Lasker had personally provided the bleached oak panels, rails, and bosses for the chapel "and other important palace rooms, out of love for the great Piergeiron." It was strange, indeed, that all the milled, polished wood came bearing inexpert spells of clairvoyance and clairaudience. Khelben hadn't removed the clumsy enchantments, but instead had overlaid them with spells that twisted all images and sounds into things menacing. Perhaps that's why the loving Lasker Nesher sat blinking between two new bodyguards, starched collar wilting against his clammy neck.

Then there were the Brothers Boarskyr. Loudly devastated by the disappearance of their kin Eidola of Neverwinter, the pair of oafs had used the misfortune as an excuse to move more or less permanently into the palace. While they awaited news of their cousin, they ravaged the palace stores of beef, sweetmeats, pork, and venison, and drank aisle after aisle of Piergeiron's private wine cellar. Both gained another pound each day they remained. The Lord Mage had grudgingly provided enchanted saddles so the Boarskyrs wouldn't break the backs of any more palace horses. Khelben wished he could send the two back to their rickety bridge and let it collapse beneath their combined enormity.

Plenty of other monsters sat in those pews, men and women as duplicitous and murderous as Eidola herself. Khelben was glad she hadn't returned and hoped she never would.

Not all the mourners here were monsters, the Lord Mage reminded himself. He watched a young boy light a candle flanking the raised dais where the caskets stood. Beside the boy hulked the man-giant Madieron Sunderstone, hair drooping in sorrow around his lowered face. Madieron had taken his master's death worse than most. As cheerful, powerful, and loyal as a sheepdog, Madieron had guarded Piergeiron from swords and shafts aplenty. But this last attack had been nothing he could fight, or, it seemed, even understand. The man had sat beside the gold and glass casket from the moment the Open Lord was interred there. Khelben wondered if, like a faithful guard dog, Sunderstone would sit beside it until he died of a broken heart. If there was such a thing as a true heart, Madieron had one.