DW01 Dragonspawn Read Online Free PDF

anyone and could charm even the undead with his acting ability and his tongue. Her choice was finally made.

    Shulana stood in the dark street outside the palatial city dwelling of the Viscount Marco D’ Alonzo. It was well past the middle of the night; the sun would dawn over the city in less than four hours, by human reckoning. The elf pondered her next move. The question was how to approach Bagsby.
    Inside the mansion, Bagsby was sleeping soundly, having been befriended by the viscount after managing to carefully lose one hundred crowns to him in a dice game at one of the more exclusive gambling halls in Clairton. The Pendargon family would not think of contacting the viscount about a minor matter of swindling—the embarrassment would be too great. Nor were they of sufficient social standing to be guests at his splendid home. Bagsby, on the other hand, as the recently robbed son of the Count of Nordingham in the kingdom of Pantania, many hundreds of leagues distant, was more than welcome to spend the night. The Pendargons were wasting the time of their own retainers trying vainly to find the so-called Leonardo.
    Shulana thought deeply on her problem. She could not tell Bagsby the truth; he would merely take her information and then use it for his own profit and the advantage of her enemy. She glanced up at the great mansion, where torchlight lit up the carefully sculpted front gardens by night, and where armed men patrolled the grounds at irregular intervals to foil the plans of thieves. What weakness did this Bagsby have that she could play on?
    Greed, she thought: greed, a fondness for what the humans considered high living, and a total lack of any values other than the satisfaction of his own desires. Bagsby would do what she wanted as long as he thought he was serving himself. He would respond to the promise of wealth, if the promise were credible, or to the threat of losing what he had—which was very little, other than his wits and his life. And there was his vanity. She had learned that it was a mistake to underestimate the power of human vanity.
    Shulana drew her cloak tightly around her and raised its cowl over her head. She resolved upon her course of action. Touching her cloak, she made a hasty gesture, muttering the words of an elven spell. Had anyone been watching, they would have seen her virtually disappear, as her cloak took on the coloration of its immediate background.
    Thus protected, Shulana walked boldly into the street and approached the front gardens of the mansion. A convenient fig tree extended its branches upward toward the second-story balcony; the climb was easy. From there, she opened the great glass doors onto the hall leading to the guest rooms. Even in the dark, her elven vision enabled her to quickly spot Bagsby’s chamber; it was the only one in use, and its door handle glowed with the recent heat of contact with a living being. The door was unlocked; the wealthy trusted their hirelings to protect them. She turned the knob and slipped inside quietly.
    The room was quite large—fully thirty feet across and almost square. A fine oak wardrobe, a marble washstand, a small, polished oak table and chair, a great mahogany bookcase filled with hand-copied and carefully bound volumes of works currently in vogue with humans, a great tapestry depicting one of the countless battles from the human-elven wars, and three fine paintings, presumably of relatives of the viscount, adorned the chamber. In the center stood the great canopied bed. The frame was made of solid polished cherry wood; the canopy was satin to match the bedclothes, and the whole enclosed with fine lace curtains. Fresh-cut flowers trembled in a finely turned clay vase next to the head of the bed.
    Bagsby lay in the center of the bed on his back, his head raised by several soft pillows, snoring loudly. The satin sheets and a fine woolen blanket were pulled up tightly under his chin.
    Shulana stood silently, surveying the scene,