Mirt harrumphed. "Pity it didn't do the same for me." Rock shifted behind him, and he whirled around, sword out and low-only to relax and smile. "Lass, lass, how many times have I told thee how much I hate being sneaked up on from behind?" he chided Asper halfheartedly. She gestured past him with her sword.

"You'd better turn around again, then, my lord," she told him calmly, as a plucking at his belt told him that Durnan had snatched one of his daggers. Mirt grunted like a walrus and heaved himself around, puffing-in time to see the beholder rushing down at them again, beams of reaving light lancing out from its eyes.

"Keep behind me, both of ye!" the fat moneylender roared. "I'm shielded!"

"Against teeth like those? That's a spell you'll have to show me some time!" Durnan said, standing at Mirt's shoulder with a dagger in either fist. He'd lost his blade under all the rocks, and one eye had swollen almost shut, but the tavernmaster seemed content-even eager-as death roared down at them again.

With the ease and fluid grace of a prowling serpent, Asper slid up to stand at Mirt's other shoulder. "It seems strange to be worrying about a beholder's teeth," she said, "and not its eyes, for once."

"Get back, lass!" Mirt roared. "As if I haven't worries enough to-"

The beholder crashed into them, snarling and snapping. They hacked and slashed ineffectually against its bony body plates.

Its hot breath whirled around them as they jumped and hewed vainly and ducked aside-only to be struck and hurled away by what felt like a fast-moving castle wall. Durnan grunted as the tyrant smashed him down like a rag doll, and then rolled away into a gully as the beholder tried to crush him. Asper could not keep her feet when the jaws reached for her. She slid out of sight beneath the monster, only to duck up again, stab at it- and be thrown end over end across the ruins, sword flying from her numbed hands to clang and clatter to its own fall. With a gasp and a moan, she fetched up against a broken-off pillar, but Mirt was too busy to hear her.

He was scrambling and cursing and flailing away against persistent fangs, sword ringing off bony plates and fangs alike. In the end, he managed to avoid losing an arm only by setting his sword upright against the closing jaws and letting go. The eye tyrant's jaws caught on the blade, bent it, and spat it out. By then, the three battered, wincing companions were rising out of the rubble widely scattered about the ruin. The bettors yelled fresh wagers in the distance.

"Oh, by the way: this is Xuzoun," Durnan said formally, indicating the eye tyrant with a flourish.

"Ill met," Mirt growled, struggling to his feet. "Damned ill met."

Then the faint, everpresent singing of his shields fell silent: his defense against the beholder's eyes was gone.

"Gods blast it," the old moneylender muttered. "To die in Skullport, of all places, and win someone's wager for him…"

"Keep apart," Asper said warningly from the rocks off to his right, "lest it take us all down at once."

"Cheerful advice," Durnan commented, watching Xuzoun as it turned slowly to survey them all, unaware no shields remained to foil its magic. "Anyone still have magic to hand?"

"That'll help us against this? Nay," Mirt growled, watching death slowly come for them. All it would take now would be for the beast to lash out with one eye, on a whim, and discover they were defenseless.

Xuzoun had sent forth much magic against these humans and seen it all boil away harmlessly, or come clawing back to harm its hurler. Lords of Waterdeep were tougher than most mortals, it seemed. How to defeat these two-perhaps three, if the woman was one, too-without destroying their bodies?

The doppleganger was dead, so preservation of these humans-their bodies, at least-more or less intact was important. They foiled all magic with ease, and there seemed no way to overcome their wills. And yet, to flee from battle with them now, before an audience of Skulkans, galled.

The beholder's advance slowed, and then stopped. It rose a prudent distance above the ruin and hung there, considering.

"Right, then, I'm off," Mirt said heartily, turning to go. "It's not the season for beholder-hunting, anyway, and I've business to see to, that I left-"

One of Xuzoun's eyes flashed. A stone the size of a gauntleted fist rose from the rubble and flashed toward the old moneylender, flying as hard and straight as any arrow. These humans might have shields to foil magic, but what if the stone were flying fast enough, and aimed true, when the magic that flung it was stripped away? Turning slowly end over end, the stone shot on.

"Old Wolf-down!" Asper screamed, seeing it. Mirt had heard that tone from her a time or two before in his life, and flopped to his belly without delay. The stone whistled past close overhead and shattered with a sharp crack against a wall beyond.

The beholder was descending, and at the same time a slab of stone the size of a small cart was rising above Durnan. He ducked away, but it followed, lowering itself with care, chasing him. The Master of the Yawning Portal spat out a curse and started a sprinting scramble across the rocks of the ruin. The beholder smiled as it drifted after him.

If the great weight of the stone pinned the running lord without having to strike him down and do harm, he'd be trapped and helpless-a prisoner until Xuzoun was ready to steal his mind and take over his body. If it worked with the one, why then there were stones aplenty here, and only two humans more.

Wheezing to his feet and regarding the stone pursuing Durnan with horror, Mirt was startled by a loud rattling of rock behind him. He wheeled around with a snarl-was one of those watching gamblers trying to change the odds?-and found himself staring at a scaly blue monster that looked like a huge and sinuous crocodile. Its head reared up to regard him as it raced over the broken rubble on a small forest of fast-churning legs.

It was a behir, a man-eating lizard-thing that could spit lightning bolts!

"Ah, just what we need!" Mirt snarled despairingly, raising his belt dagger and knowing what a useless little fang it was against such onrushing death. "Some right bastard of a mage must be toying with us!"

Setting himself the same way a weary bull lowers its head to face a fast-scudding storm, the fat old Lord of Waterdeep prepared to fight this new foe. The behir opened its jaws impossibly wide as it came, so that Mirt was staring into a maw as large as a spacious doorway. A forked tongue wriggled in its depths in a fascinating dance that plunged at him more swiftly than any man could run.

Asper screamed out Mirt's name and sprinted toward him, a small knife from her boot flashing in her hand- but she was too far off to do more than watch. The reptile snapped its jaws once, tilted its head toward Mirt to deliver what he could only describe as a wink, and surged past the astonished moneylender to spit lighting into the open mouth of the beholder.

Xuzoun screamed-a high, sobbing wail like too many cries Mirt had heard human women make-and spun away over the ruins, lightning playing about its body. Its eyestalks jerked and coiled spasmodically, and it was trailing smoke when it struck a leaning pillar and crashed heavily to the ground. The rushing behir was upon it in a breath, coiling over its foe as it snapped its jaws and tore away eyestalks in eager, merciless haste. The three humans watched, a little awed, and then in unspoken accord came together in the center of the stony devastation to watch the beholder die.

"Is there any hole here small enough that we can get into it and hold off that thing?" Asper asked softly, watching the scaly blue head toss as it tore away beholder flesh. A last bubbling wail from the thing beneath its claws died away.