The Temptation of Elminster

with his own excitement.

He'd thought the cruel Overmistress of the Acolytes had been eyeing him rather closely for the last tenday or so, was this his chance at last?

When he was alone, he hastened to fix the mantle of shards around him, tucking it up firmly between his thighs so as to make it draw blood before his first step, instead of walking with infinite care to avoid its wounds, as most did. Then he took up the platter, held it high, and made a silent prayer to the all-seeing goddess.

Oh, holy Shar, forgive my presumption, but I would serve you as the dark night wind, the barbed black blade, your scourge and trusted hand, not merely as a temple puppet at Klalaera's whims.

'Shar,' he breathed aloud, in case anyone was spying from behind panels and thought he'd been quailing or daydreaming instead of praying. He raised and lowered the platter in salute and set off briskly through the dimly torchlit halls of the temple. The smooth, black marble was cold under his bare feet, and his limbs tingled where threads of blood trickled down.

He walked straight and tall, never looking back at the naked novices crawling along in his wake, licking up his blood where it fell, and gave no sign he'd heard grunts and sobs and muffled screams behind the doors he passed, as the ambitious clergy of the House made their own pain sacrifices to Holy Shar.

He heard the rumble of the lone drum long before he reached the Inner Portal, and his excitement grew to an almost unbearable singing within him. A High Ritual, unannounced and unexpected, and he was to be part of it

Dread Brother Darlakhan. Oh, yes. A measure of power at last. He was on his way to greatness.

Darlakhan rounded the last pillar and strode to the archway where the two priestesses crossed their razor- sharp black blades before him, then drew them back across his chest with the most delicate of strokes as he held the platter high out of the way. They turned toward him this night, and Darlakhan stopped, trembling, to receive their ultimate accolade: they let him watch as they shook his blood from the points of their swords into cupped palms, and brought it to their mouths.

He whispered, 'As Shar wills,' to them, making of his tone a thanks, then strode on down the last passage to the Inner Portal, the drumbeat growing louder before him.

He was surprised to find the Portal itself unguarded. A black curtain adorned with the Dark Disk hung in the customarily empty Portal Arch. Darlakhan slowed for a moment, wondering what to do, then decided he must follow the procedure all acolytes were trained in, as if nothing was occurring out of the ordinary.

He paused at the Portal, swept his elbows out to make the shards slash at him one last time…and to keep them out of the way as he knelt…and went to his knees, extending the platter at the full stretch of his arms and touching his forehead to the cold marble of the threshold.

Swift hands snatched the platter away, and others beheaded him with a single keen stroke.

A long, sleek arm snatched up the blood-gargling head by its hair. An oiled body stretched and thrust Darlakhan's head into a brazier, ignoring the flames that raced back down oiled flesh. 'The last,' that someone murmured, pain making the voice tight.

'Then know peace, Dread Sister,' someone else said, touching her with the black Quenching Rod that drank all fire. The drum rolled one last time and fell silent, a long-nailed hand made a gesture, and black flames roared up out of a dozen braziers with a collective crackle and snarl.

Each brazier in the circle held a blackening, severed head. Each tongue of dark flame rose up in a twisting, flowing column to feed a dark sphere overhead.

The Sacred Chamber of Shar, the most holy room in the House of Holy Night, was crowded indeed. All of the cruel and powerful upper priestesses of Shar were gathered here in their black and purple, beneath the sphere of roiling shadows. All of them streamed blood from open wounds, all of their eyes were bright with excitement, and all of their attention was now fixed on the sphere that loomed so large above their heads, as tall as six mea

Something swam into view briefly, within the sphere: a human arm, slender and feminine, white skinned and clawing vainly at nothing. Then an elbow was seen, and suddenly, the head and shoulders of a feebly struggling human female swam into view. All that could be seen of her was bare, and she was thrashing about in the fire, seemingly blind. Despair was written large across her face, the eyes dark, staring pools, the mouth open in an endless, soundless scream.

