Realms of the Dragons vol.1

THE KEEPER OF SECRET

The Year of the Weeping Moon (1339 DR)

It was the eve of the Revel of Storms, and as the gods usually seemed to want such an evening to be, it was a warm, breezy night in crowded and stinking Waterdeep, with the sort of eager rising wind that meant rain was coming.

Laughter and eager chatter carried far on the scudding airs, and folk were out in plenty on the streets. Little of that restless wind, however, found its way past the smoke-blackened tapestries that shrouded the inner booths of Darth's Dolphyntyde, a tiny fish-and-quaff corner shop on south side Watchrun Alley, to stir the stinks of its deepest, darkest corners.

The fat bulk that most of Waterdeep knew rather unfavorably as Mirt the Moneylender sat in the rearmost booth, the awakened power of his ironguard ring tingling on one finger.

Blades in the ribs were a peril all too easily offered hereabouts not to spend the magic-and Darth himself was one who owed him coin, and would shed no tear if something befell Mirt in a dark corner of the Dolphyntyde.

The beads of the booth curtain rattled slightly, and Mirt's forefinger tightened on the trigger of the cocked and loaded handbow that lay ready in his lap, under the table.

"If you slay me now," a nasal voice came from the darkness beyond the curtain, "you'll see far less than what I owe. Far, far less."

"But I'll be rid of all the waiting in places like these for ye, Yelver," Mirt growled. "Ye're late-as usual."

"So arrive late yourself, and save the waiting," Yelver Toraunt hissed, sliding in through the curtains like a wary snake in an uneasy hurry. "I fear I've no welcome words for you this night, where're the gods smile."

"Ye can't pay off thy debt just now," Mirt said, his words a judgment rather than a question. "As usual."

Yelver Toraunt shrugged and said, "I can't find coin for so much as a raw eel to eat, just now. Rooms, clothes-all gone. Just Yelver, trying to scare up coins owed to him, so as to have something to hand to you. Times are hard."

The fat moneylender scowled, "So they say, loud and often, yet 'tis strange that not every last one o' my sometime business associates fail to hand me some o' the glint, when 'tis due. Thy tardiness'll cost ye an extra four dragons-and none o' thy shaved gold, neither!"

"Fair enough, I s'pose," Yelver replied with a shrug. "Blood-written?"

Mirt lifted his visible hand aside to reveal a waiting parchment, and thrust it forward with two fat and hairy fingers. Unhooding his lamp just one notch, he illuminated a small arc of table that included the page and a needle-knife too short to be much of a weapon.

Yelver took up the knife, the moneylender's eyes never leaving him, and slowly and carefully pricked the tip of one forefinger and wrote out the added debt, adding his mark. Then he set the blade down with the same exaggerated care and stepped well back.

"And so?"

"And so," said Mirt, "a tenday hence, at dusk, we'll meet at the Yawning Portal, where ye'll render something in the way of payment-or I'll start seizing the trade goods ye forgot to mention, from the loft on Slut Street, Moro's cellar off Fish Street, and thy oh-so-secret hidehdlds in Sea Ward."

Yelver swallowed at the moneylender's grim ghost of a smile and muttered, "Aye. I'll do that. Some coins, at least."

"And if ye don't? And if, say, the city holds no hair of ye by sunset tomorrow?"

"Then it'll profit you little to go looking for my bones," Yelver replied. "Seek for whatever I've left with the Keeper of Secrets."

And he whirled away and was gone in a rattle of beads ere Mirt could ask more.

The Revel of Storms had been marked by a trio of furious, fast-racing cloudbursts that had snarled across the city near highsun, leaving behind a hot, damp evening trimmed around its edges with ominous rolls of distant thunder.

Mirt the Moneylender growled in tune with them as he tramped in out of the darkness, the well-oiled back door of the Yawning Portal swinging wildly in his wake. He ignored a disapproving look from one of the sweat-cloaked cooking lasses and lurched past her with nary a leer-leaving her looking warily at his back and wondering what calamity he was bringing word of.

In truth, Mirt's dark temper was due to nothing more than a bad day of trade. Two debtors had paid off early, another two had vanished without trace, and four more were showing him empty hands and claiming poverty, while having no skills that Mirt could hire out to recoup his coins.

