“Oh, by the way, this is Xuzoun,” Durnan said formally, indicating the eye tyrant with a flourish.
“Ill met,” Mirt growled, struggling to his feet. “Damned ill met.”
Then the faint, everpresent singing that told him his shields yet lived fell silent. Their defense against the beholder’s eyes was gone.
“Gods blast it,” the old moneylender muttered. “To die in Skullport, of all places, and win someone’s wager for them.”
“Keep apart,” Asper said warningly, from off to his right, “lest it take us all down at once.”
“Cheerful advice,” Durnan commented, watching Xuzoun as it turned slowly to survey them all, as yet unaware that no shields remained to foil its magic. “Anyone still have magic to hand?”
“That’ll help us against this? Nay,” Mirt growled, watching death slowly come for them. All it would take now would be for the beast to lash out with one eye, on a whim, and discover they were defenseless.
Xuzoun had sent forth much magic against these humans, and seen it all boil away harmlessly, or come clawing back to harm its hurler. Lords of Waterdeep were tougher than most mortals, it seemed. How to defeat these two—perhaps three, if the woman was one, too—without destroying their bodies?
The only doppleganger whose loyalty Xuzoun had never found wanting was dead, so preservation of these humans— their bodies, at least—more or less intact was important. They foiled all magic with ease, and there seemed no way to overcome their wills. Yet to flee from battle with them now, before a crowd of Skulkans, galled.
The beholder’s advance slowed, then stopped. It rose a prudent distance above the ruin and hung there, considering.
“Right, then, I’m off,” Mirt said heartily, turning to go. ” ‘Tis not beholder-hunting season, anyway, and I’ve business to see to, that I left—”
One of Xuzoun’s eyes flashed, and a stone the size of a gauntleted fist rose from the rubble and flashed toward the old moneylender, flying as hard and as straight as any arrow. These humans might have shields to foil magic, but what if the stone were flying fast enough, and aimed true, when the magic that flung it was stripped away? Turning slowly end over end, the stone shot on…
“Old Wolf—down!” Asper screamed. Mirt had heard that tone from her a time or two before in his life, and flopped to his belly without delay. The stone whistled past close overhead and shattered with a sharp crack against a wall beyond.
Then the beholder was descending, and at the same time a slab of stone the size of a small cart was rising above Durnan. He ducked away but it followed, lowering itself with care, chasing him. The Master of The Yawning Portal spat out a curse and started a sprinting scramble across the rubble. The beholder seemed to smile as it drifted after him.
If the great weight of the stone pinned the running lord without having to strike him down and do harm, he’d be trapped and helpless—a prisoner until Xuzoun was ready to steal his mind and take over his body. If this worked with the one, why there were stones aplenty here, and only two humans more…
Wheezing to his feet and regarding the stone pursuing Durnan with horror, Mirt was startled by a loud rattling of rocks behind him. He lurched around with a snarl—was one of those watching gamblers trying to change the odds?—and found himself staring at a scaly blue monster that looked like a huge and sinuous crocodile, its head rearing up to regard him as it raced over the broken rubble on a small forest of fast-churning legs.
A behir—a man-eating lizard-thing that could spit lightning bolts!
“Ah, just what we need!” Mirt snarled despairingly, raising his dagger and knowing what a useless little fang it was against such onrushing death. “Some right bastard of a mage must be toying with us!”
Setting himself as a weary bull lowers its head to face into a fast-scudding storm, the fat old Lord of Waterdeep prepared to fight this new foe. The behir opened its jaws impossibly wide as it came, and Mirt was staring into a maw as large as a spacious doorway, a forked tongue wriggling in its depths in a fascinating dance, that plunged at him more swiftly than any man could run.
Asper screamed out Mirt’s name and sprinted toward him, a small boot-knife in her hand, but she was too distant to do more than watch as the reptile snapped its jaws once, tilted its head toward Mirt to deliver what he could only describe as a wink, and surged past the astonished moneylender to spit lightning into the open mouth of the beholder.
Xuzoun screamed, a high, sobbing wail like too many cries Mirt had heard human women make, and spun away over the ruins, lightnings playing about its body. Its eyestalks jerked and coiled spasmodically, and it was trailing smoke when it struck a leaning pillar and crashed heavily to the ground. The rushing behir was on it in a breath, coiling over its foe as it snapped its jaws and tore away eyestalks in eager, merciless haste. The three humans watched, a little awed, then in unspoken accord came together in the center of the stony devastation to watch the beholder die.
“Is there any hole here small enough that we can get into it and hold off that thing?” Asper asked softly, watching the scaly blue head toss as it tore away beholder flesh.
None of them saw the crystal sphere materialize silently beside the riven eye tyrant for a moment, flickering with the last vestiges of a spell-glow… then silently crumble to dust, which drifted away.
“A few, no doubt,” Durnan replied grimly, watching the carnage, “but none of them would shield us in the slightest from its lightnings.”
Asper sighed a long, shuddering sigh and tossed her head. Her eyes were very bright as she said softly, “I thought so,” and raised her little knife as if it were some great magical long sword.
When the crocodilelike head turned from its feasting, it saw the little knife, Mirt’s dagger beside it, and the similar dagger Durnan held ready, and its eyes flashed golden with amusement. Its maw opened and a hissing roar came out.
The great jaws worked and rippled with effort, and for a moment Asper thought it was trying to speak. Then it tossed its head in disgust, drew in a deep breath, and tried again, turning its eyes on Mirt. They all heard its rattling roar quite distinctly: “Thank TYanstraaaa…”
Then it lowered its head, folded its legs against its body, and slithered away. They watched it wind its snakelike way out of the ruins into the street beyond, where the audience of surviving gamblers shrank back to make way for it, and vanish around a corner—Spidersilk Lane, Durnan thought—and leave them alone with a torn-open, quite dead beholder.
“I wonder what she’ll ask you in payment?” Durnan asked the Old Wolf.
Mirt growled a wordless reply, shrugged, then turned to his lady as if seeing her for the first time. “Hello, little fruit-basket,” he leered, extending his lips in a chimplike pout to be kissed.
Slowly, Asper stuck her tongue out in eloquent reply, and made the spitting-to-the-side mime that young Waterdhavian ladies use to signal disgust or emphatic disapproval.
Then she winked and grinned.
Mirt started to grin back, but it faded quickly as he saw the danger signal of Asper’s eyebrows rising, and the accompanying glitter in the dark eyes boring into him. A moment later she asked softly, “Just who is this ‘Transtraaaa’ woman, anyway?”
Mirt gave her a sour look. “Pull in the claws, little one. She’s no woman, but a lamia noble.”
It was the turn of Durnan’s eyebrows to rise. “Slave-trading, Mirt?”
The fat moneylender gave him a disgusted look and turned to start the long trudge back up the alley. “Ye know me better than that,” he rumbled. “Slaving’s work for those who’ve no scruples, less sense, and too much wealth. Nobles, for instance.”
Durnan groaned. “Let’s not start that one again. We rooted out all we could find and Khel set spy-spells. There’ll always be a few dabblers, no doubt, but nothing we can’t handle—”