The Temptation of Elminster

The younger mage ran one hand through his wavy brown hair, utterly ruining the styling the tower's maid-of- chamber had struggled to achieve, and said, 'I quite agree with you that such things are ridiculous-and yet could they not be used as a mark of accomplishment? Meet a mage and see seven stars and a scroll on his sash, and you know where he stands?'

'I know how much time he's willing to waste on impressing folk and sewing little gewgaws onto his undergarments, more like,' Tabarast replied sourly. 'Just how many upstart magelings would add a few unearned stars to grant themselves rank and hauteur accruing to power and accomplishments they do not in fact possess? Every third one who knows how to semi that's how many! If we must talk about this…this young elf-loving jackanapes, who seems to have been a prince and the slayer of the mighty Ilhundyl and the bed mate of half a hundred slim elf lasses besides, the object of our discourse shall not be his latest conquest or idle utterance, but his import to us all. I care not which boot he puts on first of mornings, what hue of cloak he favors, or whether he prefers to kiss elf lips or human ones…have we understanding and agreement?'

'Of course,' Beldrune replied, spreading his hands. 'But why such heat? His achievements…as a Chosen One favored by the goddess Herself, mind…do nothing to belittle yours.'

Tabarast thumbed his spectacles back up to the bridge of his nose and muttered, 'I grow no younger. I've not the years left to encompass what that youn…but enough, I'll say no more. I beg leave to impart to you, my young friend, things about this One Who Walks of rather more importance to us both. The priests of the Mantle, for ins…'

“The priests of the which?'

'The Mantle … Mystra's Mantle, the temple to Our Lady in Haramettur. I don't suppose you've ever been therein.'

Beldrune shook his head. 'I try to avoid temples to Holy Mystra,' he said. 'The priests tend to be nose-in-the- air sorts who want to charge me coffers full of gold for casting…badly…what I can do myself with a few coppers of oddments.'

Tabarast flapped a dismissive hand and replied, 'Indeed, indeed, all too often … and I've my own quarrel with their snobbery…pimply younglings sneering down their noses at such as myself because we wear real, everyday, food-stained robes, and not silks and sashes and golden cross-garters, like rakes gone to town of an ardent evening. If they truly served wizards and not just awestruck young lasses who 'think they might have felt Mystra's kiss, awakening at midnight this tenday last, they'd know all true mages look like rag heaps, not fashion-pretty popinjays!'

Beldrune looked hurt…again…and gestured down the front of his scarlet silk tunic. The gesture made it ripple glassily in the lamplight, its cloth-of-gold dragons gleaming, the glittering emeralds that served them as eyes a- winking, and the fine wire wrought into spirals that passed for their tongues bobbing. 'And what am I? No true mage, I suppose?'

Tabarast passed a weary hand over his eyes. 'Nay, nay, good Droon…present company excepted, of course. Your bright plumage doth so outshine mine aged eyes that I overlook it as a matter of course. Let us have no quarrel over your learning or able mastery of realm-shaking magics, you are, before all the gods, a 'true mage,' whatever by Mystra's gentle whispers to is. Let us by more heroic efforts resist the temptation to drift away into other matters, and…if discuss the forbidden we must…speak plainly. To whit: the priests of the Mantle say that the One Who Walks is free to act on his own, that is, to make just as bad a hash of things as you and I are free to do … moreover, that it is holy Mystra's will that he be left to blunder and choose and hurl recklessness on his own, to 'become what it is needful he become.' They want us all to pretend we don't know who or what he is, if we should meet with him.'

Beldrune rested his chin on one hand, a fresh and smoking goblet raised in the other. 'Just what is it that they say he must become?' he asked.

'That's where their usefulness ends,' Tabarast snorted 'When one asks, they go to their knees and groan about 'not being worthy to know,' and 'the aims of the divine are beyond the comprehension of all mortals'…which tells me right there that they haven't figured it out yet…then they rush into an almost puppy-panting whirl of 'oh, but he's important! The signs! The signs!''

