Silverfall: Stories of the Seven Sisters

There came a cold and drifting time of nothingness that seemed to freeze her utterly, beyond gasping, and to go on forever … but she knew from what Elminster and Alassra had said that it in truth lasted so briefly that even those watching for it could not be sure it had befallen.

There was light then, and sound again, and she was somewhere unfamiliar, looking out of eyes that were not her own; these were male eyes. She had to be deft now, and patient, so as not to be noticed by this host. It was alert and angry, and its mind was dark with rage and evil. The mind is a powerful thing, and this one was very far from an abode Sylune of Shadowdale would ever be comfortable in. Her sentience had awakened in the tiny chip of stone Alustriel usually carried in her bodice, but had somehow managed to tangle unnoticed into this man's hair, knotting its fine strands securely around the stone.

She could only live, now, out of such stones-pieces of the fire-scarred flagstones of her now vanished hut. The Witch of Shadowdale was dead, and yet, through the grace of Mystra, not dead nor yet "undead," at least not in the chilling, feeding-on-the-living manner that carried most undeath onward through timeless days. When she walked in Shadowdale, 'twas true, her feet made no dint upon the grass, and folk could see through her, and termed her "ghost," and were fearful. Usually Sylune used a body made to look like her old, true one, or kept herself unseen, unless she wanted to scare.

Sylune sighed now, a sound only she could hear, and banished such dark thoughts. She had died and yet lived, through Mystra's love and aid. She should be ever joyful, but she had been human, and it is the way of humans to complain.

The Witch of Shadowdale shook the head she did not have, and briskly applied her thoughts to the here and now. It took mighty magic to send her from one stone to another when they were not touching, and she knew, somehow, that she was far from Shadowdale. Alustriel must have spent silver fire to weave such a spell. That meant this was a matter of great importance, but then her journeys were always matters of great importance. Sylune smiled with lips she no longer possessed. 'Twas time to save the world again.

She was in the mind of a man who knew Waterdeep well, by all the images of it crowding each other in his place-memories. He was a wealthy man, a merchant, linked to other beings by some sort of slumbering but recently awakened magic. The man was standing on a rocky, windy hillside where bell-hung goats wandered, a little way outside an arc of standing stones that stood like jutting monster teeth before a dark cave mouth.

This was the abode, the man knew, of a hermit priest shy;ess of Shar. He'd been here twice before, and both feared and was disgusted by the old and ugly crone who dwelt here, and stank so, ate things raw, and whose fingers were always stained with blood that was not her own. Meira the Dark was a thing of bones and malice, half hidden in rags and an improbable fall of long, glossy black hair.

The man moved forward reluctantly and drew forth his dagger, holding it by the blade, and through his eyes Sylune saw that he had clean fingers adorned with rings. He lifted the dagger to use its hilt to strike a door gong. His mind termed it such, though his eyes told her that it was a cracked iron skillet hanging from a weathered branch that had been thrust into a hole in one of the larger stones.

"Don't bother," a voice sounded. The voice was sharp and a little rough, as if long unused. "Come within. The ward of serpents is down."

Though the voice seemed to come from someone near at hand, the man could see no one. He sheathed his dagger with a low growl of disgust and stepped cau shy;tiously forward through the grassy gap between the two tallest, center-most stones.

Something moved in the shadow of the cave mouth, sidling forward into the full light to squint up at her vis shy;itor. Meira was just as the man remembered her, fondling the yellowing curves of a squirrel skull necklace as she came forward to peer at her guest. "So, what trouble is it this time?"

"Why should you assume I have trouble?"

The priestess snorted. "Handsome, wealthy, charming Auvrarn Labraster has his pick of playpretties in half a dozen cities of Faerun, and more money than Meira has ever seen in all her life. Enough to hire spells from the Red Wizards he sports with, enough to think himself important indeed… and this would be the same Auvrarn Labraster who can barely conceal his disgust when he stands near old Meira. Trouble brings him here. Trouble is all that could bring him here."

Sylune withdrew everything from the mind of the man she rode, clinging but to his eyes and ears so as to be as invisible to magic as she dared be. Labraster shifted his feet and replied stiffly, "Yes, I have trouble, and need your swift aid."

The hermit priestess snorted. "Sit on yon rock and spill all. Even I haven't the patience to drag words out of you. Speak."

"I've just used this ring-the only teleport ring I have-to escape Alustriel of Silverymoon. My hands were around her throat in her palace just minutes ago, and I called on the cycle. She fought and survived everyone in it to bring it back to me again. We left a room afire and several of her Spellguard mages knowing my likeness. I will be hunted a-"

Meira held up a hand with a hiss of anger. "Perhaps traced already. Yet you do not need me to tell you what a fool you are. I can see that much in your eyes."

She grunted, and drew a ring on a cord from some shy;where under the rags she wore. Holding it up, she hissed in annoyance, let it fall, and fumbled around in the vicin shy;ity of her bodice until another cord fell into view. She snatched up the ring and squinted at it, made a small, satisfied sound in her throat, and with a sudden wrench, broke its cord, sliding it onto one of her fingers. Lifting her eyes to Labraster's, she snapped, "Take off your teleport ring."

Slowly, he did so, holding it cupped in his hand. The priestess gestured with her head. "Set it down on that rock, and step back outside my porch ring."

When the merchant had done as he was bid, the priest shy;ess took the ring back off her own finger and set it down on another stone. She approached Labraster's ring and stooped to peer at it, seeming almost to sniff at it in sus shy;picion before she murmured a spell over it, watched the brief glow of her spell fade, then cast a second spell. After a moment, the ring quietly faded away.

"What did you do?" the merchant called out angrily. "D'you know how much that cost me? Where's it gone?"

Meira regarded him over one hunched shoulder with some irritation, then beckoned him to approach. "To an alleyway near the docks of Waterdeep, with a spell on it to keep someone from seeing or tracing you through it."

"But it'll be lost! Someone will see it and snatch it up! I-"

The priestess nodded. "A small price to pay for contin shy;ued life. I'd not want to have to fight off a Chosen of Mystra, even with the Blessed Lady of Darkness stand shy;ing at my side. Would you?"

As Labraster gaped at her, she snapped, "Now stand here-just here-and don't move, even after I stop cast shy;ing. I’ll need different spells for you and your clothes, so don't stir again until I say so."

"Why?"

Meira squinted up at him. "That," she snarled, "is one of the words I most hate; one of the reasons I don't stand in a temple teaching cruel young things to know the kisses of Shar. Utter it again, and you can face Alustriel alone."

Auvrarn Labraster swallowed, stood just where she'd indicated, and kept silent. Meira shuffled all around him with a little smile crooking the corners of her mouth. "That's better," she said. "Now stand you just so."

She continued her slow circling as her hands traced gestures in the air with surprising grace. She seemed almost to be dancing as her cracked lips shaped words that seemed both fluid and strangely angular, cruel and yet softly sliding, words that betimes rose to frame the name of the goddess Shar. When she was done, she stood with hands on hips and regarded Labraster. In her squint was a gleam of satisfaction.

"Aye, you'll do,” she said at last. "Can you live without the rest of the little magics you have hidden on you now-and won't tell me about?"

"Surrender them, you mean?"

"Nay, have them still, but asleep, not working."

Labraster hesitated, then sighed. "If I have to," he said, "yes."

She was as cold, cruel and deadly, this priestess, as the goddess she served. Shar, Mistress of the Night, the Lady of Loss, the Keeper of Secrets, the goddess revered by those who did cruelty to others, and worked dark magic, under cover of the night. She was evil with lips and hips, the night mists her cloak, her eyes always watching out of the darkness. Labraster shivered, and tried to put the feeling of being coldly watched-a feeling crawling coldly between his shoulders, nowhere near the old hermit in front of him-aside. He did not find it easy.

"Good," Meira the Dark said crisply. "Put this on your finger, and keep it there." She picked up her own ring from where she'd set it on the stone and handed it to him.

Labraster turned it in his fingers as if trying to delay putting it on, then plunged it onto one of his fingers with almost frantic haste. As it altered its shape to fit the digit perfectly, Sylune felt a tingling and darkness descended around her. She drifted through brief chaos, then abruptly, was seeing out of Labraster's eyes once more, and hearing out of his ears again, but cut off from his mind, his touch, and smell. The surges of his thoughts and emotions were gone. She was riding alone again.

"What is it?" Labraster asked, holding up his finger curiously to examine the plain silvery band.

Meira chuckled. "It carries its own tiny magic-dead zone, covering you and a little of what you touch-or hold. The best shield I know against prying archmages … or the Chosen servants of the goddess of magic." She waved at the stone where the ring had lain, and said, "Now sit here."

