Ed Greenwood - Forgotten Realms - Elminster 3 - Temptation Of Elminster

The Temptation of Elminster

Ed Greenwood

Forgotten Realms Elminster Saga 3

1998

Scanned by KiD, formatted and proofed by Dreamcity

Ebook version 1.0

Release Date: November, 26th, 2003

Prologue

There is a time in the unfolding history of the mighty Old Mage of Shadowdale that some

sages call "the years when Elminster lay dead." I wasn't there to see any corpse, so I prefer to call

them "the Silent Years." I've been vilified and derided as the worst sort of fantasizing idiot for

that stance, but my critics and I agree on one thing: whatever Elminster did during those years,

all we know of it is...nothing at all.

Antarn the Sage

from The High History of Faerunian Archmages Mighty

published circa The Year of the Staff

The sword flashed down to deal death. The roszel bush made no defense beyond emitting a solid

sort of thunking noise as tempered steel sliced through it. Thorny boughs fell away with dry cracklings, a

booted foot slipped, and there was a heavy crash, followed, as three adventurers caught their breath in

unison, by a tense silence.

"Amandarn?" one of them asked when she could hold her tongue no more, her voice sharp with

apprehension. "Amandarn?"

The name echoed back to her from the walls of the ruin...walls that seemed somehow watchful …

and waiting.

The three waded forward through loose rubble, weapons ready, eyes darting this way and that for

the telltale dark ribbon of a snake.

"Amandarn?" came the cry again, lower and more tremulous. A trap could be anywhere, or a

lurking beast, and...”

"Gods curse these stones and thorns … and crazed Netherese builders, too!" a voice more

exasperated than pain-wracked snarled from somewhere ahead, somewhere slightly muffled, where the

ground gave way into darkness.

"To say nothing of even crazier thieves!" the woman who'd called so anxiously boomed out a reply,

her voice loud and warm with relief.

"Wealth redistributors, Nuressa, if you please," Amandarn replied in aggrieved tones, as stones

shifted and rattled around his clawing hands. "The term 'thief is such a vulgar, career-limiting word."

"Like the word 'idiot'?" a third voice asked gruffly. "Or 'hero'?" Its gruffness lay like a mock growl

atop tones of liquid velvet.

"Iyriklaunavan," Nuressa said severely, "we've had this talk already, haven't we? Insults and

provocative comments are for when we're lazing by a fire, safe at home, not in the middle of some

deadly sorcerer's tomb with unknown Netherese spells and guardian ghosts bristling all around us."

"I thought I heard something odd," a deep, raw fourth voice added with a chuckle. "Ghosts bristle

far more noisily than they did in my father's day, I must say."

"Hmmph," Nuressa replied tartly, reaching one long, bronzed and muscled arm down into the gloom

to haul the still struggling Amandarn to his feet. The point of the gigantic war sword in her other hand

didn't waver or droop for an instant. "Over-clever dwarves, I've heard," she added as she more or less

plucked the wealth redistributor into the air like a rather slim pack-sack, "die just as easily."

"Where do you hear these things?" Iyriklaunavan asked, in light, sardonic tones of mock envy. "I

must go drinking there."

"Iyrik," Nuressa growled warningly, as she set the thief down.

"Say," Amandarn commented excitedly, waving one black-gloved hand for silence. "That has a ring

to it! We could call ourselves … The Over-clever Dwarf!"

"We could," Nuressa said witheringly, grounding her sword and crossing her forearms on its

quillons. It was obvious anything lurking in this crypt...or mausoleum, or whatever it was yawning dark

and menacingly just ahead of them...wasn't asleep or unwarned anymore. The need for haste was past

and the chance for stealth gone forever. The brawny warrior woman squinted up at the sun judging how

much of the day was left. She was hot in her armor … really hot, for the first time since before last

harvest.

It was an unexpectedly warm day in Mirtul, the Year of the Missing Blade, and the four adventurers

scrambling in the sea of broken, stony rubble were sweating under their shared coating of thick dust.

The shortest, stoutest one chuckled merrily and said in his raw, broken trumpet of a voice, "I can

hardly elude my born duty to be the dwarf...so that leaves it to ye three to be 'over-clever.' Even with the

triple muster, I'm not before-all-the-gods sure you've wits enough..."

