The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [43]
"I know how much time he's willing to waste on impressing folk and sewing little gewgaws onto his undergarments, more like," Tabarast replied sourly. "Just how many upstart magelings would add a few unearned stars to grant themselves rank and hauteur accruing to power and accomplishments they do not in fact possess? Every third one who knows how to semi that's how many! If we must talk about this…this young elf-loving jackanapes, who seems to have been a prince and the slayer of the mighty Ilhundyl and the bed mate of half a hundred slim elf lasses besides, the object of our discourse shall not be his latest conquest or idle utterance, but his import to us all. I care not which boot he puts on first of mornings, what hue of cloak he favors, or whether he prefers to kiss elf lips or human ones…have we understanding and agreement?"
"Of course," Beldrune replied, spreading his hands. "But why such heat? His achievements…as a Chosen One favored by the goddess Herself, mind…do nothing to belittle yours."
Tabarast thumbed his spectacles back up to the bridge of his nose and muttered, "I grow no younger. I've not the years left to encompass what that youn…but enough, I'll say no more. I beg leave to impart to you, my young friend, things about this One Who Walks of rather more importance to us both. The priests of the Mantle, for ins…"
“The priests of the which?"
"The Mantle… Mystra's Mantle, the temple to Our Lady in Haramettur. I don't suppose you've ever been therein."
Beldrune shook his head. "I try to avoid temples to Holy Mystra," he said. "The priests tend to be nose-in-the-air sorts who want to charge me coffers full of gold for casting…badly…what I can do myself with a few coppers of oddments."
Tabarast flapped a dismissive hand and replied, "Indeed, indeed, all too often… and I've my own quarrel with their snobbery…pimply younglings sneering down their noses at such as myself because we wear real, everyday, food-stained robes, and not silks and sashes and golden cross-garters, like rakes gone to town of an ardent evening. If they truly served wizards and not just awestruck young lasses who 'think they might have felt Mystra's kiss, awakening at midnight this tenday last, they'd know all true mages look like rag heaps, not fashion-pretty popinjays!"
Beldrune looked hurt…again…and gestured down the front of his scarlet silk tunic. The gesture made it ripple glassily in the lamplight, its cloth-of-gold dragons gleaming, the glittering emeralds that served them as eyes a-winking, and the fine wire wrought into spirals that passed for their tongues bobbing. "And what am I? No true mage, I suppose?"
Tabarast passed a weary hand over his eyes. "Nay, nay, good Droon…present company excepted, of course. Your bright plumage doth so outshine mine aged eyes that I overlook it as a matter of course. Let us have no quarrel over your learning or able mastery of realm-shaking magics, you are, before all the gods, a 'true mage,' whatever by Mystra's gentle whispers to is. Let us by more heroic efforts resist the temptation to drift away into other matters, and…if discuss the forbidden we must…speak plainly. To whit: the priests of the Mantle say that the One Who Walks is free to act on his own, that is, to make just as bad a hash of things as you and I are free to do… moreover, that it is holy Mystra's will that he be left to blunder and choose and hurl recklessness on his own, to 'become what it is needful he become.' They want us all to pretend we don't know who or what he is, if we should meet with him.'
Beldrune rested his chin on one hand, a fresh and smoking goblet raised in the other. "Just what is it that they say he must become?" he asked.
"That's where their usefulness ends," Tabarast snorted "When one asks, they go to their knees and groan about 'not being worthy to know,' and 'the aims of the divine are beyond the comprehension of all mortals'