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.So he'd best be about his spying.One thing to check on, first.He remembered these streets dimly: he'd passed along that one, he thought, in his first stagger through the city, trying to search for House Alastrarra without seeming to do more than stroll.A particularly proud mansion, in the heart of walled gardens, should lie in that direction.His memory was correct.It was the work of an instant to pass through the gates unseen, and seek the great house beyond.He could pass through small items, especially wood, he discovered, but stone and metal hurt or deflected him; he could not burst or even seep through solid walls.A window served him amply, however, and he entered into the tapestried splendor of a lavishly decorated home.Furs lay everywhere underfoot, and polished wood sculpted into lounges and chairs rose in flowing shapes on all sides.Wealthy elven families seemed to love varicolored blown glass and chairs that rose into a variety of little armrests and shelves and curved lounging cavities.El passed among these like a purposeful thread of smoke, seeking a particular thing.He found it in an ornate bedchamber where a nude elven couple were floating in each other's arms, upright above their bed, earnestly—even angrily—discussing the affairs of the realm.Elminster found the arguments advanced and parried by the aroused tongues of Lord and Lady Evendusk so fascinating that he lingered a long time listening, before a purely personal dispute about moderation and the consumption of tripleshroom sherry sent him swooping to the floor, and a little way across the furs there, to the visibly pulsing enchantments surrounding Duilya Evendusk's gem bower.It was the Cormanthan custom for elven ladies of means to have a pod-shaped, walk-in portable closet, something like the canopy surrounding a sedan chair.In this closet their jewels were hung or kept in little drawers individually carved to fit into the flowing wooden walls.Gem bowers were equipped with little hanging mirrors, tiny glass light-globes that shone when tapped with a forefinger, and little seats.They also contained powerful enchantments to keep out the wandering fingers of those overwhelmed by the beauty of the gems contained therein; enchantments that in theory could be tuned to keep out all except their lady owner.These "veilings" were so strong that they glowed a rich blue, quite visible to the eye, as they crawled and ebbed around their bowers in A close-clinging sphere of magic.They were strong enough, El recalled dimly from the Srinshee's comments, to hurl intruders across a room, or stand immobile against the charge of the strongest warrior— even a charge preceded by a spear, or augmented by a second or third warrior, racing shoulder to shoulder.Would they likewise rend a drifting human phantom? Or rebuff him?Gingerly he drifted closer, moving with infinite patience, extending the thinnest thread of himself cautiously outward to touch the pulsing blue glow.It rippled unchanged, and he felt nothing.He thrust it in further, reaching with the smokelike finger for three gems hanging on fine chains from the curving ceiling of Duilya Evendusk's bower.He felt nothing, and the enchantment seemed unchanged.Reluctantly he spread himself out along it, brushing against the blueness.No sensation of pain or disruption, ^and no change in the enchantment.Drawing himself back across the room from the bower, he swirled around Lord and Lady Evendusk for a moment, as they murmured gentle words to each other with slow but building hunger.Then he raced across the room, charging right at the magical barrier.He was almost up t—he was through!—bursting through the heart of the bower without disturbing so much as a ring and storming on out its other side, piercing the barrier again and flashing into a silent, unseen turn inches shy of a wall.Behind him the veiling glowed on, unchanging.El turned and regarded it with some satisfaction.Glancing beyond it, at the langorous midair dance of the amorous elven couple, he smiled—or tried to—and soared away, out an oval window into the mossy gardens beyond, seeking information
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