The Temptation of Elminster

The last prince of Athalantar struggled to breathe in her grasp, so throttled he couldn't speak or shout, as the ghostly sorceress leisurely turned the uppermost spire of her mists to a lush and very solid human torso, curvaceous and deadly.

Slim fingers grew fingernails like long talons, and when they were as long as Saeraede's hand, she reached almost lovingly for his mouth.

"We'll just have the tongue out, I think," she said aloud, "to forestall any nasty...ah, but wait a bit, Saeraede, you want him to tell you a few things before he's mute... . Hmmmm …"

Razor-sharp talons drifted just inches past Elminster's tightly constricted throat, to slice into the first flesh she found bared. Plowing deep gashes across the strangling mage's neck, she flicked his blood away in droplets that were caught in her whirling mists and held her bloody talons exultantly up to the sunlight.

"Ah, but I'm alive again," Saeraede hissed, "alive and whole! I breathe, I feel" She brought that hand to her mouth, bit her own knuckles, and held the hand out toward the grimly watching avatar of Azuth to let him see the welling blood. "I bleed! I liver

Then she screamed, swayed, and stared down, dark eyes widening in disbelief, at the gore-slick, smoking sword tip that had just burst through her breast from behind.

"Some people live far longer than they should," said Ilbryn Starym silkily from behind the hilt, as he stared gloating into the eyes of the mage still frozen in Saeraede's grasp. "Don't you agree, Elminster?"

A door was flung wide, to boom its broken song against a heavily paneled wall. It had been years since the tall, broad-shouldered woman who now stood in the doorway, her eyes snapping in alarm and anger, had worn the armor she hated so much...but as she stood glaring into the room, the half-drawn long sword at her hip gleaming, she looked every inch a warrior.

Sometimes Rauntlavon wished he was more handsome, strong, and about ten years older. He'd have given a lot for so magnificent a woman to smile at him.

Right now, she was doing anything but smiling. She was looking down at him as if she'd found a viper in her chamber pot...and his only consolation was that he wasn't the only mage rolling around on the floor under her dark displeasure, his master, the gruffly sardonic elf Iyriklaunavan, was gasping on the fine swanweave rug not a handspan away.

"Iyrik, by all the gods," the Ladylord Nuressa growled, "what befell here?"

"My farscrying spell went awry," the elf snarled back at her. "If it hadn't been for the lad, here, all those books'd be aflame now, and we'd be hurling water and ru

Rauntlavon's face flamed as the ladylord took a step forward and looked down at him with a rather kinder expression. "I-it was nothing, Great Lady," he stammered.

"Master Rauntlavon," she said gently, "an apprentice should never contradict his master-of-magecraft … nor belittle the judgment of any one of The Four Lords of the Castle."

Rauntlavon blushed as maroon as his robes and emitted the immortal words, "Yujus-yujus-er-ah-uhmmm, I, ah..."

"Yes, yes, boy, brilliantly explained as usual," Iyriklaunavan said dismissively, rolling to his elbows. "Now belt up and look around the room for me: is anything amiss? Anything broken? Smoldering? Aflame? Hop, now!"

Rauntlavon hopped, quite thankfully, but kept his attention more on what two of The Four Lords of the Castle were saying. They'd all been debonair and successful adventurers, less than a decade ago, and one never knew what wild and exciting things they might say.

Well, nothing about mating dragons this time.

"So tell me, Iyrik," the Ladylord was saying in her I-really-shouldn't-have-to-be-this-patient voice, "just why your farscrying spell blew up. Is it one of those magics you'd just be better off not trying? Or were you distracted by some nubile elf maid seen in your spying, perhaps?"

"Nessa," the elf growled...Rauntlavon had always admired the way he could look so agile and elegant and youthful, and yet be more gruff than any dwarf...as he rose and fixed her with one glaring that's- quite-enough eye, "this is serious. For us all, everywhere in Faerun.

Stop playing the swaggering warrior bitch for just a moment and listen. For once."

Rauntlavon froze, his head sunk between his shoulders, wondering if folk really survived the full fury of Great Lady Nuressa a-storming...and just how swiftly and brutally she'd notice him and have him removed from the room.

Very and with iron calm, it seemed.

"Master Rauntlavon," she said calmly, "you may leave us now. Close the door on your way out."

"Apprentice Rauntlavon," his master said, just as calmly, "it is my will that you abide with us. Send Master Rauntlavon out, and close the door behind him, remaining here with us."

Rauntlavon swallowed, drew in a deep breath, and turned around to face them, hardly daring to raise his eyes. "I-I've found nothing amiss at this end of the chamber," he a

"Now will be fine, Rauntlavon," the ladylord said in a voice of velvet menace. "Pray proceed."

The apprentice actually shivered ere he bowed and mumbled, "As my Great Lady wishes."

"It's a wonderful thing to make men and boys fear you, Nessa, but does it really make up for your years under the lash? The escaped slave gets even by enslaving others?" His master's voice was biting, Rauntlavon tried not to let his momentary hesitation show. The ladylord had been a slave? Kneeling naked under a slaver's lash, in the dust and the heat? Gods, but he'd never have...

"Do you think we can leave my past careers in my own bedchamber closet, Iyrik?" the ladylord said almost gently. Her next sentence, however, was almost a battlefield shout. "Or is there some pressing need to tell all the world?

"I won't tell anyone, I won't...I swear I won't!" Rauntlavon babbled, going to his knees on the rug.

He heard the Great Lady sigh and felt ironlike fingers on his shoulder, hauling him back to his feet. Other fingers took hold of his chin and turned his head as sharply as a whip is flicked. The apprentice found himself staring into the Lady Nuressa's smoky eyes from a distance of perhaps the length of his longest finger.

"Rauntlan," she said, addressing him as he liked his handful of friends to...a short name he'd had no idea any of the lords even knew about, "you know that one of the most essential skills any wizard can have is to keep the right secrets, and keep them well. So I shall test you now, to see if you're good enough to remain in the castle as a mage-in-training ... or a wizard in your own right, in time to come. Keep my secret, and stay. Let it out...and be yourself shut out of our lands, chased to our borders with the flat of my blade finding your backside as often as I can land it."

Rauntlavon heard his master start to say something, but the ladylord made some sort of gesture he couldn't see behind her back, and Iyriklaunavan fell silent again.

"Do you understand, Rauntlan?"

Her voice was as calm and as gentle as if she'd been discussing haying a field, Rauntlavon swallowed, nodded, squirmed under the hard points of her gaze, and managed to say, "Great Lady, I swear to keep your secret. I shall abide by your testing . .. and if ever I let it slip, I shall come to you myself to admit the doing, so the chase can begin at your convenience."

Her dark brows rose. "Well said, Master Apprentice. Agreed, then."

She took a quick step back from him and lifted her gown unhurriedly to display a ta