The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [27]
"Will you tell me your true name, before you go?" "Immeira," he said solemnly, "I will." "Good," she said almost fiercely, reaching up her hands to his neck, "for I'll not give myself to a nameless man."
A smile that did not belong to Immeira swam through his dreams and sent Elminster into sudden, coldly sweating wakefulness. "Mystra," he breathed into the darkness, staring up at the cracked stone ceiling of the best bedchamber in Fox Tower. "Lady, have I pleased thee at last?"
Only silence followed…but in it, sudden fire appeared, racing across the ceiling, shaping letters that read: "Serve the one called Dasumia."
Then they were gone, and Elminster was blinking up at darkness. He felt very alone…until he heard the soft whisper against his throat.
"Elminster?" Immeira asked, sounding awed and frightened. "What was that? Do you serve the gods?
Elminster reached up his hand to touch her face feeling suddenly close to tears. "We all do, lass, he said huskily. "We all do, if we but know it."
Three: A Feast In Felmorel
If human, dragon, orc, and elf can in peace sit down anywhere together in these Realms, it must be at a good feast. The trick is to keep them from feasting on each other.
Selbryn the Sage
from Musings From A Lonely Tower In Athkatla
published in The Year of the Worn
"And just who," the shortest and loudest of the three gate guards asked with deceptive cheerfulness, "an you?"
The hawk-nosed, neat-bearded man he was staring coldly at…who was standing out in the pelting spring rain, on foot and muddy-booted, yet somehow dry above the tops of his high and well-worn boots…matched the guard's bright, false smile and replied, "A man whom the Lord Esbre will be very sorry to have missed at his table, if ye turn me away."
"A man who has magic and thinks himself clever enough to avoid answering a demand for his name,” the guard captain said flatly, crossing his arms across his chest so that the fingers of one hand rested on the high-pommeled dagger sheathed at the right front of his belt, and the fingers of the other could stroke the mace couched in a sling-sheath on the left front. The other two guards also dropped their hands ever so casually to the waiting hilts of their weapons.
The man out in the rain smiled easily and added, "Wanlorn is my name, and Athalantar my country."
The captain snorted, "Never heard of it, and every third brigand calls himself Wanlorn."
"Good," the man said brightly, "that's settled, then."
He strode forward with such calm confidence that he was among the guards before two hard shoves…from gauntlets coming at him from quite different directions…brought him to an abrupt halt.
"Just where d'you think you're going?" the captain snarled, reaching out his hand to add his own shove to Wanlorn's welcome.
The bearded man smiled broadly, seized that hand, and shook it in a warrior's salute. "In to see Lord Esbre Felmorel," he said, "and share some private converse with him, good lad, whilst I partake of one of his superb feasts. Ye may announce me."
"And then again," the captain hissed, leaning forward to glare at the stranger nose-to-nose, "I may not." Blazing green eyes stared into merry blue-gray ones for a long moment, then the captain added shortly, "Go away. Get gone from my gate, or I'll run you through. I don't let rude brigands…or clever-tongued beggars…"
The bearded man smiled and leaned forward to land a resounding kiss on the guard's menacing mouth.
"Ye're as striking as they said ye'd be," the stranger said almost fondly. "Old Glavyn's a fire-lord when he's angry, they said. Get him to spit and snarl and run ye away from his gate…oh, he's a proper little dragon!"
One of the other guards sniggered, and Guard Captain Glavyn abandoned blinking, startled, at the stranger to whirl around with a snarl and thrust his glare down the throat of a more familiar foe. "Do we find something amusing, Feiryn? Something that so overwhelms our manhood and training that we must abandon our superiors and fellows in the face of danger whilst we