The Temptation of Elminster

Five: One Morning At Moonshorn

Not three hills had the last prince of Athalantar put at his back when a chill, chiming wind whirled and danced through the Ringyl, like a flying snake of frost and climbed the grassy slopes to where Elminster's ring had been.

It recoiled from that place, a startled wisp of cold starlight arching and twisting in the night air, then slowly advanced to trace the outline of the wards that were now gone. Completing the circle, the wind leaped into its center rather hesitantly, danced and swirled for a time over the spot where Elminster had knelt to pray, then, very slowly, drifted off along the way El's feet had taken him. It rose and flickered once as it went, almost as if looking around. Hungrily.

Out of the dawn mists it rose, dark and old and misshapen, more like a gigantic, many-fissured tree stump than a tower. The sleepless and stumbling man silently cursed Mystra's dictate to use no needless magic for perhaps the hundredth time and winced at the blisters his boots were giving him. It had been a long and weary way hence from the lands of the Lady of Shadows.

Aye, this was it: Moonshorn Tower, just as Her vision had shown him: relief-carved phases of the moon proceeded around the worn stone arch that framed its massive black, many-strapped and bolted door.

As he approached, that door opened and a yawning man stepped out, shuffled a short distance away from the tower, and emptied a chamber pot into a ditch or cesspit somewhere in the tall grass. As the pot-emptier straightened, El saw that the man was of middling years and possessed of raven-dark hair, good looks framed by razor-edged sideburns, one normal…and deep brown…eye, and one eye that blazed like a distant star, white and glowing.

He saw Elminster and stiffened in wary surprise for a moment before striding back to bar passage through the open door. "Well met," he said, in carefully neutral tones. "Be it known that I am Mardasper, guardian of this shrine of Holy Mystra. Have you business here, traveler?"

Elminster was too tired to indulge in witty repartee, but he noted with some satisfaction that the state of the morning sunlight touching the tower matched the vision granted to him last night… or early this morn … or whenever. "I do," he replied simply.

"You venerate Holy Mystra, Lady of All Mysteries?"

Elminster smiled at the thought of how shocked this Mardasper would be if he knew just how intimately a certain falling-down-exhausted mage had venerated Mystra. "I do," he said again.

Mardasper gave him a hard look, that blazing eye stabbing out at the hawk-nosed Athalantan, and moved his hands in a tiny gesture that El knew to be a truth-sensing spell.

"All who enter here," the guardian said, gesturing with the chamber pot as if it was a scepter of office, "must obey me utterly and work no magic unbidden. Anyone who takes or damages even the smallest thing from within these walls forfeits his life, or at the least his freedom, You may rest within and take water from the fount, but no food or anything else is provided…and you must surrender to me your name and all written magic and enchanted items you carry, no matter how small or benign. They will be returned upon your departure.”

“I agree to all this," El told him. "My name is Elminster Aumar. Here's my spellbook and the sole item of magic I yet carry: a dagger that can be made to glow as one desires, bright or dim. It can also purify water and edibles it touches and is guarded against rusting, I know of no other powers."

“This is all?" the fire-eyed guardian demanded, staring intently into Elminster's face as he accepted the book and the sheathed dagger. "And 'Elminster' is your true and usual name?"

“This is all, and aye, Elminster I am called," the Athalantan replied.

Mardasper gestured that he should enter, and they passed into a small chamber, dark after the bright sunlight, that held a lectern and much dust. The guardian wrote down Elminster's name and the date in a ledger as large as some doors El had seen, and waved at one of three closed doors behind the lectern.

That stair leads to the upper levels, wherein are kept the writings you doubtless seek."

El inclined his head and replied wearily, "Have my thanks."

Writings I doubtless seek? he thought. Well, perhaps so….

He turned, his hand upon the pull-ring of the door, and asked, "Why else would a mage come to Moon-shorn Tower?"

Mardasper's head snapped up from the ledger, and his good eye blinked in surprise. The other one, El noticed, never closed.

"I know not," the guardian said, sounding almost embarrassed. "There's nothing else here."

"Why came ye here?" El asked gently.

The guardian locked eyes with him in silence for a time, then replied, "If my stewardship here is faithful and diligent for four years…two being already behind me…the priests of Mystra have promised to end the spell upon me that I cannot break." He pointed at his staring eye and added pointedly, "How I came to have this is a private matter. Ask no more on this, lest your welcome run out."

