The Temptation of Elminster

of most men. Both belt and bracers displayed smooth-worked scenes of men wrestling with lions…as did the massive golden codpiece beneath the man's belt. 'Ho, Mantimera,' he boomed. 'Have you more of that venison with the sauce that melts in my memory yet? I starve!'

'No doubt,' Lord Felmorel chuckled. 'That venison need not live only in memory longer, but lift the dome off yonder great platter, and 'tis thine. Wanlorn of Athalantar, be known to Barundryn Harbright, a warrior and explorer of renown.'

Harbright shot a look at the hawk-nosed man without pausing in his determined striding to the indicated platter, and gave a sort of grunt, more noncommittal acknowledgment than welcome or greeting. Wanlorn nodded back, his eyes already turning to the other man, who stood over the table like a cold and dark pillar of fell sorcery. The hawk-nosed guest didn't need the Mantimera's introduction to know that this was a wizard almost as powerful as he was haughty. His eyes held cold sneering as they met Wanlorn's but seemed to acquire a flicker of respect… or was it fear?…as they turned to regard the Lady Nasmaerae.

'Lord Thessamel Arunder, called by some the Lord of Spells,' the Mantimera announced. Was his tone just a trifle less enthusiastic than it had been for the warrior?

The archwizard gave Wanlorn a cold nod that was more dismissal than greeting and seated himself with a grand gesture that managed to ostentatiously display the many strangely shaped, glittering rings on his fingers to everyone in the vicinity. To underscore their moment, various of the rings winked in a random scattering of varicolored flashes and glows.

As he looked at the food before him, a brief memory came to Wanlorn of the jaws of wolves snapping in his face, in the deep snows outside the Starn in the hard winter just past. He almost smiled as he put that bloody remembrance from his mind…hunger, it had been simple hunger for those howling beasts, no better and no worse than what had hold of him now…and applied his own gaze to the peppered lizard soup and crusty three-serpent pie within reach. As he cut into the latter and sniffed appreciatively at the savory steam whirling up, Wanlorn knew Arunder had darted a glance his way, to see if this stranger-guest was sufficiently impressed with the show of power. He also knew that the mage must be sitting back now and taking up a glass of wine to hide a mage-sized state of irritation.

Yet he only had to look at himself in a seeing-glass to know that power and accomplishment of Art lures many wizards into childlike petulance, as they expect the world to dance to their whim and are most selfishly annoyed whenever it doesn't. He was Arunder's current source of annoyance, the wizard would lash out at him soon.

All too soon. 'You say you hail from Athalantar, good sir…ah, Wanlorn. I'd have thought few of your age would proclaim themselves stock of that failed land,' the wizard purred, as the warrior Harbright returned to the board bearing a silver platter as broad as his own chest, which fairly groaned under the weight of near a whole roast boar and several dozen spitted fowl, and enthroned himself with the creak of a settling chair and the clatter of shaking decanters. 'Where have you dwelt more recently, and what brings you hence, cloaked in secrets and unheralded, to a house so full of riches, if I may ask? Should our hosts be locking away their gem coffers?'

'I've wandered these fair realms for some decades now,' Wanlorn replied brightly, seeming not to notice Arunder's sarcasm or unveiled insinuations, 'seeking knowledge. I'd hoped that Myth Drannor would teach me much…but it gave me only a lesson in the primal necessity of outrunning fiends. I've poked here and peered there but learned little more than a few secrets about Dasumia.'

'Have you so? Seek you lore about magic, then…or is your quest for mere treasure?'

At that last word, the warrior Harbright glanced up from his noisy and nonstop biting and swallowing for a moment, fixing Wanlorn with one level eye to listen to whatever response might be coming.

'Lore is what I chase,' Wanlorn said, and the warrior gave a disgusted grunt and resumed eating. 'Lore about Dasumia…but instead I seem to find a fair bit about the Art. I suppose its power drives those who can write to set down details of it. As to treasure … one can't eat coins. I've enough of them for my needs, alone and afoot, how would I carry more?'

