Realms of Magic

A WORM TOO SOFT…

The stone was as big as an ogre's head, as green as dragon bile, and as clear as Evermead. Unlike most emeralds, though, this one wasn't cut along fracture lines, but perfectly spherical and smooth. On its satin belly I saw myself, all six-foot-three of me dwarfed into a six-and-three-sixteenths-inch doll, my hawk-nose warped to match in size my brawny chest. I saw, too, my slim, demure hostess curved beside me, watching me as I watched the rock.

Now that Olivia Verdlar, proprietor of the Stranded Tern and owner of this peerless rock, had gotten an eyeful of me, I hoped she, too, knew why she'd flown me out from Waterdeep-pegasus-back, no less.

"Impressive," I said, and leaned away from the enormous stone.

She slid back into my line of sight. Impressive, indeed. Her green eyes matched the rock, hue and luster, and her dark hair and slim figure were the ideal setting for such gems. Knowing the power of those eyes, she knew she didn't have to say a word in response.

I'd been drawn off by worse wenches, so I bit: "You say it came from the crop of a great green…?" The word dragon hovered behind my question, but it didn't need to be spoken. After all, the rock had been christened "the Dragon's Pearl."

She nodded, and that slight motion sent an ally-ally-oxenfree down past her hips. "It's one of a hundred gem-stones that got polished in the thing's belly. Seems Xantrithicus the Greedy didn't trust his hoard to a cave, preferring to hold it in his gut." She made a gesture toward her own slim waist, knowing I'd look there. I did. "Seems that way his spendthrift mate, Tarith the Green, couldn't even get two coppers to rub together."

"One of a hundred gems," I mused. It was time to win back some self-respect. "That's got to decrease the value of the pearl."

Was that a little color I saw in her high cheekbones? "This is by far the largest of the hundred. Most of the rest are fist-sized, or pebble-sized. If the gemologists are to be believed, this is also the most ancient of the hoard, in the wyrm's gut for nearly two thousand years. I can little imagine its size when the polishing began."

I nodded, thinking, letting her words hang in the air as she had let mine, and hoping my dark-brown eyes were something of a match for her stunning green ones. I thought of the building around us: the cut-stone severity of this inner vault, the sorcerous impregnability of the outer vault, the ivory-towered fortress above, the glacial fastness of the mountain peaks. Every aspect of the Stranded Tern pleasure dome reeked of magic… everything except me, so I began again to wonder why she'd summoned me.

"Seems your magical defenses would be enough to guard this treasure," I said. "So, why bring a back-alley finder from Waterdeep across half the world to this icy palace?"

Olivia's small, hot hand was upon my biceps again, as it had been when the winged horse had touched down on the icy lip of the landing bay. She must keep those hands in a very warm place, I thought.

"Muscle and sneakiness have certain… powers that magic cannot provide."

Gods, I wished that touch did not so thrill me. Keep your head, Bolton. She's your new boss. With her next words, the hot fingers drifted away.

"Besides, the pearl resists magical protections. The mage who slew old Xantrithicus found that out when some quite ordinary banditti slew him, who were then in their own turn slain, and again, and again, until my agents retrieved the thing."

"So you called me out to defend an undefendable hunk of stone?"

"I thought with Quaid, all things were possible…"

I'd stepped right into that one. Hmm. "I've got a few tricks up my sleeve." Not really up my sleeve, but in the little black case I carried over one shoulder. Strange that so many poisons and needles and bits of wire and rubber at my back would make me feel safe. "Your rock'll be well guarded. Of course, I have my expenses, and need of room and board-"

"Don't fret, Mr. Quaid," she said silkily. "You'll find this job has more than enough… fringe benefits. And don't even think about making off with my jewel. If the snows don't get you, my winged wolves will. Now, come along."

I followed her. It wasn't hard; I just let my eyes lead. Yeah, ever since I'd stepped down from that winged stallion, shoulders iced from our flight through the gale, I'd not been able to take my eyes off this Olivia. She was grace personified: young, svelte, clean-edged like a well-turned stiletto. In fact, she was too young and beautiful for this kip, this pleasure dome built beneath a constant sleet ceiling atop the Thunder Peaks. Where could a chit like her, with legs like those, who could get anything she needed and more with a mere pout of her perfect lips, have gotten the grit and moxie and power to build such a place?