El nodded and opened the door. Probing magics sang and snarled around him for a moment. Then the darkness inside the door became a shrinking, receding web that melted away to reveal a smooth-worn, plain stone stair leading up. As the last prince of Athalantar set his hand upon its rail, an eye seemed to appear in the smooth stone just above his hand and wink at him.. but perhaps it was just his over-weary imagination. He went on up the stair.

"To work!" The balding, bearded mage in the stained and patched robe threw up the shutter and set its support bar firmly in the socket, letting sunlight spill into the room.

"Aye, Baerast," the younger wizard agreed, wrapping his hands in a cloth to keep dust from them before he caught up the next support bar, "to work it is. We've much to do, to be sure."

Tabarast of the Three Sung Curses peered over his spectacles a trifle severely and said, "The last time you made such enthusiastic utterance, dearest Droon, you spent the entire day with some Netherese chiming-ball child's toy, trying to make it roll by itself!"

"As it was meant to do," Beldrune of the Bent Finger replied, looking hurt. "Is that not why we labor here thus, Baerast? Is restoring and making sense of the scraps of elder magic not an exalted calling? Doth not Holy Mystra Herself smile betimes upon us?"

"Yes, yes, and aye besides," Tabarast said dismissively, waving away the argument like three-day-old feast table scraps. "Though I doubt overmuch if she was impressed by a failed effort to resurrect a toy." He hefted the last support bar. "Yet, passing on from that trifle, let us recollect together."

He thrust the last bar into its socket, settled it with a slap, and turned to the vast and uneven table that filled most of the room, in several places almost touching the massive and crammed bookshelves ranked along the walls.

Sixty or more untidy piles of tomes rose here and there from a carpet of scrolls, scraps of old parchment, and more recent notes that completely covered the table, in places the writings were three layers deep. The papers were held flat by a motley assortment of gems, ornate and aged rings, scraps of intricate wire or wrought metal that had once been parts of larger items, candle-topped skulls, and stranger things.

The two mages thrust out their hands above the pages and moved them in slow circles, as if a tingling in their fingertips would locate a passage they were seeking. Tabarast said slowly, "Cordorlar, writing in the failing days of Netheril… the dragonsblood experiments…" His hand shot out to grasp a particular parchment. "Here!"

Beldrune, frowning, said, "I was tracing a triple-delayed-blast fireball magic some loosejaw named Olbert claimed to have made by combining earlier magics from Lhabbartan, Iliymbrim Sharnult, and…and … agghh, the name's gone now." He looked up. "So tell me: what dragonsblood experiments? Stirring the stuff into potions? Drinking it? Setting it aflame?"

"Introducing it into one's own blood in hopes that it would bring a human wizard longevity, increased vigor, the same immunity to certain perils that some dragons enjoy, or even full-blown draconic powers," Tabarast replied. "Various mages of the time claimed to have enjoyed successes in all of those areas. Not that any of them survived or left later evidence we've found yet, to bear out any such claims." He sighed. "We've got to get into Candlekeep."

Beldrune smote his forehead and said, "That again? Baerast, I agree, wholeheartedly and with every waking scrap of my brain. We do indeed have to be able to look at the tomes in Candlekeep…but we need to do so freely, whenever thoughts take us hence, not in a single or skulking visit. I somehow doubt they'll accept us as the new co-Keepers of Candlekeep if we march in there and demand such access."

It was Tabarast's turn to frown. "True, true," he said with a sigh. "Wherefore we've got to make the most of these salvaged scraps and forgotten oddments."

He sighed again. "No matter how untruthful and incomplete they may be."

He poked at one yellowing parchment with an almost accusatory forefinger, adding, "This worthy claimant boasts of eating an entire dragon, platter by platter. It took him a season, he says, and he hired the greatest cooks of the time to make it palatable fare by trading them its bones and scales. I began to doubt him when he said it was his third such dragon, and that he preferred red dragon meat to the flesh of blue dragons."

Beldrune smiled. "Ah, Baerast," he said. "Still clinging to this romantic delusion that folk who go to the trouble of writing are superior sorts who always set down the truth? Some folk lie even to their own diaries.'

