The Best of the Realms, Book II

THE EYE OF THE DRAGON

Ambreene glanced irritably out the window as she hurried along the Hall of Clouds behind the politely insistent seneschal. Why did Grandmama Teshla want to see her just now?

The deliciously cooling breeze that had slid around Hawkwinter House was dying away. Waterdeep would soon be cloaked in a damp, clinging haze that played Tymora’s happy dance with lightning spells… even if all the household slept, she’d dare not conjure a single spark. Awkward, unpracticed casting was all she could manage.

And another tenday would pass in endless Palace promenades, dull tutoring sessions on the honorable and very long history of the Hawkwinters, and idle chatter with the emptyskulled high ladies who were her sisters’ friends—if such a cold-hearted, scheming, petty lot of catsclaws could truly be deemed the “friends” of anyone.

Another tenday in which Ambreene Hawkwinter, one more society beauty in a city that teemed with superior young she-nobles, would work no more magic of consequence. Ambreene scowled at herself in a mirror as she hurried past It would be so easy to just give in, banishing to memory her secret sessions of sweating concentration and fearfully hissed spells, and just idle her days away, drifting inevitably into the boredom of marriage to the prized lout, dandy, or stonehead of some noble family favored by the Hawkwinters. So gods-be-damnably easy.

She tossed her head and glared at a startled servant as she turned at the end of the hall into Teshla’s Tower and began to climb the spiral stairs to the rooms Grandmama Hawkwinter never left. That ease is why it must never happen, she vowed silently. I will not become another wisp-headed catsclaws—I’ll see Hawkwinter House hurled down into its own cesspools first!

The seneschal came to the door at the end of the worn red shimmerweave carpet and rang the graceful spiral of brass chimes that hung beside it. Unlatching the heavy door, he pulled it wide, stepping smoothly back and bowing to usher Ambreene within.

The youngest daughter of the Hawkwinters strode past him with the absently confident air that made the servants call her the Little Lady Queen of All Waterdeep behind her back, into the dim, quiet apartments that were all the kingdom the once-mighty Dowager Lady Hawkwinter had left.

Priceless glowstone sculptures drifted in slow dances as she passed. Enchanted, glowing paintings of flying elven hunts and dancing lords and ladies displayed endless animations, and a fascinated Ambreene was a good twenty paces into the luxurious chamber when she realized she was alone. There was no trace of the three elderly chamberladies who sat in the lounges on either side of the central bedchamber stair, waiting to be summoned up it into Teshla’s presence. Ambreene glided to a graceful halt amid those empty lounges, uncertain as to what to do next.

An eye winked open in the smooth ivory sphere adorning one bottom stairpost, and a mouth appeared in the other, saying in the familiar dry, waspish tones of Grandmama Teshla: “Come up, girl. I’ve not much time left.”

A little chill arose inside Ambreene at that calm statement. Obediently she set foot on the curving stair. So it was the summons she’d dreaded, come at last. She gathered her skirts and mounted the steps in haste.

She should have visited Grandmama more often and stayed longer, despite the watchful, over-scented old chamberladies with their vague, condescending comments and endless bright, cultured, empty phrases about the weather. She should have told Lady Teshla—who’d dabbled in dark and daring magic in her younger days, they said—about her own fumbling attempts to master magic. She should have…

Ambreene reached the head of the stairs and came to a shocked halt. Grandmama was quite alone, lying propped up on her pillows in bed. She must have sent the servants all away and unbound her hair herself.

A soft-hued driftglobe hovered above the bed and Ambreene could see that Lady Teshla was wearing a black robe whose arms were writhing, leaping flames of red silk—robes better suited to an evil seductress than the matron of one of the oldest, proudest houses in all Waterdeep. She looked dangerous, and the glint in her old, knowing eyes made that seeming even stronger.

Ambreene swallowed. “Grandmama, I came as qui—”

“Swift enough, it seems,” the dry voice said, with just a hint of weariness. “I breathe yet. Stand not there quivering like an unschooled courtesan, girl, but come and give me a kiss—or you may yet be too late.”