Her sculpted arms deftly worked the lock on the iron door of the inner vault, and I struggled to memorize the combination, a rhyme of my dad's forcing its way into my head:

A worm too soft and juicy Is a worm that hides a hook.

You can't think that way, Bolt. This is your new boss; this is her kip, your new home-a far cry from the alleys and scamps and tramps of Waterdeep's Dock Ward.

However she'd acquired it, the Stranded Tern was hers. It could have belonged to no one else. It had her lines.

The stairs we walked took us up and out to a vast great room. The white walls of the place shone like mother-of-pearl, arching smooth and high like the inside of Olivia's leg. I'd've felt blinded by the whiteness but for the red rugs that hung on the walls and the thick carpet on the floor-more carpet in one room than in all the hovels in the Dock Ward.

Dead center rose a stairway with treads of glass. It snaked upward through empty air, held up by nothing but magic. On the second floor, it gave onto a wide arch of red iron filigree, which led in turn to four floors of guest rooms. Beneath the coil of treads was a long desk and a little man in tight black satin.

He wasn't the only liveried lackey. The place crawled with maids and "hops in similar getups, and swarmed with guests:

There were hairless women wrapped in rare furs. There were men in tailored silk suits with such sharp edges they looked like tents tacked down to hard soil. There were kids, too, brash and savage in their pressed collars.

We moved out among the guests, my homespun snow-sodden shirt rough and ridiculous on my shoulders. I felt like a hairy bear.

Bolton Quaid, what've you gotten yourself into?

"This way," said the lady.

One benefit of perfect hips was that she couldn't be easily lost in a crowd. The lines of the place were hers, all right, but they lacked something of the warm dance she had…

What are you getting into, indeed?

As we approached the stair, I saw a woman of equal swank to my boss, only that instead of demure silk, this lady wore scant furs that clung to her with all the impossible suspension of the stairs.

"Keep your eyes on me, Mr. Quaid, and you'll do better," — Olivia said without turning — "Yes, ma'am," I said, coughing to show myself chastened.

We mounted the stairs. The cold beneath my shoe leather made me think the steps weren't glass, but pure, clean ice. I almost blurted my surprise, but had dealt the lady a strong enough hand already.

She led me through the red iron arch and up three floors, then out along a gaslit hallway with guest rooms. Like the rest of the palace, this hall had elegant, rounded lines-more a ribbed windpipe than a door-lined corridor. I knew the rooms would be the same, organ-shaped chambers where lurked Faerun's beautiful and wealthy and powerful, sleeping and eating and defecating like flies inside a corpse.

Beautiful and wealthy and powerful… I'd been riding in midblizzard above the seventeen onion-shaped domes of the palace before I'd realized just how far out of my league I'd be. Still, flies usually don't mind an ant pulling off his own hunk of flesh.

"Voila!" said she, halting. Her pronouncement seemed to swing wide the silver-edged door before her. The room beyond was incredible.

Unlike the great room, cold and stark, this place was as warm and soft and red as a dragon's heart. The door gave onto a railed landing above a velvet-walled sunken parlor. A fireplace, complete with blaze, stood on one wall, and opposite it was a steaming, bubbling bath large enough to bathe two war-horses. Through an open door on the far side of the parlor, I saw a velvet-covered bed that could sleep the two mounts, and in another room, a table where their knights and squires and retainers and a few bards could play a game of poker while their steeds slept. The wide, lead-glazed window above the table showed the teeth of the storm outside.

"For me?" I asked innocently, though truthfully there wasn't much acting in my delight.

"For you, Bolton Quaid." She started down into the room, and I didn't know whether to look at the brocade chairs or the bright chandelier or the tasseled drapes or those swaying hips.

I stammered after her. "The Dock Ward's my usual digs. A street rat like me is-"

She spun around and placed a finger on my lips to silence me. "If you're half the street rat I think you are, you'll be worth the room, and much more."

Those words, those eyes, that touch-suddenly the magic of the place seemed not so amazing, but a mere extension of her. She shone with power.

Her hand dropped from my lips, and like a schoolgirl, she clutched my fingers and drew me after her. "You must see this view."