A season or so back, in the Company of the Wolf, swift sword thrusts would have handed such grinning-up-their-sleeves wastrels fitting rewards … but just as he was no longer Mirt the Merciless, helm-lord of hireswords who'd been better disciplined blades than the grandest royal guards he'd seen anywhere, Mirt no longer handed out fitting rewards that carried high prices. His own neck, for instance.

No, 'twas time for a drink and a quiet demolition of Durnan across a lance-and-lion board, whilst muttering forth heartfelt venom on all wastrels, idiots, and unsympathetic gods.

There it waited under the lamplight at one end of the smooth-polished bar, all the pieces set out on the lancers and lions board, with Durnan's own battered tankard standing behind it, but-Mirt blinked-his old friend was across the room, grimly wrestling a slumped, gore-drooling body up out of a chair. Blood dripped from dangling fingertips as the lifeless man was swung up and under one of Durnan's stone-thewed arms. A lolling head faced Mirt for a moment: Yelver's.

"Spew of Sune!" Mirt snarled. "Dur, how-?"

"Throat dart," Durnan said. "Handbow, with his slayer sitting across from him. Young elf lass, by the one glimpse of an ear I had out the cowl of her cloak as she whirled away." He waved his free hand down the room. "Tharl tried to bar her way-but she murmured magic and the cloak swallowed her and itself before he could lay hand or blade to her."

By then the innkeeper had reached his destination, and his hand fell to the ring of an all-too-familiar trapdoor, awakening the glow of the spell that let only him open it.

Mirt lurched forward sputtering, "Hey-hoy! Nay so swift! I can have his memories spell-read."

The innkeeper shook his head, and thrust a pointing thumb at something glistening that was starting to slide out of Yelver's left nostril, its black and slimy end questing obscenely into the air like a corkscrew seeking a bottle.

"See?" said the innkeeper. "Some jack who did darker business than yours with goodman Toraunt made him swallow a brainworm."

Black and glistening, the worm slid a little way out of Yelver's nose, swollen from its meal of man-brain.

"Seventeen dragons" Mirt snarled disgustedly, glaring at it. "Gone for good." He turned away to slam one hairy fist down on a handy table-and remembered something, and turned back to where Durnan was calmly feeding the corpse down a chute into the unseen depths below.

"Have ye ever heard of the Keeper of Secrets?" asked Mirt.

As Durnan peered at his friend, lifting a surprised eyebrow, Yelver Toraunt's dead limbs thumped and thudded on stone walls a long way down. Something that slobbered was waiting for their arrival. After the final, meaty landing, made a swift but noisy disposal of Durnan's offering.

Someone sitting at a table nearby winced at the gnawing sounds, and turned away.

"Gods below," a sailor muttered, "but I need more bellyfire after hearing that! Keeper!"

"The master's name is Durnan," the man seated across from him growled. "And orders aren't bawled here. Twice."

The sailor's reply was a sneer, but Durnan was already striding across the floor, every inch a prowling warrior. The flicker of the candle wheels overhead gleamed on the broad metal bracers he wore on his forearms, and on the hilts of the three ready daggers sheathed in each of them.

"What'll you have, thirsty guest?" he asked calmly. "Another tall tankard of Black Sail? Or something warmer?"

"Uh, er, I'll stick to Sail," the sailor said, a little sullenly.

"A sturdy quaff, to be sure," Durnan agreed, standing back with a smile.

The serving lass who stepped in front of him to place a glistening-with-condensation tankard and a half-moon of seed-spiced cheese in front of the man wore only a smile, a magnificent mane of startlingly blue hair, baggy breeches, and a bewildering tangle of dark tattoos that confused every gazing eye.

The sailor blinked away from her beauty and mumbled, "I've no coin for yon cheese. Take it aw-"

"Nay, nay," the tattooed woman said in a husky, smoky, surprisingly deep voice, patting his arm like a hungry whore." 'Tis free-of my making, and Durnan's compliments. We like to treat friends well here, lord of the waves."

The sailor shot her a swift, hard stare, seeking some sign of mockery, but found none. With a rather sheepish grunt, he raised the cheese in thanks, found himself looking into Durnan's half smile, and sought refuge in the tankard.

When he set down both his drink and a remnant of cheese to draw breath a swallow or three later, he looked almost surprised to still be unpoisoned, or free of bitter-salt or other trickery.

By then Durnan was setting an even larger tankard in front of Mirt, moving his first lancer forward to a fortress square, and saying, "I've been hearing about the Keeper of Secrets, Mur. A woman who deals with the desperate, they say. Her shop's in North Ward."

