Silverfall: Stories of the Seven Sisters

severed ends recoiling into the deepest shadows. She waved cheerfully at a cowled form emerging hastily from a lightless doorway. It came to an abrupt, uncertain halt, failing to follow as they turned down a side-stair into a lower way. There mobile, refuse-eating fluttercap mush shy;rooms stood like a quivering, ankle-deep carpet.

'Loudly idiotic, empty-headed parodies of the most brainless of our young nobility,' Laeral explained. ' 'Prat' because they're there to make all the stupidest pratfalls, and 'dandy' because of their lampooning-all-overblown- fashions appearances.'

'Dare I ask about a play that bears the title The Elf Queen's Peculiar Pleasure?' the drow priestess asked mildly, stepping around a hobgoblin who stood like a small mountain in the center of the street. His eyes were narrow with menace, and his axe was dripping fresh gore, but he did no more than rumble half-heard profanities at the sisters as they slipped past.

Laeral winced. 'You may, of course, dare anything you desire, sister, but be aware that a fat, hairy male actor made up to look like a half-orc plays the Elf Queen, and that … er … 'her' peculiar pleasure is to steal and devour sweets from Waterdhavian noble matrons … all of whom are portrayed by heavily stubbled male actors interested in the very coarsest form of heavy handed, simpering, 'ooh and ah' clowning. The title may suggest illicit, steamy matters, but the play delivers the oldest groaning jests with a leering enthusiasm.'

Qilue looked at her sister with some amusement. 'Borrowing opinions, Lady Mage? That last sentence came straight from One-Eyed Jack's review in the last Waterdeep Watch broadsheet.'

'And whom did you think One-Eyed Jack was, hmm?' Laeral replied sweetly. 'One of my favorite guises. After all, some of our worst playwrights have openly offered blood bounties to anyone who can bring them Jack's head on a platter.'

'A Chosen has to take pride in something,' the drow priestess agreed, wrinkling her nose. Her eyes danced, and she added, 'Perhaps I'll take up acting-or writing plays. Yes. Ho, now. . Death And The Wanton Wizard. That has a ring to it.'

'Qilue,' her sister said warningly, 'don't start.'

One eyebrow crooked in reply. 'Start? I never stop.' Her face changed and she purred, 'Have some fire ready, sister.'

A moment later, the tangleweb net settled down softly over them. Laeral's magic sent it melting away amid plumes of thick green and purple smoke. Some shy;where out of its roiling the severed end of a catwalk plunged down like a giant's mace, smashed the Lady Mage of Waterdeep off her feet and solidly against the nearest wall, and withdrew in splintered disarray.

Laeral peeled herself off the bloody stone with her own gore streaming out of her nose and down one side of her face, and a stormy glint in her eyes. Another tangleweb net was drifting down onto their heads, and a mauve skinned, glistening figure in purple robes had appeared behind Qilue. One of its tentacles wrapped around her throat, and the other began questing its way up into her face.

The tiny sparkling of a defensive magical field was already gathering around the grotesquely linked couple as Laeral snarled in anger and lifted her hands to rend herself some mind flayer. Then someone opened a shuttered window high above her and emptied a coal scuttle full of old cobblestones onto her head.

When she came reeling dazedly to her feet again, she was in time to see the illithid standing in triumph over a sagging Seventh Sister.

'Qilue,' Laeral cried, calling down lightning out of the air to dance ready on both of her palms, 'shield yourself!'

'There's no need,' the drow priestess replied, twist shy;ing around to face her. Laeral gasped in horror.

A mottled, slime-glistening tentacle had plunged into where Qilue's left eye had been, and was surging inward and upward, pulsing with a horrible hunger.

'Sister?' Laeral hissed, a fire kindling in her eyes to match the dancing dazzlements in her hands. 'Shall I?'

Obsidian lips gasped as their owner winced, shook her head, then said, 'Well, you might deal with the other two. They're heading for you before and behind. This one's linked to them. I can feel the three trading thoughts like hungry little wolves.'

