When the twelve-legged serpent thing glided with deadly speed into the room, raised its horned head, and gaped 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 and embraced its head as if it were a pet, stroking it behind its horns just where Ulisss best loved her touch.

Under her caress, warily tense muscles relaxed with a quivering surge, and iron-hard scales slowly, reluctantly, began to rub against her as the monster purred. Transtra let a spell image of Mirt flow into the slow, dim mind of Ulisss, and said softly, "Hearken, oh scaly beloved, for I have 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and watched it go. Though there was a dangerous glitter in her eyes, the smile that crept slowly onto her face was catlike in its antic.i.p.ation.

She readied the spell that would let her watch both Mirt and Ulisss and spy on what befell from afar, and her tongue curled out between her lips in private mirth. The possible loss of a business a.s.sociate 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 being down the centuries to say those words," Yloebre remarked dryly, twirling the slim gla.s.s of duiruin in its fingers so that the luminous golden bubbles deep in the black wine winked and sparkled. The illithid leaned toward its compatriot. "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, and 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 gla.s.s it held. The small worms there curled and uncurled in their endless undead dance, which kept the oily black wine from thickening into a syrup.

"Do you doubt my skill?" Iraeghlee spat, leaning forward in its chair with a hissing 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! Doyou doubt me, younger one? Do you truly dare?"

"Untwist thy tentacles and hiss less loudly," Yloebre responded calmly, sipping more wine. "I doubt nothing as to 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 . . .

and the Place of Skulls above us, and the city above that, seem to be fairly crawling with wizards and priests able to see magic use, and themselves governed-nay, driven-by that appalling human fault known as 'curiosity.' What is to keep us from coming under attack within a breath or two of your 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 archmages, can detect our whisperer, or us while we remain here."

Yloebre glanced at the stone walls around them, adorned by a single glow-shift sculpture that chimed softly from time to time as its shape altered. The chamber they sat in 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 gla.s.ses 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 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, broken and sizzling, against the walls of their hideaway.

The last words Yloebre ever heard, as it struggled against searing, rising 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 of the chamber; neither of them survived long enough to see Halaster Black-cloak's eyes blast their tables and flasks to dancing sparks and flying dust.

When his gaze had roved about the entire chamber and he sensed no other mind-signatures on the whisperer in the beholder's distant brain, the wizard sighed and turned to pa.s.s through the teleport once more ... only to pause and glare with renewed energy at the chiming glow-shift sculpture.

It had escaped-or resisted-his destructive gaze unharmed. Halaster's black eyes narrowed, and then hardened into rays of darkness that leapt 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 softly, 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 answered him, 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. "] never threaten. I only-promise."

The reply that came back out of the teleport sounded very much like the rudelip-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 lit by many lamps and torches, sharp with the smell of a recent spell blast. Smokes curled lazily past him as he stumbled on uneven, shifting rubble for a moment, and 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, orcs, 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 the sudden energy of the betting suggested that 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. It 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 G.o.ddess of misfortune. 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 sensation, Durnan rolled over a low stone wall, dropped onto a sunken floor, and found his feet. There was a hubbub of new 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 outward, 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 glimpse its quarry darting through the ruins. Durnan s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 around behind a pillar until the worst of the crashings were done around him, and 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 leapt on over the rubble. By the pillar he'd 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.

He was close to his foe now, stones rolling underfoot in his haste as he burst through a doorway into a room that had been blasted away, and saw the mind flayer beyond the crumbling wall ahead. Its glistening, slime-covered hands dived to its belt and plucked forth a broad-bladed hooked sword. A blade?

Usually they were too eager to flail at one's 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 andrushed 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 k.n.o.b of stone he could hook one boot around.

Eagerly, the mind flayer pounced on the seemingly off-balance human, its four tentacles stabbing greedily out. Durnan raised one arm to fend them aside, hooked 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 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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. It melted away before him, slumping down into something like a long, reddish worm or clump of worms that slithered and flapped its wet, fast-sprouting wings in 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, & 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 throw daggers when a ready knife might be needed nearer to hand.

"Well, thank the G.o.ds 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-and then he and his foe both staggered. Someone in the crowd had hurled at them both a blasting spell strong enough to rock the ruins around them-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 s.p.a.ce at the center of the lane.

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

It landed with a heavy, wet smack, and 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. It sagged, burbled forth a whistling sigh, and hung limp. Dark gore dripped slowly onto the stones beneath it.

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.Durnan's eyes narrowed as a small white flare marked the pa.s.sing 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 said with a smile that showed him a row of jagged fangs, some of which outstripped his sword for length. "And-unfortunately for the sometimes-famous and often beloved-of-the-G.o.ds 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 lizard-man or 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 ahunting from the great city above, perhaps, or a fetch sent by a n.o.ble'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 skulking the streets of Skullport would fain be seeing the sun over Waterdeep above, were it not for the lords' decrees. Mirt specifically had made rather more than a hand-count 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 on a platter.

So it was that the distinctive rolling walk and bristling mustache was noticed by many in the circ.u.mspect crowd, 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, bodies that might move to block his path, and the guiding trail of 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 a stone that leapt out of the darkness at the back of Mirt's head- and another; the band of slayers-for-hire hight Hoelorton's Hands were known to be deft hands with a sling.

Or a cudgel. Mirt heard the faint sc.r.a.ping sound of a rushing boot on stone, and spun around like a wary barrel, his belt 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 had barely time for an apprehensive grunt as the pommel of Mirt's dagger came up under his chin.

The blow 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, eyes already dark.The second man had to dance around the falling body, and met Mirt's roundhouse left while still trying to raise his cudgel. 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 slumped forms in the alley did not rise to follow.

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

Mirt sighed in reply-Faerun certainly seemed to breed no pressing shortage of fools these days-and hunched his shoulders to pa.s.s 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. With a startled oath, their leather-clad owner pitched forward out of the darkness above, hauled down into the street like a grain-sack from a loft. A casual swing of one thick arm brought a belt dagger solidly into the masked man's temple, and the garotte fell to the cobbles alongside its limp and crumpled owner. Mirt did not even bother to look down; this was Skullport, after all.

Moreover, business awaited him ahead . . . and if he knew Durnan, 'twould be hasty business.

Three masked figures stepped out of a side alley, down the pa.s.sage 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 from them 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 summoned it, stepped around an ore sprawled on its face in a pool of blood, a spear standing up in its back- and found his way suddenly blocked by a dozen or more lithe, slim black figures, whose skin was as jet black as the soft leathers they wore. Almost mockingly, the 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 yelive."

Cold, 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.