"Immortality was the prize Zhengyi offered to the dragons," Entreri said. "The gem you took from the book—the second one, not the one from Herminicle's tower—would prove intriguing for our dragon friends, would it not?"
"Perhaps," the drow agreed. "Or perhaps they will find it revolting. Perhaps they will kill me if I even mention it, or if I reveal it but do not turn it over to them."
"Jarlaxle is nothing if not daring."
The drow shrugged and grinned. "Our dragon friends sent us to Vaasa to find just such a tome, and just such a phylactery. I am duty-bound to report to them in full."
"And to turn over the spoils?"
"The phylactery?" The drow scoffed. "I made no such agreement."
"They are dragons."
"And one is a fine lover. That changes nothing."
Entreri shuddered at the thought, which of course only made Jarlaxle smile all the wider.
"We were not sent to retrieve anything more than information, and so information I shall offer," said Jarlaxle. "Nothing less."
"And if they demand the phylactery?"
"It belongs to Urshula. I am simply holding it for him."
"And if they demand the phylactery?" Entreri asked again.
"They need not know—"
"They already know! They are dragons. They have lived in this region for centuries. They remember well the time of Zhengyi—perhaps they even fought beside him, or against him."
"Presumptions."
"They are dragons," Entreri said yet again. "Why do you not seem to understand that? You live through manipulation—never have I seen anyone better at playing the emotions of those around him. But these are dragons. They are not serving wenches or even human kings or queens. You play with a force you do not understand."
"I have played with greater, and won."
Entreri shook his head, certain then that they were doomed.
"Ever the worrier," said Jarlaxle. He had just hung his cloak on a hook, but took it back. "I will settle this, and calm your churning gut. Tazmikella and Ilnezhara are dragons—yes, my friend, I understand this—but they are copper dragons. Formidable in battle, of course, but not so much in the realm of the mind."
"You forget how they enlisted us in the first place," said Entreri.
Indeed, the dragon sisters had created an elaborate ruse to entwine the pair and to determine their intentions. Tazmikella had hired them, secretly and from afar, and when they had discovered the riddle of the woman—not that she was a dragon, but merely that she was the one who had hired them to acquire a certain candlestick—she had created a second ruse, claiming that Ilnezhara was her bitter and hated rival and that the woman was in possession of something that rightfully belonged to Tazmikella: Idalia's flute, the same magical instrument that had later been given to Entreri.
But the deception hadn't ended there, with a simple theft, for during that attempted robbery, Entreri and Jarlaxle had been shown the awful truth of Ilnezhara, revealed to them in her dragon form. Then she had wound a third level of intrigue, and yet another secret test, offering them their lives only on condition that they return to their former employer, Tazmikella, and kill her.
By any measure, even that of Entreri and Jarlaxle, the dragon sisters had played them for fools, and repeatedly.
Jarlaxle shrugged at the painful reminder and admitted, "A decent enough game they played, but one, no doubt, they had spent years perfecting. In Menzoberranzan, a ruse within a ruse within a ruse is an everyday affair, and usually spontaneously generated."
"And yet you were tripped up by theirs."
"Only because I did not expect—"
"You underestimated them."
"Because I believed them to be humans, of course, and it would be hard to underestimate a human."
"I am truly glad you feel that way."
Jarlaxle laughed. "I know they are dragons now."
"This woman you take as a lover," Entreri added dryly.
That gave Jarlaxle pause. "Because I love you as a brother, I pray that you will one day fathom the truth of it all, my friend."
"They're dragons," Entreri muttered. "And I know how drow love their brothers."
Jarlaxle sighed at his friend's unrelenting ignorance, then offered a salute embedded in a resigned sigh and slung his cloak over his shoulders. "I will return after sunset. Perhaps you would do well to run back to Vaasa and the castle and retrieve the statuette. And if you do, pray use the powers of white or blue. The fiery breath of a red dragon would not be wisely placed over our door—too much wood, of course."
The drow found his «employers» at Ilnezhara's tower. They always met there, rather than at the modest abode of Tazmikella. Perhaps that was an indication of Ilnezhara's haughtiness, her refusal to lower herself and venture to the hovel. Jarlaxle, of course, saw it a bit differently. Tazmikella's willingness to go to Ilnezhara's fabulous abode betrayed her true feelings, he believed. She pretended to care little for the niceties, but as with so many others who did likewise, it was a deception—a self-deception. So many people derided the materialistic tendencies of dragons, drow, humans, and dwarves… claiming that their own hearts were purer, their own designs more lofty and important, when in truth, they were merely deriding that which they believed they could not attain. Or if they could attain such things, they still used their «lofty» aspirations in the same manner the wealthy merchant used his gilded coach: to elevate themselves above other people.
That personal elevation was the true occupation of rational beings, even long-living creatures such as dragons.
"It was as we expected," Ilnezhara remarked after the initial greetings.
That it was she who had initiated the conversation and not the more typically forthcoming Tazmikella revealed the anxiety felt by both of the sisters.
"Your predictions that Zhengyi's library had been unearthed seem validated, yes," he answered. "You said there would be more constructs, and alas, that is what we found."
"One to dwarf Herminicle's tower," said Tazmikella, and the drow nodded.
"As a dragon might dwarf a human, in size and in strength," Ilnezhara added.
Jarlaxle didn't miss her point. The sisters knew that Zhengyi had enslaved dragons like Urshula the Black. They understood the magic that had created Herminicle's tower, and they had expected similar magic to reach to greater heights when fueled by a dragon.
So it was.
"The book was destroyed," Ilnezhara added.
"Unfortunately," said the drow.
"By Jarlaxle," the tall copper-haired creature said, and that put Jarlaxle back a step. "Or one like him," she quickly equivocated, "fast with the blade and with the spell."
Jarlaxle started to protest, but Tazmikella cut him short. "I went there," she said. "I ventured into the castle and found the podium in the main keep. I found the remnants of the book of creation, torn and burned."
Jarlaxle started to argue, then to deny, but he smiled instead, dipped a bow of congratulations to the deductive dragon, and said, "It had to be destroyed, of course."
"And the phylactery contained within?" asked Ilnezhara.
Jarlaxle's eyes shifted to take in the delicate creature, his lover, and his hand casually slipped near to the belt pouch on his right hip, wherein he kept a small orb that could blink him away from any threatening situation. Crushing that ceramic orb would throw him through the multiverse—to where, to which plane of existence even, he could not predict.
In that moment, he figured that there were few places in the multiverse more adverse than in the den of a pair of angry dragons.