The Temptation of Elminster

'One of the Fair Folk, almost certainly a mage and probably of Cormanthan lineage, on the young side-and greatly lacking in both prudence and diplomacy,' Mardasper replied bleakly. 'Is there more I should know?' He caused the spell-gems on the diadem to awaken and flicker, reinforcing them with the aroused dazzle of the scepter. We may not all have blinking staves, youngling, he thought, but…

Elven eyes flashed green with anger and that thin mouth tightened like the jaws of a steel trap, but the elf said merely, 'If I cannot proceed freely…no.'

Mardasper shrugged, lifting his arms from the lectern to call the intruder's attention to the Lad) Scepter once more. He did not want a spell battle even against a feeble foe, and he didn't need the ward-warnings or the hovering staff to tell him this was no feeble foe.

The elf shrugged elaborately, made his cloak swirl as he ostentatiously turned to go, and let his gaze fall way from the steward as if the man with the scepter were a piece of crumbling statuary. In doing so, his eyes fell across the open register…and suddenly blazed as brightly as Mardasper's own accursed eye.

The elf whirled around again, surging forward like a striking snake…and Mardasper practically thrust the Scepter into his nose, snapping, 'Have a care, sir!'

'This man!' the elf spat, stabbing a daggerlike finger onto the last name entered in the book. 'Is he still here?

Mardasper looked into that incandescent gaze from inches away, trying to keep the fear out of his own eyes and knowing he was failing. He swallowed once then said…his voice surprisingly calm in his own ears…'No. He visited only briefly, this morn, departing not long ago. Headed west, I believe.'

The elf snarled like an angry panther and whirled away again, heading for the door. The staff followed him, trailing black spell flames, two large green gems in its head coming alight to look uncannily like eyes.

'Would you like to leave a message for this Elminster, if he should stop at the tower again?' Mardasper asked in the grandest, most doom-laden voice he could manage, as the elf practically tore the door open. 'Many do.'

The elf turned in the doorway, and let the staff fly into his hand before he snapped, 'Yes! Tell him Ilbryn Starym seeks him and would be pleased to find him prepared for our meeting.' Then he stormed out, the door booming shut behind him. Its rolling thunders told the tale of the violence of its closing.

Mardasper stared at it until the wards told him the elf was gone. Then he ran a hand across his sweat- beaded brow and almost collapsed across the lectern in relief.

The Lady Scepter flashed once, and he almost dropped it. That had been a sign, for sure…but had it been one of reassurance? Or something else?

Mardasper shook the scepter slightly, hoping for something more, but, as he'd expected, nothing more happened. Ahh, tear in the Weave! Blast! By Mystra's Seven Secret Spells…!

He snarled incoherently for a moment, but resisted the urge to hurl the scepter. The last steward of Moon- shorn Tower who'd done that had ended up as ashes paltry enough to fit in a man's palm. His, actually.

Mardasper went back into his office under a heavy weight of gloom. Had he done the right thing? What did Mystra think of him? Should he have tried to stop the elf? Should he have allowed this Elminster fellow in at all? Of course the man couldn't have been the Elminster, the One Who Walks, could he? No, that one must be ancient by now, and only Mystra's…

Mardasper swallowed. He was going to fret over this all night and for days to come. He knew he was.

He set down the diadem and the scepter with exaggerated care, then sat back in his chair, sighed, and stared at the dark walls for a time. The priests of Mystra had been quite specific: a day in which strong drink of any sort passed his lips did not count in the marking of his service here.

Indeed. Quite deliberately he pulled out the three thick volumes at one end of the nearest bookshelf, reached into the darkness beyond, and came out with a large, dusty bottle. To the Abyss and beyond with the priests of Mystra and their niggling rules, too!

'Mystra,' he asked aloud, as he uncorked the bottle, 'how badly did I do?'