"North Ward? A fence? A pawn-hand? And why've I never heard of her?"

Durnan shrugged and said, "I guess you've not yet been desperate."

Mirt snorted. "Not a rat gnaws nor a chamber pot breaks in this city that I don't hear about-excepting guild inner circle whisper-moots and what goes on behind the walls of the nobles' towers. Ye know that, Dur."

The innkeeper shrugged, his eyes ranging around his taproom.

"She's not been in business long, I'd guess," he said.

Mirt moved a lion, and Durnan's fingers flipped up the trapdoor on the next square to reveal the grinning skull that meant he was bringing his lich into play-and dooming Mirt's piece-without the master of the Yawning Portal ever looking down at the board.

"She does her trade in dark rooms atop an empty all-mending shop on north side Sammarin's Street," he added quietly. "Rooms of locked iron bar gates that're never lit, so no eye ever sees her. Neighbors hear her singing at all hours-haunting airs and unfamiliar tongues, but a beautiful voice."

"Happy dancing hobgoblins," Mirt said, not believing a bit of it. He moved a lancer away from the revealed peril of Durnan's lich. "I can't believe I've never heard a breath of this…"

"Deafness comes to us all, in the end," Durnan murmured, moving his lich forward to capture a lion-and doom Mirt's throne-princess in the process.

The moneylender stared at his imminent defeat and sighed heavily.

"I yield me. Another game?"

The innkeeper smiled and took down his cloak, signaling to Luranla to take the bar. The tattooed lass gave him a smiling wave and wink, and turned to survey the room as Durnan had been doing.

Mirt stared up at his friend and asked, "Do I play that badly?"

"This night, yes. Yet we're friends, so I've agreed."

The moneylender blinked.

"To seek out your other game," Durnan replied, taking down a baldric heavy with warblades from a peg on the wall, slinging it over his shoulder, and reaching for its cross-buckles. "And visit this Keeper of Secrets."

"Your business, gentlesirs?"

The ever-so-slightly hollow voice seemed to come from their left. Down a speaking-tube.

Durnan looked at Mirt, and made the "your speech" gesture they'd both known he'd make. Words had never been his chosen weapons.

Still wheezing from their trip up the dark stairs, Mirt said, "Secrets. Yelver Toraunt told us to seek here."

"What sort of secrets are you interested in leaving with me? Did Yelver say anything of my rates?"

"Nay, he did not-and being upstanding merchants of Waterdeep, lady, we have no secrets," Mirt joked, assuming an air of exaggerated innocence.

Her answer was the snort he'd expected.

"Lady," he added, "we came here, at his bidding, to learn what secrets Yelver had left with you."

"And where is Yelver, to give me his permission to reveal anything to you?"

"Dead," Mirt replied. "Eaten."

"You can prove this, of course?"

Mirt looked at Durnan-who'd acquired a faint smile-and lifted his hand.

"Lady," the innkeeper replied, "I'm the keeper of the Yawning Portal, Durnan by name. Yelver was most definitely dead-murdered-when I put him down the shaft to where the beasts below lurk."

"Interesting," the voice observed.

Mirt waited, but the unseen woman said nothing more. He sighed, and waved at Durnan to unhood the lantern completely.

"Lady," he said, "Yelver was a business partner of mine-"

"So much I know, Mirt the Moneylender, and more- every detail of your dealings together, in fact. Know you something now: I keep secrets, not betray them. Even the secrets of the dead. Especially the secrets of the dead."

The lamplight showed the two men a vertical row of identical small, round holes-one of which must have been the speaking-tube in use-in a stone block wall before them. Stout-and chained and locked-iron bar gates blocked the way to closed stone doors to their left and right. The landing they stood on led nowhere else except back down the steep stair they'd ascended, to the street door below.

"Keeper of Secrets," Durnan asked, "let us understand each other. Is there any way we can learn what Yelver told us to seek here? The payment of a fee, perhaps?"

"No, goodman Durnan. I have no need of bribes, and if, as you say, Yelver Toraunt is dead, I can henceforth never trust anyone claiming to be him, or with a letter purporting to be from him. Unless, of course, you two are lying to me now-which makes you both untrustworthy in my eyes, and so not to be given Yelver's secrets in any circumstances."

"So there's no way we can ever learn Yelver's secret?" Mirt growled.

"None," the voice from the wall said lightly. "A good evening to you, good sirs."

