The Best of the Realms, Book II

A SLOW DAY IN SKULLPORT

Eyes blinked in the darkness, a prologue to a rare sound in Under mountain: a deep, grating chuckle. Xuzoun had not been this excited in a long, long time.

* * * * *

In the damp, chill depths of the vast subterranean labyrinth that is the infamous killing-ground of Undermountain, in winding ways not all that far north of Skullport, a certain passage begins at an archway surmounted by a smiling, reclining stone nymph. The carving lacks the unearthly, deadly beauty of the real creature it represents, yet is still strikingly attractive, and word of it has spread over the years. Some folk even believe it represents a goddess—perhaps Sune, fire-haired lady of love—and bow or pray before it… and who’s to say they’re wrong?

There’s certainly more to the statue than its lifelike beauty. Everyone who has attempted to dislodge and carry it away has been found dead—in small, torn pieces—before the arch. A blood-stained chisel one of them let fall has been left behind as a mute warning to enthusiasts of portable sculpture who may happen upon the archway in the future.

Who carved it, and why, are secrets still held by the mysterious builders of this stretch of Undermountain. The careful— and lucky— adventurer can, however, learn what lies beyond the arch: a simple, smooth-walled passage can readily be seen—but for some reason, few walk far along it.

Those who do will find that the passage soon narrows, descends sharply, and becomes a rough tunnel hewn through damp rock, filled in several places by the ceaseless murmur of echoes: fading but never silent remnants of a distant cacophony seeming to involve loud speech in tongues not understood or identified by even the most careful listener.

As the intrigued traveler moves on, the grinning bones of human adventurers and larger, snakelike things adorn the deepening way, and pits appear. Above several of these deadly shafts, palely shrouded in cobwebbed bones, hang dark, ancient tree trunks ending in sharp points. Years have passed since they fell like fangs to impale victims who are now mere twisted tangles of bone and sinew, dangling silently, their lifeblood spilled long ago.

Few explorers come so far. One may have to wait days for a crumbling bone to break free and fall into the depths with a small, dry sigh… and such sights are the only excitement hereabouts.

Any intruder who presses on past the area of pits—and manages to avoid personally discovering new ones—will soon meet the endless gaze of a skull taller than most men. A giant’s head goggles down the passage, its empty sockets lit eerily by glowworms that dwell within. Their faint, slowly-ambulating radiances show what dealt death to the giant waiting in the dimness just beyond: a boulder almost as large as the riven skull, bristling with rusted metal spikes

as long as most men stand tall. The bands that gird the stone and clasp its massive swing-chain are still strong. The many-spiked boulder hangs in the passage like a patient beholder, almost blocking the way, and sometimes swinging slightly in response to distant tremors and breezes of the depths.

Only a fool—or an adventurer—would come this far, or press on past the gigantic trap in search of further perils. A bold intruder who does will soon come to a place where a band of glowstone crosses the ceiling of the rough-hewn way, casting faint, endless ruby light down on an old, comfortable-looking armchair and footstool. These stout, welcoming pieces stand together in an alcove, flanked by a little side table littered with old and yellowed books—lurid tales of adventure, mostly, with a few tomes of the “lusty wizard” genre—and a bookmark made of a long lock of knotted and beribboned human hair.

A fortunate intruder will find the chair empty and wonder forever how it came to be there and who uses it. An unlucky explorer, or one rash enough to take or damage any of the items, will soon learn that it is one of the retreats of a certain old and mad wizard known as Halaster, called by some the Lord of Undermountain. Only he can call the ghostly ring of floating, skeletal liches that surround the chair fully into Faerun to hurl spells at those who offer him violence.

The fortunate visitor who found the alcove empty and lived to walk on would soon reach a stretch of passage where human bones drift and whirl endlessly, awaiting a living foe to rake and bludgeon. Bones circling with slow patience that stirs into deadly hunger whenever an intruder comes within reach.

Beyond the bonewhirl, the passage turns right and ends in a vast emptiness: A cavern large enough to hold some cities of the world above.

An emptiness where many eyes now blinked as a point of light winked into sudden life in the darkness.

The light pulsed, whirled in a frenzied dance, and grew swiftly larger, blazing up into a bright, floating… human woman, all long, silken hair; liquid grace; fine gown; and dark, darting eyes. The deep chuckle came again, and its source drifted close to the glowing phantom, peering at it with many eyes.

“Let us begin,” a deep voice rumbled in tones of triumph, and a thing of dusty tentacles and flowing flesh rose almost wearily from the rocks of the cavern floor to approach the phantom.

As it came, its tentacles fell back into a melting bulk that rose up, thinned, and shaped itself with frightening speed into a twin of the phantom lady.

Above the glowing image and the shapeshifting thing, the many eyes watched critically as one strove to match the other … many eyes on restless, snakelike stalks reaching from a floating sphere split by a broad, jagged mouth of many teeth. The huge central orb of the sphere blazed with excitement, and a deep rumble of satisfaction rolled around the cavern.

Xuzoun was old even as beholders go, but to its kind there comes a time when the patience of long years and cold cunning runs out—and for Xuzoun, that time had come.

The eye tyrant drifted around its enthralled doppleganger with eager speed, looking for the slightest difference from the conjured image—and emitting another rumble of satisfaction when it found none. Motes of magelight swirled in its wake as it went, working mightier magics.

If all went well, this shapeshifting thrall that now looked. so beautiful and delicate—every inch a breathless, cultured, sheltered human noble maiden—would soon be wearing another shape: that of a certain Lord of Waterdeep. And thereby would Xuzoun, through eyes and shapeshifting hands unshakably linked to its will, reach at last into the World Above and the rich, bustling city of humans too stupid even to notice when they were being manipulated. Waterdeep, City of Splendors, where coins flowed in golden rivers and folk came from all over Faerun—and beyond—to dip their hands in the passing riches. And more: to taste and smell power, wielded with subtlety or brute force.

Power. To be a part of it all and shape ends and happenings to one’s own desires. That was the lure Xuzoun could taste, even here in the hidden dark. With this thrall standing in the boots of the one called Durnan, master of the famous inn called the Yawning Portal, Xuzoun could readily convey items and beings between Skullport and Waterdeep (for stiff fees) as desired … and in a stroke become a channel for those flowing coins, and a part of all the darkest intrigues of the Sword Coast.

To live again, after so much skulking and waiting in the endless dark!

A long, cold time ago the Phaerimm had come and the city of Ooltul had fallen, dead beholders rent and hurled down its labyrinthine passages in spellbursts until their gore-drenched husks choked the very avenues of the City of Tyrants. A city that had bent purple worms and illithids alike into mind-thralled guardians, cut new passages and chambers out of solid rock with melting ease, and casually slaughtered drow warbands and armies alike. The city of Xuzoun’s birth.

The beholder could still scarce believe it had fallen, even after a slow eternity of fleeing across the lightless Underdark from the relentless Phaerimm, to come at last to fabled Skullport, the Source of Slaves, the most famous of the places Where the World Above Met the World Below. The place where Xuzoun had vowed it would stand, and run no more.

The eye tyrant looked again at its thrall and with an impatient thought blew the glowing image of the human maiden into a thousand dancing motes of magelight. They swirled in brief chaos then sped to the cavern walls to cling and glow palely there, shedding the radiance necessary for the next spell to work.

Aye, the next spell: the lure that would bring the doomed Lord of Waterdeep to Xuzoun. The old hero would come warily down into the depths of Undermountain to rescue a young, pretty noble lady in need: Nythyx Thunderstaff, the daughter of Durnan’s old friend Anadul, who was brother to Baerom, head of the noble House of Thunderstaff. And here he would die.

The beholder looked at its doppleganger thrall, standing in the shape of Nythyx, and through the mind-link made it shrink back and put one delicate hand to its mouth in terror.

A perfect likeness; Xuzoun smiled. Soon Durnan would be within reach.

Aye, soon. If all went well. As things so seldom did when one had dealings with humans, Xuzoun thought wryly. Then it shrugged, eyestalks writhing like a nest of disturbed caterpillars, and a few magelights obediently rushed together in front of it, swirled briefly, and became an eye—an eye that watched the fearful maiden as she spoke the words Xuzoun bid her to.

When the message was done, the beholder rumbled in satisfaction as the glowing eye circled it once before flying forth to find the human called Durnan.

Durnan the Lord of Waterdeep. Durnan the Master of the Portal. Durnan the Doomed.

* * * * *

“And so our blades beyond compare—” Durnan sang, bending down to rummage in the bottom rungs of the rack. Selecting a bottle, he drew it forth.

“Did brightly flash through haunted air,” he continued, and blew sharply on gray, furry dust that failed to whirl up from the bottle’s label, but merely slid reluctantly sideways and fell away. Dantymer’s Dew, 1336. Hmm. No Elixir of Evermeet, but not a bad vintage. Azoun of Cormyr had been crowned that year … and who was to say he’d fared better than this wine?

Durnan ran his dust-sash along the bottle and set it in the silently floating basket at his elbow. What else had he—? Ah, yes: Best Belaerd! Urrh. Why folk liked black licorice whisky from far Sheirtalar was beyond him, but like it they did, in increasing numbers, too, and one must move with the times.

Huh. A golden dragonshower upon that. Lads scarce old enough to shave swaggering into his inn night after night with loud, arrogant voices and gleaming dazzleshine-treated swords they missed no chance to wave around and brag about their prowess with… Were we ever that crass when we were that young, that… unsubtle? I suppose.

Time is the great healer of hurts and lantern of favorable light; no doubt it was making his youth brighter in his eyes even as it made his back creak, these days, and his bones ache on damp days. They were aching now. Durnan hefted a brace of belaerd bottles into the basket and strode on, not bothering to look back to make sure it was following.

Of course it was. Old Engult cast proper spells, enchantments to last, not fade and die, as he’d done, old, crabbed, and feeble. They’d sung his spell-dirge not a tenday ago.

Durnan shook his head, ducked through a low arch into the next cellar, and defiantly resumed the old battle song. “And a dozen dragons I slew there!”

That bellowed chorus echoed back at him from half a dozen dim corners, and he grinned and put some hearty volume into the next line: “Six old ores and a medusa fair!”

The words brought memories to mind as the echoes rolled. This wasn’t just the deepest wine cellar of the Yawning Portal; it was the home of many trophies of his swordswinging days. That lich periapt glimmering over there, where he’d hung it up as a lamp. This pair of ore tusks, from the only giant ore he’d ever met—well, if he’d lost that fight, ‘twould’ve been the only giant ore he’d ever meet, wouldn’t it?

And the swords of fallen foes, seized from lifeless, bloody hands on battlefields or carried off from spectre-haunted tombs and dragon-hoards. A score or more blades hanging here, there, and everywhere about him, the pale gleams of their slowly failing enchantments marking the walls of these dusty chambers and anchoring his expensive web of spell-wards.

Durnan looked around at them all, shook his head, and wondered how life had become so dull and routine. His thoughts leaped to blazing, pitching decks on ships that had sunk long ago, dragons erupting out of ruined castles now fallen and forgotten… the faces of snarling foes and welcoming ladies… and through it all, the bright flash and snarl of swords, skirling in a deadly dance he’d always won. Absently Durnan hummed the rest of the ballad and began another battle song of his youth as he strode on. He’d forgotten just

how many old helms and blades and suchlike he’d stashed and well-nigh forgotten down here.

Then, in front of him, his wards flared into brilliant life. The burly old tavernmaster hadn’t even time to curse before those magical defenses failed in a flash and something bright burst out of a blazing gap in the suddenly-torn air, spitting deadly spell-energies in all directions and swooping at him.

Durnan ducked low, whipping out his belt-knife and snatching at the unseen basket behind him for a bottle to hurl. The glowing thing was small, round, and—splitting open to reveal a scene within itself. As it widened into a magical frame and glided to a smooth stop in the air in front of Durnan, the wards repaired themselves with a last fitful snarl of magical fire and peace returned to the cellar.

