The Second Book of Lankhmar

snake, Igwarl drew a dagger from his belt.
           His aged parent rapped his knuckles with the rod and the weapon clattered on the rock floor.
           This second betrayal rendered Igwarl moveless.
           Quarmal snapped the fingers of his left hand thrice with measured rapidity, slipping his spatulate middle finger off his thumb and bringing it down precisely upon the crevice between his ring finger and his thumb's root with a crack loud as that of a carter's whip. And again. And yet again.
           At the first crack the girl halted her forward movement with her knife a handsbreadth short of Igwarl's belly and her eyes widened.
           At the second crack realization grew in them of the enormity of the deed she had attempted. She paled.
           At the third crack their pupils rolled upward and they fluttered shut as self-horrified unconsciousness enwrapped her. The knife slipped from her fingers and dashed on the rock floor. She swayed forward. Quarmal's rod darted past the bemused boy's shoulder and its brass ferrule took her a handsbreadth below a point midway between the nipplets of her budding breasts. She winced shut-eyed and went a shade paler.
           "Catch Issa ere she falls," Quarmal directed his son. To his credit Igwarl managed to comply swiftly enough, supporting her supine slim form with one arm beneath her shoulders, the other under her thighs.
           "Dispose her here," said Quarmal, indicating the narrow table. Igwarl did that too. The ability to act in crisis with a certain precision and a minimum of fuss seemed to run in the family, it occurred to the Mouser.
           Quarmal: You were not expecting an instructive demonstration. (Quarmal pointed this out matter-of-factly, almost casually.) Ensconced in our cavern world, you were not on guard against assault. A sister, no matter how well trained, is not to be fully trusted if there are those can undercut your training. To teach you a lesson I entranced Issa to attack you without her conscious knowledge, then countermanded her before the end.
           Igwarl: Your sinister fingers' treble snap? (Old Quarmal nodded.) What if the countermand had failed to work?
           Quarmal: You saw the celerity and sureness with which I used this rod, both to stay Issa's fall and prevent you from shortening your lesson and wasting one of Quarmall's more promising female servants.
           Igwarl: But what if the rod had failed also?
           Quarmal: Why, there are always more where you came from, youngster. Do you suppose a father who for Quarmall's good would let your gifted elder brothers kill each other, would spare you in like circumstance? Besides, my demonstration was designed to teach you not to trust me overmuch.
           Igwarl: You have proven your point, devious parent.
           Quarmal: (lifting Issa's left foot to display angry red circles upon heel and toe) And why this damage and disfigurement to Quarmall's precious property?
            Igwarl: (sulkily) It was needful to correct. Those are not regions normally seen, contributing to beauty.
           Quarmal: A limp's a beauty mark? There was the instep to be considered, not to mention the armpits.
           Igwarl: I bow to your superior wisdom, sire. Impart to me the skill of enchantment.
           Quarmal: All in good time, my son. I must reassure Issa.
           The old man tweaked her left breast sharply, bringing her awake with a gasp. But when he would have spoken to her, his red eyes lifted away and went distant. His right hand fixed on Igwarl's shoulder and bore down. The boy grimaced with the pain.
           "A hostile force is in the rocks surrounding us," the old man hissed. "It came on whilst I was rapt instructing you."
           His two children, looking up, quaked at what they saw in his ruby orbs.
           In his grainy retreat the Mouser was aware of the intrusion. The pressure of the earth around him on his body increased, reached a breath-stopping maximum, then slackened off till he felt almost free to shoot off at the speed of light and reach the ends of Nehwon in a trice, then began to tighten up again. It happened over and over in a vast chthonian pulse, as though a giant were pacing overhead.
           In his spell-casting map room and library, red-orbed old Quarmal found words. "It's my old enemy of twelve years back, Gwaay's champion, that cutpurse of