"It seems we've slipped from 'gentle' to merely 'good,'" Durnan observed aloud, waving Mirt toward the stairs.

"Evidently the price one pays for being made wiser," Mirt agreed. "Farewell, Keeper of Secrets."

"Farewell," the calm voice replied.

The two men traded glances, shrugs, and smiles.

Mirt set his boot onto the topmost step and asked suddenly, "Why the darkness? And all these bars?"

"I like darkness," was the reply, as calm as ever.

Durnan waved at Mirt to get moving, and rehooded the lantern. They went down the stairs quietly.

"Mayhap Yelver just wanted to have one last, lame laugh at me," Mirt mused aloud, as they crossed a fish guts-littered alley where rats scurried fearlessly this way and that, and made for Adder Lane. "Why'd ye bring us this far south, hey? The Portal's a good-"

"To see if all the men strolling along back there were following us, of course," Durnan muttered.

Mirt stiffened, but managed to avoid turning around.

"And-?" he asked.

"They are." Durnan replied. "A dozen, and one may be a mage."

"Watchful Order?"

"Far less official, I'd say. Let's duck into Roldro's cellar."

The innkeeper strode ahead, rapped on a particular panel set into a crumbling wall, and sang a brief, wordless phrase of music. A much smaller panel nearby slid open, and someone uttered a non-committal grunt from beyond it.

"Flashscales," Durnan murmured in reply-and the response was the click of a bolt being slid back.

The door, a few paces along the wall, looked more like a series of boards nailed over a disused hatch than a usable entryway. But the innkeeper snatched it open as he reached it, and was gone through it like a diving sea hawk. Mirt huffed and plunged after, banging the door closed not far ahead of a sudden shout and clatter of hobnailed boots on cobbles.

"Cellar to cellar, and so away," Durnan told his friend several rooms and startled young Roldro children later, as they went down damp steps into a room that stank of rotting tide wrack and mildew. "To rouse the Portal."

Mirt nodded a little wearily and said, "Aye, where they know where to find us."

Something wriggled inside his head, and he stumbled up against the wall of Murktar Roldro's cellar with a groan.

"Magic?" Durnan snapped, putting a steadying hand on Mirt's shoulder.

The moneylender nodded and waved a vague hand struck dumb by a flood of memories-faces, places, names, and amounts owed and due dates and-and-

The invasion was gone, as swiftly as it had come.

"Someone … in my mind," he wheezed, clutching at Durnan's stone-steady arm. "That mage following us."

The innkeeper nodded and asked, "Seeking memories of Yelver?"

"Aye. Turned up everything-gods, my head's a-whirl still-but Yelver, yes, an' our talk with the Keeper. I wonder what Yelver was mixed up in?"

Durnan was already whirling past him.

"Stay here," he said. "Be right back."

Mirt leaned against the wall, groggy, listening to his friend's boots racing up the stairs-and more slowly coming back down again. The keeper of the Yawning Portal wore another of his grim smiles.

"They're all racing away back nor'east, of course."

"To the Keeper of Secrets," Mirt grunted. "Knowing she told us nothing, we're now nothing-but she remains a danger." He slapped his hand to his sword hilt, drew in a deep breath, and started up the stairs himself. "So, 'tis back to Sammarin's Street."

"Way ahead of you," Durnan replied cheerfully, bounding past.

"Aye," Mirt agreed. "Everyone always is."

The flash and the trembling of cobblestones under their feet came when they were still a street away from the Keeper's shop.

Faint sounds of startled cries, curses, and the crashes of things falling and breaking arose in the tallhouses and shops all around. Durnan broke out of the trot that let Mirt keep pace with him, and raced ahead.

Almost immediately he returned with the terse explanation: "Two Watch patrols."

"Rooftops," Mirt replied, waving at a distant tall-house with carved dolphin downspouts.

Durnan flashed him a smile and dropped it off his face as he looked back behind them.

"More Watch coming," said the innkeeper.

Mirt shrugged and replied, "So we're innocents, look ye. Deafinnocents."

"No sort of innocent climbs downspouts in the middle of the night."

"Innocent downspout inspectors do," Mirt growled. When Durnan rolled his eyes, the moneylender protested, "I've a palace badge, and know what names to invoke. I-"

The uppermost floor of the building they'd visited not long before burst apart with a roar, in an eruption of stones, roof slates, and the shattered bodies of men.