When Labraster sat, she drifted up behind him and reached around to hand him something. It was a polished fragment of armor plate that served as a crude mirror. Labraster peered at it, at his new face. It was still fair to look at, but rather less commanding in looks. His hair was almost blue-black, eyes green now, nose a little crooked. He reached up to touch his own cheek. The feel of it matched what he saw. This was no illusion, but a reshaping.

"Who've you made me look like?" he demanded, turn shy;ing to face the priestess.

She was no longer there, and in that same instant Auvrarn Labraster felt a sudden, sharp pain in his neck. She'd bitten him! He whirled around the other way with an oath, flinging out his arm-

Again, she was no longer there. Labraster felt a gentle tug at his belt.

The priestess was kneeling in front of him, her eyes flashing up at him, bright and very green.

"What're you-?"

Her eyes fell to the belt buckle in her hands, and she murmured, "Now for my payment."

Auvrarn Labraster resisted a sudden urge to ram his knees together, smashing what was between them, then to kick out, hard, and send a bleeding bag of bones sail shy;ing away to a hard, bouncing landing.

The bag of bones that could slay him in an instant, or send him to sure doom whenever it chose to, flicked bright, knowing eyes up at him now in a sly taunting. She knew how he felt. Oh, she knew.

He watched her calmly unbuckle his belt and said levelly, "I prefer to choose beforehand whether or not I must lose any body parts. In like manner, I like to have some say in any partners I may take in intimacies."

Meira the Dark looked up, arching one bristling eye shy;brow. "Do you now?"

She jerked open his breeches with a sudden, violent tug and added softly, "I bit you, man. If I will it so, your every muscle will lock, holding you rigid. You will be unable to move … unable to prevent me from removing the ring and my disguising spell, binding you hand and foot, and transporting you thus onto Alustriel's dining table-or kitchen hearth spit."

A certain paleness crept over Labraster's face. He made a helpless shooing motion with his hands before snarling, "All right…"

Her hands were cool but wrinkled. Their warts brushed his flesh as she held onto him for support, sat back a little, and did something to her rags. They fell away from one bony shoulder, and he almost gagged at the smell that rolled forth. Meira looked up at him, her eyes flashing, and thrust her wrinkled self forward against him again, purring like a cat. He felt the hot lick of her tongue on his thigh, moving slowly inward, and gentle fingers probing. . before she made a sad little sigh and sat back, slapping him in a very tender place.

Green eyes glared up into his. "Give, man!" Meira snarled.

"But I …" Labraster growled, his voice stiff with dis shy;gust, his face scarlet.

Meira drew a little way back from him, on her knees, and sighed again. "No one loves me for what I am," she said sadly, staring down at her wrinkled hands. "No one has ever loved me for what I am."

She looked down at the ground in front of her, face hidden by her tangled hair, and Labraster sat silent, not daring to move or say anything. The priestess stirred, and he saw her clench one dirty hand. She rose to her feet, letting her rags fall to the ground in a little ring around her, looked expressionlessly at him for a moment, then turned and walked away.

Labraster stayed where he was. A gentle breeze slid past, ghosting down the hillside, but he moved no more than a stone statue, his eyes fixed on the ugly priestess as fear grew within him like a cold, uncoiling snake.

She stopped a few paces away and turned to face him in full filthy, sagging splendor, her eyes two green flames as they met his. Still holding his gaze, Meira raised her arms above her head, cleared her throat, then matter-of-factly, almost briskly, cast a spell.

Before his eyes she grew taller, her hair stirring rest shy;lessly around curving shoulders as she grew both more slender and more shapely. Long, long legs, a flat belly, and. . Labraster swallowed and bunked, hardly believing the beauty he saw. A spicy scent wafted from Meira as she strode forward. Labraster searched her with his eyes, feeling lust stirring within him, a rising warmth that checked for only a moment when his gaze rose far enough to find her green eyes unchanged in their knowing, and anger.

Meira glided up to him and wove slender fingers through his hair, guiding his head to her, "Such a little thing Meira demands," she murmured. "Do you still know how to be tender, man? Show me …"

Slender fingers momentarily brushed against a tiny chip of stone amid curling hair, and as if through rippling water, Sylune saw the face of Auvrarn Labraster, tight with apprehension, shifting and sliding into the face he now wore, brighter somehow than it had seemed in the mirror. A cold, dark sentience was sliding over her, con shy;sidering that face, then Labraster's own again. . then seeming to place another face over it, so that one showed through the other. She knew this new face, and tried to keep herself calm and still as the dark sentience that could only be Meira quested past, comparing it with Labraster as he really was, and doubting that the Waterdhavian merchant was suitable to masquerade as the other man.

That other man was King Azoun IV of Cormyr.

The morning was cold, the pit-privy was filthy and swirling with biting flies, and the bowl of wash water both gray and icy. The priestess, moving naked around her smoking cooking fire, was her old, wrinkled self again. Auvrarn Labraster smelled her unwashed stink on his own limbs, and wrinkled his nose in distaste. Even his own transformed clothes itched and felt… wrong.

Without looking up she handed him a steaming, rather battered tankard as he approached. It smelled wonder shy;ful, but Labraster cradled it in his hands and sniffed sus shy;piciously. "What might this be?"

"Soup," she said sweetly.

"I can tell that," he growled. "What's in it?"

"Dead things," she growled back, turning green eyes on him. They held a certain sparkle that made the merchant want to glance down at himself to make sure that noth shy;ing was missing. He hesitated, then, involuntarily, did so.

She snickered. "Ah, the great Auvrarn Labraster, scourge of the masked revels of Waterdeep." She tossed her head and laughed again, lightly. "Waterdhavians have such high standards, don't you think?"

Labraster shuddered, and brought the warm comfort of the tankard to his lips. "If you're done mocking me, woman," he growled, "perhaps you'll find time enough to tell me just whose shape I now wear, eh?"

"Blandras Nuin," Meira told her own tankard promptly, scratching herself and reaching for the pile of rags that evidently served her every wardrobe need.

Labraster watched her with fresh disgust, and asked unwillingly, "Who's 'Blandras Nuin'?"

"A man I sacrificed on the Altar of Night a few days back," the priestess said, bending to a nearby stool to kiss the oily lashes of a black, many-tailed whip reverently.

The merchant grunted, and shifted a little away. Any shy;thing dedicated to Shar was best avoided. "After you served him as you served me?"

Meira's head snapped around. She looked more shocked than angry, but her voice was as sharp as a thrusting sword as she said, "He was for Holy Shar, and Shar alone." Her thin lips drooped into a catlike smile, and she added, "He looked quite-ah, striking as he died."

"And the body?" Labraster asked, looking around as if he expected to find severed hands serving as cloak hooks, and hairy, bloodless legs bound together to hold up a table.

"Once a ritual is done, and it is properly blackened or doused in purple sauces, any suitable sacrifice to the god shy;dess may be devoured by her worshipers," Meira said primly, then glanced sidelong at her unwilling guest as he gagged, and added slyly, "I did keep certain pieces for dessert." The merchant's shaking hands spilled soup on the cave floor.

She knelt and slithered forward between his legs to lap it up. Labraster hastily backed away, seeking another place to sit. His shoulders came up against the rotting, blackened hides that served her as doors, and in an instant he spun around and shouldered himself out into the light and the fresh, frigid air.

"Gods," he growled, blinking at the brightness and cradling his hands around the battered tankard. His stomach lurched anew at the thought of the wrinkled priestess stirring a man's hairy leg into her soup caldron.

Soup caldron … he looked down in horror, and hurled the tankard as far and as hard as he could, found his knees in scrabbling haste, and vomited everything in him onto the ground so furiously that his spew splashed his eyebrows. Hot tears of rage and revulsion blurred his eyes as he coughed and spat.

"Such a waste," that sharp voice he was beginning to hate so much said coolly from behind him. "There's none of him left in that. 'Tis all bustard and black voles and rockscuttler lizards. Oh, and a snake; a rock viper, but a little one, too young for his fangs to be deadly."

Her words failed to reassure Labraster. The merchant turned his white, trembling face away from her as he rose and stumbled over to one of the standing stones. He leaned against it weakly and drew in deep, shuddering breaths of air. A hand like a wart-studded claw patted his behind, the fingers lingering to caress.

"More, valiant merchant?" Meira cooed, clear mockery in her biting tones.

Auvrarn Labraster sprang forward and away, whirling around and slapping at his sword hilt. "Away, witch!"

