The Temptation of Elminster

One of the Sharrans cried out in disbelief.

The Harper who'd claimed to be Azuth was looking calmly back up at them, standing more or less where he'd been when their barrage began. The three old men, still blinking at him in awe, stood around him. He, they, and the floor around the bottom of the shaft seemed untouched.

'Finished?' he asked quietly, looking up at them with eyes of steady, storm-smoke gray.

Elryn felt cold fear catch at the back of his throat and slide slowly down into the pit of his stomach, but Femter snarled, 'Shar take the man!' and snatched a wand from his belt.

Before Elryn or Daluth could stop him, Femter leaned over the well and snarled the word that sent a streak of flame down, down into the gloom below, straight at the upturned face of the gray-eyed man.

The Harper didn't move, but his mouth somehow stretched wider than a man's mouth should be able to… and the flames fell right into him. He shuddered for a moment as all of the fire plunged into his vitals. By the stumbling of the three old men around him, it seemed some sort of magic was keeping them at bay, moving them as he moved.

A moment later the fireball burst with a dull rumbling. The Harper stood with an unconcerned expression on his face as smoke whirled out of his ears.

He gave the watching Sharrans a reproving look and remarked, 'Needs a little more pepper.'

The Dreadspells were screaming and fleeing wildly even before Azuth lowered his head and looked again across the riven cavern at Elminster. 'I mean what I say,' he said gravely. 'You must get free of her.'

'I…can't,' Elminster gasped, staring into the dark eyes of Saeraede, as she reared up over him in triumph like some sort of giant snake, twining around him in large and tightening coils.

'And you never will,' she breathed triumphantly, her cold lips inches from his. He could feel the chilling frost of her breath on his face as she purred, 'With the powers of a Chosen and all the might Karsus left here, I can defy even such as him.'

She lifted her head to give Azuth a challenging glare as she clamped one giant hand of solid mist around El's throat. Other tentacles of mist rose around them both in a protective forest, undulating and lashing the tossed and shattered stone slabs.

The last prince of Athalantar struggled to breathe in her grasp, so throttled he couldn't speak or shout, as the ghostly sorceress leisurely turned the uppermost spire of her mists to a lush and very solid human torso, curvaceous and deadly.

Slim fingers grew fingernails like long talons, and when they were as long as Saeraede's hand, she reached almost lovingly for his mouth.

'We'll just have the tongue out, I think,' she said aloud, 'to forestall any nasty…ah, but wait a bit, Saeraede, you want him to tell you a few things before he's mute…. Hmmmm …'

Razor-sharp talons drifted just inches past Elminster's tightly constricted throat, to slice into the first flesh she found bared. Plowing deep gashes across the strangling mage's neck, she flicked his blood away in droplets that were caught in her whirling mists and held her bloody talons exultantly up to the sunlight.

'Ah, but I'm alive again,' Saeraede hissed, 'alive and whole! I breathe, I feel' She brought that hand to her mouth, bit her own knuckles, and held the hand out toward the grimly watching avatar of Azuth to let him see the welling blood. 'I bleed! I liver

Then she screamed, swayed, and stared down, dark eyes widening in disbelief, at the gore-slick, smoking sword tip that had just burst through her breast from behind.

'Some people live far longer than they should,' said Ilbryn Starym silkily from behind the hilt, as he stared gloating into the eyes of the mage still frozen in Saeraede's grasp. 'Don't you agree, Elminster?'

A door was flung wide, to boom its broken song against a heavily paneled wall. It had been years since the tall, broad-shouldered woman who now stood in the doorway, her eyes snapping in alarm and anger, had worn the armor she hated so much…but as she stood glaring into the room, the half-drawn long sword at her hip gleaming, she looked every inch a warrior.

Sometimes Rauntlavon wished he was more handsome, strong, and about ten years older. He'd have given a lot for so magnificent a woman to smile at him.

