The Second Book of Lankhmar

somewhat sorry he had had to desert Fafhrd, who had been immersed in an apparently endless drinking and dicing bout with Movarl's toughest henchmen when Squid had sailed from Kvarch Nar—the great oafs died of wine and their losses each dawn, but were reborn in the late afternoon with thirst restored and money-pouches miraculously refilled.
    But he was even more pleased that now he alone would bear Glipkerio Movarl's thanks for the four shiploads of grain and be able all by himself to tell the wondrous tale of the dragon, the rats, and their human masters—or colleagues. By the time Fafhrd got back from Kvarch Nar, broken-pursed and likely broken-pated too, the Mouser would be occupying a fine apartment in Glipkerio's palace and be able subtly to irk his large comrade by offering him hospitalities and favors.
    He wondered idly where Hisvin and Hisvet and their small entourage were now. Perhaps in Sarheenmar, or more likely Ilthmar, or already lurching by camel-train from that city to some retreat in the Eastern Lands, to be well away from Glipkerio's and Movarl's vengeance. Unwilled, his left hand rose to his temple, gently fingering the tiny straight ridge there. Truly, at this already dreamy distance, he could not hate Hisvet or the brave proxy-creature Frix. Surely Hisvet's vicious threats had been in part a kind of love-play. He did not doubt that some part of her yearned for him. Besides, he had marked her far worse than she had marked him. Well, perhaps he would meet her again some year in some far corner of the world.
    These foolishly forgiving and forgetting thoughts of the Mouser were in part due, he knew himself, to his present taut yearning for any acceptable girl. Kvarch Nar under Movarl had proved a strait-laced city, by the Mouser's standards, and during his brief stay the one erring girl encountered—one Hrenlet—had chosen to err with Fafhrd. Well, Hrenlet had been something of a giantess, albeit slender, and now he was in Lankhmar, where he knew a dozen-score spots to ease his tautness.
    The silty-brown water gave way abruptly to deep green. The sea-wherry passed beyond the outflow of the Hlal and was darting along atop the Lankhmar Deep, which dove down sheer-walled and bottomless at the very foot of the wave-pitted great rock on which stood the citadel and the palace. And now the wherrymen had to row out around a strange obstruction: a copper chute wide as a man is tall that, braced by great brazen beams, angled down from a porch of the palace almost to the surface of the sea. The Mouser wondered if the whimmy Glipkerio had taken up aquatic sports during his absence. Or perhaps this was a new way of disposing of unsatisfactory servants and slaves—sliding them suitably weighted into the sea. Then he noted a spindle-shaped vehicle (if it was that) thrice as long as a man and made of some dull gray metal poised at the top of the chute. A puzzle.
    The Mouser dearly loved puzzles, if only to elaborate on them rather than solve them, but he had no time for this one. The wherry had drawn up at the royal wharf, and he was haughtily exhibiting to the clamoring eunuchs and guards his starfish-emblemed courier's ring from Glipkerio and his parchment sealed with the cross-sworded seal of Movarl.
    The latter seemed to impress the palace-fry most. He was swiftly bowed across the dock, mounted a dizzily tall, gaily-painted wooden stair, and found himself in Glipkerio's audience chamber—a glorious sea-fronting blue-tiled room, each large triangular tile bearing a fishy emblem in bas-relief.
    The room was huge despite the blue curtains dividing it now into two halves. A pair of naked and shaven pages bowed to the Mouser and parted the curtains for him. Their sinuous silent movements against that blue background made him think of mermen. He stepped through the narrow triangular opening—to be greeted by a rather distant but imperious “Hush!”
    Since the hissing command came from the puckered lips of Glipkerio himself and since one of the beanpole monarch's hand-long skinny fingers now rose and crossed those lips, the Mouser stopped dead. With a fainter hiss the blue curtains fell together behind him.
    It was a strange and most startling scene that presented itself. The Mouser's heart missed a beat—mostly in self-outrage that his imagination had completely missed the weird possibility that was now staged before him.
    Three broad archways led out onto a porch on which rested the pointy-ended gray vehicle