The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [13]
Elminster spun around. He stood alone, the Height was empty but for a few trees and the wind stirring them.
He stared hard at the empty air, but it stayed empty.
"Who are ye, who answer me? Reveal thyself," he demanded. "Philosophy comes hard when the lectures are delivered by phantoms."
The empty air chuckled. Suddenly it held two glimmering points of light, miniature stars that circled each other lazily, then whirled around with racing speed and burst into a blinding cascade of starry motes of light.
When the flood of brightness fell away, Elminster beheld a robed man standing behind it. He was white-bearded and black-browed, and his calm eyes shone very blue before they filled with all the colors of the rushing rainbow. As Elminster watched, the man's eyes darkened to black shot through with tiny, slowly moving stars.
"Impressive," Elminster granted amiably. "And ye are…?"
The chuckle came again. "I meant it not as a show, nor yet as a herald's cry of my identity… but since we seem to be speaking suchwise, why don't you have a guess?"
El looked the man up and down. Old, ancient even, and yet spry, perhaps as young as some fifty-odd winters. White-haired, save for the brows, forearms, and chest, where the hair was black. He was empty-handed, with no rings in evidence, wearing simple, spare robes with flared sleeves and no belt or purse, bare feet below…feet that could afford to be bare, because they hovered a few inches off the ground, never quite touching.
Elminster looked up from them to the wise face of their owner, and said softly, "Azuth."
"The same," the man replied, and though he did not smile, El thought he seemed somehow pleased.
Elminster took a step forward, and said, "Forgive my boldness, High One, if ye will… but I serve Mystra in a manner both close and personal…"
"You are the dearest of her Chosen, yes," Azuth said with a smile. "She speaks often of you and of the joy you've brought her in the times she's spent playing at being mortal."
The prince of Athalantar felt joy and a vast relief. In his sigh of contentment and relaxation he almost stepped backward off the Height. At that moment a barbed whip arced around at his face, from the air off to his left, and something unseen took him around the shoulders as he swayed on the edge of oblivion then snatched him forward, away from the cornugon an instant before its reaching talons could thrust into Elminster's eyes. He found himself skimming across the scorched stones of the hilltop, Azuth receding before him so they always faced each other from the same distance.
"M-my thanks," El stammered, as they came to a gentle halt. He felt himself lowered into a comfortable, lounging position, lying on yielding but somehow solid air. Azuth was also sitting on nothing, facing him, across a fire that suddenly sprang out of nowhere. Flames danced up from air a handspan above the unmarked rock of the Height. El looked at it, then around at a sky now full of bat-winged, scaled, hissing fiends, clawing at the air with widening, many-toothed smiles as they dived nearer.
"I don't wish to seem ungrateful or critical, High One," he said, "but yon fiends can't fail but notice this light, and we'll have them visiting."
Azuth smiled, and for an instant his arms seemed to flow with slowly marching lights, winking and sparkling. "No," he replied in the calm, musical voice that was at once splendid and laced with excitement… and at the same time soothing and reassuring. "This Height, henceforth, is shielded against fiends…of all kinds…so long as my power endures. Now hearken, for there are things you should know."
Elminster nodded, bright-eyed in his eagerness. His manner brought the ghost of a smile to the lips of the Lord of Spells, who caused both of their hands to be suddenly full of goblets of wine that smoked and glowed. The god began to speak.
Over Azuth's left shoulder, a hulking red monster of a fiend flapped huge wings in a