The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [60]
Dasumia gave him a smile that held rather more triumph than welcome. "Body and soul I'll have you," she murmured. "Body and soul." She whirled away from him and looked back over her shoulder to purr provocatively, "Which shall we sample first, hmmm?"
* * * * *
"Now, really, Droon! I ask you: would we have had such widespread mastery of magic, such legions of capable or nearly capable mages, from sea unto sea and to the frozen wastes and uttermost east, if Myth Drannor still stood proud? Or would we have had closed, elite ranks of those who dwelt or had free admittance to the City of Song… and the rest of us left to fight for what scraps the glittering few deigned to toss to us, or that we could plunder from old tombs…and the liches lurking in them?" Tabarast turned in his saddle to make a point, almost fell out of it despite the tangle of sashes and belts he'd lashed himself on with, and thought it prudent to face forward again, merely gesturing airily with one hand. His mule sighed and kept on plodding.
"Come, come! We speak not of gems, Baerast," Beldrune replied, "nor yet cabbages…but magic! The Art! A ferrago of ideas, a feast of enchantments, an endless flood of new approaches and…"
"Free-flowing nonsense spoken by young mages," the older mage retorted. "Surely even you, young Droon, have seen enough years to know that generosity…truly open giving, not to an apprentice one can keep beholden or even spell-thralled…is a quality rarer and less cultivated in the ranks of wizards than in any other assembly of size or import in Faerun today, save perhaps an orc horde. Pray weary my ears with rather less morology, if it troubles you not overmuch to do so."
Beldrune spread despairing hands. "Is any view that differs from your own but worthless idiocy?" he asked. "Or can it be…panoptic wind trumpet that you are…that some small shred of possibility remains that some truths the gods may not as yet have revealed unto wise old Tabarast, shrewd old Tabarast, unthinking old Tab…"
"Why is it that the young always resort so swiftly to personal offenses?" wise old Tabarast asked the world at large, loudly. "Name-calling and ridicule greet arguments that speak to a point, not foremost a person to attack or decry. Such a rude, unsettling approach makes a mountain of every monticule, a pernicious tempest of every chance exchange of remarks, and blackens the names of all who dare to hold recusant views. I disapprove strongly of it, Droon, I do. Such scrannel threats and blusterings are no worthy substitute for well-argued views…and all too often hold up a shield for jejune, even retrorse sciamachy, bereft of sense and waving bright purfle and clever verbiage where meaning has flown!"
"Uh, ah, ahem, yes," Beldrune said weakly. When Tabarast was riled, two words in ten was fair going. "We were speaking of the influence of fabled Myth Drannor on the practice of the Art across all Faerun, I believe."
"We were," Tabarast confirmed almost severely, urging his mule over the summit of a monticle with a flourish of his tiny riding whip. The fact that it had broken in some past mishap, and now dangled uselessly from a point only inches above the handle, seemed to have utterly escaped his notice.
Beldrune waited for the torrent of grand but largely junkettaceous utterances that invariably accompanied any of Tabarast's observations of simple fact, but for once it did not come.
He raised his eyebrows in wonderment and said nothing as he followed his colleague over the hill. Hipsy…and plenty of it. 'Twas past time for hipsy. He slapped at the grand cloak rolled and belted at his hip, found the reassuring solid smoothness of his flask beneath it, and drew it forth. Tabarast had made this blend, and it was a mite watery for Beldrune's taste, but he didn't want to have to sit through that argument again. Next time, it'd be his turn, and there'd be more of the rare and heady concoction he'd heard called "brandy," and less water and wine.
Hmmm. Always assuming they both lived to see a next time. Adventure had seemed a grand thing