'C'mon, Filson,' I said, gesturing him to follow me. 'This is the point when we go grille the boss.'
The urchin's hands closed over the jewels, and they disappeared into his pockets. I didn't care. Not about his petty larcenyrnor about our explosive emergence out the in-door, which startled back a crew of servers who'd come to check out the commotion. My young charge and I shoved past them, bold and self-righteous, and strode out into the wide dining hall. All around us, patrons chattered nervously, trying to cover a multitude of social blunders caused by the lapse of their magical enhancements. It was no use: they were all about to be embarrassed all over again.
Another lapse. Suddenly, the huge, elegant room was gone, replaced in a flash by a cold, breezy barn backed up against a yawning cave mouth. The tables had become long troughs; the delicacies straw and dung and dirt clods; the guests scabby old hags, grotesquely fat men with rashes around their mouths, acne-pocked wretches, greasy-haired baboons, toad-people covered in oozy boils, haggard and hairy and naked cavemen, filthy-jowled pigs… The menagerie-the best of which belonged in a barn and the worst of which belonged in a priest-sealed grave-chattered on with its same squawking gossip. Now, though, the salacious words and chuckles and winks were animalistic yawps and grunts and scratchings.
It was over, again. I reeled, feeling as delirious as before, though knowing now it was not I but the Stranded Tern that was deluded. I only hoped that the pleasant illusory surroundings would remain in 'place until I found Olivia. I had no desire to stumble through breezy barns and black cave mouths and cold snow and ramshackle shacks. Yes, shacks-I now understood what I was dealing with.
I didn't have to look long for Olivia; I literally ran into her on a blind corner of the soaring great room. Apparently, she had been looking for me. Her lovely face was red, whether with exertion or anger.
'There you are!' she shouted. 'What am I paying you for? Find the culprit!'
I had reached a pique myself, and it felt delicious to indulge it. 'I have. You are the first among many culprits.'
'What?' she barked, enraged.
'Yes, madam. You are serving those guests of yours cow droppings instead of tenderloin, algae instead of caviar, worms instead of noodles. Your hammer-beamed dining hall is a drafty, stinky barn, and your pearlescent great room is a filthy, awful cavern.'
'And whose fault is that?' shrieked Olivia. I'd not expected that tack, and the shock of it shut me up. 'I have promised them the finest accommodations, and that is what I have magically provided. Yes, magically. And cow pies transformed by the pearl are tenderloins. These temporary shortfalls are your problem. The feces laid before my guests are your responsibility.'
I was surprised, yes, but guilty? No. 'So you thought that one magic rock could transform an isolated mountain village of goblins into an opulent spa for the wealthy and powerful…?'
'Until this morning, it had.'
'And thought it powerful enough to warp goblins and cavemen into comely human servants and chefs and maitre d's-?'
'You were convinced it was a hot bath and a silken bed rather than a pus pocket and a rotting slab of meat.'
'Just so that you could lure the most influential creatures of Faerun here. But why? That's the question. What hook does this juicy worm hide? Gold, of course! You've gathered them here to get their real riches in exchange for your false luxuries. Perhaps you're even performing a few casual assassinations for whomever you are leagued with!'
'Are you accusing me of murd-'
'But look who got the last laugh!' I shouted, latching onto her hot little hand and dragging her unceremoniously after me toward the bustling dining hall. 'You didn't lure the rich and powerful folk of Faerun, but only more magical charlatans such as yourself. You've traded grubs and garbage for ore flesh and feces!'
I couldn't have timed it better. As though on cue, the magic failed again, and before my outflung hand, we both saw the filthy, debased, rank, and horrible creatures that sat around troughs and mangers in that barn. Scrofulous magic-users all, whose gold coins were nothing more than transmuted river stones, whose paper notes were merely mildewed leaves, whose august nobility was only a beautiful mask cast over their true tired, warty, awful flesh. Their powerful magics had temporarily made real what was false, and the lie of their lives had shriveled their true selves as full-plate armor shrivels the body inside into white, wrinkled nothing.
'And how dare you act as though the great finder,
Bolton Quaid, has not solved this mystery of yours? The reason your illusion magic is failing is that it is surrounded by more illusion magic. One illusion piled atop another piled atop another makes for a swaying emptiness that must and will fall. It's your worthless guests and their worthless bark and twigs, all dressed up in magic to look like creatures of import, that has made your worthless barns and hovels and caves show for what they truly are-no great pleasure dome of the Thunder Peaks.
'How dare you hire me-me! — thinking a nonmagical dolt from the docks would be too stupid to see through your schemes?'
I was so pleased with having solved the mystery that I'd missed the biggest illusion of all. Literally, the biggest.
She lurked just behind me now. -From the green whiffs of caustic breath, I knew even before I turned what I would see, but still the sight shocked me into trembling numbness.
A great green wyrm. She towered over me in the toothy cavern of her lair. Not Xantrithicus, for this was a she-lizard-but perhaps his mate, Tarith the Green. Her ver-million scales gleamed like ceramic plates across her bunched haunch, which rose easily the height of my head. Above that was the lizard's mighty rib cage, expanding now in an in-drawn breath in preparation to poison me and all the critters clustered fearfully in the barn behind me. Atop that bulging set of ribs were two long and wicked arms, clawing eagerly at the air, and then a mange-scruffed neck, and then a huge red-fleshed set of jowls. The eyes that sat atop that smoldering snout were the same green eyes with which Olivia had so enticed me when I arrived-the same, except for their size, like twin turkey platters.
This time, it was the hook that hid the wyrm.
I knew I was dead. My feet were rooted to the smooth, chill floor of the cavern, and my once-so-proud tongue lay like a dead thing between my clattering teeth. I would not escape. I could not escape. Oh, if I were a lucky man, the magic would return now, so that she would shrink to her human form… but good luck was too much to hope for.
She reared back, lungs full, and the reptilian muscles along her rib cage slid obscenely beneath her scales. I felt the gagging green gas billow, sudden and fierce, over me, burning eyes I'd instinctively shut, and nose and lips, though I held my breath.
No, a guy from the Dock Ward of Waterdeep can't count on good luck. Thankfully, though, he can count on a wily scamp of a partner.
The cloud suddenly ceased, and some of the thin fumes traced backward toward the open maw of the dragon as she gasped for air. I cracked my eyes just enough to see Filson straddling the creature's tail and yanking one plate-sized scale up against the grain. It had to be more surprise than pain that had made the wyrm gasp, but whatever it was, I had my opening.
Snatching a loose timber from the rotting side of the barn, I heaved the thing up toward that sucking gullet. My aim was true, and the decaying wood lodged itself in the creature's throat. Had there been people in the barn behind me instead of filthy, sorcerous subpeople, I might have taken a moment to shout for them to run. As it was, it didn't matter. They were running anyway.
Instead, I repaid Filson by dashing around the struggling bulk of the beast and snatching him from the tail. My feet had just touched ground on the other side of the huge appendage when the beam-bearing mouth of the dragon slammed down where we had just been. Filson was yammering something, but there was no time to listen, no time to think. He had his own legs, and I made him use them as the two of us bolted for the far end of the cavern.
We heard a huge hack and cough behind us, and the rotten timber shot out like a ballista round over our heads to strike the stone wall and obliterate itself there.
'Back to the rooms!' I shouted to Filson, thinking the caverns that held the suites would be too small for the dragon to navigate.
Filson nodded his agreement, and we shot out toward where the stairs should have been. They weren't