Numbly Ambreene did as she was bid. The old arms trembled as they went around her, but the lips were as firm and imperious as always. Ambreene looked into the black, bottomless pools of Grandmama’s eyes—a falcon’s eyes, her father had once called them—and said, “Grandmama, there’s something I must tell you. I’ve been trying to—”

“Weave a few spells,” Lady Teshla finished the sentence, almost impatiently. “Don’t you think I know this, girl? What way does my favorite window face?”

Toward Ambreene’s own bedchamber windows, of course, but…

“I’m glad you used the word ‘trying.’ A right mess you made of the darkshadow cloak,” Teshla said dryly, “but you have all the grand gestures right, girl. Some young blade’U quake in his boots if he ever tries too much at a dance, and you hurl the pig-face curse his way!”

Ambreene flushed in embarrassment. How had Grandmama, shut up in this dim towertop room, seen that? She was sure she’d managed to restore the old warhound’s rightful looks before his frightened yelps had…

The drif tglobe swirled and drew her eyes—and suddenly its heart flashed into a view of distant Castle Waterdeep, from above, as if she were standing atop Mount Waterdeep looking down on it!

“That’s how I see all,” Teshla told her as the scene faded. “Touch the sphere.”

Wonderingly, Ambreene did so. A tingling went through her from her fingertips, and Teshla nodded approvingly.

“The globe will follow you, now. When you go, all the house can think I was just bestowing a little magic on my kin before I went to the arms of the gods. But this is why I summoned you.”

A wrinkled hand moved with surprising speed, drawing up the fine chain that had gleamed down into Teshla’s shrunken bodice for as long as Ambreene could remember, and bringing into view a delicately-worked silvery metal dragon’s head, in profile. Its single eye was a huge, dark, glossy gem of a sort Ambreene had never seen before in a lifetime of watching wealth drift languidly by at feasts and revels. She stared at it… and it seemed to stare back at her.

“What is it?” she whispered as Teshla drew the chain off over her head with arms once more slow and weary, and held it out.

“The Eye of the Dragon, child,” Teshla said softly. “May it serve you better than it did me—and may you use it far more wisely than I did. Take it.”

The youngest daughter of House Hawkwinter swallowed, then lifted her head and calmly reached out for the gem.

Teshla chuckled at the imperious manner, then tilted her head to watch her descendant closely, almost warily., tj,

In Ambreene’s awed fingers, the gem seemed warm and alive—and weightless, as if it could float on its own. It held waiting, unsleeping power, strong magic that Ambreene could feel through her entire body. She stared at it in amazement, then looked up at her grandmother.

“I–I never dreamed that there was so precious a thing in this house,” she said wonderingly. “And to be given it… thank you, Grandmama! All my thanks! I don’t know how to say it well enough, but—”

“Know what it does before being so free and eager with your joy,” Teshla told her dryly. “It is your true inheritance, for only a sorceress can use it. Keep it secret, for no one else within these walls knows of it, and it is a thing of great power.”

Her dark eyes stared somberly into Ambreene’s own. “Be warned, girl—learn its ways thoroughly, and use it only with great care, for it steals and stores memories, and can leave a man a hollow husk… as I learned, to my cost.”

Ambreene stared at her grandmother with the beginnings of a frown playing about her brows. Grandmama turning a man into a—husk? What man could she have been so interested in, or who would even look at her? It must have been some reckless thief, come to the tallest tower of Hawkwinter House in hopes of stealing away with some baubles…

“Speculate all you want,” Teshla told her, as if reading her thoughts, “but waste not the breaths left to me in foolish questions as to who and why. That is my own business, and you can learn the truth from the Eye after I am gone. But remember, and beware: it steals memory.”

Ambreene had been about to put the chain over her own neck. She stopped abruptly, looked at the gem as if it might bite her, and hurriedly slid it into the outermost pocket of her robes.

“Wise,” Teshla said, falling back into her pillows. “Now that is done, and…” Her eyes closed and her voice trailed away.

Ambreene stared at her in sudden alarm. “Grandmama?” she cried. “Gra—”

Then she heard the rattle of a drawn breath, and— slowly and unsteadily—another. Grandmama still lived. Yet Ambreene knew this would be her grandmother’s deathbed. Soon.

Ambreene stood silently by Lady Teshla’s bed for a long time, thinking furiously—then whirled and left the room, striding hard. The driftglobe sailed silently along in her wake.