There was a murmur of puzzlement and surprise from among the gathered priestesses…and the tallest among them, resplendent in her horned black headdress and her mantle of deepest purple, stepped forward and brought the long lash in her hand down with brutal force across the bare back of a man kneeling under the sphere. Sweat flew in all directions, he was drenched and gleaming.

'Explain, Dread Brother High,' the Darklady of the House commanded, her voice sharp. 'We were promised by you…and, in a sending, by the Flame of Darkness herself…that your striving would bring us great power and great opportunity. Even if this wench is some great queen of Faerun, I see no power nor opportunity here save the grubby achievement of seizing a land and its coffers. Explain both well and speedily…and live.'

The senior priest of the House looked at the struggling figure in the sphere as he let his hands fall to his sides, then slumped back to the marble floor, exhausted. Through his gasps, the priestesses saw the bright flash of his smile.

'It is a success, your Darkness,' he said when he could find breath enough. 'This is an avatar of the goddess Mystra, though of much less power than most she sends forth. We cannot harm it without unleashing magics too wild for all of us together to hope to control, but while we keep it trapped thus, we can tap the Weave whenever it strives to, gaining magic to power spells studied…and cast…as wizards do. This avatar must have been tainted by its flirtation with Bane … there is a lasting weakness here, I believe.'

'Time enough for such musings later,' said Darklady Avroana firmly. Her voice was still cold and biting, but the eagerness on her face and the tapping of her whip against her own thigh rather than across the face of High Brother Narlkond betrayed her excitement and approval. 'Tell me of these spells. We sit and study as mages do, and fill our minds…and what then?'

'No power floods into those memorized patterns until our captive here seeks to touch the Weave,' replied the senior priest, rolling over to face her on his knees, 'which happens every few hours or so. It seems unable not to strive to, for that is its essential nature, and…'

'How long can we keep this up?' Avroana snapped, gesturing up at the sphere with her whip.

'So long as we have enthusiastic believers in the Dark Mother to furnish us with their heads.'

'More have been called hither,' said the Darklady, her lips shaping…for a very brief instant…a smile that was as cold as the glacial ice that seals shut a northern tomb. 'They've been told we mount a holy crusade.'

'Your Darkness,' High Brother Narlkond replied, with a soft smile of his own, 'we do.'

'This is what in human speech would be called the Lookout Tree,' said the moon elf, sitting down on a huge leaf…which promptly curled and flexed around him to form a couch that cupped him like a giant, gentle hand.

Umbregard stared around at the view between the great arched branches that split apart where they stood to soar still farther up into the thin, cold air. 'By the gods,' he said slowly, 'those are clouds! We're looking down on the clouds?

'Only the lowest sort of clouds,' Starsunder said with a smile. 'Oh, didn't you know? Yes, different shapes of clouds hang at different levels, just as fish in a lake seek levels in the water that suit them.'

'Fish…?' the human mage asked, then grinned and said, 'Never mind, we stray swiftly from my original questioning.'

Starsunder grinned back. 'Now do you see how it was that humans studied in Myth Drannor for centuries,' he said, 'and some of them still learned only a handful of the spells they came seeking? The best of them didn't even mind.'

Umbregard shook his head. 'Oh, to have been there,' he whispered longingly, sitting down rather gingerly on another leaf. It promptly tumbled him into its center…he had time for only the briefest of startled murmurs…and folded itself around him, to leave him upright, enthroned in warm comfort.

'Well, ahem,' he offered in pleased surprise, while Starsunder chuckled. 'Nice, very nice.' He looked at Starsunder's chair, still clearly alive and attached to the gigantic shadowtop tree they'd climbed so laboriously to the top of, up a spiral stair that had seemed endless. 'I suppose there's no chance of getting a chair like this anywhere else but in the Elven Court?'

'None,' Starsunder said with a wide smile, 'at all. Sorry.'

Umbregard snorted. 'You don't sound sorry at all. Why did we have to sweat our weary ways up here, step after thousandth step, what's wrong with using spells to fly?'