'Lady, I do,' Durnan said. 'By blood and my last coin I bind myself.'
'Lady, I do,' Mirt echoed, hard after his friend's words. 'By blood an' my last coin I bind myself.' And he added less formally, 'Though 'twould help if we at least knew thy friend's name.'
'Raumorth, he's called,' the Keeper of Secrets said swiftly, as the Watch thundered down upon them in a thunder of running boots, clanging blades, and angry shouts. 'I accept your bindings.'
'And where is Raumorth?' Durnan asked urgently.
'Right behind you,' Taunamorla hissed.
The two friends whirled around-to meet the cold smile of a man they'd seen before: the tall, cloaked man who'd been walking toward them as they'd questioned the Keeper near the ruins of her shop. His hands were raised-as if he'd been ready to blast Mirt and Durnan down. Not far beyond him was a running pack of armored men: a great mustering of the Watch.
'I'm a mage from Tethyr.' Raumorth's voice was deep and rich. 'You don't know me well, but you've befriended me-a trader and traveling investor who's visited Waterdeep once a season or so, for years.'
'Of course,' Durnan agreed, smiling at the man and stepping casually past him so that the foremost Watch officer's sword no longer had a clear path to Raumorth's back.
'Way! Make way! Stand aside, man!' that onrushing Watchman bellowed.
Mirt and Raumorth winked at each other-and obediently stepped back, Durnan with them, the three men parting like windblown leaves to leave the Watch a clear path to charge at… the Keeper of Secrets.
Who suddenly looked bewildered and flustered, as she squeaked, 'Ohh! The Watch! The Watch!'
'Stand! Stand all, in silence! Down all arms!' a deeper, grander voice commanded.
'My arms don't come off,' Mirt explained innocently, 'but I am standing.'
By then the Watch had surrounded the four, and tense silence was falling. The officer who'd spoken glared coldly at the fat moneylender.
'I know you, Mirt.'
'Yes,' Mirt agreed with a broad smile. 'As I recall, ye owe me eleven dragons, four shards-unless ye're late paying me by highsun tomorrow, whereupon-'
'Enough' barked the Watch commander. 'Now keep silence for a moment or so.' He turned his head deliberately to gaze at Durnan. 'You're also known to me, Durnan of the Yawning Portal, in Castle Ward.'
'At your service.'
'Undoubtedly. However, these two with you….Good lady, you were seen outside a certain shop this night, and stand under the suspicion of the Watch. Your name, citizenry, and trade.'
The answer was a tremulous, 'Taunamorla Esmurla, a scribe, formerly of Amn but now of Waterdeep. I–I've done nothing wrong!'
'And I,' said Raumorth firmly, 'am a trader from Tethyr, arrived in Waterdeep just this day, who stopped to talk with Mirt and Durnan, whom I've done business with in earlier visits down the years, and regard as friends. I've no intention of doing anything that merits pointing so many loaded crossbows at me, Watchmen, and I'd appreciate it if you'd lower them '
The crossbows wavered not a fingerbreadth, and the Watch commander scowled.
'You were seen outside that same shop,' he snarled, 'and were observed to change into the shape of a great dragon-'
'A fang dragon, sir,' one of the other Watch officers murmured.
'A fang dragon, indeed,' the commander continued, 'and in that form did spell-battle with officers of the Watch, including wizards acting in defense of this city and its peace and safe order. Wherefore I arres-'
'Hoy, hoy, hoy now!' Mirt protested. 'Raumorth here's been with us for… well, since we all left Taunamorla's shop together. That was some time back, as we've not been walking all that swiftly, and-'
'Yes,' Durnan said firmly, looking at the Watch commander. 'I'd take it very poorly if my word was set aside, here on the street, before all the watching city. Raumorth here's been walking with us. If he can somehow be in two places at once, changing into dragons and hurling spells all over the place, then he's a mightier mage than any I've ever heard of! Why don't we all go to Blackstaff Tower, right now, and you can ask them if such a thing's even possible. Raumorth's been walking at my side, alive and solid-I know, because I clapped him on the arm more than once!'
'Ohhh,' Taunamorla gasped, going pale, 'do you mean … a dragon, lots of spells … is my shop all right?'
The Watch commander blinked and asked, 'What shop is yours, lady? I don't recall seeing a quill signboard anywhere near the…'
'I,' Taunamorla Esmurla said, 'am better known in Waterdeep as the Keeper of Secrets.'
'What? Don't move…'
Several Watchmen shouted at once, and a crossbow fired, its quarrel humming off into the night sky.
Quietly and without any fuss, six hulking dragons had faded into view behind Taunamorla. There wasn't quite enough room in the street for the two at either end of the sudden great mountain of scaled flesh. Signboards and balcony railings shattered and fell like tossed kindling.
Raumorth made a swift, intricate gesture, and Mirt and Durnan felt their skin tingling. Then the mage clapped his hands to their forearms and towed them toward the nearest alley mouth, scant moments before Watch halberds stabbed through-their own immobile images, that still stood in a cluster facing the raging Watch commander.
Who, like all the other Watchmen, didn't seem to notice the four as they fled into the alley together. That may have been because of Raumorth's spell-or it may have had something to do with six dragons lowering their great horned heads, opening their jaws, and reaching forward long-taloned claws like gigantic cats. Or it might just have been because most of the Watch were fleeing down the street as fast as their hobnailed boots could take them.
In a dark, stinking corner where two alleys met, Raumorth raised a hand that crackled with ready magic.
'This,' he said quietly, 'will be where we part, men of Waterdeep: It's best if-'
'No, Raumorth,' Taunamorla said. 'I made a formal pact with these two.'
'Lady! We-'
'Are as bad as the humans we revile if we cleave to their habits, casting aside our promises like empty chatter,' she said in a voice that was suddenly steel edged with ice.
Raumorth bowed and said, 'Truth … yet this is a mistake. Pothoc ukris!'
'Perhaps. Yet consider this: once they know the truth about me, how will it profit them-save to force a little prudence on them? Who would believe them if they spread the tale?'
Raumorth's eyes glimmered like golden flames as he said, 'There's something in that… yet it would take only one curious wizard deciding to seek the truth behind their words-'
'And when they know something of our numbers, they'll know that no mage could strike us all down at once. And it would only take one of us, knowing who must have told the wizard, to hunt them down and end their lives slowly and horribly, terrified beyond reason and with limbs torn from them at leisure.'
Mirt shivered at the calmness in her voice, and the Keeper of Secrets smiled at him as tenderly as a doting aunt.
'Yet none of this unpleasantness need happen. Raumorth, a shielding against all prying?'
The man who was more than a mage from Tethyr cast a swift, deft spell, and announced-as something like smoke turned solid and fell around them in a sudden, unbroken cloud-'Done.'
'This is for your ears alone, Mirt and Durnan,' Taunamorla murmured, 'and is not to reach your tongues. I am what humans like to call a song dragon, and I came to Waterdeep over twenty summers ago, summoned by elders of my kin, to … manage a problem here. I've been here ever since.'
'A problem involving other dragons,' Mirt rumbled, waving a hand at Raumorth. 'Lots of other dragons.'
The Keeper nodded.
'What problem?'
'Many dragons like to dwell among humans-and not only because your kind can serve as ready food, or as a source of wealth for us to seize and hoard. Some wyrms come to love your energy, your restlessness, your clever strivings…'
'The free entertainment we provide,' Mirt grunted. Taunamorla smiled wryly and said, 'Bluntly said, but