The wrinkled, toadlike creature in front of him looked almost comical as it pouted, but one look into those green eyes quelled any mirth that might have been rising in Auvrarn Labraster now and for perhaps the next month or so. They held a cold and waiting promise that told the merchant he'd been judged expendable. One wrong step would be his last, or worse he'd be violently unmanned and teleported, maimed and still screaming, into the hands of Alustriel of Silverymoon, only to be hauled back again like a hooked fish, if Alustriel should show him any mercy. Back to the cooking pot, no doubt strapped to that bloodstained worktable and cut up alive, piece by piece, while Meira the Dark discussed seasonings with him, and-no, no more!

Labraster shook his head, his eyes closed, and he heard himself gasp, "For pity's sake, priestess! I’ve a heavy load, and mean no offense, but, truly, I-"

“You find Meira not to your taste," the priestess said, her voice more sad than angry. "Well, you're not the first, nor the last." She glanced up at him with the suddenness of a snake, eyes bright. "You'll find your way back here, though, when next your needs outstrip that ambition of yours, and Meira will be waiting. Oh, yes, perhaps to play the man, then, to your woman, hmm? We'll see. Oh, aye, well see."

Labraster shivered. She meant every word, and a small part of him was even excited. What sneaking spells had she worked on him, to make him think so? How much of a leash did Auvrarn Labraster now wear?

He had to get out of there. He had to get away from this woman and her foul cave. Fleeing all the roused Spellguard through the High Palace of Silverymoon was starting to seem preferable to this. Labraster drew in a deep breath, lifted his head, and forced himself to open his eyes and to smile.

"A part of me looks forward to that," he admitted, and saw Meira's green eyes flash. "You can use spells if you want, to confirm that I speak truth."

The priestess shook her head. "Nay, lad, I can see. I can also see that you want very much to be off and about your scheming, tarrying here no longer. Hear then my advice. Go nowhere that Auvrarn Labraster would, and reveal your disguise to no one. Let your affairs be run by your agents, even if they begin to subvert and swindle. The ring will keep you out of even the cycle's summons. You know how to contact those of us who matter, if need be. Don't go wandering back to claim treasures Labraster hid and finish deals he left hanging. The Chosen-and the Harpers, now-will be waiting and watching for that."

"For how long?" Labraster growled. "The High Lady of Silverymoon still has no proof against me. After all, I did not slay the tradelord. Such legal niceties would not matter, say, to those who rule in Luskan, but she is one who does take refuge in laws, and hold to them."

Meira lifted her misshapen shoulders in a smooth shrug. "For as long as need bo. You lost a life, merchant-yes, the one you'd built, but most of us only ever get one. Think of a fresh start, a chance to deal with some travel shy;ing traders who'll come unaware that you know their true natures as a challenge, hmm?"

Labraster bowed his head, "I grant that, though it does not yet seem a gladsome thing to me. So tell me, who am I? Blandras Nuin, yes, but who is Blandras Nuin?"

The priestess lifted her lip in an unlovely smile, like a dog about to snarl. "A man of moderate prosperity, ruled by honesty. An innocent in the intrigues of the world, con shy;tent to live out his life in trade."

"Trade in what, and where?"

"Blandras Nuin is a trader in textiles," the priestess said grandly, as if telling a fireside tale to rapt children, "respected in his home city of Neverwinter. He seldom travels, and when he does, 'tis usually to Everlund or Sil shy;verymoon, on matters of business. He's a kindly man, with little interest in women beyond watching tavern girls dance, and has no family or relatives."

Labraster looked pained. "Textiles? What do I know about cloth?" he snarled.

Green eyes twinkled. Their owner replied crisply, "Whatever you'll learn between here and Nuin's house. It is a tall and narrow abode, roof of old shields sealed with pitch, stone lion gateposts, on Prendle Street. You'll have six servants, but the old chambermaid Alaithe is the only one who really knows you-that is, the real Blandras Nuin."

Auvrarn Labraster sighed, glanced around at the standing stones and the hillside falling away into the trees, then brought his head up to peer at the priestess who'd transformed him. "I've no choice, have I?" he asked, his words more bitter than he'd meant them to be-but not nearly as bitter as he felt.

"None at all, Blandras Nuin," Meira told him. "Now start walking."

Labraster's brows lifted stormily. "Can't you teleport me?"

The priestess pointed a wart-studded finger at the merchant's hand and shook her raven-haired head. "The ring, remember?"

The darkness of closed eyes, and the roaring that meant Labraster's snoring would render his ears useless until he awakened, left the eldest of the Seven Sisters utterly alone once more. She was alone and alert, not needing to sleep, but unable to ride a body around to look at new things, and talk to other beings, and see more. She was alone to think.

So what had she to show for all the hard work Dove, Qilue, Laeral, and Alustriel before her had done? A little more than the usual quiet, underhanded alliance between a rogue at one end of a caravan route and a thief at the other. A little more even than a trading coster gone bad, or illicit goods bought with stolen coin. It was a shadowy chain of varied individuals who worked covertly in Scornubel, Waterdeep, Silverymoon, a hermit's cave some shy;where north and east of Longsaddle in the wild hills between the Long Road and the Goblintide, here in Neverwinter, and presumably in distant Thay. . probably also in Sembia and Cormyr, and possibly in Amn and other Sword Coast ports such as Luskan and Baldur's Gate.

They behaved not unlike the Zhentarim, but enough unlike their work to remove them from suspicion, even if there'd been no Thayans or Sharran clergy to make the differences sharp.

Drow were working with humans to supplant other humans, using magical guises-long-lasting shapeshifting; powerful magic needed there. Humans were busily engaged in smuggling, hidden investments, market manipulations, and slavery, but such a widespread secret organization, with all of its perils, was hardly needed for anything but the slavery and smuggling. So why? Larger aims, as yet unseen, must underlie it all. The presence of the Red Wizards-who by nature need great power, and therefore work at a great reach, whether prudent or not-and that of any clergy of Shar both pointed to bigger things.

Just what those bigger things were was probably beyond what Labraster knew, but not necessarily beyond what he could guess.

Well, Chosen of Mystra could make guesses, too. If drow could masquerade as humans in Scornubel, what was to stop others in the cabal-yes, call it that, however ugly or possibly misplaced the word-from using similar means and magics to take the places of other folk, elsewhere? They'd target rich folk, of course, influential folk, rulers-why else had others considered this Labraster a fitting stand-in for Azoun of Cormyr, and Meira thought him too weak? — and elder noble families, energetically rising merchants, those who commanded armies or con shy;trolled fleets, caravan companies, and trading costers.

It was grain and beans again. Centuries ago, a certain bored, younger Sylune-restless and not yet rooted, not yet the Witch of Shadowdale, not yet loving any place too closely, and the poorer for it-had watched merchants grow rich. Oh, aye, merchants grew rich all the time, sometimes by innovation and more often by rushing in needed goods when there were shortages.

She remembered a few growing rich by virtue of the mercenaries they could hire to burn crops in one place, or fight the mercenaries hastily hired against them across sown farmers' fields, which bought the same result. They'd take advantage of these shortages, rushing in goods they'd already secured elsewhere when demand and prices were highest.

Grains and beans. Not so glamorous as kidnapped princesses or fell wizards cracking castles asunder, but just as hard on the folk whose land the wars raged through, or who starved outright or dwelt in misery, for the lack of things that need not have been scarce. All the while merchants who hired armsmen to kick back beg shy;gars rode in ever grander coaches to revels where they grew fatter and laughed louder, guzzling wine and eyeing each other's new jewels and hired bedmates, until they were all so bored that feuds and hunts and the ever-changing whimsy of styles known as "fashion" came to the fore as a way of spending time and coin.

Just the way of the world, a Waterdhavian merchant dead and dust these four hundred years had told her, derisively dismissing her protests at such behavior. Just something she hadn't, of course, the native wits to under shy;stand, and should leave off thinking about and hurry, while she still had her looks, to the nearest whorehouse to get back to earning herself a living.

She'd tried that, too. Mirth still rose in Sylune after all these years at the haughty merchant's wife who'd looked down from a festhall balcony with scorn at the silver-haired dancer and called out that she might as well wear naught but pig herders' boots to do what she did … only to recognize her own son in Sylune's arms later the same night… a Sylune wearing only pig herders' boots, which she'd given the man to present to his mother on her morningfeast platter the next day. The woman's shrieks of rage had been the talk of her hitherto quietly exclusive Waterdhavian neighborhood, but that woman, too, was long dead, and her fine son. Sylune, caught defending her beloved dale in the heart of a storm of dragons, should have followed them both into the cold, eternal darkness, but for the love of her sisters and the grace of her mother Mystra.

"Oh, Mystra," she prayed now, alone in the darkness with no voice to speak aloud. "Let me do what is right and best for thee and for all Faerun. . and let those two rights and bests run ever together."

