Фриц Лейбер - Swords Of Lankhmar[Мечи Ланкмара]

So it was that the tilting told Fafhrd that the Sinking Land was once more about to submerge. And now the tilt had increased so much that he had to pull a little on the mare's right bridle to keep her to the road. Looking back over right shoulder, he saw that the four black horsemen were also coming on faster, in fact somewhat faster than he.

As his gaze returned to his goal of safety, the Marsh, he saw the near waters of the Inner Sea shoot upward in a line of gray, foam geysers — the first escape of vapors — while the waters of the Sea of the East drew suddenly closer.

Then very slowly the rock beneath him began to tilt in the opposite direction, until at last he was pulling on the mare's left bridle to keep her to the road. He was very glad she was a Mingol beast, trained to ignore any and all unnaturalness, even earthquake.

And now it was the still waters of the Sea of the East that exploded upward in a long, dirty, bubbling fence of escaping gas, while the waters of the Inner Sea came foaming almost to the road.

Yet the Marsh was very close. He could make out individual thorn trees and cactuses and thickets of giant sea-grass outlined against the now utterly bled west. And then he saw straight ahead a gap that — pray Issek! — would be the causeway.

Sparks sped whitely from under the mare's iron shoes. The beast's breath rasped.

But now there was a new disquieting change in the landscape, though a very slight one. Almost imperceptibly, the whole Great Salt Marsh was beginning to rise.

The Sinking Land was beginning its periodic submergence.

From either side, from north and south, gray walls were converging on him — the foam-fronted raging waters of the Inner Sea and the Sea of the East rushing to sink the great stone shield now its gaseous support was gone.

A black barrier a yard high loomed just ahead. Fafhrd leaned low in the saddle, nudging the mare's flanks with his heels, and with a great long leap the mare lifted them the needed yard and found them firm footing again, and with never a pause galloped on unchangingly, except that now instead of clashing sharply against rock, the iron shoes struck mutedly on the tight-packed gravel of the causeway.

From behind them came a mounting, rumbling, snarling roar that suddenly rose to a crashing climax. Fafhrd looked back and saw a great starburst of waters — not gray now, but ghostly white in the remaining light from the west — where the waves of the Inner Sea had met the rollers of the Sea of the East exactly at the road.

He was about to look forward again and slow his mount, when out of that pale, churny explosion there appeared a black horse and rider, then another, then a third. But no more — the fourth had evidently been engulfed. The hair lifted on his back at the thought of the leaps the three other beasts had made with their black riders, and he cursed the Mingol mare to make more speed, knowing that kind words went unheard by her.

Lankhmar readied herself for another night of terror as shadows lengthened toward infinity and the sunlight turned deep orange. Her inhabitants were not reassured by the lessening number of murderous rats in the streets; they smelled the electric calm before the storm and they barricaded themselves in upper stories as they had the night gone by. Soldiers and constables, according to their individual characters, grinned with relief or griped at bureaucracy's inanities when they got the news that they were to repair to the Southern Barracks one hour before midnight to be harangued by Olegnya Mingolsbane, who was reputed to make the longest and most tedious spittle-spraying speeches of any Captain General in Nehwon's history, and to stink with the sourness of near-senility besides that.

Aboard _Squid_, Slinoor gave orders for lights to burn all night and an all-hands watch to be kept. While the black kitten, forsaking the crow's nest, paced the rail nearest the docks, from time to time uttering an anxious mew and eyeing the dark streets as if with mingled temptation and dread.

For a while Glipkerio soothed his nerves by observing the subtle torturing of Reetha, designed chiefly to fray her nerves rather than her flesh, and by auditing her hours-long questioning by well-trained inquisitors, who sought to hammer from her the admission that the Gray Mouser was leader of the rats — as his shrinking to rat-size seemed surely to prove — and also force her to divulge a veritable hand-book of information on the Mouser's magical methods and sorcerous strategems. The girl truly entranced Glipkerio: she reacted to threats, evil teasings, and relatively minor pain in such a lively, unwearying way.

But after a while he nonetheless grew bored and had a light supper served him in the sunset's red glow on his sea-porch outside the Blue Audience Chamber and beside the head of the great copper chute where balanced the great leaden spindle, which he reached out and touched from time to time for reassurance. He hadn't lied to Hisvin, he told himself smugly; he _did_ have at least one other secret weapon, albeit it wasn't a weapon of offense, but rather the ultimate opposite. Pray, though, he wouldn't have to use it! Hisvin had promised that at midnight he would work his spell against the assaulting rats, and thus far Hisvin had never failed — had he not conquered the rats of the grain fleet? — while his daughter and her maid had ways of soothing Glipkerio that amazingly did not involve whippings. He had seen with his own eyes Hisvin slay rats with his spell — while on his own part he had arranged for all soldiers and police to be in the South Barracks at midnight listening to that tiresome Olegnya Mingolsbane. He had done his part, he told himself; Hisvin would do his; and at midnight his troubles and vexations would be done.

But it was such a long time until midnight! Once more boredom engulfed the black-togaed, purple-pansy coroneted, beanpole monarch, and he began to think wistfully of whips and Reetha. Beyond all other men, he mused, an overlord, burdened by administration and ceremonies, had no time for even the most homely hobbies and innocent diversions.

Reetha's questioners, meanwhile, gave up for the day and left her in Samanda's charge, who from time to time described gloatingly to the girl the various all-out thrashings and other torments the palace mistress would visit on her as soon as her namby-pamby inquisitors were through with her. The much-abused maid sought to comfort herself with the thought that her madcap gray rescuer might somehow regain his proper size and return to work again her escape. Surely, and despite all the nasty insinuations she had endured, the Gray Mouser was rat-size against his will. She recalled the many fairy tales she had heard of lizard- and frog-princes restored to handsomeness and proper height by a maiden's loving kiss, and despite her miseries, her eye-browless eyes grew dreamy.

The Mouser squinted through Grig's notched mask at the glorious Council Chamber and the other members of the Supreme Thirteen. Already the scene had become oppressively familiar to him, and he was damnably tired of lisping. Nevertheless, he gathered himself for a supreme effort, which at least was one that tickled his wits.

His coming here had been simplicity itself, and inevitability too. Upon reaching the Fifth Level after parting with Hreest and his pike-rats, rat-pages had fallen in beside him at the foot of the white marble stairs, and a rat-chamberlain had gone solemnly before him, ringing an engraved silver bell which probably once had tinkled from the ankle of a temple dancer in the Street of the Gods in the world above. Thus, footing it grandly himself with the aid of his sapphire-topped ivory staff, though still hobbling a little, he had been wordlessly conducted into the Council Chamber and to the very chair which he now occupied.