by Monte Cook
The object of their attention was a man whose fine features were adorned rather than ruined by a finely upswept mustache, its chestnut magnificence overwhelmed by the curly sweep of hair that must have reached to the man’s waist but was bound up in a scarlet ribbon to keep it clear of the spotless green shoulders of his elegantly cut festive jacket. He was lean and lithe beneath the devastatingly simple lines of his garb, but from the lace at his wrists to that at his throat, every curve of his form betrayed sleek strength and flaring, ready muscle. As for his gray silken breeches, with their discreet codpiece—why, the tight bottom they displayed to the world as he bowed and turned to leave them made both cousins gasp again, then swallow … then turn to each other to share an incredulously delighted squeal.
As he glided swiftly away down carpeted steps, the man in the dark green jacket managed to sufficiently suppress a shudder that neither of the overly plump Amnian ladies noticed.
“Who is that delectable man?” Simylra Lavartil inquired of the world at large, ruffling the furs that supported her bosom with an enthusiasm that threatened to shred them.
“That, madam,” a servant murmured, as he bent to offer her a fresh drink of manycherries wine from a tray of full tallglasses, “is Dumathchess Ilchoas, as yet bereft of any noble title … though I believe the ladies have given him one; they’ve taken to calling him ‘Dauntless.’ ”
Simylra thanked him profusely, and proved the fervor of her gratitude by seizing not one but three glasses from his tray, draining them in rapid succession before hurling herself back in her chair to stare at her cousin with a gasp of mingled satiation, longing, and delight.
“Dauntless!” she cried. “Oh, can the world hold such pleasures?”
“Evidently, madam, not for long,” the servant murmured disapprovingly, as he surveyed the wreckage of his tray and glided away without giving Cathlona an opportunity to work similar havoc upon it.
She stared sourly after the dwindling form of the servant, and asked, “So just what did our Dauntless see over that rail to make him abandon us—nay, spurn us—in such unseemly haste?”
Simylra gathered her strength with a visible effort and leaned forward again to gasp anew. “Why, it’s the most daring costume yet!”
“Some lord’s come naked?” Cathlona asked, raising her delicately plucked brows questioningly.
“No, cuz … not a lord, but a lady, and not quite naked. She’s wearing some black leather straps”—and Simylra giggled and colored prettily, waving a few fingers before her mouth—“here and there, you know. They must bear some powerful spells; her disguise is nearly perfect.”
“Her disguise as what?” Cathlona asked, not quite daring to lean forward again after her previous experience.
“A drow princess,” Simylra breathed, her eyes glittering with envy as she watched the new arrival sweep across the entry hall with catlike grace and every male eye below turn toward her.
The lady was daring indeed to come as an outlawed, evil being, wearing little more than a pair of gleaming black buttock-high boots with silver heel spikes, and elbow length gloves of the same material. Her breasts and loins seemed to be covered by nothing more than crisscrossing leather straps hung with spindle-shaped rock crystal stones, and a black ribbon encircled her throat. Her hair reached to the backs of her knees in a magnificent raven dark sweep that was bound in a cage of silver chain ending in two delicate chains, little larger than glittering threads that hung in loops attached to the spurs of her boots. Two tiny bells hung from pointed silver medallions glued to her nipples, and she wore a calm, crooked smile that broadened as the man known as Dauntless swept up to her and proffered his arm. As she turned to display herself to him, the two gaping cousins saw that a walnut-sized diamond bulged glitteringly from her navel—and that a tiny sculpted dagger hung point-downward from the cluster of diamonds and silver scrollwork at her loins.
“Gods,” Simylra murmured, and swallowed noisily. “How can anyone compete with that?”
“Simmy,” her cousin said grimly, “either get me a drink—a very large drink—or let me go home.”
* * * * *
“May I say, my lady, what a splendid costume you chose to grace our eyes with, this night?” Dauntless offered gallantly, keeping his eyes carefully on hers.
Qilué laughed, low and musically. “You may indeed say so, Lord Dauntless. I find your own appearance very pleasing on the eyes.”
