Realms of Magic - Brian Thomsen King [120]
"Until this morning, it had."
"And thought it powerful enough to warp goblins and cavemen into comely human servants and chefs and maitre d's-?"
"You were convinced it was a hot bath and a silken bed rather than a pus pocket and a rotting slab of meat."
"Just so that you could lure the most influential creatures of Faerun here. But why? That's the question. What hook does this juicy worm hide? Gold, of course! You've gathered them here to get their real riches in exchange for your false luxuries. Perhaps you're even performing a few casual assassinations for whomever you are leagued with!"
"Are you accusing me of murd-"
"But look who got the last laugh!" I shouted, latching onto her hot little hand and dragging her unceremoniously after me toward the bustling dining hall. "You didn't lure the rich and powerful folk of Faerun, but only more magical charlatans such as yourself. You've traded grubs and garbage for ore flesh and feces!"
I couldn't have timed it better. As though on cue, the magic failed again, and before my outflung hand, we both saw the filthy, debased, rank, and horrible creatures that sat around troughs and mangers in that barn. Scrofulous magic-users all, whose gold coins were nothing more than transmuted river stones, whose paper notes were merely mildewed leaves, whose august nobility was only a beautiful mask cast over their true tired, warty, awful flesh. Their powerful magics had temporarily made real what was false, and the lie of their lives had shriveled their true selves as full-plate armor shrivels the body inside into white, wrinkled nothing.
"And how dare you act as though the great finder, Bolton Quaid, has not solved this mystery of yours? The reason your illusion magic is failing is that it is surrounded by more illusion magic. One illusion piled atop another piled atop another makes for a swaying emptiness that must and will fall. It's your worthless guests and their worthless bark and twigs, all dressed up in magic to look like creatures of import, that has made your worthless barns and hovels and caves show for what they truly are-no great pleasure dome of the Thunder Peaks.
"How dare you hire me-me!-thinking a nonmagical dolt from the docks would be too stupid to see through your schemes?"
I was so pleased with having solved the mystery that I'd missed the biggest illusion of all. Literally, the biggest.
She lurked just behind me now. – From the green whiffs of caustic breath, I knew even before I turned what I would see, but still the sight shocked me into trembling numbness.
A great green wyrm. She towered over me in the toothy cavern of her lair. Not Xantrithicus, for this was a she-lizard-but perhaps his mate, Tarith the Green. Her ver-million scales gleamed like ceramic plates across her bunched haunch, which rose easily the height of my head. Above that was the lizard's mighty rib cage, expanding now in an in-drawn breath in preparation to poison me and all the critters clustered fearfully in the barn behind me. Atop that bulging set of ribs were two long and wicked arms, clawing eagerly at the air, and then a mange-scruffed neck, and then a huge red-fleshed set of jowls. The eyes that sat atop that smoldering snout were the same green eyes with which Olivia had so enticed me when I arrived-the same, except for their size, like twin turkey platters.
This time, it was the hook that hid the wyrm.
I knew I was dead. My feet were rooted to the smooth, chill floor of the cavern, and my once-so-proud tongue lay like a dead thing between my clattering teeth. I would not escape. I could not escape. Oh, if I were a lucky man, the magic would return now, so that she would shrink to her human form… but good luck was too much to hope for.
She reared back, lungs full, and the reptilian muscles along her rib cage slid obscenely beneath her scales. I felt the gagging green gas billow, sudden and fierce, over me, burning eyes I'd instinctively shut, and nose and lips, though I held my breath.
No, a guy from the Dock Ward of Waterdeep can't count on good luck. Thankfully, though,