He waved at the ceiling and walls around them and added, "When all this was new, do you think the Netherese who dwelt or worked here were the great paragons some sages claim them to be…wiser than we, more mighty in all ways than the folk of today, and able to work almost any magic with a snap of the fingers? Not a bit of it! They were like us…a few bright minds, a lot of lazy-wits, and a few dark and devious twisters of truth who worked on folk around them to make others do as they desired. Sound familiar?"

Tabarast plucked up a falcon's head carved from a single palm-sized emerald an age ago and stroked its curved beak absently.

"I grant your point, Droon, yet I ask myself: what follows? Are we doomed to wallow in distortions and untruths as the years pass, with but seventeen spells to show for it…seventeen?'

Beldrune spread his hands. "That's seventeen more magics than some mages craft in a lifetime of working the Art," he reminded his colleague mildly. "And we share a task both of us love…and, moreover, are granted the occasional personal reward from Herself, remember?"

"How do we know She sends those dream-visions?" Tabarast said in a low voice. "How do we really know?"

Moonshorn Tower shook all around them for the briefest of instants, with a deep rumbling sound, somewhere a stack of books collapsed with a crash.

Beldrune smiled crookedly and said, "That's good enough for me. What do you want Her to do, Baerast? Dole out a spell a night, written across our brains in letters of everlasting fire?"

Tabarast snorted. "There's no need to be ridiculous, Droon." Then he smiled almost wistfully, and added, "Letters of fire would be nice, though, just once."

"Old cynic," the younger mage responded with an air of offended pomposity, "I am never ridiculous. I merely afford a degree of jollity that has never failed to please even more discerning audiences than yourself, or should I say especially more discerning audiences than yourself."

Tabarast mumbled something, then added more loudly, This is why we accomplish so little, as the hours and days pass unheeded. Clever words, clever words we catch and hurl like small boys at skulltoss, and the work advances but little."

Beldrune gestured at the table. "So take up some new scrap, and let's begin," he challenged. "Today we'll work together rather than pursuing separate ends and see if the Lady smiles on us. Do start, old friend, and I shall keep us to the matter at hand. In this my vigilance shall be steadfast, but as nothing to my wroth."

"Isn't that 'wrath,' m'boy?" Tabarast asked, his hand hovering once more above the table.

"Lesser beings, dearest mage of my regard, may well indulge in wrath…I feel wroth," Beldrune replied loftily, then added with a snarl, "Now take up a paper, and let's be about it!"

Tabarast blinked in astonishment and took up a paper. "…That so surpasseth all mine previous… other mages decry such.. Yet will I prevail, the truth being my guide and guardian,' methinks, methinks, methinks, ho ho hum … Hmmm. Someone writing in the South, before Myth Drannor but probably not ail that long before, about a spell to put a mage's wits and all in the body of a beast, to make it prowl at his bidding for a night, or stay longer or forever within it should his own body be threatened or lost."

"Good, good," Beldrune responded. "Could it be Alavaernith, in the early days of working on his Three-cats' spell? Or is it too effusive for that?"

"I suspect someone other than Alavaernith,' Tabarast said slowly. "He was never so open with his secrets as this. …"

Neither of them noticed a red-eyed, hawk-nosed man step into the room and lean for a moment against the door sill with an air of utter weariness, looking around at everything as he listened to them.

"And does he say anything useful?" Beldrune pressed. "Or can we cast this aside on the heap in the barrel?"

Tabarast peered at the page, turned it over to make sure the back was blank, held it to the light seeking oddities in (or hidden under) the writing, and finally handed it to his colleague with a sound that was half sigh and half snort. "Nothing useful, beyond telling us what someone was working on or had thought of back then…."

The hawk-nosed man stepped forward to peer at the gilt-lettered spines of tomes wedged tightly into the nearest bookshelf, then looked over at the table and carefully turned over a twisted, crumpled cage of wrought metal that had probably once held the shape of a globe. Examining it carefully, the stranger set it softly back down and peered at the writings beneath it.

"Now, this one," Tabarast said slowly, bent over the other side of the table, "is rather more interesting. No, we shan't be hurling this into the barrel quite so quickly." He held it up under his nose as he straightened, then paused as Elminster's boot made a slight sound and the dark-haired mage asked, "How goes it, Mardasper? Keeping an eye on things, as usual, hmmm?"