A head and what looked like a knee bounced and pattered wetly to the cobblestones nearby. Durnan abandoned any attempt to look innocent and clawed at Mirt.

"Down" he hissed, "and look dazed."

Blinking around at the tumult of running Watch officers and still-rolling shards of stone, Mirt complied.

They crouched together against the wall of what looked to be a toy shop as shouting uniformed men ran past, lanterns bobbing.

"Yelver surprises me more and more," the fat moneylender muttered, "but we'll never know his secrets now. No one could've-"

There was a creaking close at hand as a "downsteps door" opened. Durnan peered down a narrow flight of stone steps past the usual clutter of rain barrels and discarded trash, into one of the many cellar-level entries common to that part of North Ward. After the blasts, someone could come out curious, or wanting to flee, or waving a blade and wild enough with fear to use it on anyone.

Mirt hastily drew back his boots to let the lone cloaked and cowled figure mount the steps, noting bare, empty hands clutching at her-yes, her-cloak to keep her features covered.

She stopped, peering up at the two men, and said, "Stand back, if you please, and let me pass."

It was the calm voice they'd traded words with in the darkness.

"Of course," Mirt squeaked, trying to make his voice sound unlike his own.

He and Durnan both stepped back, lifting empty hands to signal that they meant no harm. But as the woman reached the top of the steps, Durnan whirled back to face her, luring her attention. Mirt plucked back her cowl.

Her revealed face was smiling wryly. Beneath the emerald-green cloak was a rather plain, heavy-set woman in a rumpled gown. She had very large, dark, arresting eyes. Around their dark-fire gaze one scarcely noticed plump cheeks, pale skin, and unruly brown hair.

"Well met, lady," Durnan said. "What price are your secrets now?"

"Bensvelk Miirik Darastrix loex?"

The hiss was swift and angry.

"The Keeper?" a deeper, calmer voice rumbled. "Nay, nay, she lives. Were she to die, yon crystal would burst." A hand waved at a glowing orb of glass halfway across the cavern. "And you really should keep to Common, Orauth. Even in Waterdeep, Draconic attracts attention."

"Malval om aurm!"

"Of course your anger is great. So is mine. To lose her would be an aurm blow, yes, but the true korth is if humans learn what she does-and through her, of us. Which is why I watch the crystal. Anyone who captures, attacks, or hurls magic at her must die."

"Lay a hand on me," the woman said, "and I'll scream for the Watch."

As she spoke, more Watch officers trotted past, several Watchful Order mages striding among them.

"Ye mistake our natures, lady," Mirt protested.

"No, she doesn't," Durnan disagreed, before the Keeper could reply.

Whatever word she started to snap dissolved into a swift, short laugh.

She tugged her cowl free of Mirt's fingers, faced them both squarely, and asked, "What do you want?"

Mirt blinked at her then said, "Uh-er-to know thy name, an' who those men were, an' what ye did to them an' how, an'… an'…"

"Yelver's secrets," she finished calmly, shaking her head.

"Nicely listed, lady," Durnan agreed politely, and fell into waiting silence.

As it stretched, the three of them stood regarding each other, and the street around them filled with gawking Waterdhavians.

"Very well," the woman said at last. "You may call me Taunamorla."

"And?" Durnan asked politely.

"I am still," Taunamorla said with a smile, "the Keeper of Secrets."

"Your real name being one of them?"

Taunamorla's smile widened.

"Of course," she replied. "Now, neither of you are dullards-and so I believe you can guess how dangerous questioning me further will be."

Durnan touched Mirt's arm, and the stout moneylender nodded curtly. He'd already caught sight of a tall, cloaked man striding toward them among the gathering crowd of gawkers who were staring at the shouting Watch and the smoking, still stone-shedding ruin of the shop. At Durnan's caution, he saw two more cold-eyed men, bareheaded but in full armor, approaching from where the innkeeper was facing.

"You have friends," Durnan observed calmly.

"I keep secrets," Taunamorla replied. "Go now, and keep your lives."

Mirt bowed to her and started away down the street, leaving behind only the comment, "We'll meet again, Lady of Secrets."

Her reply was as calm as ever: "Of course."

They were halfway back to the Portal when fire mounted up into the night sky behind them with a roar that sent Mirt staggering.

"Keep going," Durnan said. "Whatever's happening, I'm sure the Keeper of Secrets is involved-and that we're better off draining tankards over our lancers and pondering what she is. Beyond a powerful spell hurler, that is."

