The Temptation of Elminster

by Ed Greenwood

  “Llander?” he called, hoping not to get a sword thrust in the face. “Llander?”

  He heard a small sound behind him and lashed out viciously with his blade, hacking so hard that the steel rang off the stone wall with numbing force, shedding a few tinkling shards of metal in its wake.

  He was rewarded with a gasp. When he turned to see who it was, the Iron Fox found himself face to face not with a hawk-nosed man or a bleeding corpse but with a young lass he’d seen a time or two before about the Starn. She was three safe steps down the stair, beyond his sword tip, and looked very stern, a hand at her throat. As the Fox gazed at her, still startled to see this wench here in his locked and barred tower, she brought her hand slowly and deliberately down, and the front of her gown open with it.

  His eyes followed her movement until the halberd smashing into his ankles from above sent him cannoning helplessly down the stairs. He screamed out a curse as he swung his blade around to hack away this latest attack. The Fox found himself once more nose to nose with the grinning, hawk-nosed man. A slim dagger driven by a slender but firm arm plunged into the Iron Fox’s right eye, and Faerûn whirled away from him forever.

  Breathing heavily, Immeira sprang away from the huge armored carcass and let it clang and slither a little way down the stair, gauntlets clutching vainly at empty air.

  Then she looked quickly away and up at the man who was smiling down at her. “Wanlorn,” she moaned, and found herself trembling—a moment before she burst into tears. “Wanlorn, we’ve done it!”

  “Nay, lass,” said the soothing voice that went with the arms that held her then. “We’ve but done the easiest part. Now the hard and true work begins. Ye’ve slain a few rats, is all … the house they infested must still be set in order.”

  He plucked the fouled and dripping dagger from her hands and tossed it away; she heard it ring against the floor tiles below.

  “The Realm of the Iron Fox is broken, but Buckralam’s Starn must be made to live again.”

  “How?” she moaned into his chest. “Guide me. You said you would not stay.…”

  “I cannot, lass—not more than a season. ’Twould be better for thee if I left this night.”

  Her arms tightened around him like a vise.

  “No!”

  “Easy, lass,” he said. “I’ll stay long enough to see you take old Rarendon—and whichever of the orphans and farmers ye can trust as an escort on the road—to Saern Hill. I’ll write ye a note to give to a man there, a horse breeder named Nantlin; ask him if his harp sounds as sweet as ever, and he’ll know who the note is really from. He’ll bring folk to dwell here and women and men of honor and ready blades to keep laws all Starneir approve of, to make the Starn strong again. There is a doom laid upon me though, lass … I must be gone before he or any of his folk come into the valley.”

  Immeira stared up at him, her face drenched with tears. She could see plain sorrow in his eyes and tight-set lips, reaching up two timid fingers to trace the set of his jaw.

  “Will you tell me your true name, before you go?”

  “Immeira,” he said solemnly, “I will.”

  “Good,” she said almost fiercely, reaching up her hands to his neck, “for I’ll not give myself to a nameless man.”

  A smile that did not belong to Immeira swam through his dreams and sent Elminster into sudden, coldly sweating wakefulness. “Mystra,” he breathed into the darkness, staring up at the cracked stone ceiling of the best bedchamber in Fox Tower. “Lady, have I pleased thee at last?”

  Only silence followed—but in it, sudden fire appeared, racing across the ceiling, shaping letters that read: “Serve the one called Dasumia.”

  Then they were gone, and Elminster was blinking up at darkness. He felt very alone—until he heard the soft whisper against his throat.

  “Elminster?” Immeira asked, sounding awed and frightened. “What was that? Do you serve the gods?”

  Elminster reached up his hand to touch her face, feeling suddenly close to tears. “We all do, lass,” he said huskily. “We all do, if we but know it.”

  Three

  A FEAST IN FELMOREL

  If human, dragon, orc, and elf can in peace sit down anywhere together in these Realms, it must be at a good feast. The trick is to keep them from feasting on each other.

  Selbryn the Sage

  from Musings From A Lonely Tower In Athkatla

  published in The Year of the Worm

  “And just who,” the shortest and loudest of the three gate guards asked with deceptive cheerfulness, “are you?”