“Durnan? Lord Durnan?” The face of the lass in the sending was familiar, though he’d never heard that small, soft voice so a-tremble with fear before. Nythyx Thunderstaff was standing in a dark cavern somewhere, a smudge of dirt on her face and one bare shoulder gleaming above a torn gown—and her dark eyes were wide with terror.

“If this reaches you, please come to me. I’m in”—the noble maiden swallowed, bit her lip, and went on—“Undermountain. The others’ve all run off, and … things are following me. I think I’m somewhere near your cellars, but I’m not sure … and my glowfire is dying fast. Th-there’s something following me. Please come.”

The scene darkened and dwindled away to nothing, leaving Durnan staring at where those pleading eyes had been. The sending was genuine—it must be. Only certain nobles dared openly address him as “lord,” and he’d seen Nythyx at a moonlit revel at the Palace not four days ago. It was truly the lass, all right, and she was scared. The cavern behind her might be anywhere in Undermountain except nearby; around the Portal, the dungeon he knew was all chambers and smooth-cut halls … and “the others have all run off” sounded like one of those daring forays by young noble boys with a pressing need to impress ladies, a bright new sword or dashing cloak, and a few flagons of courage. Such forays seldom ventured more than a few rooms deep into the uppermost level of Undermountain’s endless labyrinth before fear—or real danger—sent the hitherto-giggling participants hastening back to the city above.

So a little girl he’d laughed and played courtier-dolls with, and later talked of life, adventure, and escaping the boredom of being a dignified young lady of a great house—not all that different, at that, from the boredom of a retired adventurer— was lost and in distress somewhere in Undermountain. And he was the only aid she knew to turn to. Durnan sighed. His duty was clear.

Not that this was likely to rank with the daring deeds of his youth, but… the tavernmaster frowned and strode to a certain pillar. Now, was it the fourth stone down, or—?

The fourth stone held firm under his fingers, but the fifth stone obligingly ground inward, revealing a slot containing a lever. He pressed that finger of stone down. Something unseen squealed slightly, then clicked. Durnan remembered to step back before the stones, swinging out, dealt his knee a numbing blow. Then he glided forward again, feeling the old excitement leaping inside him, to peer into the dark revealed niche.

The quillons of a blade glimmered as if in greeting. Durnan took it out and slid it from its sheath—the long, heavy broadsword from a tomb in a frozen, nameless vale somewhere north of Silverymoon one desperate day when he’d been fleeing an ore band. He’d hewn his way across half the northlands with it, then from deck to pirate deck up and down the Sword Coast. There’d been a time when he could make a man’s head leap from its shoulders with a solid swing. The muscles under his arm rippled just as they always had when he swung the blade, narrowly missing the basket hovering behind him.

It cut the air with that sinuous might he loved so well, but seemed a lot heavier than it once had—gods, had he run around waving this all day and all night?—and Durnan brought its tip down to the floor, and leaned on it as he thought of where Nythyx might be… lost somewhere in the dark and dangerous ways beyond the walls of his cellars.

The tavernmaster fingered the familiar pommel and grip for a breath or two, then shrugged and did something to the plain ring on the middle finger of his left hand. A tiny pinwheel of silver star-motes arose to silently circle it, and he leaned over the rushing, swiftly-fading radiances and whispered, “Gone into Undermountain to rescue Nythyx Thunderstaff, old friend; I may need help.”

The last motes died. Durnan looked at the ring, sighed, and hefted the sword again. His second sigh was louder, and he shook his head grimly at his failing strength as he hung the sword back in the pillar, and went down the room to where a shorter, lighter blade hung on the wall. This one had felt good in his hand, too…

It slid out of its sheath in swift, eager silence. He tossed it in the air, caught it, and instantly lunged at an imaginary opponent, springing up without pause to whirl and slash empty air just a hair or two above the bottles in the floating basket. It shrank away from his leaping steel, but Durnan didn’t notice as he bounded through an archway that his wards would let only him pass through, and down the steep dark steps beyond. For the first time in long, dusty years he was off to war!

The floating basket of bottles, forgotten behind him, tried to dart through the wards in his wake. There was a flash of aroused magic and a reeling rebound.

The basket seemed to sigh for just an instant before it crashed to the floor, shattering at least one bottle of belaerd. Dark whisky gurgled out across the floor… but no one was there to hear it.

* * * * *

“Transtra? I know you’re in there! Come out and fight, all the gods damn you, or I’ll—”

The speaker did not wait to finish his threat, but dealt the door a heavy blow. It shuddered sufficiently that neither occupant of the chamber beyond the door needed to see the bright edge of the axeblade breaking through on the second blow to know that the door would not withstand a third strike.

The fat, red-faced man in the room broke off his muttered negotiations and stood hastily back to give his business associate the room she needed. Serpentine coils slithered around his feet as she drew herself up, swaying slightly, and frowned in concentration.

Transtra’s flame-red hair and beautiful, unclad upper body remained unchanged, the string of rubies she wore still winking between her breasts—but below her slim waist the scales melted away and her tail shrank into long, human legs. Mirt stepped firmly forward between them, the magic that protected him from her touch flaring into life, and swept her into an amorous embrace just as a splintering crash heralded the collapse of the door.

The shrieks and cart-rumbles of bustling Skullport flooded into the room. Aminotaur’s long-horned head ducked through the wreckage of the door, warily following the huge broadaxe. Its nostrils flared as it roared, “Transtra?”

Mirt lifted his head from yielding, cherry flavored lips and rumbled testily, “Ye’ve got the wrong room, hornhead—and I’ve paid for this one.”

The minotaur bellowed its anger and lurched forward— but came to an abrupt halt as a slim blade rose smoothly from between the floorboards in front of it, ascending with deadly stealth. “The next one’ll rise between your legs,” the fat moneylender growled, “unless they walk on out of here right swiftly. Hear me?”

The minotaur glared at him then stared hard at the woman Mirt held, muttered, “Sorry,” and withdrew. The stout moneylender held up a hand and let the second ring on it do its work, enshrouding the open doorway and the walls all around in a cloaking mist. The sounds of Skullport died away abruptly as the ward took effect and in the stillness a steely voice close by his throat said firmly, “My thanks for your quick-witted courtesy, Mirt. You can let go of me now and step well clear.”

“Anything to avoid unpleasantness—and gore,” the moneylender quipped, complying. “Ye make a fine lass, Transtra.”

“Not for you, I don’t,” the lamia noble replied sharply, as scales began to reappear on her lengthening legs. “Let’s keep to matters of trade-bars and importation, shall we? I believe we’d reached six-score casks of belaerd and ten strongchests of heavy chain.”

“Ye don’t want to throw in a ruby or two?” Mirt rumbled, raising an eyebrow. The lamia regarded him coldly.

“No,” she said shortly, “I don’t.”

“Ah,” Mirt said airily, “then I’ve something of thine to return, it seems.” He held out a string of rubies in one stubby-fingered hand. Transtra frowned at it, then looked down to where her unbound hair cascaded over her bosom. The bottom three stones on her string were missing.

She snarled as she raised blazing eyes to his—but Mirt bowed gravely to her as she snatched her rubies back, and with his chin close to the floor looked up and flashed her a momentary, wild rolling-eyed idiot’s grin.

Transtra’s tail lashed the floor for a perilous moment or two thereafter, before her hisses of fury slowly relaxed into a rueful, head-shaking chuckle.

“You’ve never played me false yet,” she said in quiet surprise, watching the shaggy-haired man straighten with a grunt and wheeze. “How is it, then, that you make any coins at all?”

“My boundless charm,” Mirt explained nonchalantly, “leaves rich women swooning in my arms, anxious to make gifts of their baubles to one so attentive and—er, gifted—as I. ‘Tis what’s brought me all this grand way, to where I am today.”

“A rented upstairs escort’s chamber in the worst brothel in Skullport?” Transtra asked sardonically, gliding toward him.

Mirt stuck hairy thumbs in his belt and harrumphed. “Well, lass, ‘tis no secret that my discretion—”

“Has slipped indeed if you dare call me ‘lass,’ ” was the acidic reply as the lamia noble folded her arms and drew herself up, tapping the floor with the tip of her tail in irritation.

Mirt waved a dismissive hand. “If ye think a little assumed pique will make me remorseful and somehow beholden as we talk more trade, think awhile again, little scaled one.”

“Little scaled one?” the lamia noble hissed, truly angry now, bending toward him with blazing eyes. “Why, I’ve a—”

She reared back, startled, and hastily raised her hands to hurl a spell as a pinwheel of tiny lights suddenly appeared in midair in front of her. Transtra glared angrily at the merchant, but saw that this apparition was no doing of his; Mirt was as surprised as she. The lamia noble backed away, hands raised in readiness.

A whisper familiar to Mirt arose from those circling lights: “Gone into Undermountain to rescue Nythyx Thunderstaff, old friend; I may need help.” The first ring on Mirt’s hand quivered in response, silently tugging him in the direction of his friend Durnan’s distant inn.

Mirt followed that urging, striding across the floor in his battered, flopping old boots toward the shattered door. Transtra drew smoothly aside to let him pass; he seemed to have forgotten she was in the room. The wards parted soundlessly at the frowning old merchant’s approach, and he stepped out into the passage, finding it unencumbered by minotaurs. A few steps took him to the nearest window.

The fat merchant looked out and down over the walled, warded courtyard of Bindle’s Blade, the newest tankard-house in dark and dangerous Skullport. He’d glanced at the tables there through this window out of old habit upon arrival, and was sure he’d then seen… aye. He had.

A recent venture in Skullport that had met with general approval were the many guttering guide-torches that could be hired for an evening—carried wherever one willed by floating, disembodied skeletal hands. Many of these flickering innovations were bobbing and glimmering among the carefully-spaced tables of the Blade right now, and one of them shone quite clearly on the face of Nythyx Thunderstaff, sitting calmly with several female slave-dealers, a long, tall flagon of amberjack in her hand and a slim long sword at her hip. As he watched, she laughed at someone’s jest and slid back in her chair to plant one delicately booted foot atop the table, raising her flagon in salute to the slaver who’d amused her. Umhuh. If that was a woman in distress, he’d hate to see a confident and contented one.

Mirt watched the young noble stretch in her chair, catlike, and glance around. He drew back before she might happen to look up and shook his shaggy head. “Well,” he said slowly, “Well, well.”

“This … thing that has befallen,” the lamia noble said from close behind him, “has put an end to our trade-talk for now, has it not?”

Mirt turned to look into eyes the color of flame, and noticed—not for the first time—just how beautiful Transtra was. “It has,” he said almost sadly, and his business associate gave him a little, catlike smile as the flickering fire of a ready spell faded from one slim, long-nailed hand.

“There’ll be … other evenings,” she purred, slithering past so closely that her leathery scales brushed along his arm. Mirt watched her go down the stairs into the darkness before he stirred, harrumphed, and shook his head. It was a pity he was so stout, and that lamia nobles ate human flesh. He’d started to want that little smile to mean the other thing.

He stepped back into his room and did something to the first ring. A tiny pinwheel of silver star-motes obediently arose to silently circle it. He bent over them and murmured, “Gone out into Skullport to answer Durnan’s call for aid in rescuing Nythyx Thunderstaff; I’ve seen her safe here, so expect a ruse.”

As the magelight faded, the fat, aging Harper and Lord of Waterdeep muttered something over his other ring to draw the tatters of his ward in around him, so he’d be cloaked against flying death on his walk through Skullport. Shops and faces in the undercity changed with brutal rapidity, but the place grew no more tolerant of the weak and unwary. Mirt looked all around then took something small from his belt-pouch to hold ready in his hand as he trudged along the passage to take another, hidden stair out of the House of the Long Slow Kiss. He left the ruined door open behind him so Hlardas would know he was gone and turn off the foot-treadle blades.