She was almost running when she swept past the seneschal, ignoring his surprised look and murmured question. She traversed the Hall of Clouds faster than the old warrior had ever seen her move before, so that he had to trot to keep up—and instead of storming into her rooms or bursting into tears when her chambermaids rose to greet her, the young lass turned abruptly aside to descend the back stair that led to the stables and thence to the House gates.

The seneschal clattered after her, clutching his scabbard to keep it from tangling in his legs and sending him into a headlong tumble. “Lady Ambreene!” he puffed, his voice imperious now. “This is most irregular! Your father said nothing about your going out this day, and with the Great Lady Teshla so nea—”

Ambreene did not bother to turn her head. “Did he not? Well, go to him, and he shall tell you—but stand in my path at your peril!” The lie came to her in an easy rush, and she found herself quivering with excitement and anger. No one was going to stop her, not even Lord Piergeiron himself! Grandmama was her only real friend, and Ambreene had no intention of losing such a precious thing, whatever Teshla might think of the time left to her…

Until a few breaths ago, Ambreene Hawkwinter had been powerless to do anything about Grandmama’s slow wasting. But that was before the Eye of the Dragon had come into her hand.

It was beautiful, yes—so beautiful!—and a thing of power besides. But what were those things set against the warmth and wisdom of Grandmama, there to laugh with her, chide her, and teach her the ways of spells, men, and Waterdeep itself? In all the city, men said, there was no mage as mighty as Khelben Blackstaff—and if he could make the dead live and gods whole, he could surely restore one old woman t And he would want this Eye of the Dragon, and doubtless do such a small and kind service in return for it.

Briefly Ambreene thought of how powerful the Eye might make her, and how slow her mastery of magic was sure to be without it—but no. Without Grandmama’s direction and teaching, she might never learn to wield even the pendant, let alone spells of her own! She strode down the street, uncaring, as folk stared at the speeding driftglobe and the red-faced old seneschal puffing along after her with a half-dozen smirking, hastily-commanded Hawkwinter armsmen at his heels. She needed only her eyes to head for the dark and distant needle of Blackstaff Tower.

Every child of Waterdeep knew it. The home of a man whose spells were mighty enough to hurl back liches, mind flayers, and beholders all at once, and whose stern justice frightened even proud heads of the richest noble houses. Ambreene knew that too, and quailed inwardly as she marched along. But she was a Hawkwinter, on a truly noble mission—and Ambreene’s name might well someday ring down the streets of Waterdeep as grandly as that of Khelbun Arunsun.

She lifted her chin and strode on without slowing. Behind her, the seneschal rolled his eyes and wheezed along. Fear was beginning to show on his face as she passed into the shadow of Blackstaff Tower.

* * * * *

A single taper flickered in Ambreene’s bedchamber as she shot the door-bolt into place with steady hands, so none could disturb her. Then she hurried to the dusty space behind her wardrobe where she hid her few scraps of magic.

She almost made it. Two paces shy of her secret place the hot tears of rage and grief burst forth, blinding her. She blundered forward, sobbing, until she ran into the wardrobe’s polished side and raised trembling fists to strike it, again and again, heedless of the pain.

Khelben had granted immediate audience, and hope had soared like a flame within her until the moment Ambreene had given him her name. He’d looked at her gravely, and uttered words that would burn in her brain forever: “Teshla Hawkwinter? No, child. Not that one. She knows why, and has accepted her death… and so must you.”

And that was all he would say, despite her tearful pleadings. At last Ambreene had risen from her knees, lifted her chin, turned in silence, and left, unheralded. He hadn’t even looked up from his papers as she’d gone out!

She’d stumbled home, the seneschal and guards treading close around her but not daring to speak, to find all the folk of the house as white-faced as she was. Silence reigned heavily over Hawkwinter House save for muffled weeping behind backchamber doors. The Dowager Lady Teshla Hawkwinter was dead.

The priests of half a dozen temples murmured and chanted around the high-canopied bed and Ambreene hadn’t even been allowed in to see what was left of her Grandmama—sleeping forever now, a small and shrunken thing in the great spill of silken pillows—until the haughty strangers were done.