From dark nothingness came a faint, singing sound. The gentlest echo of a chime Sylune had heard before, when drifting in the arms of the Lady of Mystery. It lin shy;gered around her, almost faint beyond hearing, then was gone.

The Witch of Shadowdale smiled, and knew peace, for she was no longer alone in the darkness.

"What if I do not choose to follow this road longer? This meandering backwoods trail that leaves me far from my city, my business, the folk that I love and know, and, by all the good gods there may be, from the-the-"

"Action you crave?" the hooded man's voice was smooth and unruffled. Something that was almost amusement rippled across its rich tones.

"Well, yes. I'd not have put it that way, but this does leave me far from my coins and my battles, and yes, the grander things we … are both part of I chafe in these chains." Labraster's voice had risen high in exasperation. Something in the other man's stillness warned him that he was drawing too much attention to them both, and he dropped his voice almost to a whisper to add, "They drive me wild. Sometimes I think I may go mad."

"So much is increasingly apparent, Blandras Nuin," the cloth merchant's visitor replied. "Yet it does you no credit in our eyes if we see in you a weakness. Those lions who are always bold to be a-hunt, in at the slayings whenever they scent blood, all too often move too soon and ruin things. Even when they do not, their restless shy;ness makes them poor allies after the victories have been won. Cold patience sits comfortably in some of us, and turns our wits to think ill of those who have too little patience, or too much hunger for the chase."

"But it's been months now," Labraster protested, clenching one hand-the hand that bore a certain ring-into a fist, "and until you, today, nothing but silence. Silence and selling cloth. Gods! More than that, I tell you, Harpers are as thick hereabouts as flies on rotting meat."

"Perhaps too apt a choice of words," the hooded man murmured. "More than one of us in a certain city much visited by caravans has fallen to Harper blades in recent days. The dead carts held many surprises. Much flesh that was as black as the darkest night. Your swift and thorough flight from the questioning of the High Lady has done much to hold you blameless in this-among those who look for blame in such things."

"I thought that project was overbold from the first. How many actors can there be who can fool kin and trade partners and all, night and day, eh?" The cloth merchant waved a dismissive hand, then almost lunged forward to hiss, "Can you tell me nothing of what else has befallen? So many plans were on the brink of becoming real projects. Just to know a few shreds of-gods! Cloth again! — a little of what's hap shy;pening will keep me alive, keep me feeling a part of things."

"You find excitement a drink every bit as alluring as good wine, Master Nuin?" the hooded man asked softly. "Think on this, then. Like wine, excitement can be all the better when it's aged properly."

Auvrarn Labraster growled, deep in his throat, and smoothed out a bolt of cloth with unnecessary savagery. "You'll give me nothing at all?"

"I did not say that," his visitor said smoothly. "There's word from Sembia. Tael is ready to move. The inn outside Westgate called the Black Baron burned down a tenday back, and-"

Labraster's head jerked up like a stabbing blade. "What?" he hissed. "Did anyone get out? What was found in the ashes-and down in the cellars?" He leaned for shy;ward eagerly to put his hand on the hooded man's arm, to shake out some answers if need be. He came to a sudden, silent halt, as a bared blade slid out of the sleeve where an arm should have been.

That calm, smooth voice said reprovingly, "Master Nuin, I've heard it said that overeagerness has carried many a lion over a cliff. You've heard the same, I trust?"

Auvrarn Labraster swallowed, stepped back a pace, and nodded, his face carefully expressionless once more. "Yes," he mumbled, then cleared his throat, threw his head back, and said more clearly, "Yes. Yes, I have."

The hood seemed to nod, almost imperceptibly, as new customers entered Blandras Nuin's shop and headed straight for the proprietor. "Other engagements press me hard now. Perhaps I'll return to buy your excellent cloth another day, but it may not be soon. Perhaps even … next season."

"Of course," the man who wore the name Blandras Nuin agreed with a quick smile. "I shall be waiting here; eager to serve you, as always."

He saw teeth flash in the gloom of the hood, for just a moment, shaping a smile. "Of course."

The hood turned away, but as its owner stepped around an advancing customer to seek the door, turned back again. The voice that rolled out from within it one last time was somehow no louder, and yet still as clear as if it came from right beside the cloth merchant's elbow.

Its tones were gentle, almost fatherly. "It all comes back, Master Nuin, to patience. Try not to forget that."

Blandras Nuin stared at the door as it banged, not seeming to see the customers now gathering before him.

"Old friend of yours?" one of the tailors asked.

"Sounded more like a creditor," another grunted. "Trouble, Nuin?"

Blandras Nuin looked down at him sharply, then smiled a thin and mirthless smile. "No, just matters halfway across Faerun that I can do nothing about."

"Ah, investments," the first tailor said wisely, nodding.

"He in the hood was right enough, then," the second added. "Nothing to be done about what's out of your reach except drop all and ride to seize it-or learn a little patience." He grinned ruefully, spat thoughtfully into the floor rushes, and added, "I've learned me a lot of patience."

Patience was her strength, and Sylune-as little more than a silent, thinking thing-clung to it in the days that followed, as Auvrarn Labraster settled into being a colder, more cruel copy of Blandras Nuin, and learned the cloth trade, and looked for sideline dealings that could earn him rather more coin for rather less work. She watched him swindle, and watched him deal fairly-and she watched him murder.

She was powerless to work magic, powerless to whis shy;per in his mind, touch him in his dreams, or influence his waking mind in the smallest way. She was powerless to do anything but ride him and experience life as he did-at least until he really combed out his hair.

Labraster was disgusted with himself for being so swiftly singled out in Silverymoon, disgusted with the shape and life he'd had to adopt, and disgusted whenever he thought of the woman who'd given both to him. He took little care over his appearance, sighing instead for his own lost good looks whenever he passed a mirror. So a little chip of stone remained where it was, and he never knew how close he was to delivery from loneliness. Not that it would have been the sort of deliverance he'd have welcomed.

At least Neverwinter was cold in winter and damp with sea-breezes all the year round. Folk needed clothing, and clothing was apt not to last overlong. The man who was not Blandras Nuin grew all too used to the hitherto unfamiliar reek of mildew as the tendays passed. Neverwinter was a city of crafters, and he had much competi shy;tion from lace weavers and furriers and even women who made exotic knots from silken cord, but it was also a city of fashion, of men and women with a taste for style and the wealth to indulge that taste. Some of them liked the styles of Waterdeep, and suppliers from Waterdeep were folk he knew. They had no idea that he knew them, for they saw the kindly face of Blandras Nuin hailing them from the door of a modest shop, not the grander face of Auvrarn Labraster sending an agent over from his coach to stop them in wider, less muddy streets. Yet he knew their weaknesses, and whom they owed coin to, and when they were desperate. He was careful to befriend them, to win their respect, to make them regard him as impor shy;tant, so far as Neverwinter was important. He dealt with them fairly and soon, he dealt with them often.

The coins started to come. Bolts of cloth gathered less dust, and Blandras took less and less mold-stained and mice-nibbled stock to the copper coin markets outside the walls, and looked a little less drawn about his face. His shop grew no larger, how shy;ever, and no new coach or steed appeared in his sta shy;bles. Gossip soon suggested he owed money elsewhere, and was sending it away with the same men who brought him his cloth. . and as he did nothing scan shy;dalous, or seemingly anything at all outside of his shop, really, gossip soon forgot him.

Certain eyes and tongues in the city would have been surprised indeed to learn that no less than four of the houses on Spurnserpent Street now belonged to Blandras Nuin. They'd become his one at a time, in an inexorable march along that old lane situated on the edge of the expanding area where the wealthy were tearing down and rebuilding in grander style. They'd have been still more surprised to learn that the modest, kindly cloth mer shy;chant was just waiting for other folk to move before send shy;ing an agent to make offers on others … but the only eyes that did notice belonged to local Harpers, and they were pleased to see coin going there and not into something unseen or suspicious that meant they would have to skulk at the shutters of yet another fine, upstanding citizen.

An unseen, ghostly lady who'd had over six hundred years to take her measure of folk watched the world through the eyes of the man who was not Blandras Nuin, and heard as he did the words he spoke, and saw his deeds. She wondered sometimes, if things had been dif shy;ferent, if this was a man she could have turned to truly become the sort of man he was pretending to be. A man she could have welcomed to Storm's kitchen table with a glad heart, however many murders had stained his hands in the past. After all, her own had certainly known blood enough, and Storm welcomed her.

One could always build a legion of castles on "if things had been different." Those who tried to, in life, were often the most dangerous ones. More than that, she'd had long enough to learn that men cannot be turned. They can only turn themselves. One can ruin a life with a single, crippling sword stroke, or a blinding iron, but one cannot guide the unwilling save by example and by holding out choices, and only when the unwilling don't realize what is being done. Sylune was also determined that she would do no more than guide. Down the years the eldest of the Seven Sisters had heard enough whimpering, of dogs and men, to have any favor left for the boot or the whip.