  The hawk-nosed, neat-bearded man he was staring coldly at—who was standing out in the pelting spring rain, on foot and muddy-booted, yet somehow dry above the tops of his high and well-worn boots—matched the guard’s bright, false smile and replied, “A man whom the Lord Esbre will be very sorry to have missed at his table, if ye turn me away.”

  “A man who has magic and thinks himself clever enough to avoid answering a demand for his name,” the guard captain said flatly, crossing his arms across his chest so that the fingers of one hand rested on the high-pommeled dagger sheathed at the right front of his belt, and the fingers of the other could stroke the mace couched in a sling-sheath on the left front. The other two guards also dropped their hands ever so casually to the waiting hilts of their weapons.

  The man out in the rain smiled easily and added, “Wanlorn is my name, and Athalantar my country.”

  The captain snorted, “Never heard of it, and every third brigand calls himself Wanlorn.”

  “Good,” the man said brightly, “that’s settled, then.”

  He strode forward with such calm confidence that he was among the guards before two hard shoves—from gauntlets coming at him from quite different directions—brought him to an abrupt halt.

  “Just where d’you think you’re going?” the captain snarled, reaching out his hand to add his own shove to Wanlorn’s welcome.

  The bearded man smiled broadly, seized that hand, and shook it in a warrior’s salute. “In to see Lord Esbre Felmorel,” he said, “and share some private converse with him, good lad, whilst I partake of one of his superb feasts. Ye may announce me.”

  “And then again,” the captain hissed, leaning forward to glare at the stranger nose-to-nose, “I may not.” Blazing green eyes stared into merry blue-gray ones for a long moment, then the captain added shortly, “Go away. Get gone from my gate, or I’ll run you through. I don’t let rude brigands—or clever-tongued beggars—”

  The bearded man smiled and leaned forward to land a resounding kiss on the guard’s menacing mouth.

  “Ye’re as striking as they said ye’d be,” the stranger said almost fondly. “Old Glavyn’s a fire-lord when he’s angry, they said. Get him to spit and snarl and run ye away from his gate—oh, he’s a proper little dragon!”

  One of the other guards sniggered, and Guard Captain Glavyn abandoned blinking, startled, at the stranger to whirl around with a snarl and thrust his glare down the throat of a more familiar foe. “Do we find something amusing, Feiryn? Something that so overwhelms our manhood and training that we must abandon our superiors and fellows in the face of danger whilst we indulge ourselves in a wholly inappropriate and insultingly demeaning display of mirth?”

  The guard blanched, and a satisfied Glavyn whirled back to fix the hawk-nosed stranger with a look that promised swift and waiting death hovering only inches away. “As for you, goodman … if you ever dare to—to violate my person again, my sword shall be swift and sure in my hand, and not all the gods in this world or the next shall be enough to save you!”

  “Ah, Glavyn, Glavyn,” the bearded stranger said admiringly, “what flow! What style! Splendid words, stirringly delivered. I’ll tell Esbr—the Lord so, when I sit down to dine with him.” He clapped the captain on one shoulder and slipped past him in the same movement.

  The guard captain exploded into red rage and snatched out his weapons to … or, rather, tried to. Somehow, str
ain and struggle as he might, he couldn’t make either mace or dagger budge, or uncross his arms to reach for the short sword slung across his back or his other dagger beside it. He couldn’t move his arms at all. Glavyn drew in breath for what would have been a hoarse, incoherent scream, but for—

  “My lords, what is all this tumult?” The low, musical voice of the Lady Nasmaerae cut through Glavyn’s gathering wind and the rising alarm of his fellow guards like a sword blade sliding through silk. Four men moved in silence to place themselves where they could best—that is, without obstruction—stare at her.

  Slender she was, in a gown of green whose tight, pointed sleeves almost hid her fingers but left supple shoulders bare. A stomacher of intricate worked silver caught the gleam of the dying day, even through the rain and mist, as she turned away slightly in the darkness and worked some small cantrip that made the candelabra in her hand burst into warm flame.

  By its leaping light eyes that were dark pools grew even larger, and indigo in hue—indigo with flecks of gold. Lady Nasmaerae’s mouth and manner seemed all chaste innocence, but those eyes promised old wisdom, dark sensuality, and a smoldering hunger.

