alone.'
'Well, some folk never learn that lesson,' the cold voice pointed out, setting the goblet carefully down again. It was empty. Goblets were always too small, these days.
After the third turning, Laeral took Qilue's wrist and steered her off into an alcove that had once been some shy;one's cellar. They were both breathing heavily, but the bowmen ahead of them were panting and staggering.
'Time for a spell,' the Lady Mage gasped.
'Invisibility?'
Laeral wrinkled her nose. 'Ah, you guessed.'
'Sister,' Qilue said severely, 'have we time? I don't want to lose them. They know their way; they go in haste, and the leader seldom flashes his glowstone.'
Laeral nodded, murmured an invisibility spell in deft and elegant haste, touched Qilue, then tugged her back out into the passage.
'You run ahead,' the Lady Mage gasped as they picked up speed again, 'and I'll do myself when I get the chance. We'll still be able to see each other with this enchantment. I've a fair idea where they're headed, anyway, and they're winded. They'll have to stop soon, or collapse.'
'They're not the only ones,' Qilue gasped back, then squeezed her sister's arm affectionately and let go, sprinting ahead into the darkness.
'Holy Mystra forfend,' Laeral puffed, watching the youngest of the Seven Sisters vanish into the gloom like a black arrow. 'I'm getting too old for this.'
She whirled around, half-expecting to hear Mirt's sarcastic rumble coming out of the darkness to tell her she wasn't the only one, but the darkness remained silent. The Lady Mage of Waterdeep looked down at the scorched remnants of her clothing, decided that was just as well, and started running. By the time she reached the first bend in the passage, she decided she wasn't too tardy an arrow herself.
The bowmen staggered to a halt, groaning, and swiped sweat from their eyes with their forearms. One held out a glowstone and felt for the chain at his throat as the other turned his back and drew a dagger, staring warily all around.
The darkness remained empty and still, filled with the rasp of their own hard breathing and the usual reek of the nearby sewers. With a sigh of relief the man with the glowstone thrust the long-barreled key on the end of his chain into a crack between two uneven wall stones, and turned it. There was a gentle grating sound, and the man pulled on the key. It brought a smallish stone block out of the wall with it, into his waiting palm. The bowman reached into the cavity the stone had filled, drew out the mummified husk of a spider, and let it drift down to the passage floor as he reached farther into the hole, turned something, then set his shoulder against the wall. It growled once, then with a low, reluctant grating sound, yielded inward, revealing itself to be a short, wide door.
The man with the dagger took the glowstone with a snarled, 'Hurry!' The bowman with the key slipped through the opened door, struck alight a lantern hanging just inside, then shoved the door closed from within.
The remaining bowman replaced spider and block with barely concealed impatience then shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to another, his eyes on the passage from whence they'd come. 'Hurry, damn you!' he growled, glaring up at the wall above the door. As if it had heard him, a row of stones there slid inward in unison, dropping away to reveal an opening along the ceiling of the passage that would admit a crawling man. A rope appeared through this gap and descended, the key on its neck chain tinkling at the end of it. The bowman sheathed his dagger, locked the stone block, then clambered up the wall in almost feverish haste, the glowstone in his teeth.
He was still rolling through the gap in the ceiling when something invisible came sprinting out of the gloom. Unseen hands drew a dagger whose blade was as slender as a needle and as dull and black as tar, set it on the floor pointing to the wall exactly under one end of the open gap, then-as the stones grated hastily back into place- hurried back the way it had come.
Once she'd gone far enough to regain her breath without her panting being heard from the opening she'd found, Qilue sat down against the wall and waited until the Lady Mage of Waterdeep came up to her in the darkness.
'Your favorite stretch of wall?'
'The same,' the drow priestess replied with a grin, and slapped Laeral's behind affectionately as she rose. Ah, but it'd felt good to be a freebooting adventurer for a few days, she thought. I am going to miss this.
'Was that a victory pat and you're going to show me two bodies,' Laeral asked, 'or-?'
'I'm going to show you my dagger in a moment,' Qilue said tersely. 'Now find and keep silence-for once-and come. Bring a wraithform spell, if you've got one … or one of those blast-everything-to-the-gods spells if you don't.'
'I can provide either,' Laeral murmured into her younger sister's ear as Qilue took hold of her wrist and led her forward.
With catlike stealth the two Chosen went to where Qilue's dagger lay. The priestess indicated the size and edges of the ceiling opening with her hands, then touched the Lady Mage to send the silent thought;
Laeral sighed soundlessly.
Laeral nodded, cast the spell on herself, then seemed to flow into the wall.
Qilue listened intently for a long time, then let out her own long, soundless sigh, leaned back against the cold, rough stones of the passage wall, and let herself sag wearily.
Steeling herself against the stench of the sewers, she settled herself into another silent wait. This one was less patient than the last. She found herself hoping that handsome young Harper would turn up again. Yes, she was going to miss this very much.
The cellar was large, damp, and equipped with bells on the wall that could send signals up metal rods to places above. Laeral kept to its darkest corner as the two bowmen looked gloomily at those bells then at the adjacent stone door. The two agreed grimly that they'd wait until morning to give a report that was going to be received with rage. They went on a quick search for rats among the pile of empty crates that filled one end of the cellar. Finding none, the bowmen set their lantern on the floor to burn itself out, and took two of the rough rope mattresses slung along one wall. Once they'd settled uneasily off to sleep, Laeral drifted silently around the cellar, inspecting the other things it held. Among the items there were a long coffle bar with manacles, rows of body irons hung on a wall, and two casks that-if several small, dried puddles could be trusted-held the rich, dark, drugged wine known as 'slavesleep.'
Well, it wasn't exactly trumpet blaring news that the owner of this particular cellar was slave-dealing. Laeral wondered briefly just how many cellars, in the labyrinth of underways beneath the streets and houses of Waterdeep, held similar incriminating items. Or worse, like the one that had been found knee-deep in bodies drowned in brandy to keep down the smell, or the monster-fighting pit under Cat Alley, or …
Why drow, though? And why Mrilla Malsander? The reach was too needlessly broad and bold for just kid shy;napping and slaving. This was something bigger …
Not that these two would know anything of use, even if she'd been carrying the right magic to get it out of them.
One of the men muttered something unintelligible but fearful in his slumber. The Lady Mage of Waterdeep drifted over to stand above him, frowning thoughtfully down. She blew him a kiss and slipped back to the passage wall like a silent shadow, vanish shy;ing through it a scant instant before the other bowman sat bolt upright, quivering in fear, and tried to tell himself that there'd been no gliding ghost in the cellar beyond the phantoms conjured by his imag shy;ination. It took him longer than usual to convince himself that everything was all right.
Laeral melted back out of the wall, murmured a word that made her solid again, and touched a dark, bare