Yet he’d best shout a reminder while passing the kitchens. One could lose good chambermaids that way.

Asper hurled herself into a somersault over the startled guard’s head and spun around as her bare feet bounced to a landing on the cold flagstones. The city guardsman turned with smooth speed, magnificent in his splendid armor—in time to see the gleaming pommel of the young lady’s pionard a finger away from his eyes, where its wicked point should have been. He’d barely begun to gape at it when the pommel of her reversed long sword nudged his ribs, just where it would have driven all breath out of him had this fight been in earnest.

He stared into the sweat-slick face of the grinning ash-blonde girl and shook his head in surrender, drops of his own sweat flying from the end of his nose. “I see ye do it,” he growled, “but I still don’t believe it.”

“Consider yourself slain, Herle,” said the guardcaptain from behind him, “and next time, try not to turn like some sort of sleeping elephant. She could have put her blade through your neck and been gone out the door before you were well into your pivot!”

“Aye, captain,” Herle said heavily. “Just once, I’d like to see y—”

He fell silent to gape at a pinwheel of tiny lights that silently appeared in midair, one by one, in front of his leather-clad foe. Asper watched them spin into bright solidity in wary silence, one hand raised to bid the guardsmen keep still.

A hoarse whisper she knew well arose from those circling lights. “Gone out into Skullport to answer Durnan’s call for aid in rescuing Nythyx Thunderstaff; I’ve seen her safe here, so expect a ruse.”

The motes of light faded until she knew only she could see them, thanks to Mirt’s magic, drifting into a line leading north—and sharply downward. Into Undermountain, below even this deep, dank castle cellar.

Asper frowned at the tiny points of light. Her man had sent her his message in case Durnan’s call had been false—a ruse to lure Mirt himself into danger. And, ruse or not, unless either of the old Lords of Waterdeep had changed a goodly amount in the last few days, they’d sorely need her aid soon. She turned and bowed to the watching guardsmen.

“It’s been a pleasure breaking blades with you, as always, gentlesirs,” she told them, wiping sweat from her brow with one leather-clad forearm as she stepped into her boots. “I must go; I’m needed.”

“Is it something we should know about?” the guardcaptain asked, frowning.

Asper shook her head. “Lords’ business,” she said, and ran lightly out of the room, leaving the armsmen staring after her.

“How can one woman’s blade—even that woman’s—matter to the Lords of Waterdeep?” one asked, in tones of wonder. “What is she, that they need her to aid them so often?”

“Friend,” Herle replied, “You try to best her at blade-work next time, then come and ask me again.” And he casually cast the blade in his hand end over end down the length of that vast chamber, into the gloryhole in the far corner—an opening no larger than his fist. It settled home, hilt-deep, with a rattling clang, and all his fellows turned to regard him with whistles of awe. Herle spread his hands and added, “You all saw what she did to me. However good one is, there’s always someone better.”

Another guard shivered. “I’d not like to meet whoever’s better than she is.”

* * * * *

“And now for the other working,” the eye tyrant breathed, turning an eyestalk toward a certain shadowed cavity high in the cavern wall. Something small and glossy obediently rose into view there, drifting smoothly out into the greater emptiness of the main cavern: a shining sphere of polished crystal about as tall as a large human head. It winked and sparkled as it glided toward the beholder—then grew brighter, a pale greenish glow awakening within it.

“Yessss,” Xuzoun gloated as an image became apparent in the crystal’s depths. Woodlands, wrapped about a young, slim human female who was turning smoothly in her saddle to laugh, unbound blonde hair swirling about her shoulders. Her mirth and unheard words were directed to a young man riding into the scene with humor dancing in his own eyes. The watching beholder’s mouth twisted in what might have been a sneer.

“Shandril Shessair within my power, and knowing it not,” the beholder purred. “Only a few enchantments more, then … ah, yes, then spellfire will be drawn forth from her at my desire, to be hurled at any who defy me! Many shall pay the debts they owe me, very shortly thereafter…”

A stalactite elsewhere in the cavern yawned, then muttered, ” ‘Only a few enchantments more’ before I rule the world? How many times have I heard that before?”

A black bat, hanging upside down from a nearby stalactite, turned its head and blinked. “Elminster?” it asked. “It is you… is it not? You felt the weaving too? “

“Of course and of course,” the rocky fang replied. “I can feel all bindings laid on the lass. If Halaster did more in his domain than just watch the free entertainment, I’d not be here, but…”

“Watching is almost always best,” the stalactite beneath the clinging bat’s claws said coldly, and quivered slightly. “You always did act too swiftly and change Faerun too much, Elminster.”

The bat took startled wing, beating a hasty flight across to the rock that was the Old Mage. “Halaster?” it asked cautiously, as it alighted and turned to look back.

“The same, Laeral,” replied the dagger of rock where it had first clung. “Are we agreed that this Xuzoun should never wield spellfire?”

The other two murmured “Aye” together.

“Then trust me to foil this magic in a way that will leave Shandril and the beholder both unknowing,” Halaster replied. “I keep my house ordered as I see fit—though you, Lady Mage of Waterdeep, are welcome to dabble. Your touch is more deft than most.”

The bat looked from one stalactite to the other, aware of a certain tension in the air that felt like the two ancient archwizards had locked gazes and were staring steadfastly into the depths of each other’s souls. Silence stretched and sang between them. Then, because of who she was, Laeral

dared to ask, “And what of Elminster? Is he also welcome in Undermountain?”

“What little sanity I have I owe to him,” Halaster replied, “and I respect him for his mastery of magic—and his compassion—more than any other living mage. Yet for what he did to me … what he had to do to me … I bear him no great love.”

Two dark, hawklike eyes were fading into view in the rock, and they flickered as the Master of Undermountain added quietly, “This is my home, and a man may shut the gates of his home to anyone he desires to be free of.”

The stalactite that was Elminster said as gently, “I have no quarrel with that. Know that my gate is always open to you.”

“I appreciate that,” the dark-eyed stalactite told him grudgingly, before it faded silently away.

* * * * *

He hadn’t used this passage for years, and had almost forgotten the trip step and the anklebreak holes beyond. The battered old coffer was still on the high ledge where it should be, though. Durnan lifted out the string of potions and gratefully slid them onto his belt, tapping the metal vials to be sure they were still full. Then he took up the wisp of gauzy black cloth that had lain beneath them and bound it over his eyes.

All at once the clinging darkness receded and he could see as clearly in the gloom as creatures who dwelt in the World Below. He took the gorget out of its clip on the inside coffer lid and slid the second nightmask into its carry-sleeve before he buckled it around his throat. It just might be needed.

The tavernmaster caught himself wondering what else he should bring along, and sighed, banishing an image of himself staggering along under the weight of a generously pot-and-flask-girdled pack larger than he was. It had been a long time since he’d leaped into battle with only a sword in his hand and fire in his eyes. It had been even longer since he’d felt that invulnerable.

Durnan drew a deep breath, shrugged his shoulders once or twice to break the tension that had been building there, clapped a hand to the hilt of his sword to ensure it rode loosely in its scabbard, and set off down the narrow passage. Two secret doors ground open under his hand to let him pass, and he closed them carefully behind him. Beyond the second was a room in Undermountain he knew well.

Standing just inside it, Durnan peered around to make sure nothing had changed since he’d last seen it, then stepped carefully around the waiting falling-block trap and across the chamber. It was thick with dust, cobwebs, and the crumbling skeletons of several unfortunate adventurers still stuck to the tattered webs of a long-slain spider. Shoving these husks aside with his blade, Durnan strode softly out into the vast dungeon where so many had died.

Undermountain was the abode of the mad wizard Halaster and the graveyard of thousands of fearsome monsters and foolhardy men alike. Once it had been Durnan’s playground, a place to stay limber after a long day standing behind the bar listening to young nobles and would-be adventurers from afar boast of what they’d do and win down in the lightless depths. All too often, he’d come across their bodies too late to save them from traps they should have been anticipating and predators they should have been ready for.

Thinking of which … he drew his blade and stabbed upward as he leaned through an open doorway. It slid into something solid yet yielding, and Durnan drew back to avoid the falling body. The thing that had awaited him above the door crashed heavily to the flagstones. It was a kobold, a strangle-wire still clutched in its convulsing hands.

Durnan put his sword tip through its throat just to be sure as he kicked the heavy stone door hard, sending it smashing back against the wall of the chamber. There were some wet crackings and a bubbling gasp from behind it, and something slid to the floor. Something koboldish, no doubt.

A third of the sly, yammering little beasts scuttled into view at the far end of the room, and Durnan brought his sword up to strike aside the javelin it hurled. The bracers he wore protected him against missiles that bore no enchantments, but ‘twould be a little late to discover that this particular javelin was magical, once it was in his throat…

The throw was wide, and a smooth sidestep took him completely out of the hurtling weapon’s path. Even before it crashed off stone behind him, the old warrior was moving.

Durnan caught hold of the doorframe as he charged through the door and swung himself around hard to the right. As he’d expected, a line of three kobolds was waiting along the wall there, their spiked clubs and wicked blades raised. The tavernmaster had a glimpse of their startled faces before his blade found the face of the foremost. He kept rushing, driving the dying creature back into its fellows, tumbling them all to the floor. He kicked, stomped, and thrust ruthlessly with his blade, knowing how vicious kobolds could be, and spun from the last fallen victim to face the one who’d hurled the javelin.

It was snarling and backing away, fear in its eyes as it saw all of its fellows dead or dying. Durnan advanced a step and it spat in his direction, whirled, and fled through the archway at the far end of the room. Durnan knelt, plucked up a kobold blade, and flung it as hard as he could.

There was a heavy crash, clang, and moan beyond the arch, but Durnan was already running hard. The wise leave no foes alive behind them in Undermountain.

A thrust ended the kobold’s feeble crawl, and Durnan picked up its bleeding body and hurled it into the next room. As he’d expected, something greenish-yellow flowed swiftly down the wall toward the corpse. Durnan peered into the room—paying particular attention to the ceiling—then, satisfied that it held only one carrion crawler, sprinted across the chamber and through the right-hand door at its far end, pulling the heavy stone barrier closed behind him. Something far off and in agony promptly screamed in the dark distance ahead.

The passage before him was the only link between the warren of rooms around his cellars and the rest of Undermountain. It was always a place to watch warily for oozes, slimes, and other silent, hard-to-see creeping things.

Scorch marks and unpleasant remnants on the stones around told him the kobolds had recently cleared this way of at least one such peril. Durnan stalked cautiously on, wondering how Mirt was faring and how soon they’d meet. It felt good to be in action again, though the glory days of the Four were long gone.

Once the brazen, impudent band of adventurers he and Mirt had led had been the toast of Waterdeep and a common headache of honest merchants up and down the Sword Coast, the heroes of impudent tales men roared admiringly over in half a hundred taverns. But years had passed and the roars had faded—as, he supposed, they always did. All that was left of those times were happy memories, the deep trust they yet shared, and the linked message rings all of the Four still wore. Durnan saw Mirt and Asper often, but Randal Morn was off fighting in distant Daggerdale to keep his rightful rule over that fair vale… and the ranger Florin Falconhand, who’d stood in for Asper on a foray or three, was a Knight of Myth Drannor these days, and seldom seen on the Sword Coast. There were even whispers that he’d visited fabled Evermeet…

Durnan was still recalling splendid victories the Four had shared when sudden magelight welled up all around him in the empty passage. He’d just time to feel disgusted— taken by sorcery again?—when his world was overwhelmed with whirling lights and there was nothing under his boots anymore.

“Beshaba’s kiss!” he swore disgustedly. The tavernmaster knew a teleport was whisking him away to somewhere worse. They always took you somewhere worse.