When there was no reply, he turned, and both mages stared across the room at the newcomer…who gave them a polite nod and smile, looked for a moment at an old and brittle scroll on the table, then stepped sideways, seeking more interesting writings.

Tabarast and Beldrune frowned at the stranger in unison, then turned their backs, drew in side by side, and continued their investigations in muttered tones.

El gave their eloquent backs and shoulders a wry, exhausted smile, then shrugged and peered at another parchment. It was something about Grafting a spike-studded torture coffin so that folk latched into it were teleported elsewhere rather than suffering impalement, and it was written with that squaring of the letters that marked its origin as the south shore of the Sea of Fallen Stars. The glint of metallic inks shone back at him, and the page had reached that soft brown state just before crumbling begins … as old as he was, or older. El looked at the next page, sliding aside a Netherese ocular to do it.

He gave the beautiful item a second glance. The enchantments that would affix it over a wearer's eye were gone, but the gem would still, by the looks of it, afford vision of heat, and even through wood or stone a handspan thick or less. With the curled filigree around it, it looked like a giant, elegant tear that would glisten endlessly on a lady's cheek.

What a lot of work. Grafting far in excess of its usefulness, done for the sheer joy of mastering the Art and creating something that would last… and there must be a thousand times a thousand such items, scattered all over a world so rich in natural magic that all of them could be said to be frivolities.

And was Elminster Aumar, in truth, one more frivolity?

Perhaps, and perhaps he was destined to leave behind little more than these endless dusty scraps of parchment, the confused and unfinished ideas of centuries … yet that flow of mistakes and vain strivings and occasional triumphs or destructive disasters was the Art, with Mystra the gatekeeper of the Weave from which it all came and to which it all returned.

Enough. He was standing in a parchment-littered room in Moonshorn Tower, here and now, and the flow of magics or the very nature of Art were alike in their irrelevance His world was a place of hunger, and thirst, feeling cold or hot…or feeling so gods-spitting tired that he could barely keep his eyes open an instant longer.

Wait! There…he'd seen that writing before. The fine, flowing hand of Elenshaer, who'd been so good at crafting new and unusual wardings in Myth Drannor…until he'd been torn apart by a Phaerimm he'd rashly caged in too-feeble spells to do a little experimentation … a victim, some would say, of that arrogant assumption of elven superiority and of the ethical right to transform, mutilate, or tamper with "lesser beings," even if they're not truly lesser beings, that afflicts so many of his race. An unfortunate moment of misjudgment and another of carelessness, others would term it. And who was to say which view was right or if any of it truly mattered? Seeing the slender elf laughing and gesturing, fluted wineglass in hand, in his memory of a terrace that no longer stood, amid folk who no longer lived, El slid aside other writings to expose all of Elenshaer's missive.

It was a spell, of sorts. Or rather, the beginnings of a "hook" of Art that would allow an additional power to be added to an existing ward by the casting of another spell into the invisible hook…which would then draw the spell Into the weaving of the ward and permit the caster to govern and adjust its effects. Elminster read the spell over silently until it approached its ending and stopped.

Elenshaer had followed a common elf mages' practice. He'd set down the crowning part of the casting on another paper, kept elsewhere. His abode would have held thousands of such papers, with Elenshaer's memory as the only link of what paper went with which. There'd even been a rogue mage in the City of Song, Twillist, who'd sought power by pilfering such "ends" of spells, trading them to young apprentices and others eager for more knowledge and power in exchange for lesser, but whole, magics.

The missing ending was almost obvious to a mage who'd had a hand in crafting mythals and studied with Cormanthan elves. A summation or linking bridge, probably "Tanaethaert shurruna rae," a shaping gesture…thus…mirrored immediately and incorporated into the incantation with the utterance of "Rahrada," then the declaration that would make the hook recede into the ward-weave and give its caster control of the spell effects it brought with it: "Dannaras ouuhilim rabreivra, tonneth ootaha la, tabras torren ouliirym torrin, dalarabban yultah." A concluding gesture… thus…and it would be done.

He'd spoken those words aloud, though near-soundlessly, and was startled when something spun into being in the air before him, a little more than the length of his hand above Elenshaer's incomplete spell. A little glowing construction hung in the air above the page: lines of fire looping into a tiny knot that began to rotate as he watched it, to spin endlessly and silently.