Her father had been there. He had said her name once, gently, and had reached for her—but Ambreene stepped around him and looked upon the Lady Teshla alone and in silence. When she turned to go, her father had signed to the servants not to follow, and for that gentle mercy she must remember to thank him when she could. But not now. Oh, not now.

She drew herself up in the darkness, an anger boiling in her throat that made her want to scream, rake herself, and break things, and hissed in a voice that fought hoarsely through tears, “I will make you pay for her death, 0 great, grand Lord Mage Khelben Blackstaff Arunsun. Ambreene Hawkwinter will make you plead for aid as I pleaded… and I will show you the same mercy you showed me. This I swear.”

Her last words seemed to echo around her, and Ambreene shivered and clung to the wardrobe for support. So this was

powerful archmage in all Waterdeep, too. She rang the servants’ bell and went to unbolt the door for them. She must get Grandmama’s spellbooks and magic things before some maid spirited them away to make fair coin and they were lost. Ambreene had much work to do.

* * * * *

A month later, Ambreene stood beside the wardrobe and looked at herself in her glass. A gaunt and hollow-eyed maid with white skin and dark, burning eyes gazed back at her. She knew the servants whispered her wits had been touched by the Lady Teshla’s death, but she cared not a whit.

Ambreene was almost ready. Mastery of all the spells in Teshla’s books—her books, now—might take years, but the Eye of the Dragon shone openly on her breast, and at night quivered warmly against her skin, whispering to her in her dreams.

All too often the night visions it sent drifted away in smoky tatters, but when her will was strong enough to hold steady to them, they showed her how to command the pendant to take memories … and to yield its memories up, like the scenes acted out at revels.

As Grandmama had warned, the Eye could drink memories, and when she got the right chance, she’d use it on Khelben to steal his magic. Then she would be a great sorceress, and he’d be left a shambling, slack-jawed idiot. A fitting fate, she’d thought… until that dark day when the pendant showed her why he’d refused to keep Grandmama alive.

Teshla had been a lush, dark beauty in her youth, all flashing eyes, flowing raven hair, and full, cruel lips … and as proud and amoral as any haughty noble. Many men sighed for her, but she saw them as passing fancies to be duped into building her wealth and power. She professed undying love for one wizard—but in her bed, the Eye pressed between them by their bodies and her mouth entrapping his, she’d drained all Endairn’s magic away, becoming a mage of power in one night.

With her newfound arts she’d chained him in a dark cellar, bound in spell-silence, and set forth to lure the most cunning merchant of the city to wed her.

Horthran Hawkwinter had been rich indeed. She’d not refused his shower of coins, but it had been his wits she’d wanted, his judgment of folk and knowledge of their pasts, schemes, alliances, and abilities. And it was his wits she’d taken on another night like the first, in the very bed in which she died; a gift from him, seeing its first use. The confused Horthran had been confined to his chambers from then on, visited by Teshla only when she wanted an heir, then another child in case misfortune befell the first.

Ambreene shivered a little as she watched her infant elders set aside in a nursery while Teshla clawed and carved her subtle way to dominance, making the Hawkwinters a grand and respected house in Waterdeep.

She wept when the Eye showed a bored Teshla bringing together her husband and the mindless wizard and goading them into fighting each other for her entertainment. They’d both died—sharing a look of heartfelt gratitude as they stared into each other’s eyes and slowly throttled each other.

That look had troubled Teshla, even after she’d had the bodies burned and the ashes scattered at sea by a Hawkwinter ship. Eventually her nightmares had frightened her servants so much that they’d called in the Lord Mage of Waterdeep … and the look Khelben had given her as he stripped away all her spellbooks and things of power except the Eye and left her alone in her turret room had haunted Teshla almost as much as the dying looks of Endairn and Horthran.

Over the long years, Teshla had built up her magic again, scroll by scroll, her coins reaching where she could not, to win for her—often with bloodied blades—magic she dared not seek openly. Her son and heir, Eremoes, grew into a man of wisdom and justice under the best tutors the Hawkwinter coffers could buy, and there had come the day when he’d returned to Hawkwinter House with a new and beautiful wife, the sorceress Merilylee Caranthor of Athkatla.