I nodded, and after a few stumbling steps, did. Through the wide window, I saw her wintery palace, glowing cold and blue like a rock-stranded moon. The towers stood fearless and alien in the blizzard, and the curving curtain wall was draped in icicles; but the courtyard within was hot and bright and sandy.

Now I did blurt my amazement. In the midst of this waste of rock and snow, the lady had made a garden. From this height, the palm trees looked like ferns, the green bunches of Chultan flowers like field clover. And in the midst of the garden lay a winding, sandy lagoon, overarched here and there with footbridges, surrounded by paths and benches, peopled by folk so beautiful and powerful and rich that they seemed fey creatures, seemed to glide above the sand without leaving footprints.

I started to speak-what words, I do not know-and found I couldn't because I had not breathed in moments, perhaps minutes. But I needed no words; Olivia was speaking for us both now.

"You haven't even got the chill out of your poor Water-dhavian bones yet. Look how you shiver." She spoke like a doting mother to a child. Some part of me knew she was drawing the rough cloak from my shoulders, was running that small hot hand along my bare side. "There'll be plenty of time for Mr. Quaid to rig traps and alarms. First, though, a recuperative bath."

"I–I-I-" came my reply as she led me to the huge, steaming tub. With a tremble-whether of fear or cold or joy-I knew I was naked, stripped bare. I lowered myself into the foamy, hot, bubbling waters. Hmm. The seduced innocent was a new role for me.

She moved up next to me, and now it was not her hot hand that touched my lips, but her own lips. They seemed to scald, and the fresh warm breath of her puffed for a moment over my face as she drew back.

"This is moving a little too fast," I said, at last able to speak as I looked into those green eyes. Oh, yes, those green eyes. "You put a tailored suit on a street rat, and all you've got is a rat in a suit."

"Not if the suit is magic."

That night, I had the most peculiar dream. I rolled over on the silken sheets to enfold Olivia in my brawny arms, feel her heat against my bare chest, and instead felt the bristling mange of Xantrithicus the Greedy himself. I awoke, screaming.

Next morning when I rose, she was gone. I dressed quickly, donning the white ruffled shirt, red brocade jacket, white hose, and charcoal-gray wool leggings left for me. Just my size. I smiled wryly. She'd had enough chance to check my fit perfectly.

I came down for breakfast and saw Olivia in the hammer-beamed dining hall, presiding royally over a morning feast for her guests. She gave me the same polite nod she gave other late arrivals; either she was a better stoneface than I, or she'd made herself familiar with more guests than just me-men and women, alike.

Breakfast was hot and filling-eggs and fried mushrooms, tortes and jellies, bangers and gravy and biscuits and pie. Still, compared to the feast last night, the food paled. Oh, well. It sure beat the hash slung in the Dock Ward.

I ate too much food and stayed too long staring at those otherwise-occupied green eyes-too much and too long, given that I had a gem to secure. I headed for the vault.

En route, I met my assistant. I'd not known before that instant that I had an assistant.

"Hold up, bloke. Where you think you're off to?" asked the scamp. I could have called him no better; I'd seen enough scamps in my day to know their stripe. Heck, I'd been one myself not so long ago. This scamp had greasy black hair, which he continually finger-combed back from his brown eyes. He sat upon a tall stool, leaning back rak-ishly against the slick wall, and his ruddy, freckled face bore a scowl that revealed less-than-healthy teeth, an idle splinter stabbed between two that were close enough to hold it. And if Olivia had tried to dress this kid in silks instead of knee- and elbow-worn linens, she'd failed.

"I'm Bolton Quaid, new head of security for the Tern."

"Bosh!" replied the lad immediately. "Quaid ain't no dandy. Lady says he's a rogue, like me-knows which way's up."

I kicked the stool out from under him, snagged his collar, and hoisted him high. I'd used a similar technique on alley cats. "Would you say this way is up?"

The kid hung there, poking his fists at the air and snarling. "You ain't getting… grrrrh… past Filson Cry-bot… Mister Dandy-Thief. Like to feel… my shiv…?"

"You mean this?" I asked, holding up my other hand to show him his crude little knife, dwarfed on my meaty fingers. "Or this-" I rolled my fingers to show a white rabbit's foot "-or this-" a slingshot "-or this-" a bent black feather "-or this-" a pair of marbles, and so on. The kid was on the verge of tears, and even I wouldn't reduce a proud street scamp to tears.

