The Temptation of Elminster

darkness, and with more haste than dignity headed for the hills.

The heights on the far side of the Ringyl weren't yet touched by moonlight, but the glittering stars cast enough light to make their grassy flanks seem to glow. El looked back several times on his determined march up out of the town, but nothing seemed to stir or follow him, and the many eyes that peered at him out of the darkness were no larger than those of rats.

Perhaps he would have time to win some sort of slumber, after all. The hilltop he chose was small and bare of all but the ever-present long grass. He walked it in a smallish ring, then opened his pack, took out a cloth scrip full of daggers that glowed a brief, vivid stormy blue when unwrapped…radiance that promptly seemed to leak out of them, dripping and dancing to the ground…and retraced his steps around the ring. He drove a dagger hilt-deep into the soil at intervals and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like an old and rather bawdy dance rhyme. When the ring was complete, the Athalantan turned back along it and drove a second ring of daggers in, angling each of these additional blades into the turf on the inside of the ring, so that its blade touched the vertical steel of an already-buried dagger. He held out his hand, palm downward and fingers spread, said a single, soft word over them, wrapped his cloak around himself, and went to bed.

'What, pray tell, are you reading?' The balding, bearded mage set aside a goblet whose contents frothed and bubbled, looked up unhurriedly over his spectacles, elevated one eyebrow at a fashionably slow pace, and replied, 'A play … of sorts.'

The younger wizard standing over him…more splendidly dressed and still possessing some of his own hair… blinked. 'A 'play,' Baerast? And 'of sorts'? Not an obscure spellbook or one of Nabraether's meaty grimoires?'

Tabarast of the Three Sung Curses peered up over his spectacles again, more severely this time. 'Let there be no impediment to your dawning understanding, dearest Droon,' he said. 'I am currently immersed in a play, to whit 'The Stormy Knight, Or, The Brazen Butcherer.' A work of some energy.'

'And more spilled blood,' Beldrune of the Bent Finger replied, sweeping aside an untidy stack of books that had almost buried a high-backed chair and planting himself firmly in it before it even had time to wheeze at its sudden freedom. The crash of tomes that followed was impressive in both room-shaking solidity and in the amount of dust it raised. It almost drowned out the two smaller thunderings that followed, the first occasioned by the clearance of the footstool of its own tower of tomes by means of a hearty two-footed kick, and the second caused by the collapse of both back legs of the old chair.

As Beldrune abruptly settled lower amid scattered literature, Tabarast laid a dust-warding hand over the open top of his goblet and asked through the roiling cloud of dancing motes, 'Are you quite finished? I begin to weary of this nuisance.'

Beldrune made a sound that some folk would have deemed rude and others might judge impressive and by way of elaborating on this reply uttered the words, 'My dear fellow, is this…this burgeoning panoply of literary chaos my achievement? I think not. There's not a chair or table left on this entire floor that isn't guarding its own ever- growing fortress of magical knowledge at your behest, and…'

Tabarast made a sound like a serpent's skull being crushed under an eager boot heel. 'My behest? Do you now deny the parcenary of this disarray around us? I can confute any claims to the contrary, if you've a day or two to spare.'

'Meaning my wits are that slow, or words so slow and laborious to come to your lips that…atch, never mind. I came not to bandy bright phrases all evening but to banish a little lonely befuddlement by talking a while.'

'A prolusion I've heard before,' Tabarast observed dryly. 'Have a drink.'

He pulled on the lever that made the familiar cabinet rise from the floorboards to stand between then and listened to Beldrune pounce on its contents from the far side with an absence of continued speech that meant young Droon must be very thirsty.

'All right.. have two,' he amended his offer.

The sounds of swallowing continued. Tabarast opened his mouth to say something, remembered that a certain topic was by mutual agreement forbidden, and shut it again. Then another thought came to him.

'Have you ever read 'The Stormy Knight?'' he asked the cabinet, judging Beldrune's head to be inside it.

The younger wizard raised his head from clinkings and uncorkings and gurglings, looking hurt. 'Have I not?' he asked, then cleared his throat and recited,

What knight is that

who yonder comes riding

bright-arrayed in armor of gold

his sash the dripping blood of his foes?

There was a pause, then, 'I did it in Ambrara, once.' You were the Stormy Knight?' Tabarast asked in open disbelief, his small round spectacles sliding down his nose in search of unknown destinations.

'Second Undergardener,' Beldrune snapped, looking even more hurt. 'We all have to start somewhere.”

Taking a large and dusty bottle firmly in one fist, he plucked its cork and hurled the stopper back over his shoulder where it hit the Snoring Shield of Antalassiter with a bright ping, glanced off the Lost Hunting Horn of the Mavran Maidens, and fell somewhere behind the man-high, dust-covered mound of scrolls and books that Tabarast considered his 'Urgent Reading of the Moment.' He drained the contents of the bottle in one long and loud swallowing that left him gasping, with tears trailing down his face, and in urgent need of something that tasted better.

A knowing Tabarast silently handed him the bowl of roast halavan nuts. Beldrune dug in with both hands until the bowl was empty, then smiled apologetically, burped, and took his worry stone from its drawstring pouch. Thumbing its smooth, familiar curves seemed to calm him.

Settling back in his chair, he added, 'I've always preferred 'Broderick Betrayed, Or, The Wizard Woeful.''

'This would be my turn,' the older mage replied with a dignified nod, and in the manner of an actor on center stage threw out his hand and grandly declaimed:

That so fat and grasping a man

Should have the very stars bright in his hands

To blind us all with their shining

Blotting out his faults in plenty.

His huge and howling ghost

Doth prowl the world entire

but loves and lingers most

upon this very same and lonesome spot

Where gods loved, men killed, and careless elves forgot.

'Well,' Beldrune said after a little silence, 'not to deny your impressive performance…your usual paraph, and then some!..but it seems we've returned again to the subject we agreed was forbidden: the One Who Walks, and just what Mystra meant by creating a Chosen One as her most esteemed mortal servant.'

Tabarast shrugged, his long and slender fingers tracing the wisps of his own beard thoughtfully. 'Men collect what is forbidden,' he said. 'Always have, always will.'

'And mages more so,' Beldrune agreed. 'What does that tell us about those who follow our profession, I wonder?'

The older mage snorted. 'That no shortage of witty fools has yet fallen over Faerun.'

'Hah!' Beldrune leaned forward, stroking one splendid silk lapel eagerly between forefinger and thumb, the worry stone momentarily forgotten. 'Then you grant that Our Lady will take more than one Chosen? At last?'

'I grant no such thing,' Tabarast replied rather testily. 'I can see a succession of Chosen, one raised after another falls, but I've yet been shown no evidence of the dozen or more you champion, still less of this Bright Company of star-harnessing, mountain-splitting arch-wizards some of the more romantic mages keep babbling about. They'll be begging Holy Mystra to issue merit badges next.'