The Temptation of Elminster

'My thanks,' Umbregard replied, and meant it.

The hollow was cold and as dark as a cave, here the leaves met close overhead, and no sun at all touched the earth. Faintly glowing fungi gave off just enough light to see a stone at the edge of the little pool, and a crystal goblet waiting on it. 'For my use?' the human mage asked.

'Of course,' the calm voice replied, coming from everywhere and nowhere. 'Do you fear enslaving enchantments, or elven trickery?'

'No,' Umbregard replied. 'Rather, I do not want to give offense by seizing things overboldly.'

He took up the goblet…it was cool to the touch, and somehow softer in his fingers than it should have been…dipped it into the pool, and drank. As the ripples chased each other across the water, he thought he saw in them a sad, dark-eyed elf face regarding him for a moment.. but if it had ever truly been there, it was gone in the next instant.

The water was good, and seemed at once both invigorating and soothing. The man let it slide down his throat, closed his eyes, and gave himself over to silent enjoyment.

Somewhere a bird called and was answered. It was all very peaceful… he sat up with a start, fearing for one awful moment that he had slept under an elven spell, and carefully set the goblet back on the stone where he'd found it.

'My thanks,' he said again. 'The water was every bit as you said it would be. Know that I am Umbregard, once of Galadorna, and have fled far since that realm fell. I work magic, though I can boast no great power, and I have prayed to Mystra…the goddess of magic humans venerate…often in my travels.'

'And what have you prayed to her for?' the elven voice asked in tones of pleasant interest, sounding very close. Again Umbregard quelled the urge to turn and look at its source.

'Guidance in what good and fitting things magic can be used for, to build a life for one who is not interested in using spells as blades to threaten or thrust into others,' he replied. 'Galadorna, before its fall, had become a nest of spell-hurling vipers, each striving to bring rivals down and not caring what waste and ruin they wrought in the doing. I will not be like that.'

'Well said,' the elf said, and Umbregard heard the goblet being dipped then lifted up out of the pool. 'Yet it is a long and hard wandering through the shadowed wood for one of your kind, to here. What brought you hence?'

'Mystra showed me the way, and this duskwood grove,' Umbregard replied. 'I knew not who I'd meet here, but I suspected it would be an elf, once of Myth Drannor … for such a one would know what it was to choose a path after the fall of your home and all you held dear.'

He could clearly hear a wince in the elven voice as it replied, 'You certainly have the gift of speaking plainly, Umbregard.'

'I mean no offense,' the human mage replied, turning quickly and offering his hand.

A moon elf male in a dark blue open-front shirt and high booted tight leather breeches was sitting perhaps another handspan away, the goblet raised in his hand. He seemed weaponless, though two small objects…black, teardrop-shaped gemstones that twinkled like two dark stars…floated in the air above his left shoulder.

He smiled into Umbregard's wonderstruck eyes and said, 'I know. I am also known, among my folk, for my uncommon bluntness. I am called, in your tongue, Star-sunder, a star fell from the sky at the moment of my birth, though I doubt whatever it heralded had anything at all to do with me.'

The human mage gasped, shrank back, and said, 'That's one of the …'

The elf's eyebrows lifted. 'Yes?' he asked. 'Or blurt you out a secret you must now try to keep?'

Umbregard blushed. 'Ah, no … no,' he said. 'That's one of the sayings of the priests of Mystra. 'Seek you one for whom the stars fall, for he speaks truth.' '

Starsunder blinked. 'Oh, dear. My role, it seems, is laid out for me,' the elf said with a smile, drained the goblet, and set it down on the stone just as carefully as Umbregard had done. In soft silence, it promptly vanished.

'What truths have you come to hear?' the elf asked, and in that moment Umbregard came to understand that the lacing of laughter in an elf's voice is not always mockery.

He hesitated for a moment, then said, 'Some in Galadorna whispered that the man Elminster, who was our last court mage, also lived in Myth Drannor long ago, and worked dark magic there. I know this is a human I ask about, and that I presume overmuch…why should you freely yield secrets to me, at all?…but I must know. If humans can live long years as elves do, how … and why? At what tasks should they spend all this time?'

Starsunder held up a hand. 'The flood begins,' he joked. 'Hold at these for now, lest your remembrance of answers I give be lost in the rushing stream of your next query, and the one to follow, and so on.' He smiled and leaned back against a tree root.

'To your first: yes, the same man named Elminster dwelt in Myth Drannor from before the laying of its mythal to some time after, learning and working much magic. Those who hated the idea of a human thrusting his way in among us elves…for he was the first, or among the first…and many folk who came to Myth Drannor, once it was open to all, and envied him his power, might have termed some of his castings 'dark,' but I cannot in truth judge them so, or his reasons for working this or that enchantment.'

Umbregard opened his mouth to speak, but Star-sunder chuckled and threw up a hand to still him. 'Not yet, please, bald and important truths shouldn't be rushed.'

Umbregard flushed, then smiled and sat back, gesturing to the elf to continue.

There was a twinkle in Starsunder's eyes as he spoke again. 'Humans who master magic enough…or rather, think they've 'mastered' magic enough…try many ways to outlive their usual span of years. Most of these, from lichdom to elixirs, are flawed in that they twist the essential nature of persons using them. They become new…and many would judge, I among them, 'lesser'…beings in the process. If you ask me how you could live longer, I would say the only unstained way to do so … though it will change you as surely as the lesser ways … is the one Elminster has taken … or perhaps been led into. I know not if he ardently sought it and worked toward it, drifted into it, or was forced or pushed into it. He serves Mystra as a special servant, doing her bidding in exchange for longevity, special status, and powers to boot. I believe he is called a 'Chosen' of the goddess.'

'How did he get to be chosen for this service?' Umbregard asked slowly. 'Do you know?'

'I know not,' Starsunder replied, 'but I do know how he has continued it for what to humans is a very long time: love.'

'Love? Mystra loves him?'

'And he loves her.' There was disbelief or incredulity in the confusion written plainly on the human mage's face, so Starsunder added gently, 'Yes, beyond fondness and friendship and the raging desires of the flesh, true, deep, and lasting love. It is hard to believe this until you've truly felt it, Umbregard, but listen to me. There is a power in love greater than most things that can touch humans… or elves, or orcs for that matter. A power for good and for ill. Like all things of such power, love is very dangerous.'

'Dangerous?'

Starsunder smiled faintly and said, 'Love is a flame that sets fire to things. It is a greater danger to mages than any miscast spell can ever hope to be.'

He leaned forward to lay a hand on Umbregard's arm, and said almost fiercely, as they stared into each other's eyes, 'Magic gone awry can merely kill a mage, love can remake him, and drive him to remake the world. Our Coronal's great love drove him to seek a way for Cormanthyr that remade it… and, most of my folk would say, in the end destroyed it. I was yet young one warm night, out swimming for a lark, with no magic of my own to be felt…something that probably kept me alive then…when the Great Lady of the Starym, Ildilyntra who had loved the Coronal and been loved by him, slew herself to try to bring about his death, driven by her love for our land, just as he was…and both of them seared in their striving by their denied yet thriving love for each other.'

The moon elf sighed and shook his head. 'You cannot feel the sadness that stirs in me when I hear them again in my head, arguing together…and you are the first human after Elminster to know of that night. Mind and mark, Umbregard: to speak of this secret to others of my kind may mean your swift death.'

'I shall heed,' Umbregard whispered. 'Say on.'

The elf smiled wryly and continued, 'There's little more to say. Mystra chose this Elminster to serve her, and he has done well, where others have not. The gods make us all different, and more of us fail than succeed.