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"No power floods into those memorized patterns until our captive here seeks to touch the Weave," replied the senior priest, rolling over to face her on his knees, "which happens every few hours or so. It seems unable not to strive to, for that is its essential nature, and…"

"How long can we keep this up?" Avroana snapped, gesturing up at the sphere with her whip.

"So long as we have enthusiastic believers in the Dark Mother to furnish us with their heads."

"More have been called hither," said the Darklady, her lips shaping…for a very brief instant…a smile that was as cold as the glacial ice that seals shut a northern tomb. "They've been told we mount a holy crusade."

"Your Darkness," High Brother Narlkond replied, with a soft smile of his own, "we do."

"This is what in human speech would be called the Lookout Tree," said the moon elf, sitting down on a huge leaf…which promptly curled and flexed around him to form a couch that cupped him like a giant, gentle hand.

Umbregard stared around at the view between the great arched branches that split apart where they stood to soar still farther up into the thin, cold air. "By the gods," he said slowly, "those are clouds! We're looking down on the clouds?

"Only the lowest sort of clouds," Starsunder said with a smile. "Oh, didn't you know? Yes, different shapes of clouds hang at different levels, just as fish in a lake seek levels in the water that suit them."

"Fish…?" the human mage asked, then grinned and said, "Never mind, we stray swiftly from my original questioning."

Starsunder grinned back. "Now do you see how it was that humans studied in Myth Drannor for centuries," he said, "and some of them still learned only a handful of the spells they came seeking? The best of them didn't even mind."

Umbregard shook his head. "Oh, to have been there," he whispered longingly, sitting down rather gingerly on another leaf. It promptly tumbled him into its center…he had time for only the briefest of startled murmurs…and folded itself around him, to leave him upright, enthroned in warm comfort.

"Well, ahem," he offered in pleased surprise, while Starsunder chuckled. "Nice, very nice." He looked at Starsunder's chair, still clearly alive and attached to the gigantic shadowtop tree they'd climbed so laboriously to the top of, up a spiral stair that had seemed endless. "I suppose there's no chance of getting a chair like this anywhere else but in the Elven Court?"

"None," Starsunder said with a wide smile, "at all. Sorry."

Umbregard snorted. "You don't sound sorry at all. Why did we have to sweat our weary ways up here, step after thousandth step, what's wrong with using spells to fly?"

"The tree needed to get to know you," his elf host explained. "Otherwise, when you sat down just now, it'd quite likely have hurled you off into yonder clouds like a catapult… and I'd have had no human wizards to chat with this evening."

Umbregard shuddered at the vision of being helplessly thrust out, out into the oh-so-empty air, before starting that terrible, long plunge…

"Aghh!" he shrieked, waving his hands to sweep away his mental vision. "Gods! Away, away! Let's get back to our converse! When we were eating…ohh, that treejelly! How d…no. Later, I'll ask that later. Now I want to know why you said, when we were eating, that Elminster stands in such danger just now…and stands also so close to being an even greater danger to us all… why?"

Starsunder looked out over miles of greenery toward the distant line of mountains for a moment before he said, "Any human mage who lives as many years as this Elminster outstrips most human foes of his own making, they die while he lives on. His very longevity and power make him a natural target for those of all races who would seize him, or his powers from him, or his supposed riches and enchanted items. Such perils confront all mages who've enjoyed any success."

Umbregard nodded, and his elf host continued.

"It's reasonable to suppose that a wizard