Swords Of Lankhmar

"_Also_," Hisvin continued implacably, his fingernails like a spiked trap. "_Beware of the Gray Mouser!_ Set your guards on the watch for him! And now… be off to your flagellatory pastimes," he added brightly, loosing his horny nails from Glipkerio's arm.

Massaging the dents they'd made, hardly yet realizing he was free, Glipkerio babbled on, "Ah yes, the Mouser — bad, bad! But the rest… good, good! Enormous thanks, Hisvin! And now I must rush me — " And he turned away with a lunging, improbably long step.

" — to see a maid — " Hisvin couldn't resist repeating.

As if the words stung him between the shoulders, Glipkerio turned back at that and interrupted with some spirit. "To attend to business of highest importance! I have other secret weapons than yours, old man — and other sorcerors too!" And then he was swift-striding off again, black toga at extremest stretch.

Cupping bony hand to wrinkled lips, Hisvin cried after him sweetly, "I hope your business writhes prettily and screams most soothingly, brave overlord!"

The Gray Mouser showed his courier's ring to the guards at the opal-tiled land entry of the palace. He half expected it not to work. Hisvin had had two days to poison silly Glip's mind against him, and indeed there were sidewise glances and a wait long enough for the Mouser to feel the full strength of his hangover and to swear he'd never drink so much, so mixed again. And to marvel too at his stupidity and good luck in venturing last night into the dark, rat-infested streets and getting back silly-drunk to Nattick's through some of the darkest of them without staggering into a second rat-ambush. Ah well, at least he'd found Sheelba's black vial safe at Nattick's, resisted the impulse to drink it while tipsy, and he'd got that heartening, titillating note from Hisvet. As soon as his business was finished here, he must hie himself straight to Hisvin's house and —

A guard returned from somewhere and nodded sourly. He was passed inside.

From the sneer-lipped third butler, who was an old gossip friend of the Mouser, he learned that Lankhmar's overlord was with his Emergency Council, which now included Hisvin. He resisted the grandiose impulse to show off his Sheelban rat-magic before the notables of Lankhmar and in the presence of his chief sorcerous rival, though he did confidently pat the black vial in his pouch. After all, he needed a spot where rats were foregathered for the thing to work and he needed Glipkerio alone best to work on him. So he strolled into the dim mazy lower corridors of the palace to waste an hour and eavesdrop or chat as opportunity afforded.

As generally happened when he killed time, the Mouser soon found himself headed for the kitchen. Though he dearly detested Samanda, he made a point of slyly courting her, because he knew her power in the palace and liked her stuffed mushrooms and mulled wine.

The plain-tiled yet spotless corridors he now traversed were empty. It was the slack half hour when dinner has been washed up and supper mostly not begun, and every weary servitor who can flops on a cot or the floor. Also, the menace of the rats doubtless discouraged wanderings of servant and master alike. Once he thought he heard a faint boot-tramp behind him, but it faded when he looked back, and no one appeared. By the time he had begun to smell foods and fire and pots and soap and dishwater and floorwater, the silence had became almost eerie. Then somewhere a bell harshly knelled three times and from ahead, "Get out!" was suddenly roared in Samanda's harsh voice. The Mouser shrank back despite himself. A leather curtain bellied a score of paces ahead of him and three kitchen boys and a maid came hurrying silently into the corridor, their bare feet making no sound on the tiles. In the light filtering down from the tiny, high windows they looked like waxen mannikins as they fled swiftly past him. Though they avoided him, they seemed not to see him. Or perhaps that was only some whip-ingrained "eyes front!" discipline.

As silently as they — who couldn't even make the noise of a hair dropping, since this morning's barbering had left them none — the Mouser hurried forward and put his eye to the slit in the leather curtains.