The Temptation of Elminster

by Ed Greenwood

  Nasmaerae opened her mouth to plead, to spill forth desperate lies, to protest that her deeds had been misunderstood, but all that came out was a torrent of tears. She threw herself against him and tried to go to her knees, but a strong hand on her hip held her upright. When she could form words through the sobs, it was to beg his forgiveness and offer herself for any punishment he deemed fitting, and to—

  He stilled her words with a firm finger laid across her lips and said grimly, “We’ll speak no more of what you have done. You shall never enthrall me or anyone else again.”

  “I—believe me, my Lord, I would never—”

  “You can’t, whatever you may come to desire. This I know. So that others may also know it, you shall try to place me in thrall again—now.”

  Nasmaerae stared at him. “I—no! No, Esbre, I dare not! I—”

  “Lady,” the Mantimera told her grimly, “I am uttering a command, not affording you a choice.” He made a gesture involving three of his fingers; all around her, swords grated out of scabbards.

  The Lady Felmorel darted glances about. She was ringed with drawn steel, the sharp, dark points of well-used war swords menacing her on all sides. She saw a white-faced Glavyn above one of them, trusty old Errart staring grimly at her over another. Then she whirled away, hiding her face in her hands.

  “I—I … Esbre!” she sobbed. “My magic will be shorn from me if I—”

  “Your life shall be shorn from you if you do not. Death or obedience, Lady. The same choice warriors who serve me have, every day. It comes not so hard to them.”

  The Lady Nasmaerae groaned. Slowly her hands fell from her face and she straightened, breathing heavily, her eyes elsewhere. She threw back her head to look at the ceiling and said in a small voice, “I’ll need more room. Someone pluck away this rug, lest it be scorched.” She walked deliberately onto the point of someone’s sword until they gave way before her and she could get off the soft, luxurious rug, then turned to face back into the ring and said softly, “I’ll need a knife.”

  “No,” Esbre snapped.

  “The spell requires it, Lord,” she told the ceiling. “Wield it yourself, if it gives you comfort—but obey me utterly when I begin the casting, lest we both be doomed.”

  “Proceed,” he said, his voice cold stone again.

  Nasmaerae strode away from him until she stood in the center of the ring of blades once more, then turned and faced him. “Glavyn,” she said, “bring my lord’s chamber pot hence. If it be empty, report so back to us.”

  The guard stared at her, unmoving—but spun from his place and hastened to the door at a curt nod from Lord Felmorel.

  While they waited, Nasmaerae calmly tore the soaked nightgown from her body and flung it away, standing nude before them all. She stood flatfooted, neither covering herself modestly nor adopting her usual sensual poses, and licked her lips more than once, looking only at her lord.

  “Punish me,” she said suddenly, “in any other way but this. The Art means all to me, Esbre, every—”

  “Be still,” he almost whispered, but she shrank back as if he’d snapped a lash across her lips and said no more.

  The door opened; Glavyn returned bearing an earthen pot. Lord Felmorel took it from him, motioned him back into his place in the line, and said to his men, “I trust you all. If you see aught that offers ill to Felmorel, strike accordingly—both of us, if need be.” Bearing a small belt knife and the pot, he stepped forward.

  “I love you, Esbre,” the Lady Nasmaerae whispered, and went to her knees.

  He stared at her stonily and said only, “Proceed.”

  She drew in a deep, shuddering breath and said, “Place the pot so that I can reach within.” When he did so, she dipped one hand in and brought it out with a palmful of his urine. Letting her cupped hand rest on the floor, she held out her other hand and said, “Cut my palm—not deeply, but draw blood.”

  Grimly Lord Felmorel did as he was bid, and she said, “Now withdraw—pot, knife, and all.”

  As he retreated, the guards grew tense, waiting to leap forward with their steel at the slightest sign from Lord Esbre. As her own dark blood filled her palm, Nasmaerae looked around the ring. Their faces told her just how deeply she was feared and hated. She bit her lip and shook her head slightly.

