The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [51]
"How do we know She sends those dream-visions?" Tabarast said in a low voice. "How do we really know?"
Moonshorn Tower shook all around them for the briefest of instants, with a deep rumbling sound, somewhere a stack of books collapsed with a crash.
Beldrune smiled crookedly and said, "That's good enough for me. What do you want Her to do, Baerast? Dole out a spell a night, written across our brains in letters of everlasting fire?"
Tabarast snorted. "There's no need to be ridiculous, Droon." Then he smiled almost wistfully, and added, "Letters of fire would be nice, though, just once."
"Old cynic," the younger mage responded with an air of offended pomposity, "I am never ridiculous. I merely afford a degree of jollity that has never failed to please even more discerning audiences than yourself, or should I say especially more discerning audiences than yourself."
Tabarast mumbled something, then added more loudly, This is why we accomplish so little, as the hours and days pass unheeded. Clever words, clever words we catch and hurl like small boys at skulltoss, and the work advances but little."
Beldrune gestured at the table. "So take up some new scrap, and let's begin," he challenged. "Today we'll work together rather than pursuing separate ends and see if the Lady smiles on us. Do start, old friend, and I shall keep us to the matter at hand. In this my vigilance shall be steadfast, but as nothing to my wroth."
"Isn't that 'wrath,' m'boy?" Tabarast asked, his hand hovering once more above the table.
"Lesser beings, dearest mage of my regard, may well indulge in wrath…I feel wroth," Beldrune replied loftily, then added with a snarl, "Now take up a paper, and let's be about it!"
Tabarast blinked in astonishment and took up a paper. "…That so surpasseth all mine previous… other mages decry such… Yet will I prevail, the truth being my guide and guardian,' methinks, methinks, methinks, ho ho hum… Hmmm. Someone writing in the South, before Myth Drannor but probably not ail that long before, about a spell to put a mage's wits and all in the body of a beast, to make it prowl at his bidding for a night, or stay longer or forever within it should his own body be threatened or lost."
"Good, good," Beldrune responded. "Could it be Alavaernith, in the early days of working on his Three-cats' spell? Or is it too effusive for that?"
"I suspect someone other than Alavaernith,' Tabarast said slowly. "He was never so open with his secrets as this…"
Neither of them noticed a red-eyed, hawk-nosed man step into the room and lean for a moment against the door sill with an air of utter weariness, looking around at everything as he listened to them.
"And does he say anything useful?" Beldrune pressed. "Or can we cast this aside on the heap in the barrel?"
Tabarast peered at the page, turned it over to make sure the back was blank, held it to the light seeking oddities in (or hidden under) the writing, and finally handed it to his colleague with a sound that was half sigh and half snort. "Nothing useful, beyond telling us what someone was working on or had thought of back then…"
The hawk-nosed man stepped forward to peer at the gilt-lettered spines of tomes wedged tightly into the nearest bookshelf, then looked over at the table and carefully turned over a twisted, crumpled cage of wrought metal that had probably once held the shape of a globe. Examining it carefully, the stranger set it softly back down and peered at the writings beneath it.
"Now, this one," Tabarast said slowly, bent over the other side of the table, "is rather more interesting. No, we shan't be hurling this into the barrel quite so quickly." He held it up under his nose as he straightened, then paused as Elminster's boot made a slight sound and the dark-haired mage asked, "How goes it, Mardasper? Keeping an eye on things, as usual, hmmm?"
When there was no reply, he turned, and both mages stared across the room at the newcomer