Gaerond smiled his best, soft wolf smile. “No. I’m afraid not.”

The air promptly erupted in a briefly deafening storm of hissing and twanging, while the old man sat as still as a stone.

As abruptly as it had come, the storm was done, all the tapestries and paintings fluttering in the wake of too many snarling quarrels to count.

Most of the Bloodshields had been driven back against the walls, so studded with those quarrels as to resemble pincushions. Gaerond hadn’t been near a wall, so he was the last to fall, toppling in slow silence, disbelief plain on his dead face.

As if the thump and clatter of his landing were a cue, figures all clambered out from behind the tapestries in brisk haste, their pearl-white limbs reaching to reload crossbows or to snatch away weapons in case any of the Bloodshields might have had magical protection enough to somehow still live.

It appeared that none of them had.

The doppelganger sitting behind the table dwindled down into something long and lean that easily slid out of the wizard’s robes and the suit of padded armor beneath them that had lent “Elminster” such broad shoulders, and stretched across the table to join in the work of taking up the adventurers’ bodies and gear-the latter for salvage and sale, and the former to eat.

“Any trouble?” hissed a new arrival, coming into the cave still wearing Thal’s face, but with a body pearl white and featureless as the others.

“None,” replied one of the doppelgangers, who was busily breaking the necks of the Bloodshields, just to be sure, sounding almost bored.

“Where is the infamous Elminster, anyhail?” the youngest doppelganger asked. “He’s still alive, yes? They say he is, you know.”

Doppelgangers rarely shrug, but most of those crowded into the cave tried various versions of it, in wriggling unison.