* * * * *

Transtra stood in a room that few in Skullport knew was her own, eyes narrow and face frowning. Old Mirt’s ring had spoken and that meant one of the Four had called on him for aid. And when the Four called, it always meant trouble for someone. Sooner or later, if that fat old merchant didn’t lose some weight and gain some prudence in trade for it, the recipient of the trouble was going to be him. Perhaps on an occasion sooner than he expected, such as—this one.

The lamia noble stirred into life, tossing her flame-red hair so it cascaded down her back like languid fire, and glided across the tiles like a gigantic upright snake. The soft, ever-shifting spell-lights she loved dappled her gleaming flesh in a shifting pattern that made her slave, a thin and dirty human man cowering on his knees in a corner, swallow and turn his eyes swiftly away. Transtra was apt to be cruel when his more lusty thoughts became apparent, and her cruelty often seemed to reach the climax of its outpouring in enthusiastic floggings with well-salted whips. The slave shivered involuntarily at the memory of his last one.

The dry slithering of her scales on the tiles drew closer, then stopped. The man kept his gaze on the corner, trying not to tremble as cold fear rose in his throat and he wondered just what she might do this time.

“Torthan,” she said, almost gently, “get up and go do a thing for me.”

Torthan reluctantly raised his eyes to meet hers. “Great lady?”

“Open the gate that brings Ulisss, then go to your room,” Transtra told him.

As he hastened obediently away, Torthan could hear her muttering the first words of the web of spells she used to lay unshakable commands on the behir.

When the twelve-legged serpent thing glided into the room with deadly speed and raised its horned head to gape its jaws at her, Transtra faced it with both of her hands held over her head, spell-flames circling them.

Ulisss lowered its head in a gesture of submission and sighed in disgust. One day it would catch its cruel mistress in a moment of weakness and slay her—but not this day.

Transtra let the fires rage up and down her arms as she slithered up to the huge serpent-creature and embraced its head as if it were a pet, stroking it behind its horns just where Ulisss best loved her touch.

Warily tense muscles under iron-hard scales quivered under her caress, relaxed with a slow surge, then slowly, reluctantly started to rub against her as the monster began to purr. Transtra let a spell-image of Mirt flow into his slow, dim mind and said softly, “Hearken, 0 scaly beloved, for I’ve a task for thee. Follow this man—aye, his girth is amusingly enormous—and…”

As she whispered on, the behir’s eyes grew brighter and more golden with wicked hunger and excitement—and when she released it, it slithered off on its mission with eager haste.

Transtra swayed upright, folded her arms across her breasts, and watched it go. Though there was a dangerous glitter in her eyes, the smile that crept slowly across her face was catlike in its anticipation. As she readied the spell that would let her watch both Mirt and Ulisss and spy on what befell from afar, her tongue curled out between her lips in private mirth. The possible loss of a business associate was a small price to pay for the grand entertainment to come.

* * * * *

“What can go wrong? The plan is perfect,” Iraeghlee said testily, its mouth-tentacles whipping and curling in irritation.

“You’re not the first down the centuries to say those words,” Yloebre remarked dryly, twirling the slim glass of duiruin in its fingers so the luminous golden bubbles deep in the black wine winked and sparkled. “Any number of things can go awry.”

“Such as?” Iraeghlee challenged. “Not even the Merciless Ones Beneath Anauroch know of our whisperer. The beholder’s no fool, yet has no inkling of its presence … or, thus, our influence.”

“That may be so only because we’ve not awakened any control over it yet,” Yloebre told the depths of the glass it held. The small worms there curled and uncurled in their endless undead dance that kept the oily black wine from thickening into a syrup.

“Do you doubt my skill?” Iraeghlee spat, leaning forward in its chair with a hiss of rippling silk sleeves. “It ate the whisperer, which in turn ate its way into what little Xuzoun has of the paltry things eye tyrants are pleased to call their brains! I felt it take in beholder blood and grow! I felt it through the linkage my magic made—a link I can make anew whenever I desire! Do you doubt me, younger one? Do you truly dare?”

“Untwist thy tentacles and hiss less loudly,” Yloebre responded calmly, sipping more wine. “I doubt nothing about your ability to establish control over the eye tyrant—only as to our shared ability to escape the notice of the powers hereabouts. The whisperer is a brain node, linked to you by magic. The Place of Skulls above us, and the city above that, seem to fairly crawl with wizards and priests able to see magic in use, and themselves governed—nay, driven—by that appalling human fault known as ‘curiosity’ What’s to keep us from coming under attack within a breath or two of you crushing Xuzoun’s will?”

Iraeghlee’s mauve skin was almost black with anger. Its voice quivered with rage and menace as it said slowly, “Hear this, feeblewits, and let one hearing be enough: No drow nor human, from matron mothers to archniages, can detect our whisperer, or us, while we remain here.”

Yloebre glanced at the stone walls around them, adorned by a single glowshift sculpture that chimed softly from time to time as its shape altered. The chamber held only their floating chairs, several floating tables (including the palely-glowing one between them), and the fluted and many-hued array of flasks and glasses that its current sample had come from. Unseen runes of power crawled and twisted on the undersides of the tables, awaiting a call to life from either illithid, but there were no other defenses save what they could personally cast or wield.

Not that such things were likely to be needed. They were six shifts away from a cesspool-cellar under the gambling house known as the Blushing Bride’s Burial Pit in southern Skullport—a chain of trapped teleports that should be long enough to fool or slay even the most persistent and powerful of nosy wizards.

It was at about that moment that the table between them grew two dark, grave eyes—and exploded into blazing shards that hurled both mind flayers back against the walls of their hideaway, broken and sizzling.

The last words Yloebre ever heard, as it struggled against rising, searing red pain, was a man’s voice saying disgustedly, “Stupid illithids. Must they always meddle?”

The crushed, half-melted bodies of the mind flayers slid like slime down the walls; neither survived long enough to see Halaster Blackcloak’s eyes blast their tables and flasks to dancing sparks and flying dust.

After his gaze had roved about the entire chamber and he was satisfied no other mind-signatures were to be found on the whisperer growing in the beholder’s distant brain, the wizard sighed and turned to pass through the teleport once more—only to turn slowly and glare with renewed fury at the turning, chiming glowshift sculpture.

It had escaped—or resisted—his destructive gaze unharmed. Halaster’s black eyes narrowed, then hardened into rays of darkness that leaped and stabbed through the air, only to strike the sculpture and be drained away to somewhere else, leaving the chiming construct unharmed.

“Who—?” Halaster snarled, shifting into a more tangible, upright form.

The sculpture cleared its throat and said mildly, “Why, me, of course. We agreed that action in thy house was undesirable if not of thy doing—but we said nothing of mere watching. Tis how I learn things, ye see.”

“Elminster,” Halaster said, fading back into a darkness studded with two eyes as sharp as spear points, “one day you’ll overstep the marks I set… and then…”

“Ye’ll try to slay me, and fail, and I’ll have to decide how merciful to be with ye,” the sculpture replied merrily. “Those who set marks, know ye, are usually better employed doing something else.”

“Do not presume to threaten me,” Halaster’s voice replied, as if from a great distance, as the darkness that was the Master of Undermountain began to whirl about the unseen teleport.

“That was not a threat,” the sculpture said mildly. “I never threaten—only promise.”

The reply that came back out of the teleport sounded very much like the rude lip-flapping sound known in some realms as a “raspberry.”

Durnan was still swearing when the whirling blue mists faded and the world returned: a darkly cavernous world of many lamps and torches, sharp with the smell of a recent spellblast. Its smokes curled lazily past him as he stumbled on uneven, shifting rubble then crouched, blade up, to look all around.

There was a murmur off to his right. Durnan looked that way first and found himself regarding an interested crowd of mongrelmen, hobgoblins, bugbears, ores, wererats, kenku, blade-bristling humans, drow, imps, and worse. They were standing on a torchlit street making bets and excited comments—as they stared right back at him.

Skullport. He was in Skullport. The surprise on some of the faces and a sudden flurry of betting suggested his arrival hadn’t been expected. Wherefore this crowd had gathered to witness something else. Durnan glanced left and right into the dark, smoking ruin around him. Ah hah. Indeed.

A beholder hung in the air off to his left, its eyes gleaming with malice as it glared at him and through him, at… a mauve, glistening creature with a tentacled face and white, pupilless eyes that stood in dark, ornate robes well off to his right—and was raising its three-fingered hands in clawing, spell-hurling gestures as it coldly hissed an incantation. A mind flayer… and an eye tyrant. Dueling with magic. And he was between them.

“Thank you, Beshaba!” the tavernmaster snarled in sarcastic thanks to the goddess of misfortune as he dived headlong onto the rubble, framing a scene in his mind of opening a certain ivory door with the dragonscale key. The mental vision grew clear, the door swung wide—and Durnan remembered to close his eyes just in time.

The white light in his mind was nothing to the blinding flash that marked the breaking of the dragon rune he bore on his left wristlet. As that broad metal band crumbled, giving his forearm an eerie tingling as it fell away, Durnan rolled over a low stone wall, dropped onto a sunken floor, and found his feet. There came a hubbub of excitement from the crowd

as the tavernmaster started his sprint through the pillars and tumbled stones, and got his eyes open again.

The white ring of radiance that marked the rune’s release of power was still rolling outwards, moving with him in a flickering, expanding dome of protection. Spell rays and gaze attacks alike would be shattered by its touch—for an all-too-short time.

“Tymora”aid me!” he gasped as he ran, dodging between two blackened stubs of stone wall that stood like frozen fingers reaching vainly for the cavern ceiling overhead. If Lady Luck smiled on him, the dragon rune would guard his back from the beholder’s eye powers long enough for him to reach the mind flayer. Aye, if…

Dark robes flickered ahead as the illithid dodged this way and that, trying to see him as he darted through the ruins. Durnan snatched out his belt-knife as he ran, dust-sash flapping, and the mind flayer spat one loud word somewhere ahead of him.

There was a flash, a roar of tortured stone, and one of the walls ahead burst into fist-sized chunks of rubble. Durnan spun behind a pillar until the worst crashings of striking, rolling stones were under way around him, then sped on. If a certain old and overweight tavernmaster could just move well enough, there’d be no time for the thing to work another spell!

He snarled at his own slowness as he leaped over the rubble. He’d just had a momentary glimpse of the beholder, drifting along after him but keeping well back. It must not be hungry… or at least, not very hungry.

Durnan was close to the illithid now, stones rolling underfoot in his haste as he burst through a doorway into a room that was no longer there, and saw it beyond the crumbling wall ahead. Its glistening, slime-covered hands darted to its belt and plucked forth a broad-bladed hooked sword. A blade? Usually they were too eager to flail at your head with those brain-sucking tentacles to bother with steel…

The squidlike growths around the thing’s mauve mouth were writhing in excitement, Durnan saw, as he came around one last jagged end of wall and rushed down on his foe.

A boot coming down wrongly on loose rubble now could mean his swift death, he reminded himself grimly, and hunkered down as he ran to keep his balance, skidding deliberately when he reached a knob of stone he could hook one boot around.

Eagerly, the mind flayer pounced on the seemingly off-balance human, those four tentacles stabbing greedily out. Durnan raised one arm to fend them aside, hooking the edge of his knife around the nearest one, and slashed viciously at their roots.

The mind flayer’s sword came up rather clumsily to clang against his blade, and he used the speed he’d built up to smash it aside with one shoulder and dive past the thing, lashing out with one boot to kick it in the chest.

There were shouts from the watching crowd and the fast-paced chatter of changing bets as Durnan rolled to his feet, bounced off a spar of stone, and charged back at the thing. He dare not turn his back on it and try to run for the street—not only would it have time to hurl a spell at his back, but the crowd might well draw steel on him, or bar his way for its own amusement, to force him to turn and fight.