"That'll do," the elf standing beside him said, his tones as gruff as any dwarf could manage. "It's not a

name I'm in overmuch favor of, anyway. I don't want a joke name. How can we feel proud..."

"Strut around, you mean," the dwarf murmured.

"...wearing a jest we're sure to become heartily sick of after a month, at most. Why not something

exotic, something ..." He waved his hand as if willing inspiration to burst forth. A moment later, obligingly,

it did. "Something like the Steel Rose."

There was a moment of considering silence, which Iyriklaunavan could count as something of a

victory, before Folossan chuckled again and asked, "You want me to forge some flowers for us to wear?

Belt buckles? Codpieces?"

Amandarn stopped rubbing his bruises long enough to ask witheringly, "Do you have to make a joke

of everything, Lossum? I like that name."

The woman who towered over them all in her blackened armor said slowly, "But I don't know that I

do, Sir Thief. I was called something similar when I was a slave, thanks to the whippings my

disobedience brought me. A 'steel rose' is a welt raised by a steel-barbed whip." The merry dwarf

shrugged. "That makes it a bad name for a brace of bold and menacing adventurers?" he asked.

Amandarn snorted at that description. Nuressa's mouth tightened into a thin line that the others had

learned to respect. "A slaver who makes steel roses is deemed careless with a whip or unable to control

his temper. Such a welt lowers the value of a slave. Good slavers have other ways of causing pain

without leaving marks. So you'll be saying we're careless and unable to control ourselves."

"Seems even more fitting, then, to me," the dwarf told the nearest stone pillar, then jumped back

with a strangled oath as it cracked across and a great shard of stone tumbled down at him, crashing

through a sudden flurry of tensely raised weapons.

Dust swirled in the silence, but nothing else moved. After what seemed like a long time, Nuressa

lowered her blade and muttered, "We've wasted quite enough time on one more silly argument about

what to call ourselves. Let it be spoken of later. Amandarn, you were finding us a safe way into yon …"

"Waiting tomb," Folossan murmured smoothly, grinning sheepishly under the sudden weight of the

three dark, annoyed glares.

In near silence the thief moved forward, hands spread for balance, his soft-soled boots gripping the

loose stones. Perhaps a dozen strides ahead lay a dark and gaping opening in the side of a broken-spired

bulk of stone that had once been the heart of a mighty palace but now stood like a forlorn and forgotten

cottage amid leaning pillars and heaps of fern-girt rubble.

Iyriklaunavan took a few steps forward to better watch Amandarn's slow and careful advance. As

the slim, almost child-sized thief came to a halt just outside the ruined walls to peer warily ahead, the

maroon-robed elf whispered, "I have a bad feeling about this… ."

Folossan waved a dismissive hand and said, "You have a bad feeling about everything, O gruffest of

elves."

Nuressa jostled both of them into silence as Amandarn suddenly broke his immobility, gliding

forward and out of sight.

They waited. And waited. Iyriklaunavan cleared his throat as quietly as he could, but the sound in

his throat still seemed startlingly loud even to him. An eerie, waiting stillness seemed to hang over the

ruins. A bird crossed the distant sky without calling, the beats of its wings seeming to measure a time that

had grown too long.

Something had happened to Amandarn.

A very quiet doom? They'd heard nothing .. . and as the tense breaths of time dragged on, heard

more of it.

Nuressa found herself walking slowly toward the hole where Amandarn had gone, her boots

crunching on the shifting stones where the thief had walked with no more noise than a falling leaf. She

shrugged and hefted the war sword in her hands. Skulking was for others.

She was almost in under the shadow of the walls when something moved in the waiting darkness

ahead of her. Nuressa swept her blade up and back, ready to cut down viciously, but the face grinning at

her out of the gloom belonged to Amandarn.

"I knew you were annoyed with me," the thief said, eyeing her raised steel, "but I'm quite short

enough already, thank you."

He jerked his thumb at the darkness behind him. "It's a tomb, all right," he said, "old and crawling

with runes. They probably say something along the lines of 'Zurmapyxapetyl, a mage of Netheril, sleeps

here,' but reading Old High Netherese, or whatever it's properly called, is more Iyrik's skill than mine."

