The Lord Mage shook his head. "A few might scale the walls and fight through, but the gate will hold."

She shrugged, not seeing his reasoning.

"They've got that far." Khelben waved grimly at the harbor and then back at countless staring eyes and wet scales below. "You know the merfolk would die before they let these sea-scum into the inner harbor."

Sorrow thinned Laeral's lips. In the fury of the fray she'd forgotten what the bold advance of the fish-men must mean. Some of the harbor merfolk were dear friends.

Had been dear friends.

"Without them," she murmured, "the storm drains are undefended. Each is well warded, but whoever sends the sahuagin against us is no stranger to the Art."

"Aye," Khelben agreed, clasping her shoulders briefly as she turned to go. "For all we know, there could already be sahuagin in every sewer in Waterdeep-and once they're down there, there's no place in the city they can't go."

Laeral nodded grimly. "I'll send for everyone who can hurl a spell or swing a sword."

"We've not much time," the Blackstaff warned, "and many of our friends may be busy elsewhere. This strike from the sea isn't limited to Waterdeep."

"I'll contact Candlekeep first." Laeral, never much of a scholar, gave her lord a swift, ironic smile. "Surely the monks have nothing more pressing to attend to."

A small snake, a bright garden slitherer banded in tropical turquoise and green, wound a soundless way through room after dim room full of books. With sure instinct it made its way to a certain dusty alcove deep in Candlekeep and spiraled gracefully up one leg of a study table.

The young man seated there greeted his familiar with an absent-minded nod and returned his full attention to the book open before him: a thick history of fabled Waterdeep. Mrelder had always been fascinated by the City of Splendors, his hunger for its lore almost stronger than his ache to master sorcery. Almost.