The Temptation of Elminster

into the Lady Nuressa's smoky eyes from a distance of perhaps the length of his longest finger.

'Rauntlan,' she said, addressing him as he liked his handful of friends to…a short name he'd had no idea any of the lords even knew about, 'you know that one of the most essential skills any wizard can have is to keep the right secrets, and keep them well. So I shall test you now, to see if you're good enough to remain in the castle as a mage-in-training … or a wizard in your own right, in time to come. Keep my secret, and stay. Let it out…and be yourself shut out of our lands, chased to our borders with the flat of my blade finding your backside as often as I can land it.'

Rauntlavon heard his master start to say something, but the ladylord made some sort of gesture he couldn't see behind her back, and Iyriklaunavan fell silent again.

'Do you understand, Rauntlan?'

Her voice was as calm and as gentle as if she'd been discussing haying a field, Rauntlavon swallowed, nodded, squirmed under the hard points of her gaze, and managed to say, 'Great Lady, I swear to keep your secret. I shall abide by your testing.. and if ever I let it slip, I shall come to you myself to admit the doing, so the chase can begin at your convenience.'

Her dark brows rose. 'Well said, Master Apprentice. Agreed, then.'

She took a quick step back from him and lifted her gown unhurriedly to display a tanned, muscular leg so long and shapely that he swallowed twice, unable to tear his eyes from it. Somewhere far, far away, his master chuckled, but Rauntlavon was lost in the slow but continuing rise of fine fabric, up, up to her hip…he was swallowing hard, now, and knew his face must be as bright as a lamp…where his eyes locked on a purplish-white brand. The cruel design was burned deep into her flesh, just below the edge of the bone that made her hip jut out. She traced a circle around it with one long finger and asked in a dry voice, 'Seen enough, Rauntlan?'

He almost choked, trying to swallow and nod fervently at the same time, and somewhere in the midst of his distress the gown went to her ankles again, her hand clapped his shoulders like a club crashing down, and her deep voice said in his ear, 'So we have a secret to share now, you and I. Something to remember.' She shoved him away gently and added, 'I believe this end of the room hasn't been fully inspected yet, Master Apprentice.'

Her voice was a brisk goad once more, but somehow Rauntlavon found himself almost grinning as he strode away to the end of the room and announced, 'Inspection resumes, Great Lady…and sharing begins!'

His master laughed aloud, and after a moment Rauntlavon heard a low, thrilling murmur that must have been the ladylord chuckling.

She used the lash of her voice on Iyriklaunavan next, breaking off in mid-chuckle to snap, 'Enough time wasted, mage. You frighten me up from my table with a map half drawn and my soup growing cold, then go all coy about why. What's so 'serious' that your apprentice must hear about it alongside me? Do you think you can get around to telling me about this oh-so-serious matter before, say, nightfall!'

'I meant it when I said this was serious, Nessa,' Rauntlavon's master said quietly. 'Put the edge of your tongue away for a moment and listen. Please.'

He paused then, and…wonders! Rauntlavon even turned around to see, earning him an almost amused glance from the Great Lady…the Ladylord Nuressa gave him silence, waiting to hear him speak.

Iyriklaunavan blinked, seeming himself surprised, then said swiftly, 'You know that magic…all magic not bolstered by draining a few sorts of enchanted items… is going wrong. Spells twisting to all sorts of results, untrustworthy and dangerous. Some mages are hiding in their towers, unable to defend themselves against anyone who might try to settle grudges. Magic has gone wild. If fewer folk knew about it, I'd say that this should be our secret…Rauntlavon's and mine own…for you to keep, or else. It will come as no surprise to you that many mages have been trying to find out why this darkness has befallen. I am one of them.'

'And that's even less of a surprise,' the Lady Nuressa said quietly. Rauntlavon's head snapped around to regard her somber face. He'd never heard her speak so gently before. She sounded almost … tender.

