Elfshadow - Elaine Cunningham [12]
"Hmmm. You're a gray, aren't you?" he asked, noting that her pale, almost white skin was touched with blue along her high sharp cheekbones and pointed ears.
"I am a moon elf, yes," Arilyn corrected.
'Gray elf' was a derogatory term when used by a human or a dwarf, and a deadly insult from the lips of another elf. Oblivious to the slight he had just given her, the man continued to examine Arilyn. "A half-gray at that. Oh, well. Half an elf is better than none, I always say," he noted with a leer. "After we're done here, maybe you'd like to-"
"No," Arilyn said quickly. The lecherous expression on the man's loathsome face raised her bile. After his comment about her lineage, she wouldn't have had anything do to with him even if he'd been as handsome and virtuous as the elflord Erlan Duirsar.
"Your loss." He shrugged, then held up the piwafwi again. "Do you want the cape, or not?"
Arilyn hesitated. She had assumed many identities in her career, and on one occasion she'd had to disguise herself as a dark elf to join a renegade band of drow mercenaries. It was not a pleasant memory. The drow, if possible, were worse than the Zhentarim. Once the assignment was over, it had taken her hours to wash the ebony stain from her skin and days to banish the pervasive sense of evil from her soul.
"Squeamish?" he taunted.
"Not really. I'm just wondering how you can part with such a sentimental token," she said coldly.
The Zhentishman responded with a grin. "Why not? I've got some real interesting battle scars to remember her by."
"Ten gold pieces for the cape?" Arilyn asked, cutting off the old man before he could regale her with more of his vile anecdotes. The mention of money brought him right around.
"Ten? Huh! Not likely. Twenty pieces, and make it platinum."
"Five platinum," Arilyn counteroffered.
"Ten."
"Done." The money and the cape changed hands, and Arilyn quickly tucked the garment into her bag before the lantern's light could further erode it. She noted that the piwafwi's luster had already dimmed in the short time it had been out of the dark trunk. The cape would probably disintegrate completely with the coming of dawn, and its magic had waned long before the death of the dark elf who once wore it. Arilyn had learned that drow magical items faded outside of the Underdark, their subterranean world. She suspected that the informant knew this as well, judging from his small sly smile as he pocketed the ten platinum coins. He looked immensely pleased with himself, probably picturing the look her face would likely hold when the expensive cape dissolved into gray smoke.
Arilyn intentionally allowed the old man this small triumph. He took pride in the quality of the information he sold, but he also felt a compulsion to cheat his clients.
"By the way," he said expansively, "how do you plan to get into the fortress?" Arilyn raised a skeptical eyebrow, and he cackled again and waved a wizened hand. "You're right, you're right. If I were you, I wouldn't tell me, either. I suppose that concludes our business, unless, of course…" He let his words trail off suggestively.
Arilyn ignored him and pointed to one of the maps. "I need more information about this area. Can you list all the ways out of the basement level?"
"Sure, but why bother? I doubt you'll get that far."
Arilyn held her temper with difficulty. "Any secret doors? Passages? Or do I have to swim out through