The Second Book of Lankhmar

he had noted balanced at the top of the chute. Now he could see a hinged manhole toward its out-jutting bow.
    At the near end of the room was a large, thick-bottomed, close-barred cage containing at least a score of black rats, which chittered and wove around each other ceaselessly and sometimes clattered the bars menacingly.
    At the far end of the sea-blue room, near the circular stair leading up into the palace's tallest minaret, Glipkerio had risen in excitement from his golden audience couch shaped like a seashell. The fantastic overlord stood a head higher than Fafhrd, but was thin as a starved Mingol. His black toga made him look like a funeral cypress. Perhaps to offset this dismal effect, he wore a wreath of small violet flowers around his blond head, the hair of which clustered in golden ringlets.
    Close beside him, scarce half his height, hanging weightlessly on his arm like an elf and dressed in a loose robe of pale blonde silk, was Hisvet. The Mouser's dagger-cut, stretching from her left nostril to her jaw, was still a pink line and would have given her a sardonic expression, except that now as her gaze swung to the Mouser she smiled most prettily.
    Standing almost midway between the audience couch and the caged rats was Hisvet's father Hisvin. His skinny frame was wrapped in a black toga, but he still wore his tight black leather cap with its long cheek-flaps. His gaze was fixed fiercely on the caged rats and he was weaving his bony fingers at them hypnotically.
    “Gnawers dark from deep below...” he began to incant in a voice that whistled with age yet was authoritatively strident.
    At that instant a naked young serving maid appeared through a narrow archway near the audience couch, bearing on her shaven head a great silver tray laden with goblets and temptingly mounded silver plates. Her wrists were chained to her waist, while a fine silver chain between her narrow black anklets prevented her from taking steps more than twice as long as her narrow pink-toed feet.
    Without a “Hush!” this time, Glipkerio raised a narrow long palm to her and once again put a long, skinny finger to his lips. The slim maid's movements ceased imperceptibly and she stood silent as a birch tree on a windless day.
    The Mouser was about to say, “Puissant Overlord, this is evilest enchantment. You are consorting with your dearest enemies!"—but at that instant Hisvet smiled at him again and he felt a frighteningly delicious tingling run down his cheek and gums from the silver dart in his left temple to his tongue, inhibiting speech.
    Hisvin recommenced in his commanding Lankhmarese that bore the faintest trace of an Ilthmar lisp and reminded the Mouser of the lisping rat Grig:
    “Gnawers dark from deep below,
    To ratty grave you now must go!
    Blear each eye and drag each tail!
    Fur fall off and heartbeat fail!”
    All the black rats crowded to the farthest side of their cage from Hisvin, chittering and squeaking as if in maddest terror. Most of them were on their hind feet, clawing toward the bars like a panicky human crowd.
    The old man, now swiftly weaving his fingers in a most complex, mysterious pattern, continued relentlessly:
    “Blur your eyesight, stop your breath!—
    By corrupting spell of Death!
    Your brains are cheese, your life is fled!
    Spin once around and drop down dead!”
    And the black rats did just that —spinning like amateur actors both to ease and dramatize their falls, yet falling most convincingly all the same with varying plops onto the cage floor or each other and lying stiff and still with furry eyelids a-droop and hairless tails slack and sharp-nailed feet thrust stiffly up.
    There was a curious slow-paced slappy clapping as Glipkerio applauded with his narrow hands which were long as human feet. Then the beanpole monarch hurried to the cage with strides so lengthy that the lower two-thirds of his toga looked like the silhouette of a tent. Hisvet skipped merrily at his side, while Hisvin came circling swiftly.
    “Didst see that wonder, Gray Mouser?” Glipkerio demanded in piping voice, waving his courier closer. “There is a plague of rats in Lankhmar. You, who might from your name be expected to protect us, have returned somewhat tardily. But—bless the Black-Boned Gods!—my redoubtable servant Hisvin and his incomparable sorcerer-apprentice daughter Hisvet, having conquered the rats which menaced the grain fleet, hastened back in good time to take measures against our local