Seeing her mother clearly for the first time, Ambreene sought Khelben’s protection against the Eye. Cloaked in his spell, she tried to seize Teshla’s magic for her own.

Eremoes never knew the sorcerous attack on Hawkwinter House that left no trace of his beloved Merilylee, half his servants dead, and the upper floors of the family mansion a shambles was not the work of a rival house at all—but the result of a sorcerous duel between his mother and his wife. A duel Teshla did not lose.

Ambreene wept as she saw herself shielded in her nursery by Teshla’s spells. Her Grandmama had chosen Ambreene to be her friend and sorcerous heir from the first, and shaped her into the role as coldly and as calculatingly as anything else she’d set out to do.

Ambreene spent a long night of tears on her knees when Śshe was done seeing all the long, long years of memories the Eye had seen, but when she rose at last, dry-eyed, Khelben’s hated face still burned in her mind.

Why hadn’t he stopped Grandmama? He was Lord Mage of Waterdeep, and had a duty. Why had he let Ambreene’s mother be blasted to nothing, and the Hawkwinters groomed to Teshla’s wishes? What, in this uncaring—when he knew her deeds and ambitions, and did nothing—made him any better than Lady Teshla Hawkwinter?

Nothing. She was gone, leaving behind only spells, the Eye, and shame. But he lived still, and had dismissed Ambreene without even a look, and let the house of Hawkwinter become what Teshla had twisted it into. And her father did not even know…

That very morning Eremoes Hawkwinter had broken his mourning silence and sent forth invitations to a grand feast, to the folk of the Palace and every grand house in the city. And they would come; Hawkwinter hospitality was legendary.

Khelben Arunsun’s name was on one of those invitations, and he would come. After Ambreene had told the Lady Laeral that she was thinking of studying magic, and very much wanted to see the Lord Mage of Waterdeep at Hawkwinter House, Laeral would see that he attended.

Ambreene smiled slowly and went to where her spell had little time to prepare herself to greet Khelben properly. She suspected it might not be all that easy to make an archmage kill himself.

* * * * *

The gate-greetings were done, and the many-colored driftglobes she’d conjured (to her father’s smiling approval) were becoming useful as dusk drew down. From a distance, across the dance floor, Ambreene smiled and waved at Laeral as the arriving Lord and Lady Mage of Waterdeep were welcomed by her father—then allowed herself to be swept away into a chalantra by one more would-be suitor.

She’d scarcely recognized herself in the glass when the chamberladies had finished with her, but she could have resembled one of the sacks of unwashed potatoes piled up in the cellars and still been nearly trampled by the attentions of every younger noble son of the city. As the night wore on, Ambreene kept a smile firmly on her face and magic to keep her hair up and her feet just a breath above the tiles. She wasn’t nearly as weary and footsore as she should have been when she slipped away from a sweating Talag Ilvastarr after moonrise and sought somewhere private.

Many couples had stolen away from the laughter, min-strelry, and chatter to enjoy the beauty of the extensive gardens of Hawkwinter House together. A part of Ambreene ached to be giggling and caressing the night away in the arms of a handsome young blade, but she had sworn an oath, the first thing of consequence she had set out to do in her life. Ambreene Hawkwinter would keep her oaths. All her oaths.

Then she was alone in a room that was dark enough. A few gestures and a hissed word and Ambreene’s muscles shifted in the loose gown she’d chosen. It felt peculiar, this sliding and puffing, as she became older and fatter, her cheeks and chin chubby, and her hair russet red. Now no suitor would see her as the highly desirable Hawkwinter heiress and press his attentions, or want to dance with her all night.

She smiled grimly into the darkness and went in search of the Lord Mace of Waterdeeo.

He was not on the dance floor, nor in any of the noisy, crowded antechambers that gave off it, where loudly-talking older nobles were busy insulting each other, gossiping, gorging themselves, and drinking themselves silly. Nor was he where Ambreene had expected to find him—the dim, smoky rooms on the floor above, where men who thought themselves wiser and more powerful than their fellow nobles muttered darkly about plots and trade treaties and the dark days ahead for Waterdeep, and added new layers of refinements and pacts to the already labyrinthine entanglements of the city’s intrigues.