"Any guardians?" Nuressa asked, not taking her eyes off the darkness beyond Amandarn for an

instant.

"None that I saw, but a glowblade's pretty dim. ..."

"Safe to throw in a torch?"

The thief shrugged. "Should be. Everything's made of stone."

Wordlessly Nuressa extended an open, gauntleted hand behind her. After a few scrambling minutes,

Folossan put a lit torch into it. The warrior looked at him, dipped her jaw in wordless thanks, and threw.

Flames whup-whup-whuppedinto the darkness. The torchlight guttered when it landed, then

recovered and danced brightly once more. Nuressa stepped forward to fill the opening with her body,

barring the way, and asked simply, "Traps?"

"None near the entrance," Amandarn replied, "and this place doesn't feel like we'll find any. Yet ... I

don't like those runes. You can hide anything in runes."

"True enough," the dwarf agreed in a low voice. "Are you satisfied, Nessa? Are you going to stand

aside and let us in or play at being a closed door until nightfall?"

The armored woman gave him a withering look, then silently stood aside and gestured grandly at

him to proceed.

Folossan put his head down and scuttled past, not quite daring to whoop. The normally

gloomy-looking Iyriklaunavan was hard on his heels, trotting forward with fluid grace and maroon robes

held high to avoid tripping. It would not do to tumble and fall helplessly into a tomb where just about any

sort of snake or other foe might be lurking.

Amandarn wasn't far behind. In exasperated silence Nuressa watched them storm past and shook

her head. Did they think this was some sort of pleasure outing?

She followed more cautiously, looking for doors that might be shut to imprison them, traps

Amandarn might have missed, even some sort of lurking foes, hitherto unnoticed… .

"Gods on their glittering thrones!" Folossan gasped, somewhere ahead. He made of the curse a

slow, measured bricklaying of awe, building a wall of utter astonishment that seemed to echo around the

dark tomb chamber for just an instant before something swallowed it.

Nuressa shouldered her way out of the sunlight, war sword ready. Trust them to cry no warning to

tell her what peril awaited.

The chamber was high and dusty and dark, the torch dying a slow, sullen death at its heart. There

was a space that bore some sort of circular design in the floor tiles, framed by four smooth, dark stone

pillars that soared from the pave to the lofty, unseen ceiling.

Away beyond those ever feebler flames rose dark steps crowned by what could only be the casket

of someone great and important...or a true giant, so large was the massive black stone, blotched with

deep emerald green, its curves aglitter with golden runes that flashed in time with the pulsing, fading light

of the torch. Two empty braziers taller than she was flanked this dais, and over it hung the

dusty-shrouded ends of what looked like a curtain of mail but could, under the dust, be almost anything

that would drape like fabric, hanging motionless from the distant, scarcely seen ceiling.

It was not the tomb that the gruff elf mage, the awed dwarf, and the boyish thief were staring at. It

was something else, rather nearer than that, and above them. Nuressa shot a hard glance up at it, then all

around the tomb chamber, seeking some other entrance or waiting peril. None offered itself to the tip of

her gleaming blade, so she grounded it and joined in the general staring.

High above them, starting perhaps fifty feet up in the air, hung what might be a scarecrow, and might

have once been a man. Two worn bootheels they could see, standing on emptiness, and above that a

man-sized bulk of gray dust so thick it looked like fur, joined to the ceiling and walls by lazy, dusty arcs

of cobwebs that must be as thick as ropes.

"That was a man, once, I think," Iyriklaunavan murmured, voicing what they were all thinking.

"Aye, so, but what's holding him up there?" Folossan asked. "Surely not those webs … but I can

see naught else."

"So it's magic," Nuressa said reluctantly, and they all nodded in slow and solemn agreement.

"Someone who died in a trap or spell duel," Amandarn said quietly, "or a guardian, who's been

waiting all these years, undead or asleep, for the likes of us to intrude?"

"We can't afford to gamble," the elf told him gruffly. "He could well be a mage, and he's above us,

where none can hide from him. Stand back, all."

The adventuring band that had no name moved in four different directions, each member taking his

own path backward across the ever more dimly lit room. Folossan was fumbling in his voluminous

shoulder bags for another torch as Iyriklaunavan raised his hands to cup empty air, murmured something,

then spread his hands apart.

