The Second Book of Lankhmar

good ever done him in his life—for he twisted the tale somewhat to make it appear that his sole objective all along had been to win to her side and bed.
    He ended by asking, as he parted two fingers to let Hisvet's dagger strike between them, “How ever did you and dear Frix guess that I was impersonating Grig?”
    She replied, “Most simply, gracious gamesman. We went to fetch my father from the council, for there is still an important journey he, Frix, and I must make tonight. At a distance we heard you speak and I divined your true voice despite your clever lispings. Thereafter we followed you.”
    “Ah, surely I may hope you love me as dearly, since you trouble to know me so well,” the Mouser warbled infatuatedly, slipping hand aside from a cunning slash. “But tell me, divine one, how comes it that you and Frix and your father are able to live and hold great power in the rat-world?”
    With her dagger she pointed somewhat languidly toward the vanity table holding the black and white vials, informing him, “My family has used the same potion as Sheelba's for countless centuries, and also the white potion, which restores us at once to human-size. During those same centuries we have interbred with the rats, resulting in divinely beautiful monsters such as I am, but also in monsters most ugly, at least by human standards. Those latter of my family stay always below ground, but the rest of us enjoy the advantages and delights of living in two worlds. The inter-breeding has also resulted in many rats with human-like hands and minds. The spreading of civilization to the rats is largely our doing, and we shall rule as chiefs and chieftesses paramount, or even goddesses and gods, when the rats rule men.”
    This talk of interbreeding and monsters startled the Mouser somewhat and gave him to think, despite his ever more firmly gyved ensorcelment by Hisvet. He recalled Lukeen's old suggestion, made aboard Squid , that Hisvet concealed a she-rat's body under her maiden robes and he wondered—somewhat fearfully yet most curiously—just what form Hisvet's slim body did take. For instance, did she have a tail? But on the whole he was certain that whatever he discovered under her violet robe would please him mightily, since now his infatuation with the grain-merchant's daughter had grown almost beyond all bounds.
    However, he outwardly showed none of this wondering, but merely asked, as if idly, “So your father is also Lord Null, and you and he and Frix regularly travel back and forth between the big and little worlds?”
    “Show him, dear Frix,” Hisvet commanded lazily, lifting slim fingers to mask a yawn, as though the hand-and-dagger game had begun to bore her.
    Frix moved back against the wall until her head with its natural jet-black sheath and copper-gleaming plaits, for she had thrown back her hood, was between the cages of the pocket-viper and the most enraged scorpion. Her dark eyes were a sleepwalker's, fixed on things infinitely remote. The scorpion darted his moist white sting between the bars rat-inches from her ear, the viper's trifid tongue vibrated angrily against her cheek, while his fangs struck the silver rounds and dripped venom that wetted oilily her yellow silken shoulder, but she seemed to take no note whatever of these matters. The fingers of her right hand, however, moved along a row of medallions decorating the glow-worm tank behind her, and without looking down, she pressed two at once.
    The painting of the girl and crocodile moved swiftly upward, revealing the foot of a dark steep stairway.
    “That leads without branchings to my father's and my house,” Hisvet explained.
    The painting descended. Frix pressed two other medallions and the companion painting of man and leopardess rose, revealing a like stairway.
    “While that one ascends directly by way of a golden rat-hole to the private apartments of whoever is Lankhmar's seeming overlord, now Glipkerio Kistomerces,” Hisvet told the Mouser as the second painting slid down into place. “So you see, beloved, our power goes everywhere.” And she lifted her dagger and touched it lightly to his throat. The Mouser let it rest there a space before taking its tip between fingers and thumb and moving it aside. Then he as gently caught hold of the tip of one of Hisvet's braids, she offering no resistance, and began to unweave the fine silver wires from the finer silver-blonde hairs.
    Frix still stood like a statue between fang and sting,