Ambreene found privacy again and sent a seeking spell on a tour of the bedchambers and servants’ rooms that left her blushing and her eyebrows raised … perhaps permanently. In one, she found Laeral and her father together, but they were only talking. Relieved at not having to add the Lady Mage of Waterdeep to the ranks of those she must destroy, Ambreene continued her search, but found no trace of Lord Khelben in all the House.

Finally she farscried him far away across the moonlit gardens, speaking to a succession of young party guests out strolling idly about the grounds. Hmmph. Dispensing wizardly wisdom, no doubt.

Ambreene’s eyes narrowed, and she cast another spell. There was a sound like the faint jangle of harp strings, then:

“Grand night, to be sure,” someone who was not there said loudly in her ear, “but my gut’s rolling like a ship being beached through breakers!”

“It’s that wine,” another, thinner voice replied. “If you must try to drink the Hawkwinter cellars dry all by yourself…”

So her spell was working, but where was Khelben’s voice? Ambreene frowned and bent her will in the wizard’s direction.

A third, cheerful voice said, “Fair even, Lor—” then stopped as if cut off by a knife. Ambreene juggled the fading wisps of her first spell into life once more, and saw the man who must have spoken … a man in a half-cloak, daringly-patterned hose, and a doublet of slashed silk, standing conversing with Khelben. Gods-be-damned! The wizard must have a shield up to prevent eavesdroppers from hearing what was said!

Her eyes narrowed. What words, at a party, could be so important that they must be hidden from all?

Then she had a sudden thought and sent her clairaudience spell whirling back across Hawkwinter House to the private chamber where Eremoes and Laeral sat.

“Your service to the Harp is as timely and as enjoyable as always,” the Lady Mage was saying, “and I want you to know that it is not unappreciated or taken for granted, Lord.”

Ambreene blinked. Her father, a Harper? Gods above!

“I know that’s not the case,” her father replied, “but I must confess I had my own selfish reason for this gathering…”

“And would this reason be your youngest daughter’s growing mastery of magic?” Laeral asked smoothly.

“It would,” Eremoes Hawkwinter said. “I know Blackstaff Tower always has more would-be apprentices than either you or Khelben have time for, but if you’d be willing to explore her powers and, I confess, her thoughts and feelings; she’s been more affected by my mother’s death than her siblings or most folk her age would be … I’d be most grateful. I cannot hire the right tutor until I know her strengths and interests, and to query her directly would upset her, diminish me in her eyes, and yet fail to yield the truth.”

“I can do that in the morning, if you’d like,” Laeral said in kindly tones, and Ambreene’s prying spell collapsed as she shrieked in fear.

She must act now! Once Laeral poked into her mind, she’d have no secrets left and Khelben might well turn her into a frog or bookend or his slave while she was still whimpering under the Lady Mage’s mindprobe…

Trembling in haste, Ambreene shifted her form again. A young woman who was alluring indeed ran from the room, clattered down the closest stair to the gardens, startling couples out of their embraces as she rushed past, and found the moonlight as quickly as she could.

The succession of Harper agents seemed to have finished their business with the Lord Mage of Waterdeep, and for one

chilling moment Ambreene thought Khelben was gone from Hawkwinter House, and she’d missed her chance.

Then she caught sight of him in a far corner of the gardens, sitting alone on a bench in the bright moonlight. Pulling the Eye on its chain off over her head, Ambreene held it ready inside a sleeve of her gown, panted until she regained control of her breath, then set off swiftly toward her quarry.

This would be her only chance. To keep her oath, she could not fail now. Ambreene moved as quietly as she could without seeming to creep or stalk. If Khelben turned his head and saw her, she wanted to look alluring, not like a thief darting guiltily about.

He was stroking his chin as she drew near, and studying the bright belt of stars overhead as if they were telling him something.

“Well met, Lord Wizard,” she said enticingly, when she was only a few paces away. She kept her voice low and rich and laced with laughter, like a seductive courtesan she’d once overheard at the Palace entertaining a rich Calishite merchant. “Moonlight becomes thee.”

“I believe that last line should be mine, lady,” Khelben replied calmly, studying her with eyes that seemed to bore right through her magical disguise.

