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uninvited, Piergeiron had nevertheless welcomed her attendance. When dealing with one of Mystra’s Chosen, it was usually the wise thing to do.
    “No one here cares for your Shadovar threats,” added Storm.
    “You misunderstand, Lady Silverhand,” Aglarel said. He probably meant his smile to seem forbearing, but the line of fang tips hanging down behind his black lip made it look rather more sinister. “The Shadovar are not threatening anyone. I am merely informing Lords Piergeiron and Dyndaryl of the shell’s dangers.”
    What are those dangers? whispered Deliah the White, one of the Masked Lords of Waterdeep. Like the other masked lords, her identity was concealed beneath a magic cloak, helm, and mask, and her words could be heard only by Piergeiron and her fellows on the council. Knowing of these dangers does us little good unless we also know what they are.
     
    “What, exactly, is the nature of these dangers?” Piergeiron asked. As the Open Lord, it was his duty to serve as the council’s common face and speak for the others in public. “It does us little good to know of them without knowing what they are.”
    Aglarel cast a meaningful glance over his shoulder at the gawkers in the public gallery. “It wouldn’t be wise to reveal the shadowshell’s nature at present,” he said. “Suffice it to say that we all know what happened when a mere Tomb Guard’s magic hit a shadow spell.”
    Along with Deliah the White and several others, Piergeiron found himself nodding. This whole mess had started when a patrol of Evereskan Tomb Guards interrupted a rendezvous between a powerful Shadovar wizard and what the elves took to be a company of human tomb robbers. A phaerimm had been drawn to the sound of the resulting turmoil, and during the terrible battle that followed, the patrol leader’s Weave-based magic had clashed with the Shadovar’s shadow-based magic. Nobody really understood what had happened next, except that the result had torn a hole in the mystic barrier that had kept the phaerimm imprisoned beneath Anauroch for over fifteen hundred years.
    After allowing his audience a moment to contemplate his words, Aglarel continued, “Can you imagine the consequences if that spell had been loosed by one of Waterdeep’s battle wizards?” He glanced at Gervas Imesfor. “Or perhaps a high mage from Evereska?”
    “There is no need to imagine,” Storm said darkly. “We all know what happened at Shadowdale—which is why I am finding your concern for our welfare so difficult to believe now.”
    “What happened at Shadowdale was a misunderstanding,” Aglarel countered, “and it was your attack that
     
    opened the Hell breach. We lost one of our own to it as well.”
    “A small price to be rid of Elminster,” Storm spat.
    “That was never our intention,” Aglarel said. “Rivalen and the others were there to talk—”
    “Perhaps you forget that I was there, Prince,” Storm warned. “I saw what your brothers did.”
    Before the lightning that flashed in her eyes became bolts flying from her fingers, Piergeiron raised a hand and said, “As concerned as we all are about Elminster’s fate, that is not the matter before this council.”
    He could not allow Storm to turn this discussion into a quarrel over who had caused Elminster’s disappearance. The argument was a sore one, and growing more so since the Simbul had turned up missing as well. There were some who suggested she had already recovered Elminster and spirited him off to some other dimension to recuperate. But Storm insisted on holding the Shadovar responsible for Elminster’s continued absence, and she never missed an opportunity to rebuke them over the matter.
    Piergeiron did not know what to believe—he had heard convincing evidence that supported both sides— and it really didn’t matter to him. His only goal was to keep the matter from erupting into a full-blown magic duel anywhere within a hundred leagues of Waterdeep— much less within