'I have no items to waste in bolstering my spells,' Iyriklaunavan continued, 'so the boy…Rauntlavon…has been my bulwark, using his spells to steady mine. Word has even come to us that some wizards…and even priests of the faiths of the Weave…believe divine Mystra and Azuth themselves have been corrupting magic deliberately, for some purpose mortals cannot even hazard.'

'You worship our gods of magecraft?'

'Nessa,' Iyriklaunavan said calmly, 'I don't even have a bedchamber closet to keep my secrets in. I'm trying to hurry this, really I am just listen.'

Nuressa leaned back against one of the lamp-girt pillars that held up the ceiling of the spell chamber, and gestured for the elf mage to continue. She didn't even look irritated.

'Just now we were seeking but had not yet called up a place in our scrying, the enchantment being just complete,' Iyriklaunavan continued, 'when I felt one thing, and saw another. I think everyone in Faerun who was attempting a scrying at the time felt what I did: the willful, reckless release of many wizards' staves at once, in one place, all directed at the same target.'

'You mean mages everywhere feel it, whenever one wizard blasts another?' Nuressa's voice was incredulous. 'No wonder you're all so difficult.'

'No, we do not normally feel such things…nor have the violence of feeling anything strike us so hard that our own spells collapse into wildfire,' Rauntlavon's master told her. 'The reason we did this time was the target of this unleashing: the High One. I saw him, standing at the bottom of a shaft with three mortal mages, while magic seeking to destroy him rained down…and his attention was elsewhere.'

'Azuth? Who was crazed enough to use magic to try to blast down a god of magic?' The ladylord looked surprised.

'That I did not see,' Iyriklaunavan replied. 'I did, however, see what Azuth was regarding. A ghostly sorceress, who was trying to slay a Chosen of Mystra.'

'What's that?' the Great Lady asked. 'Some sort of servant of the goddess?'

'Yes,' the elf mage said grimly, 'and he was someone you might remember. Cast your thoughts back to a day when we fled from a tomb…a tomb furnished with pillars that erupted in eyes. A mage was hanging above us there, asleep or trapped, and came out after we fled. He asked you what year it was.'

'Oh, yesss,' the ladylord murmured, her eyes far away, 'and I told him.'

'And thereby we earned the favor of the goddess Mystra,' Iyriklaunavan told her, 'who delivered this castle into our hands.'

The Lady Nuressa frowned. 'I thought Amandarn won title to these lands while dicing with some merchant lords…hazarding all our coins in the process,' she said.

Rauntlavon stood very still, not wanting to be ejected again now. Surely this was an even more dangerous secret than…

'Amandarn lost all our coins, Nessa. Folossan nearly killed him for it…and they had to flee when he stole a few bits back to buy a meal that night and got caught at it. The two of them hid in a shrine to Mystra…rolled right in under the altar and hid under its fine cloth. There they slept, though both of them swear magic must have dragged them into slumber, for they'd had little to drink and were all excited from their flight and the danger. When they awoke, all of our coins were back in Amandarn's pouch…along with the title to the castle.'

The Great Lady's brow arched and she asked, 'And you believe this tale?'

'Nessa, I used spells to glean every last detail of it out of both their heads, after they told me. It happened.'

'I see,' the Great Lady said calmly. 'Rauntlavon, be aware that this is another secret shared between us here…and only us here, or you'll have to flee four Lords of the Castle, not merely one.'

'Yes, Great Lady,' the apprentice said, then swallowed and faced them both. 'There's something I should say, now. If something happens to Great Azuth…or Most Holy Mystra…and magic keeps crumbling, we all share a grave problem.'

'And what is that, Rauntlavon?' The Lady Nuressa asked, in almost kindly tones, her fingers caressing the pommel of her long sword.

Rauntlavon's eyes dropped to those fingers…whose fabled strength was one of the rocks upon which his world stood…then back up to meet her smoky eyes.

'I think we must pray for Azuth or find some way to aid him. The castle was built with much magic,' he told the two lords, the words coming out in a rush. 'If its spells fall, it will fall…and us with it.'