"You remember how Cerulean used to have a bluish tint to his coat?" Shal asked, setting down her mug of ale.

"Yeah," answered Ren. "He does have a little bit of a blue tinge to him, even when he isn't collecting sparks from the floor."

"Well, since he returned this morning from putting Ranthor to rest, his coat has just the slightest hint of purple to it." Shal looked up with a grin of pure delight, obviously expecting Ren to comprehend her excitement. But he simply returned a puzzled stare.

"Don't you see?" asked Tarl, plunking down his own mug for emphasis. "Purple is Shal's color, not Ranthor's. The wizard has truly been put to rest, and the familiar is wholly Shal's."

"Purple is Shal's color? How would you know?" Ren appeared puzzled and looked to Tarl for some kind of explanation.

"I asked," Tarl said simply, and he locked eyes with Shal for just a moment before adding, "because I wanted to know."

"Well, thanks, Tarl. What a pal!" Ren said sarcastically. " Why don't you just come out and accuse me of being unobservant?"

"I wasn't suggesting-"

Tarl didn't have a chance to finish. The doors to the inn were flung open wide, and two trumpeters entered. They took position on either side of the double doors and began blasting their horns so loud that Sot's collection of rare glass liquor bottles rattled in their rack behind the bar. Sot grabbed his cudgel and seemed likely to throttle the two, but at that moment a herald entered the inn, stepped between them, unfurled a long scroll, and began reading:

"The Honorable Porphyrys Cadorna, Fourth Councilman of the City of Phlan, requires the presence of Tarl Desanea of Vaasa, Ren o' the Blade of Waterdeep, and Shal Bal of Cormyr directly in front of these premises immediately."

"Fourth Councilman now, eh?" Tarl noted. "I guess we'd better see what he wants."

"I don't get the impression we have much choice," said Ren, rising from the bench.

The herald exited, and the trumpeters stood holding the doors open until the three followed. Outside the inn, a gleaming white carriage, drawn by two white horses with braided tails and manes and feather plumes, pulled up in front of the inn just as the three came out. After calming the spirited horses, the herald opened the carriage door and dropped to his hands and knees before it. Cadorna stepped from the high carriage onto the man's back, then down to the street.

"Ah, I see you're all looking well." Cadorna waved his hand toward the three with a flourish. "Recovered from your mission to Thorn Island?"

"Recovered, and all ready to tend to our own unfinished business," said Ren, a slight edge in his voice.

"Not before assisting me with a small project, I hope," said Cadorna, his tone mirroring Ren's. "I believe my request will be of particular interest to the cleric, if not to the two of you. I assume that, in your concern for the cleric's best interests, you would consider accompanying him."

Shal wasn't anxious to enter into a discussion with any man who stepped on the flesh of others, but she did want Tarl to know he had her support. "Please state your request, Fourth Councilman," she said.

"I will… in the privacy of the inn," said Cadorna.

"The privacy of the inn?" Shal repeated. She and the others looked at him curiously until he instructed his herald and trumpeters to enter and clear the tavern.

Within a matter of minutes, the customers were emerging through the doorway. Sot's angry complaints coming from within could no doubt be heard for blocks.

Chuckling quietly, Ren suggested that Cadorna allow the feisty innkeeper to stay, noting that he was a friend and, after all, the owner of the inn. To his surprise, Cadorna agreed.

In fact, as the newly appointed Fourth Councilman began to describe his family's demise at the time of the Dragon Run, he pointed out Sot as an example of the type of businessperson his parents and grandparents were- hardworking, indefatigable, and possessing a kind of street sense that kept their business alive when others failed. "That's why I'm sure the family fortune, or at least a portion of it, must still be intact," he said.

"As you can see," Cadorna continued with uncharacteristic humbleness, "I'm no fighter. I've recently received word from a half-orc spy I employ that the Cadorna textile house is now the dwelling place of a particularly disagreeable band of gnolls. Twice I have dispatched parties in the hope of recovering what is rightfully mine, but both times they failed to return." Cadorna paused for a moment, shaking his head. "Imagine being defeated by anything as lazy and unobservant as a gnoll!"

"Lazy and unobservant, perhaps, but big," Ren noted. "Not to mention completely amoral."

"Yes… well, be that as it may, they certainly don't compare to the likes of the beasts you defeated at Sokol Keep, though I have heard some rather ugly rumors about the gnoll leader…" Cadorna paused a moment, watching them closely. "What I've heard is that he's a half-breed, the product of some poor woman's misfortune at the hands of a raiding band of gnolls…" He gave the others time to express their revulsion, then took out a piece of yellowed parchment.

The map Cadorna produced was tattered from age and repeated folding. It showed the entire city, before it ever became separated into the civilized and uncivilized segments. Businesses were identified with notes about their ownership and their relative success. Cadorna didn't need to point out the location of his family's textile house; it dominated a large corner section of the city, and expansion plans had been sketched in on the map. When Cadorna was certain they knew the location of his family's business, he turned the map over. A crude sketch, obviously not the work of the cartographer who had drafted the city map, filled the other side.

"This is my father's drawing of the property, including the family living quarters," Cadorna explained. "I believe the treasure is here," he continued, pointing to a wall of an area labeled as a bedroom. "I don't know if the bulk of the family holdings will be in coins or bullion, but I do have notes from my mother describing several family heirlooms that I expect will be there… if the treasure is still intact."

"I don't understand, Councilman Cadorna," Tarl interrupted. "You implied earlier that I would have some special interest in this…"

"It is my plan, should you recover the treasure, to give a generous portion-let's say fifteen percent-to the Tyrian temple."

Tarl leaned forward, his interest obviously piqued. "Why haven't you made this offer to the warrior clerics from the temple?"

"Simple. I consider the recovery of this treasure a personal matter. I'm not anxious to make this news public until such time as the treasure is actually in my hands," explained Cadorna.

"You'll forgive my straightforwardness here, Councilman," said Ren, "but if I understand you correctly, you aren't asking us to reclaim the textile house for human habitation."

"That's correct."

"Then if the venture were made in daytime, when most of the creatures outside the walls sleep, what's the difficulty? Is there something you aren't telling us?"

Cadorna cleared his throat, and his eyes darted from side to side. "Yes, well… the, uh, the gnoll leader I mentioned… They say he's as much a hyena in appearance-the mangy mane and yellowed teeth, you know-as any gnoll, but that he behaves like a man. Sometimes strangles his prey… even uses poisoned daggers. Highly ungnoll-like." Cadorna didn't wait for that to sink in, but instead plunged ahead. "A creature such as that might explain the, uh, difficulties experienced by the other two parties. With a superior intelligence leading them, the gnolls would indeed be formidable-even in daylight."