The man's eyes narrowed, and he said even more coldly, "Prove yourself."
"Ye doubt me?" Elminster asked slowly. "Why, Dhaerivus, I recall my first magefair!" He nodded in reflection and added dryly, "Ye made a most fetching toad."
Dhaerivus flushed. "You know the rule," he said harshly, waving the staff. Lights began to race along its length, brightening the crystal sphere that topped it. With slow menace, the floating man brought that glowing end down to point at the Old Mage.
"Aye," Elminster replied. Then he wagged a finger back and forth and announced lightly, "Nice-ly!"
The staff that menaced them snapped back upright, forced away by the power of Elminster's sorcery. The sentinel who held it gaped at them in astonishment and fear before the muscles of his face rippled and lost their struggle against another dose of the Old Mage's spellcasting.
The magic made Dhaerivus giggle involuntarily for a few moments, then released him. His grin turned rapidly into a scowl of dark anger.
Elminster took no notice. "There ye go," he said jovially to the shaken sentinel as he urged his mount onward. "Happy magic!"
Storm looked back at the furious man as they topped the next ridge. The staff was flashing and flickering like a lightning storm at sea, and the sentinel was snarling and stamping angrily on the empty air. Storm glanced at Elminster and asked wonderingly, "You cast a cantrip’? Making him giggle is 'proving yourself?"
Elminster nodded. "A wizard must prove to a magefair sentinel only that he can work magic. Er, to keep the rabble out"
He rolled his eyes to show what he thought of that attitude and calmly urged his horse down through a tumble of boulders and long grass. "Guests like thee are exempt from the testing, but each mage is limited to only one such compatriot. No mage can avoid the test and be allowed into the fair. Generally, young bucks cast powerful explosions and the like, or exquisite and-ahem-voluptuous illusions, but in this case I, ah, well, ah … meant it as an insult"
Storm wrinkled her brow. "I see," she observed carefully. "I'm going to have to be very careful at this fair."
Elminster waved a hand. "Ah, nay, nay," he replied. "I must merely get a certain magical key from someone who isn't expected to be insane enough to bring it here-or to have anything at all to do with it-and then have a bit of fun. Certain Harpers asked me to come here to protect this friend I must meet. No doubt ye were asked to come along too-to keep a certain Old Mage out of trouble." He favored her with a level look. Storm smiled and nodded ruefully.
The Old Mage chuckled. "These magefairs are private little gatherings. I haven't been to one in years, and we're far enough from home that my face won't be well known. Certain rules govern those who attend, rules meant to keep things from sinking into a general spell-brawl, but ye'd do well to keep in mind that most everyone here can wield magic-quite well. Walk softly. Drink things that are offered to ye only if I am present and deem it wise. Draw thy magical blade only if ye must. Some come here to gain new spells, but most come to show off what they can do, like children at play. Cruel, overpowerful children, a lot of them."
He scratched at his beard and looked thoughtful. "As to those who work against us, the names and faces of their servants at the magefair are unknown to me." He grinned suddenly. "Suspect everyone, as usual, and ye should do all right."
"What is this key we seek?," Storm asked, "and why is it so valuable?"
Elminster shrugged. "It's precious only because of what it opens. Its form and purpose ye'11 learn soon enough- which is another way of saying I scarce remember what it looks like and haven't the faintest idea why, after so many years, its importance has risen so suddenly and sharply." He cast a dry look at her and added, "Mysterious enough for ye?"
Storm replied with a look that had, over the years, plunged more than one man into icy fear.
Unperturbed, the Old Mage smiled at her as they rode up the heather-clad slope of another ridge. "Sorry, my dear, but I got quite a lecture last time-from thee, as I recall- on speaking freely about all sorts of little details that should be kept secret in matters like this, so I'm flapping my jaws as little as I can this time around and acting as if only I know the great secret upon which the safety of the entire world rests-oh, there I go. Ye see, I just can't help myself. Tis so hard to do all this intrigue and world-saving with grim and solemn seriousness when ye've done it so often down the centuries. Now, where was I? Ah, yes--"
There were worse fates, Storm reminded herself with an inward smile, than traveling across half of Faerun with Elminster. To buoy her spirits, she spent some time trying to remember what some of them were.