  Then she drew in another deep breath, and with it seemed to gain courage. “I’ll begin,” she announced, and without pause slipped into a chant that swiftly rose in urgency and seemed fashioned around his name. The words were thick and yet somehow slithering, like aroused serpents. As they came faster and faster, small wisps of smoke issued from between her lips.

  Suddenly—very suddenly—she clapped her hands together so that blood and urine mixed, and cried out a phrase that seemed to echo and smite the ears of the men in the chamber like thunderclaps. A white flame flared between her cupped palms, and she lifted her head to look at her lord—only to scream, raw and horrified and desperate, and try to fling herself to her feet and away.

  The star-swirling eyes of Azuth, cold and remorseless, were staring at her out of Lord Felmorel’s face, and that musical, terrible voice of doom sounded again, telling her, “All magic has its price.”

  None of the guards heard those five words or saw anything but grim pity in their Lord’s face, as the Mantimera held up a hand to stay their blades. The Lady Felmorel had fallen to the floor, her face a mask of despair and her eyes unseeing, dying wisps of smoke rising from her trembling limbs—limbs that withered before their eyes, then were restored to lush vitality, only to wither again in racing waves. All the while, as her body convulsed, rebuilt itself, and shriveled again, her screaming went on, rising and falling in a broken paean of pain and terror.

  The guards stared down at her writhing body in shocked silence until the Mantimera spoke again.

  “My lady will be abed for some days,” he said grimly. “Leave me with her, all of you—but summon her maids-of-chamber hence to see to her needs. Azuth is merciful and shall be worshiped in this house henceforth.”

  Somewhere a woman was twisting on a bare stone floor, with leveled swords all around her in a ring and her bare body withering in waves as she wailed … elsewhere motes of light, like stars in a night sky, were whirling in darkness with a cold chiming sound … there followed a confusing, falling instant of mages casting spells and becoming skeletons in their robes as they did so, before Elminster saw himself standing in darkness, moonlight falling around him. He was poised before a castle whose front gate was fashioned in the shape of a giant spiderweb. It was a place he knew he’d never been, or seen before. His hands were raised in the weaving of a spell that took shape an instant later and spell blasted apart the gate in a burst of brilliance. The light whirled away to become the teeth of a laughing mouth that whispered, “Seek me in shadows.”

  The words were mocking, the voice feminine, and Elminster found himself sitting bolt upright at the foot of his unused bed, cold sweat plastering his clothing to him.

  “Mystra has guided me,” he murmured. “I’ll tarry no longer here, but go out to seek and challenge this Lady of Shadows.” He smiled and added, “Or my name isn’t Wanlorn.”

  He’d never unpacked the worn saddlebag that carried his gear. It was the work of moments to make sure no helpful servant had removed anything for washing and he was out the door, striding briskly as if guests always went for late night walks around Castle Felmorel. Skulking is for thieves.

  He nodded pleasantly to the one servant he did meet, but he never saw the impassive face of Barundryn Harbright watching him from the depths of a dark corner, with the faintest of satisfied nods. Nor did he see the moving shadow that slipped out from under the staircase he descended to follow him, bearing its own bundle of belongings.

  Only a single aged servant was watching the closed castle gate. El peered all around to make sure guards weren’t hiding anywhere. Seeing none, he hefted the doused brass lantern he’d borrowed from a hallway moments ago, swung it carefu
lly, and let go.

  The lamp plunged to the cobbles well behind the old man, with a crash like the landing of a toppling suit of armor. The man shouted in fear and banged his shin on a door frame trying to get to his pike.

  When he reached the shattered lantern, limping and cursing, to menace it with a wobbling pike, El had slipped out the porter’s door in the gate, just one more shadow in this wet spring night.

  Another shadow followed, conjuring a drift of mist to roll before it in case this wandering Wanlorn looked back for pursuit. The briefest of flashes marked the casting of the shadow’s spell—but the servant with the pike was too far away to notice or to have identified the face so fleetingly illuminated. Thessamel Arunder, the Lord of Spells, had also felt the need to suddenly and quietly take his leave of Castle Felmorel in the middle of the night.

