The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [50]
He thrust the last bar into its socket, settled it with a slap, and turned to the vast and uneven table that filled most of the room, in several places almost touching the massive and crammed bookshelves ranked along the walls.
Sixty or more untidy piles of tomes rose here and there from a carpet of scrolls, scraps of old parchment, and more recent notes that completely covered the table, in places the writings were three layers deep. The papers were held flat by a motley assortment of gems, ornate and aged rings, scraps of intricate wire or wrought metal that had once been parts of larger items, candle-topped skulls, and stranger things.
The two mages thrust out their hands above the pages and moved them in slow circles, as if a tingling in their fingertips would locate a passage they were seeking. Tabarast said slowly, "Cordorlar, writing in the failing days of Netheril… the dragonsblood experiments…" His hand shot out to grasp a particular parchment. "Here!"
Beldrune, frowning, said, "I was tracing a triple-delayed-blast fireball magic some loosejaw named Olbert claimed to have made by combining earlier magics from Lhabbartan, Iliymbrim Sharnult, and…and… agghh, the name's gone now." He looked up. "So tell me: what dragonsblood experiments? Stirring the stuff into potions? Drinking it? Setting it aflame?"
"Introducing it into one's own blood in hopes that it would bring a human wizard longevity, increased vigor, the same immunity to certain perils that some dragons enjoy, or even full-blown draconic powers," Tabarast replied. "Various mages of the time claimed to have enjoyed successes in all of those areas. Not that any of them survived or left later evidence we've found yet, to bear out any such claims." He sighed. "We've got to get into Candlekeep."
Beldrune smote his forehead and said, "That again? Baerast, I agree, wholeheartedly and with every waking scrap of my brain. We do indeed have to be able to look at the tomes in Candlekeep…but we need to do so freely, whenever thoughts take us hence, not in a single or skulking visit. I somehow doubt they'll accept us as the new co-Keepers of Candlekeep if we march in there and demand such access."
It was Tabarast's turn to frown. "True, true," he said with a sigh. "Wherefore we've got to make the most of these salvaged scraps and forgotten oddments."
He sighed again. "No matter how untruthful and incomplete they may be."
He poked at one yellowing parchment with an almost accusatory forefinger, adding, "This worthy claimant boasts of eating an entire dragon, platter by platter. It took him a season, he says, and he hired the greatest cooks of the time to make it palatable fare by trading them its bones and scales. I began to doubt him when he said it was his third such dragon, and that he preferred red dragon meat to the flesh of blue dragons."
Beldrune smiled. "Ah, Baerast," he said. "Still clinging to this romantic delusion that folk who go to the trouble of writing are superior sorts who always set down the truth? Some folk lie even to their own diaries.'
He waved at the ceiling and walls around them and added, "When all this was new, do you think the Netherese who dwelt or worked here were the great paragons some sages claim them to be…wiser than we, more mighty in all ways than the folk of today, and able to work almost any magic with a snap of the fingers? Not a bit of it! They were like us…a few bright minds, a lot of lazy-wits, and a few dark and devious twisters of truth who worked on folk around them to make others do as they desired. Sound familiar?"
Tabarast plucked up a falcon's head carved from a single palm-sized emerald an age ago and stroked its curved beak absently.
"I grant your point, Droon, yet I ask myself: what follows? Are we doomed to wallow in distortions and untruths as the years pass, with but seventeen spells to show for it…seventeen?'
Beldrune spread his hands. "That's seventeen more magics than some mages craft in a lifetime of working the Art," he reminded his