The Temptation of Elminster

'Good, good,' Beldrune responded. 'Could it be Alavaernith, in the early days of working on his Three-cats' spell? Or is it too effusive for that?'

'I suspect someone other than Alavaernith,' Tabarast said slowly. 'He was never so open with his secrets as this. …'

Neither of them noticed a red-eyed, hawk-nosed man step into the room and lean for a moment against the door sill with an air of utter weariness, looking around at everything as he listened to them.

'And does he say anything useful?' Beldrune pressed. 'Or can we cast this aside on the heap in the barrel?'

Tabarast peered at the page, turned it over to make sure the back was blank, held it to the light seeking oddities in (or hidden under) the writing, and finally handed it to his colleague with a sound that was half sigh and half snort. 'Nothing useful, beyond telling us what someone was working on or had thought of back then….'

The hawk-nosed man stepped forward to peer at the gilt-lettered spines of tomes wedged tightly into the nearest bookshelf, then looked over at the table and carefully turned over a twisted, crumpled cage of wrought metal that had probably once held the shape of a globe. Examining it carefully, the stranger set it softly back down and peered at the writings beneath it.

'Now, this one,' Tabarast said slowly, bent over the other side of the table, 'is rather more interesting. No, we shan't be hurling this into the barrel quite so quickly.' He held it up under his nose as he straightened, then paused as Elminster's boot made a slight sound and the dark-haired mage asked, 'How goes it, Mardasper? Keeping an eye on things, as usual, hmmm?'

When there was no reply, he turned, and both mages stared across the room at the newcomer…who gave them a polite nod and smile, looked for a moment at an old and brittle scroll on the table, then stepped sideways, seeking more interesting writings.

Tabarast and Beldrune frowned at the stranger in unison, then turned their backs, drew in side by side, and continued their investigations in muttered tones.

El gave their eloquent backs and shoulders a wry, exhausted smile, then shrugged and peered at another parchment. It was something about Grafting a spike-studded torture coffin so that folk latched into it were teleported elsewhere rather than suffering impalement, and it was written with that squaring of the letters that marked its origin as the south shore of the Sea of Fallen Stars. The glint of metallic inks shone back at him, and the page had reached that soft brown state just before crumbling begins … as old as he was, or older. El looked at the next page, sliding aside a Netherese ocular to do it.

He gave the beautiful item a second glance. The enchantments that would affix it over a wearer's eye were gone, but the gem would still, by the looks of it, afford vision of heat, and even through wood or stone a handspan thick or less. With the curled filigree around it, it looked like a giant, elegant tear that would glisten endlessly on a lady's cheek.

What a lot of work. Grafting far in excess of its usefulness, done for the sheer joy of mastering the Art and creating something that would last… and there must be a thousand times a thousand such items, scattered all over a world so rich in natural magic that all of them could be said to be frivolities.

And was Elminster Aumar, in truth, one more frivolity?

Perhaps, and perhaps he was destined to leave behind little more than these endless dusty scraps of parchment, the confused and unfinished ideas of centuries … yet that flow of mistakes and vain strivings and occasional triumphs or destructive disasters was the Art, with Mystra the gatekeeper of the Weave from which it all came and to which it all returned.

Enough. He was standing in a parchment-littered room in Moonshorn Tower, here and now, and the flow of magics or the very nature of Art were alike in their irrelevance His world was a place of hunger, and thirst, feeling cold or hot…or feeling so gods-spitting tired that he could barely keep his eyes open an instant longer.

Wait! There…he'd seen that writing before. The fine, flowing hand of Elenshaer, who'd been so good at crafting new and unusual wardings in Myth Drannor…until he'd been torn apart by a Phaerimm he'd rashly caged in too-feeble spells to do a little experimentation … a victim, some would say, of that arrogant assumption of elven superiority and of the ethical right to transform, mutilate, or tamper with 'lesser beings,' even if they're not truly lesser beings, that afflicts so many of his race. An unfortunate moment of misjudgment and another of carelessness, others would term it. And who was to say which view was right or if any of it truly mattered? Seeing the slender elf laughing and gesturing, fluted wineglass in hand, in his memory of a terrace that no longer stood, amid folk who no longer lived, El slid aside other writings to expose all of Elenshaer's missive.

It was a spell, of sorts. Or rather, the beginnings of a 'hook' of Art that would allow an additional power to be added to an existing ward by the casting of another spell into the invisible hook…which would then draw the spell Into the weaving of the ward and permit the caster to govern and adjust its effects. Elminster read the spell over silently until it approached its ending and stopped.

Elenshaer had followed a common elf mages' practice. He'd set down the crowning part of the casting on another paper, kept elsewhere. His abode would have held thousands of such papers, with Elenshaer's memory as the only link of what paper went with which. There'd even been a rogue mage in the City of Song, Twillist, who'd sought power by pilfering such 'ends' of spells, trading them to young apprentices and others eager for more knowledge and power in exchange for lesser, but whole, magics.

The missing ending was almost obvious to a mage who'd had a hand in crafting mythals and studied with Cormanthan elves. A summation or linking bridge, probably 'Tanaethaert shurruna rae,' a shaping gesture…thus…mirrored immediately and incorporated into the incantation with the utterance of 'Rahrada,' then the declaration that would make the hook recede into the ward-weave and give its caster control of the spell effects it brought with it: 'Dannaras ouuhilim rabreivra, tonneth ootaha la, tabras torren ouliirym torrin, dalarabban yultah.' A concluding gesture… thus…and it would be done.

He'd spoken those words aloud, though near-soundlessly, and was startled when something spun into being in the air before him, a little more than the length of his hand above Elenshaer's incomplete spell. A little glowing construction hung in the air above the page: lines of fire looping into a tiny knot that began to rotate as he watched it, to spin endlessly and silently.

Sigh. If there was such a thing as a needless magic, this was it. Unthinkingly he'd broken Mystra's decree, after enduring so much discomfort and danger to keep it. Gods blast!

As if that silent, savage thought had been a cue, the hook he'd created commenced to spit tiny sparks at the parchment beneath it. Oh, that was all he needed! In a room such as this, with dry and dusty paper inches deep on everything….

His hands were already darting to shield the thickly strewn parchments against the sparks … too late. They landed, hopped, and…

Formed glowing words that were overlaying Elenshaer's writing as they advanced before his astonished eyes, leaving no smoke or sign of conflagration in their wake.

Leave. Now. Seek the Riven Stone.

The message flashed once, as if to make sure that he read it, blazed brightly, then slowly began to fade away.

El read them one more time and swallowed. He could barely stand, but the command couldn't be much clearer, he must leave this place without delay. He raised his head and looked regretfully around at all the lore he'd not be able to poke around in, now. No more sparks fell from the tiny whirling hook, and the two old wizards were still hunched against him on the far side of the room, mumbling secrets to each other so he'd not hear.

He looked down at the letters of magical flame again, found them just fading into invisibility, and watched until they were quite gone. Then he gave the room a deep, soundless sigh, followed it with a rueful grin, and crept out as softly as the thief in Hastarl he'd once been.

After the fourth page of unrelated lore, Tabarast murmured, 'Will you look behind us and see where this stranger has got to? If he's wandered back to the door, or out of it, this guarding of tongues shall cease forthwith. I feel like a guilty servant gossiping in an outhouse.'

'How can we discuss things if we can't speak freely?' Beldrune agreed, performing an elaborately casual glance back over his shoulder at the littered table. Then he swung right around, and said, 'Baerast, he's gone.'