The mind flayer’s body seemed misshapen. It wavered as it rose from the rubble where it had fallen—just in time to quail and hiss under the bite of Durnan’s sword. Once, twice, the true steel slashed, hacking tentacles away—and the blood that splattered forth was not the milky ichor it should have been, but a dark, reddish-green gore!

Frowning, Durnan cut away the last tentacle and drew back his blade for a final thrust through one of those furiously-glaring white eyes—only to see it melt away before him, slumping down into something like a long, reddish worm or clump of worms that slithered and flapped wet, fast-sprouting fleshy wings in its haste to escape. He hacked at the glistening thing in disgust, backing away to keep an eye out for tentacles heading for his ankles.

There was angry shouting from the crowd: The shapeshift had told them the thing Durnan faced was no mind flayer, but something else … and who could bet on an unknown shapeshifting thing that was swiftly being hacked apart by this hard-breathing human?

Amid curses, a tankard flew through the air to rattle among the tumbled stones not far away. It was shortly followed by another. Enraged bettors were venting their feelings. Luckily, the state of things in Skullport was such that few would dare to throw daggers when a ready knife might be needed more pressingly to settle a dispute nearer to hand in the crowd…

“Well, thank the gods for such grand favors,” Durnan muttered aloud at that grim thought, as he ducked away from a part of the worm-thing that had suddenly grown bony spurs and was flailing at him. He took one numbing gash high on his arm, near his left shoulder—then he and his foe both staggered. Someone in the crowd had hurled a blasting spell strong enough to rock the ruins at them both—and the dragon rune’s dome had flung it straight back at its source.

The packed throng of spectators was suddenly a screaming, fleeing mob generously sprayed with blood. Pulped, boneless things struggled weakly on the slick stones around a ring of cleared space at the center of the lane.

Durnan lunged under his foe’s bony, flailing arm and caught hold of the worm-like coils, lifting them with a grunt. There was a horrible shifting and wriggling in his hands as slashing teeth and talons struggled to be born—then the tavernmaster set his teeth and heaved, the muscles in his shoulders rippled, and the shapeshifting thing was flung away through the air.

It landed with a heavy, wet smack, flopped spasmodically once or twice, but could not lift itself off the row of iron spikes that stuck up through its flowing flesh like a line of blades before it sagged, burbled forth a whistling sigh, and hung limp. Dark gore dripped slowly onto the stones beneath. Useful things, sword blade fences.

A deep blue glow flickered and faded around the corpse as it melted back into the ungainly limbs and bare-brained, fanged head of a doppleganger. The glow of dying magic.

Durnan’s eyes narrowed as a flare of white light marked the passing of his own dragon-rune defenses. Someone —in the crowd —had been feeding that beast spells, and probably controlling it, too…

“I am Xuzoun,” a deep voice rolled out from close behind him, heavy with confident menace, “and you, Durnan of Waterdeep, have just slain my most loyal servant.”

Durnan spun around to find—as he’d expected—the beholder looming over him, great and terrible. Its huge, lone central eye gloated coldly as the stones all around him erupted into conjured, questing black tentacles.

“The teleport that brought me here was yours, then?” Durnan asked. “And this… duel staged for my benefit?” His face and voice showed no fear as his sword and knife came up smoothly to face the eye tyrant—and the tentacles grew around him like swaying, upright eels.

“Of course,” the beholder told him silkily. “I’ve gone to much trouble to take you.”

Durnan cast a quick look around at the slowly and carefully closing ring of tentacles. “And why would that be?” he asked softly.

“I desire to wear the body of a Lord of Waterdeep for a time,” the fell monster replied, with a smile that displayed a row of jagged fangs that in places outstripped his sword for length. “And—unfortunately for the sometimes-famous and often beloved-of-the-gods man called Durnan—I’ve chosen you.”

* * * * *

Strange sights in plenty are seen in Skullport, and folk who survive there long have learned not to stare overmuch, nor linger long in one place, lest they be marked for dealing with later. So it was that no lizardman nor scurrying halfling moved more than a wary eyeball as a little line of drifting, dancing sparks of radiance came out of the darkness, heading down a certain alley that was narrow and noisome even for the Source of Slaves. A sorceress out a-hunting from the great city above, perhaps, or a fetch sent by a noble’s pet wizard, or a brood of will o’ wisp younglings? It was better not to speculate, but merely to observe without being seen to look, and mark where the lights went.

More than a few of those watchful eyes widened as they recognized the shuffling, wheezing bulk that trudged along in the lights’ wake, worn leather boots flopping. A Lord of Waterdeep, now…

Many folk now skulking the streets of Skullport would fain be seeing the sun over Waterdeep above were it not for the Lords’ decrees—and Mirt had made rather more than a handcount of personal foes down the years, too. Some of them had offered much coin for his delivery to their feet, alive and more or less whole—or failing that, just his head, goggling at them on a platter.

So it was that the distinctive rolling walk and bristling moustache was noticed often, and excited whispers and hurryings followed those recognitions. It was not long before a dagger spun out of the night, thrown hard and unerringly, coming fast at the old Harper’s left eyeball. Mirt ignored it, keeping his gaze instead on the stones underfoot, any bodies that might be moving out to block his path, and the guiding trail of star-motes.

The dagger struck his invisible shields and spun away with the faintest of singing sounds, heading back at the hand that had flung it. So, too, did the first stone that leaped out of the darkness at the back of Mirt’s head, and the second; the band of slayers-for-hire called Hoelorton’s Hands were known to be deft hands with a sling.

Or a cudgel. Mirt heard the faint scrape of a rushing boot on stone and spun around like a wary barrel, his dagger gleaming in one fat fist. Two rogues were almost upon him, running fast. One swung his stout club in a deadly arc as he came.

The fat moneylender’s hairy fingers plucked at the battered wood as it whistled past, and pulled. Overbalanced, the startled man barely had time for an apprehensive grunt as the pommel of Mirt’s dagger came up under his chin and sent him swiftly into the arms of the ladies who whisper softly to warriors in slumber: He crashed over like a felled tree, spitting teeth from his shattered jaw, his eyes already dark.

The second man had to dance around the falling body and met Mirt’s roundhouse left while trying to get his cudgel up. Mirt let his knuckles take the man’s head into the nearest wall, hard, and felt something break under them before he spun away to follow the drifting lights again, wheezing along patiently as if nothing had befallen. The two huddled bodies in the alley did not rise to follow.

Another dagger flashed out of the darkness and a bucketful of stones plummeted from the air as Mirt trudged under one of the many catwalks that crisscrossed the emptiness above most streets and passages of Skullport. His shields sent both offerings back whence they’d come, journeys marked by one strangled, gurgling cry.

Mirt sighed in reply—Faerun certainly seemed to breed no pressing shortage of fools, these days—and hunched his shoulders to pass under a particularly low catwalk.

A garotte slipped down and around his throat as he emerged into the torchlight beyond—but the fat old Lord paid it no apparent heed, striding deliberately on. Only the corded muscles rising into view on his thick neck betrayed the effort it took to walk on without slowing, as the waxed cord skittered over the hard, smooth steel of the gorget that covered his grizzled throat.

It took less than a breath before the wheezing merchant reached the full stretch of the deadly cord and the skilled arms that wielded it, and their leather-clad owner pitched forward out of the darkness above with a startled oath, hauled down into the street like a grain sack from a loft. A casual swing of one thick arm brought the ready dagger solidly into the masked man’s temple, and the garotte fell to the cobbles alongside its limp, crumpled owner. Mirt did not even bother to look down; this was Skullport, after all. Moreover, business awaited ahead … and if he knew Durnan, ‘twould be hasty business.

Three masked figures stepped out of a side alley a little way ahead of him, but Mirt showed no sign of slowing or drawing the stout sword at his belt. He forged on steadily into waiting death, and after a tense moment, one of the three stepped back and waved at his fellows to do likewise.

“Your pardon, Mirt,” he growled. “You’re looking so well, I almost didn’t know you.”

“Prettily said, Ilbarth,” Mirt grunted, turning suddenly to glare at one of the others, who’d sidled just a step too close to the fat old man’s back. “So ye can live, all of ye.”

“Generous, white-whiskers,” that man said softly, “when it’s three to one.”

“I’m known for my open-handed generosity,” Mirt said, baring his teeth in a grin without slowing, “so I’ll let ye live a second time, Aldon. Take care ye don’t use up all thy luck and my patience, now.”

Aldon took one uncertain step in pursuit of the wheezing man. “How’d you know my name?”

“He knows everyone in Skullport,” Ilbarth said with a nervous grin. “Isn’t that right, Mirt? I’ll bet cold coin you’ve lived all your life down here.”

“Not yet,” Mirt grunted, turning to fix him with one cold and level gray-blue eye. “Not quite yet.”

He turned away and went on down the alley without looking back, but the three men did not follow. They stood watching him for a time, and soon had cause to be very glad they’d not proceeded with more violent activities.

The old moneylender strode past a tentacle that slid down from an upper window to pluck aloft a man who’d whistled to summon it, stepped around an ore sprawled on its face in a pool of blood with a spear standing up in its back, and found his way suddenly blocked by a dozen or more lithe, slim figures whose skin was as jet black as the soft leathers they wore. Almost mockingly, the line of guiding motes of light winked and sparkled in the distance beyond them.

“How now, old man?” one of the drow hissed. “Care to buy your life with a careful and verbose listing of all your wealth, where it can be found, and just how it’s guarded?”

“No,” Mirt growled, “I’m in a hurry. So stand aside, and I’ll let all of ye live.”

Coldly mocking laughter gave him reply, and one of the dark elves sneered, “Kind of you, indeed.”

“Indeed, but I won’t tarry,” Mirt growled. “Stand aside, now!”

“Giving us orders, old man?” the drow who’d first spoken responded tartly. “For that, you’ll taste a whip!” Slim gloved fingers went eagerly to a thigh sheath.

“Or three,” another of the drow agreed, as other hands made the same movement, and slim black tentacles curled and cracked. Mirt sighed, opened his cupped hand to reveal the thing he’d taken from his pouch in the House of the Long Slow Kiss, and murmured a word.

The battered metal chevron in his palm erupted in a ringing, leaping sparkle of steel—and the old moneylender stood calmly watching as the magic he’d unleashed became a hundred slashing, darting swords that flew about the alley in front of him in a deadly whirlwind. Drow leaped desperately for safety, anywhere it might lie… but died anyway amid screams from open windows above. Someone paused on a catwalk to watch—and someone else smote that watcher from behind, contributing a helplessly-plunging, senseless body to the flashing carnage below.

“Enough!” Mirt growled as he watched the unfortunate falling man cut to ribbons. The moneylender spat a second strange word, and the blades obediently melted away, leaving the alley empty of menacing forms in his path. He strode on.

His next few steps were in slippery black blood, but the star-motes still twinkled in the gloom ahead, heading for a sudden, distant flash of spell-light. In its flare Mirt saw many folk gathered to watch something off to the left, crowded together to enjoy—a fight? A duel? Bets were being placed, and the more belligerent were jostling for a better view.

There was another flash, which resolved itself into the blue pinwheel that marked the appearance of someone using an old catch-teleport spell—and out of its heart stumbled Durnan, moving fast. Mirt’s old friend was in some sort of ruin, caught in the midst of a spell-duel between—gods blast all!—a beholder, and someone… a mage? Nay, mauve skin—a mind flayer. Ye gods. Hasty business indeed!

“Idiot!” Mirt described Durnan fervently and broke into a trot, feeling in his pouch for some other small salvation or other.

“Hearken, all!” he panted to the uneven stones ahead of him, as his shaggy bulk gathered speed, “and take note. ‘Tis the Wheezing Warrior to the rescue —again!”

