Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [42]
Proud names and thieves successful enough to buy wealth and station all came here in the end… all their boasts and plots and gold coins bought them no more than crumbling gravestones, inscribed with lies about their greatness and good character. Scant comfort, El thought, to the moldering bones beneath.
In the tranquil shade of the tomb-trees, the two friends lay atop the sloping roof of Ansildabar's Last Rest, knowing but not caring that the bones of the once-famous explorer lay gnawed and exposed in the pillaged tomb beneath, and passed a wineskin back and forth as they watched the shadows cast by the lowering sun creep across leaning tombs and collapsed mausoleums, heralding dusk.
"I've been thinking," Farl said suddenly, holding out his hand for the skin.
"Usually a bad sign," Elminster agreed affably, handing it over.
"Hah-ha," Farl replied, "between wild orgies, I mean."
"Ah, I'd been wondering what those momentary pauses were," Elminster said, extending his hand for the skin. Farl, who hadn't yet drunk, gave him a hurt look and a 'stay' gesture, and then drank deeply. Sighing with satisfaction, he wiped his mouth and held it out.
"D'you recall how much Budaera was asking me for pleasure together?"
Elminster grinned. "Aye. A low price-just for thee."
Farl nodded. "Exactly. Gold pieces hand over fist, these maids make… 'twould be easy, I'm thinking, to find out where some of 'em hide their loot-and help ourselves while they were sleeping, or out 'busy' at the taverns and rich merchants' clubs."
"Nay," El said firmly, "count me out of such plots. Fleece such sheep an' ye'll do it alone."
Farl looked at him. "Right, consider the plot abandoned. Now tell me why."
Elminster set his jaw. "I'll not steal from those who barely have enough coins for food, let alone taxes or saving."
"Principles?" Farl rescued the nearly empty wineskin.
"I've always had 'em. Ye know that." El waved away the skin, and Farl happily drained it.
"I thought ye wanted to slay all the wizards in Athalantar."
Elminster nodded. "All the magelords. Aye, I've sworn that oath-and slow, iron-careful, I've set about fulfilling it," he replied, staring out over the river, where a pole barge had just come into view in the distance, heading downstream toward the docks. "Yet sometimes I wonder what else I should do-what more life should be."
"Roast boar feasts every night," Farl said. "So much coin to buy them that I'll never have to feel the bite of a knife or hide in rotting dung while armsmen poke into it with their halberds."
"Nothing more?" El asked. "Nothing-higher?"
"What's the point?" Farl asked with a touch of scorn. "There're priests enough all over Faerun to worry about things like that- and my empty stomach never tires of telling me what I should be tending to." Satisfied that the very last drop of wine had fallen into his open mouth, he lowered the skin, rolled it, and thrust it through his belt. Then he looked across at his friend.
Eladar the Dark was frowning at him. "What gods should I worship?"
Farl shrugged, taken aback, and spread his hands. "A man must find that out for himself-or should. Only fools obey the nearest priest."
Amusement came into the blue-gray eyes locked on his. "What do priests do, then?"
Farl shrugged. "A lot of chanting and angry shouting and sticking swords into people who worship other gods."
In the same quiet, serious voice, El asked, "What use are faiths, then?"
Farl shrugged wildly, adopting a crazed, 'Who can know?' expression, but El's serious eyes stayed on him, and after a silence Farl said slowly, "Folk always have to believe there's something better, somewhere, than what they have right now-and that they just might get it. And they like to belong, to be part of a group, and feel superior to outlanders. It's why folk join clubs, and companies, and fellowships."
Eladar looked at him. "And go out and stick swords in each other in dark alleys-and then feel superior about it?"
Farl grinned. "Exactly." He watched the pole barge scrape to a stop against a distant dock, and said casually, "If