[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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
file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%2...GM5%20-%20The%20Swords%20of%20Lankhmar.txt (58 of 99) [12/28/2004 4:47:57 PM]
file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/Fritz%20Leiber%20-%20FGM5%20-%20The%20Swords%20of%20Lankhmar.txt
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.
The four other doorways to the kitchen, even the one in the gallery, also had their
curtains drawn. The great hot room had only two occupants. Fat Samanda, perspiring in her black
wool dress and under the prickly plum pudding of her piled black hair, was heating in the whitely
blazing fireplace the seven wire lashes of a long-handled whip. She drew it forth a little. The
strands glowed dull red. She thrust it back. Her sparse, sweat-beaded black mustache lengthened
and shed its salt rain in a smile as her tiny, fat-pillowed eyes fed on Reetha, who stood with
arms straight down her sides and chin high, almost in the room's center, half faced away from the
blaze. The serving maid wore only her black leather collar. The diamond-stripe patterns of her
last whippings still showed faintly down her back.
"Stand straighter, my pet," Samanda cooed like a cow. "Or would it be easier if your wrists
were roped to a beam and your ankles to the ring-bolt in the cellar door?"
Now the dry stink of dirty floorwater was strongest in the Mouser's nostrils. Glancing down
and to one side through his slit, he noted a large wooden pail filled almost to the brim with a
mop's huge soggy head, lapped around by gray, soap-foamy water.
Samanda inspected the seven wires again. They glowed bright red. "Now," she said. "Brace
yourself, my poppet."
Slipping through the curtain and snatching up the mop by its thick, splintery handle, the
Mouser raced at Samanda, holding the mop's huge, dripping Medusa-head between their faces in hopes
that she would not be able to identify her assailant. As the fiery wires hissed faintly through
the air, he took her square in the face with a big smack and a gray splash, so that she was driven
back a yard before she tripped on a long grilling-fork and fell backwards on her hinder fat-
cushions.
Leaving the mop lying on her face with its handle neatly down her front, the Mouser whirled
around, noting as he did a watery yellow eye in the nearest curtain slit and also the last red
winking out of the wires lying midway between the fireplace and Reetha, still stiffly erect and
with eyes squeezed shut and muscles taut against the red-hot blow.
He grabbed her arm at its pit, she screamed with amazement and pent tension, but he ignored
this and hurried her toward the doorway by which he had entered, then stopped short at the tramp
of many boots just beyond it. He rushed the girl in turn toward the two other leather-curtained
doorways that hadn't an eye in their slits. More boots tramping. He sped back to the room's
center, still firmly gripping Reetha.
Samanda, still on her back, had pushed the mop away with her pudgy fingers and was
frantically wiping her eyes and squealing from soap-smart and rage.
The watery yellow eye was joined by its partner as Glipkerio strode in, daffodil wreath [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]