* * * * *

Something cold struck the back of his neck and clung. Durnan snarled and chopped at it, even as a pair of black tentacles twined about his blade and pulled, seeking to drag it down.

Durnan slashed out with the dagger in his other hand, trying to free his sword. The chill at the back of his neck was spreading, cold caressing fingers moving along his shoulders. “What, by the bones of the cursed—?” he snarled.

The beholder smiled down at him. “Your memories will be mine first, before I take the tiny candle that you call a mind—and blow it out!”

Durnan rolled his eyes. “You sound like a bad actor trying to impress gawping North Ward nobles!” Then the point of his dagger found the pommel of his sword. He pressed down firmly and hissed a certain word.

The gem in the pommel burst with a tiny blaze of its own—and slowly, in impressive silence, all of the black tentacles faded away. “So much for your spell,” the tavernmaster grunted, throwing the dagger hard into the beholder’s large, staring central eye.

The world erupted in a roar of pain and fury. The eye tyrant bucked in midair like a wild stallion trying to shake off ropes, shuddered, then rolled over with terrible speed, eyestalks reaching out to transfix Durnan in many fell gazes.

Nothing happened.

“Mystra, grant that my spellshatter last just a trifle longer,” Durnan prayed aloud, hands stabbing down to his boots for more daggers. That great mouth was very close now, and the roaring coming from it was shaking the tavernmaster’s body. Teeth chattering helplessly, Durnan watched those fangs gape wide…

* * * * *

Not far away, a black cobweb quivered and seemed to stiffen. Then a hoarse, dusty voice issued from it—a voice that squeaked and hissed from long disuse. “Someone’s using a speUshatter,” it told the empty darkness of the crypt around it.

Not surprisingly, there was no reply.

After a moment’s pause, the cobweb shot forth an arm like the tentacle of a black octopus and plunged it into the stone of the far wall—as if the tentacle was a mere shadow, able to freely drift through solid things. Then the entire cobweb shifted like a gigantic, ungainly spider and followed the tentacle, sliding into the stones of the crypt wall like a purposeful ghost.

A breath later, the black tentacle emerged from a solid wall in Skullport, wriggling out across an alley and turning to probe up and down the narrow, reeking way as if it had eyes. A rat paused in its gnawings and scuttlings to watch this new, probably edible worm or snake—but sank back down behind a pile of refuse when the tentacle grew swiftly into a spiderlike growth that covered most of the wall. This spiderlike thing then became a flapping black cloak… from which grew the shuffling figure of a robed, cowled man whose eyes gleamed in the darkness as brightly as the rat’s own.

The man’s robe swished past the cowering rodent as he stepped out of the alley, looked across a blackened, tumbled area of devastation where a building had burned or been blasted apart, and said clearly, “Hmmm.”

A beholder was bobbing above a lone human, the magelight of carelessly-crafted spells streaming around it, but constrained from reaching its human by some invisible shield or other. The spellshatter, no doubt.

“Hmmm,” the man said again, and stepped back into the wall, sinking smoothly into the solid stone until only two dark, watchful patches remained to mark where his eyes must be.

Wisely, the rat scuttled silently away. With archwizards, one can never be sure, and Halaster Blackcloak was known to be both one of the most powerful archwizards of all and more than a little erratic in his behavior. He seemed to be settling into the wall to watch whatever was going on in the ruins, but—if one could ever be safe in Skullport—it was better to be safely away from him. Far away from him.

* * * * *

Asper slid to a stop on a high catwalk and caught at its rail for a moment to catch her breath. It had been a long, hard run, and more than one foolish beast had tried to make her its supper along the way. The blade in her hand was still dark and wet from her last encounter, and the leap from the end of the little-known tunnel—that wound down through the heart of Mount Waterdeep to end in a sheer drop from the ceiling of the cavern that held most of Skullport—down to the dark roofs below was always a throat-tightening thing.

Gasping for air, Mirt’s lady tossed her head. Sweat streamed down her face despite her frequent wipings, plastering ash-blonde tresses to her forehead and dripping from the end of her nose. Asper sighed air deep into her lungs, shook her head to hurl away more sweat, clipped the ring on her sword pommel to the matching one at her throat and spun the ribbon around so the gory blade would bounce along at her back as she traveled on. Then she peered out over Skullport, waiting for her breathing to slow.

The deadly place seemed somehow quiet tonight, the mysterious guardian skulls—or whatever they truly were— drifting here and there through the gloom high above the streets, where the stone fangs of the cavern ceiling made a silent forest close overhead. Asper loved this world of flitting bats, occasional screams, and muttered conspiracies. She enjoyed a leisurely prowl among the crumbling roofs’ gargoyles, glowing wards, and wrought iron climb-nots, where crossbows waited for thieves to trip their lines.

But this journey had been anything but leisurely. Asper clung to the rail as if it was a lover and peered north. There had been something, a flicker —there!

Spell-light flashed in a place of darkness. Some sort of ruin, it seemed, liberally endowed with rough heaps and pillars of blackened stone. In the second flash Asper saw the unmistakable sphere of a beholder, eyestalks writhing in pain or rage, quivering in the air low above some sort of foe. Probably a man. The sort of trouble Durnan or her beloved were almost sure to be drawn into.

Asper vaulted lightly over the rail and fell through the cool air, ignoring the oath uttered by a startled face at a window as she passed. Her boots found a second catwalk, slipped for a moment on damp boards as they sank and danced back up under her landing, then held firm. Asper crouched low as the catwalk’s tremblings grew gentler, the fingertips of one hand just touching the boards in front of her, and looked again at the beholder. The problem was, Skullport was all too apt to be crawling with this sort of thing. The right sort of strife for Mirt and Durnan to get caught up in, but had they chosen this particular strife, or found amusement elsewhere?

Then her eyes fell on what she’d been searching for, far ahead along the narrow alley that ran from beneath her catwalk to the ruins where the beholder danced. A familiar lurching form, portly where he wasn’t burly, shambling and wheezing along with that bluff, fearless unconcern she loved so well. Mirt the Moneylender, the man whose heart drove and carried the Lords of Waterdeep, was lumbering like an ungainly hopping hippo over heaped rubble where the alley emptied out into the general chaos of the ruin—trotting up to an enraged beholder to rescue his friend.

This was their fight, then. Asper frowned, quickly undid her belt, plucked something from behind its buckle, and set it down carefully on the boards beside her. It would not do to be touched by the sort of magic a beholder’s eyes could hurl while carrying that little bauble.

She buckled up her belt again, bit her lip in thought, then turned smoothly and ran a little way along the catwalk to where someone bolder than most had strung a line of washing from the high, hanging way to their own balcony. The cord was old and soft where the glowmold that infested these caverns had been washed away many times, but it held one hurrying, catlike woman in leathers long enough for her to reach the balcony. Asper got one boot on the balcony rail and kicked hard. The aging iron squealed in protest as she sprang away into darkness, fingers straining for the lantern-line she sought.

It was barbed to keep unscrupulous folk from winching down the iron basket of glowworms that served some fearful merchant as a back door lantern, and the gloves Asper wore ended in middle-finger rings, leaving her fingers and most of her palms bare to grip things unhampered, but she shed only a little blood as she caught hold, swung, and let go again, heading feet first for another catwalk. Her eyes were on the battle ahead.

The eye tyrant seemed to be trying to bite Durnan, who was ducking and rolling among stubby fingers of stone wall. As Asper’s feet found the catwalk boards, slid in something unpleasant, and shot her right across it into empty air beyond, she saw the beholder bite down. Blocks of stone crumbled and Durnan dived away, a dagger flashing in his hand. Mirt was getting close now, and beyond them all—as she brought her feet together to crash down through the rotting roof of a bone-cart—Asper could see a few warily-watching creatures, a minotaur and a kenku among them, pointing at him disgustedly and shouting to each other. Wagers were being changed, it seemed.

Then Asper’s feet plunged through silk that was gray with age, into brittle bones beyond. She shut her eyes against flying shards as she sank into a crouch, letting her legs take the force of her landing, as a rough male ore’s voice snarled, ” What by all the brain-boring tentacles of dripping Ilsenine’s sycophants was that?”

“Special delivery,” Asper told the unseen merchant as her sword flashed out. Silk fell away like cobwebs and she sprang past startled, furious eyes and gleaming tusks onto the street beyond.

“Grmnarrr!” The ore’s roar of rage echoed off the buildings around, and Asper dodged sharply toward one side of the alley, bringing her sword up and back behind her without looking or slowing. A heavy handaxe rang off its tip and rattled along an iron gate beside her. Asper ran on into the darkness, calling back, “Pleasant meeting, bloodtusks!”

The ore term of respect was unlikely to mollify a merchant whose cart-top had just been ruined, but she was in a hurry. Up ahead, the beholder seemed to be shaking the air in a roaring frenzy that far outmatched the snarls of the ore behind her—and rays were lashing out from its writhing, coiling eyestalks in all directions. Those stabbing down seemed to meet some sort of shield and fade away, and one that lashed out toward Mirt met a similar fate, but others were causing spectacular explosions, bursts of flame and lightning, and in one spot, the stone was melting like syrup and slumping down upon itself in a slow flood.

Magelight flashed and curled around the eye tyrant as it poured forth spells in a display that had the audience scrambling for cover. The shouted latest adjustments to their wagers rang back hollowly from windows, balconies, and behind walls all around as the ground shook. Stone shrieked as it was rent asunder and the last of the ruin’s blackened walls toppled, with slow majesty, down onto the struggling tavernmaster.

Dust rose slowly as the heaving underfoot subsided, and the ringing that had risen in Asper’s ears was not enough to drown out Mirt’s roar of challenge.

“About! Turn about, ye blasted lump of floating suet! I’ll look ye in all yer eyes and stare ye down, and there’ll be a blade-thrust into every one of ‘em before ye’ll have time to flee! Turn about, I say!”

Asper winced at her lord’s imprudence, even as a rueful smile twisted her lips. This was her Mirt, all right.

Winded by his shouting, the fat old Lord of Waterdeep puffed and wheezed straight at the beholder, old boots flopping as he scrambled up a shifting pile of rubble. At its top he made a show of drawing his stout old sword and raising it in challenge. “Do ye hear me, ball of offal? I—”

“Hear you quite well enough,” the beholder replied. “Be silent forever, fat man.” Beams of deadly radiance flashed from its eyes.

They struck something unseen in the air before Mirt with such savage force that the very emptiness darkened, and the fat moneylender staggered to keep his footing as he was thrust back under the weight of the magic that clawed and tore at his shields.

The eye tyrant screamed in rage—was every puling human protected against all his powers?—and lashed out repeatedly with spells and thrusting eye-beams. The ground shook anew and Mirt disappeared down a sliding mound of rubble as stones broke free from buildings all around and plunged to the streets. Asper crouched low to stay unseen and scrambled forward as a balcony broke off a large mansion off to her left and crashed to its iron-gated forecourt, splitting paving stones with cracks like the strikes of a dozen whips.

A stone shard whirled out of nowhere and laid her cheek open with the ease of a slicing razor. Asper hissed at the close call and put a hand up to shield her face, spreading her fingers to see Mirt struggling along like a man battling his way into the face of a gale. Blackness sparked and roiled around him as his shields slowly melted—soon they would surely fail, he’d be blasted to a rain of blood, and she’d lose him, forever.

There was only one way she could help, and it might mean her life. Thrown away vainly, too, if she fouled the lone chance she’d get. Asper swallowed, tossed her head to draw breath and blow errant hairs away from her eyes, and slapped the hilt of her sword so the rune carved there would be smeared with the gore still leaking from her torn fingers. She felt its familiar ridges slick and sticky with her blood and nodded in satisfaction. Turning herself carefully to face the raging eye tyrant, she firmly whispered two words aloud.