"Give 'em back! Give 'em back!"

"All right." I gently lowered the kid to his feet and shoved his stuff at him.

No sooner had he touched ground than his heel stomped my foot. Ahhh! The walls around me swam, went dim, seeming for a moment to blink out from smooth-polished pearl to filthy cave stone. I let out a gasp and took a step back, only to strike my head against something brutally hard. The kid had already snagged his stuff and backed toward the iron door of the vault, his little shiv thrust out before him. I reeled, almost dropped to my haunches, and my head was filled with the keen of a whistle. It was going to take a while to recover from this one.

Especially now. Olivia was there. She'd appeared suddenly, as though magically summoned: only then did I see the whistle drop from Filson's lips to dangle on a chain around his scrawny neck. Already he was babbling to the lady about the intruder (me) who'd tried to strangle him.

Olivia, in typical aplomb, laughed. "Filson, meet your new boss. This is Mr. Bolton Quaid." With that introduction, she gestured to me, and I might have bowed had I not been busy rubbing my head and looking into empty air to see what had hit me.

The ruddy scamp face turned as white as the walls around us, though the color looked less fetching on Filson. "Er… sorry, boss."

I waved off the apology, wishing I could find a lump on the wall at least as large as the one on my head. "Part of the job. I'm glad to know you can handle yourself in a fight."

That brought some color back to those cheeks. "Just trying to do my job."

"Speaking of which," said Olivia, her tone hardening as she turned to me, "you'd best get at least some provisional protection on the Dragon's Pearl. We've had a couple magic lapses this morning."

My brow beetled. "Magic lapses?"

"The storms play havoc with magic," volunteered Filson, clearly wanting to redeem himself. "Spells fail sometimes."

"These lapses aren't caused by any storm," Olivia said, never turning from me. She let the implications sink in before she spoke them. "One of the guests is trying to dispel the magical protections around the pearl."

Now it was my turn to go white. "I'll get on it right away."

"Once you get the pearl secured nonmagically, I want you to hunt down the cause of these… interruptions."

"What shall I do when I find the culprit?"

"Kill him."

Within a few hours, the pearl was secured seven ways to Summertide. I'd locked it in three concentric boxes, chained the outer box to five different spots on the walls, set seventy-three poisoned darts into projectors along the perimeter, lined ceiling and floors with drider web, strung up three hair triggers on the threshold to the chamber, and booby-trapped the vault door so that the slightest disturbance would trigger a circular deadfall. The rock was as safe as I knew how to make it, short of hanging it around my own neck.

The whole time I worked, Filson watched and gabbed. He told me a lot I already knew about Olivia: that she was powerful and ruthless and all-knowing in the Tern. He also hinted in whispers that she used magic to look younger. That didn't surprise me, but I nervously wondered how much younger.

Most interesting of all, though, he spilled his own theory about why the lady kept a gemstone she feared to remove from its vault within a vault. He said the Dragon's Pearl magically powered the whole palace. He said the rock had absorbed Xantrithicus's power and Olivia was now drawing on it. He said the stone couldn't be magically guarded because any spells that kept intruders out would keep the magic in.

Out of the mouths of kids. The Dock Ward had taught me to listen to babbling kids and old fools. A worm too soft and juicy is a worm that hides a hook. Hmm. Where was Olivia's hook, and what fish was she trying to lure, and why? Money, certainly, but she had enough of that. More money, of course, but also… what-power, station… companionship?

No time for such thoughts. I had a would-be jewel thief to catch.

It would not be easy. I doubted Olivia wanted me to rough up her patrons, as I routinely did to the smugglers and black marketeers on the docks. No, this would take subtlety and stealth.

Filson would prove to be a problem.

"Reconnoiter? What's that mean?" he asked suspiciously. "Are you trying to brush me off?"

"Not at all," I responded, pushing him toward the crowded dining hall. "You know the patrons. Watch them. See if any of them look suspicious."

"What're you gonna do?" the boy asked defensively.

"My job," I responded. One more shove did the trick, and the kid was off into the whirling cloud of mink and satin and hoity-toity laughter.

My job, in this case, involved grilling the servants. You listen to kids and old fools and servants. They've been in every crack and cranny, seen everything doing and everybody being done, and because of their station, had been ignored all the while. While Filson was giving diners the eye, I'd be giving cooks the ear.