“I’m young yet,” she returned lightly, “and still working on my catalogue of blandishments and flirtations. All Waterdeep knows of your dedication to justice and fidelity to the Lady Laeral, my lord, but I was wondering if you’d mind if a lass who prefers wits and maturity to the empty swaggering of young men practiced a line or two on you, and perhaps grew so bold…”

She leaned near, giving the Lord Mage of Waterdeep a spectacular view of the fine leaping-dragons lace that edged her bodice, and continued slowly and huskily,”… as to share a kiss with me? Something I’d remember fondly and privately, mind, not shout from the rooftops…”

The Lord Mage of Waterdeep regarded her. For a moment, something that was almost a smile seemed to play about his lips. “What precisely did you have in mind, 0 enthusiastic young lady?”

Ambreene let the fullness of her sleeve hold the Eye, and stretched forth that hand for Khelben to see. His eyes flicked from one of her empty, ringless hands to the other as she knelt, so that their eyes were level.

“I am no disguised monster, only a lonely maid,” she said in sultry tones, staring invitingly, almost challengingly into his eyes, “and I’d very much like a kiss.” She licked her lips and purred, “I’ll submit to whatever magic you want to use, to be sure I’m… safe.”

The mage they called The Blackstaff raised an eyebrow. “And why go to all this trouble—possible humiliation and danger—just for one kiss from an old man?”

“I’ve heard what they say about wizards,” she whispered, eyes bright.

He looked swiftly around, as if to be sure that no one else was watching them, and then extended his arms and said, “Come, then, lass, and try whatever you’re trying to do…”

Ambreene’s eyes narrowed at his choice of words, but the opportunity was too good to pass up. Opening her mouth hungrily, she glided into his embrace, then twisted in his arms, whipping the pendant out and around his neck like a striking snake. The Eye of the Dragon flashed as she snarled, “Take his memories! Take them all! And give them tome!”

The chain tightened cruelly around the mage’s throat, but. he only pulled her closer and growled, “You wanted a kiss, remember?”

His lips were warm, but Ambreene shook her head violently and tried to bite him. When her mouth was free, she spat in his face and hissed, “Plead! Plead for your magic, archmage!”

She jerked the chain tight across Khelben’s windpipe. He did not turn the purple hue she expected, but only smiled faintly.

“Don’t you know what this is?” she snarled, tugging on the chain again.

The wizard nodded. “The Eye of the Dragon,” he said calmly. “It’s been years, lass, since I’ve seen it. Well, well…”

“Years?” Confused, Ambreene could barely get the word out through lips that were suddenly twisting and slipping… her face and body were sliding back into their true shape!

The craggy, bearded face so close to hers was melting and shifting too… and when Ambreene saw what it became, the color fled from her face and her teeth began to chatter in terror.

She’d seen the Old Mage of Shadowdale only once, but the wizard they called Elminster was unmistakable. He grinned at her. “If ye’d live a little longer, lass,” he said gently, “never try to bosom thy way up to the real Khelben. He’s not that trusting, know ye … after all, he’s had several centuries of comely wenches trying that sort of thing on him, and most of them were his apprentices.”

“But…how…”

“Khelben had to hurry back to Blackstaff Tower to work on some Harper business begun here tonight,” the Old Mage explained. “Both he and Laeral felt your probing spells— really, lass, take a little more care with such things, eh?—so he called me in to do a little impersonation in case any other Harpers came to report… or ye decided to do something spectacularly stupid.”

“And was what I did so stupid?” Ambreene asked with menacing softness, her hands twisting the chain until it cut deep into his throat.

Elminster smiled unconcernedly, and chucked her under the chin as if she were a small girl. “Well, ‘twas certainly spectacular…” he murmured, and added, “Iwouldn’t wear a gown like that.”

He bent his head to her bodice, and peered. “Ah, leaping dragons… Thayan work; very nice.”

Ambreene thrust herself against him, hooking her legs around his and pressing as much of herself against Elminster’s body as she possibly could. She put her head over his shoulder and dug her chin down with bruising force, holding him with all the strength in her quivering body.

“Now,” she said into his ear, “any harmful spell you work on me will hurt you as well. Khelben wronged my Grandmama and my family; my revenge was for him. But your magic will serve me just as well, giving me spells enough to destroy him another way. Can you feel the memories leaving you?”