Yet she already knew that whatever Blandras Nuin was becoming, Auvrarn Labraster only really understood boots and whips. She would have to be his whip-if ever she got the chance.

Sometimes Blandras Nuin bought drinks for traders in other goods from Waterdeep, the more garrulous mer shy;chants whose wares never touched on bolts of cloth or garment-making. He sat with them, and made them feel welcome and in the company of a friend, and gave them an ear that listened all the night through, and was never attached to a face that looked bored or hostile. He seemed to some a dreamer after the gilded bustle of a city he'd never dare to try his luck in, one of many such on their travels who were hungry for their talk of who was riding high and who'd fallen down in the City of Splendors. He wanted to know where things might be heading for those fortunate and wealthy enough to pitch in when the coins started to roll. New fashions and the latest nasty gossip of betrayals and debauched revels, noble feuds and men-and increasingly, women-found dead in new and stranger "suspicious circumstances," fueled an ever-burn shy;ing curiosity. If the eyes of the man who bought their drinks widened at some of the names, why then they always seemed wide and avid, didn't they?

Temple scandals and guild rights, warehouse fires on the docks and new turrets added to the already over shy;gilded houses of merchants rising past their ears in coin; he listened to it all.

Those nights of Waterdhavian tales were the times when Blandras Nuin bought extra bottles to carry home in his fists, or strayed to the houses where lamps burned late and silken scarves hung at the windows, beckoning lonely men inside.

Unnoticed and invisible, Sylune rode her unhappy steed through days, then months, drawing the cloak of her patience around her and waiting, waiting for the moment when a certain ring would come off Labraster's finger, and give her the chance she needed.

The moon rode high above scudding clouds this night, and the breeze off the sea reached cold fingers right through his thin cloak. The man who sometimes forgot that he'd ever been Auvrarn Labraster reeled more than a little as he came down the worn stone steps of the Howling Herald, leaned for a moment against the stair post topped with a gaping gargoyle head, and was noisily sick all over the refuse strewn in the lee of the post.

Ah, but he'd drunk too much-a lot too much. Good old Blandras Nuin had lent small sums to a lot of men to subtly spread his influence and circle of friends, and most of them never intended to pay it back. As long as he kept smiling and not mentioning it and draining the tankards they bought for him, there was no need to kill him. Cut off from his armsmen, alley boys, and more sinister allies, Auvrarn Labraster had to be careful about things like that. He was alone, like any other idiot mer shy;chant whose friends lasted just as long as the coins in his purse. Any shadow could hold ready knives and grasping hands.

A shadow moved in the gloom of the narrow passage between the Herald and the bakery next door. Labraster moved hastily, if unsteadily, around to face it, feeling for his knife.

Eyes gleamed in the darkness, then teeth, curving into a smile. "Go home, weaver," a voice hissed contemptu shy;ously. "I know how empty your purse is."

Rage rose in Labraster, just for a moment, and with its coming, his head started to pound as if quarry hammers were setting to work on the back of his head.

"Errummahuh," he agreed hastily, turning away and hurrying off down the street, away from the softly chuck shy;ling shadow waiting by the stair post. Gods, but a youth with a long knife probably could open his kidneys for him this night, with ease, and leave him to bleed his life away in the mud, bereft of coin, and alone. Alone. . the smil shy;ing image of the priestess Meira swam into his mind, then, and he groaned and clutched at his head.

"No," he whimpered. "Gods, no. A toothless alley whore would be cleaner and more loving."

That mumbled conviction took him around a corner onto Boldshoulder Street, which was cobbled, uneven, and dotted with the mud and dung of many wagons. He realized this only as he slipped in one such offering, his left boot shooting out wildly in front of him.

A moment later, he'd measured his length helplessly in midair, and a moment after that he slammed down so hard on his back in rather liquid horse droppings that the breath was hurled out of him. His elbows and head went numb, and he could barely find strength enough, in the sudden dizzying swirl of the moon above him, to writhe in pain.

It must have been some time later when he rolled over. Dazedly he recalled that at least two separate pairs of boots had clicked hurriedly past him without stopping. He was cold, his head was splitting, and he reeked with wet, green-brown dung.

"What had they been feeding the horse that did this?" he snarled, on the verge of tears from the smell and his headache. "And how by the God on the Rack could it have been in any state to pull anything?"

Somehow he found his feet again and stumbled on down the street. Prendle was just two lanes over, and in his house he could get a bath. Nuin had an ornate tub. The man must have had a thing for cleanliness. Perhaps he'd fallen down, just like this, once too often, and gotten tired of crawling naked under the pump in the stable yard. Auvrarn's stomach lurched as a stray breath of sea breeze brought a fresh waft of the smell coming off him to his nose. The breeze didn't touch his hair, which felt like glue. There was probably dung all through it. Labraster moaned, and felt like throwing up again-well, gods, why not?

Emptying his stomach into the street made him feel just a bit better, but it still seemed like a stinking, reeling eternity before he found his own gateposts. The stone lions stared patiently out into the night, not bothering to give him the disgusted and incredulous stares several of his neighbors had favored him with as he'd reeled past, knowing he was wearing a sick smile and raging inside, He muttered a heartfelt curse upon the heads of all hermit priestesses, High Ladies, and stupidly honest cloth merchants, wherever they might be, and kicked and hammered at his own front door until he felt better.

That got him one thing. When the last of his three keys clicked in its lock and the door groaned wide, both of the young, empty-headed maids he'd had to hire to replace Alaithe were awake and in the hall, wide-eyed and clutching garden shears and fire tongs in their trembling hands. They were wearing two of his dressing gowns, and had obviously been too stupid-fortunately for him-to think of together lifting the door bar into place.

He cursed them all the way up the stairs. Nalambra and Karlae-Stonehead and Clumsyhands. Ardent and curvaceous they might be, but they were also slow and lazy everywhere but in bed. Anticipate his needs? Think at all for themselves? Bah! Now he'd have to shiver naked in the cold metal bathtub for hours as they pumped water and gasped their way up the stairs with hearth fire-warmed rocks to heat it.

Alaithe would have had a hot bath waiting, and if he'd not bothered with it, she'd have had fresh rocks ready to heat it anew in the morning, without a murmur of com shy;plaint. For perhaps the seven hundredth time he regretted strangling her and burying her in the garden, but he'd had no choice. She'd been suspicious of him from the first, and set about devising little tests and traps to see if he wasn't the "real" Blandras Nuin. Once he'd smelled the kaurdyl in his morning broth, he'd had no choice. If she was trying to kill him, it was time to slay her. Fat and unlovely she may have been, but what a housekeeper! Perhaps, to Blandras, more than that. Hadn't it started that first night, when he'd bolted his bedchamber door and pretended to be asleep when she'd tried to open it at dawn?

Ah, gods, but none of it mattered now. "Nalambra! Karlae!" Labraster snarled. "Stop all that screaming and get up here and pump." Gods, but he smelled. He unlatched the window that overlooked the garden and started hauling off sodden, dung-caked garments and hurling them out into the night. Out with it, out with it all!

Even the boots went, and the belt with the dagger built into its buckle. No one would scale the high, barred gate or force a way through the thornhedge to steal things so foul anyway. All he left-in an empty chamber pot, not on the table-were his coin-purse, his belt-knife, and the rings from his fingers-all of them. As they clattered into the pot, he shoved it away with his foot, stepped into the bath, and grimly crouched down to wait. He knew he was going to have some long, cold hours yet before morning.

The worst of the dung was gone from his hair and his skin, at least, but the bath Auvrarn Labraster sat in was brown and covered with a swirl of bubble-adorned white scum. It smelled as if it was more liquid dung now than water. Worse than that, it was cold, and getting colder by the minute, and his two lazy maids with the stone-sling and the hot stones that would make this bearable were nowhere to be seen.

"Nalambra!" he bellowed. "Karlae! Where in all the yawning pits of the Abyss are you?"

As if his shout had been a signal, two throat-stripping screams erupted downstairs. A chair fell over, or maybe a table-the whole house shook-and fainter crashes fol shy;lowed, one of them the bang of his front door trailing all of its chains and bolts as it slammed shut, then rebounded. The splintering crash that came on the heels of that booming sounded as if someone had burst out of the kitchen midden chute without waiting to open it.

Then came the silence, stretching out in the cold as Labraster waited, and shivered, and waited.

"Nalambra?" he called, when he could wait no longer, "Karlae?"

