The Temptation of Elminster

A long hand reached past Umbregard, its fingers glowing with healing radiance, and touched Starsunder's flank. The glow flared, the elf shuddered, and the last fragments of something that had hung on a chain around the archmage's neck fell away into drifting dust. Tenthar rose hastily and stepped back, his hand going to his belt.

Umbregard looked up at the wand that hand had closed around, and hesitantly asked its owner, 'Is there going to be violence between us?'

Tenthar shook his head. 'When all Faerun hangs in the balance,' he replied, 'personal angers must be set aside. I think I've grown up enough to set them aside for good.' He extended his hand. 'And you?'

Elminster knelt on the cold stone as the slithering, tentacled bulk drew nearer … and nearer. With almost indolent ease a long, mottled blue-brown tentacle reached out for him, leathery strength curling around his throat. Icy flames of fear surged up his back, and El trembled as the tentacle tightened almost lovingly.

'Mystra,' he whispered into the darkness, 'I…'

A memory of holding a goddess in his arms as they flew through the air came to him unbidden, then, and he drew on the pride it awakened within him, forcing down his fear. 'If I am to die under these tentacles, so be it. I've had a good life, and far more of it than most.'

As his fear melted, so did the slithering monster, melting into nothingness. It hung like clinging smoke around him for a moment before sudden light washed over him. He turned his head to its source…and stared.

What his eyes had told him was probably a bare stone wall, though the cloak of gloom made it hard to see properly, was now a huge open archway. Beyond was a vast chamber awash in glowing golden coins, precious statuary, and gems…literally barrels full of glistening jewels.

Elminster looked at all its dazzle and just shrugged. His shoulders had barely fallen before the treasure chamber went dark, all of its riches melting away … whereupon a trumpet sang out loudly behind him.

El whirled around to see another vast, grand, and warmly lit chamber. This one held no treasure, but instead a crowd of people … royalty, by their glittering garb, crowns, and proud faces. Human kings and scaled, lizardlike emperors jostled with merfolk who were gasping in the air, all crowding forward to lay their crowns and scepters at his feet, murmuring endless variations on, 'I submit me and all my lands, Great Elminster.'

Princesses were removing their gem-studded gowns, now, and offering both gowns and themselves to him, prostrating themselves to clutch at his ankles. He felt their featherlike fingers upon him, stared into many worshiping, awed, and longing eyes, then shut his own firmly for a moment to gather the will he needed.

When he opened them, an eternity later, it was to say loudly and firmly: 'My apologies, and I mean no offense by my refusal, but…no. I cannot accept ye, or any of this.'

When he opened his eyes, everything was melting away amid growing dimness, and off to his right another light was growing, this one the dappled dance of true sunlight. Immeira of Buckralam's Starn was gliding forward across a bright room toward him, her arms outstretched and that eager smile on her face, offering herself to him. As she drew near, shaping his name soundlessly on her lips, she pulled open the bodice of her dark blue gown…and Elminster swallowed hard as the memories rose up in a sudden, warm surge.

The sun fell through the windows of Fox Tower and laid dappled fingers across the parchments Immeira was frowning over. Gods, how did anyone make sense of such as this? She sighed and slumped back in her chair…then, in a sort of dream, found herself rising to glide across the room, toward its darkest corner. Halfway there her fingers began to pluck at her catches and lacing, to tear open the front of her gown, as if offering herself to…empty air.

Immeira frowned. 'Why…?' she murmured, then abruptly shivered, whirled around, and did up her gown again with shaking fingers.

Her busy fingers clenched into fists when she was done, and she peered in all directions around the deserted room, her face growing pale. 'Wanlorn,' she whispered. 'Elminster? Do you need me?'

Silence was her answer. She was talking to an empty room, driven by her own fancies. Irritated, she strode back to her chair.. and came to a halt in mid-stride, as a sudden feeling of being watched washed over her. It was followed by a surge of great peace and warmth.

