Azure bonds - Kate Novak [76]
"Files?" shrieked Akabar. "Look around you!" he demanded. "Does it look as if anything has been filed here in the last millennium?"
The question was purely rhetorical. The scribe's outer office, which also served as a waiting room for those seeking audience with the great Elminster, was a firetrap waiting for a spark. Parchment scrolls, leatherbound tomes, sheaves of loose leaves of paper, empty folders clearly labeled Important or Confidential, and bark textbooks stained with berry ink, and chalk dust lay on every available horizontal surface or leaned against a vertical surface. Colored streamers, on which were scrawled the most exotic letters, hung from the ceiling.
Besides the gray slate used to write temporary messages, such as Attend Azoun's Coronation and Warn Myth Drannor of Attack, there were stone and clay tablets and sheets of soft metals to hold more permanent messages, the ones to be handed down through history- Pick Up Laundry and Pay Lhaeo.
All this, of course, was a tribute to Lhaeo's ability to intimidate adventurers and keep them from disturbing Elminster. Akabar sensed this to some extent. At least, he could not believe that anyone, including Lhaeo, really gave a bat's dropping for what he wrote down. His perception was that Lhaeo's forms were some sort of test of his patience or intelligence or desperation. If he just stuck it out long enough, he was certain, Lhaeo would finally recognize his worthiness as a candidate and remind his master that a southern mage waited in the outer office.
However, Akabar had been waiting five hours-three at the inn and two in this dismal, cramped room. His patience was spent, his intelligence exhausted on figuring out the ridiculous forms. Desperation was his final strategy. He considered dashing from the room to the tower, but without Lhaeo's guidance through the maze of halls and doors and rooms, he wasn't sure he could find it. Even if I did find the stairs, Akabar mused, I have no guarantee that Elminster is in the tower.
Lheao shrugged. "You must understand, Elminster is a very busy man. This is the only way we have of determining if a problem is truly important enough to warrant interrupting his already overcrowded schedule."
"Just what size dragon does it take to land in this room to merit the sage's attention?"
"Oh, Elminster doesn't consult with dragons," Lhaeo assured the mage. "Consults on dragons, perhaps, but not with them. The sage is very, very busy, and he does not, as a rule, waste his time with dragons. That's what adventurers are for. And if, um, when you get in to see him, I would advise you to mention dragons as little as possible."
"Look," Akabar said, "I understand that the sage is busy. When I got his message to hurry over, I assumed he would see me on his dinner break or something."
"Dinner break?" The scribe used a delicate finger to push the wire rims around the lenses higher up his nose. "I don't think Elminster has taken a dinner break since, let's see… umm… this is the Year of the Prince, then that makes it…" Lhaeo consulted a calendar.
"Does anyone ever make it past this blizzard of parchment?" Akabar growled.
"Well," Lhaeo sat and thought for half a moment. "There was a delegation from the Forest of Anauroch."
"Anauroch is a desert, not a forest," Akabar said.
"Well, now it is, yes."
"Was that supposed to be a joke?" Akabar snapped.
"Am I laughing?" the scribe asked, looking at Akabar over the rim of his glasses.
"No."
"Then it couldn't be a joke, could it?"
"Look," said Akabar, "I realize the sage can't spare time for everyone. I wouldn't bother him with a petty problem. I'm a mage of no small water. Another member of the sage community, Master Dimswart of Suzail, was unable to handle all the complexities of