Before he finished speaking, the owner of the high- '! prowed gown and helm-high hairdo had whisked herself into the pink silk cushions of a gilded high-back lounge. It had been a rotting mushroom in the forest out by Harper's Hill only that morning. She swept sandwiches onto a silver self-platter faster than raindrops fly to earth. A dainty decanter of cordial floated gently off a shelf to fill a fluted glass at the Great Lady Calabrista's elbow, causing her to emit a surprised little titter.
Four young and silken-gowned beauties drifted into the room, making hand-courtesies as they came. They ranged themselves before the four empty chairs farthest '] from their tutor. Their beauty was as gilded as fine court furniture, but at least two of their smiles held a touch too much superior sneer. All of them affected slight boredom and languid ease. All of them would soon catch cold in the gowns they had chosen to impress. Watching pearls glisten, slippers glide, and pendulous gem-cluster earrings sway and dangle, Elminster was beginning to be reminded of Tharsult too.
"Come along, come closer, girls! DON'T be shy; great men have no time for shy little girls! Sirrah Elminster, these sandwiches are QUITE the most EXQUISITE morsels that have passed these my lips in weeks! Why, whatever are they made of?"
"Snail, Great Lady," Elminster said with the sweetest of smiles. "Laced with a green paste made from only the largest tree-slugs of the forest around us, garnished with pepper and lemon-squeezings, of course."
"Of course," the Great Lady Calabrista echoed, faintly and haltingly.
Elminster put a firm hand over his teacup to muffle its snort of mirth.
Four gracefully extended hands stopped, quivered, and withdrew, leaving platters untouched.
The Old Mage raised his brows. "Oh, but they're GOOD! Nobles in Waterdeep prize nothing else more highly! And if the gods smile upon thee, and grant their brightest luck-" He leaned forward eagerly, peering at the sandwiches upon the platter before him, until his hand stabbed suddenly down, to peel back bread and reveal a hurrying slug undulating out of the heart of a sandwich-for just a moment, before he slapped the bread back into place, snatched the sandwich to his mouth, and bit down, hard-"ye find a live one! Ah, there's nothing like it!”
As he spoke, the green head of the slug poked out of the corner of his mouth, twisted this way and that ques-tioningly, and then vanished within again. Elminster chewed heartily, beaming at his guests. The little illusions get 'em, every time.
"I–I think it would be best," the Great Lady Calabrista quavered, "if we proceeded with the burden of our visit. Men of great influence in Sembia-not to put too fine a point on it, men of great WEALTH-have enrolled their daughters at my school for some years now, seeking to find those who are GIFTED BY THE GODS with an aptitude for magic… an aptitude that I flatter myself I can draw out without recourse to dark altars and midnight fires and sacrifices of, er, snails…. THAT IS TO SAY, I am confident that these, my BEST students, will not disappoint any competent practitioner of the ART! I was REQUESTED to bring them before you by VERY highly placed individuals, for your examination and-ah, approval."
"Ye have done well and wisely," Elminster said with a smile. "I approve of all of them."
"You DO? Without eve-that is to say, their fitness at magic shines forth so BRIGHTLY?"
"Indeed, Great Lady," Elminster said with a gracious smile, gently slapping his teacup (which had begun to emit small sounds that resembled hiccups), "it doth. Indubitably. Had ye not had so GREAT a hand in the shaping of their glories, their power would blind EVEN YE! Let me tender my apologies, ladies four, for discussing thee as one does cattle, or fine gowns, or the luster of china…. What concerns me most is not thy grasp of spells but thy thinking, and characters, and the daily flight of thy heans. Perhaps we can assay a beginning in learning that, here today. I-"
Glass burst into the room in a thousand sparkling shards. Sighing, Elminster put one hand over his teacup again.
"Die, cursed mageling!" The mage in the window thrust her hands forward in claws, and lightning burst from her long fingers.
They snarled across the room amid the customary blinding flashes and spitting sparks, and struck something unseen a foot or so shy of the Old Mage's nose. He calmly watched them rebound, amid the screams, crashing headlong flights, sprays of loose pearls, and the Great Lady Calabrista clawing her way up the back of her grand chair, which promptly overbalanced to reveal far, far too many silk and gem-beaded gauze petticoats to the world. Lightnings clawed at the Red Wizardess who'd cast them. They scattered before her shield as she snarled in angry triumph and lashed out at random around the room, causing a certain teacup to dance, chairs to slump back into mushrooms again, and the frog to open both its eyes very wide and inquire, "Bong?"
In three breaths the room was empty of four Sembian ladies. Elminster reclined at ease in his chair, sandwich in hand. He watched with interest as the last of his young visitors, trembling and white to the very lips, held forth a wand she'd snatched out of a hitherto-hidden hip sheath, gritted her teeth, and hissed out a word that brought the stick of wood in her hands into furious life.
A white beam smashed across the room, caused red fires to rage about the Thayan mage for a crazed instant, and then smashed the Red Wizardess, window, spell shield, and all, out into the garden, leaving a large and smoking hole in its wake.
The young Sembian stared at what she'd done, unshed tears bright in her eyes.
A weak voice groaned from somewhere outside, "My roses!"
''Are ye all right, Lhaeo? I wasn't expecting this spitfire here to have a wand of ever-searing flames…."
"That wasn't me," his scribe told him wearily. "I was still being a teacup. That was a Red Wizard-or Wizardess, whatever."
Old and magely brows rose together. "Two, in one afternoon? I'll have to start charging a toll." Elminster's head turned slowly, and he asked the astonished young lady, "Noumea Fairbright? That is thy name, is it not?" At her nod, he continued, "Noumea, wherever did ye get a wand of ever-searing flames? They're not safe, ye know."
The young lady gaped at him for a few moments longer, and then found her voice. "Safe? SAFE? After you set your apprentice on us hurling lightning? To trick us and scorch us and scare us like I've never been scar before? Why, you-"
Elminster grinned, and Lhaeo's face, as it appeared at the window, wore an identical expression.
"Ye'Il do," they said in chorus. "Yes, ye'U do just fine. Sit down, feet up, and have a snail sandwich; they're really mustard, cheese, and pickles. We've much to talk about." 1
Noumea glared at them both for a moment longer. Then she sat down firmly on a mushroom and brought two spike-heeled golden slippers down on Elminster's table with a crash. "Well?" she asked, raising a severe but amused eyebrow. "Wasn't there some cordial?"
Chapter Fourteen
Tentacles tightened-and a devil's head flew. The spinagon's neck fountained black, smoking blood as its body whirled around in grotesque spasms. Its staring head bouncing wetly on the rocks some distance away.
Disgusted, Nergal turned away. Even slaying things gave him no satisfaction now. Avernus was in an uproar, with pit fiend generals riding dragons here and there, legions of cornugons flying in their wake, and barb-tailed osyluths stalking everywhere, spying and prying. Thrice he'd escaped attack only by the swiftest of shapeshifts and masterful acting. Sooner or later he'd end up trying to impersonate a particular general to troops who reported to the real general.