'Use a few of them to buy a horse,' Harbright grunted, spraying an arc of table with small morsels of herbed boar. 'Gods above…walking around the kingdoms! I'd grow old even before my feet wore off at the ankles!'

'Tell me,' Lord Felmorel addressed Wanlorn, leaning forward, 'how much did you see of the fabled City of Song? Most who even glimpse the ruins are torn apart before they can win clear.'

'Or did you just wander about in the woods near where you imagine Myth Drannor to be?' Arunder asked silkily, plucking up a decanter to refill his glass.

'The fiends must have been busy hounding someone else,' the hawk-nosed man told the Mantimera, 'because I spent most of a day clambering through overgrown, largely empty buildings without seeing anything alive that was larger than a squirrel. Beautiful arched windows, curving balconies … it must have been very grand. Now there's not much lying about waiting to be carried off. I saw no wineglasses still on tables or books propped open where someone was interrupted in their reading, as the minstrels would have us all believe. No doubt the city was sacked after it fell. Yet I saw, and remember, some sigils and writings. Now if I could just determine what they mean….'

'You saw no fiends?' Arunder was derisive…but also visibly eager to hear Wanlorn's reply. The hawk-nosed man smiled.

'No, sir mage, they guard the city yet. 'Twill probably be years, if ever, before folk can walk into the ruins without having to worry about anything more dangerous than a stirge, say, or an owlbear.'

Lord Felmorel shook his head. 'All that power,' he murmured, 'and yet they fell. All that beauty swept away, the people dead or scattered … once lost, it can never be restored again. Not the way it was.'

Wanlorn nodded. 'Even if the fiends were banished by nightfall,' he said, 'the place rebuilt in a tenday, and a citizenry of comparable wit and accomplishments assembled the day after, we'd not have the City of Beauty back again. That shared excitement, drive, and the freedom to experiment and freely reason and indulge in whimsy that's founded on the sure knowledge of one's own invulnerability won't be there. One would have a players' stage pretending to be the City of Song, not Myth Drannor once more.'

The Mantimera nodded and said, 'I've long heard the tales of the fall, and have even faced a fell fiend-not there…and lived to tell the tale. Even divided by their various selfish interests and rivalries, I can scarce believe that so grand and powerful a folk fell as completely and utterly as they did.'

'Myth Drannor had to fall,' Barundryn Harbright rumbled, spreading one massive hand as if holding an invisible skull out over the table for their inspection. 'They got above themselves, you see, chasing godhood again … like those Netherese. The gods see to it that such dreams end bloodily, or there'd be more gods than we could all remember, and none of 'em with might enough to answer a single prayer. 'Sobvious, so why do all these mages keep making this same mistake?'

The wizard Arunder favored him with a slim, superior smile and said, 'Possibly because they don't have you on hand to correct their every little straying from the One True Path.'

The warrior's face lit up. 'Oh, you've heard of it?' he asked. 'The One True Path, aye.'

The mage's jaw dropped open. He'd been joking, but by all the gods, this lummox seemed serious.

'There aren't many of us thus far,' Harbright continued enthusiastically, waving a whole, gravy-dripping pheasant for emphasis, 'but already we wield power in a dozen towns. We need a realm, next, and…'

'So do we all. I'd like several,' Arunder said mockingly, swiftly recovered from his astonishment. 'Get me one with lots of towering castles, will you?'

Harbright gave him a level look. 'The problem with over- clever mages,' he growled to the table at large, 'is their unfamiliarity with work…not to mention getting along with all sorts of folk and knowing how to saddle a horse or put a heel back on a boot or even how to kill and cook a chicken. They seldom know how to hold their drink down, or how to woo a wench, or grow turnips … but they always know how to tell other folk what to do, even about turnip-growing or wringing a chicken's neck!'

Large, hairy, blunt-fingered hands waved about alarmingly, and Arunder shrank away, covering his obvious fear by reaching for a distant decanter. Wanlorn obligingly moved it nearer to the mage but was ignored rather than thanked.

Their host cut into the uncomfortable moment by asking, 'Yet, my lords, True Paths or the natures of wizards aside, what see you ahead for all who dwell in this heart of far-sprawling Faerun? If Myth Drannor the Mighty can