Dauntless chuckled. “As I’ve said, good lady, I’m hardly a lord—but I am, I must confess, a man smitten. I would know your name.”
In reply he got a light laugh and the murmured comment, as the devastatingly lovely lady leaned into his grasp, “I’d much rather remain a woman of mystery this night, if you don’t mind.”
“Ah, but I do,” Dauntless said smoothly, handing her forward into a curtained alcove where a waiter was holding a tray of drinks ready. “A woman, did you say? You mean you’re not really a drow princess?”
“A drow princess? No,” Qilué replied, curling long fingers around a glass. “Magic can work wonders for the outward appearance, if deftly applied.”
“Your own spellcraft,” Dauntless asked, leading her on into a shadowed bower, “or did someone else transform you?”
“Dauntless,” the lips so close to his breathed, “that would be telling, now, wouldn’t it?”
The Harper moved in close, until their noses were almost touching, and said, “I appreciate both your choice of such a daring disguise and the skill with which it has been spun.”
Her response was a low purr of laughter and the huskily whispered words, “Go ahead, my lord, test it.”
Dauntless looked into her eyes, found a welcome there, and extended his head forward until their lips met … and clung, tongues darting a soft duel … then tightened, mouth to mouth, bodies melting together.
When at last they broke apart to breathe, Qilué spun deftly out of his arms and asked, “So, Dauntless, do I pass your test?”
“Several tests, and more, Lady of Mystery. Are you free for the rest of this evening—or any part of it?”
“Regretfully, no, my lord. Business brings me hither, and business must be my master this night. Had I freedom to pursue pleasure, good Dauntless, rest assured that I’d be at your heels, and nowhere else, until dawn—and as long after as you might desire.”
“Forgive my forwardness, lady,” the Harper murmured, “but tell me, if your true shape returned to you at any time during such a pursuit as you’ve suggested, would I be aghast? Or disappointed?”
“That, my lord Dauntless, would depend entirely on your own tastes and inclinations,” the dark elf said gently. “Not, I believe, on whom I turned out to be. I’m not one of the well-known and well-wrinkled noble matrons of the city, gone out to play in a disguise. It is my fond hope that my true shape would not offend you overmuch. Now, if you’ll excuse me? That business I mentioned, you understand.”
“Of course,” the handsome young man agreed, bowing deeply. “The pleasure has been mine.”
“Well, someday perhaps ’twill be,” she purred in reply. She unhurriedly stroked the back of one of his hands. then put her emptied wine glass into the other before she stepped away.
Dauntless watched her lilt away across the room beyond the bower, through an envious and watchful crowd, and his eyes slowly narrowed. Business here, now, would be what exactly?
What would a drow pretending to be a human wearing the spell-shape of a drow be doing here at a revel for nobles and would-be nobles?
She’d left suddenly, as if catching sight of someone she wanted to meet. Who?
Dauntless faded in behind a potted fern as the Lady of Mystery turned at the far end of the room to look back, almost challengingly. Gods, but her lips had been inviting.…
He was doomed to spend most of the next hour acting innocent and unobtrusive, trying to stay in the background but within sight of the drow princess as she glided enthusiastically around the revel, letting many men a
nd women test the efficacy of her costume. Often, Dauntless was sure—though she never once looked in his direction—she did so just to silently tease him.
It wasn’t until the end of the second hour, after frequent subterfuges of being either drunk or about to be sick to escape the clutches of enthusiastic matron after smitten matron, that Dauntless thought he saw the guest his drow princess was shadowing. He wasn’t sure until that person—a buxom lady in a plain-fronted mauve gown with shoulder ruffles—suddenly moved to a spiral stair masquerading as a large spiral plant stand in one corner of the room she was in, and began to climb it.
The Lady of Mystery moved purposefully, too—to a dark alcove where a beaded curtain hid her from public view for, it seemed, just long enough. By the time Dauntless drifted up to it, it was empty—but the casements of its lone window stood open to the night.
He peered out and up once, quick and quiet, and was rewarded by the sight of a shapely body the hue of glossy jet climbing up through the shadows of the wall to a stone gargoyle-shaped waterspout protruding from the overhanging balcony on the floor above. The same balcony the spiral stair led to. In another instant, his Lady of Mystery was going to be hanging upside down from that gargoyle, just under one end of the balcony.
