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extreme degrees. His sparse red hair approximated the color and texture of copper wire, his sallow skin captured the exact hue of yellowed ivory, and his large, rather bulbous eyes were a strange shade of light green that did not occur elsewhere in nature. Out of lifelong habit, Tinkersdam wore a short tunic of bright yellow— the traditional color of Lantan—and sandals on his bare feet. His plump, extremely bowed legs were hairless, as was his face—no doubt the result of the many explosions that his work occasioned.
    A skilled inventor and a daring alchemist, Tinkersdam had a particular fondness for lethal gadgets that could kill or disable people in innovative ways. He had been exiled from Lantan years ago when one of his experiments blew up someone influential. He had since been invited to leave several other cities for similar reasons.
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The Harpers
    Arilyn would be the first to acknowledge that Tinkersdam, although he was undoubtedly brilliant, straddled the line between eccentricity and insanity. Yet the odd little man had become one of her most valued allies. Theirs was a symbiotic relationship. Over the years he’d provided her with any number of gadgets and alchemically derived substances. She devised a practical use for them, in the process often finding new and unanticipated applications that delighted the alchemist.
    Arilyn’s gaze swept the workshop, searching for the items she’d requested. There was never any guarantee that Tinkersdam would complete a project by the requested date. Time had little meaning to the man, and he was likely to desert a given task to work on some new and wondrously destructive toy that caught his fancy.
    At the moment Tinkersdam was standing before a small stove, his attention wholly absorbed with the concoction he was stirring. Steam rose from the iron skillet, and with it the rich, earthy scent of cooking mushrooms. It was a homey enough scene, except for the agonized screams that came from the pan, and for the large brown mushrooms that lay on the table beside him, twitching frantically and emitting shrieks of horror as they awaited their fete.
    Underdark mushrooms.
    The realization sent a shiver up the Harper’s spine. She’d heard tales of the bizarre fungi that grew in those deep tunnels. How Tinkersdam had managed to obtain some—and what he planned to do with them—were matters she did not care to contemplate.
    “How is the eye mask coming?” she asked.
    The sound of her voice did not seem to startle the alchemist. Indeed, Tinkersdam did not so much as look up. Arilyn was not certain whether he’d been aware of her from the first, or whether her presence simply didn’t matter enough to register with him.•Ť•

Silver Shadows
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    Third table from my right,” Tinkersdam muttered in a reedy voice as he picked up a small, moldering tome. “Saute shriekers until silent; stir in powdered effreet lungs; add two drops of congealed manticore drool,” he read aloud.
    Arilyn shuddered again and went in search of the indicated item. She poked around in the clutter for several moments before she found it: a half mask of some pale, supple substance that looked remarkably like the skin of a moon elf, except for the incredibly tiny gear-works packed behind the mask’s painted eyes.
    A mirror hung on one wall of the cave. Despite his undeniable lack of physical beauty, Tinkersdam was quite particular about his grooming. Arilyn went to the mirror and pressed the half mask onto her face. The thin material clung to her skin, taking on color as it warmed until it matched exactly the pale hue of her face, even to the faint blue highlights on her cheekbones. Even more remarkable were the eyes. Not only were they an exact replica of her own—large, almond-shaped, a distinctive elven shade of deep blue flecked with gold—but they even blinked from time to time in a most realistic fashion. She could see through them, yet when she closed her own eyes and raised her hand to touch the