The Best of the Realms, Book II

III. The Wizard

The rosebush shakes all over, curls a thorny tendril back as if to scratch at itself, straightens, and grows both more solid and more brown. Brown boots, brown breeches, and a brown belt and sword scabbard, complete with impressively heavy-looking sword. All worn by a tall, slender man whose long, flowing beard and almost as long hair are as white as unspoiled snow. Blue-gray eyes sparkle—with mischief?—under slightly dark brows. A curved, glossy brown pipe fades into view out of nothingness, to hover helpfully near the bearded mouth. Which promptly crooks up into a wry smile.

“Increasingly I find it so, aye… but then, I’ve had an age more than most spell-hurlers to learn that. This particular malicious sorceress is no worse than most.”

He turns his head, lifts one eyebrow in a manner familiar to many Faerunians—most of them dead—and asks almost as gently as Storm frames her calm questions, “Think ye not so, Nathchanczia of Neverwinter?”

The struggling sorceress freezes once more, her face going bone-pale. Her bosom heaves with swift, fearful breaths, out of which emerges a query that is more gasp than snarl. “Y-you know my name?”

The white-bearded man draws himself erect, fixes her with a stern (yet still twinkling) gaze, and replies, “To try this pride of thine on like the cloak ye make of it: know, wench, that Elminster of Shadowdale knows many, many things. I tread the worlds, and see centuries pass, towers rise and castles fall, and yet retain my smile. I mate with dragons—suitably shapechanged, of course—and live to rue that whim. I dance with liches who are bones or less, I hurl down fortresses when they stand in the way of a pleasant view, trade places with rosebushes at a lass’s call, and even pay taxes with a smile. Truly, I am… a braggard and a dolt who’s somehow managed to stay alive longer than most, by sheer luck more than any sly skill. Yes, Nathchanczia, I know thy name—as I know that of thy mother Alaice and thy father Rorold, and their parents before them, and … but ye apprehend my drift. I even know why ye’ve come to Shadowdale seeking me, but ‘twould amuse me to hear it from thy lips. With, as ye charge, appropriate begging. Or not, of course.”