I watched the double doors to see which swung which way, then made my entry. The kitchen-a long, low-ceilinged gallery-was as decked as any other room. Tables and butcher's blocks lined the marble floor, shiny-scrubbed pots and pans hung from the plaster-bossed ceiling, rolling steam stood above bubbling kettles, and chefs bustled about it all, their white smocks and mushroom hats flitting like scrap paper in wind.

I walked up to one of the chefs, who worked a bloody set of knives on five long tenderloins. "Excuse me," said I.

The man didn't look up. His hands moved expertly on meat and knife. "You're excused."

By his faint Sembian accent, I knew this was a connoisseur snob. Well, to me, a cook's a cook. "I was wondering if you've noticed any… magical lapses."

Again, no attention was spared me. He was busy sliding the steaks he'd cut from a tenderloin onto a platter, which was immediately whisked away by another cook. He reached for the second hunk of meat as he spoke. "I haven't time to notice-"

The words stopped dead. He must have seen it. I certainly couldn't have missed it. The long red wet slab of meat had turned to a great greasy cow pie, and the scoriated butcher's block into an uneven boulder. Worse still, though, the keen-edged knife had disappeared, an ass's jawbone in its place, and the cook's supple, well-trained hand had become a warty, clawed, three-fingered talon. Gone was the white smock and mushroom hat, replaced by a pessimistic clump of matted chest-hair on a bare, greenish, scaly chest… and an oily spit curl above a goblin pate.

Goblin pate!

Those dark, squalid goblin eyes lifted and met mine in that stunned moment, and two protruding lower fangs rose up and out to threaten those gray-green nostrils. But the next moment it was all gone, and the Sembian chef was staring impatiently, baldly, at me.

"Did you see that?" I asked, aghast.

"See what?"

Before our bland talk could go further, we were interrupted by a shout of outrage. I looked toward the doors in time to see a server in the last foot of his fall to the polished marble floor. A platter of steaming turkey and trimmings preceded him. It and he hit ground, and the turkey's featherless wings flapped stupidly as it arced upward, vomited its stuffing onto the server, and flopped onto the marble floor.

The cause of this small catastrophe followed hard on the fall-my doubtable assistant, Filson. He leapt past the open-out door and vaulted the server to run in gleeful pride toward me.

"Look, Quaid! Look what I found in Mr. Stavel's pockets!"

Too stunned to do anything else, I did look at the rich golden treasures spread out on the waifs grubby hands-a clockwork timepiece in gold, a money clip fat with Cormyr-ian notes, a pair of rings with rubies the size of cat's-eyes, and a strand of enormous pearls, any one of which would have equalled my typical take in a given year.

"You… you…" The bald bullocks of this "assistant"- not only to knock over a server and ruin a turkey after picking pockets in my name, but also to come brag to me and the kitchen staff about it-beggared me. "You stole from the guests!"

"But look! It's-" Now it was his turn to look flabber gasted as he gazed at the trove in his hands. Unlike me, however, he found too many words to express his consternation. "But wait. I was going to return them after I checked for any clues or any evidence that might link them to attempts to shut down the lady's magic, only when I'd gotten the take they weren't in my hands more than a second or two before they turned into-"

He didn't have to finish, for I saw it with my own eyes: the clockwork timepiece had become a smooth-edged river stone, the money clip and Cormyrian notes had turned into a bunch of leaves caught in a splinter of bark, the rings were a couple of large ladybug shells, and the pearls were a shriveled strand of grapes.

The reconstitution of all those things happened so quickly that I hadn't had time to be surprised at these revelations before I was being surprised at the reappearance of the gold and pearls and jewels.

…/so worm that hides a hook.

There's a point in every case gone sour when the finder knows he's being had. I'd reached that point. A pearl with the magical might of an ancient wyrm… a woman known to use magic to make her look younger… to use magic to make an impossible lagoon in the heart of a blizzard… cow pies for tenderloin and goblins for chefs… Oh, yes, it was all coming far too clear now. In a flash, I saw through the whole charade, saw why a woman would use a dragon-enchanted emerald to create a magical pleasure dome atop the most forbidding of mountains.