Immeira found herself smiling at nothing, as contented as she'd ever felt. She beamed at the empty room around her and sat back down with a sigh. Dappled sun danced across her parchments, and she smiled at a memory of a slender, hawk-nosed man saving the Starn while she watched. Immeira sighed again, tossed her head to send her hair out of her eyes, and returned to the task of trying to decide who in the Starn should plant what, so that all might have food enough to last comfortably through the winter.

Her warm, yearning eagerness and hope, her delight … Elminster reached for Immeira, a broad smile growing on his own face…a smile that froze as the thought struck him: was this spirited young woman to be some sort of reward for him, to mark his retirement from Mystra's service?

He snatched back his hands from the approaching woman and told the darkness fiercely, 'No. Long ago I made my choice … to walk the long road, the darker way, and know the sweep of danger and adventure and doom. I cannot turn back from it now, for even as I need Mystra, Mystra needs me.'

At his words, Immeira and the sun-dappled room behind her melted away into falling motes of dwindling light that plunged down far below him in the great dark void he hung within, until his eyes could see them no more.

Abruptly fresh sunlight washed in from his right. Elminster turned toward it, and found himself gazing into a long chamber lined with rows of bookshelves that reached up to touch its high ceiling. Sunlit dust-motes hung thick in the air, and through their luster Elminster could see that the shelves were crammed with spell tomes, with not an inch of shelf left empty. Ribbons protruded from some of the spines, others glowed with mysterious runes.

A comfortable-looking armchair, footstool, and side table beckoned from the right-hand end of this library. The side table was piled high with books, El took a step forward to get a better look at them and found himself striding hungrily into the room.

Spells of Athalantar, gilt lettering on one spine said clearly. El extended an eager hand and let it fall back to his side, muttering, 'No. It breaks my soul to refuse such knowledge, but… where's the fun of finding new magic, mastering it phrase by guess, and deduction by spell trial?'

The room didn't fall away into darkness as all the previous apparitions had done. El blinked around at more spellbooks than he could hope to collect in a century or more of doing nothing but hunting down and seizing books of magic, and swallowed. Then, as if in a dream, he took a step toward the nearest shelf, reaching for a particularly fat volume that bore the title Galagard's Compendium of Spells Netherese. It was … inches from his fingertips when El whirled around and snarled, 'No!'

In the echoes of that exclamation his world went dark and empty again, the dusty room swept away in an instant, and he was standing in darkness and on darkness, alone once more.

A light approached out of black velvet nothingness, and became a man in ornate, high-collared robes, standing on a floor of stone slabs with a spell staff winking and humming in his hand. Not seeing Elminster, the man was staring grimly down at a dead woman sprawled on the stones before him, gentle smokes rising from her body, her face frozen in an eternal scream of fear.

'No,' the man said wearily. 'No more. I find that 'First among Her Chosen' has become an empty boast. Find another fool to be your slave down the centuries, lady. Everyone I loved…everyone I knew… is dead and gone, my work is swept away by each new grasping generation of spell hurlers, Faerun fades into a pale shadow of the glory I saw in my youth…and most of all, I'm … so … damned … tired….'

The man broke his staff with a sudden surge of strength, the muscles of his arms rippling. Blue light flared from the broken ends, swirling in the instant before a mighty explosion of released magic coalesced into a rushing wave. The despairing Chosen thrust one spearlike broken shaft end into his chest. He threw back his head in a soundless gasp or scream…and fell away into swirling dust, that convulsing jaw last, an instant before the outward rush of magic became blinding.

El turned his gaze away from that flash…only to find it mirrored in miniature elsewhere, in a hand-sized scrying sphere that a bald man in red robes was hunched over. The man shook his fist in triumph at what he saw in the depths of the crystal, and hissed, 'Yes! yes! Now I am First among Mystra's Chosen…and if they thought Elthaeris was overbearing, they'll learn well to kneel and quiver in fear beneath the spell-seizing scepter of Uirkymbrand! Hahahaha! The weak might just as well slay themselves right now, and yield their power to one more fitted to wield it…me!'

That mad shout was still ringing in Elminster's ears as that scene winked out, and a circle of light occurred