Sigh. If there was such a thing as a needless magic, this was it. Unthinkingly he'd broken Mystra's decree, after enduring so much discomfort and danger to keep it. Gods blast!

As if that silent, savage thought had been a cue, the hook he'd created commenced to spit tiny sparks at the parchment beneath it. Oh, that was all he needed! In a room such as this, with dry and dusty paper inches deep on everything….

His hands were already darting to shield the thickly strewn parchments against the sparks … too late. They landed, hopped, and…

Formed glowing words that were overlaying Elenshaer's writing as they advanced before his astonished eyes, leaving no smoke or sign of conflagration in their wake.

Leave. Now. Seek the Riven Stone.

The message flashed once, as if to make sure that he read it, blazed brightly, then slowly began to fade away.

El read them one more time and swallowed. He could barely stand, but the command couldn't be much clearer, he must leave this place without delay. He raised his head and looked regretfully around at all the lore he'd not be able to poke around in, now. No more sparks fell from the tiny whirling hook, and the two old wizards were still hunched against him on the far side of the room, mumbling secrets to each other so he'd not hear.

He looked down at the letters of magical flame again, found them just fading into invisibility, and watched until they were quite gone. Then he gave the room a deep, soundless sigh, followed it with a rueful grin, and crept out as softly as the thief in Hastarl he'd once been.

After the fourth page of unrelated lore, Tabarast murmured, "Will you look behind us and see where this stranger has got to? If he's wandered back to the door, or out of it, this guarding of tongues shall cease forthwith. I feel like a guilty servant gossiping in an outhouse."

"How can we discuss things if we can't speak freely?" Beldrune agreed, performing an elaborately casual glance back over his shoulder at the littered table. Then he swung right around, and said, "Baerast, he's gone."

Something in the younger mage's tone made Tabarast's head snap up. He turned around, too, to stare across the room where they'd labored for so long, and find it empty of strange mages, but now home to…

"The sign!" Beldrune gasped, voice unsteady in awe. "The sign! A Chosen was here among us!"

"After all these years," Tabarast murmured huskily, almost dazed. In an instant his life and his faith and all Toril around him had changed. "Who can it have been? That beak-nosed youngster? We must follow him!"

Slowly, as if they dared not disturb it, the two old mages advanced around the table. By unspoken agreement they walked in opposite directions, to come upon the spinning sigil from different directions…as if it might escape if they didn't pounce.

The little whirling knot of blazing lines was still there when they met in front of it to gape at it in awe. "It matches the vision completely," Tabarast murmured, as If there'd been some possibility of a mistake or counterfeit. "There can be no doubt."

He looked around the room at their piled, cluttered years of work. "I'm going to miss all of this," he said slowly.

"I'm not!" Beldrune replied, almost bowling the older mage over in his rush for the door. "Adventure…at last!"

Tabarast blinked at his fast-receding colleague and said, "Droon? Are you mad? This is exciting, yes, but our road's just beginning…it'll be a hard fall for you soon, if you're dancing this high in glee right now."

The Dark Gods take your gloom, Baerast…we're going adventuring? Beldrune shouted back up the stairway.

Tabarast winced and started descending steps, a sour expression settling onto his face. "You've never been on an adventure before, have you?"

Years of travel had made the hard-packed mud lane between Aerhiot's Field and Salopar's Field sink down into its own ditch, until now the tangled hedges almost met overhead, as disturbed birds and squirrels fretted and darted along in the perpetual gloom whenever anyone ventured along the lane.

The oxen were used to it, and so was Nuglar. He trudged along half asleep with his goad-stick in the crook of his arm, not expecting to have to use it, while the three massive beasts ambled along ahead of him, also half-asleep, hardly bothering to switch their tails against the biting buzzflies.

Something chimed nearby. Nuglar lifted one heavy eyelid and turned his head to see what could be making the sound … a wandering lamb, perhaps, collared with one of those tiny toy bells the priests of the Mother hung down their aspergilla? Several younglings?

He could see nothing but a sort of white, sparkling mist in the air, whirling tongues of it that trailed the chiming. It was all around him now, loud and somehow cruel, settling around him like a cold shawl… and around the oxen. One of them sobbed in sudden alarm as the chiming mist became a howling, tightening whirlwind encircling it.