He’d have to move like silent lightning, but there was another window—and another gargoyle—at the other end of the balcony, hidden from the Lady of Mystery’s perch by the curving buttresses that supported the balcony. Fortunately Dauntless could move like silent lightning, and he did so.
Out and up, thus, and he was there. A pleasant night outside, to be sure. He’d just hang around for a while in the cool night air to catch whatever words the lady in purple was going to whisper over the balcony rail. He hoped—before all the gods, he hoped—they wouldn’t be something that would force him to have to kill his Lady of Mystery.
The voices began, then, and Dauntless got another surprise. The first voice was unfamiliar to him, but he could see from purple ruffles and a moving chin, just visible over the edge of the balcony, that the speaker was the lady in purple. The second belonged to someone who must have been already on the balcony, waiting. It was a distinctive, harsh croak that belonged to only one woman in all Waterdeep: Mrilla Malsander, one of the most ambitious of the rich merchants currently trying to become noble by any means possible. Their words were sinister but too cryptic to force him to kill anyone.
Qilué clung to the crumbling curves of the snarling gargoyle, and listened intently as the slaver Brelma—who made a very fetching lady in purple, she had to admit—said without any preamble or greeting, “The trouble was a spy, but she’s dead now. The project is still unfolding nicely.”
“Good,” the other lady replied, her voice like the croak of a raven. “See that it continues to do so. If not, you know whom to speak with.” With that she turned away and started down the stair, leaving Brelma to look innocently—perhaps wonderingly—out at the lamplit night skyline of Waterdeep.
* * * * *
As Qilué swung herself back in through the window, she felt another twinge of the nausea that had plagued her recently, and it strengthened her resolve. Duty to Dove was one thing, and blundering around in Waterdeep making matters worse was another. The time for an expert on drow was past; the time for an expert on the City of Splendors had come … and her sister Laeral dwelt not a dozen streets away, in the brooding city landmark of Blackstaff Tower.
She must now enlist Laeral in taking over the unfolding investigation of the dark elven invasion of Scornubel, and whatever lay behind it, just as Dove had enlisted her. A drow priestess is a little out of her depth in the interwoven, bloodied velvet politics of Waterdhavian nobility—and can’t help but be just a mite obvious, too.
Leaving the revel swiftly was simplicity itself. Every Waterdhavian mansion has servants’ stairs, and in the shadowed candlelight, concealing gloom was everywhere. If her handsome pursuer wanted to come along, he was quite welcome. Whether he was part of those she was investigating or some nosy Waterdhavian watchwolf, Blackstaff Tower should give him something to think about.
One of her own covert contacts in the city had told her that the endless renovations to the tower interior had recently reached a pace she described as “enthusiastic,” but hopefully the back entrance Qilué remembered still existed. She strolled unconcernedly thence through the streets of the city, acting as if she had every right to be there. The three watch patrols she encountered gave her hard stares, seemed about to challenge her, then thought better of it. She must be a noble matron wealthy enough to squander spells on a party disguise. After all, didn’t real drow creep and skulk about, maniacally attacking any human they saw?
With that sarcastic thought still twisting her lips, Qilué came to a certain spot along the curving tower wall, turned to face the dark stone, and with her fingertips traced a line to a certain spot. Her fingers dipped into an almost invisible seam, then emerged, moving diagonally a little way down to touch a junction of stone blocks, before—she knelt smoothly—darting into a gap right at ground level. The wall receded silently into itself, magic lending a velvet silence to what should have been a grating of weighty stone, and Qilué slipped into a dark embrasure.
It would remain open for only a few seconds before the wall shifted forward again to expel her straight back out onto the street, but if she reached thus in the darkness, a side way should open.…
It did, and Qilué stepped forward through some space of magical darkness into a dimly lit, curving passage whose inside wall was seamed with many closed cupboard doors, warning radiances flickering around their locks and catches. What she sought was just ahead: a tall, narrow cupboard or closet door.
