Next a rangy chap carrying by neck and tail, wound round and over his shoulders, the largest eel the Mouser had ever seen. Its bearer gave the impression that he was wrestling with it as he hobbled—it writhed ponderously, still alive. Lucky it’s not twined about his neck, the Mouser thought.
The man after the eel-carrier had, by a wicked handhook through its shell, a giant green crab on his back, its ten legs working persistently in the air, its great claws opening and closing. And it was hard to tell which of the two’s eyes goggled out the farthest, the shellfish’s or the man’s.
Finally a fisherman bearing overshoulder by its bound-together tentacles an octopus still turning rainbow colors in its death-spasms, its great sunken eyes filming above its monstrous beak. Monsters bearing monsters, the Mouser epitomized with a happy chuckle. Lord, what grotesques we mortals be!
And now the dock should he coming up. The Mouser turned aound in his seat to look thal way and saw … not Cif, he decided regretfully after a moment … but at any rate (and a little to his initial surprise) Milsa and Rill at the dockk edge, the latter bearing a torch that flamed most merrily, both of them smiling warm welcomes and looking truly most brave in their fresh paint and whore’s finery, Hilsa in her red stockings, Rill in a bright yellow pair, both in short gaudy smocks cut low at the neck. Really, they looked younger this way, or at least a little less shopworn, he thought as he leaped up and joined them on the dock. How nice of Loki to have sent his priestesses … well, not priestesses exactly, say temple maidens rather … no, not maidens exactly either, but professional ladies, nurses and playmates of the god … to welcome home the god’s faithful servant.
But no sooner had he bowed to them in turn than they put aside their smiles and Hilsa said to him urgently in a low voice, “There’s ill news, captain. Lady Cif’s sent us to tell you that she and the Lady Afreyt have been impeached by the other council members. She’s accused of using coined gold she had the keeping of and other Rimic treasures to fee you and the tall captain and your men. She expects you with your famed cleverness, she told me, to concoct some tale to counter all this.”
The Mouser’s smile hardly faltered. He was struck rather with how gayly Rill’s torch flickered and flared as Hilsa’s doleful words poured over him. When Rimic treasures were mentioned he touched his pouch where the queller reposed on its snipped-off length of cord. He had no doubt that it was one of them, yet somehow he was not troubled.
“Is that all?” he asked when Hilsa had done. “I thought at least you’d tell me the trolls had come, against whom the god has warned us. Lead on, my dears, to the council hall! Ourph and Mikkidu, attend us! Take courage, Mother Grum—” (he called down to the skiff) “—doubt not your mistress’ safety.” And linking arms with Hilsa and Rill he set out briskly, telling himself that in reverses of fortune such as this, the all-important thing was to behave with vast self-confidence, flame like Rill’s torch with it! That was the secret. What matter that he hadn’t the faintest idea of what tale he would tell the council? Only maintain the appearance of self-confidence and at the moment when needed, inspiration would come!
What with the late arrival of the fishing fleet the narrow streets were quite crowded as they footed it along. Perhaps it was market night as well, and maybe the council meeting had something to do with it. At any rate there were a lot of “foreigners” out and Rime Islers too, and for a wonder the latter looked stranger and more drolly grotesque than the former. Here came trudging those four fishers again with their monstrous burdens! A fat boy gaped at them. The Mouser patted his head in passing. Oh, what a show was life!
Hilsa and Rill, infected by the Mouser’s lightheartedness, put on their smiles again. He must be a grand sight, he thought, strolling along with two fine whores as if he owned the town.
The blue front of the council hall appeared, its door framed by some gone galleon’s massive stern and flanked by two glum louts with quarterstaves. The Mouser felt Hilsa and Rill hesitate, but crying in a loud voice, “All honor to the council!” he swept them inside with him, Ourph and Mikkidu ducking in after.
The room inside was larger and somewhat more lofty than the one at the Salt Herring, but was gray-timbered like it, built of wrecks. And it had no fireplace, but was inadequately warmed by two smoking braziers and lit by torches that burned blue and sad (perhaps there were bronze nails in them), not merrily golden-yellow like Rill’s. The main article of furniture was a long heavy table, at one end of which Clif and Afreyt sat, looking their haughtiest. Drawn away from them toward the other end were seated ten large sober Isle-men of middle years, Groniger in their midst, with such doleful, gloomily indignant, outraged looks on their faces that the Mouser burst out laughing. Other Islers crowded the walls, some women among them. All turned on the newcomers’ faces of mingled puzzlement and disapproval.
Groniger reared up and thundered at him, “You dare to laugh at the gathered authority of Rime Isle? You, who come bursting in accompanied by women of the streets and your own trespassing crewmen?”
The Mouser managed to control his laughter and listen with the most open, honest expression imaginable, injured innocence incarnate.
Groniger went on, shaking his finger at the other, “Well, there he stands, councilors. a chief receiver of the misappropriated gold, perchance even of the gold cube of honest dealing. The man who came to us out of the south with tales of magic storms and day turned night and vanished hostile vessels and a purported Mingol invasion—he who has, as you perceive, Mingols amongst his crew—the man who paid for his dockage in Rime Isle gold!”
Cif stood up at that, her eyes blazing, and said, “Let him speak, at least, and answer this outrageous charge, since you won’t take my word.”
A councilman rose beside Groniger. “Why should we listen to a stranger’s lies?”
Groniger said, “I thank you, Dwone.”
Afreyt got to her feet. “No, let him speak. Will you hear nothing but your own voices?”
Another councilman got up.
Groniger said, “Yes. Zwaakin?”
That one said, “No harm to hear what he has to say. He may convict himself out of his own mouth.” Cif glared at Zwaaken and said loudly, “Tell them, Mouser!”
At that moment the Mouser, glancing at Rill’s torch (which seemed to wink at him) felt a godlike power invading and possessing him to the tips of his fingers and toes—nay, to the end of his every hair. Without warning—in fact, without knowing he was going to do it at all he ran forward across the room and sprang atop the table where its sides were clear toward Cif’s end.
He looked around compellingly at all (a sea of cold and hostile faces, mostly), gave them a searching stare, and then—well, as the godlike force possessed every part of him utterly, his mind was perforce driven completely out of himself, the scene swiftly darkened, he heard himself beginning to say something in a mighty voice, but then he (his mind) fell irretrievably into an inner darkness deeper and blacker than any sleep or swound.
Then (for th~ Mouser) no time at all passed … or an eternity.
His return to awareness (or rebirth, rather, it seemed that massive a transition) began with whirling yellow lights and grinning. open-mouthed, exalted faces mottling the inner darkness, and the sense of a great noise on the edge of the audible and of a resonant voice speaking words of power, and then without other warning the whole bright and deafening scene materialized with a rush and a roar and he was standing insolently tall on the massive council table with what felt like a wild (or even demented) smile on his lips, while his left fist rested jauntily on his hip and his right was whirling around his head the golden queller (or cube of square dealing, he reminded himself) on its cord. And all around him every last Rimelander—councilmen, guards, common fishers, women (and Cif, Afrayt, Rill, Hilsa, Mikkidu, needless to say)—was staring at him with rapturous adoration (as if he were a god or legendary hero at least) and standing on their feet (some jumping up and down) and cheering him to the echo! Fists pounded the table, quarterstaves thudded the stony floor resoundingly. While torchmen whirled their sad flambeaux until they flamed as yellow-bright as Rill’s.
Now in the name of all the gods at once, the Mouser asked himself, continuing however to grin, Whatever did I tell or promise them to put them all in such a state? In the fiend’s name, what?