The Gray Mouser (2010)
Retreat to advance
“You are more tempted by the hot lips of black magic than the chaste slim fingers of white, no matter to how pretty a misling the latter belong--no, do not deny it! You are more drawn to the beguiling sinuosities of the left-hand path than the straight deep road of the right. I fear me you will never be mouse in the end but mouser. And never white but gray--oh well, that’s better than black.”
--Fritz Leiber, “The Unholy Grail”
When I began reading Leiber’s classic series of sword-and-sorcery earlier in 2010, it was with an eye towards finding something to paint. There hadn’t been a lot of attention devoted to Lankhmar in awhile, and I prefer to play in quiet corners. This description, from The Gray Mouser’s introduction story, was perfect. In that story, some of his past was discussed which left a lot of hope that some of the psychological turmoil of trying to ride between dark and light would be a feature of the stories as they went on. It became the basis of designing this illustration, supplementing it with other details from the first two books.