Between those hands something shivered and glimmered for a tumbling instant before it flashed, so

bright as to sear the watching eye, and leaped through the dark emptiness like a sizzling blade. The spell

clove air and all as it smote whatever hung so high above, bringing down a heavy rain of choking dust.

Clods of gray fur fell like snow melting from high branches, pattering down on all sides as the four

adventurers coughed and wiped at their eyes and noses, shaking their heads and staggering back.

Something flickered nearby, in several places. Struggling to clear the dust from watering eyes and

see, the four adventurers could not help but notice two things through the swirling dust: the booted feet

above were still exactly where they had been, and the flickerings were pulsing radiances playing rapidly

up and down the four stone pillars.

"He moves!" Iyriklaunavan shouted suddenly, pointing upward. "He moves! I'll..."

The rest of his words were lost in a sudden grinding, rumbling noise that shook the floor tiles under

their boots. The light dancing down the pillars suddenly flashed into brightness, gleaming back from four

tensely raised weapons. Stone facings on all of the pillars slid down into the floor, leaving behind

openings that stretched the height of the pillars.

Something filled those openings, dimly seen as the radiances died away, leaving only the ruby

embers of the torch on the floor. Folossan dived for that torch, blowing hard on it and coughing in the

swirling dust with each breath he took. He thrust a fresh torch against the old one and blew on where

they met.

The others were peering suspiciously at what filled the floor-to-ceiling channels in the pillars. It was

something pale and glistening that writhed in the channels like maggots crawling over a corpse. Pearly

white here, dun-hued there, like rice glistening under a clear sauce but expanding outward, as if flexing

and stretching after a long confinement.

The new torch flared, and in the newly leaping light Nuressa saw enough to be certain. "Lossum...

get out of there!" she shouted. "All of you! Back...out of this place...now!"

She had distinctly seen pale flesh peel and wrinkle back to unhood a green-gray eye … and there

was another, and a third. These were forests of eyestalks.

And the only creatures she knew of that had many eyes on stalks were beholders, the deadly eye

tyrants of legend. The others knew the same tales and were sprinting through the settling dust toward her

now, all thoughts of tomb plunder and laden sacks of treasure forgotten.

Behind the hurrying adventurers, as Nuressa watched, eyes winked and came to life and began to

focus.

"Hurry!" she bellowed, drawing in enough dust to make her next words a croak. "Hurry ... or die!"

A glow suddenly encircled one eye, then another... and burst into beams of golden light that stabbed

out through the dust, parting it like smoke, to scorch the heels of hurrying Folossan and the wall beside

Iyriklaunavan. Amandarn darted past Nuressa, stinking of fear, and the warrior woman pressed herself

against the wall so as not to block the passage of her other two desperately hurrying companions. The elf

then the dwarf clattered past, cursing in continuous babblings, but Nuressa kept her eyes on the pillars.

Four columns of awake and alert eyes were peering her way now, radiances growing around many of

them."Gods," she gasped, in utter terror. Oh let them be fixed here, unable to follow… .

A ruby beam of light from one eye stabbed at Nuressa and she ducked away, sparks erupting along

the edge of her war sword. Sudden heat seared her palm. As a dozen golden beams lanced through the

dust at her, she threw the blade over her head, back behind her out of the chamber. She wheeled in the

same motion to flee headlong after it, diving for safety as something burst near her left ear with a sound

like rolling thunder. Stones began to fall in a hard and heavy rain.

It feels odd, to stand on air, neither solid like stone, nor the slight yielding of turf under one's boots.

In dry and dusty darkness … where by Mystra's sweet kisses was he?

Memory flowed around him like a river, cloaking him against madness for so long that it would not

answer his bidding now. There was a tingling in his limbs. Great power had struck him, forcefully, only

moments ago. A spell must have been hurled his way ... so a foe must be near.

His eyes, so long dry and frozen in place, would not turn in their sockets, so he had to turn his head.

His neck proved to be stiff and set in its pose, so he turned his shoulders, wheeling his whole body, as

the walls drifted slowly past, and dust fell away from him in wisps and ropes and huge clods.