Beldrune sipped deeply from his goblet, swallowed, and asked, 'What signs?'

Tabarast resumed the ringing voice of doom that he'd used to delivered the lines from Broderick, and intoned: 'In this Year of Laughter, the Blazing Hand of Sorcery ascends the starry night cloak, for the first time in centuries! Nine black tressym landed upon the sleeping princess Sharandra of the South and delivered themselves of four kittens each upon her very bosom! (Don't ask me how she slept through that or what she thought of the mess when she did wake!) The Walking Tower of Warglend has moved for the first time in a thousand years, taking itself from Tower Tor to the midst of a nearby lake! A talking frog has been found in Candlekeep, wherein also six pages in as many books have gone blank, and two books appeared that have never been seen by any Faerunian scholar before! The Well of the Bonedance in Maraeda's run dry! The skeleton of the lich Buardrim has been seen dancing in…ah, bah! Enough! They can keep it up for hours!'

'Gullet Well's gone dry?'

Tabarast favored Beldrune with a look. 'Yes,' he said mildly. 'Gullet Well has gone dry…for whatever real reason. I saw the dead horses to prove it. So there you have it. Tell me, good Droon, you get out and about more than I do, and hear more of the gossip…however paltry or deliberately fabricated it may be… among our fellow workers-of-Art. How say the mages about this One Who Walks? What do the trendy wizards think?'

It was Beldrune's turn to snort. 'Trendy wizards don't think,' he retorted, 'or they'd take care never to be caught up in any trend. But as to what's being said … of him, less than nothing. What our colleagues seem to have heard out of whatever the priests have proclaimed can be boiled down to great secret excitement and preening over the chance to be named a Chosen of Mystra…and thereby get all sorts of special powers and inside knowledge. They seem to view it as the most exclusive club yet, and that someone is certain to privately contact them to join, any day now. If Mystra is selecting mortal mages to be Her personal servants, endowing them with spells mighty enough to shatter mountains and read minds, each and every mage wants to get into this oh-so-exclusive group without appearing in the slightest to be interested in such status.'

Tabarast raised an eyebrow. 'I see. How do you know I'm already not a Chosen and reading your mind even now?'

Beldrune gave his friend a wry smile. 'If you were reading my mind, Baerast,' he said, 'you'd be trying to smite me down, right now…and blushing to boot!'

Tabarast lifted the other eyebrow to join the first. 'Oh? Should I bother to venture further queries?' he asked. 'I suspect not, but I'd like to be prepared if your incipient anger bids fair to goad you into muscular and daring feats that I must needs resist … You do feel incipient anger, don't you?'

'No, not a moment of it,' Beldrune replied cheerfully. 'Though I could probably work up to it, if you continue to guard that jar of halavan nuts so closely. Pass it over.'

Tabarast did so, freely giving his colleague a sour look along with it and saying, 'I value these nuts highly, one might even say they are precious to me. Con duct thy depredations accordingly.'

The younger wizard smiled wryly. 'All mages, I daresay, conduct their depredations while considering-if they take time to consider at all…what they're about to seize or destroy to be precious. Don't you?'

Tabarast looked thoughtful. 'Yes,' he murmured. 'Yes, I do.' He lifted an eyebrow. 'How many of us, I wonder, fall so into exultation at our own power that we try to seize or destroy everything we deem precious?'

Beldrune scooped up a handful of nuts. 'Most of us would consider a Chosen precious, would we not?' he asked.

Tabarast nodded. 'The One Who Walks is going to have an interesting career in time soon to come,' he predicted softly, his face very far from a smile. 'Pour me something.' Beldrune did.

Lightning rose and snapped out, splitting the night with a bright flash of fury. El blinked and sat up. Blue arcs of deadly magic were leaping and crackling from dagger to dagger around his ring, and in the night beyond something was thrashing wetly…something that was being avoided by a score or more slinking, prowling things that looked like ragged shadows, but moved like hunting cats. Elminster came fully awake fast, peering all around and counting. The thrashing hadn't ended, and anything that could survive such a lash of lightning was something to be