  The lantern was a bewilderment, the limp painful, and the pike too long and heavy; old Bretchimus was some time getting back to his post. He never felt or heard the chill, chiming whirlwind that was more a wind than a body, more a shadow than a presence, and that, drifting purposefully, became the third shadow that evening to pass out the porter’s door. Perhaps it was just as well. As he leaned the pike back against the wall, its head fell off. It was an old pike and had seen enough excitement for one evening.

  Torntlar’s Farm covered six hills and took a lot of hoeing. Dawn saw Habaertus Ilynker rubbing his aching back and digging into the stony soil of the last hill—the one that adjoined the wolf-prowled wood that stretched all the way to Felmorel. As he did every morning, Habaertus glanced toward Castle Felmorel, though it was too far away to really see, and nodded a greeting to his older brother Bretchimus.

  “Yourn the lucky one,” he told his absent brother, as he did each morning. “Dwellin’ yon, with that vast wine cellar an’ that slinking silkhips Lady orderin’ y’about, an’ all.”

  He spat on his hands and picked up his hoe once more in time to see a few stray twinklings in the air that told him something strange was arriving. Or rather, passing him by. An unseen, chiming presence swept out of the trees and across the field, swirling like a mist or shadow, yet curiously elusive—for no shadow could be seen if one stared right at it.

  Habaertus watched it start to snake past, pursed his lips, then, overcome by curiosity, took a swipe at it with his hoe.

  The reaction was immediate. A sparkling occurred in the air where the blade of the hoe had passed through the wind, loud chiming sounded on all sides, then the shadowy wind overwhelmed Habaertus, howling around him like a hound closing on a kill. He hadn’t even time for a grunt of astonishment.

  As a wind-scoured skeleton collapsed into dust, the whirlwind roused itself with another little chorus of chimings and moved on across Torntlar’s Farm. In its wake a battered hoe thumped to the earth beside two empty boots. One of them promptly fell over, and all that was left of Habaertus Ilynker fell out and drifted away.

  Four

  STAG HORNS AND SHADOWS

  I wonder: do monsters look different from inside?

  Citta Hothemer

  from Musings Of A Shameless Noble

  published in The Year of the Prince

  The farmer’s eyes were dark with suspicion and sunken with weariness. The fork in his hands, however, pointed very steadily toward Wanlorn’s eyes and moved whenever the lone traveler did, to keep that menace on target.

  When the farmer finally broke the long, sharp silence that had followed the traveler’s question, it was to say, “Yuh can find the Lady of Shadows somewhere over the next hill,” a sentence the speaker ended by spitting pointedly into the dirt between them. “Her lands begin there, leastways. I don’t want to know why yuh’d want to meet her—an’ I don’t want yuh standing here on my land much longer, either. Get yuh boots yonder, and yuh in ’em!”

  A feint with the fork underscored the man’s words. Wanlorn raised an eyebrow, replied, “Have my thanks,” in dry tones, and with neither haste nor delay got his boots yonder.

  He did not have to look back to know the farmer was watching him all the way over the crest of the hill; he could feel the man’s eyes drilling into his back like two drawn daggers. He made a point of not looking back as he went over the ridge—and in lawless country, no sensible traveler stands long atop any height, visible from afar. Eyes alert enough to be watching for strangers are seldom friendly ones.

  As he trotted down the bracken-cloaked hillside that was his first taste of the Lands of the Lady, he briefly considered becoming a falcon or perhaps a prowling beast … but no, if this Lady of Shadows was alert and watchful, betraying his magical abilities at the outset would be the height of foolishness.

  Not that the man who was Wanlorn, but who’d walked longer under the name of Elminster, cared overmuch about being thought a fool. It was a little late for that he thought wryly, considering the road he’d chosen in life—with his stealthy departure from Castle Felmorel not all that many steps behind him. Mystra was forging him into a weapon, or at least a tool … and in all the forging he’d seen, those rains of hammer blows looked to be a little hard on the weapon.

  And who was it long ago who’d said, “The task forges the worker”?

  It would be so much easier to just do as he pleased, using magic for personal gain and having no care for the consequences or the fates of others. He could have happily ruled the land of his birth, mouthing—as more than one mage he’d met with did—the occasional empty prayer to a goddess of magic who meant nothing to him.