The sword shuddered in her hands, then bucked, and she clung to it grimly as the rune’s power was unleashed. It blazed away into nothingness as the sword dragged her up into the air and flung her forward, and eerie silence fell.

She was invisible now, she knew, springing up into the air on a one-way vault that would end in a bone-shattering meeting with the cavern wall or a sickening plunge to the ground if she judged wrongly.

The beholder hadn’t noticed her. It was still lashing her lord with futile gazes and hurled spells as she rose out of the flashings and trembling air, passing up and over the monster…

Now! The rune’s power winked out in obedience to her will and Asper found herself falling, sword first, as Mirt’s roars and the excited shouts of the watching Skulkans rushed back around her. Straight down at the curving, segmented body of the eye tyrant she plunged, headed for just behind the squirming forest of its eyestalks. Asper spread her legs and braced herself for the landing—she’d have only a bare breath to strike before it flung her away.

She’d mixed the stoneclaw sap and creeper gum herself, and spread it on the soles of her boots more thickly than most thieves, miners, and sailors liked it, but it had seen her through more catwalk and rooftop landings on this foray than she cared to think about just now, and if it served her just once more…

Asper’s boots struck the beholder’s body with solid thumps, and the blade in her hands flashed once and back again before she’d even caught her balance. Almost cut through, an eyestalk flopped and thrashed beside her, spattering her with yellow-green, stinging gore as another eye turned her way—and as her boots found purchase on the curving body plates, Asper lunged desperately, putting her sword tip through the questing eye and shaking violently to drag the steel free before another orb could bathe her in its deadly gaze.

Three of the deadly eyestalks were turning, like slow serpents, and the beholder was rolling over to fling her off. Asper kicked out at one eye as her balance went, and flailed with her blade at another, ending up falling hard on the bony plates of the monster’s body, wrapped around an eyestalk. She clung to it with one hand and drove the quillons of her blade into the questing orb that came curling at her. Milky fluid burst forth, drenching her. Spitting out the reeking slime, Asper grimly slashed at another eye—then she was falling, the beholder’s bony bulk no longer under her.

Stones rushed up to meet her, and Asper tucked herself around her sword, trying to roll, but there was no time, and she crashed into what was left of a wall with numbing force, reeling back helplessly with mists swirling in front of her eyes and new wetness on her chin where she’d bitten through her lip.

Mirt was roaring her name and sprinting toward her, arms spread to embrace her. Would his failing shields protect them both?

Not from the death that was now sweeping toward her. The beholder’s large central eye was a rent, shriveled ruin, milky liquid dripping from a slash that gaped low in the now-sightless bulge, but the smaller eyes on their stalks glittered with maddened rage as they stared at her, growing swiftly nearer. The charging monster would either ram her into the stones and crush the life from her, or roll over at the last instant to snap at her with its fangs—teeth adorning a jagged mouth quite large enough to swallow her.

Asper shuddered, shook her head to clear it, and raised the gore-streaming blade she still held, as Mirt came gasping up to her, stout sword raised—and the beholder’s eyes vanished behind its own bulk, as it rolled over to reveal the gaping maw that would devour her.

A giant among his own kind, and armed with spells that they lacked, magic enough to overmatch many a human mage, Xuzoun had been contemptuously overconfident. Always a mistake with humans, he vaguely remembered an older tyrant telling him once as they drifted together over a long-ago battlefield where thousands of ores and humans lay trampled and fallen, during a chance meeting after both he and the other had sought the entertainment of watching an ore horde hew its way into oblivion—and had paid dearly. It would take many spells and long, long months in hiding to regain what had been lost in a few moments of red, reaving pain, but first to still the hands that had done this, forever!

Mirt fetched up against her, panting. “Are ye mad, lass? Yon—”

Asper shoved him away, and with the momentum pushing against his shaggy bulk gave her, spun about and dived away, just as Mirt staggered backward and sat down hard on bruising stone with a roar of pain—and the beholder crashed into the stones where they’d stood, snapping and tearing with its teeth.

Rubble sprayed or rolled in all directions as the beholder raked the heap of stone apart, teeth grating on rock. The impact sent it cartwheeling helplessly away through the air and uncovered a battered, unsteadily-reeling tavernmaster.

Durnan found his feet and climbed grimly out of the heaped stones, growling at the pain of several stiffening bruises. He’d been buried long enough to know the first cold touch of despair, and was in a mood to rend beholders.

“Urrrgh,” Mirt snarled, waddling awkwardly to his feet. “What’s this the earth spits forth? Tavernmasters gone carelessly strolling through Skullport?”

“Well met, old friend,” Durnan said with a grin, clapping Mirt on the shoulder with fingers that seemed made of iron.

Mirt’s moustache made that overall bristling movement that betokened a smile. “I saw the little minx ye came seeking, sitting as cool as ye please in Bindle’s Blade, tossing down amberjack, so I came in haste, knowing ye’d be avidly hunting down a trap!” He cast a look at the beholder as it thudded into the wall of a stronghouse where pale faces had just vanished from view, and asked, “So what did ye do to get a tyrant mad at ye? Refuse to kiss it?”

“Your wit slides out razor-sharp as always, Old Wolf,” Durnan observed, with a sly smile that belied his light, innocent tone.

Mirt gestured rudely in reply. “Well?”

“Nothing,” Durnan said flatly as they watched the beholder reel, steady itself, and begin to drift their way, menacingly slow and carefully. “I came out of the Portal to aid a noble lady—and strode straight into a spell that snatched me here.” He grinned. “Well, at least it saved me a bit of walking.”

Mirt harrumphed. “Pity it didn’t do the same for me.” Rock shifted behind him and he whirled around, sword out and low—only to relax and smile. “Lass, lass, how many times have I told thee how much I hate being snuck up on from behind?” he chided Asper halfheartedly. She gestured past him with her sword.

“You’d better turn around again, then, my lord,” she told him calmly, as a plucking at his belt told him that Durnan had snatched one of his daggers. Mirt grunted like a walrus and heaved himself around, puffing—in time to see the beholder rushing down at them again, beams of reaving light lancing out from its eyes.

“Keep behind me, both of ye!” the fat moneylender roared. “I’m shielded!”

“Against teeth like those? That’s a spell you’ll have to show me some time!” Durnan said, standing at Mirt’s shoulder with a dagger in either fist. He’d lost his blade under all the rocks, and one eye had swollen almost shut, but the tavernmaster seemed content—even eager—as death roared at them again.

Asper slid up to stand at Mirt’s other shoulder with the ease and fluid grace of a prowling serpent. “It seems strange to be worrying about a beholder’s teeth,” she said, “and not its eyes, for once.”

“Get back, lass!” Mirt roared. “As I haven’t worries enough!—”

Then the beholder crashed into them, snarling and snapping, as they hacked and slashed ineffectually against its bony body plates.

Its hot breath whirled around them as they jumped and hewed vainly and ducked aside, only to be struck and hurled away by what felt like a fast-moving castle wall. Durnan grunted as the tyrant smashed him down onto rocks like a rag doll, then rolled away into a gully as it settled, trying to crush him. Asper could not keep her feet when the jaws reached for her, and slid out of sight beneath the monster, only to duck up again, stab at it, and be thrown end-over-end across the ruins, sword flying from her numbed hands to clang and clatter to its own fall. She fetched up against a broken-off pillar with a gasp and a moan, but Mirt was too busy to hear her.

He was scrambling, cursing, and flailing against persistent fangs, sword ringing off bony plates and fangs alike, and in the end, only managed to avoid losing an arm by setting his sword upright against closing jaws and letting go. The beholder’s jaws caught on the blade, bent it, then spat it out.

By then, the three battered, wincing companions were rising out of the rubble in widely scattered spots. Fresh wagers were yelled in the distance.

“Oh, by the way, this is Xuzoun,” Durnan said formally, indicating the eye tyrant with a flourish.

“Ill met,” Mirt growled, struggling to his feet. “Damned ill met.”

Then the faint, everpresent singing that told him his shields yet lived fell silent. Their defense against the beholder’s eyes was gone.

“Gods blast it,” the old moneylender muttered. “To die in Skullport, of all places, and win someone’s wager for them.”

“Keep apart,” Asper said warningly, from off to his right, “lest it take us all down at once.”

“Cheerful advice,” Durnan commented, watching Xuzoun as it turned slowly to survey them all, as yet unaware that no shields remained to foil its magic. “Anyone still have magic to hand?”

“That’ll help us against this? Nay,” Mirt growled, watching death slowly come for them. All it would take now would be for the beast to lash out with one eye, on a whim, and discover they were defenseless.

Xuzoun had sent forth much magic against these humans, and seen it all boil away harmlessly, or come clawing back to harm its hurler. Lords of Waterdeep were tougher than most mortals, it seemed. How to defeat these two—perhaps three, if the woman was one, too—without destroying their bodies?

The only doppleganger whose loyalty Xuzoun had never found wanting was dead, so preservation of these humans— their bodies, at least—more or less intact was important. They foiled all magic with ease, and there seemed no way to overcome their wills. Yet to flee from battle with them now, before a crowd of Skulkans, galled.

The beholder’s advance slowed, then stopped. It rose a prudent distance above the ruin and hung there, considering.

“Right, then, I’m off,” Mirt said heartily, turning to go. ” ‘Tis not beholder-hunting season, anyway, and I’ve business to see to, that I left—”

One of Xuzoun’s eyes flashed, and a stone the size of a gauntleted fist rose from the rubble and flashed toward the old moneylender, flying as hard and as straight as any arrow. These humans might have shields to foil magic, but what if the stone were flying fast enough, and aimed true, when the magic that flung it was stripped away? Turning slowly end over end, the stone shot on…

“Old Wolf—down!” Asper screamed. Mirt had heard that tone from her a time or two before in his life, and flopped to his belly without delay. The stone whistled past close overhead and shattered with a sharp crack against a wall beyond.

Then the beholder was descending, and at the same time a slab of stone the size of a small cart was rising above Durnan. He ducked away but it followed, lowering itself with care, chasing him. The Master of The Yawning Portal spat out a curse and started a sprinting scramble across the rubble. The beholder seemed to smile as it drifted after him.

If the great weight of the stone pinned the running lord without having to strike him down and do harm, he’d be trapped and helpless—a prisoner until Xuzoun was ready to steal his mind and take over his body. If this worked with the one, why there were stones aplenty here, and only two humans more…

Wheezing to his feet and regarding the stone pursuing Durnan with horror, Mirt was startled by a loud rattling of rocks behind him. He lurched around with a snarl—was one of those watching gamblers trying to change the odds?—and found himself staring at a scaly blue monster that looked like a huge and sinuous crocodile, its head rearing up to regard him as it raced over the broken rubble on a small forest of fast-churning legs.

A behir—a man-eating lizard-thing that could spit lightning bolts!

“Ah, just what we need!” Mirt snarled despairingly, raising his dagger and knowing what a useless little fang it was against such onrushing death. “Some right bastard of a mage must be toying with us!”

Setting himself as a weary bull lowers its head to face into a fast-scudding storm, the fat old Lord of Waterdeep prepared to fight this new foe. The behir opened its jaws impossibly wide as it came, and Mirt was staring into a maw as large as a spacious doorway, a forked tongue wriggling in its depths in a fascinating dance, that plunged at him more swiftly than any man could run.

Asper screamed out Mirt’s name and sprinted toward him, a small boot-knife in her hand, but she was too distant to do more than watch as the reptile snapped its jaws once, tilted its head toward Mirt to deliver what he could only describe as a wink, and surged past the astonished moneylender to spit lightning into the open mouth of the beholder.

Xuzoun screamed, a high, sobbing wail like too many cries Mirt had heard human women make, and spun away over the ruins, lightnings playing about its body. Its eyestalks jerked and coiled spasmodically, and it was trailing smoke when it struck a leaning pillar and crashed heavily to the ground. The rushing behir was on it in a breath, coiling over its foe as it snapped its jaws and tore away eyestalks in eager, merciless haste. The three humans watched, a little awed, then in unspoken accord came together in the center of the stony devastation to watch the beholder die.

