"I thank you, sir," Roablar replied, bowing slightly and favoring all the monks with a beaming smile. He was waved in through the gap in the partly open gates and set off across the courtyard shifting his sack on his shoulder, as all travelers do.

"Well, Amanther?" the monk who'd dealt with him asked, glancing at the next supplicants—a large party of horsemen, still some way off down the Way of the Lion.

The oldest, tallest monk of the five smiled faintly. "A mage—human female, not old—wearing a very good spell-spun disguise. I daresay the books she mentioned are already familiar to her; I doubt she needs to peruse them again. Slyly learning spells is of course the aim of most who enter covertly, but she feels different to me, somehow. She'll bear close watching."

The other monks nodded. "Thaerabho already answers your signal," one of them said, pointing at a monk strolling across the courtyard to casually follow Roablar of Lantan up to the Emerald Door.

"Good," another grinned, rubbing his hands. "A new mystery to dissect at table this night. One can never have enough delving and prying. It keeps the soul young."

"A tongue more deft, Larth," Amanther admonished. "Say rather: Inquiry into all things keeps a mind bright."

"That too," Larth agreed with a chuckle, which was echoed by the other monks.

"Well, then, clever dissembler," Amanther said, waving at the approaching cloud of dust and sun-flashing armor. "Deal you with these next seekers!"

"With as much pleasure as humility," Larth replied cheerfully. "I'll wager they'll proffer a family history or perhaps a text on the genealogy or heraldry of their immediate region."

"Nay," said another monk, squinting at the banners. "I expect another copy of Navril's History of the Parsnip, with some obscure local collection of plays or minstrels' sayings to serve as their entrance-gift when we reject old Navril one more time."

The chorus of chuckles was hearty but brief, for it was not proper for monks of Candlekeep to be anything less than politely grave when first greeting supplicants.

Across the Court of Air, the monk Thaerabho gazed at the shoulders of the Lantanna talking to the doorkeeper and had to suppress an urge to stop, cross his arms, and rub his chin in eager anticipation.

This was going to be one of the interesting deceivers. He could feel it.

* * * * *

Lady Joysil Ambrur stood sipping wine and watching her servants reluctantly depart. Before ringing for them, she'd downed an entire bottle of potent vintage without any apparent effects at all and begun a second by the rather daintier means of filling (and refilling) her tallglass. Though she still stood by her high-backed seat behind the table, a new piece of furniture had made its appearance, in accordance with her orders, in the hall nearby: a broad, simple bed covered with luxurious linens, cozy-blankets, and pillows. Though it lacked a high headboard carved with her coat-of-arms, it was a bed for her.

Silence deepened in Haelithtorntowers around Lady Joysil as she sipped, regarding the rubies on the table—which lay undisturbed in their own little oval of light dust in the only part of the table that (again at her orders) had not been cleared and dusted.

The Lady of Haelithtorntowers was wearing a slight smile. She'd also ordered all the servants to take a day off from their duties, and the night to follow, in the luxurious guest apartments in the farthest tower of her mansion, Firewyrm Tower. They were not to disturb her or return until the next dawn for any reason.

Their obedience had been doubtful—wherefore, after their going, the Lady Ambrur had taken a scepter from the hollow leg of a particular piece of furniture and magically sealed the door that walled off the lone passage linking Firewyrm Tower to Great Tower.

At the heart of Great Tower was the hall in which she stood, and as the torches failed it was rapidly growing dark despite the brightening day outside. Appropriate for a weary noble lady taking to her bed alone—and Lady Ambrur did that now.

She took her glass and bottle with her, still showing no signs of being tipsy, and retained all her garments, from her jeweled slippers and glittering tiara to her rows of sparkling dangledrop earrings. In the deepening gloom she kept her eyes on the table and sat on the edge of her bed in calm silence, waiting.

Quite soon and suddenly ruby fire flashed from the gems—and four black-clad men appeared on the table above those stones, crouching with weapons ready as it groaned ominously under their weight.

Joysil daintily climbed up to stand in the center of her bed, spilling not a drop of wine—and as she did so, soft white-and-green radiance blossomed in the air around her, illuminating her bed, the table, and all points between.

"Greetings, unknown guests," she said calmly. "I didn't think your master would wait until nightfall. Red Wizards are so impatient."

The four hooded men in battle-leathers stiffened, beholding the calm noblewoman. She was tall, large-boned, and lush of figure in her magnificent gown, and a spectacular flood of slightly wavy, honey-hued hair descended her back, to that point where a back begins to swell out and become a behind. The nether tips of her tresses deepened to a coppery flame-hue. The calm eyes surveying her visitors were steel-gray, the slightest of age-wrinkles lurking at their corners. She held her goblet-sized tallglass in one hand—and a wand had now somehow appeared in the other.

The four snarled silently and hurled the daggers they held. The flashing steel spinning through the air bore vivid crazings of purple that cried "Poison!" to any astute observer.

They did not have to throw far, and their target showed no signs of movement, but the whirling knives vanished a handspan from the Lady Ambrur.

A bare breath later, two of the men in black grunted, gasped, and pitched forward from the table, to crash down through a chair to the floor, and lie unmoving. Their own daggers stood out of their backs. Another knife spun past the ear of the man who'd hurled it and back toward the noblewoman again—only to vanish as before, snatched by the loop teleport she'd cast, and reappear behind its hurler again, sinking and spinning more slowly.

No one watched its next journey. The remaining pair of slayers burst forward from the table, racing to the attack. The Lady Ambrur's only reaction was to take another sip of wine.

One of her attackers plucked blades from all over his clothing as he came, snatching and hurling a storm of steel. Daggers bit at empty air, spinning over the bed to clatter and slide on the floor of the great hall—for the Lady Ambrur all of a sudden wasn't there.

She appeared by the table, glass still raised to her lips, and coolly triggered her wand. Its silvery beam lashed out to become a crimson blast of exploding head and brains where it touched the slayer who hadn't yet lightened his load of weaponry.

Headless and staggering, that black-garbed corpse wobbled forward to a loose-limbed collapse onto the floor.

The surviving slayer whirled with a snarl—and sprang aside as the wand fired again, leaping and rolling free of harm.

Swift and agile, he launched himself into an attack that dodged this way and that, avoiding another wand-blast. Like the wind he raced forward, to bring himself within reach of the noblewoman—

—Who blinked away once more. The black-hooded slayer did not freeze but kept running and dodging as he looked for her, and that saved him from the next bite of her wand, which blew apart a large wyrmtongue-leaf plant with its urn as he darted aside.

The wand spat again, striking aside a dagger he'd hurled in a flash of sparks. Tasmurand the Slayer put his entire shoulder and balance into another swift throw, right behind that first fang.