  A smile rose behind her eyes as she measured her effect on the men at the gate, and she added almost lightly, “Who are we, on a night such as this, to keep a lone traveler standing in the wet? Come in, sir, and be welcome. Castle Felmorel stands open to ye.”

  The hawk-nosed stranger bowed his head and smiled. “Lady,” he said, “ye do me great honor by thy generosity to a stranger—outpouring, as it is, of a trusting and loving manner that thy gate-guards would do well to emulate. Wanlorn of Athalantar am I, and I accept thy hospitality, swearing unreservedly that I mean no harm to ye or to anyone who dwells within, nor to any design or chattel of Felmorel. Folk in the lands around spoke volubly of thy beauty, but I see their words were poor, tattered things compared to the stirring and sublime vision that is—ye.”

  Nasmaerae dimpled. Still wearing that amused smile, she turned her head and said, “Listen well, Glavyn. This is how the racing tongue encompasseth true flattery. Idle and empty it may be—but oh, so pretty.”

  The guard captain, red-faced and still trembling as he fought with his immobile arms while trying not to appear to be doing so, glowered past her shoulder and said nothing.

  The Lady Nasmaerae turned her back on him in a smooth lilt that wasn’t quite a flounce and offered her arm to Wanlorn. He took it with a bow and in the same motion he assumed the lofty bearing of the candelabra, their fingers brushing each other for a moment—or perhaps just a lingering instant longer.

  As they swept away out of sight down a dark-paneled inner passage, the guards could have collectively sworn that the flames of that bobbing candelabra winked. That was when Glavyn found that he could suddenly move his arms again.

  One might have expected him to draw forth the weapons he’d so striven to loose these past few breaths—but instead, the captain poured all his energy into a vigorous, snarling-swift, prolonged use of his tongue.

  By the time he was finally forced to draw breath, the two guards under his command were regarding him with respect and amazement. Glavyn turned away quickly, so they wouldn’t see him blush.

  The arms of Felmorel featured at their heart a mantimera rampant, and although no one living had ever seen such an ungainly and dangerous beast (sporting, as it did, three bearded heads and three spike-bristling tails at opposing ends of its bat-winged body), the Lord of Felmorel was known, both affectionately and by those who spoke in fear, as “the Mantimera.”

  As jovial and as watchfully deadly in manner as his heraldic namesake was reputed to be, Esbre Felmorel greeted his unexpected guest with an easy affability, praising him for a timely arrival to provide light converse whilst his other two guests this night were still a-robing in their apartments. The Lord then offered the obviously weary Wanlorn the immediate hospitality of a suite of rooms for rest and refreshment, but the hawk-nosed man deferred his acceptance until after the feast was done, saying it would be poor repayment of warm generosity to deprive his host of a chance to share that very converse.

  The Lady Nasmaerae assumed a couch that was obviously her customary seat with a liquid grace that both men paused to watch. She smiled and silently cupped a fluted elven glass of iced wine beside her cheek, content to listen as the customary opening courtesies were exchanged between the two men, down the long and well-laden, otherwise empty candlelit feasting table.

  “Though ’twould be considered overbold in many a hall to ask so bluntly,” the Mantimera rumbled, “I would know something out of sheer curiosity, and so will ask: what brings you hither, from a land so distant that I confess I’ve not heard of it, to seek out one castle in the rain?”

  Wanlorn smiled. “Lord Esbre, I am as direct a man as thyself, given my druthers. I am happy to state plainly that I am traveling Faerûn in this Year of Laughter to learn more of it, under holy direction in this task, and am at present seeking news or word of someone I know only as ‘Dasumia.’ Have ye, perchance, a Dasumia in Felmorel, or perhaps a ready supply of Dasumias in the vicinity?”

  The Mantimera frowned slightly in concentration, then said, “I fear not, so far as my knowledge carries me, and must needs cry nay to both your queries. Nasmaerae?”

  The Lady Felmorel shook her head slightly. “I have never heard that name.” She turned her gaze to meet Wanlorn’s eyes directly and asked, “Is this a matter touching on the magic you so ably demonstrated at our gates—or something you’d rather keep private?”

  “I know not what it touches on,” their guest replied. “As we speak, ‘Dasumia’ is a mystery to me.”