“No,” Elminster said lightly. “I know how to make the Eye work as its creator intended it to. I’m giving ye only the memories I want ye to have… and keeping them, not letting them drain away.”

Ambreene drew back her lips in a disbelieving sneer. “And just how can you do that? Lady Teshla could not, and the Eye hasn’t shown me any way to wield it thus! What makes you such an expert?”

Gentle mirth glinted in Elminster’s eyes as he said mildly, “Why, lass, I created the thing in the first place. In Myth Drannor, ‘twas… in my spare time.”

Ambreene shook her head derisively, but said nothing. He was so calm. What if it were true?

Then she gasped and stiffened as the world around her vanished in a flood of memories not her own. Vivid images, all around her as if they were befalling here and now, and she were living them…

She was dimly aware that her nails were raking someone’s back, that he was growling protestingly, and that there was a sudden strong smell of pipesmoke, but…

She was standing on the deck of a storm-tossed ship, watching as a grandly-robed man turned his back on his son—who laughed and hurled a bolt of lightning with both. hands that cut his father’s body in two and sent the front of the ship boiling up into flames…

Then she was in a bedchamber where a man was pinned to a door with a sword, his lifeblood a spreading puddle on the floor, and gasping, “Why, Maruel? Why have you done this?”

“Because I want to,” the breathtakingly beautiful woman on the bed said to him with a sneer that matched Ambreene’s own, “and at last have the power to. I am the Shadowsil, and from now on I will take what I want, not beg for it!” She raised her hand and waved casually, and the long blade slid out of the man all black with his blood. He crumpled to the floor, gasping, “But I loved… you…”

“And what is that to me, fool?” she laughed. Then the scene was whirled away and Ambreene was somewhere else again.

A tower where a woman wept with smoke curling away from her empty hands and ashes all around her, while a man sat on empty air not far away and said, “And so your trick has come around to visit itself on thee. Well done, Alatha—oh, well done indeed!”

The woman’s raw howl of grief whirled Ambreene away into a scene of a sorceress betraying her tutor, then another ambitious magistress turning to evil and mistakenly slaying the man she loved…

“All of these happened, lass, and I was there to see them,” Elminster told her gently. “Have ye such a hunger to join them?”

Ambreene wept and tried to pull away from him, shaking her head and straining to think of things of her own choice … but her thoughts were dragged ruthlessly back into the whirlwind of revenge, grief, and evil until she was babbling…

“Gods! Oh, gods, stop! Have mercy!” she sobbed.

“Better mercy than ye planned to show Khelben, I hope,” the Old Mage said grimly, and abruptly she was seeing a young lass clad only in long, luxurious hair who knelt amid glowing, floating symbols, in a chamber whose dark walls winked with stars.

“Who—?”

“A lady in Myth Drannor, crafting the first foresight spell,” Elminster replied. Abruptly the spell poured into Ambreene’s own mind, writing itself in runes and whirling concepts of fire. She gasped, gagged, and moaned as her mind stretched dizzily. A very bright light seemed to be rushing through her, and…

“Note that this magic allows thee only to see what lies ahead for others. If thy mind can encompass it and ye stay sane, ‘twill become thy most useful tool—and thy great burden,” Elminster said, as she blinked and saw his face again in the moonlight, inches from her own.

Gentle hands put the Eye of the Dragon into her hands. “Now… about that kiss…”

Ambreene wept as warm lips brushed hers tenderly and that old, wise voice said, “Thanks for the memories.”

Then the old wizard turned away in the moonlight, as she stared after him with eyes that streamed the tears of a thousand years. Elminster strode across the garden and as he went, his battered old boots left the dewy grass and trod on air. Up on emptiness he walked, as if the starry sky were his own private staircase, up over the garden wall and on, over the rooftops of the city.

When she could see him no more, Ambreene looked down at the pendant in her hands. Suddenly it spoke with Elminster’s voice and she nearly flung it down in startlement.

“Ah, lass,” it said, “be not downcast, for ye heard a-right, what they say about wizards. Put this on whenever ye need to talk to me … or to Khelben. He’s waiting for ye to come and see him.”

And from that day until the day the gods willed that Ambreene Hawkwinter die, long years later, the pendant never left her breast.