That dark reverie took them across several scrub-covered ridges, to the lip of a deep, bowl-shaped valley. A narrow trail wound down into it from somewhere on their right, crossing in front of them to enter a grove of trees. The trees hid the rest of the valley from the two riders.
It was then that a man in rich purple robes sailed into view. Floated would be a more accurate term, since he perched serenely on a carpet that undulated through the air like an eager snake, following the narrow trail far below. And as the bard and wizard watched, the man on the flying carpet sailed into the trees. Their leaves promptly changed color from their former green to a bright coppery hue, and several voices could be heard, raised in cries of praise of the new arrival.
They had obviously reached the magefair.
Far off, on the heights that rose on the other side of the still-unseen valley, Storm saw balls of fire bursting in the air. Elminster followed the direction of her stare and said, "Ah, yes-the fireball-throwing contest, d'ye see? Mage-lings get all excited about it… something about impressing their peers. No doubt we'll end up there all too soon. They're allowed to challenge us older dweomercrafters, ye see, to prove their manly mettles by beating feeble dodderers. Er, womanly mettles too, mark ye, though many maids have sense enough to avoid such vulgar displays of power."
Storm raised an eyebrow. "How does one fireball impress more than another? As the saying goes, aren't all that hit you the same?"
The Old Mage shook his head patiently. "If a few words of the incantation are changed, the spell becomes more difficult to cast and the size and force of its blast mirrors the power and experience of the one throwing it. One wizard can boast that his is bigger than that of the next wizard, y'see. An archmage's firesphere can be quite impressive."
He paused meaningfully, then added, "I mean to get in and get out of the fair, mind ye, with a minimum of dallying. Tossing fire about is more a sport for the green and foolish. Try not to seek out trouble by challenging anyone. Stay close and speak not. It's safer."
And with these melodramatic words the Old Mage kicked his heels and sent his horse galloping down the steep track in reckless haste, raising dust. At the bottom, Elminster plunged his mount into a crowd of laughing, chatting mages. Storm, close on his heels, had time for one stare before she entered the assembled mages.
The gorge was full of folk standing shoulder to shoulder. Their robes formed a moving sea of wild colors, and the chatter was nearly deafening. There were men and women of all shapes, ages, and sizes-and a few whose gender the bard wasn't sure of. Traditional dark, flowing, wide-sleeved robes were amply in evidence, but most of the mages wore stranger, more colorful garments. Storm, who had seen much in the way of garb over many years of wandering, stared in wonder. It is widely held in Faerun-among non-mages, at least-that those who work Art are all, in varying degrees, crazy. In eccentricity of dress, Storm saw, this was certainly correct.
All manner of strange headpieces and body adornments bristled and sprouted around her, shimmering and sparkling and in some cases shifting shape in fluid movements. One lady mage wore nothing but a gigantic, many-feathered snake, which moved its slow coils continuously around her lithe body. A man nearby seemed clad only in dancing flames. The wizard he was speaking to wore a shifting, phosphorescent fungus, out of which grew small leafy ferns and thistles. Next to them stood a half-elven maiden clad in a flowing gown of gleaming, soft-polished gems strung upon many silken threads. She was arguing with a long-haired dwarf wearing furs and leather upon which a pair of insect-eating lizards crawled ceaselessly, long tongues darting. A snatch of their conversation came to Storm's ears:
"Well, what did the Thayan do then?"
"Blew up the entire castle, of course. What else?"
Other voices crowded in, drowning out the previous speakers. "What was that? Purple zombies? Why purple?"
"She was bored, I guess. You should have seen the prince's face the next morning. She made a dozen tiny red hands appear out of thin air and pinch him in all the places he had pinched her… in front of all the court, too!"
Elminster was riding steadily through the throng. He seemed to know where he was going. Storm followed, past a man who was balancing a full bottle of something dark and red on his large nose and protesting in muffled tones to those watching that he wasn't using any magic to help him. She looked away just before the bottle toppled and spilled all over him, but could not resist looking back at the damp result. She was careful not to smile.
"How many times must I tell thee? First you kiss, then cast the spell-or it stays a frog forever!"
Storm shook her head, trying to concentrate on Elminster and ignore such talk. A terrific din of conversation, strange music, humming, and weird little popping noises raged over the crowd. Wizards gestured to impress those they were speaking with, and varicolored smokes and many-hued globes of radiance obediently bobbed or writhed in the air over their heads. Enspelled birds sang complicated melodies, and some flew graceful aerial ballets. Storm peered this way and that, trying to see everything, watching for danger.
