Elminster's Daughter - Ed Greenwood [80]
Or something worse.
Wherefore they turned to present Noumea with a leveled row of glittering spike-points when the party reached Candlekeep proper and stopped to parley with the monks of the gate.
Noumea came to a halt, nodded to them politely, and waited calmly enough. When it was her turn at the tall gates-spell-shrouded vertical bars as thick as her forearm, bearing the castle-and-flames device of Candlekeep and a guard of five purple-robed priests-she gave the expressionless monk who approached her a book from her sack and waited while he carefully stripped away its wrappings.
"The Life of the Sembian Woodworm," he read aloud, his voice devoid of judgment. With gentle fingers he opened the tome, glanced at a few pages, stopped to peer at what were unmistakably the glyphs of spells-minor wardings effective also against paper-worms, he noted with an audible sigh of excitement-then looked up and said, "A notable, valuable gift. You are most welcome within our walls, seeker of wisdom. What's your name, your land, and your intent within?"
"I am Roablar of Lantan, come from trading up and down the Sword Coast and most recently Sembia to examine certain texts. I'm most interested in Thelgul's Do Metals Live? and Bracetar's Notes On Preservation of Foodstuffs and Oils!"
The monk smiled for the first time. It transformed his face, leaving Noumea with the impression that it was not an expression he assumed often. "Be welcome here, Roablar, so long as you treat books with the reverence they deserve, eschewing fire, damp, the torn page, and the removal of lore from the eyes of others. Cross the yard ahead of you to the green-hued door, and give your name to the Keeper of the Emerald Door. You'll be provided with food, a bath, quarters in which to sleep, and a moot with the monk who will escort you on your first visit to the rooms of the tomes."
"I thank you, sir," Roablar replied, bowing slightly and favoring all the monks with a beaming smile. He was waved in through the gap in the partly open gates and set off across the courtyard shifting his sack on his shoulder, as all travelers do.
"Well, Amanther?" the monk who'd dealt with him asked, glancing at the next supplicants-a large party of horsemen, still some way off down the Way of the Lion.
The oldest, tallest monk of the five smiled faintly. "A mage-human female, not old-wearing a very good spell-spun disguise. I daresay the books she mentioned are already familiar to her; I doubt she needs to peruse them again. Slyly learning spells is of course the aim of most who enter covertly, but she feels different to me, somehow. She'll bear close watching."
The other monks nodded. "Thaerabho already answers your signal," one of them said, pointing at a monk strolling across the courtyard to casually follow Roablar of Lantan up to the Emerald Door.
"Good," another grinned, rubbing his hands. "A new mystery to dissect at table this night. One can never have enough delving and prying. It keeps the soul young."
"A tongue more deft, Larth," Amanther admonished. "Say rather: Inquiry into all things keeps a mind bright."
"That too," Larth agreed with a chuckle, which was echoed by the other monks.
"Well, then, clever dissembler," Amanther said, waving at the approaching cloud of dust and sun-flashing armor. "Deal you with these next seekers!"
"With as much pleasure as humility," Larth replied cheerfully. "I'll wager they'll proffer a family history or perhaps a text on the genealogy or heraldry of their immediate region."
"Nay," said another monk, squinting at the banners. "I expect another copy of Navril's History of the Parsnip, with some obscure local collection of plays or minstrels' sayings to serve as their entrance-gift when we reject old Navril one more time."
The chorus of chuckles was hearty but brief, for it was not proper for monks of Candlekeep to be anything less than politely grave when first greeting supplicants.
Across the Court of Air, the monk Thaerabho