The Knight and Knave of Swords

But as to her own secret person, it still remained a mystery to the Mouser, whether under the robes, wraps, and armor she affected there was a normal maiden form or a slender rat tail and eight tits, which his imagination pictured as converging pairs of large-nippled and large-aureoled bud-breasts, the third pair to either side of her umbilicus and the fourth close together upon her pubis.

It also was a mystery to him whether the three females and he were all now of rat size or human size — ten inches or five feet high. Certainly he'd had none of the shape-changing elixir that was used in moving between Lankhmar Above and the rat city of Lankhmar Below.

His hankerings continued. Surely he deserved some reward for all the underground perils he'd braved. Women could do men so much good so easily.

There remained the problem of the three women's perfect inaudibility.

Either, he guessed, they were engaged in an elaborate pantomime (plotted by Hisvet to tease him?), or it was a dream despite its realism, or else there was some hermetic barrier (most likely magical) between his ears and them.

Supporting this last possibility was the point that while he could see the giant luminescent insects move about in their cages, striking the silver bars with wing and limb while making their bright shinings and flashes, no angry buzzings or sounds of any sort came down from them; while (most telling of all in its way) only silence accompanied the infrequent but regular plashes of the singular crystalline drops into the shimmering pool of the waterclock so close at hand.

One final circumstance suggestive of magic at work and matching the strange quiet of the scene otherwise so real: miraculously suspended in the air above the near edge of the low table, in a vertical attitude with ring- pommeled small silver grip uppermost, was a tapering whip of white snow-serpent hide scarcely a cubit long, so close at hand he could perceive its finely rugose surface, yet spy no thread or other explanation of its quiet suspension.

Well, that was the scene, he told himself. Now to decide on how to enter it, assert himself as one of the actors. He would lean suddenly forward, he told himself, reach out his right hand, seize with his three bottom fingers the neck of the carafe, unstopper it with forefinger and thumb preparatory to putting it to his parched lips, saying meanwhile something to the effect of, “Greetings, dearest delightful demoiselle, do me the kindness of interrupting this charade to give an old friend notice. Don't be alarmed, girls,” that last being for the two maids, of course.

No sooner thought than done!

But, from the start, things went most grievously agley. On his first move he felt himself gripped by a general paralysis that struck like lightning. His whole front was bruised, his right hand and arm scraped, from every side dark brown grainy walls rushed in upon him, his “Greetings” became on the first syllable a strangled growl that stabbed his ears, pained his whole skull, and changed to a fit of coughing that left him with what seemed a mouthful of raw dirt.

He was still in the same horrid buried predicament he'd been in ever since he'd slipped down out of the full-moon ceremony on Gallows Hill into the cold cruel ground that was at once so strangely permeable to his involuntary passage through it and so adamantly resistant to his attempts to escape it. This time he'd been fooled by the perfection of the occult vision, which let him see through solid earth for a distance around him, into thinking he was free, disregarding the evidence of all his other avenues of awareness. Evidently he had somehow been brought to Lankhmar's underenvirons, and nothing now remained to do but begin anew the slow game of regularizing his breathing, calming his pounding heart, and freeing his mouth grain by grain of the dirt that had entered it during his spasm, carefully working his tongue to best advantage, in order to assure bare survival. For after the pain in his skull subsided he became aware of a general weakness and a wavering of consciousness that told him he was very near the edge between being and not being and must work most cunningly to draw back from it.

During this endeavor he was assisted by the fact that he never quite altogether lost sight of a larger white and violet visual reality around him. There were patchy flashes and glimpses of it alternating with the grainy dark dirt, and he was also helped by the faint yellow glow continuing to emanate from his upper face.

When the Mouser finally re-won all the territory he'd lost by his incautious sally, he was surprised to see fair Hisvet still going through all the motions of talking, and the winsome maids through those of attending her every word, as animatedly as before. Whatever was she saying?

While carefully maintaining all underground breathing routines, he concentrated his attention on other channels of sensation than the visual, seeking to widen and deepen, and bringing to bear all his inner powers, and after a time his efforts were rewarded.

The next heavy drop fell into the pool of the waterclock with an audible dulcet plash! He almost, but not quite, gave a start.

Almost immediately a glow wasp buzzed and a diamond-fly whirred its transparent wings against the wire-thin pale bars.

Hisvet leaned back on her elbows and said in silver tones, “At ease, girls.'

They appeared to relax their attention — a little, at any rate.

She tapped three fingers against the ruby rondure of her lips as she yawned prettily. “My, that was a most lengthy and boring lecture,” she commented. “Yet you endured it most commendably, dear Threesie,” she addressed the dark-haired maid. “And you too, Foursie,” she told the fair-haired one. She picked up from beside her a long emerald-headed pin and flourished it playfully. “There was not once the need for me to make use of this upon either of you,” she said, laughing, “to recall to attention the willful wandering mind and wake the lazy dreamer.'

Both girls shaped their lips to appreciative smiles, while giving the pin most sour looks.

Hisvet handed it to Foursie, who bore it somewhat gingerly across the room to a drawered chest topped with cosmetics and mirrors, and inserted it into a spherical black cushion that held jewel-headed others such, compassing all the hues of the rainbow.

Meanwhile Hisvet addressed Threesie, whose eyes widened as she listened. “During my talk I twice got the distinct impression that we were being spied on by an evil intelligence, one of the criminous sort my father deals with, or one of our own enemies or a cast-off lover perchance.” She searched her gaze around the walls, lingering somewhat overlong, the Mouser felt, in his direction.

“I will meditate on it,” she continued. “Dear Threesie, fetch me my silver-inlaid black opal figure of the world of Nehwon which I call the Opener of the Way.'

Threesie nodded dutifully and went to the same chest Foursie had just visited, passing her midway.

“Dear Foursie,” Hisvet greeted the blonde, “fetch me a beaker of white wine. My throat has grown quite dry with all that stupid talking.'

Foursie bowed her fair-thatched head and came to the low table set against the wall behind which the Mouser was embedded in earth invisible to him. He studied her appreciatively as she unstoppered the carafe he'd so disastrously snatched at and neatly filled a shining glass so tall and narrow it looked like a measuring tube. Her white uniform tunic was secured down the front with large circular jet buttons.

Returning to her mistress, she went down on her knees without bending her slender body in any other way and proffered the refreshment.

“Taste it first,” Hisvet instructed.

Getting this instruction, not uncommonly given servants by aristocrats, Foursie threw back her head and poured a short gush of the fluid between her parted lips without touching them to the glass, which she next held out to show its level was perceptibly decreased.

Hisvet accepted it, saying, “That was well executed, Foursie. Next time don't wait for instruction. And you might lick your lips and smile to show that you enjoyed.'

Foursie bobbed her head.

“Dear demoiselle,” Threesie called from where she knelt at the chest of drawers, “I cannot find the Opener.'

“Have you searched carefully for it?” Hisvet called back, her voice becoming slightly thin. “It is an oblate sphere big as two thumbs, inset with silver bounding the continents and flat diamonds for the cities and a larger amethyst and turquoise making the death and life poles.'

“Dear demoiselle, I know the Opener,” Threesie called respectfully.