The walls drifting ... he was sinking, settling down through the air, released from … what?

Something had trapped him here, despite his clever walking on air to avoid traps and guardian

spells. Something had seized on the magic holding him aloft and gripped it as if in manacles, holding him

immobile in the darkness.

A very long time must have passed.

Yet something had shattered the spell trap, awakening him. He wasn't alone, and he was descending

whether he wanted to or not, heading toward ... what?

He strained to see and found eyes looking back at him from all sides. Malevolent eyes, set in

columns of pale eyestalks that danced and swayed with slow grace as they followed his fall, radiances

growing around them.

Some strange sort of beholder? No, some of the stalks were darker, or stouter, or larger all around

than others … these were beholder eyestalks, all right, but they'd come from many different beholders.

Those radiances, of course, could only mean him harm.

He still felt oddly … detached. Not real, not here, but still afloat in the rush of memories that named

him... Elminster, the Chosen One...or at least a Chosen... of Mystra, the dark-eyed lady of all magic. Ah,

the warmth and sheer power of the silver fire that flowed through her and out of her, pouring from her

mouth, locked onto his, to snarl and sear and burn its agonizing, exhilarating way through every inch of

him, leaking out nose and ears and his very fingertips.

Light flared and flashed, and Elminster felt new agony. His dry throat struggled to roar, his hands

clawed uncontrollably at the air, and his guts seemed afire and yet light and free.

He looked down and found silver fire raging and sputtering around him, spilling restlessly out of his

stomach along with something pale, bloody, and ropy that must be his own innards. Fresh fire flashed,

and a searing pain and sizzle marked the loss of his hair and the tip of an ear along the right side of his

head.Anger seized him, and without thinking Elminster lashed out, raking the air with silver fire that

shattered and scattered a score of reaching magical beams on its way to claw at struggling eyestalks.

Eyes melted away, winking and weeping and thrashing with futile radiances sparking and flickering

around them. El wasted no time watching their destruction, but turned to point at another pillar and sear

its column of eyestalks from top to bottom.

He knew not what magics preserved all these severed eyestalks, but Mystra's flames could rend all

Art, and flesh both alive and undead. Elminster turned to scorch another column of angry eyes. He was

still sinking, his guts sagging out in front of him, and with each bolt of silver fire something beyond the

pillars glowed in answer. Eye-born beams of deadly magic were stabbing at him in earnest now, failing

before the divine fire of Mystra. The angry crackle and the surflike rising and falling roar of much

unleashed magic was howling about the chamber like a full-throated winter storm, shaking the wizard's

long-unused limbs.

A last column of eyes darkened and died, to droop and dangle floorward, weeping dark sludge that

mirrored Elminster's own tile-drenching flow of vital fluids. He clawed at his own innards, tucking them

back inside himself with hands that blazed with silver flames, and was still about it, feeling sick and weak

despite the roused, surging divine power, when his boot heels found something solid at last. He stumbled,

all balance gone, staggered, and almost fell before he got his feet planted firmly. Dust swirled up anew

around him, crackling angrily as it met surging silver fire. Beyond the pillars, runes graven on the steps

and casket of what must be a tomb flashed and crackled with flames of their own, mirroring every roar of

Mystra's fire.

Gasping as agony caught at him, El bent his efforts to healing the great wound in his middle, ignoring

the last few flickering eyes. The flowing silver fire would, he hoped, catch and rend their spells before he

was harmed. His blood had fallen in a dark rain on the tiles during his descent, and he felt emptied and

torn. The last mage of Athalantar snarled in wordless anger and determination.

He had to get himself whole and out of this place before the stored silver fire faded and failed him,

retreating to coil warmly around his heart and rebuild itself. Whatever had entrapped him before could

well do so again if he tarried, and his present agony had been caused by only one eyestalk attack. He

turned slowly, bent over with silver flames licking between trembling fingers, and held his guts in place as

he moved haltingly toward the place where dim daylight was coming from.

Eyestalks flashed forth fresh beams of ravening magic to scorch floor tiles inches behind Elminster's

shuffling boots. Sealing the last of his great wound, he slashed behind him with a sheet of silver flame,

shielding himself from more attacks.

