Durnan saw Mirt and Asper often, but Randal Morn was off fighting in the distant hold of Daggerdale, to keep his rightful rule over that fair land. And the ranger, Florin Falconhand, who'd stood in for Asper on a foray or three, was a Knight of Myth Drannor these days, and seldom seen on the Sword Coast. There were even whispers that he'd spent time in Evermeet recently.

Durnan was still recalling splendid victories the Four had shared when sudden motes of magelight welled up all around him in the empty passage. He'd just time to feel disgusted-taken by sorcery again?- when his world was overwhelmed with whirling lights, and there was nothing under his boots anymore…

"Beshaba's kiss!" he swore disgustedly. The tavern-master knew a teleport was whisking him away to somewhere worse.

They always took you somewhere worse…

Transtra stood in a room that few in Skullport knew was her own, eyes narrow and face frowning. Old Mirt's ring had spoken, and that meant one of the Four had called on him for aid. And when the Four called, it always meant trouble for someone-and sooner or later, if that fat old merchant didn't lose some weight and gain some prudence in trade for it, the recipient of the trouble was going to be him. Perhaps on an occasion sooner than he expected… such as this one.

The lamia stirred into sudden life, tossing her flame-red hair so that it cascaded down her back like languid fire, and glided across the tiles like a gigantic, upright snake. The soft, ever-shifting spell lights she loved dappled her gleaming flesh in a pattern that made her slave-a thin and dirty human male cowering on his knees in a corner of the room-swallow and turn his eyes swiftly away. Transtra was apt to be cruel when his more lusty thoughts became apparent… and her cruelty often reached its climax in enthusiastic floggings with well-salted whips. The slave shivered involuntarily at the memories of his last one.

The dry slithering of her scales on the tiles drew closer, and then stopped. The man kept his gaze on the corner, trying not to tremble as cold fear rose in his throat, and he wondered just what she might do this time. "Torthan," she said, almost gently, "get up and go do a thing for me."

Torthan reluctantly raised his eyes to meet hers. "Great lady?"

"Open the gate that brings Ulisss, and then go to your room," Transtra told him.

As he hastened obediently away, Torthan could hear her muttering the first words of one of the web of spells she used to lay unshakable commands on the behir.

When the twelve-legged serpent thing glided with deadly speed into the room, raised its horned head, and gaped its jaws at her, Transtra faced it with both of her hands held over her head, spell flames circling them.

Ulisss lowered its head in a gesture of submission and sighed in disgust. One day it would catch its cruel mistress in a moment of weakness and slay her… but not this day.

Transtra let the fires rage up and down her arms as she slithered up to the huge serpent and embraced its head as if it were a pet, stroking it behind its horns just where Ulisss best loved her touch.

Under her caress, warily tense muscles relaxed with a quivering surge, and iron-hard scales slowly, reluctantly, began to rub against her as the monster purred. Transtra let a spell image of Mirt flow into the slow, dim mind of Ulisss, and said softly, "Hearken, oh scaly beloved, for I have a task for thee. Follow this man- aye, his girth is amusingly enormous-and…"

As she whispered on, the behir's eyes grew brighter and more golden with wicked hunger and excitement- and when she released it, it slithered off on its mission with eager haste.

Transtra swayed upright, folded her arms across her breasts, and watched it go. Though there was a dangerous glitter in her eyes, the smile that crept slowly onto her face was catlike in its anticipation.

She readied the spell that would let her watch both Mirt and Ulisss and spy on what befell from afar, and her tongue curled out between her lips in private mirth. The possible loss of a business associate was a small price to pay for the grand entertainment to come.

"What can go wrong? The plan is perfect," Iraeghlee said testily, its mouth-tentacles whipping and curling in irritation.

"You're not the first being down the centuries to say those words," Yloebre remarked dryly, twirling the slim glass of duiruin in its fingers so that the luminous golden bubbles deep in the black wine winked and sparkled. The illithid leaned toward its compatriot. "Any number of things can go awry."

"Such as?" Iraeghlee challenged. "Not even the Merciless Ones Beneath Anauroch know of our whisperer. The beholder's no fool, and yet has no inkling of its presence… or, thus, our influence."

"That may be so only because we've not awakened any control over it yet," Yloebre told the depths of the glass it held. The small worms there curled and uncurled in their endless undead dance, which kept the oily black wine from thickening into a syrup.

"Do you doubt my skill?" Iraeghlee spat, leaning forward in its chair with a hissing of rippling silk sleeves. "It ate the whisperer, which in turn ate its way into what little Xuzoun has of the paltry things eye tyrants are pleased to call their brains! I felt it take in beholder blood, and grow! I felt it through the linkage my magic made-a link I can make anew whenever I desire! Do you doubt me, younger one? Do you truly dare?"

"Untwist thy tentacles and hiss less loudly," Yloebre responded calmly, sipping more wine. "I doubt nothing as to your ability to establish control over the eye tyrant-only as to our shared ability to escape the notice of the powers hereabouts. The whisperer is a brain node, linked to you by magic… and the Place of Skulls above us, and the city above that, seem to be fairly crawling with wizards and priests able to see magic use, and themselves governed-nay, driven-by that appalling human fault known as 'curiosity.' What is to keep us from coming under attack within a breath or two of your crushing Xuzoun's will?"

Iraeghlee's mauve skin was almost black with anger. Its voice quivered with rage and menace as it said slowly, "Hear this, feeblewits, and let one hearing be enough: no drow nor human, from matron mothers to archmages, can detect our whisperer, or us while we remain here."

Yloebre glanced at the stone walls around them, adorned by a single glow-shift sculpture that chimed softly from time to time as its shape altered. The chamber they sat in held only their floating chairs, several floating tables (including the palely glowing one between them), and the fluted and many-hued array of flasks and glasses that its current sample had come from. Unseen runes of power crawled and twisted on the undersides of the tables, awaiting a call to life from either illithid, but there were no other defenses save what they could personally cast or wield.

Not that such things were likely to be needed. They were six shifts away from a cesspool under the gambling house known as the Blushing Bride's Burial Pit, in southern Skullport-a chain of trapped teleports that should be long enough to fool or slay even the most persistent and powerful of nosy wizards.

It was at about that moment that the table between them grew two dark, grave eyes-and exploded into blazing shards that hurled both mind flayers, broken and sizzling, against the walls of their hideaway.

The last words Yloebre ever heard, as it struggled against searing, rising red pain, was a man's voice saying disgustedly, "Stupid illithids. Must they always meddle?"

The crushed, half-melted bodies of the mind flayers slid like slime down the walls of the chamber, neither of them survived long enough to see Halaster Black-cloak's eyes blast their tables and flasks to dancing sparks and flying dust.

When his gaze had roved about the entire chamber and he sensed no other mind-signatures on the whisperer in the beholder's distant brain, the wizard sighed and turned to pass through the teleport once more… only to pause and glare with renewed energy at the chiming glow-shift sculpture.