  “Perhaps our other guests—one deeply versed in matters magical, and both of them widely traveled—can offer you words to light the dark corners of your mystery,” Lord Esbre offered, sliding a decanter closer to Wanlorn. “I’ve found, down the years, that many useful points of lore lie like gems gleaming in forgotten cellars in the minds of those who sup at my board—gems they’re as surprised to recall and bring to light once more as we are that they possess such specific and rare riches.”

  A fanfare sounded faintly down distant passages, and the Mantimera glanced at servants deftly dragging open a pair of tall, ebon-hued doors with heavy, gilded handles. “Here they both come now,” he said, dipping a whel-lusk, half-shell and all, into a bowl of spiced softcheese. “Pray eat, good sir. We hold to no formality of serving nor waiting on others here. All I ask of my guests is good speech and attentive listening. Drink up!”

  Side by side, and striding in careful step—for all the world as if neither wanted the other to enter the hall either first or last—two tall men came into the room then. One was as broad shouldered as a bull, and wore a high-prowed golden belt that reached almost to his bulging breast. Thin purple silk covered his mighty musculature above it and flowed down corded and hairy arms to where gilded bracers encircled forearms larger than the thighs of most men. Both belt and bracers displayed smooth-worked scenes of men wrestling with lions—as did the massive golden codpiece beneath the man’s belt. “Ho, Mantimera,” he boomed. “Have you more of that venison with the sauce that melts in my memory yet? I starve!”

  “No doubt,” Lord Felmorel chuckled. “That venison need not live only in memory longer; but lift the dome off yonder great platter, and ’tis thine. Wanlorn of Athalantar, be known to Barundryn Harbright, a warrior and explorer of renown.”

  Harbright shot a look at the hawk-nosed man without pausing in his determined striding to the indicated platter, and gave a sort of grunt, more noncommittal acknowledgment than welcome or greeting. Wanlorn nodded back, his eyes already turning to the other man, who stood over the table like a cold and dark pillar of fell sorcery. The hawk-nosed guest didn’t need the Mantimera’s introduction to know that this was a wizard almost as powerful as he was haughty. His eyes held cold sneering as they met Wanlorn’s but seemed to acquire a flicker of respect—or was it fear?—as they turned to regard
the Lady Nasmaerae.

  “Lord Thessamel Arunder, called by some the Lord of Spells,” the Mantimera announced. Was his tone just a trifle less enthusiastic than it had been for the warrior?

  The archwizard gave Wanlorn a cold nod that was more dismissal than greeting and seated himself with a grand gesture that managed to ostentatiously display the many strangely shaped, glittering rings on his fingers to everyone in the vicinity. To underscore their moment, various of the rings winked in a random scattering of varicolored flashes and glows.

  As he looked at the food before him, a brief memory came to Wanlorn of the jaws of wolves snapping in his face, in the deep snows outside the Starn in the hard winter just past. He almost smiled as he put that bloody remembrance from his mind—hunger, it had been simple hunger for those howling beasts; no better and no worse than what had hold of him now—and applied his own gaze to the peppered lizard soup and crusty three-serpent pie within reach. As he cut into the latter and sniffed appreciatively at the savory steam whirling up, Wanlorn knew Arunder had darted a glance his way, to see if this stranger-guest was sufficiently impressed with the show of power. He also knew that the mage must be sitting back now and taking up a glass of wine to hide a mage-sized state of irritation.

  Yet he only had to look at himself in a seeing-glass to know that power and accomplishment of Art lures many wizards into childlike petulance, as they expect the world to dance to their whim and are most selfishly annoyed whenever it doesn’t. He was Arunder’s current source of annoyance; the wizard would lash out at him soon.

  All too soon. “You say you hail from Athalantar, good sir—ah, Wanlorn. I’d have thought few of your age would proclaim themselves stock of that failed land,” the wizard purred, as the warrior Harbright returned to the board bearing a silver platter as broad as his own chest, which fairly groaned under the weight of near a whole roast boar and several dozen spitted fowl, and enthroned himself with the creak of a settling chair and the clatter of shaking decanters. “Where have you dwelt more recently, and what brings you hence, cloaked in secrets and unheralded, to a house so full of riches, if I may ask? Should our hosts be locking away their gem coffers?”