Behind him, unseen, the surviving eyestalks all went limp and dark in the same instant. In the next

breath, the runes on the tomb acquired a steady, strengthening glow. Small radiances winked amid the

metallic curtain above it, climbing and descending like curious but excited spiders, flaring forth ever

stronger.

Elminster found his way out into the waiting light, half expecting arrows or blades to bite at him while

he was still blinking at the dazzling brightness of full daylight. Instead, he found only four frightened faces

staring at him over a distant remnant of wall.

He tried to call to them, but all that emerged was a dry, strangled snarl. El coughed, gargled, and

tried again, managing a sort of sob.

The elf behind the wall lifted a hand as if to cast a spell, but the dwarf and the human male flanking

him struck that hand aside. A furious argument and struggle followed.

El fixed his eyes on the fourth adventurer...a woman watching him warily over the crazed and

crumbling edge of a great sword that had been struck by lightning or something of the sort not very long

ago...and managed to ask, "What. .. year... is this?"

"Year of the Missing Blade, in early Mirtul," she called back, then, seeing his weary lack of

comprehension, added, "In Dalereckoning, 'tis seven hundred and fifty-nine."

El nodded and waved his thanks, on his stumbling way to lean against a nearby pillar and shake his

head.He'd been exploring this tomb...a century ago?... seeking to learn how the mightiest archwizards of

Netheril had faced death. Some insidious magical trap had ensnared him so cleverly that he'd never even

noticed his fall into stasis. For years, it seemed, he'd hung frozen near the ceiling. Elminster the Mighty,

Chosen of Mystra, Armathor of Myth Drannor, and Prince of Athalantar stood in midair, a handy anchor

for spiderwebs, acquiring a thick cloak of dust and cobwebs.

Careless idiot. Would that ever change, the hawk-nosed mage wondered briefly, if he lived to be a

thousand years old or more?

Perhaps not. Ah, well, at least he knew he was an idiot. Most wizards never even make it that far.

El drew in a deep breath, dodged behind the pillar as he saw the elf glaring at him and raising his hands

again, and sorted through his memories. These were the spells...and that one would serve. He had a

world to see anew, and decades of lost history to catch up on.

"Mystra, forgive me," he said aloud, calling up the spell.

There came no answer, but the spell worked as it was supposed to, plucking him up into a brief

maelstrom of blue mists and silver bubbles that would whisk him elsewhere.

Abruptly, the figure behind the pillar was gone.

"I could have had him!" Iyriklaunavan cursed. "Just a few moments longer, and..."

"You could've had us killed in a spell duel, right here," Amandarn hissed. "Shouldn't we be getting

away from here? That man was freed from how we found him, those eyes sprouted from the pillars …

what else is waking up, in there?"

Folossan rolled his eyes and said, "Am I hearing rightly? A thief, walking away from treasure?"

The wealth redistributor eyed him coldly. "Try saying it thus," he replied. " 'Hurrying away from

likely death, in the interests of staying alive.' "

The dwarf looked up at the silent warrior woman beside him.

"Nessa?"

She let out a deep, regretful sigh, then said briskly, "We run, away, as swift as we can on these

loose stones. Come...now." She turned, a hulking figure in blackened armor, and began to shoulder her

way around pillars and stub-ends of fallen walls.

"We're barely twenty paces from the strongest magic I've seen in decades," the elf mage protested,

waving a hand at the darkness.

Nuressa turned, hands on hips, and said tartly, "Hear my prediction: it's not only the strongest magic

you've seen...it's the strongest you'll ever see, Iyrik, if you tarry here much longer. Let's get gone before

dark .. . and while we still can."

She turned away once more. Folossan and Amandarn cast regretful glances at the hall they'd fled

from, but they followed.

The elf in maroon robes cursed, took one longing step around the end of the wall as if to return to

the tomb, then turned to follow his companions. A few paces later he stopped and looked back.

He sighed and went on his way, never seeing what came out of the tomb to follow him.

The second torch died down. In the near total darkness that followed, the runes on the steps of the

tomb blazed like so many altar candles. From somewhere there came a rhythmic thudding, as if from an

unseen, distant drum. The lights winking and playing in the curtain above the dark stone casket began to

race about, washing down over the stone tomb as showers of sparks that sank into the runes they

touched and caused little flames to flare up briefly from the stone. A mist or wispy smoke came with

them, and a faint echo that might have been an exultant chant mingled briefly with the thudding.

