Torm looked pained. "How did you-? Oh. Elminster."

She nodded in silent satisfaction. The thief looked at her, found his eyes drawn to meet her own, sighed, reminded himself again that this magnificent creature was a woman old enough to be his great granddam many times over, smiled ruefully, and turned her around to face away from him again. "You wanted a rub," he said, "and you shall have it. Then you can go down those stairs and fight off the entire Zhent army doe-naked if you want… but you might catch cold before they get here."

"Not if all the men of Mistledale give me the sort of hot glances you've been throwing my way," she returned. Torm chuckled and tipped some scented oil out of the bottle he'd taken from the wardrobe, rubbed his palms together, and then laid gentle fingers on her shoulders.

Sylune stiffened. "What're y-oh. Ohhh." A few pleasant minutes later, she asked almost sleepily, "How did you know I love the scent of cloves? Did Elminster tell you?"

"No," Torm replied, sounding irritated.

"How, then?"

"Lady Sylune," Torm said carefully, "I am a thief." He had to hold her up to keep her from falling off the chair as she bent over and shook with sudden, helpless laughter. Daggerdale, Flamerule 15

Valaster's Stand had thrust lancelike into the eastern Daggerdale sky for an age and more, and bid fair to do so for a long time to come. Long before Valaster had chosen to die there, the stand had been an arrowhead-shaped ridge that rose sharply upward as it ran northwest, to end in a jagged, overhanging point of rock under which many a traveler had camped. Wiser folk kept to the thick stand of shadowtop trees that marched up its back, and so stayed hidden from the eyes of predators.

The trees on the edge of the rocky point were dead or dying. Their bare branches thrust up into the sky like the gnarled fingers of a dead man, a popular roost for birds of prey. Two large and dusty buzzards sat side by side there now. Many another raptor circled, squalling at the buzzards' refusal to leave, and then flew off in search of other perches.