There it was. A touch here should open it, and—
The moment she touched the panel, a sickening, tingling feeling told Qilué that something was wrong. The lock spells must have been changed. She stepped hastily back and away from the panel—but the flock of guardian hands bursting out of the outer wall of the passage swerved unerringly toward her, snatching and grabbing with their usual icy accuracy.
With three quick slaps the drow priestess kept them clear of her face and throat, then Qilué simply hunched down, gasping at the pain, and endured their cruel grasps all over the rest of her body. Oh, would she have bruises.
She could try to pry off each of the flying obsidian hands and shatter them before they began their numbing, ultimately paralyzing washes of electricity, but she needed to see Laeral anyway, and a little lockpicking would attract immediate attention from the duty apprentice seeing to the wards.
Struggling against the rigid holds of the gripping hands, Qilué plucked the dangling dagger ornament from her crotch, twisted it to its full length, and shielded it in her palm from any guardian hand strikes or clawings. Khelben’s one failing was to purchase all of his locks, before he laid spells upon them, from the same dwarven crafter whose work, sold in Skullport to the few who could afford it, was familiar to Qilué. Their maker had shown her the one way to force them open. It required a lockpick of just the right angle … like this one.
A sudden movement, a twist, a click, and the panel sighed open. Qilué got her nails under the edge, hauled it open with a strength that surprised the being who was watching her by then, and sprang onward, straight to the next door.
The duty apprentice was attentive. As Qilué moved, the hands began to crawl up her body with bruising force, seeking joints to jam themselves in, and her throat to strangle. Qilué snarled her defiance at them as she picked the next door, rushed up a short flight of steps, then threw herself out of the way of the huge iron fist that slammed down across the passage.
The iron golem it belonged to emerged into the narrow way with ponderous care, and by then she was through the door beyond and into a room where spheres of flickering radiance drifted toward her from all sides in menacing, purposeful silence.
“Khelben!” she snapped to the empty air, as magic missiles burst from her hands to destroy t
hese guardians, “Laeral! Call off your watchwolves! I’ve no wish to destroy them!”
Numbing lightnings were leaping from the hands on her body, now, playing across her skin until she hissed at the pain and stumbled like a drunken dockhand under their punishment. The next door was there, but could she reach it?
Grimly Qilué staggered on, gesturing rudely at a crystal sphere that descended from the dimness near the ceiling. Its depths held a voice that said, “She called on the lord and lady master. We’d best open the doors.”
It also held the frightened face of a young man sitting at a glowing table, who stared out of the sphere at the struggling intruder and gasped, “But she’s a drow!”
“Get Laeral!” Qilué roared. “Bring her to me, or I’ll start really destroying things.” In sudden fury she tore a crawling guardian hand from her breast, waved it at the sphere, and hurled it to the floor, bounding onto it with all her strength and ignoring the lightnings it spat around her boots as it died. “Are you deaf, duty apprentice?”
“You hear? She knows our duties. She must be—”
“Half Waterdeep has heard of the defenses of Blackstaff Tower,” the young man said scornfully. “She’s a dark elf, and I’m not letting any dark elf into this room with us.”
“But—”
“But nothing. You’ve always been too soft, Araeralee! You’d let Szass Tam of Thay in here, if he put on the body of a beautiful maid and whimpered at the door. How do we know that isn’t him now? Or Manshoon of the Zhentarim, up to another of his tricks?”
“Well, I’m rousing Lady Laeral to decide for herself.”
“Araeralee, don’t you dare! This is my duty watch, and—dark gods take you, wench! You’ve done it! You’ve burning well gone and done it! It’ll be the lash of spells for you, once I tell Khelben. Now I’m going to have to rouse all the apprentices … don’t you know we’re supposed to do that first, before bothering the masters? Drown you!”
“Drown you, enthusiastic young idiot,” Qilué snarled at the sphere as she forced the lock of the next door and came out into a large, many-pillared chamber that by rights shouldn’t have fit within the tower walls, but which was probably on some other plane or fold of spellspace … a chamber rapidly filling with barefoot, sleepy-eyed apprentices.