Realms of the Underdark - J. Robert King [42]
"That may be so only because we've not awakened any control over it yet," Yloebre told the depths of the glass it held. The small worms there curled and uncurled in their endless undead dance, which kept the oily black wine from thickening into a syrup.
"Do you doubt my skill?" Iraeghlee spat, leaning forward in its chair with a hissing of rippling silk sleeves. "It ate the whisperer, which in turn ate its way into what little Xuzoun has of the paltry things eye tyrants are pleased to call their brains! I felt it take in beholder blood, and grow! I felt it through the linkage my magic made-a link I can make anew whenever I desire! Do you doubt me, younger one? Do you truly dare?"
"Untwist thy tentacles and hiss less loudly," Yloebre responded calmly, sipping more wine. "I doubt nothing as to your ability to establish control over the eye tyrant-only as to our shared ability to escape the notice of the powers hereabouts. The whisperer is a brain node, linked to you by magic… and the Place of Skulls above us, and the city above that, seem to be fairly crawling with wizards and priests able to see magic use, and themselves governed-nay, driven-by that appalling human fault known as 'curiosity.' What is to keep us from coming under attack within a breath or two of your crushing Xuzoun's will?"
Iraeghlee's mauve skin was almost black with anger. Its voice quivered with rage and menace as it said slowly, "Hear this, feeblewits, and let one hearing be enough: no drow nor human, from matron mothers to archmages, can detect our whisperer, or us while we remain here."
Yloebre glanced at the stone walls around them, adorned by a single glow-shift sculpture that chimed softly from time to time as its shape altered. The chamber they sat in held only their floating chairs, several floating tables (including the palely glowing one between them), and the fluted and many-hued array of flasks and glasses that its current sample had come from. Unseen runes of power crawled and twisted on the undersides of the tables, awaiting a call to life from either illithid, but there were no other defenses save what they could personally cast or wield.
Not that such things were likely to be needed. They were six shifts away from a cesspool under the gambling house known as the Blushing Bride's Burial Pit, in southern Skullport-a chain of trapped teleports that should be long enough to fool or slay even the most persistent and powerful of nosy wizards.
It was at about that moment that the table between them grew two dark, grave eyes-and exploded into blazing shards that hurled both mind flayers, broken and sizzling, against the walls of their hideaway.
The last words Yloebre ever heard, as it struggled against searing, rising red pain, was a man's voice saying disgustedly, "Stupid illithids. Must they always meddle?"
The crushed, half-melted bodies of the mind flayers slid like slime down the walls of the chamber; neither of them survived long enough to see Halaster Black-cloak's eyes blast their tables and flasks to dancing sparks and flying dust.
When his gaze had roved about the entire chamber and he sensed no other mind-signatures on the whisperer in the beholder's distant brain, the wizard sighed and turned to pass through the teleport once more… only to pause and glare with renewed energy at the chiming glow-shift sculpture.
It had escaped-or resisted-his destructive gaze unharmed. Halaster's black eyes narrowed, and then hardened into rays of darkness that leapt and stabbed through the air-only to strike the sculpture and be drained away to somewhere else, leaving the chiming construct unharmed.
"Who-?" Halaster snarled, shifting into a more tangible, upright form.
The sculpture cleared its throat and said mildly, "Why, me, of course. We agreed that action in thy house was undesirable if not of thy doing… but we said nothing of mere watching. 'Tis how I learn things, ye see."
"Elminster," Halaster said softly, fading back into a darkness studded with two eyes as sharp as spear points. "One