  There was that one thing his choice had given him: long life. Long enough to outlive every last friend and neighbor of his youth, every colleague of his early adventures and magical workings and revelry in Myth Drannor … and every friend and lover, one after another, of that wondrous city, too.

  Elminster’s lips twisted in bitterness as remembered faces and laughter and caresses rushed past his mind’s regard, one after gods-be-cursed another … and the plans with them, the dreams excitedly discussed and well intended, that blow and dwindle away like morning mist in bright sunlight and come to nothing in the end.

  So much had come to nothing in the end.…

  Like the village in front of him, it seemed. Roofs fallen in and overgrown gardens and paths greeted him, with here and there a blackened chimney stabbing up at the sky like a dark and battered dagger to mark where a cottage had stood before fire came, or a vine-choked hump that was once a fieldstone wall or hedgerow between fields. Something that might have been a wolf or may have been another sort of large-jawed hunting beast slunk out of one ruined house as Elminster approached. Otherwise the village of Hammershaws seemed utterly deserted. Was this what Lord Esbre had meant by the Lady of Shadows seeking to “enforce her will” on these lands? Was every such place ahead of him going to be deserted?

  What had happened to all the folk who dwelt here?

  A few strides later brought him a grim answer. Something dull and yellow-gray cracked under his boots. Not a stone after all, but a piece of skull … well, several pieces, now. He turned his head and walked grimly on.

  Another stride, another cracking sound; a long bone, this time. And another, a fourth … he was walking on the dead. Human bones, gnawed and scattered, were strewn everywhere in Hammershaws. What he’d thought was a collapsed railing on a little log bridge across the meandering creek was actually a tangle of skeletons, their arms dangling down almost to the water. El peered, saw at least eight skulls, sighed, and trudged on, looking this way and that among leaning carts and yard-gates fast vanishing under the brambles and creeping tallgrass that had already reclaimed the yards beyond them.

  None but the dead dwelt in Hammershaws now. El poked into one cottage, just to see if anything of interest survived, and was rewarded with a brief glimpse of a slumped human skeleton on a stone chair. The supple mottled coils of an awakened snake glided between the bones as the serpent spiraled up to coil at the top of the chair. It was seeking height to better strike at this overbold intruder. As its hi
ss rose loud in that ravaged room, Elminster decided not to stay and learn the quality of the serpent’s range and aim.

  The road beyond Hammershaws looked as overgrown as the village. A lone vulture circled high in the sky, watching the human intruder traverse a fading way across the rolling lands to Drinden.

  A mill and busy market town, was Drinden, if the memories of still-vigorous old men could be trusted. Yet this once bustling hamlet proved now to be another ruin, as deserted as the first village had been. El stood at its central crossroads and looked grimly up at a sky that had slowly gone gray with tattered, smoke-like storm clouds. Then he shrugged and walked on. So long as one’s paper and components stay dry, what matter a little rain?

  Yet no rain came as El took the northwestern way, up a steep slope that skirted a stunted wood that had once been an orchard. The sky started to turn milky-white, but the land remained deserted.

  He’d been told the Lady of Shadows rode or walked the land in the company of dark knights he’d do well to fear, with their ready blades and eager treacheries and vicious disregard for surrenders or agreements. Yet as he walked on into the heart of the domain of the Lady of Shadows, he seemed utterly alone in a deserted realm. No hoofbeats or trumpets sounded, and no hooves came thundering down into the road bearing folk to challenge one man walking along with a saddlebag slung over his shoulder.

  It was growing late and the skies had just cleared to reveal a glorious sunset like melted coins glimmering in an amber sky as Elminster reached the valley that held the town of Tresset’s Ringyl, once and perhaps still home to the Lady of Shadows. He found that it, too, was a deserted, beast-roamed ruin.

  Forty or more buildings, at his first glance from the heights, still stood amid the trees that in the end would tear them all apart. Sitting amidst the clustered ruins were the crumbling walls of a castle whose soaring battlements probably afforded something winged and dangerous with a lair. El peered at it as the amber sky became a ruby sea, and the stars began to show overhead.