The Second Book of Lankhmar

be blasted by your incantations. When, oh when, is that planet of yours going to reach its proper spot on the starry stage so you can recite and finger-weave your rat-deadly magic? What's delaying it, Hisvin? I command that planet to move faster! Else I will send a naval expedition across the unknown Outer Sea to sink it!”
    The skinny, round-shouldered grain-merchant sorrowfully sucked in his cheeks beneath the flaps of his black leather cap, raised his beady eyes ceilingward, and in general made a most pious face.
    “Alas, my brave overlord,” he said, “that star's course may not yet be predicted with absolute certainty. It will soon arrive at its spot, never fear, but exactly how soon the most learned astrologer cannot foretell. Benign waves urge it forward, then a malign sky-swell drives it back. It is in the eye of a celestial storm. As an iceberg-huge jewel floating in the blue waters of the heavens, it is subject to their currents and ragings. Recall also what I've told you of your traitorous courier, the Gray Mouser, who it now appears is in league with powerful witch doctors and fetish-men working against us.”
    Nervously plucking at his black toga and slapping away with his long, flappy fingers the pink hand of a maid who sought to rearrange the garment, Glipkerio spat out peevishly, “Now the Mouser. Now the stars. What sort of impotent sorcerer are you? Methinks the rats rule the stars as well as the streets and corridors of Lankhmar.”
    Reetha, who was the rebuffed maid, uttered a soundless philosophic sigh and softly as a mouse inserted her slapped hand under her overlord's toga and began most gently to scratch his stomach, meanwhile occupying her mind with a vision of herself girdled in three leather loops with Samanda's keys, thongs, chains, and whips, while the blubbery palace mistress knelt naked and quaking before her.
    Hisvin intoned, “Against that pernicious thought, I present you with a most powerful palindrome: Rats live on no evil star. Recite it with lips and mind when your warlike eagerness to come to final grips with your furry foes makes you melancholy, oh most courageous commander-in-chief.”
    “You give me words; I ask for action,” Glipkerio complained.
    “I will send my daughter Hisvet to attend you. She has now disciplined into instructive erotic capers a new dozen of silver-caged white rats.”
    “Rats, rats, rats! Do you seek to drive me mad?” Glipkerio squeaked angrily.
    “I will at once order her to destroy her harmless pets, good scholars though they be,” Hisvin answered smoothly, bowing very low so that he could make a nasty face unseen. “Then, your overlordship wishing, she shall come to soothe your battle-stung brazen nerves with mystic rhythms learned in the Eastern Lands. While her maid Frix is skilled in subtle massages known only to her and to certain practitioners in Quarmall, Kokgnab, and Klesh.”
    Glipkerio lifted his shoulders, pouted his lips, and uttered a little grunt midway between indifference and unwilling satisfaction.
    At that instant, a half-dozen of the officers and pages crouched together and directed their gazes and weapons at a doorway in which had appeared a little low shadow.
    At the same moment, her mind overly absorbed and excited by the imagined squeals and groans of Samanda forced to crawl about the kitchen floor by jerks of her globe-dressed black hair and by jabs of the long pins taken from it, Reetha inadvertently tweaked a tuft of body hair which her gently scratching fingers had encountered.
    Her monarch writhed as if stabbed and uttered a thin, piercing shriek.
    A dwarf white cat had trotted nervously into the doorway, looking back over shoulder with nervous pink eyes, and now when Glipkerio screamed, disappeared as if batted by an unseen broom.
    Glipkerio gasped, then shook a pointing finger under Reetha's nose. It was all she could do not to snap with her teeth at the soft, perfumed object, which looked as long and loathsome to her as the white caterpillar of a giant moon moth.
    “Report yourself to Samanda!” he commanded. “Describe to her in full detail your offense. Tell her to inform me beforehand of your hour of punishment.”
    Against his own rule, Hisvin permitted himself a small, veiled expression of his contempt for his overlord's wits. In his solemn professional voice he said, “For best effect, recite my palindrome backwards, letter by letter.”
    * * * *
    The Mouser snored peacefully on a thick mattress