The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [100]
"By Mystra's smile, that feels good!" Beldrune said wonderingly, as he stretched and wiggled his fingers experimentally. "I do feel younger, all the aches are gone." He swung himself up to a sitting position, rubbing at his face around his eyes, and from between his fingers fixed Tabarast with a level look.
"Truth time, trusted colleague of the arcane," he said firmly. "Wizards of a certain standing don't just 'find' new spells on hitherto-blank back pages of their spellbooks. Where did it really come from?"
Tabarast of the Three Sung Curses looked back over the tops of his thumb-smudged spectacles rather severely. "You grow not old gracefully, most highly regarded Droon. I detect a growing and decidedly unattractive tendency in yourself, to open disbelief in the testimony of your wiser elders. Crush this flaw, my boy, while yet you retain some friendly relations with folk who can serve as your wiser elders…for 'tis sure that, given your advancing age and wisdom, these are few, and shall be fewer henceforth."
The older wizard took a few thoughtful paces away, scratching the bridge of his nose. "I did indeed just find it, on a page that has always been blank, that I have looked to fill with a spell puissant enough to be worthy of the writing these last three decades. I know not how it came to be there, but I believe…I can only believe-that the sacred Hand of the Lady is involved somehow. Spare me the hearing, the spittle and drawn breath, of your usual lecture on Mystra's utter and everlasting refusal to give magic to mortals."
Beldrune blinked. Tabarast waited, carefully not smiling.
"Very well," the younger mage said after a pause that seemed longer than it truly was, "but you leave me, now, with very little to say. Some silences, I fear, are going to stretch."
Then Tabarast did smile…an instant before asking in innocent tones, "Is that a promise?"
Fortunately, a rejuvenated Beldrune of the Bent Finger proved to be every bit as bad a shot with hurled pillows as the old one had been.
Though not a living creature could be seen in the deep shade of the duskwoods, here where their trunks stood so close together that they might have been gigantic blades of grass, the lone human could feel that someone was watching him. Someone very near. Swallowing, he decided to take a chance.
"Is this the place men call Tangletrees?" he asked the air calmly, sitting down on the huge and moss-covered curve of a fallen tree trunk, and setting his smooth-worn staff aside.
"It is," came a grave reply, in a voice so light and melodious that it could only have been elven.
Umbregard, once of Galadorna, resisted his instinctive desire to turn toward where the voice seemed to have come from, to see who might be there. Instead, he smiled and held out his hands, empty palms upward. "I come in peace, without fire or any ill will or desire to despoil. I come seeking only answers."
A deep, liquid chuckle came to his ears, then the words, "So do we all, man…and the most fortunate of us find a few of them. Be my guest for a time, in safety and at ease. Rise and go around the two entwined trees to your right, down into the hollow. Its water, I suspect, will be the purest yet to pass your lips."
"My thanks," Umbregard replied, and meant it.
The hollow was cold and as dark as a cave, here the leaves met close overhead, and no sun at all touched the earth. Faintly glowing fungi gave off just enough light to see a stone at the edge of the little pool, and a crystal goblet waiting on it. "For my use?" the human mage asked.
"Of course," the calm voice replied, coming from everywhere and nowhere. "Do you fear enslaving enchantments, or elven trickery?"
"No," Umbregard replied. "Rather, I do not want to give offense by seizing things overboldly."
He took up the goblet…it was cool to the touch, and somehow softer in his fingers than it should have been…dipped it