Lightning split the gloom of the subterranean city of Skullport with a sound like a rolling, booming clap of thunder. Two skeletons danced briefly in the dying afterglow before collapsing into ash. The crumbling tendrils of yet another tangleweb net slumped and dangled down on all sides, melting away into smoke, as Laeral turned and snarled, 'Is your hungry little wolf still so eager?'

'I feel like gagging,' Qilue remarked calmly. 'It numbs, and yet it burns. A moment or two more and it'll touch my brain, and-ahhh! Here we go. . '

The drow priestess threw her shoulders back down onto the trodden stones of the street and arched her back, her body quivering with effort. . but its strain shy;ing was nothing compared to the stiffening then frantic squalling spasms of the illithid above her. A glistening mauve hand clawed ineffectually at the air, the stifled echo of a bubbling scream arose, and the mind flayer reeled away, sightless eyes smoking, dead on its feet.

A silver plume of flame arose within the gaping ruin of Qilue's face and snarled around its torn flesh like a buzzing fly. Laeral hissed in concern and lifted her fin shy;gers to trace the intricate gestures of a spell that called on Qilue's unharmed eye to spin itself a new match. She held her kneeling sister's head steady with a hand laced through Qilue's restlessly twisting hair, and looked around in all directions for the approach of fresh danger as the spell did its slow work.

What she saw instead were a lot of spying eyes slid shy;ing back into concealment. In the distant gloom where the fluttercap mushrooms ended and the street turned to join another passage between unwelcoming stone buildings, a drow with a smoky lock of hair stood look shy;ing back over her shoulder at the two sisters.

Ah, Brelma, doubtless deliberately leading us into trap after trap.

The Lady Mage of Waterdeep sent that thought directly to her sister, and Qilue replied aloud, 'Of course-and I appreciate the effort she's going to. Many folks wouldn't have taken all this trouble.' Her voice was more wry than bitter.

Laeral lifted an eyebrow, then sighed. 'There are, however, always the favorite few. .'

Something in her voice made Qilue look up. Her one good eye glanced along the street to where Brelma was hastily ducking around the corner of a building, in time to see a trio of leather-armored men trot out of an alley with wound and cocked crossbows in their hands. They ranged themselves into a line, loaded their weapons, took aim-as noises on all sides of the sisters marked the arrival of many of their fellows-and fired.

The air was full of quarrels as the Lady Mage of Waterdeep thrust Qilue's head to the ground and threw herself flat. The drow priestess turned over as quarrels cracked and rattled on the stones all around her. She opened her mouth to shape a spell. She was still won shy;dering why Laeral hadn't already done so when she saw the reason.

From out of the dark tangle of decaying balconies, laundry lines, and crossing catwalks high above them, an all too familiar shape was descending-a sphere of bony plates split by a wide, crooked, many-toothed mouth that was clearly smiling. A beholder. A wriggling fringe of wormlike eyestalks could be seen around one curve of the body, and above that unfriendly smile, the eye tyrant's large central orb was fixed unwaveringly on the two Chosen. Laeral hissed something in the frantic instant before that eye erupted in the softly racing cone of pale light that consumed and doused all magic it touched.

'Not a very stylish trap,' Qilue snarled, the first cold whispers of fear rising in her. 'Not that it needs to be.' Without magic, they were simply two tall and unarmored targets lying in the midst of a ring of crossbow-men who undoubtedly had daggers in plenty to use when their quarrels were all spent.

A wet thump came from somewhere very near, and Qilue heard her sister gasp.

'Laeral?' she cried, rolling over with no thought for the ring of grim men closing in carefully around them, or the beholder hanging so close above. 'Sister?'

'What was that foolishness I said earlier about find shy;ing out who the lions were?' Laeral asked, her voice tight with pain. A dark, heavy war-quarrel stood out of one of her shoulders, threads of silver smoke stirring away from the wound, and from between the fingers she held pressed against her right flank, tongues of silver flame were licking.

'Laeral!' Qilue gasped, crawling hastily forward. 'Lie still, and let me. .'

'Die right beside her,' one of the crossbowmen said coldly.

Qilue looked up to find a ring of ready bows aimed at her head. There were a dozen or more, even with most