Фриц Лейбер - Swords Of Lankhmar[Мечи Ланкмара]

But she showed no sign of so doing, nor Hisvet of ordering her away, so without more ado the Mouser began a mild love-play, catching at the violet-gloved fingers of Hisvet's left hand as they dipped toward the sweetmeats or plucking at the ribbons and edges of her violet robe, in the latter case reminding her of the discrepancy in their degree of undress and suggesting that it be corrected by the subtraction of an item or two from her outfit. Hisvet in turn would deftly jab with her dagger at his snatching hand, as if to pin it to tray or bed, and he would whip it back barely in time. It was an amusing game, this dance of hand and needle-sharp dagger — or at least it seemed amusing to the Mouser, especially after he had drained a cup or two of fiery colorless wine — and so when Hisvet asked him how he had come into the rat-world, he merrily told her the story of Sheelba's black potion and how he had first thought its effects a most damnably unfair wizardly joke, but now blessed them as the greatest 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, seeming to see things beyond reality.

"Is Frix one of your breed? — combining in some fashion the finest of human and ratly qualities," the Mouser asked quietly, keeping up with the task which, he told himself, would eventually and after an admittedly weary amount of unbraiding, allow him to arrive at his heart's desire.

Hisvet shook her head languorously, laying aside her dagger. "Frix is my dearest slave and almost sister, but not by blood. Indeed she is the dearest slave in all Nehwon, for she is a princess and perchance by now a queen in her own world. While a-travel between worlds, she was ship-wrecked here and beset by demons, from whom my father rescued her, at the price that she serve me forever."

At this, Frix spoke at last, though without moving else but her lips and tongue, not even her eyes to look at them. "Or until, sweetest mistress, I three times save your life at entire peril of my own. That has happened once now, aboard _Squid_, when the dragon would have gobbled you."

"You would never leave me, dear Frix," Hisvet said confidently.

"I love you dearly and serve you faithfully," Frix replied. "Yet all things come to an end, blessed Demoiselle."

"Then I shall have the Gray Mouser to protect me, and you unneeded," Hisvet countered somewhat pettishly, lying on an elbow. "Leave us for the nonce, Frix, for I would speak privately with him."

With merriest smile Frix came from between the deadly cages, made a curtsy toward the bed, resumed her yellow mask and swiftly went off through the second unsecret doorway, curtained with filmy silver.

Still lifted on her elbow, Hisvet turned toward the Mouser her slender form and her taper-face alight with beauty. He reached toward her eagerly, but she captured his questing hands in her cool fingers and fondling them asked, or rather stated, her eyes feeding on his, "You will love me forever, will you not, who dared the dark and fearsome tunnels of the rat-world to win me?"

"That will I surely, O Empress of Endless Delights," the Mouser answered fervently, maddened by desire and believing his words to the ends of the universe of his feelings — almost.

"Then I think it proper to relieve you of _this_," Hisvet said, putting the fingers of her two hands to his temple, "for it would be an offense against myself and my supreme beauty to depend on a charm when I may now wholly depend on _you_."

And with only the tiniest tweak of pain inflicted, she deftly squeezed with her fingernails the silver dart from under the Mouser's skin, as any woman might squeeze out a blackhead or whitehead from the visage of her lover. She showed him the dart gleaming on her palm. He for his part felt no change in his feelings whatever. He still adored her as divinity — and the fact that previously in his life he had never put any but momentary trust in any divinity whatever seemed of no importance at all, at least at this moment.