He rolled out of the bath and stood up to hear better, leaning forward with one arm on a chair. Shivering thus, he waited until the water he stood in stilled again, and lis shy;tened intently for any sounds of movement in the house below. Even stealthy sounds that meant he'd best find the blade under the bed would tell him something, but there was nothing more than the faint whisper of the sea breeze blowing through open doors and windows below.

"Blast all smugly blazing gods and their sky splitting thunderbolts!" Auvrarn Labraster snarled at last, as his wet hands slipped and he fell on the cold lip of the bath, before crashing back down into its depths with a helpless, mighty splash, that emptied the top foot or so of its con shy;tents all over the room around him.

His candle lamp went out.

Labraster stared into the darkness in real alarm. There'd been no breeze, the thing had full shutters to keep water-even a wave of dung stained bathwater-out, and the candle had been less than a third burned down. What, then, had …?

Something that glowed faintly glided past the door shy;way, and Auvrarn Labraster's heart froze. He struggled to swallow, to rouse himself to rise and run for his sword, but the blade was in his bedchamber, and the bedcham shy;ber was through that door.

The glow was out there, somewhere off to the right, but he knew all too well what he'd seen. It was the image of a burly woman-Alaithe-bobbing along just as she'd always bustled along the upstairs hall. An image that glowed, that he could see through, and that moved in utter silence.

It came back again, and he bit his lip to keep from screaming. The ghost of his housekeeper moved more slowly this time, as if carrying something he could not see. She did not look in his direction or appear to know he was there, but on her throat he could clearly see the dark, deep grooves of fingers.

Auvrarn Labraster shivered, snatched up the only thing he could reach that might serve as a weapon-the bath stool-and cowered down in the icy, noisome bath shy;water. He would not scream. He would not die here this night, if he didn't leap out the window or do something stupid. It was only an image, nothing that could harm him.

When Alaithe's sad, hollow-eyed, glowing face rose up out of the waters between his knees, Auvrarn Labraster discovered that he could scream. Quite well.

She loomed forward as she emerged from the water, swaying over him like a snake, her face coming ever closer to his. He tried screaming again, enthusiastically, and again.

"Be silent, master," she said, her white lips moving, "or I'll touch you."

Quite suddenly Labraster discovered that he could keep very quiet. He whimpered once, deep in his throat, but the ghost came no closer-not that six inches from his own nose was a comfortable distance. For just a moment, the face so close to his melted into skin shriv shy;eled over a skull, with a fat white worm crawling out of one eye socket. Labraster struggled on the shrieking edge of howling out a scream, then the face was Alaithe's again, plump-necked, familiar, almost motherly, and somehow reassuring.

"The dead rise because they need to know," Alaithe whispered, her voice the same husky drone, "and I have a need to know why you slew me, and more-much more. I will haunt you forever, no matter where in all Faerun you run, unless you release me to my rest by telling me all. Speak freely, man, so long as you don't scream or shout."

"H-haunt me?" Labraster stammered, raising the stool up out of the water like a shield.

"Haunt you, man, freezing your heart and your loins, so that you always feel cold. Appearing at your shoulder for others to see, whenever you try to court, or make deals, or speak to priests. More than those, you shall never sleep again unless I desire to let you sleep, and never share a bed again unless it be with someone who is blind, and deaf, and feels not the cold. Yes, I shall haunt you, man."

Auvrarn Labraster sank down in the now icy water, shivering uncontrollably. The breeze rose and blew sea mist into the room, but the ghostly woman leaning over him never wavered or took her dark and terrible eyes from his.

"A-and if I tell you what you want to know?"

The ghost seemed to recede a little from him, and her strangled voice came more faintly. "Then Alaithe whom you slew shall sink back into the garden, and you shall see her no more."

"I… you won't hurt me?"

"Not if you tell all," the ghost said in tones of doom, "and avoid using any of the lies that fall so easily from your lips."

Auvrarn Labraster licked those lips, heard his teeth chatter, and asked, "C-could I, perhaps, get out of this bath?"

"Of course … if you'd like to try to bed a ghost, or answer my questions out in the street, just as you are." The ghostly face was very close to his, and so were its fin shy;gers, outstretched on either side of him and curving inward toward his throat.

Auvrarn Labraster gave a little yelp, ducked down until the cold water splashed his chin, and managed to say, "H-here is just fine-uh, just fine! A-ask your questions."

"Why did you slay me?"

"B-because you tried to kill me!" Labraster said quickly. Ghostly hands reached for him, and he shouted desperately, "Because you knew I wasn't Blandras!"

"And what happened to my good master?"

"I don't know," Labraster babbled. "I-an evil priestess forced me to come here. She changed me into his shape."

"What did I say earlier about lies?" A cold finger slid forward, and the quivering, whimpering merchant felt a needle of ice stab through his left eye. Though his trem shy;bling fingers found no blood or wound, he could not see out of that eye.

"Don't make me touch you again, man," the face so ter shy;ribly close to his added, in its droning whisper. "Tell me the truth about Meira and the altar Blandras Nuin died on."

"Y-you know? Well, why make me tell you if-"

"I want you to tell all. I need you to tell all. If I cannot rest, neither shall you."

"Aha, aye, yes yes," Labraster said hastily, terror making his tongue swift. "I–I was visiting the priestess Meira for my own purposes, and sh-"

"Which purposes?"

"I needed to hide from a foe. Her spells could do it."

"And who are you, really?"

Auvrarn Labraster drew in a deep breath. "A merchant of Waterdeep. Uh, no one important. I'm a dealer in furs and trinkets. My name is n-"

"Auvrarn Labraster, have a care for your remaining eye," the ghost said mildly.

"— ot so well known as I'd like. Auvrarn Labraster, as you know, and-and-"

"And you are hiding from what foe?"

Labraster licked his lips. "Ah, Alustriel, the High Lady of Silverymoon. I-we fought."

"Why?"

"There was a murder-a tradelord of Neverwinter. She thought I did it, but it was an umber hulk, really, and-"

"And you can tell me the truth, Auvrarn Labraster, about your connection to that umber hulk, can't you?"

"I-" Auvrarn Labraster's good eye narrowed, and he asked, "What does this have to do with Blandras Nuin?"

"I need to know it all, false man and murderer, all. The cycle, the wizards of Thay … I need to hear it all from your lips. You will feel much better once you tell me. Much warmer, to be sure, for the furs that cloak your bed await but steps away."

"I could just get up and run through you and get those furs now!" Labraster shouted through chattering teeth, the bathwater swirling wildly about him.

"Men whose joints are frozen can't bend them. They can fall-once, but thereafter they cannot even crawl."

Auvrarn Labraster moaned and slid back in the bath until the waters lapped at his mouth. "I could just let myself slide under," he murmured.

"I think you know that I would not let you die until I'd heard it all," that horrible, patient voice came back at him.

"How would I know that?" the shivering merchant shouted. "You tried to kill me, remember?"

The husky voice of the wraith glowing above him was, somehow, dripping with contempt. "Kaurdyl is a spice, ignorant man. Only huge doses of it can kill-then only when it is mixed with certain oils."

"A-and how is it that you know that?" Labraster asked quickly, as if each accusation was a weapon that could fend off a vengeful ghost.

"All cooks have to know such things. If they can't be bothered, they become merchants instead. If they're too lazy to make coin as a merchant, why then, they can always murder a merchant and take what is his, can't they?"

The man in the bath shrank down so suddenly that cold water lapped over its edge and slapped across the bath chamber floor. "I never killed Nuin," he stammered. "Y-you know that."

"I was speaking of other merchants, back in Waterdeep," the ghost said flatly, 'but I'll speak no more of them. You will speak. You will answer my every question, or-"

Ghostly hands stretched out, and the merchant's teeth set up an uncontrollable chatter from the sudden chill. He waved a desperate hand, fending the wraith away, and cried, "I'll tell! I'll tell!"

The ghost nodded. "You will indeed," she said, and it sounded like a king's command.

Labraster stared at it-her-and ran one desperate hand through his wet, ruined hair. When he found his voice again, it sounded on the quavering edge of tears, "Will you tell me something first? I need to know why you rose. I mean, folk die all the time, and they don't come whispering to their sons and daughters wanting to know things."

“You'd be surprised," the ghost of Alaithe said in a voice that echoed with doom.

Labraster stared at her, swallowed with an effort, then pleaded, "Just tell me, please? Did Blandras mean all that much to you?"

"Yes." The whisper was so fierce, and the ghostly face so close to his, that Auvrarn Labraster almost threw himself under the water without thinking.

He cowered for a long time, staring into the dead gaze in those dark pits of eyes, before he managed to ask, "L-love?"

