Realms of the Underdark - J. Robert King [32]
As it came, its tentacles fell back into a melting bulk that rose up, thinned, and shaped itself with frightening speed into a twin of the phantom lady.
Above the glowing image and the shapeshifting thing, the many eyes watched critically as one strove to match the other… many eyes on restless, snakelike stalks belonging to a sphere split by a broad, jagged mouth of myriad teeth. A huge, lone central orb in the floating sphere gleamed with excitement, and a deep rumble of satisfaction rolled around the cavern.
Xuzoun was old even as beholders go, but to its kind there comes a time when the patience of long years and cold cunning runs out… and for Xuzoun, that time had come.
The eye tyrant drifted with excited speed around its enthralled doppleganger, looking for the slightest difference from the conjured image… and emitting another rumble of satisfaction when it found none. Motes of magelight swirled in its wake as it went, working mighty magics.
If all went well, the shapeshifting thrall that now looked so beautiful and delicate-every inch the breathless, cultured, sheltered human noble maiden- would soon be wearing another shape: that of a certain Lord of Waterdeep. And thereby would Xuzoun, through eyes and shapeshifting hands unshakably linked to its will, reach at last into the World Above, and the rich, bustling city of humans too stupid even to notice when they were being manipulated. Waterdeep, City of Splendors, where gold coins flowed in rivers and folk came from all over Faerun-and beyond-to dip their hands in the passing riches. And more: to taste and smell power, wielded with subtlety or brute force.
Power. To be a part of it all, and shape ends and happenings to one's own desires. That was the lure Xuzoun could taste, even here in the hidden dark. With this thrall standing in the boots of the one called Durnan, master of the famous inn called the Yawning Portal, Xuzoun would be able to readily convey items and beings between Skullport and Waterdeep (for stiff fees) when desired… and at a stroke become a channel for those flowing coins, and a part of all the darkest intrigues of the Sword Coast.
To live again, after so much skulking and waiting in the endless dark!
A long, cold time ago, the Phaerimm had come, and the city of Ooltul had fallen. Beholders had been rent and hurled down its labyrinthine passages in spell-bursts until their gore-drenched husks choked the very avenues of the City of Tyrants. Ooltul had once bent purple worms and illithids alike into mind-thralled guardians, cut new passages and chambers out of solid rock with melting ease, and casually slaughtered drow war bands and whelmed dark elven armies alike, whenever they appeared. It had been the city of Xuzoun's birth. The beholder could still scarce believe it had fallen, even after a slow eternity of fleeing across the lightless Underdark from the relentless Phaerimm, to come at last to fabled Skullport, the Source of Slaves, the most famous of the places Where the World Above Met the World Below…
The place where Xuzoun had vowed to stay and flee no more. The eye tyrant looked again at its thrall, and with an impatient thought, blew the glowing image of the human maiden into a thousand dancing motes of magelight. They swirled in a brief chaos, and then sped to the cavern walls to cling and glow palely there, shedding the radiance necessary for the next spell to work.
Aye, the next spell. The lure that would bring the doomed Lord of Waterdeep to Xuzoun. The old hero would come warily down into the depths of Undermountain to rescue a young, pretty noble lady in need: Nythyx Thunderstaff, the daughter of Durnan's old friend Anadul, who was brother to Baerom, head of the noble House of Thunderstaff. And here he would die.
The beholder looked again at its doppleganger thrall, standing in the shape of Nythyx, and through the mind-link made it shrink back and put one delicate hand to its