The runes flared into blazing brilliance, faded, flashed almost blinding-bright...then abruptly went out,

leaving all in darkness and silence.

The embers of the torch gave just enough light, had anyone been in the tomb, to see the massive lid

of the casket hovering just above its sides. Through the gap between them, something emerged from the

tomb and swirled around the room.

It was more a wind than a body, more a shadow than a presence. Like a chill, chiming whirlwind it

gathered itself and drifted purposefully toward where the sunlight beckoned. Living things that had been

in the tomb not long ago still walked ... for a little while yet.

Book One: The Lady Of Shadows

One: A Fire At Midnight

Azuth remains a mysterious figure...sometimes benevolent, sometimes ruthless, sometimes

eager to reveal all, sometimes deliberately cryptic. In other words, a typical mage.

Antarn the Sage

from The High History of Faerunian Archmages Mighty

published circa The Year of the Staff

"Tempus preserve us!"

"Save the prayers, fool, and run! Tempus'll honor your bones if you don't hurry!"

Pots clanged together wildly as Larando cast them aside, rucksack and all, and sprinted away

through the knee-deep ferns. A low branch took his helm off, and he didn't even pause to try to grab at

it. Panting, the priest of Tempus followed, sweat dripping from his stubbled chin. Ardelnar Trethtran

was exhausted, his lungs and thighs aching from all the running...but he dared not collapse yet. The

tumbled towers of Myth Drannor were still all around them ... and so were the lurking fiends.

Deep, harsh laughter rolled out of the trees to Ardelnar's left...followed by a charging trio of

barbazu, their beards dripping blood. They were naked, their scaled hides glistening with the gore of

victims as well as the usual slime. Broad shoulders rippled, and batlike ears and long, lashing tails bobbed

exultantly as they came bounding along like playful orcs, black eyes snapping with glee. They flung away

the bloody limbs of some unfortunate adventurer they'd torn apart and swarmed after Larando, shouting

exultant jests and boasts in a language Ardelnar was glad he couldn't understand. They waved their

heavy, saw-toothed blades like toys as they hooted and snorted and hacked, and it took them only a few

moments to draw blood. Larando screamed as one frantically flailing arm went flying away from him,

severed cleanly by a shrewd strike.

The competing bearded fiend wasn't so deft, the warrior's other arm was left dangling from his

shoulder, attached to his body by a few strips of bloody flesh. When Larando moaned and collapsed,

two of the fiends used their saw-toothed blades to lift him in an improvised cradle, and run along with him

so the third barbazu could have some sport involving the warrior's innards and carving openings to allow

them to briefly see the wider world.

Larando's head was lolling despite the brutal slaps being dealt him, as Ardelnar fled in a different

direction. The priest's last glimpse of his friend was of a beautiful winged woman...no, a fiend, an

erinyes...swooping down out of the trees with a sickle in her hands.

Giant gray-feathered wings beat above a slender body that was shapely and pale wherever cruel

barbed armor didn't cover it. Scowling black brows arched with glee, a pert mouth parted as the

she-fiend's tongue licked her lips in anticipation, and she sliced, twisted, and flew on, waving a bloody

trophy. Behind her, gore spattered all over the barbazu as they howled their disappointment, a headless

corpse thrashing and convulsing in their midst.

"Tempus forgive my fear, I pray," Ardelnar managed to stammer through white and trembling lips, as

he fought down nausea and ran on. It had been a mistake to come here, a mistake that looked very much

like it was going to cost all of them their lives.

The City of Song was no open treasure pit, but the hunting ground of fiends. These malevolent

creatures would hide, letting adventurers venture freely into their midst to wander the very ruins of the

riven city. Then they'd trap the intruders and take cruel sport in slaying them as a sort of hunt-and-run

game.