"C'mon, Filson," I said, gesturing him to follow me. "This is the point when we go grille the boss."

The urchin's hands closed over the jewels, and they disappeared into his pockets. I didn't care. Not about his petty larcenyrnor about our explosive emergence out the in-door, which startled back a crew of servers who'd come to check out the commotion. My young charge and I shoved past them, bold and self-righteous, and strode out into the wide dining hall. All around us, patrons chattered nervously, trying to cover a multitude of social blunders caused by the lapse of their magical enhancements. It was no use: they were all about to be embarrassed all over again.

Another lapse. Suddenly, the huge, elegant room was gone, replaced in a flash by a cold, breezy barn backed up against a yawning cave mouth. The tables had become long troughs; the delicacies straw and dung and dirt clods; the guests scabby old hags, grotesquely fat men with rashes around their mouths, acne-pocked wretches, greasy-haired baboons, toad-people covered in oozy boils, haggard and hairy and naked cavemen, filthy-jowled pigs… The menagerie-the best of which belonged in a barn and the worst of which belonged in a priest-sealed grave-chattered on with its same squawking gossip. Now, though, the salacious words and chuckles and winks were animalistic yawps and grunts and scratchings.

It was over, again. I reeled, feeling as delirious as before, though knowing now it was not I but the Stranded Tern that was deluded. I only hoped that the pleasant illusory surroundings would remain in 'place until I found Olivia. I had no desire to stumble through breezy barns and black cave mouths and cold snow and ramshackle shacks. Yes, shacks-I now understood what I was dealing with.

I didn't have to look long for Olivia; I literally ran into her on a blind corner of the soaring great room. Apparently, she had been looking for me. Her lovely face was red, whether with exertion or anger.

"There you are!" she shouted. "What am I paying you for? Find the culprit!"

I had reached a pique myself, and it felt delicious to indulge it. "I have. You are the first among many culprits."

"What?" she barked, enraged.

"Yes, madam. You are serving those guests of yours cow droppings instead of tenderloin, algae instead of caviar, worms instead of noodles. Your hammer-beamed dining hall is a drafty, stinky barn, and your pearlescent great room is a filthy, awful cavern."

"And whose fault is that?" shrieked Olivia. I'd not expected that tack, and the shock of it shut me up. "I have promised them the finest accommodations, and that is what I have magically provided. Yes, magically. And cow pies transformed by the pearl are tenderloins. These temporary shortfalls are your problem. The feces laid before my guests are your responsibility."

I was surprised, yes, but guilty? No. "So you thought that one magic rock could transform an isolated mountain village of goblins into an opulent spa for the wealthy and powerful…?"

"Until this morning, it had."

"And thought it powerful enough to warp goblins and cavemen into comely human servants and chefs and maitre d's-?"

"You were convinced it was a hot bath and a silken bed rather than a pus pocket and a rotting slab of meat."

"Just so that you could lure the most influential creatures of Faerun here. But why? That's the question. What hook does this juicy worm hide? Gold, of course! You've gathered them here to get their real riches in exchange for your false luxuries. Perhaps you're even performing a few casual assassinations for whomever you are leagued with!"

"Are you accusing me of murd-"

"But look who got the last laugh!" I shouted, latching onto her hot little hand and dragging her unceremoniously after me toward the bustling dining hall. "You didn't lure the rich and powerful folk of Faerun, but only more magical charlatans such as yourself. You've traded grubs and garbage for ore flesh and feces!"

I couldn't have timed it better. As though on cue, the magic failed again, and before my outflung hand, we both saw the filthy, debased, rank, and horrible creatures that sat around troughs and mangers in that barn. Scrofulous magic-users all, whose gold coins were nothing more than transmuted river stones, whose paper notes were merely mildewed leaves, whose august nobility was only a beautiful mask cast over their true tired, warty, awful flesh. Their powerful magics had temporarily made real what was false, and the lie of their lives had shriveled their true selves as full-plate armor shrivels the body inside into white, wrinkled nothing.

"And how dare you act as though the great finder,

Bolton Quaid, has not solved this mystery of yours? The reason your illusion magic is failing is that it is surrounded by more illusion magic. One illusion piled atop another piled atop another makes for a swaying emptiness that must and will fall. It's your worthless guests and their worthless bark and twigs, all dressed up in magic to look like creatures of import, that has made your worthless barns and hovels and caves show for what they truly are-no great pleasure dome of the Thunder Peaks.