In his fingertips, the cork shone like a bright star for the briefest of instants…and shot back into the bottle so violently that his fingers and thumb were left bleeding and numb. Mardasper stared at them for a moment, then carefully put the bottle away again.

'So was that good … or bad?' he asked the gloom in bewilderment. 'Oh, where are the priests when I need them?'

'Whoah!' Tabarast cried. ' Woaaaaah…' His cry ended in a thump as his behind met the road hard, hurling dust in all directions. The mule came to a stop a pace farther on, gave him a reproachful look, and then stood waiting with a mournful air.

Beldrune sniggered as he overtook his winded colleague, urging it on with a small, feather-plumed whip, his splendid boots outthrust like tusks on either side of his mule. 'You seem quite fond of fertile Faerun beneath us this day, friend Baerast!' he observed jovially…an instant before his mule came to an abrupt stop beside the one Tabarast had lately been riding.

Overbalanced, Beldrune toppled helplessly over his mount's head with a startled yell, somersaulting onto the road with an impressive crash that made Tabarast wince, then sputter with repressed mirth as the two mules exchanged glances, seemed to come to some sort of agreement, and with one accord stepped forward, trampling the groaning Beldrune under hoof.

His groans turned to yells of rage and pain, and he flailed wildly with his arms until he was free of unwashed mule bodies and mud-caked mule hooves. 'A rescue!' he cried. 'For the love of Mystra, a rescue!'

'Get up,' Tabarast said grimly, pulling at his hair. 'This Chosen must be half the way to wherever he's going by now, and we can't even stay in the saddles of two smallish mules, by the Wand! Get up, Droon!'

'Arrrghr Beldrune yelled. 'Let go of my hair!'

Tabarast did as he was bidden…and Beldrune's head fell back onto the road with a thump that sounded like a smaller echo of the one Tabarast had made earlier. The younger mage launched into a long and incoherent curse, but Tabarast ignored him, limping ahead to catch the bridles of their mules before the beasts got over the next rise in the road, and clean away.

'I've brought back your mule,' he said to the still-snarling body on its back in the road. 'I suggest we walk beside them for a time … we both seem to be a little out of practice at riding.'

'If you mean we've been falling off all too often,' Beldrune snarled, 'then we are out of practice…but we won't get back in practice unless we mount up and ride!'

Suiting the action to the words, he hauled himself into the saddle of Tabarast's mule, hoping the change of mount would improve his ride a trifle.

The mule swiveled one eye to take in Tabarast standing beside it and someone else loudly occupying its back and didn't budge.

Beldrune yelled at it and hauled on the reins as if he was dragging in a monstrous fish. The mule's head was jerked up and back, but it started trying to twist the reins out of Beldrune's grasp, or draw them into its mouth by repeated chomping, rather than move even a single step forward.

Beldrune drew back his heels, wishing he was wearing spurs, and kicked the beast's flanks as hard as he could. Nothing happened, so he kicked again.

The mule shot forward, leaping up into the air and twisting as it did so.

Beldrune went over backward with what might have been a despairing sob, landed hard on one shoulder, and rolled helplessly back down the road. His splendid doublet was rapidly becoming a dung-stained rag as he tumbled along an impressive length of road before negotiating contact…a solid, leaf-shaking collision, to be precise…with one of a pair of duskwood trees by the roadside.

Tabarast snatched at the reins of the growling mule…until now, he hadn't known mules could growl-made sure he still had hold of the other mule's bridle, and looked back down the road. 'Finished playing at bold knights on horseback?' he snapped. 'We're on important mission, remember?'

An upside-down Beldrune, who'd been staring at I. booted feet a good way up the tree, above him, looked back at his colleague groggily for a moment, then slowly unfolded himself back into the road. When he was upright again, he raked showers of dust from his hair with one hand…wincing at the pains in his back this activity caused… and snarled, 'With all the shouting you're doing, it's a safe bet that Elminster isn't within forty farms of here!'

The tree seemed to flicker for a moment, but neither of the two esteemed mages noticed.