"Huh," Beldrune grunted, "she said that, an' look what happened to her."
Tabarast stumped forward and put his arms around Caladaster in a rough embrace, muttering, "I know just how you feel. We've got to go before dark, mind, and I'll want a tankard by then."
"A lot of tankards," Beldrune agreed.
"But somewhere quiet to sit and think, just us three," Tabarast added, almost fiercely. "I don't want to be sitting telling all the drunken farmers how we walked with a god this night, and have them laugh at us."
"Agreed," Caladaster said calmly, and turned away.
Beldrune stared at his back. "Where are you going?"
The old wizard reached the rubble-strewn bottom of the shaft and peered down at the stones. "I stood just here," he murmured, "and the god was … there." Though his voice was steady, even gruff, his cheeks were suddenly wet with tears.
"He protected us," he whispered. "He held back more magic than I've ever seen hurled before, in all my life, magic that turned the very rocks to empty air … for us, that we might live."
"Gods have to do that, y'see," Beldrune told him. "Someone has to see what they do and live to tell others. What's the good of all that power, otherwise?"
Caladaster looked at him with scorn, anger rising in his eyes, and stepped back from Beldrune. "Do you dare to laugh at divine…"
"Yes," Beldrune told him simply. "What's the good of being human, elsewise?"
Caladaster stared at him, mouth hanging open, for what seemed like a very long time. Then the old wizard swallowed deliberately, shook his head, and chuckled feebly. "I never saw things that way before," he said, almost admiringly. "Do you laugh at gods often?"
"One or twice a tenday," Beldrune said solemnly. "Thrice on high holy days, if someone reminds us when they are."
"Stand back, holy mocker," Tabarast said suddenly, waving at him. Beldrune raised his eyebrows in a silent question, but his old friend just waved a shooing hand at him and strode forward, adding, "Move those great booted hooves of yours, I said!"
"All right," Beldrune said easily, doing so, "so long as you tell me why."
Tabarast knelt in the rubble and tugged at something, a corner of bright cloth amid the stones. "Gems and scarlet fineweave?" he asked Faerun at large. "What have we here?"
His wrinkled old hands were already plucking stones aside and uncovering cloth with dexterous speed, as Beldrune went to one knee with a grunt and joined him at the task. Caladaster stood over them anxiously, afraid that, somehow, a ghostly sorceress would rise from these rags to menace them anew.
Beldrune grunted in appreciation as the red gown, with gem-adorned dragons crawling over both hips, was laid out in full…but he promptly plucked it up and handed it to Caladaster, growling as he waved at more cloth, beneath, "There's more!"
The daring black gown was greeted with an even louder grunt, but when the blue ruffles came into view and Tabarast stirred around in the stones beneath enough to be sure that these three garments were all they were likely to find, Beldrune's grunts turned into low whispers of curiosity. "Being as Azuth wasn't wearing them, that I saw, these must have come from her" he said.
Tabarast and Caladaster exchanged glances. "Being older and wiser than you," his old friend told him kindly, "we'd figured out that much already."
Beldrune stuck out his tongue in response to that and held up the blue gown for closer scrutiny.
"Do these hold power, do you think?" Tabarast asked, the black gown dangling from his fingers as Caladaster suppressed a smirk.
"Hmmph. Power or not, I'm not wearing this backless number," Beldrune replied, turning the blue ruffles around again to face him. "It goes down far enough to give the cool drafts more'n a bit of help, if you know what I mean…."
Twenty: Never Have So Many Owed So Much
Never before in the history of this fair realm have so many owed so much to the coffers of the king. Never fear but that he'll come collecting in short order…and his price shall be the lives of his debtors, in some foreign war or other. He'll call it a Crusade or something equally grand … but those who die in Cormyr's colors will be just as dead as if he'd called it a Raid To Pillage, or a Head Collecting Patrol. It is the way of kings to collect in blood. Only archmages can seize such payments more swiftly and recklessly.
"Doomtime," that deep voice boomed in Elminster's head. "Mind you make the right choices." Somehow, the Athalantan knew that Azuth was gone, and he was alone in the flood of blue sparks…the flood that he'd thought was Azuth…whirling him over and over and down … to a place of darkness, with a cold stone floor under his bare knees. He was naked, his gown and dagger and countless small items of magery gone somewhere in the whirling.
"Robbed by a god," he murmured and chuckled. His mirth left no echo behind, but what happened to it as it died away left him thinking he was somewhere underground … somewhere not all that large. His good feeling died soon after his chuckle, Elminster's innards felt…ravaged.
It was damp, and a chill was beginning to creep through him, but El did not rise from his knees. He felt weak and sick, and…when he tried to seek out magic or call up his spells…all of his powers as a Chosen and as a mage seemed to be gone.
He was just a man again, on his knees in a dark chamber somewhere. He knew that he should be despairing, but instead he felt at peace. He had seen far more years than most humans and done…so far as he could judge, at least by his own standards…fairly well. If it was time for death to come to him, so be it.
There were just the usual complaints: was it time for his death? What should he be doing? What was going on? Who was going to stop by and furnish him with answers to his every query…and when?
In all his life, there had only been one source for succor and guidance who wasn't certain to be long dead by now, or entombed and asleep he knew not where.. and that one source was the goddess who made him her Chosen.
"Oh, Mystra, ye've been my lover, my mother, my soul guide, my savior, and my teacher," Elminster said aloud. "Please, hear me now."
He hadn't really intended to pray … or perhaps he had, all along, but just not admitted it to himself. "I've been honored to serve ye," he told the listening darkness. "Ye've given me a splendid life, for which…as is the way of men…I've not thanked thee enough. I am content to face now whatever fate ye deem fitting for me, yet…as is the way of wizards…I wish to tell thee some things first."
He chuckled, and held up a hand. "Save thy spells and fury," he said." 'Tis only three things."
Elminster drew in a deep breath. "The first: thank ye for giving me the life ye have."
Was something moving in the gloom and shadows beyond where his eyes served him reliably?
He shrugged. What if something was? Alone, unclad, on his knees without magecraft to aid him, if something did approach him, this is how he'd have to greet it, and this was all he had to offer it.
"The second," El announced calmly. "Being thy Chosen is really what I want to spend out my days doing."
Those words echoed, where the darkness had muffled his words before. El frowned, then shrugged again and told the darkness earnestly, "The third, and most important to me to impart: Lady, I love thee."
As those words echoed, the darkness disgorged something that did move and reveal itself and loom all too clearly.
Something vast and monstrous and tentacled, slithered leisurely toward him.
"Was it a god?" Vaelam asked, white to the lips. Shrugs and panting were the first answers he got from his fellow Dreadspells, as they lay gasping in the hollow. Scraped and scratched by tree limbs in their run and thoroughly winded, they were only now shedding the heavy cloak of terror.