The Lady Scepter flashed once, and he almost dropped it. That had been a sign, for sure…but had it been one of reassurance? Or something else?
Mardasper shook the scepter slightly, hoping for something more, but, as he'd expected, nothing more happened. Ahh, tear in the Weave! Blast! By Mystra's Seven Secret Spells…!
He snarled incoherently for a moment, but resisted the urge to hurl the scepter. The last steward of Moon-shorn Tower who'd done that had ended up as ashes paltry enough to fit in a man's palm. His, actually.
Mardasper went back into his office under a heavy weight of gloom. Had he done the right thing? What did Mystra think of him? Should he have tried to stop the elf? Should he have allowed this Elminster fellow in at all? Of course the man couldn't have been the Elminster, the One Who Walks, could he? No, that one must be ancient by now, and only Mystra's…
Mardasper swallowed. He was going to fret over this all night and for days to come. He knew he was.
He set down the diadem and the scepter with exaggerated care, then sat back in his chair, sighed, and stared at the dark walls for a time. The priests of Mystra had been quite specific: a day in which strong drink of any sort passed his lips did not count in the marking of his service here.
Indeed. Quite deliberately he pulled out the three thick volumes at one end of the nearest bookshelf, reached into the darkness beyond, and came out with a large, dusty bottle. To the Abyss and beyond with the priests of Mystra and their niggling rules, too!
"Mystra," he asked aloud, as he uncorked the bottle, "how badly did I do?"
In his fingertips, the cork shone like a bright star for the briefest of instants…and shot back into the bottle so violently that his fingers and thumb were left bleeding and numb. Mardasper stared at them for a moment, then carefully put the bottle away again.
"So was that good … or bad?" he asked the gloom in bewilderment. "Oh, where are the priests when I need them?"
"Whoah!" Tabarast cried. " Woaaaaah…" His cry ended in a thump as his behind met the road hard, hurling dust in all directions. The mule came to a stop a pace farther on, gave him a reproachful look, and then stood waiting with a mournful air.
Beldrune sniggered as he overtook his winded colleague, urging it on with a small, feather-plumed whip, his splendid boots outthrust like tusks on either side of his mule. "You seem quite fond of fertile Faerun beneath us this day, friend Baerast!" he observed jovially…an instant before his mule came to an abrupt stop beside the one Tabarast had lately been riding.
Overbalanced, Beldrune toppled helplessly over his mount's head with a startled yell, somersaulting onto the road with an impressive crash that made Tabarast wince, then sputter with repressed mirth as the two mules exchanged glances, seemed to come to some sort of agreement, and with one accord stepped forward, trampling the groaning Beldrune under hoof.
His groans turned to yells of rage and pain, and he flailed wildly with his arms until he was free of unwashed mule bodies and mud-caked mule hooves. "A rescue!" he cried. "For the love of Mystra, a rescue!"
"Get up," Tabarast said grimly, pulling at his hair. "This Chosen must be half the way to wherever he's going by now, and we can't even stay in the saddles of two smallish mules, by the Wand! Get up, Droon!"
"Arrrghr Beldrune yelled. "Let go of my hair!"
Tabarast did as he was bidden…and Beldrune's head fell back onto the road with a thump that sounded like a smaller echo of the one Tabarast had made earlier. The younger mage launched into a long and incoherent curse, but Tabarast ignored him, limping ahead to catch the bridles of their mules before the beasts got over the next rise in the road, and clean away.
"I've brought back your mule," he said to the still-snarling body on its back in the road. "I suggest we walk beside them for a time … we both seem to be a little out of practice at riding."
"If you mean we've been falling off all too often," Beldrune snarled, "then we are out of practice…but we won't get back in practice unless we mount up and ride!"
Suiting the action to the words, he hauled himself into the saddle of Tabarast's mule, hoping the change of mount would improve his ride a trifle.
The mule swiveled one eye to take in Tabarast standing beside it and someone else loudly occupying its back and didn't budge.
Beldrune yelled at it and hauled on the reins as if he was dragging in a monstrous fish. The mule's head was jerked up and back, but it started trying to twist the reins out of Beldrune's grasp, or draw them into its mouth by repeated chomping, rather than move even a single step forward.
Beldrune drew back his heels, wishing he was wearing spurs, and kicked the beast's flanks as hard as he could. Nothing happened, so he kicked again.
The mule shot forward, leaping up into the air and twisting as it did so.
Beldrune went over backward with what might have been a despairing sob, landed hard on one shoulder, and rolled helplessly back down the road. His splendid doublet was rapidly becoming a dung-stained rag as he tumbled along an impressive length of road before negotiating contact…a solid, leaf-shaking collision, to be precise…with one of a pair of duskwood trees by the roadside.
Tabarast snatched at the reins of the growling mule…until now, he hadn't known mules could growl-made sure he still had hold of the other mule's bridle, and looked back down the road. "Finished playing at bold knights on horseback?" he snapped. "We're on important mission, remember?"
An upside-down Beldrune, who'd been staring at I. booted feet a good way up the tree, above him, looked back at his colleague groggily for a moment, then slowly unfolded himself back into the road. When he was upright again, he raked showers of dust from his hair with one hand…wincing at the pains in his back this activity caused…and snarled, "With all the shouting you're doing, it's a safe bet that Elminster isn't within forty farms of here!"
The tree seemed to flicker for a moment, but neither of the two esteemed mages noticed.
Six: At The Riven Stone
Let stones be riven and the world be changed,
When next two such as these meet,
With howling chaos in the sky
And deception a gliding serpent round their feet.
Sunlight stabbed down, and Elminster smiled. He was still in lands he'd never seen before, but more than one farmer along this rising road had assured him he was heading toward the Riven Stone.
Out of habit El glanced back to see if anyone was following him, then up at the sky, taking bird-shape had been a favorite tactic of elf mages who didn't look with friendly eyes on the first human who'd walked into their cozy midst, and changed Cormanthyr forever. Right now, however, both places seemed empty of foes-or any living creature, for that matter.
Briefly El wondered how far along the road those two bumbling mages had gotten to yestereve on their recalcitrant mules. He chuckled. The way Mystra's whims ran, no doubt he'd find out soon enough.
The sky was blue and clear, and a brisk wind blew just this side of chilly, a grand day for walking, and the last prince of Athalantar was enjoying it. Rolling farm fields with rubblestone walls spread out on either side of the road, here and there, boulders too big to be moved thrust up out of the tillage like tomb markers or the snouts of gigantic, petrified monsters of the underearth….
He was obviously remembering too many bards' ballads, and too few hours of plowing and haying. The air had that wet, earthy smell of fresh-plowed land, and if a certain Athalantan had to walk Toril alone, days like these at least made one feel alive and not a doddering survivor staggering toward a waiting grave.