The Dream Spheres

Myrna slowly began to breathe normally. Her face turned a sickly green, and she rushed for the washstand.

She retched until she was as dry as the Anauroch, then wiped the tears from her streaming eyes. The look she cast upon her rescuers held more enmity than gratitude.

"Trying to clean up after your friend?" she croaked at Dan.

He and Arilyn exchanged a puzzled glance. "I don't understand," he said.

"Elaith poisoned me. I'm sure of it! I have had dealings with him of late," Myrna admitted, her voice growing stronger. "Some openly, some hidden. Payment for some of the information came in the form of elven coin," she said defensively.

"What reason would he have to do such a thing?" Danilo demanded.

The woman sniffed. "You are a fool," she said. "Do you know nothing of what goes on around you?"

Arilyn's face clouded and she seemed about to speak, but Danilo made a subtle gesture warning her to silence.

The gossipmonger's words were too close to his own thoughts for comfort. What she had to say, he needed to hear. He took a small purse of gold from his bag and set it on the table.

"Go on," he said evenly.

For once the sight of gain had no effect on Myrna. She caught up the bag and threw it back at him. "This I will do gladly," she said vindictively. "Lady Cassandra did well to keep you from the family business—you, who dance attendance to the archmage and play about with Harpers! What would you do, Harper, if you knew that the days of the Tha

"Be careful what rumors you repeat," Arilyn said softly.

"Rumors?" The woman laughed scornfully. "Half the bards in Waterdeep speak of him as a Harper. As to his family, he believes me. I see it in his face!"

"Not just Tha

"Huzzah!" Myrna applauded him mockingly. "He realized that his clan is not all powerful! Of course it's not just Tha

"Eltorchul," Arilyn guessed, seeing Oth's death in this new light.

"Those potion-mixers and tinkers? Hardly!" Myrna cocked her bright head as she considered this. "Nonetheless, I would not rule out the possibility. The current struggle might make room for new faces—provided, of course, that those faces are not surmounted by pointed ears!" she added viciously.

Danilo began to follow her reasoning. "Elaith Craulnober has many concerns in this city, both above and below the streets."

"Huzzah again!" the woman said. "He is getting too ambitious, too powerful. The families have agreed to oust the elf lord."

"Yet you have had dealings with him," Arilyn pointed out.

Myrna smiled coyly. "Who is to say that I might not be behind some of these attempts?"

For a long moment no one answered. Arilyn stooped and picked up the empty vial. "To think I wasted a perfectly good antidote."

The noblewoman's face turned livid. "Mark me, you will not escape this. Do you think that the families are pleased with Dan's relationship with Khelben Arunsun? With the Harpers? With a half-elf?"

She stopped and made a visible effort to calm herself. "I have said too much, and I will no doubt pay for it. But every word of it is truth. If you ask my opinion—and many people in this city do—you're both in deep and wild water, and neither of you will swim to shore."

Seventeen

By unspoken agreement, Danilo and Arilyn sought out the beauty and solitude of his elven garden. They did not speak until they stood at the edge of the serene pool, and for a long time they stared into the water as if it were a scrying bowl that could show them their next course.

Danilo was of no mind for conversation. He still reeled from this revelation, which explained much, if not all, of the mystery surrounding recent events.

"Myrna Cassalanter is a spiteful woman," Arilyn said at last.

"I will not argue with that, but I daresay there is as much truth in her words as spite," he said. "Don't you agree?"

"Not completely. I doubt Elaith is responsible for poisoning Myrna."

Danilo looked at her in surprise. "Really."

"Elves seldom use poison. Elaith's methods, though twisted, are still elven."

"Twisted?" he prompted.

She told him her suspicions that Elaith killed the broker down in Skullport in order to acquire the missing dream spheres. "The mark of an elven sword was unmistakable. One of the men had been dissolved into mist. Elaith is competent in magic, and he has a vast collection of magical weapons. It is the sort of thing he would do."

"But Myrna said she received payment in elven coin."

"What of it? That, more than anything, leads me to believe that Elaith is being set up. He isn't that stupid."

"No, he isn't," Danilo agreed, "but that makes him all the more dangerous. He will not take kindly to this treatment. It's possible that some of the recent events are his vengeance against the noble families."

They considered this in silence. A courtesan was dead, and Simon Ilzimmer had been blamed. The death count did not end there: Belinda Gundwynd and her elven love. Oth Eltorchul.

Lilly.

"And this is the elf I am pledged to defend," Danilo said softly. "Once, he asked me to prove his i

Arilyn nodded and started for the gate. "We might as well get on with it.

* * * * *

Isabeau waited until Arilyn and Danilo were well out of sight, then sailed up to the door of Myrna Cassalanter's mansion as if she were a regular visitor.

She found Myrna pale, but unusually calm. The reason for this, the woman explained, was her new diversion. She showed Isabeau a wooden box filled with small crystal spheres.

Isabeau knew all about them—knew more than this silly woman could begin to suspect—but she listened with quiet contempt as Myrna spoke glowingly of using purchased magic to live a fantasy.

She, Isabeau, was determined to carve out her own.

The dream spheres were not the way. She saw that now. If they had already found their way into the homes of Waterdeep's wealthy and powerful, she had little hope of retrieving enough of them to turn a profit.

There was another way. Risky, certainly, but Isabeau saw in it her only chance.

She selected the largest, brightest globe from the box and took note of the greedy, territorial expression that leaped into Myrna's eye.

"I would like to try one of these wonders," Isabeau said. "Will you choose one for me?"

Myrna all but leaped for the powerful, expensive globe in her visitor's hands. "That one is for my own use. Any of these others you may have."

"We could perhaps share," Isabeau suggested. "You to your dream, and I mine? A pleasant respite to break up the day."

Her hostess nodded avidly. Once her guest was settled with a lesser magical dream, she took the powerful dream sphere for herself.

Isabeau waited until the woman was deep into the magical trance. She rose quietly to her feet and tipped the box of dream spheres into her pocket. Then she carefully unclasped the necklace from the entranced woman's neck and added it to her loot.

The larger and brighter the sphere, the longer and more powerful the dream. Isabeau had learned that much, but she took no chances. Moving as silently and swiftly as a dervish's ghost, she picked the chamber clean of any valuables and fled while the woman was still deep in her dream.