In answer, the wraith hovering over him drew away to the foot of the bath, and rose upright then, slowly, turned from the fat, motherly, homely figure of Alaithe into a younger, buxom, strikingly beautiful woman. "I was once like this," the ghostly voice came to him, "and Blandras knew me then. He loved me, and I spurned him. Our ways parted. Years later, I was as you knew me-" The vision of beauty became the familiar bulk of Alaithe once more. "-and was thrown out of my job in favor of a younger, more beautiful woman. I came to Neverwinter, and by chance, begging for work in the streets, met Blandras. He took me in."

"As your master, or man?" Labraster asked roughly.

The ghost drifted a little nearer. "There is hope for you yet, murderer. As my husband, Blandras was. Now it is time for you to answer me again."

Labraster let out a sigh, shivered uncontrollably from cold rather than fear, and hugged himself in the frigid water. "Yes," he said faintly. "Ask."

"You and the priestess Meira are part of a chain of folk who work together. Who are the others?"

"There are drow, in Scornubel, who speak to me and others through one of their number, the slaver Brella," Labraster said slowly. "They, as I, have many who work for them personally, knowing nothing of us or our aims. A woman in Waterdeep, for example, has no idea why I give her orders to invest thus or hire so. It is hard to ans-"

"Meira outranks you, as you outrank Mrilla Malsander. Who is of your standing, or higher?"

"The Red Wizards Azmyrandyr, Roeblen, and Thaltar, at least two other Red Wizards above them, I think, and at least one other mage who leads us all. There are other clergy of Shar whose names have been kept from me."

"Does your group have a name?"

A bitter smile touched Labraster's lips. "You begin to sound like a watch officer.. no."

"Who is that one other mage?"

Labraster looked very nervous. "I-there may be a spell on me that slays if I speak his name."

The ghost drifted almost nose to nose with the shiver shy;ing merchant, and said softly, "Why not risk that chance?" Ghostly fingers slid down to loosely encircle Labraster's throat. They did not touch him, but he could feel the icy chill radiating from them,

"I, ah, the mad mage who dwells under Waterdeep! All know of him. Need I name him?"

There were many dark stories about Halaster Blackcloak, the mad wizard who lurked in fabled Undermountain-stories of an old, thin-lipped sorcerer who could stroke cats and aid children, or blast towers to rubble with revelers inside, or transport horrific monsters onto the feast tables of proud merchants. A wizard mighty enough to spell-tame dragons with a wave of his hand, or blast mountain peaks to rubble if they ruined his view. Labraster had heard grisly stories around many a tavern hearth about the Mad Mage of Undermountain, and some of those tales might even be true. As the years passed, stories he'd scoffed at in his younger days were turning out to be disturbingly accurate, if they were about wizards. He wished he could say the same about some of the other tales.

"Halaster Blackcloak is hardly lucid enough to lead a cabal for long, unless it was of folk working only in Undermountain," the ghost said, leaning so close that Labraster felt a chill all over his face and throat, and was jolted cruelly back to the here and now. "Who really leads you, Labraster?"

"I know not-I swear I know not! Even Meira knows only her Sharran superiors, just as I know the Thayans! Please believe me, 'tis truth!"

The ghost withdrew a little from the sobbing man in the bath and asked, "And your aims? Tell me more about them."

Auvrarn Labraster sagged against the high, upright masterpiece of scrollwork that was the back of his-well, Blandras Nuin's, but his now-bath and gasped in relief, staring at the ceiling with one wild eye and one blankly staring one. The ghost let him pant for a long time before drifting nearer, but she did not have to threaten again before he started to stammer out a reply.

"Smuggling and s-slaving, of course. Th-the drow are taking over the rulership of Scornubel, taking the places of those we enslave. Things stolen in one city are hidden and sold elsewhere in hard winters or when war threat shy;ens, for high returns. Such schemes are my tasks. Those above me work more ambitious schemes, breeding mal shy;contents here, sponsoring rebels there-and themselves using magic to change their shapes and take the places of important persons."

"Such as?"

"High officials in Amn, Baldur's Gate, Westgate, all over Sembia, and Mirabar. More soon."

''Working toward?"

Auvrarn Labraster drew in a deep breath, groaned, and said in a rush, "Supplanting the rulers of Nimpeth, Cormyr, and Hillsfar."

"You are joined in a 'cycle' enchantment with an umber hulk and three Red Wizards, wherein each of you can trade places with the next being in the sequence so that you could leave a confrontation, and bring the umber hulk to stand and fight in your place. Whose doing was that?"

"The mad mage's."

"Are there other cycles within the nameless chain of intriguers to which you belong?"

"I believe so," Labraster said wearily. "Gods, let me get warm, I beg of you."

The ghost slid up to almost touch noses with him once more, and whispered, "You strangled me, man, and now dare to beg for mercy?"

Auvrarn Labraster looked back at her through one failing eye and mumbled, "Yes. Yes, I guess I do."

He tried to shriek, a moment later, as that icy hand touched his blinded eye again, but he found he could do nothing. He was frozen utterly in an icy grip that could crush him at any time. The merchant couldn't even breathe as the hoarse, husky whisper of the woman he'd strangled echoed through his head:

Be glad, Auvrarn Labraster, that Alaithe is merciful. Remember that mercy for the rest of your days-in par shy;ticular, whenever you hold the life of another in your hands. Throats are delicate things.

He could see again, dazedly, blinking in the sudden light as the candle lamp, so long dark, flickered up into flame again by itself. He was blinking with both eyes. He could see again.

The water was still cold, and there was still an icy chill lingering about his throat, but the ghost was gone. With a sudden, wild hope, Auvrarn Labraster stood up, bath shy;water raining down in all directions, and looked around.

There was no eerie glow. He was free of her.

He ran his hands through his dripping hair, shudder shy;ing and shivering uncontrollably now as the breeze coming through the windows quickened. When he turned and leaped out of the bath he didn't care that his wet feet skidded on the floor and he almost fell, didn't care that the fouled water crashed down over the floor in a mighty sheet in his wake, and he certainly didn't hear the tiny tink of a small fragment of stone falling into the nearly emptied bath.

The man who was not Blandras Nuin pounded naked along the upstairs hall, sniveling and shivering, and plunged through the open, dark door of his bedchamber with his teeth so loudly a-chatter that he could hear nothing else.

The candle-glow from within the closed curtains of his canopied bed would have brought Auvrarn Labraster to a wary halt on any other night but this-but as it was, he bounded across the room and tore them wide.

It was a measure of his chilled, near-delirious state that Labraster found nothing unusual in the fact that a lamp that he'd left behind in the bathroom should be hanging above his pillows now, merrily alight. Nor that two maids he'd cursed into fleeing him then heard injur shy;ing themselves in headlong terrified flight from a ghost downstairs earlier this evening should now be curled up nude in his bed, unharmed, with their hair neatly combed over their shoulders, so deeply asleep that his screams and shouts in the bathroom hadn't roused them. No, Auvrarn Labraster took in just one thing-and, as he always had in life, plunged heartily in to seize it.

His leap took him into the little cavity between the curved and muscled backs of Nalambra and Karlae-a space not large enough for anything larger than a stretched out and trusting cat. Both maids awoke in sudden, shrieking terror as they were landed upon and thrust rolling out of bed by something very cold and very wet, that struck both hard and with a vicious disregard for their comfort.

They both landed hard, but were up in a howling instant, running headlong and screaming for the door. Nalambra, by virtue of being hurled to the floor on the door side of the bed, got there first, but slipped on a puddle in the hallway just outside the door. Karlae, upon encountering an obstacle, clawed her way blindly up Nalambra's back. They fell through the door together, sobbing in utter terror and slapping and flailing at each other in a frantic whirlwind, somehow disentangled themselves in the hallway beyond, and ran headlong into the shadowy arms of a wraithlike figure that hung wait shy;ing in the hallway. It was silent, more slender than the ghost of Alaithe, and as dark as the night.

Sleep overcame Nalambra and Karlae as they passed through the dark arms they never noticed. As they tumbled limply toward the floor, something unseen gently caught them and left them floating, sprawled in midair.

The dark, ghostly figure glided down the hall to the door the two terrified maids had erupted out of, and peered in.

The canopied bed still held the candle lamp her spells had whisked there. Its warm rays fell upon a huge, shiver shy;ing mass that looked like a man rolled up in all of the bed linens and over furs at once, so that only a little of his face could be seen down a sort of tunnel. A muffled moaning was coming from the heart of the untidy bundle, and a trail of water led through the door up to the bed where it lay.

The dark figure made a sighing sound and curled the fingers of one hand together. The candle lamp obediently went out.

A howl of fear arose immediately from the bundle, but the dark figure ignored it, turning away to go back down the hall again. Sylune had waited a very long time for the man in the bed to take off his magic-dead ring, and she did not intend to let this chance slip away. Besides, play shy;ing ghosts was good fun.

