The scorched rabbit was, surprisingly, very good.
Hawkgauntlet, Kythorn 18
Across the gloomy taproom of the Hawkgauntlet Arms, the balding bartender stared at Elminster and slowly grew pale. 'Burn them alive?' he gasped. 'Right… here?'
'Would ye prefer I did the deed?'
Galdus gulped. 'I'd prefer… it didn't happen at all.'
Elminster nodded at him. 'I hear ye,' he said softly. 'I'll take them far away instead. If I leave them nearby- believe me-ye'll have them back here soon, carving up thy folk, looting thy tavern, and then going on to the next place.'
Galdus nodded. 'No doubt. Yet if you burn them here, I'd have to move on myself. I couldn't walk past their ashes every morn… I just couldn't.'
The Old Mage nodded. 'I understand,' he said quietly. 'So be it.' He murmured something and waved a hand, and the struggling brigands were suddenly gone.
'Are they… dead?'
'Not yet. If they behave, not for many years yet. But I'm afraid I don't expect them to behave.'
The bartender gulped. 'I… ah… you have my thanks, friend.'
'Fair fortune follow thee and thine,' Elminster said in formal reply. Then he smiled, went to the bar, and extended his hand.
Galdus took it. 'Thanks for saving our lives-myself and the wife and the three lasses the other side o' that door, my two daughters and one I hire in. Thanks for the magic, too.'
'Oh, aye,' Elminster said, and leaned forward to touch the old man's shoulder.
Galdus stiffened. 'What did you do?'
'You have a year, now, of taking no harm from slung stones and fired arrows and cutting blades of iron and steel. A year, mind. Use it well to make the folk who're going to be fleeing here from Westgate in the months ahead respect ye.'
Galdus tried to smile. 'Those brigands… You have to slay like that often?'
'All the time,' Elminster said simply. 'Today's been quite a busy day for it, but yestereve was worse.' He turned toward the door.
'Is all this slaying the price of becoming an arch-mage?' Galdus asked from behind him, almost whispering.
'Nay,' Elminster said, fixing him with tired eyes. 'This is the price of keeping the Realms alive. I've been paying it for more than a thousand years.'
Galdus paled again but held up a hand to stop Elminster's departure. He drew two tankards of bitter from a keg and wordlessly slid one across the bar. Elminster took it, and from his empty hand a stack of gold coins slid onto the polished wood.
' 'Tis free, El!' Galdus said almost angrily, looking down at the coins, then up at the Old Mage, and then down at the coins again, mouth dropping open.
'Ye have two daughters to raise, and maybe three, if the year ahead is cruel to the parents of the other,' El said. 'Put those away-bury 'em in a pot nearby-and ye'll have what ye need, later on.' He grinned suddenly. 'Perhaps even enough to rebuild that outhouse.'
Galdus turned very red and then, a long moment later, grinned back.
'Right, then,' he said, carefully taking up the coins. His hands trembled slightly as he put them in a sack and tied it at his belt. Then he took a pull at his tankard and looked at Elminster with almost pleading eyes.
'I'm a fool for asking this,' he said quietly. 'You could burn this place down, and me with it, probably by uttering a single word.'
El inclined his head in a slow nod. 'But ye're a man and were once a mage, so ye'll ask.'
Galdus grinned slowly, shook his head, and said, 'Yes. Well… Right, then. Why is all this killing necessary?'
Elminster shrugged. 'Because I haven't yet succeeded in talking anyone to death.'
'What?'
'I can't get folk to agree with others in peace. Always swords, spells, poison, or just fists come out… and are used.' He sipped thoughtfully at his beer and said, 'For several hundred years I tried to forge treaties here and handshakes there across Faerun, and trust rulers to keep 'em. Some did so for as long as a year or two, seldom more.'
He stared into his beer and added, 'I grew tired of threatening and pleading, over and over again. Folk lied to me, smiled, and laughed at my back the moment I'd left. So I did what I had to: told folk clearly what the price'd be if they didn't keep peace in this or that way they'd agreed to. And I made them pay the price when I had to. Sudden respect, or sudden death, was the result. Some folk learned, and that won us peace enough for humankind to rise above scrabbling in the dirt to feed ourselves between goblinkin raids and monster attacks.'
El drained his beer. 'So men grew rich, and arrogant, and spread across Faerun, making me wonder if I'd really done wrong, as the glorious old peoples, the elves and the dwarves, grew few and hunted. I started to worry about having to slaughter entire realms of men to keep us from laying waste to all Toril, burning down every tree for fuel, and eating all else, and finally each other-and then starving in the desert we'd left, dying off with a world wasted.'
Galdus stared at him, swallowed beer without tasting it, and waved at him wordlessly to continue.
'I needn't have worried,' Elminster went on, rubbing his sharp nose and looking off into the distance. 'Humankind took advantage of its power and leisure to go to war with itself… and still does, year after year. I sometimes wonder if they've managed this any better, in other worlds where there are men, elsewhere in the multiverse.'
The Old Mage fixed Galdus with calm eyes. 'My job now-with the other Chosen, and the Harpers I helped found, and all the rulers I can dupe or threaten or bargain with-is to keep wars small and the real villains in check so that little folk, like thy family, can grow just a little better off year by year.'
Galdus finished his own beer and held out his hand for El's tankard.
'From anyone else,' he said heavily, refilling them both, 'I'd call this deluded raving. A thousand years…' He shook his head. 'Yet I believe you.' He said it almost wonderingly and shook his head again as he set a full tankard down in front of the Old Mage. 'Say on, please.'
Elminster raised his beer in a silent toast. As the two tankards clinked, he asked the bartender, 'Have ye never wondered why, year after year, the cruel mages in Thay, Zhentil Keep, Calimshan, and half a hundred other places don't destroy half the Realms in spell duels? Or just lead armies to roll over all of ye and meet to hack each other up in the smoking ruins that're left? Or why those orc hordes out of the northernmost mountains, that cover the land for mile upon mile of grunting goblinkin, don't just sweep over everyone?'
He drained his beer at single gulp. 'Slaying,' he answered himself, 'that's why. Slaying when needful, and only when needful. Some realms have armies to do such dirty deeds. Shadowdale has Elminster.'
Galdus swallowed. 'When I was young and thought I could rule the world in just a few years, with just a few more spells, I used to talk about the way of the world and how I'd change it. I think all young wizards do, if they've someone to talk to. Later on, I never thought it'd all be for real, or that any halfway sane wizard spoke so, when he grew older.' He shook his head and looked up at Elminster. 'I thought they all just got twisted with power and greedy for more, and spent their days selling scrolls for gold or stealing spells from tombs or their enemies, or locked themselves away to go slowly mad making spells to open doors silently, or get wet laundry dry, or open stuck corks in old bottles… or blew themselves and their towers to the skies trying to perfect army-reaving magics.'
'Most of them do just that,' Elminster said softly. 'Yet their very self-interest helps the rest of us. They're turned inward to small things, not trying to change the world, but they're in the way of conquerors and monsters. Intelligent folk rightly fear that they'll awaken and do battle if threatened, and beasts find that out the hard way.'
Galdus grunted. 'It makes one want to have more to drink, thinking about it.'
Elminster grinned. 'A lot of wizards do that, too.'
He straightened in his seat and said, 'My thanks for the bitter, Galdus, and the converse. 'Tis seldom I get to