“Is there any hole here small enough that we can get into it and hold off that thing?” Asper asked softly, watching the scaly blue head toss as it tore away beholder flesh.

None of them saw the crystal sphere materialize silently beside the riven eye tyrant for a moment, flickering with the last vestiges of a spell-glow… then silently crumble to dust, which drifted away.

“A few, no doubt,” Durnan replied grimly, watching the carnage, “but none of them would shield us in the slightest from its lightnings.”

Asper sighed a long, shuddering sigh and tossed her head. Her eyes were very bright as she said softly, “I thought so,” and raised her little knife as if it were some great magical long sword.

When the crocodilelike head turned from its feasting, it saw the little knife, Mirt’s dagger beside it, and the similar dagger Durnan held ready, and its eyes flashed golden with amusement. Its maw opened and a hissing roar came out.

The great jaws worked and rippled with effort, and for a moment Asper thought it was trying to speak. Then it tossed its head in disgust, drew in a deep breath, and tried again, turning its eyes on Mirt. They all heard its rattling roar quite distinctly: “Thank TYanstraaaa…”

Then it lowered its head, folded its legs against its body, and slithered away. They watched it wind its snakelike way out of the ruins into the street beyond, where the audience of surviving gamblers shrank back to make way for it, and vanish around a corner—Spidersilk Lane, Durnan thought—and leave them alone with a torn-open, quite dead beholder.

“I wonder what she’ll ask you in payment?” Durnan asked the Old Wolf.

Mirt growled a wordless reply, shrugged, then turned to his lady as if seeing her for the first time. “Hello, little fruit-basket,” he leered, extending his lips in a chimplike pout to be kissed.

Slowly, Asper stuck her tongue out in eloquent reply, and made the spitting-to-the-side mime that young Waterdhavian ladies use to signal disgust or emphatic disapproval.

Then she winked and grinned.

Mirt started to grin back, but it faded quickly as he saw the danger signal of Asper’s eyebrows rising, and the accompanying glitter in the dark eyes boring into him. A moment later she asked softly, “Just who is this ‘Transtraaaa’ woman, anyway?”

Mirt gave her a sour look. “Pull in the claws, little one. She’s no woman, but a lamia noble.”

It was the turn of Durnan’s eyebrows to rise. “Slave-trading, Mirt?”

The fat moneylender gave him a disgusted look and turned to start the long trudge back up the alley. “Ye know me better than that,” he rumbled. “Slaving’s work for those who’ve no scruples, less sense, and too much wealth. Nobles, for instance.”

Durnan groaned. “Let’s not start that one again. We rooted out all we could find and Khel set spy-spells. There’ll always be a few dabblers, no doubt, but nothing we can’t handle—”

Lightning roared across the ruins to split the stones at his feet.

“Oh? Care to try to handle me, tavernmaster?”

That taunt echoed and rolled around them, made louder by magic. It had been delivered in the voice of an arrogant young woman of culture and breeding. The three Lords looked up whence the lightning had come and saw a lone figure standing on the catwalk where Asper had inspected a line of washing not so long ago: a slim, haughty figure in a dark green cloak whose folds showed the shape of a long sword beneath it. The uppermost part of the figure was all flashing eyes and curling auburn hair piled high around graceful shoulders.

“Young Nythyx,” Mirt roared, “come down from there!”

In reply, two gloved hands parted the cloak from within to reveal the glowing, deadly things they bore: Netherese blast scepters, crackling with simmering lightnings. “Come up and get me, fat man.” Nythyx Thunderstaff sneered. “I don’t take orders from drunken old commoners.”

Durnan looked up at her, eyes narrowing. “You a slaver, then?” He strode calmly toward the mouth of the alley, and after a moment Mirt and Asper followed.

The scepters were leveled at them, and the young woman who held them shrugged and said almost defiantly, “Yes.”

Durnan kept on walking, but shook his head in smiling disbelief. “You’ve never shackled men or dragged ores out of carry-cages. If you tried, they’d toss you around like a child’s ball!”

Lightning stabbed at him in wordless, deadly reply.

An unclad woman whose hair and eyes shared the color of leaping flame leaned out of a window near the alley-mouth and stiffened. “Blast scepters!” she hissed, and as her eyes blazed even brighter, she flowed forward out of the window. Her body was human to the hips, but from there down it was the scaled, sinuous bulk of a serpent. She slithered along the wall, drawing herself upright, and raised her hands to weave a spell, but a dark, chill hand caught at her shoulder.

She spun about, hands growing talons with lightning speed. “Who—?”

“I am sometimes called Halaster Blackcloak,” the wall told her, ere a cowled face melted out of its stones to join the arm that held her. Flamered eyes met dark ones, and after

a moment Transtra shivered and looked away. The hand released its hold on her, and Halaster’s voice was almost kindly as he added, “They’ll be fine. Watch. Just watch.”

* * * * *

Lightning spat down at the tavernmaster, slashing aside glow-lanterns and washing, but Durnan calmly leaped aside, rolled to his feet, and resumed his steady walk a dozen paces ahead and to the left of where he’d been walking. He looked up through smoking rags and swaying ropes and remarked, “Ah. You cooked every slave who said something you didn’t like, eh? This may be one reason why we’ve never heard of your stellar slaving career.”

Lightning cracked again, and in its wake the young noblewoman shrieked, “Don’t you dare mock me, tavernmaster! My master would have killed you, all of you, if it hadn’t been for that—that snake-thing! You’re very lucky to be alive to toss smart words my way right now!”

“Ye really should practice with that toy,” Mirt growled, waggling one large and hairy finger her way, “if ye harbor any fond hopes of ever hitting someone with it.”

At his shoulder, Asper frowned. “You served … the beholder?” she asked the woman aloft.

They were close enough now to clearly see Nythyx Thunderstaff s slim lips draw into a tight line. She stared down at them, pale and trembling with rage, and said, “Yes. With Xuzoun, I wielded power and influence. Great lords poured me their best wines in hopes of gaining just the slaves they desired. You’ve ended that, you three, and will pay for doing so. This I swear.”

“I’ve heard of consorts fathers disapprove of,” Mirt rumbled, “but lass, lass, how could ye be so foolish?”

“Foolish?” Nythyx shrieked, thrusting forth her scepters to point almost straight down at their upturned faces. “Foolish? Who’s the fool here, Old Wolf?” And she triggered both blast scepters with a snarl.

But Asper had been muttering something under her breath—and at that moment the catwalk bucked and broke apart as the blast star she’d left behind on it obediently exploded.

“Ye are, if ye know no better than to let us walk right up when ye had the power to torch us all,” Mirt told Nythyx, as the young noblewoman tumbled helplessly down to the cobbles at their feet, futile lightnings sputtering forth to scorch the buildings on either side but finding no way to slow her killing fall.

Or almost fatal fall. A scant few feet above the stones Durnan rushed forward, leaped high to meet her, and cradled her deftly in his arms, crashing down into a crouch that took the force of her descent.

Nythyx stared at him for one astonished moment, then her face twisted and she raised the one scepter she’d managed to hang on to, aiming at his face—so the tavernmaster brought one expert fist down across her chin in a swipe that left her slack-jawed and senseless. Durnan watched the winking and sputtering scepter fall slowly from her hand. When it clattered on the cobbles, he kicked it to Asper, looked at the now-empty face of the woman in his arms for a moment, then swung her onto his shoulder for the long carry back to her father’s arms in Waterdeep. Just what, he wondered, was he going to tell Lord Thunderstaff…?

Rubies caught his eyes as her long, ostentatious earrings dangled down beside his chest. Durnan stared at them, shook his head, and said wearily, “I’m getting too old for this. Wfcafaday!”

Mirt shrugged as one of his arms found its way around Asper’s shoulders. “Eh? What say ye? ‘Twas a bit of a slow day in Skullport, I’d say!”

The words had scarce left his mouth when the front of a nearby building burst out into the alley with a flash and roar, shattering shutters across the way and sending another catwalk into dancing collapse. Flashing fingers of blue-white fire spat from the curling smokes of the riven building even before the flung stones of its walls had finished falling, and on those fiery fingers were borne two writhing bodies.

The three Lords of Waterdeep watched the pair struggling vainly against the magic. They were women of greater age and

far more lush beauty than either Asper or Nythyx—beauty revealed through the tatters of their smouldering robes as they shrieked and wailed past the three lords, pulled in a sharp curve along the front of a butcher shop and on down the alley by the raging magic that held them captive.

The lords turned to watch, in time to see a black flame rise suddenly into being along one wall partway down the alley: a dancing shadow without fuel or heat that seemed neither to die nor rise higher, but merely to continue.

From behind its concealing veil, Transtra watched a shadowy hand rise from the cobbles behind Mirt’s boot, deftly close on the second, forgotten blast scepter which lay fallen and still sparking feebly on the cobbles, and draw it down through the solid stone.

A moment later, the hand reappeared beside her and offered her the scepter. “You see? Patience does bring rewards,” Halaster murmured, as the lamia noble looked at him in wonderment, then at the scepter, and slowly stretched forth her hand for it. The wizard smiled thinly. “There’s no trap; take it.”

Transtra regarded him, eyes unreadable. “Why have you given me this?”

Eyes as black as a starless night looked back into hers. “I have few friends, lady, and I’d like to gain another—as you gained yonder moneylender.”

Transtra looked at the two sorceresses clawing and sobbing against the unknown magic carrying them inexorably down the alley, drew in a deep breath, then looked back at Halaster and stretched forth her other hand.

“I’m willing to gain one, too,” she said steadily, and the smile that answered her was like a wave of warm spiced wine that carried her along unresisting when the wizard replied, “Then trust me, and come.”

Cool black fingers closed on hers, and drew her toward the wall, into the chill embrace pf the stones. Transtra swallowed, closed her eyes, and kept firm hold of the fingers that took her on, into silence, away from the alley…

The black flame along one side pf the alley was suddenly gone as if it had never been, revealing a dirty stone wall broken by one dark, open window. As the two struggling sorceresses flew past that spot, their splendid bodies wriggled, lengthened, and turned warty and green.

“Trolls?” Asper asked, frowning, and her two companions nodded. The forcibly transformed women plunged across the ruins into darkness, tumbling in the grip of the magic that propelled them. A moment later, on the far side of the great cavern whence they’d gone, two gigantic orbs blazed open and a thunderous voice rumbled, “Who dares—?”

There followed the rumblings and slight shakings of even so large a cavern as this that marked the stirring of a huge, long-quiescent body. Something larger than several buildings rose up on the far side of the ruins.

As the black dragon raised its scaly bulk higher than the roofs of Skullport to glare down the alley, Asper whispered something over the Netherese scepter. A nimbus of blue-and-gold fire surrounded her hand. “Touch me, both of you,” she said, “and bring the not-so-noble lady’s hand against mine.”

Durnan touched Nythyx’s limp hand to Asper’s, and she whispered something. The scepter began to whine and pulse, brighter at each flare.

“What have ye done, lass?” Mirt rumbled.

“Used this thing to power the little carry-stone you gave me, so as to whisk us all back to Mirt’s mansion,” she replied—and as she spoke, the familiar blue mists of teleportation began to rise and swirl around them. Asper smiled and turned her head to face Durnan. “I must agree with my lord,” she said sweetly to the tavernmaster. “A slow day, in truth.”

“May there be many more of them,” Durnan breathed his heartfelt wish as the dragon’s charge made the stony pave of the alley buckle and heave under their boots, and the mists rushed up to claim them, spinning them back to a place where there’d be a fire and a warm bathing pool, ready wine … and no dragons. What more could a retired adventurer ask for?