool us, did it not fit so well with what Fafhrd has told me about his and Captain Mouser's greatest adventure (though there were more than one of those, to hear them talk) during the last days of Overlord Glipkerio's reign, when there was an incursion or eruption of armed rats into Lankhmar City, along with many other weird events, and involving the unscrupulous grain merchant Hisvin and his scandalous daughter Hisvet, both the rats' allies and bearing the same names as the two saints in your own strange tale."
           "I am grateful your Ladyship believes at least partly in my truthful account," Fingers replied a little huffily. "I may be overcredulous, Lady, but never a liar."
           Afreyt turned around smiling. "Don't be so formal and serious," she chided merrily. "Give me the brush and turn your back."
           The girl complied, facing the two high horn windows to the outside, which were now whitening with the rising moon a day past full. Afreyt scraped the brush across a lump of green soap and set to work, saying, "During the twists and turns of that famous rat-man fracas in Lankhmar (it happed at least ten years ago — you'd have been still an infant at Tovilyis), the Gray Mouser had to pretend a great love for this Hisvet chit (so Fafhrd tells me), pursuing her through a series of magical size changes from Lankhmar Above down to Lankhmar Below and then back again. His true love then was a royal kitchen slave named Reetha, at least she was the one he ended up with. At that time Fafhrd's consort was the Ghoulish warrior-maid Kreeshkra — a walking skeleton because Ghouls' flesh's invisible, their bones on view. Truly there are times when I don't know if I can believe half of the things Fafhrd says, while the Mouser's always a great liar — he boasts of it."
           "I was told Ghouls ate people," Fingers observed, bracing her back against Afreyt's brisk scrubbing. "And much later I heard about the latter-day rat war in Lankhmar. Friska told me about it in Ilthmar, after we'd moved there from Tovilyis, when she was warning me against believing everything the rat priests told us."
           "Friska?" Afreyt questioned, pausing in her scrubbing.
           "My mother's name when she was a slave in Quarmall before she escaped to Tovilyis, where I was