"How dare you hire me-me! — thinking a nonmagical dolt from the docks would be too stupid to see through your schemes?"

I was so pleased with having solved the mystery that I'd missed the biggest illusion of all. Literally, the biggest.

She lurked just behind me now. -From the green whiffs of caustic breath, I knew even before I turned what I would see, but still the sight shocked me into trembling numbness.

A great green wyrm. She towered over me in the toothy cavern of her lair. Not Xantrithicus, for this was a she-lizard-but perhaps his mate, Tarith the Green. Her ver-million scales gleamed like ceramic plates across her bunched haunch, which rose easily the height of my head. Above that was the lizard's mighty rib cage, expanding now in an in-drawn breath in preparation to poison me and all the critters clustered fearfully in the barn behind me. Atop that bulging set of ribs were two long and wicked arms, clawing eagerly at the air, and then a mange-scruffed neck, and then a huge red-fleshed set of jowls. The eyes that sat atop that smoldering snout were the same green eyes with which Olivia had so enticed me when I arrived-the same, except for their size, like twin turkey platters.

This time, it was the hook that hid the wyrm.

I knew I was dead. My feet were rooted to the smooth, chill floor of the cavern, and my once-so-proud tongue lay like a dead thing between my clattering teeth. I would not escape. I could not escape. Oh, if I were a lucky man, the magic would return now, so that she would shrink to her human form… but good luck was too much to hope for.

She reared back, lungs full, and the reptilian muscles along her rib cage slid obscenely beneath her scales. I felt the gagging green gas billow, sudden and fierce, over me, burning eyes I'd instinctively shut, and nose and lips, though I held my breath.

No, a guy from the Dock Ward of Waterdeep can't count on good luck. Thankfully, though, he can count on a wily scamp of a partner.

The cloud suddenly ceased, and some of the thin fumes traced backward toward the open maw of the dragon as she gasped for air. I cracked my eyes just enough to see Filson straddling the creature's tail and yanking one plate-sized scale up against the grain. It had to be more surprise than pain that had made the wyrm gasp, but whatever it was, I had my opening.

Snatching a loose timber from the rotting side of the barn, I heaved the thing up toward that sucking gullet. My aim was true, and the decaying wood lodged itself in the creature's throat. Had there been people in the barn behind me instead of filthy, sorcerous subpeople, I might have taken a moment to shout for them to run. As it was, it didn't matter. They were running anyway.

Instead, I repaid Filson by dashing around the struggling bulk of the beast and snatching him from the tail. My feet had just touched ground on the other side of the huge appendage when the beam-bearing mouth of the dragon slammed down where we had just been. Filson was yammering something, but there was no time to listen, no time to think. He had his own legs, and I made him use them as the two of us bolted for the far end of the cavern.

We heard a huge hack and cough behind us, and the rotten timber shot out like a ballista round over our heads to strike the stone wall and obliterate itself there.

"Back to the rooms!" I shouted to Filson, thinking the caverns that held the suites would be too small for the dragon to navigate.

Filson nodded his agreement, and we shot out toward where the stairs should have been. They weren't stairs, though, but the picked-clean skeleton of a coiling dragon neck. The head lay upside down where the desk had been, and from it curved yellowed vertebrae up to a ledge of stone, where the half-rotted corpse of the great wyrm lay. The belly of the beast had been slit lengthwise, and the green scales flayed back from the midline to expose the layered rotting matrix of dragon organs.

Xantrithicus. She'd gutted her own husband to get the Dragon's Pearl from his stomach, then turned his corpse into an inn for the wealthy and powerful. I could not have known it from where I stood, but something told me in that moment I had, indeed, slept last night in a dragon's heart.

She'd done it all for the Dragon's Pearl. The Dragon's Pearl!

"Come on," I shouted, and motioned for Filson to follow.

Not a moment too soon. The profound thunder of the dragon's clawed feet came upon the cave floor like cannon-shot against a wall. The kid and I pelted toward the descending cave that led to the vault and the pearl, though with the rumble and rattle beneath our feet, each step forward was shortened by a half jolt back. *Tou can't escape me, Bolton Quaid!" raged the dragon. I derived some small satisfaction from the raw sound of her voice. The log had more than done its work. "You can't escape this place without magic."

