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Something swam into view briefly, within the sphere: a human arm, slender and feminine, white ski
There was a murmur of puzzlement and surprise from among the gathered priestesses...and the tallest among them, resplendent in her horned black headdress and her mantle of deepest purple, stepped forward and brought the long lash in her hand down with brutal force across the bare back of a man kneeling under the sphere. Sweat flew in all directions, he was drenched and gleaming.
"Explain, Dread Brother High," the Darklady of the House commanded, her voice sharp. "We were promised by you...and, in a sending, by the Flame of Darkness herself...that your striving would bring us great power and great opportunity. Even if this wench is some great queen of Faerun, I see no power nor opportunity here save the grubby achievement of seizing a land and its coffers. Explain both well and speedily...and live."
The senior priest of the House looked at the struggling figure in the sphere as he let his hands fall to his sides, then slumped back to the marble floor, exhausted. Through his gasps, the priestesses saw the bright flash of his smile.
"It is a success, your Darkness," he said when he could find breath enough. "This is an avatar of the goddess Mystra, though of much less power than most she sends forth. We ca
"Time enough for such musings later," said Darklady Avroana firmly. Her voice was still cold and biting, but the eagerness on her face and the tapping of her whip against her own thigh rather than across the face of High Brother Narlkond betrayed her excitement and approval. "Tell me of these spells. We sit and study as mages do, and fill our minds...and what then?"
"No power floods into those memorized patterns until our captive here seeks to touch the Weave," replied the senior priest, rolling over to face her on his knees, "which happens every few hours or so. It seems unable not to strive to, for that is its essential nature, and..."
"How long can we keep this up?" Avroana snapped, gesturing up at the sphere with her whip.
"So long as we have enthusiastic believers in the Dark Mother to furnish us with their heads."
"More have been called hither," said the Darklady, her lips shaping...for a very brief instant...a smile that was as cold as the glacial ice that seals shut a northern tomb. "They've been told we mount a holy crusade."
"Your Darkness," High Brother Narlkond replied, with a soft smile of his own, "we do."
"This is what in human speech would be called the Lookout Tree," said the moon elf, sitting down on a huge leaf...which promptly curled and flexed around him to form a couch that cupped him like a giant, gentle hand.
Umbregard stared around at the view between the great arched branches that split apart where they stood to soar still farther up into the thin, cold air. "By the gods," he said slowly, "those are clouds! We're looking down on the clouds?
"Only the lowest sort of clouds," Starsunder said with a smile. "Oh, didn't you know? Yes, different shapes of clouds hang at different levels, just as fish in a lake seek levels in the water that suit them."
"Fish...?" the human mage asked, then gri
Starsunder gri
Umbregard shook his head. "Oh, to have been there," he whispered longingly, sitting down rather gingerly on another leaf. It promptly tumbled him into its center...he had time for only the briefest of startled murmurs...and folded itself around him, to leave him upright, enthroned in warm comfort.
"Well, ahem," he offered in pleased surprise, while Starsunder chuckled. "Nice, very nice." He looked at Starsunder's chair, still clearly alive and attached to the gigantic shadowtop tree they'd climbed so laboriously to the top of, up a spiral stair that had seemed endless. "I suppose there's no chance of getting a chair like this anywhere else but in the Elven Court?"
"None," Starsunder said with a wide smile, "at all. Sorry."
Umbregard snorted. "You don't sound sorry at all. Why did we have to sweat our weary ways up here, step after thousandth step, what's wrong with using spells to fly?"
"The tree needed to get to know you," his elf host explained. "Otherwise, when you sat down just now, it'd quite likely have hurled you off into yonder clouds like a catapult... and I'd have had no human wizards to chat with this evening."
Umbregard shuddered at the vision of being helplessly thrust out, out into the oh-so-empty air, before starting that terrible, long plunge ...
"Aghh!" he shrieked, waving his hands to sweep away his mental vision. "Gods! Away, away! Let's get back to our converse! When we were eating...ohh, that treejelly! How d...no. Later, I'll ask that later. Now I want to know why you said, when we were eating, that Elminster stands in such danger just now...and stands also so close to being an even greater danger to us all... why?"
Starsunder looked out over miles of greenery toward the distant line of mountains for a moment before he said, "Any human mage who lives as many years as this Elminster outstrips most human foes of his own making, they die while he lives on. His very longevity and power make him a natural target for those of all races who would seize him, or his powers from him, or his supposed riches and enchanted items. Such perils confront all mages who've enjoyed any success."
Umbregard nodded, and his elf host continued.
"It's reasonable to suppose that a wizard of greater success attracts greater attention, and so greater foes, yes?"
Umbregard nodded again, sitting forward eagerly. "You're going to tell me about some great mysterious foes that Elminster's now facing?"
Starsunder smiled. "Such as the Phaerimm, the Malaugrym, and perhaps even the Sharn? No."
Umbregard frowned. "The Phaerr...?"
Starsunder chuckled. "If I tell you about them, they won't be mysterious any longer, will they? Moreover, you'll live the rest of your days in fear, and no one will believe you when you spread word of them. Each time you speak of them will increase the likelihood that one of their number will feel sufficient need to silence you-and so bring to a brutal and early end the life of Umbregard. No, forget them. It's good practice for mages, forgetting and letting go of things that interest them. Some of them never learn how, and die long before their time."
Umbregard frowned, opened his mouth to say something, and shut it again. Then it popped open once more, and he said almost angrily, "Well then, if we're to speak of no foes, what special danger does Elminster face?"
A small, tightly curled leaf at Starsunder's elbow opened then to reveal two glass bowls full of what looked like water. He passed one of the bowls over to Umbregard and they drank together.
It was water, and the coolest, clearest that Umbregard had yet tasted. As it slid down to every corner of his being, he felt suddenly fully awake and vigorous. He turned his head to exclaim about how he felt, looked into Starsunder's eyes, and saw sadness there. He hesitated in speaking just long enough for the moon elf to say deliberately, "Himself."