Her fading essence couldn't spin spells for much longer, though. 'Twas a good thing this fearful merchant liked to surround himself with enchanted swords and daggers-and an even better thing that he feared the magic-dead ring would break their enchantments, and had hidden them all carefully away in a locked cabinet along the back of his best bedroom wardrobe.

At least a pair of them were shortly to follow into obliv shy;ion the glowstone from the box by his bedside that Auvrarn Labraster didn't yet know he'd lost. Oblivion might well have claimed some targets of the cabal whilst Labraster was in hiding, with a certain powerless Chosen of Mystra accompanying him.

It was high time to hand this evil chain of schemers a setback. To do so swiftly without revealing to all of them that the Seven Sisters knew of them and were on the hunt-something that might cause desperate reactions, and get a lot of folk killed-would involve something the Witch of Shadowdale was usually loath to do. She would have to unleash a fox among the chickens. Three Thayan mages in turn had struck at Alustriel, and the scourge of Red Wizards was the Simbul, a fox apt to run somewhat wild. Sylune recalled rather bitterly reminding her sister from Aglarond that when castles are hurled down, folk one has no quarrel with are apt to get maimed and crushed, not just dueling mages. This once, perhaps, such bold and reckless strife was necessary, just as removing a little stored magic from Faerun forever was now necessary.

"Forgive me, Mystra," the ghost whispered on its way into the bath chamber. "Let one magic feed another."

The dark, ghostly figure swept to the sink and held two daggers over it. There were two flashes, like stars twinkling out from behind dark clouds! Two dark hands trembled and seemed to grow more solid, then sudden darkness returned. Ashes drifted down between slender fingers into the sink, where a single brief pour from the ewer of ready water chased them down the drain and away. Sylune was a tidy person.

She was also one who hated unfinished tasks. With all speed she returned to the hallway and outlined the two sleeping maids with the same ghostly glow she favored when appearing to murderous and waterlogged mer shy;chants as the phantom of Alaithe. The Witch of Shadowdale smiled, waved her hands in a few quick gestures, and caused their hair to stand out stiff and straight in all directions and their eyes to open and stare blankly into the darkness, though they slept on. She arranged their bodies with hands at sides and feet pointed out straight, then turned them in the air so that they floated upright a foot or so above the hallway floor, side by side and facing the bedroom. If Labraster took it into his head to come eavesdropping on her, he'd have to physically force his way past them and somehow, Sylune thought he wouldn't be very eager to do that. For good measure, she left a ghostly image of the worm-eaten Alaithe hanging in the bath chamber doorway, bloated up so as to entirely fill the doorframe.

Sylune floated over to the open window to look out at the Neverwinter night. There were white, staring faces in the windows of several houses nearby, looking her way. The Witch of Shadowdale smiled broadly, gave her translucent, wraithlike self a bright green-white glow, and caused her head to rise up until it was a good three feet above her shoulders.

She waved cheerfully at the house where the loudest scream erupted in response, and strolled forward through the window to stand, nude and magnificent, her hair billowing out around her, in the empty air some sixty feet above the dark and garment-strewn garden below.

She wove a sending to chat with a distant sister and said into the night, "Hail, Witch-Queen of Aglarond!"

Hello yourself, Witch of Shadowdale, came an answer. Storm and Lustra have been wondering where you've been these past months.

"Trapped in an unwashed patch of hair on the head of a merchant wearing a magic-dead ring for fear of Lustra coming down on him in her full fury. It got so I wasn't just talking to myself-I was arguing with myself."

Ugh! Those things should be destroyed. I've even caught a pair of Tashlutans-hired by our friends from Thay, of course-sneaking into my court with a pair of them that generate a reciprocating field between them. Pity their greed took their ring-hands into the path of a spill of molten gold being poured in one of the crafter's shops. Oh. . winning those arguments with yourself, I hope. What sparks your plaintive cry this fair evening, sister?

"The usual need to save all fair Faerun and everything in it, Lassra. I'm trapped in some bathwater-treated with a liberal dose of dissolved horse dung, so bring gloves-because our villain finally did a thorough job of washing his hair. He's shivering in his bed right now. Want to come to Neverwinter and warm him up?"

Neverwinter? Does it have Red Wizards I can torment?

"No, but this man is linked in a magical cycle to an umber hulk and three Red Wizards. That should satisfy even someone as greedy as you."

A-hunting Red Wizards? Leave it to me.

"Touch my stone and I'll give you all I know about our foes in one mindburst."

You're a gem, Sylune. Constrained against the Art for months? I'd have gone utterly and eternally insane.

"Others of my sisters have vigor, and low contacts across Faerun, and a love of danger. I have something rarer: patience."

While I have a hunger to kill Red Wizards.

Erovas Vrakenntun rubbed weary eyes and glared again at the window. Like the rest of the near neighbors of Blandras Nuin, he'd been unexpectedly entertained all night long. The hitherto quiet abode of a cloth merchant known for his kindnesses and solitude had provided a free spectacle that Erovas was heartily sick of.

Bloodcurdling, deafening shrieks, shouts and tavern oaths, and things breaking had been a damned near con shy;stant chorus-punctuated by displays of clothes thrown out windows, nude women plunging out of the house and running shrieking across the garden, and now, what looked like ghosts flitting past the windows. By the Untold Trembling Mysteries of Mystra, 'twas enough to make a-

His eyes widened and his jaw dropped open. His favorite monocle fell unheeded from its perch, to swing and dangle at the end of its maroon ribbon. Erovas the decanter merchant swallowed loudly, and reached for shy;ward with the sleeve of his dressing gown to wipe a small smear away from his window.

Not a hundred paces away-if he'd been able to pace upward through the air along a steady ascendant, as if climbing a staircase that had never existed and certainly never would, if he had anything to say about it, to reach a point about fifty feet above the sill of his window-a nude woman was floating. A woman whose long legs, slender, spectacular figure, and truly remarkable, gently swirling hair made his own wife look like a rather squat and badly sculpted garden statue of the jauntily gnomish variety.

The woman was standing on empty air-nay, leaning at ease on empty air, as if against a sideboard-talking in amused tones and in a relaxed, gossipy manner with someone who wasn't there. She was glowing brightly, he could see right through her, and he could see everything-Erovas gulped-including the fact that her head, with that gorgeous hair, was floating a good three feet above those slender, moon-drenched shoulders.

There was a small squeaking sound beside him. Erovas jumped, and it was a few anxious seconds before he realized that the sound had come from his wife, who'd come softly up beside him to see what he was staring at. When, she'd seen it for herself, she'd crammed some knuckles into her mouth, and bitten down hard.

A scream erupted from somewhere nearby, echoing around the dark houses, and the ghostly woman looked down and gave them a cheerful wave. Something inside Erovas the decanter merchant snapped.

"Right, that's it," he said to his trembling wife in a voice of iron. She whirled around to stare up at him as if he were twelve feet tall, fully armored, and grimly draw shy;ing on huge spiked war gauntlets as he contemplated which heavy sword to snatch up for the ride into battle. "We're moving. First thing in the morning. I've always hated your cousin in Port Llast, but right now I could cheerfully kiss him-and his six fat, drooling sons. Come help me-with the packing."

The Simbul’s newest bedchamber took the form of a tall, soaring cone, its walls covered with the polished, interlaced, and startlingly red scales of many red dragons who would never take wing again. A steady, spell-spun breeze rose to the unseen tip of the cone, carrying swirling smoke with it.

The smoke came from a merrily-blazing bonfire that was floating some dozen feet above the tiled, diamond-shaped central dance floor. Four women were lying or sprawling at ease in the air around it, floating with spellbooks open in front of them. From time to time, encountering particularly faint or smudged writings, one of the studying sorceresses would crook a finger, and a blazing log would drift out from the conflagration to hang obligingly near, where it could shed light but not flame where desired.

The bed that usually hung high in the center of the cone was now floating handy to one side, piled high with scrolls, grimoires, bookmarks, and plates of butterbread biscuits. An unseen harp played very faint and gentle ballads in the background. The fire popped only in hushed tones, and did not spit sparks at all.

One of the floating women sat bolt upright, causing the others to look up, startled. The Simbul frowned but kept silent, nodding slightly from time to time, then slowly acquired a wolfish grin. "A-hunting Red Wizards? Leave it to me."

She was, suddenly, a small whirlwind of flame that outshone the fire, a whirlwind that spun dazzlingly into a rising spiral-and was just as suddenly gone.

The three remaining sorceresses looked at each other. Then two of them groaned in unison, and the third one asked in disbelief, "Again?"