I planned on getting myself a little magic-sooner rather than later. We'd reached the descending shaft and just started down it when that great coiling neck of the dragon shot forth, the mouth opening wide like another cavern of stalactites. Her muzzle smashed against the opening.

I dived down the sharp slope, but Filson wasn't with me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that my stouthearted partner had glory instead of survival in mind. He leapt the other way, landing in the dragon's mouth. Scrambling up the creature's forked tongue, he brandished his little shiv as though it were a great sword. The tiny knife bit into the red roof of the dragon's mouth, and though it sunk to its handle, the wyrm could not have felt more than the smallest pinprick.

Surely, Filson would die for his courage.

And he would have, had the dragon bitten down on him instead of venting a great gust of poison gas from her lungs. The sneezelike blast blew Filson, shivless, off the creature's tongue and out of its mouth, flinging him into me, where I had landed in a crouch and was preparing to rush for the vault door. Stuck together by the wind, we were hurled down the passage to strike the very door I sought.

In the face of that gale, it was tough to grasp the lock. It was tougher to do so without gasping to inhale breath, which would have been instantly deadly. But I succeeded, spinning the thing, rushing through the combination I'd memorized when Olivia opened the lock.

The poison blast spent itself, and the combination was done. Still without breathing, I yanked the vault door open and dashed to the side.

There came a dragon scream from up the passage, just as I had hoped, and a huge forearm thrust its way down toward the revealed pearl. My hundred traps went off beautifully, with a sound like a thousand mosquitoes taking flight. Even the circular deadfall block came down to crush the dragon's claw, in the process cracking and peeling away my three iron boxes like layers of skin from an onion.

But it would take more than that to stop her. I clambered over her twitching wrist and onto the deadfall, finally took a breath of the fresher air, and grabbed the stone.

Touching it was enough. The contact of flesh to gem triggered its magic. The huge green dragon resumed the form of green-eyed Olivia. Her small, hot hand, crushed beneath the stone, caused her to be yanked forward into the vault as her form shrank. Down the stairs she rattled, then slid to a stop just within the doorway. I lunged at her, wanting to kill her in human form-lovely, lovable human form-before she could become a dragon again.

You see, I'd forgotten about the shiv.

She did not move. The small knife had been more than large enough to kill her, forced up through her human palette and into her brain. When I pulled her head up and back by her silken black hair, the blood gushing from her mouth told the story. The blood, and those lifeless green eyes.

Companionship. I knew it then. That was the one other hook for this wyrm. She'd killed her mate for the pearl, and then used the pearl to gain back all she'd lost- wealth, power, status, and companionship. Perhaps that's where a six-foot-three street rat from Waterdeep came in.

The poison gas was gone from the air, and I gasped a breath when I saw those emerald eyes.

So did my new partner.

The magic resumed a moment later, with explosive results, since the corpse of the dragon couldn't fit in that tiny vault. Luckily, Filson and I had expected as much, and were scampering across the cavern beyond when green chunks of dragon started flying.

We didn't even try to take the Dragon's Pearl with us. We'd had a bellyful of trouble from it, just like old Xantrithicus had. Besides, there was already plenty of false affluence and deceptive beauty in the Dock Ward of Waterdeep.

It wasn't beneath us, however, to make a quick search of the rest of the place, hoping to scrape together enough real wealth among all the bits of glitter and twine to make our troubles worthwhile. We could not. Apparently, the dragon's hoard was nothing more than fantasy built on illusion built on air.

Gone were the riches, and gone too the wretches, fled to whatever icy refuges they could find when the dragon first appeared. Most would likely die out there. I feared we would, too.

About then, I heard the greatest sound in the world- the impatient champ and whinny of a very real winged horse. Apparently, even the pearl's illusory magic could not have reached to Waterdeep, so the lady had had to send the genuine article. I tipped my hat to what was left of her corpse, thanking her for inadvertently showing me you get what you pay for.

With my new associate mounted on the stallion behind me, I urged the pegasus toward the bright, snowy daylight, and from there up into the bracing sky.

To Waterdeep," I told the creature, patting it fondly on the shoulder. "The Dock Ward. I'd like to see some genuine squalor for a change."