Nuglar shouted, or thought he did, and stretched out a hand to that ox's rump…only to feel a deathly, searing chill, numbing in an instant like icy winter water. He drew back his arm.

It was a stump, blood streaming from where his hand should have been. He opened his mouth to scream, and a wisp of that deadly whirlwind spun out of nowhere to plunge down his throat.

Less than a breath later, Nuglar's jawbone dropped away from a wavering, wind-scoured skull…an instant before his skeleton collapsed into whirling dust, whipped together into crumbling oblivion with the three oxen.

With a loud, triumphant chorus of chiming, like many exultant bells being rung together, a larger, brighter whirlwind rose out of the lane and poured itself across Aerhiot's Field, leaving the muddy lane empty of all but a stout, well-worn goad-stick. It danced in the air in the whirling wake of the chiming mist for an eerie moment, then fell to the mud for other frightened farmers to find later.

A long time passed in the gloomy lane before squirrels meekly scampered and the birds dared to sing again.

The Riven Stone must be a place, or more likely a landmark…a rock cloven by a spring or winter ice. A feature he'd never heard of, but then there was a lot of Faerun he knew nothing about, yet.

Was Mystra going to make him walk over every stride of it?

Almost reeling in exhaustion, Elminster trudged up a grassy slope, trying to keep in sight of the road that had brought him to the Tower … and was now taking him on away from it. Leaving the tower had been a matter of flat urgency, aye, but the Lady…or Azuth, speaking for her… knew he'd have to search for the Riven Stone. Well, then, he couldn't be expected to find it immediately.

That was good, because he could barely find the strength to put one foot in front of another any longer.

El took another two clumsy steps, found himself sliding back down the slope to the roadside, stumbled, and a short rushing while later, fetched up hard against a duskwood tree.

It felt good to lean against the comforting bulk of the tree, when he was so gods-forsaken weary… bark burned against his cheek, and El caught himself halfway along a sliding fall. Sprawling a-snore in the road wouldn't be a wise thing, in this land of daggers ready for unprotected throats.

There was no branch handy to cling to, to climb the tree or even keep himself on his feet… and speaking of that, his knees were starting to buckle … ah, but wait. What had the Srinshee taught him about a tree-shaping spell? Some simple change in the incantation of one of the spells he was carrying, Thoaloat's Variant aye, that's what it had been called. "Doabro Thoaloat was a wily old goat"…and that little rhyme brought back the memory he needed: the change was thus.

It was possible that Elminster snored gently twice or thrice during the incantation, but the duskwood that appeared an instant later, leaning against an identical duskwood that had been there rather longer, preferred deep silence to snoring, and so peace fell by the roadside.

When he was in the steward's chamber, the wards always warned him. They almost blazed in great measure of approaching magic, this time, so Mardasper was through the door and standing behind his lectern with the diadem on his head, its eyepiece over his accursed eye, and the Lady Scepter on his head before the door opened…without any knock…and an elf mage stepped within, cloak swirling around him, and the gems set into the staff of living wood in his hand winking on and off in an ever-changing display. The elf met the steward's eye, let go of the staff…it hung upright in the air, its lights continuing to wink and twinkle…and watched for Mardasper's reaction with the faintest of sneers playing about his thin lips.

The steward took care not to look impressed or even interested and managed to add a faint air of dismissal to his visual examination of the newcomer. With elves, status and control were always issues. Push-push-shove, disdain, sniff, sneer … well, not this day, by Holy Mystra! He looked young, but Mardasper knew that even without spells to alter the body or appearance, one of the Fair Folk could look this green and vigorous for centuries. He looked haughty…but then they all did, didn't they?

"Well met," he said, in carefully neutral tones. "Be it known that I am Mardasper, guardian of this shrine of Holy Mystra. Have you business here, traveler?"

"I do," the elf said coldly, stepping forward. The steward willed the eyepiece to lift and gave the newcomer the full benefit of his blazing gaze. The elf slowed, eyes narrowing a trifle, then came to a smooth halt, hand not…quite…touching the butts of a trio of wands sheathed at his hip.

Mardasper resisted the urge to smile tightly and asked carefully, "You venerate Holy Mystra, Lady of All Mysteries?" He used the diadem to truth-read, saving his own spells for any unpleasantness that might prove necessary.