Everywhere folk stood talking, arguing, laughing, or dickering, with goblets and flagons of varying sizes and contents in their hands, or floating handily in midair at their elbows. Some sort of rule, Storm guessed, kept the mages themselves from flying, floating, or teleporting about. Mostly they just stood in groups, talking. Storm threaded her mount carefully among them. Three olive-hued tentacles slid out from under a mage's hood as she passed. Small, glittering eyes opened at their ends, surveyed her, and winked. She tried not to show her involuntary shudder as she rode on, past a man with bright green hair and beard who was juggling a ring of hand-sized balls of fire in the air. The lady mage he was trying to impress was in the act of stifling a yawn.
The next group was made up of old and wrinkled crones with cold dark eyes and sinister-looking black robes. They were chuckling and swigging beer from clear glass tankards that didn't seem to empty. "First babe I ever saw that was born with wings," one was saying delightedly. "Flew around the nursery, giggling, the little scamp. Well, the king nearly swallowed his crown, I tell thee!"
Storm left the women behind, riding across a little open space where rising smoke and ashes suggested someone had experienced a warm and possibly fatal accident very recently. Beyond it, she plunged into the chatter once again.
"You must understand, old friend, that taking the shape of a dragon is an experience that changes one forever-forever, I tell you!" A mage in florid pink and purple, lace at his wrists and throat, was underscoring this point by flicking a long, forked tongue at the mage he was speaking to-a wizardess with white, furry hair running down her arms and the backs of her hands. Her skin was a deeper purple than the garb of the wizard speaking to her. Her reply to his claims about dragonshaping was an eloquent snort.
Then Storm was threading her way past six enchantingly beautiful half-elven sorceresses, whose heads were bent together in low-voiced intrigue. One looked up alertly, only to relax and give the bard a relieved smile. The others, intent on deal-making, never saw her.
"Well, just change the name and the way you cast it, and he'll never know. I mean, anyone could have come up with a spell like that. Teach it to me, and I'll not tell where I got it. In return, I'll show you that trick of Tlaerune's, the one that makes men swoon and-"
Shaking her head, Storm hurried on through the magical bedlam, trying to catch up with the Old Mage. Where had he gone? She looked up and down the crowded gorge- there were hundreds of mages here! Yet, thanks to her keen eyes, she managed to find Elminster again. The Old Mage continued to cut through the gathered wizards without slowing or dismounting-until he came to a tree-shaded corner on the far, rocky wall of the gorge. There, in the dappled gloom, a short, stunningly beautiful lady mage was talking with five or six obviously smitten men of the Art.
Storm saw laughing black eyes, flowing black hair, and a gown whose scanty front seemed to be made of glowing, always-shifting flowers. Then the Old Mage vaulted, or rather fell, straight from his horse into the arms of the lady, with the words, "Duara! My dear1. Years have passed! Simply yearsl"
Dark eyes sparkled up into his, and the Old Mage's effusive greetings were temporarily stilled by a deep kiss. Slim hands went around his neck, stroked his tangle of white hair, and then moved downward, in a tight, passionate embrace.
After Elminster's glad greetings and the long kiss, Storm heard a low, purring voice replying enthusiastically. On the faces of the men around she saw astonishment, then anger, resignation, or disgust, and finally resigned disinterest. Storm also noticed Duara's fingers at the mage's belt, moving nimbly.
Other eyes had seen it, too-particularly those of a tall, hook-nosed man in a dark green velvet doublet with slashed and puffed sleeves. He'd been watching the Old Mage's affectionate greeting closely, his expression hidden by the smoke from his long, slim clay pipe.
When Elminster finally bid the smiling beauty a noisy adieu, the hook-nosed wizard let his pipe float by itself as he strode forward, gesturing wordlessly. In response, Elminster's pouch levitated upward and opened in midair. Silence fell among the mages standing near. It was obvious by their expressions that the green-clad wizard's spellwork was a serious breach of etiquette.
Storm half-drew her sword, but Elminster's bony hand stayed her firmly. In merry tones, he asked, "Lost thy magic, colleague? Want to borrow a cup of this or that?"