The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [44]
Beldrune sipped deeply from his goblet, swallowed, and asked, "What signs?"
Tabarast resumed the ringing voice of doom that he'd used to delivered the lines from Broderick, and intoned: "In this Year of Laughter, the Blazing Hand of Sorcery ascends the starry night cloak, for the first time in centuries! Nine black tressym landed upon the sleeping princess Sharandra of the South and delivered themselves of four kittens each upon her very bosom! (Don't ask me how she slept through that or what she thought of the mess when she did wake!) The Walking Tower of Warglend has moved for the first time in a thousand years, taking itself from Tower Tor to the midst of a nearby lake! A talking frog has been found in Candlekeep, wherein also six pages in as many books have gone blank, and two books appeared that have never been seen by any Faerunian scholar before! The Well of the Bonedance in Maraeda's run dry! The skeleton of the lich Buardrim has been seen dancing in…ah, bah! Enough! They can keep it up for hours!"
"Gullet Well's gone dry?"
Tabarast favored Beldrune with a look. "Yes," he said mildly. "Gullet Well has gone dry…for whatever real reason. I saw the dead horses to prove it. So there you have it. Tell me, good Droon, you get out and about more than I do, and hear more of the gossip…however paltry or deliberately fabricated it may be…among our fellow workers-of-Art. How say the mages about this One Who Walks? What do the trendy wizards think?"
It was Beldrune's turn to snort. "Trendy wizards don't think," he retorted, "or they'd take care never to be caught up in any trend. But as to what's being said… of him, less than nothing. What our colleagues seem to have heard out of whatever the priests have proclaimed can be boiled down to great secret excitement and preening over the chance to be named a Chosen of Mystra…and thereby get all sorts of special powers and inside knowledge. They seem to view it as the most exclusive club yet, and that someone is certain to privately contact them to join, any day now. If Mystra is selecting mortal mages to be Her personal servants, endowing them with spells mighty enough to shatter mountains and read minds, each and every mage wants to get into this oh-so-exclusive group without appearing in the slightest to be interested in such status."
Tabarast raised an eyebrow. "I see. How do you know I'm already not a Chosen and reading your mind even now?"
Beldrune gave his friend a wry smile. "If you were reading my mind, Baerast," he said, "you'd be trying to smite me down, right now…and blushing to boot!"
Tabarast lifted the other eyebrow to join the first. "Oh? Should I bother to venture further queries?" he asked. "I suspect not, but I'd like to be prepared if your incipient anger bids fair to goad you into muscular and daring feats that I must needs resist… You do feel incipient anger, don't you?"
"No, not a moment of it," Beldrune replied cheerfully. "Though I could probably work up to it, if you continue to guard that jar of halavan nuts so closely. Pass it over."
Tabarast did so, freely giving his colleague a sour look along with it and saying, "I value these nuts highly, one might even say they are precious to me. Con duct thy depredations accordingly."
The younger wizard smiled wryly. "All mages, I daresay, conduct their depredations while considering-if they take time to consider at all…what they're about to seize or destroy to be precious. Don't you?"
Tabarast looked thoughtful. "Yes," he murmured. "Yes, I do." He lifted an eyebrow. "How many of us, I wonder, fall so into exultation at our own power that we try to seize or destroy everything we deem precious?'
Beldrune scooped up a handful of nuts. "Most of us would consider a Chosen precious, would we not?" he asked.
Tabarast nodded. "The One Who Walks is going to have an interesting career in time soon to come," he predicted softly, his face very far