The Mouser gasped out, still with a snickering whoop, "You don't know how undersized! Halfway around the Inner Sea you say… and nevertheless time your entrance perfectly! Why you're the greatest actor of them all!" He dropped to his knees in front of the tile that had served as trapdoor and said in tones composed equally of philosophy, humor, and hysteria, "While I must lose — forever, I suppose — the greatest love of my life." He rapped the tile — it sounded very solid — and thrusting down his face called out softly, "Yoo-hoo! Hisvet!" Fafhrd jerked him to his feet.
Frix raised a hand. The Mouser looked at her, while Fafhrd had never taken his eyes off her.
"Here, little man, catch!" Smiling, she called to the Mouser and tossed him a small black vial, which he caught and goggled at foolishly. "Use it if you are ever again so silly as to wish to seek out my late mistress. I have no need of it. I have worked out my bondage in this world. I have done the diabolic Demoiselle her three services. I am free!"
As she said that last word, her eyes lit up like lamps. She threw back her black hood and took a breath so deep it seemed almost to lift her from the floor. Her eyes fixed on infinity. Her dark hair lifted on her head. Lightning crackled in her hair, formed itself in a blue nimbus, and streamed like a blue cloak down her body, over and through her black silk dress.
She turned and ran swiftly out onto the porch, Fafhrd and the Mouser after her. Glowing still more bluely and crying, "Free! Free! _Free_! Back to Arilia! Back to the World of Air!" she dove off the edge.
She did not seem to enter the waves, but skimmed just along their crests like a small, faint blue comet and then mounting toward the sky, higher and higher, became a faint blue star and vanished.
"Where is Arilia?" the Mouser asked.
"I thought this was the world of Air," Fafhrd mused.
Chapter Seventeen
The rats all over Lankkmar, after suffering huge losses, dove back everywhere into their holes and pulled tight shut the doors of such as had them. This happened also in the rooms of pink pools in the third floor of Hisvin's house, where the War Cats had driven back the last of the rats who had gained their human size by drinking the white vials there and at the expense of the flesh of Hisvin's Mingols. Now they guzzled the black vials even more eagerly, to escape back into their tunnels.
The rats also suffered total defeat in the South Barracks, where the War Cats ravaged after clawing and crashing open the doors with preternatural strength.
Their work done, the War Cats regathered at the place where Fafhrd had summoned them and there faded away even as they had earlier materialized. They were still thirteen, although they had lost one of their company, for the black kitten faded away with them, comporting himself like an apprentice member of their company. It was ever afterwards believed by most Lankhmarts, that the War Cats and the white skeletons as well had been summoned by the Gods _of_ Lankhmar, whose reputation for horrid powers and dire activities was thereby bolstered, despite some guilty recollections of their temporary defeat by the rats.
By twos and threes and sixes, the people of Lankhmar emerged from their places of hiding, learned that the Rat Plague was over, and wept, prayed, and rejoiced. Gentle Radomix Kistomerces-Null was plucked from his retreat in the slums and with his seventeen cats carried in triumph to the Rainbow Palace.
Glipkerio, his leaden craft tightly collapsed around him by weight of water, until it had become a second leaden skin molded to his form — truly a handsome coffin — continued to sink in the Lankhmar Deep, but whether to reach a solid bottom, or only a balancing place between world bubbles in the waters of infinity, who may say?
The Gray Mouser recovered Cat's Claw from Hreest's belt, marveling somewhat that all the rat-corpses were yet human size. Likely enough depth froze all magics.
Fafhrd noted with distaste the three pools of pink slime in front of the gold audience couch and looked for something to throw over them. Elakeria coyly clutched her coverlet around her. He dragged from a corner a colorful rug that was a duke's ransom and made that do.
There was the noise of hooves on tiles. In the high, wide archway from which the drapes had been torn there appeared Kreeshkra, still on horseback arid leading the other two Ghoulish mounts, empty saddled. Fafhrd swung the skeleton girl down and embraced her heartily, somewhat to the Mouser's and Elakeria's shock, but soon said, "Dearest love, I think it best you put on again your black cloak and hood. Your naked bones are to me the acme of beauty, but here come others they may disturb."
"Already ashamed of me, aren't you? Oh, you dirty-minded puritanical Mud Folk!" Kreeshkra commented with a sour laugh, yet complied, while the rainbows in her eye sockets twinkled.
The others Fafhrd had referred to consisted of the councillors, soldiers, and various relatives of the late overlord, including the gentle Radomix Kistomerces-Null and his seventeen cats, each now carried and cosseted by some noble hoping to gain favor from Lankhmar's most likely next overlord.
Not all the new arrivals were so commonplace. One heralded by more hoof-cloppings on tile, was Fafhrd's Mingol mare, her tether bitten through. She stopped by Fafhrd and glared her bloodshot eyes at him, as if to say, "I am not so easily got rid of. Why did you cheat me of a battle?"
Kreeshkra patted the beast's nose and observed to grim Fafhrd, "You are clearly a man who attracts deep loyalty in others. I trust you have the same quailty yourself."
"Never doubt me, dearest," Fafhrd answered with fond sincerity.
Also among the newcomers and returners was Reetha, looking suavely happy as a cat who has licked cream, or a panther some even more vital fluid, and naked as ever except for three broad black leather loops around her waist. She threw her arms about the Mouser "You're big again!" she rejoiced. "And you beat them all!"
The Mouser accepted her embrace, though he purposely put on a dissatisfied face and said sourly, "You were a big help! — you and your naked army, deserting me when I most needed help. I suppose you finished off Samanda!"
"Indeed we did!" Reetha smirked like a sated leopardess. "What a sizzling she made! Look, doll, her belt of office _does_ go three times round my waist. Oh yes! we cornered her in the kitchen and brought her down. Each of us took a pin from her hair. Then — "
"Spare me the details, darling," the Mouser cut her short. "This night for nine hours I've been a rat, with all of a rat's nasty feelings, and that's quite long enough. Come with me, pet; there's something we must attend to ere the crowd gets too thick."
When they returned after a short space, the Mouser was carrying a box wrapped in his cloak, while Reetha wore a violet robe, around which was still triply looped, however, Samanda's belt. And the crowd had thickened indeed. Radomix Kistomerces-no-longer-Null had already been informally vested with Lankhmar's overlordship and was sitting somewhat bemused on the golden seashell audience couch along with his seventeen cats and also a smiling Elakeria, who had wrapped her coverlet like a sari around her sylphlike figure.
The Mouser drew Fafhrd aside. "That's quite a girl you've got," he remarked, rather inadequately, of Kreeshkra.
"Yes, isn't she," Fafhrd agreed blandly.
"You should have seen mine," the Mouser boasted. "I don't mean Reetha there, I mean my _weird_ one. She had — "
"Don't let Kreeshkra hear you use that word," Fafhrd warned sharply through _sub voce_.
"Well, anyhow, whenever I want to see her again," the Mouser continued conspiratorially, "I have only to swallow the contents of this black vial and — "