The elf hesitated. "Betimes," he said at last, and that was truth. Mardasper suspected the newcomer meant that he'd gone on his knees to Mystra a time or two in conditions of great privacy, in hopes of gaining an edge over rival elf mages. No matter, here, it would suffice.

"All who enter here," the guardian said, raising the tip of the Lady Scepter just enough to make an elven eye flicker, "must obey me utterly and work no magic unbidden. Anyone who takes or damages even the smallest thing from within these walls forfeits his life, or at the least his freedom. You may rest within, and take water from the fount, but no food or anything else is provided…and you must surrender to me your name, and all written magic and enchanted items you carry, no matter how small or benign. They will be returned upon your departure."

"I think not," the elf said scornfully. "I've no intention of ever becoming any man's slave, nor of yielding items entrusted to me, long venerated in my family, into the hands of anyone else…least of all a human. Do you know who I am, steward?"

"One of the Fair Folk, almost certainly a mage and probably of Cormanthan lineage, on the young side-and greatly lacking in both prudence and diplomacy,' Mardasper replied bleakly. "Is there more I should know?" He caused the spell-gems on the diadem to awaken and flicker, reinforcing them with the aroused dazzle of the scepter. We may not all have blinking staves, youngling, he thought, but…

Elven eyes flashed green with anger and that thin mouth tightened like the jaws of a steel trap, but the elf said merely, "If I cannot proceed freely…no."

Mardasper shrugged, lifting his arms from the lectern to call the intruder's attention to the Lad) Scepter once more. He did not want a spell battle even against a feeble foe, and he didn't need the ward-warnings or the hovering staff to tell him this was no feeble foe.

The elf shrugged elaborately, made his cloak swirl as he ostentatiously turned to go, and let his gaze fall way from the steward as if the man with the scepter were a piece of crumbling statuary. In doing so, his eyes fell across the open register…and suddenly blazed as brightly as Mardasper's own accursed eye.

The elf whirled around again, surging forward like a striking snake…and Mardasper practically thrust the Scepter into his nose, snapping, "Have a care, sir!"

"This man!" the elf spat, stabbing a daggerlike finger onto the last name entered in the book. "Is he still here?

Mardasper looked into that incandescent gaze from inches away, trying to keep the fear out of his own eyes and knowing he was failing. He swallowed once then said…his voice surprisingly calm in his own ears…"No. He visited only briefly, this morn, departing not long ago. Headed west, I believe."

The elf snarled like an angry panther and whirled away again, heading for the door. The staff followed him, trailing black spell flames, two large green gems in its head coming alight to look uncannily like eyes.

"Would you like to leave a message for this Elminster, if he should stop at the tower again?" Mardasper asked in the grandest, most doom-laden voice he could manage, as the elf practically tore the door open. "Many do."

The elf turned in the doorway, and let the staff fly into his hand before he snapped, "Yes! Tell him Ilbryn Starym seeks him and would be pleased to find him prepared for our meeting." Then he stormed out, the door booming shut behind him. Its rolling thunders told the tale of the violence of its closing.

Mardasper stared at it until the wards told him the elf was gone. Then he ran a hand across his sweat-beaded brow and almost collapsed across the lectern in relief.

The Lady Scepter flashed once, and he almost dropped it. That had been a sign, for sure…but had it been one of reassurance? Or something else?

Mardasper shook the scepter slightly, hoping for something more, but, as he'd expected, nothing more happened. Ahh, tear in the Weave! Blast! By Mystra's Seven Secret Spells…!

He snarled incoherently for a moment, but resisted the urge to hurl the scepter. The last steward of Moon-shorn Tower who'd done that had ended up as ashes paltry enough to fit in a man's palm. His, actually.

Mardasper went back into his office under a heavy weight of gloom. Had he done the right thing? What did Mystra think of him? Should he have tried to stop the elf? Should he have allowed this Elminster fellow in at all? Of course the man couldn't have been the Elminster, the One Who Walks, could he? No, that one must be ancient by now, and only Mystra's…

Mardasper swallowed. He was going to fret over this all night and for days to come. He knew he was.

He set down the diadem and the scepter with exaggerated care, then sat back in his chair, sighed, and stared at the dark walls for a time. The priests of Mystra had been quite specific: a day in which strong drink of any sort passed his lips did not count in the marking of his service here.