Tales of such cruelty were told in taverns where adventurers gather. That was why three famous and

very independent companies of adventurers had uneasily joined in a pact and gone into Myth Drannor

together. Surely seven mages, two of them archwizards of note, could handle a few bat-winged …

Most of those mages had been torn apart already or left to stumble around with eyes and tongues

plucked out, for the fiends to tease at leisure later. When the rest of us are dead, Ardelnar thought grimly

as he tripped over a fallen statuette, hopped a few awkward steps to keep his footing, and found himself

stumbling through the shattered, overgrown remnants of a garden fountain.

Oh, they'd found treasure. His belt pouch was bulging right now with a generous double handful of

gems...sapphires and a few rubies...torn from the chest of a mummified elf corpse as its preservative

magics faded with a few last glows and sighs. There'd even been a lone erinyes in that crypt, they'd slain

her...it... with confidence. With her wings hacked off in a shower of bloody feathers, she'd not lasted long

against the blades of a dozen adventurers, for all her hissing and spitting. Ardelnar could still see the spurt

of blood from a mouth beautiful enough to kiss, and her blood smoking as it ran along her dusky limbs.

Not long after that, the jaws of the trap had closed, with gloating fiends strolling out of every ruin,

glade, and thicket on all sides. The adventurers had broken and fled in all directions to the tune of cold,

cruel laughter … and the slaughter had begun.

Back in the here and now, he was seeing the erinyes again. Four of them swooping past, gliding low.

Ardelnar ducked involuntarily, but found himself ignored as they banked off to his right, giggling like

temple-maids...nude, beautiful, and deadly. They'd have passed for dusky-skinned women of the

Tashalar without those great gray-feathered wings. They were after the mage he'd been hoping would get

them both out of this fiend-haunted ruin. Klargathan Srior was a tall, spade-bearded southerner who

seemed the most capable of all the mages, as well as the most arrogant.

All that hauteur was gone now, as the mage ran wearily along on Ardelnar's right, hairy legs stained

with blood where he'd gashed himself while slicing off his own robes so he could flee faster. Gold

earrings bobbed amid rivers of sweat, and a steady stream of mumbled curses marked the mage's flight

for his life. The erinyes glided in, veering apart to come at Klargathan from different directions,

razor-sharp daggers in their hands. Sport was in their laughter and their cruel eyes, not outright murder.

Gasping, the mage stopped and took his stand. "Priest!" he bellowed, as a baton from his belt grew

of its own accord into a staff. "Aid me, for the love of Tempus!"

Ardelnar almost ran on, leaving the man's death to buy himself a few more breaths of flight, but he

stood no chance in this deep and endless wood without Klargathan's spells, and they both knew it. They

also both knew that this cold realization carried more weight than the command to serve in the name of

the Foehammer. The shame of that was like a cold worm crawling in Ardelnar's heart. Not that there was

time to brood or fashion denials.

He swallowed in mid-stride, then almost fell as he wheeled around without slowing and ran to the

mage, stumbling over bones half-glimpsed amid the forest plants, old bones...human bones. He had a

momentary glimpse of a skull rolling away from his foot, jawless and unable to grin.

Klargathan was whirling his staff over his head with desperate energy, trying to smash aside the

gliding erinyes without having one of them slash open his face or pluck the weapon from his hands. They

were circling him like sharks, reaching out with their blades to cut at his clothing. One shoulder was

already bared...and wet with blood from the dagger cut that had left it so.

Through the desperate chaos of thudding staff and flapping wings, the mage's eyes caught those of

the priest. "I need ..." the southerner gasped, "some time!"

Ardelnar nodded to show he understood and plucked off his own helm to smash at one wing of an

erinyes. She flapped aside and he brought his warhammer up from his belt into her beautiful face, hard.

Blood sprayed and the fiend squalled. Then she was past them, flying blindly into a tumble along the

ground and into a waiting tree, while her three companions descended on Ardelnar in a shrieking, clawing

cloud. He jammed the helm over the face of one and ducked under her gliding body so close that her

breasts grazed his shoulder, using her as cover against the blades of the others. They struck at both her

and the priest, not caring who they cut open, and as Ardelnar ducked away and rolled to his feet to avoid

being caught between those last two screaming, spitting she-fiends, he heard Klargathan stammering out

an incantation, ignoring the gurgling erinyes who plowed into the ground beside him, her side slashed

Ed Greenwood - Forgotten Realms - Elminster 3 - Temptation Of Elminster

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