Namra turned to lick his chest as if in play, and mur shy;mured, "Soon, this?"
Standing stiffly immobile under her tongue, Inder growled, "As soon as I can get back to them and take the goblets without seeming forward or unusual."
"Count on me," Namra purred, stepping away from her false husband. Several self-important voices died away momentarily among the grandly talking mer shy;chants as their owners turned to watch the buxom, emerald adorned woman strut to a pillar of sweets.
On her way back from the pillar to take up a fresh tallglass of firewine from the sideboard, Namra Dunseltree seemed to develop an itch. When a few frown shy;ing, surreptitious clawings had no apparent effect, she practically tore open the front of her gown to get at her breastbone, hiking the emeralds-and the gown they were attached to-this way and that. She didn't have to look up to know that her audience was steadily increasing, and her downcast eyes also let her see Inder's passing boot, on his way back to Halonder and Iyrevven Eldeglut with the drugged wine.
"Can I help, m'lady?" a dealer in southern silks purred at her shoulder. "I could not but help notice your obvious distress."
"Oh?" Namra purred. "Yes, 'dis dress' is a trifle obvi shy;ous, isn't it?"
His sudden shout of laughter drew more eyes. Over his shoulder Namra saw Iyrevven throw back her head to drain her glass, as Inder put out his arm past her to usher her husband Halonder into a side chamber.
Iyrevven's eyes rolled up and she started shaking. Namra turned her head to join in the silk dealer's mirth, but shot another glance at her hostess in time to see Inder's arm snake out from the doorway. He took Iyrevven firmly by the elbow as her glass crashed to the floor, and turned her to follow Halonder.
Now came the moment she'd been waiting for. Namra clasped the delighted silk dealer to her bosom, rocked him as she giggled, and kept a steady watch on the door through which Inder and the two victims had disappeared. The folk who headed for that door now would have to be the two dark elves who'd replace the Eldegluts-and persons at least high enough in the invasion scheme to cast the spells of seizing. If one of them should happen to be Daerdatha, would Namra even recognize her?
And how well would Daerdatha recognize Namra-or the dark elf wearing Namra's skin?
Six. . no, eight dark elves were converging on the door, laughing and talking, but strolling with rather more alacrity than they should have been. Seven strode in. The eighth-a dark-eyed man whose rich shirt was open all down the front to display not only a hairy chest, but a dozen thick, coin-adorned gold chains criss shy;crossing it-spun on his heel to face the wider revelry he'd just left. He darted glances all around the room, looking for folk who might be watching.
Qilue got her eyes down in time, spun away from the silk dealer with a last saucy laugh and the flouncing comment, "M'lord, I'd tarry, but atter your simply must go find my husband."
The silk dealer took that as a compliment, and was still laughing and waving when Namra Dunseltree turned to enter a certain doorway-and found her way blocked by a dozen thick ropes of gold and the hairy chest behind them. She gave its owner a merry smile and said, "My husband, Inder-he went this way, I know he did."
The dark-eyed man simply shook his head, saying nothing.
Namra tried to push past him and he shifted side shy;ways, pinning her against the doorframe. One of Inder's tapestries had been hung in the room beyond, blocking everyone's view of its depths from the door.
"Good sir," Namra said insistently, struggling against the strength that held her pinned, "I must go to my husband. Make way!"
"Forget not your orders," he muttered into her ear. "Now turn around, act merry, and go seek out a drink. Your 'husband' will appear at your side soon enough."
Namra drew back, and he let her go. She paused, a dozen steps from the doorway, and turned to look challengingly back at him. The dark-eyed man's eyes widened as if she'd done something impossible, then narrowed.. then seemed to blaze up into flame.
Something in Qilue's head seemed to stir, then grow warm, and she found the images of the real Namra coming to mind, one after another in a quickening, almost urgent flood: the memories Daerdatha had placed into Anlaervrith's mind. The heat of hostile, roil shy;ing magic was rising swiftly now in Qilue's head, and the images were repeating, in an ever quickening, bewildering stream. The dark-eyed man seemed to be trying to awaken something he could not find, to force her to do something. Were all the disguised drow in Scornubel controlled like puppets?
Well, one at least was not, and now one of those who sought to exercise such control knew it. Qilue turned hastily away, seeking a doorway that would take her out of this throng of revelers. If every one of them could be turned against her, bloodshed-lots of bloodshed-would be inevitable.
Halonder and Iyrevven Eldeglut were doomed to a brutally short slavery of backbreaking work in the hot, dangerous jungles of Chult, but if Qilue defied the many disguised drow here in open battle, scores of folk-both dark elves and unwitting humans-could well be doomed. Yet if she did nothing, doom might be reserved for Qilue Veladorn alone. .
"Hold, Namra!" the dark-eyed man snarled, his voice harsh and loud. Heads turned to look, all over the room, and Qilue saw other heads appear behind the man's shoulder. Crowded together in the doorway, their eyes were cold and alert. One of them whispered some shy;thing Qilue couldn't catch. Men and women in the laughing, chattering height of revelry drew hitherto-concealed knives from under sleeves, out of bodices, and from the side slits of gowns, and plunged them calmly into the throats of those they'd been standing joking with.
"Sweet Mystra," Qilue murmured, hastening toward a window. So these invaders valued human lives as nothing. The gurgling dying behind her must have all been humans of Scornubel, and their slayers the dis shy;guised drow who'd slipped in to take the places of their neighbors, and vanish among them. So open a butchery meant that the leaders of the invasion considered the city already theirs-or cared nothing for the drow who'd become Scornubrians.
The window ahead was an increasingly attractive destination. The doors might all be too distant and too well guarded, but she wasn't so old yet that she couldn't manage a little tumbling.
Behind Qilue, a cold, cruel voice snapped an order in words she did not understand, and there came a thun shy;der of movement as a hundred or more feet began to move in haste, converging on her in what seemed almost a charge.
A dozen or more grim-faced humans-spell-disguised dark elves, no doubt-stood between her and the window. They were moving to block her, ranging them shy;selves carefully to allow her no way past, and to give each other room to fight. Every one of them had a knife of some sort, and at least two held full-sized swords ready in their hands. Dark eyes glittered with hatred. . the eyes of her own kind. Qilue swallowed.
Murmuring words she'd hoped not to have to use, she spun around with a dancer's grace and hurled a spell at the onrushing drow. The stars of Eilistraee were quickly spread everywhere in the room, and an unseen, inex shy;orable force that only worshipers of the Dark Dancer could withstand was hurling her pursuers back, some of them stumbling awkwardly amid the furniture and onto the bodies of those pressed too closely behind them.
Qilue wasted no time in gloating, but spun around again and hissed the words of her next spell at the drow between her and the window. Two of them were almost upon her, stabbing, and it took all of her skill at bobbing and weaving to finish her spell and send forth lightning among them.
Blue-white bolts leaped almost hungrily from her fingertips, and the bodies they darted amongst con shy;vulsed and screamed, arching and dancing helplessly in the crackling air. Here and there between Qilue and the window, humans flickered into their darker true shapes as they convulsed and screamed under the raking pain of her leaping bolts, and the daggers in their hands burst into tiny falling stars of molten metal.