"A powerful spell hurler with enemies," Mirt replied, as they hastened on together.

Another, larger blast followed, then far-off screams, splintering sounds, and what sounded like something very large-lunged roaring in pain-a protest that abruptly ended in yet another explosion.

Mirt glanced back, but could see nothing more than a lot of sparks and cinders, high above the roofs of Waterdeep. Then the horns of the Watch started-the full alarm-call that would summon the Guard, and mages, and-

"The Portal" Durnan reminded his friend.

Mirt lurched two steps more along the way back to the inn before the air in front of them flickered, and the Keeper of Secrets was suddenly standing in front of them, her eyes glittering with anger.

"Gentlesirs, I find I need you," she said.

"Us? Upstanding merchants of Waterdeep?" Mirt grunted.

Taunamorla smiled thinly and said, "Indeed. Upstanding merchants of the city are precisely what I'm in need of, just now."

"How so?"

"Your word will be accepted by the Watch-and I can bargain with you."

"You want us to lie about something," Durnan observed. "About what, and for what reward?"

"My thanks for your haste," the Keeper of Secrets said in a rush, giving him a smile that might warm most men's hearts. "I will trade you all of Yelver's secrets for a few words of false testimony."

"Say on," Mirt rumbled. "What testimony?"

"To defend his very life, a friend of mine was just forced to trade spells with several Watchful Order mages. Men died-a lot of men, some of those mages and officers of the Watch among them-and I need you to swear that this friend of mine was with you, since you left my office earlier this night."

Durnan lifted a disbelieving eyebrow and replied, "Our word against many of the Watch? Lady, you overestimate our reputations. If they know they saw him, the protests of an innkeeper and a moneylender aren't going to-"

"When fighting the Watch, my friend wore a magical disguise. He looked like a dragon, not like himself."

Durnan cast a swift, questioning glance at Mirt-who looked straight at Taunamorla and shook his head.

"Nay," Mirt grunted. "Yelver's secrets were worth seventeen dragons to me-if they could lead to the recovery of all my loaned coins. Knowing just who an' what ye truly are-for peace of mind alone-could be worth much more, in the years ahead. So that would be my price. Full and honest answers to these: What manner of creature are ye, lady? When came ye to Waterdeep, an' why? The answer that stands behind keeping secrets for worms like Yelver, mind ye."

"Do you know what you're asking?" the Keeper of Secrets asked.

"Aye, lady, I believe I do."

Torches flickered behind them, and there were shouts. Cries of discovery from the Watch, and hastening feet. The woman in the green cloak glanced over Mirt and Durnan's shoulders, her mouth drawing down into a tight line.

"I'm out of time," she snapped. "I, Taunamorla, agree to this bargain. Do you, Durnan of Waterdeep? And do you, Mirt of Waterdeep?"

"Lady, I do," Durnan said. "By blood and my last coin I bind myself."

"Lady, I do," Mirt echoed, hard after his friend's words. "By blood an' my last coin I bind myself." And he added less formally, "Though 'twould help if we at least knew thy friend's name."

"Raumorth, he's called," the Keeper of Secrets said swiftly, as the Watch thundered down upon them in a thunder of running boots, clanging blades, and angry shouts. "I accept your bindings."

"And where is Raumorth?" Durnan asked urgently.

"Right behind you," Taunamorla hissed.

The two friends whirled around-to meet the cold smile of a man they'd seen before: the tall, cloaked man who'd been walking toward them as they'd questioned the Keeper near the ruins of her shop. His hands were raised-as if he'd been ready to blast Mirt and Durnan down. Not far beyond him was a running pack of armored men: a great mustering of the Watch.

"I'm a mage from Tethyr." Raumorth's voice was deep and rich. "You don't know me well, but you've befriended me-a trader and traveling investor who's visited Waterdeep once a season or so, for years."

"Of course," Durnan agreed, smiling at the man and stepping casually past him so that the foremost Watch officer's sword no longer had a clear path to Raumorth's back.

"Way! Make way! Stand aside, man!" that onrushing Watchman bellowed.

Mirt and Raumorth winked at each other-and obediently stepped back, Durnan with them, the three men parting like windblown leaves to leave the Watch a clear path to charge at… the Keeper of Secrets.

Who suddenly looked bewildered and flustered, as she squeaked, "Ohh! The Watch! The Watch!"

"Stand! Stand all, in silence! Down all arms!" a deeper, grander voice commanded.

