The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [101]
The water was good, and seemed at once both invigorating and soothing. The man let it slide down his throat, closed his eyes, and gave himself over to silent enjoyment.
Somewhere a bird called and was answered. It was all very peaceful… he sat up with a start, fearing for one awful moment that he had slept under an elven spell, and carefully set the goblet back on the stone where he'd found it.
"My thanks," he said again. "The water was every bit as you said it would be. Know that I am Umbregard, once of Galadorna, and have fled far since that realm fell. I work magic, though I can boast no great power, and I have prayed to Mystra…the goddess of magic humans venerate…often in my travels."
"And what have you prayed to her for?" the elven voice asked in tones of pleasant interest, sounding very close. Again Umbregard quelled the urge to turn and look at its source.
"Guidance in what good and fitting things magic can be used for, to build a life for one who is not interested in using spells as blades to threaten or thrust into others," he replied. "Galadorna, before its fall, had become a nest of spell-hurling vipers, each striving to bring rivals down and not caring what waste and ruin they wrought in the doing. I will not be like that."
"Well said," the elf said, and Umbregard heard the goblet being dipped then lifted up out of the pool. "Yet it is a long and hard wandering through the shadowed wood for one of your kind, to here. What brought you hence?"
"Mystra showed me the way, and this duskwood grove," Umbregard replied. "I knew not who I'd meet here, but I suspected it would be an elf, once of Myth Drannor… for such a one would know what it was to choose a path after the fall of your home and all you held dear."
He could clearly hear a wince in the elven voice as it replied, "You certainly have the gift of speaking plainly, Umbregard."
"I mean no offense," the human mage replied, turning quickly and offering his hand.
A moon elf male in a dark blue open-front shirt and high booted tight leather breeches was sitting perhaps another handspan away, the goblet raised in his hand. He seemed weaponless, though two small objects…black, teardrop-shaped gemstones that twinkled like two dark stars…floated in the air above his left shoulder.
He smiled into Umbregard's wonderstruck eyes and said, "I know. I am also known, among my folk, for my uncommon bluntness. I am called, in your tongue, Star-sunder, a star fell from the sky at the moment of my birth, though I doubt whatever it heralded had anything at all to do with me."
The human mage gasped, shrank back, and said, "That's one of the…"
The elf's eyebrows lifted. "Yes?" he asked. "Or blurt you out a secret you must now try to keep?"
Umbregard blushed. "Ah, no… no," he said. "That's one of the sayings of the priests of Mystra. 'Seek you one for whom the stars fall, for he speaks truth.' "
Starsunder blinked. "Oh, dear. My role, it seems, is laid out for me," the elf said with a smile, drained the goblet, and set it down on the stone just as carefully as Umbregard had done. In soft silence, it promptly vanished.
"What truths have you come to hear?" the elf asked, and in that moment Umbregard came to understand that the lacing of laughter in an elf's voice is not always mockery.
He hesitated for a moment, then said, "Some in Galadorna whispered that the man Elminster, who was our last court mage, also lived in Myth Drannor long ago, and worked dark magic there. I know this is a human I ask about, and that I presume overmuch…why should you freely yield secrets to me, at all?…but I must know. If humans can live long years as elves do, how… and why? At what tasks should they spend all this time?"
Starsunder held up a hand. "The flood begins," he joked. "Hold at these for now, lest your remembrance of answers I give be lost in the rushing stream