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 stairs, though, but the picked-clean skeleton of a coiling dragon neck. The head lay upside down where the desk had been, and from it curved yellowed vertebrae up to a ledge of stone, where the half-rotted corpse of the great wyrm lay. The belly of the beast had been slit lengthwise, and the green scales flayed back from the midline to expose the layered rotting matrix of dragon organs.

Xantrithicus. She'd gutted her own husband to get the Dragon's Pearl from his stomach, then turned his corpse into an inn for the wealthy and powerful. I could not have known it from where I stood, but something told me in that moment I had, indeed, slept last night in a dragon's heart.

She'd done it all for the Dragon's Pearl. The Dragon's Pearl!

"Come on," I shouted, and motioned for Filson to follow.

Not a moment too soon. The profound thunder of the dragon's clawed feet came upon the cave floor like cannon-shot against a wall. The kid and I pelted toward the descending cave that led to the vault and the pearl, though with the rumble and rattle beneath our feet, each step forward was shortened by a half jolt back. *Tou can't escape me, Bolton Quaid!" raged the dragon. I derived some small satisfaction from the raw sound of her voice. The log had more than done its work. "You can't escape this place without magic."

I planned on getting myself a little magic-sooner rather than later. We'd reached the descending shaft and just started down it when that great coiling neck of the dragon shot forth, the mouth opening wide like another cavern of stalactites. Her muzzle smashed against the opening.

I dived down the sharp slope, but Filson wasn't with me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that my stouthearted partner had glory instead of survival in mind. He leapt the other way, landing in the dragon's mouth. Scrambling up the creature's forked tongue, he brandished his little shiv as though it were a great sword. The tiny knife bit into the red roof of the dragon's mouth, and though it sunk to its handle, the wyrm could not have felt more than the smallest pinprick.

Surely, Filson would die for his courage.

And he would have, had the dragon bitten down on him instead of venting a great gust of poison gas from her lungs. The sneezelike blast blew Filson, shivless, off the creature's tongue and out of its mouth, flinging him into me, where I had landed in a crouch and was preparing to rush for the vault door. Stuck together by the wind, we were hurled down the passage to strike the very door I sought.

In the face of that gale, it was tough to grasp the lock. It was tougher to do so without gasping to inhale breath, which would have been instantly deadly. But I succeeded, spinning the thing, rushing through the combination I'd memorized when Olivia opened the lock.

The poison blast spent itself, and the combination was done. Still without breathing, I yanked the vault door open and dashed to the side.

There came a dragon scream from up the passage, just as I had hoped, and a huge forearm thrust its way down toward the revealed pearl. My hundred traps went off beautifully, with a sound like a thousand mosquitoes taking flight. Even the circular deadfall block came down to crush the dragon's claw, in the process cracking and peeling away my three iron boxes like layers of skin from an onion.

But it would take more than that to stop her. I clambered over her twitching wrist and onto the deadfall, finally took a breath of the fresher air, and grabbed the stone.

Touching it was enough. The contact of flesh to gem triggered its magic. The huge green dragon resumed the form of green-eyed Olivia. Her small, hot hand, crushed beneath the stone, caused her to be yanked forward into the vault as her form shrank. Down the stairs she rattled, then slid to a stop just within the doorway. I lunged at her, wanting to kill her in human form-lovely, lovable human form-before she could become a dragon again.

You see, I'd forgotten about the shiv.

She did not move. The small knife had been more than large enough to kill her, forced up through her human palette and into her brain. When I pulled her head up and back by her silken black hair, the blood gushing from her mouth told the story. The blood, and those lifeless green eyes.

Companionship. I knew it then. That was the one other hook for this wyrm. She'd killed her mate for the pearl, and then used the pearl to gain back all she'd lost- wealth, power, status, and companionship. Perhaps that's where a six-foot-three street rat from Waterdeep came in.

The poison gas was gone from the air, and I gasped a breath when I saw those emerald eyes.

So did my new partner. -•- •

The magic resumed a moment later, with explosive results, since the corpse of the dragon couldn't fit in that tiny vault. Luckily, Filson and I had expected as much, and were scampering across the cavern beyond when green chunks of dragon started flying.

We didn't even try to take the Dragon's Pearl with us. We'd had a bellyful of trouble from it, just like old Xantrithicus had. Besides, there was already plenty of false affluence and deceptive beauty in the Dock Ward of Waterdeep.

It wasn't beneath us, however, to make a quick search of the rest of the place, hoping to scrape together enough real wealth among all the bits of glitter and twine to make our troubles worthwhile. We could not. Apparently, the dragon's hoard was nothing more than fantasy built on illusion built on air.

Gone were the riches, and gone too the wretches, fled to whatever icy refuges they could find when the dragon first appeared. Most would likely die out there. I feared we would, too.

About then, I heard the greatest sound in the world- the impatient champ and whinny of a very real winged horse. Apparently, even the pearl's illusory magic could not have reached to Waterdeep, so the lady had had to send the genuine article. I tipped my hat to what was left of her corpse, thanking her for inadvertently showing me you get what you pay for.

With my new associate mounted on the stallion behind me, I urged the pegasus toward the bright, snowy daylight, and from there up into the bracing sky.

To Waterdeep," I told the creature, patting it fondly on the shoulder. "The Dock Ward. I'd like to see some genuine squalor for a change."