"My arms don't come off," Mirt explained innocently, "but I am standing."

By then the Watch had surrounded the four, and tense silence was falling. The officer who'd spoken glared coldly at the fat moneylender.

"I know you, Mirt."

"Yes," Mirt agreed with a broad smile. "As I recall, ye owe me eleven dragons, four shards-unless ye're late paying me by highsun tomorrow, whereupon-"

"Enough" barked the Watch commander. "Now keep silence for a moment or so." He turned his head deliberately to gaze at Durnan. "You're also known to me, Durnan of the Yawning Portal, in Castle Ward."

"At your service."

"Undoubtedly. However, these two with you….Good lady, you were seen outside a certain shop this night, and stand under the suspicion of the Watch. Your name, citizenry, and trade."

The answer was a tremulous, "Taunamorla Esmurla, a scribe, formerly of Amn but now of Waterdeep. I–I've done nothing wrong!"

"And I," said Raumorth firmly, "am a trader from Tethyr, arrived in Waterdeep just this day, who stopped to talk with Mirt and Durnan, whom I've done business with in earlier visits down the years, and regard as friends. I've no intention of doing anything that merits pointing so many loaded crossbows at me, Watchmen, and I'd appreciate it if you'd lower them "

The crossbows wavered not a fingerbreadth, and the Watch commander scowled.

"You were seen outside that same shop," he snarled, "and were observed to change into the shape of a great dragon-"

"A fang dragon, sir," one of the other Watch officers murmured.

"A fang dragon, indeed," the commander continued, "and in that form did spell-battle with officers of the Watch, including wizards acting in defense of this city and its peace and safe order. Wherefore I arres-"

"Hoy, hoy, hoy now!" Mirt protested. "Raumorth here's been with us for… well, since we all left Taunamorla's shop together. That was some time back, as we've not been walking all that swiftly, and-"

"Yes," Durnan said firmly, looking at the Watch commander. "I'd take it very poorly if my word was set aside, here on the street, before all the watching city. Raumorth here's been walking with us. If he can somehow be in two places at once, changing into dragons and hurling spells all over the place, then he's a mightier mage than any I've ever heard of! Why don't we all go to Blackstaff Tower, right now, and you can ask them if such a thing's even possible. Raumorth's been walking at my side, alive and solid-I know, because I clapped him on the arm more than once!"

"Ohhh," Taunamorla gasped, going pale, "do you mean … a dragon, lots of spells … is my shop all right?"

The Watch commander blinked and asked, "What shop is yours, lady? I don't recall seeing a quill signboard anywhere near the…"

"I," Taunamorla Esmurla said, "am better known in Waterdeep as the Keeper of Secrets."

"What? Don't move…"

Several Watchmen shouted at once, and a crossbow fired, its quarrel humming off into the night sky.

Quietly and without any fuss, six hulking dragons had faded into view behind Taunamorla. There wasn't quite enough room in the street for the two at either end of the sudden great mountain of scaled flesh. Signboards and balcony railings shattered and fell like tossed kindling.

Raumorth made a swift, intricate gesture, and Mirt and Durnan felt their skin tingling. Then the mage clapped his hands to their forearms and towed them toward the nearest alley mouth, scant moments before Watch halberds stabbed through-their own immobile images, that still stood in a cluster facing the raging Watch commander.

Who, like all the other Watchmen, didn't seem to notice the four as they fled into the alley together. That may have been because of Raumorth's spell-or it may have had something to do with six dragons lowering their great horned heads, opening their jaws, and reaching forward long-taloned claws like gigantic cats. Or it might just have been because most of the Watch were fleeing down the street as fast as their hobnailed boots could take them.

In a dark, stinking corner where two alleys met, Raumorth raised a hand that crackled with ready magic.

"This," he said quietly, "will be where we part, men of Waterdeep: It's best if-"

"No, Raumorth," Taunamorla said. "I made a formal pact with these two."

"Lady! We-"

"Are as bad as the humans we revile if we cleave to their habits, casting aside our promises like empty chatter," she said in a voice that was suddenly steel edged with ice.

Raumorth bowed and said, "Truth … yet this is a mistake. Pothoc ukris!"

"Perhaps. Yet consider this: once they know the truth about me, how will it profit them-save to force a little prudence on them? Who would believe them if they spread the tale?"

