The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [41]
The heights on the far side of the Ringyl weren't yet touched by moonlight, but the glittering stars cast enough light to make their grassy flanks seem to glow. El looked back several times on his determined march up out of the town, but nothing seemed to stir or follow him, and the many eyes that peered at him out of the darkness were no larger than those of rats.
Perhaps he would have time to win some sort of slumber, after all. The hilltop he chose was small and bare of all but the ever-present long grass. He walked it in a smallish ring, then opened his pack, took out a cloth scrip full of daggers that glowed a brief, vivid stormy blue when unwrapped…radiance that promptly seemed to leak out of them, dripping and dancing to the ground…and retraced his steps around the ring. He drove a dagger hilt-deep into the soil at intervals and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like an old and rather bawdy dance rhyme. When the ring was complete, the Athalantan turned back along it and drove a second ring of daggers in, angling each of these additional blades into the turf on the inside of the ring, so that its blade touched the vertical steel of an already-buried dagger. He held out his hand, palm downward and fingers spread, said a single, soft word over them, wrapped his cloak around himself, and went to bed.
"What, pray tell, are you reading?" The balding, bearded mage set aside a goblet whose contents frothed and bubbled, looked up unhurriedly over his spectacles, elevated one eyebrow at a fashionably slow pace, and replied, "A play… of sorts."
The younger wizard standing over him…more splendidly dressed and still possessing some of his own hair…blinked. "A 'play,' Baerast? And 'of sorts'? Not an obscure spellbook or one of Nabraether's meaty grimoires?"
Tabarast of the Three Sung Curses peered up over his spectacles again, more severely this time. "Let there be no impediment to your dawning understanding, dearest Droon," he said. "I am currently immersed in a play, to whit 'The Stormy Knight, Or, The Brazen Butcherer.' A work of some energy."
"And more spilled blood," Beldrune of the Bent Finger replied, sweeping aside an untidy stack of books that had almost buried a high-backed chair and planting himself firmly in it before it even had time to wheeze at its sudden freedom. The crash of tomes that followed was impressive in both room-shaking solidity and in the amount of dust it raised. It almost drowned out the two smaller thunderings that followed, the first occasioned by the clearance of the footstool of its own tower of tomes by means of a hearty two-footed kick, and the second caused by the collapse of both back legs of the old chair.
As Beldrune abruptly settled lower amid scattered literature, Tabarast laid a dust-warding hand over the open top of his goblet and asked through the roiling cloud of dancing motes, "Are you quite finished? I begin to weary of this nuisance."
Beldrune made a sound that some folk would have deemed rude and others might judge impressive and by way of elaborating on this reply uttered the words, "My dear fellow, is this…this burgeoning panoply of literary chaos my achievement? I think not. There's not a chair or table left on this entire floor that isn't guarding its own ever-growing fortress of magical knowledge at your behest, and…"
Tabarast made a sound like a serpent's skull being crushed under an eager boot heel. "My behest? Do you now deny the parcenary of this disarray around us? I can confute any claims to the contrary, if you've a day or two to spare."
"Meaning my wits are that slow, or words so slow and laborious to come to your lips that…atch, never mind. I came not to bandy bright phrases all evening but to banish a little lonely befuddlement by talking a while."
"A prolusion I've heard before," Tabarast observed dryly. "Have