Indeed. Quite deliberately he pulled out the three thick volumes at one end of the nearest bookshelf, reached into the darkness beyond, and came out with a large, dusty bottle. To the Abyss and beyond with the priests of Mystra and their niggling rules, too!

"Mystra," he asked aloud, as he uncorked the bottle, "how badly did I do?"

In his fingertips, the cork shone like a bright star for the briefest of instants…and shot back into the bottle so violently that his fingers and thumb were left bleeding and numb. Mardasper stared at them for a moment, then carefully put the bottle away again.

"So was that good … or bad?" he asked the gloom in bewilderment. "Oh, where are the priests when I need them?"

"Whoah!" Tabarast cried. " Woaaaaah…" His cry ended in a thump as his behind met the road hard, hurling dust in all directions. The mule came to a stop a pace farther on, gave him a reproachful look, and then stood waiting with a mournful air.

Beldrune sniggered as he overtook his winded colleague, urging it on with a small, feather-plumed whip, his splendid boots outthrust like tusks on either side of his mule. "You seem quite fond of fertile Faerun beneath us this day, friend Baerast!" he observed jovially…an instant before his mule came to an abrupt stop beside the one Tabarast had lately been riding.

Overbalanced, Beldrune toppled helplessly over his mount's head with a startled yell, somersaulting onto the road with an impressive crash that made Tabarast wince, then sputter with repressed mirth as the two mules exchanged glances, seemed to come to some sort of agreement, and with one accord stepped forward, trampling the groaning Beldrune under hoof.

His groans turned to yells of rage and pain, and he flailed wildly with his arms until he was free of unwashed mule bodies and mud-caked mule hooves. "A rescue!" he cried. "For the love of Mystra, a rescue!"

"Get up," Tabarast said grimly, pulling at his hair. "This Chosen must be half the way to wherever he's going by now, and we can't even stay in the saddles of two smallish mules, by the Wand! Get up, Droon!"

"Arrrghr Beldrune yelled. "Let go of my hair!"

Tabarast did as he was bidden…and Beldrune's head fell back onto the road with a thump that sounded like a smaller echo of the one Tabarast had made earlier. The younger mage launched into a long and incoherent curse, but Tabarast ignored him, limping ahead to catch the bridles of their mules before the beasts got over the next rise in the road, and clean away.

"I've brought back your mule," he said to the still-snarling body on its back in the road. "I suggest we walk beside them for a time … we both seem to be a little out of practice at riding."

"If you mean we've been falling off all too often," Beldrune snarled, "then we are out of practice…but we won't get back in practice unless we mount up and ride!"

Suiting the action to the words, he hauled himself into the saddle of Tabarast's mule, hoping the change of mount would improve his ride a trifle.

The mule swiveled one eye to take in Tabarast standing beside it and someone else loudly occupying its back and didn't budge.

Beldrune yelled at it and hauled on the reins as if he was dragging in a monstrous fish. The mule's head was jerked up and back, but it started trying to twist the reins out of Beldrune's grasp, or draw them into its mouth by repeated chomping, rather than move even a single step forward.

Beldrune drew back his heels, wishing he was wearing spurs, and kicked the beast's flanks as hard as he could. Nothing happened, so he kicked again.

The mule shot forward, leaping up into the air and twisting as it did so.

Beldrune went over backward with what might have been a despairing sob, landed hard on one shoulder, and rolled helplessly back down the road. His splendid doublet was rapidly becoming a dung-stained rag as he tumbled along an impressive length of road before negotiating contact…a solid, leaf-shaking collision, to be precise…with one of a pair of duskwood trees by the roadside.

Tabarast snatched at the reins of the growling mule…until now, he hadn't known mules could growl-made sure he still had hold of the other mule's bridle, and looked back down the road. "Finished playing at bold knights on horseback?" he snapped. "We're on important mission, remember?"

An upside-down Beldrune, who'd been staring at I. booted feet a good way up the tree, above him, looked back at his colleague groggily for a moment, then slowly unfolded himself back into the road. When he was upright again, he raked showers of dust from his hair with one hand…wincing at the pains in his back this activity caused…and snarled, "With all the shouting you're doing, it's a safe bet that Elminster isn't within forty farms of here!"

The tree seemed to flicker for a moment, but neither of the two esteemed mages noticed.