"Was it me?" he said. His voice was even, ironically so coming from a man half dead, sitting in a pool of stinking yellow-green gore. "You were going to kill me, Alashar. For money. Was it me? Or was it him?"

She let her arm drop, more out of exhaustion than any sudden desire not to slice his arrogant head off. "I woke up in your bed, and it could just as easily have been your prison world. Grenway's… whatever it was… was going to swallow you whole. You could have killed me. I could have let him kill you."

"So that makes us even?" he asked. "You can kill me now if you want to."

"That naga thing wasn't Grenway's, was it?"

He shook his head slowly in reply.

"Then Grenway's not the only one who wants you dead?"

He laughed this time, but with a hint of sadness.

"I might kill you later," she said, smiling, "if somebody actually pays me to. But right now, I think we both have a debt to collect."

The look on his face was the same one she'd seen in the demiplane of shadow. And yes, it was admiration.

Only after making absolutely certain the necessary safeguards were in place did Grenway speak the word that drew the big doors to his sitting room open.

Alashar came in slowly, each step deliberate and careful. Her big green eyes surveyed the dusty, cluttered room. The sack in her hand was soaked in blood the color of a human's. Grenway smirked at the thought that the weaver mage who sold it to him had promised it wouldn't do that. The archmage thought he might have to have someone pay the weaver a visit in the morning.

Alashar stopped a few paces from where Grenway was sitting. The archmage sprawled casually on pillows and cushions spread over a thick rug made from the dark brown fur of a cave bear.

"Well, Alashar, dear girl," he said, "what have you got for me today?" His voice was calm because he knew she couldn't kill him. The fact that she didn't have her strange sword didn't even matter. The room itself would protect him.

He forgave the sneer that preceded her flat answer.

"Something that finishes us, Grenway."

He watched every movement of her lithe body as she reached a slender arm into the blood-soaked bag. When she pulled out the head of the archwizard Shadow, Grenway fell into a fit of laughing, coughing, laughing, and coughing until the cushions were sprinkled with spittle and his nose had started to run. His clawlike hands played absentmindedly with the few tufts of white hair hanging in patches to his withered, spotted scalp.

"The gems," Alashar said sternly, and Grenway laughed again.

Even Alashar couldn't react fast enough to dodge the hand that burst out of the floor behind her, trailing an arm the color and texture of the sitting-room floor. It shot up behind her, up over her head, and came down to palm her scalp and continue pulling back. Her neck snapped, the sound echoing sickeningly in the big stone room. The force of it almost ripped her head off her shoulders. Her body fell backward. The hand followed the arm back into the floor and was gone before Alashar's body stopped its death spasms.

Grenway finally stopped coughing. The ancient arch-wizard stood weakly and spared a happy glance at the head on the floor, not bothering to acknowledge the corpse of his own assassin. He turned, whistling a little tune from his youth, and shuffled to the door to his private bedchamber and opened it.

"Good evening," Alashar said.

Grenway stopped and looked up as fast as his brittle neck would allow. They were there, alive, both of them.

The simulacrums…

He opened his mouth to begin an incantation, but no sound came out. Shadow smiled, and Alashar drew her rapier and stepped forward.

Shadows Of The Past

Brian M. Thomsen

The first thing I can remember is the face of an angel, the real-world variety, with an expression of satisfaction that usually follows a night's satiation.

I quickly returned her smile, sat up to kiss her… and immediately felt a thunderous headache that shattered my focus. I quickly blacked out, not conscious even long enough to sense my surroundings.

All I could remember was the face of the angel.

I awoke again much later-at least I thought it was much later, since the room seemed to have been brighter upon my first awakening.

Careful so as not to repeat the outcome of my first endeavor, I allowed my eyes to get accustomed to the ambient light. I slowly scanned as much of my surroundings as I could without moving my head and jarring my obviously bruised brains. I still felt a certain throbbing tenderness in my skull. Ever so slowly, I turned my head to the side.

The woman I first took for an angel was still in the room. She was turned away, her curvaceous figure backlit by an alcoved lantern. She cast a decidedly human shadow on the opposite wall. I could not make out her face. Saving my strength, I waited for her to turn around.

After a few moments, my patience was rewarded.

As she pivoted toward me, I closed my eyes for a bit more than a wink, to give the impression I was only now coming around.

She noticed my optical flutterings. Her footsteps were soft as she crossed the room to come to my side.

"Easy now," she purred. "No sudden moves. We don't want a repeat of your last episode, now do we?"

With more careful maneuvering, I turned my head to face her. I opened my eyes to behold the face of the angel that filled my memory. Our eyes made contact, and a smile came to her lips.

The fog that filled my head began to dissipate, and the scene around me came into focus.

I was lying on a makeshift cot in some storeroom. The angel of loveliness who had first inspired thoughts of ecstasy, passion, and compassion also became clearer. Far from the angelic vision of my dreams, she had the ragged look of a gutter snipe. This is not to say she was hard on the eyes, mind you, only that she was of the common sort one usually found along the docks of Waterdeep.

Waterdeep! I must have been mugged in some Dock Ward alley. Well, that explained how I'd gotten here, and the abuse my cranium endured.

She smiled again, and whispered, "Good. You're coming around. I was afraid you were going to pass out again."

The tone of her voice had not changed, and what I had taken for the sensuous purring of an amorous angel was probably just the modulated tones of a careful nurse. Perhaps, too, she was reluctant to announce our presence to passersby, predators, or watches.

I slowly turned to the side, raised my head up with the support of elbow, arm, and hand, and hazarded a question. "I'm in Waterdeep, right?"

"You are correct," she answered tentatively, as if expecting another question hot on its heels.

"Good," I replied with false bravado. "It's always good to know where you finally wind up. It's almost as important as your own name."

Even now, I cannot be sure whether the tension that crossing my nurse's face was real or imagined. At the time, I was too distracted to pay attention. Only then did I realize I hadn't the foggiest notion in all Toril what my name was, or for that matter, what my past was.

I panicked and lurched forward. I wanted to escape this storeroom and seek a clue to my identity. The nurse tried to press me back to the cot. I quickly dodged her grip and got to my feet…

And promptly passed out again for all my hasty efforts.

Sounds from outside the storeroom soon brought me around. Numerous dockworkers were none too quietly heading to their jobs. My nurse was once again present, slightly the worse for wear, as if she had just finished a hard night's work. This time, she was accompanied by a burly fellow for whom the term gentleman would have been wishful thinking.