As her beak closed on the blade of the dagger, the hawk melted and flowed, an eerie swirling of flesh that spun into a filthy, naked crone, wild-eyed and wild-haired, a bony old woman sucking on the weapon like a babe single-mindedly worrying a mother’s teat.

There was a glow in her mouth as she sucked, heedless of the sharp steel-and the dagger melted away. Just as the magic he brought her always did.

She crouched on the rock like a panther, greedy mouth fighting to draw in the hilt, her body becoming larger, stronger, and more curvaceous. Her hair shone; she looked younger …

As she always did. For a little while.

For too many years, his Alassra-the Simbul, the once proud Witch-Queen of Aglarond and the single-handed scourge of Thay, the slave empire ruled by Red Wizards beyond counting-had been a frail husk of her former self. Dwelling alone and wild in the Dales, the Thunder Peaks, and the Hullack, shapechanging into endless guises, usually the shapes of raptors as she lapsed in and out of madness.

Magic always made her intellect and control brighten for a time, so for many seasons Elminster had been making these visits to the lady he loved. Or what was left of her.

Stealing, seizing, and digging out of ruins an endless stream of magic items, he had brought them to the rock, for her to subsume and regain fleeting control over her decaying wits.

The Spellplague had not been a kind thing.

The dagger was gone, its pommel a brief pearl on her tongue that died with the last of the glow. Then her eyes were upon him, and she was in his arms, weeping.

“El, oh, El,” was all she could say between her foul kisses. Her stink almost overwhelmed Elminster as she clung to him, wrapping her limbs around him, running her long fingers over all of him she could reach and clawing at his worn and patched robes to try to reach more of him.