Raumorth's eyes glimmered like golden flames as he said, "There's something in that… yet it would take only one curious wizard deciding to seek the truth behind their words-"

"And when they know something of our numbers, they'll know that no mage could strike us all down at once. And it would only take one of us, knowing who must have told the wizard, to hunt them down and end their lives slowly and horribly, terrified beyond reason and with limbs torn from them at leisure."

Mirt shivered at the calmness in her voice, and the Keeper of Secrets smiled at him as tenderly as a doting aunt.

"Yet none of this unpleasantness need happen. Raumorth, a shielding against all prying?"

The man who was more than a mage from Tethyr cast a swift, deft spell, and announced-as something like smoke turned solid and fell around them in a sudden, unbroken cloud-"Done."

"This is for your ears alone, Mirt and Durnan," Taunamorla murmured, "and is not to reach your tongues. I am what humans like to call a song dragon, and I came to Waterdeep over twenty summers ago, summoned by elders of my kin, to … manage a problem here. I've been here ever since."

"A problem involving other dragons," Mirt rumbled, waving a hand at Raumorth. "Lots of other dragons."

The Keeper nodded.

"What problem?"

"Many dragons like to dwell among humans-and not only because your kind can serve as ready food, or as a source of wealth for us to seize and hoard. Some wyrms come to love your energy, your restlessness, your clever strivings…"

"The free entertainment we provide," Mirt grunted. Taunamorla smiled wryly and said, "Bluntly said, but true."

"Waterdeep is a fine cauldron of such things," Durnan put in. "Yet a cauldron full of alert and wary wizards, sorcerers, and priests. Dragons need magic to hide among men. Magic that might well get noticed."

The Keeper turned to Raumorth and said, "You see? They knew, or suspected, already-and yet stood with us."

"Lady," Durnan said, "a few secrets are always preferable to the Watch and the Guard laying waste to several city blocks against some mighty foe."

"Nay, nay," Mirt said. "Let's discharge the bargain. Ye say it, Lady Taunamorla, plainly. Thy service in Waterdeep is-?"

"I am the guide and central contact for more than a few hidden-in-human-shape dragons dwelling in Waterdeep. We watch over things, manipulating and sometimes mind-whispering to the Lords of Waterdeep-"

"And mind-blasting those who'd overthrow them," Raumorth interrupted.

Mirt nodded and said, "And yet… the wards? The Watchful Order? Hath no one seen ye for what ye are?"

"Who do you think had a hand in crafting the wards?" Raumorth asked.

"And some Waterdhavians have seen our true natures," the Keeper of Secrets added, "but seen fit to leave us alone."

"They have?"

"Of course," she replied. "They saw our work, and judged us."

She turned and started to walk away along one alley, Raumorth's shielding parting into a dark tunnel before her.

Mirt blinked. Raumorth was gone! Nay … nay, he was the tunnel, stretching into a dark archway that arched up and around the Keeper, and moved away with her.

Taunamorla Esmurla turned to fix the two men with eyes that were suddenly larger and darker than before-and yet held many tiny stars.

"Why do you think," she asked Mirt and Durnan softly, "Waterdeep hasn't erupted into battle and ruin long ago? With Halaster and Skullport and Under-mountain below, and half the greedy grasping humans in Faerun visiting or dwelling above?"

The two men stood for a long time in the dark and empty alley, as Watch patrols trudged past.

"Six dragons, I tell thee! Six!" One Watchman growled, turning into the alley to empty his bladder thoughtfully into a discarded cask. "And gone, like a mage's tricks! Yet they were real. They broke the balcony clear off Shandledorth's."

"Aye, I saw. A wizard playing at snatch-teleport, mayhap? Thrusting a lairful of dragons into our laps and whisking them away again?"

"Why play such games?"

"To impress nobles who hired him? To awe revel guests? To make a name for himself, or pass some test?"

"If he's a wizard, that's reason enough for all manner of lunacy," an older Watchman said.

There was a general grunt of agreement, and the patrol left the alley again, and moved on.

Mirt glanced up past dark shutters and rooftops, to where the stars glimmered, and growled, "There's … something magnificent about being a dragon. Something grander than we are. Something…"

"We don't understand," Durnan finished his friend's sentence. "Now let's be getting home. 'Tis late-or rather, early-and Luranla's probably thrashed all the sailors in the Portal senseless by now."

Mirt snorted, "Think she's a dragon, in disguise?"

Durnan shook his head. "No. Oh, no. You ask her, and I'll watch from a safe distance. Tethyr, perhaps."