Right now, she was doing anything but smiling. She was looking down at him as if she'd found a viper in her chamber pot…and his only consolation was that he wasn't the only mage rolling around on the floor under her dark displeasure, his master, the gruffly sardonic elf Iyriklaunavan, was gasping on the fine swanweave rug not a handspan away.

'Iyrik, by all the gods,' the Ladylord Nuressa growled, 'what befell here?'

'My farscrying spell went awry,' the elf snarled back at her. 'If it hadn't been for the lad, here, all those books'd be aflame now, and we'd be hurling water and running with buckets for our lives' worth!'

Rauntlavon's face flamed as the ladylord took a step forward and looked down at him with a rather kinder expression. 'I-it was nothing, Great Lady,' he stammered.

'Master Rauntlavon,' she said gently, 'an apprentice should never contradict his master-of-magecraft … nor belittle the judgment of any one of The Four Lords of the Castle.'

Rauntlavon blushed as maroon as his robes and emitted the immortal words, 'Yujus-yujus-er-ah-uhmmm, I, ah…'

'Yes, yes, boy, brilliantly explained as usual,' Iyriklaunavan said dismissively, rolling to his elbows. 'Now belt up and look around the room for me: is anything amiss? Anything broken? Smoldering? Aflame? Hop, now!'

Rauntlavon hopped, quite thankfully, but kept his attention more on what two of The Four Lords of the Castle were saying. They'd all been debonair and successful adventurers, less than a decade ago, and one never knew what wild and exciting things they might say.

Well, nothing about mating dragons this time.

'So tell me, Iyrik,' the Ladylord was saying in her I-really-shouldn't-have-to-be- this-patient voice, 'just why your farscrying spell blew up. Is it one of those magics you'd just be better off not trying? Or were you distracted by some nubile elf maid seen in your spying, perhaps?'

'Nessa,' the elf growled…Rauntlavon had always admired the way he could look so agile and elegant and youthful, and yet be more gruff than any dwarf…as he rose and fixed her with one glaring that's- quite-enough eye, 'this is serious. For us all, everywhere in Faerun.

Stop playing the swaggering warrior bitch for just a moment and listen. For once.'

Rauntlavon froze, his head sunk between his shoulders, wondering if folk really survived the full fury of Great Lady Nuressa a-storming…and just how swiftly and brutally she'd notice him and have him removed from the room.

Very and with iron calm, it seemed.

'Master Rauntlavon,' she said calmly, 'you may leave us now. Close the door on your way out.'

'Apprentice Rauntlavon,' his master said, just as calmly, 'it is my will that you abide with us. Send Master Rauntlavon out, and close the door behind him, remaining here with us.'

Rauntlavon swallowed, drew in a deep breath, and turned around to face them, hardly daring to raise his eyes. 'I–I've found nothing amiss at this end of the chamber,' he announced, his voice higher and rather more unsteady than he wished it would be. 'Shall I examine the other half of it now … or later?'

'Now will be fine, Rauntlavon,' the ladylord said in a voice of velvet menace. 'Pray proceed.'

The apprentice actually shivered ere he bowed and mumbled, 'As my Great Lady wishes.'

'It's a wonderful thing to make men and boys fear you, Nessa, but does it really make up for your years under the lash? The escaped slave gets even by enslaving others?' His master's voice was biting, Rauntlavon tried not to let his momentary hesitation show. The ladylord had been a slave? Kneeling naked under a slaver's lash, in the dust and the heat? Gods, but he'd never have…

'Do you think we can leave my past careers in my own bedchamber closet, Iyrik?' the ladylord said almost gently. Her next sentence, however, was almost a battlefield shout. 'Or is there some pressing need to tell all the world?

'I won't tell anyone, I won't…I swear I won't!' Rauntlavon babbled, going to his knees on the rug.

He heard the Great Lady sigh and felt ironlike fingers on his shoulder, hauling him back to his feet. Other fingers took hold of his chin and turned his head as sharply as a whip is flicked. The apprentice found himself staring