Less than a breath later, Nuglar's jawbone dropped away from a wavering, wind-scoured skull...an instant before his skeleton collapsed into whirling dust, whipped together into crumbling oblivion with the three oxen.
With a loud, triumphant chorus of chiming, like many exultant bells being rung together, a larger, brighter whirlwind rose out of the lane and poured itself across Aerhiot's Field, leaving the muddy lane empty of all but a stout, well-worn goad-stick. It danced in the air in the whirling wake of the chiming mist for an eerie moment, then fell to the mud for other frightened farmers to find later.
A long time passed in the gloomy lane before squirrels meekly scampered and the birds dared to sing again.
The Riven Stone must be a place, or more likely a landmark...a rock cloven by a spring or winter ice. A feature he'd never heard of, but then there was a lot of Faerun he knew nothing about, yet.
Was Mystra going to make him walk over every stride of it?
Almost reeling in exhaustion, Elminster trudged up a grassy slope, trying to keep in sight of the road that had brought him to the Tower ... and was now taking him on away from it. Leaving the tower had been a matter of flat urgency, aye, but the Lady...or Azuth, speaking for her... knew he'd have to search for the Riven Stone. Well, then, he couldn't be expected to find it immediately.
That was good, because he could barely find the strength to put one foot in front of another any longer.
El took another two clumsy steps, found himself sliding back down the slope to the roadside, stumbled, and a short rushing while later, fetched up hard against a duskwood tree.
It felt good to lean against the comforting bulk of the tree, when he was so gods-forsaken weary... bark burned against his cheek, and El caught himself halfway along a sliding fall. Sprawling a-snore in the road wouldn't be a wise thing, in this land of daggers ready for unprotected throats.
There was no branch handy to cling to, to climb the tree or even keep himself on his feet... and speaking of that, his knees were starting to buckle ... ah, but wait. What had the Srinshee taught him about a tree-shaping spell? Some simple change in the incantation of one of the spells he was carrying, Thoaloat's Variant aye, that's what it had been called. "Doabro Thoaloat was a wily old goat"...and that little rhyme brought back the memory he needed: the change was thus.
It was possible that Elminster snored gently twice or thrice during the incantation, but the duskwood that appeared an instant later, leaning against an identical duskwood that had been there rather longer, preferred deep silence to snoring, and so peace fell by the roadside.
When he was in the steward's chamber, the wards always warned him. They almost blazed in great measure of approaching magic, this time, so Mardasper was through the door and standing behind his lectern with the diadem on his head, its eyepiece over his accursed eye, and the Lady Scepter on his head before the door opened...without any knock...and an elf mage stepped within, cloak swirling around him, and the gems set into the staff of living wood in his hand winking on and off in an ever-changing display. The elf met the steward's eye, let go of the staff...it hung upright in the air, its lights continuing to wink and twinkle...and watched for Mardasper's reaction with the faintest of sneers playing about his thin lips.
The steward took care not to look impressed or even interested and managed to add a faint air of dismissal to his visual examination of the newcomer. With elves, status and control were always issues. Push-push-shove, disdain, sniff, sneer ... well, not this day, by Holy Mystra! He looked young, but Mardasper knew that even without spells to alter the body or appearance, one of the Fair Folk could look this green and vigorous for centuries. He looked haughty...but then they all did, didn't they?
"Well met," he said, in carefully neutral tones. "Be it known that I am Mardasper, guardian of this shrine of Holy Mystra. Have you business here, traveler?"
"I do," the elf said coldly, stepping forward. The steward willed the eyepiece to lift and gave the newcomer the full benefit of his blazing gaze. The elf slowed, eyes narrowing a trifle, then came to a smooth halt, hand not...quite...touching the butts of a trio of wands sheathed at his hip.
Mardasper resisted the urge to smile tightly and asked carefully, "You venerate Holy Mystra, Lady of All Mysteries?" He used the diadem to truth-read, saving his own spells for any unpleasantness that might prove necessary.
The elf hesitated. "Betimes," he said at last, and that was truth. Mardasper suspected the newcomer meant that he'd gone on his knees to Mystra a time or two in conditions of great privacy, in hopes of gaining an edge over rival elf mages. No matter, here, it would suffice.
"All who enter here," the guardian said, raising the tip of the Lady Scepter just enough to make an elven eye flicker, "must obey me utterly and work no magic unbidden. Anyone who takes or damages even the smallest thing from within these walls forfeits his life, or at the least his freedom. You may rest within, and take water from the fount, but no food or anything else is provided...and you must surrender to me your name, and all written magic and enchanted items you carry, no matter how small or benign. They will be returned upon your departure."
"I think not," the elf said scornfully. "I've no intention of ever becoming any man's slave, nor of yielding items entrusted to me, long venerated in my family, into the hands of anyone else...least of all a human. Do you know who I am, steward?"
"One of the Fair Folk, almost certainly a mage and probably of Cormanthan lineage, on the young side-and greatly lacking in both prudence and diplomacy,' Mardasper replied bleakly. "Is there more I should know?" He caused the spell-gems on the diadem to awaken and flicker, reinforcing them with the aroused dazzle of the scepter. We may not all have blinking staves, youngling, he thought, but...
Elven eyes flashed green with anger and that thin mouth tightened like the jaws of a steel trap, but the elf said merely, "If I cannot proceed freely...no."
Mardasper shrugged, lifting his arms from the lectern to call the intruder's attention to the Lad) Scepter once more. He did not want a spell battle even against a feeble foe, and he didn't need the ward-warnings or the hovering staff to tell him this was no feeble foe.
The elf shrugged elaborately, made his cloak swirl as he ostentatiously turned to go, and let his gaze fall way from the steward as if the man with the scepter were a piece of crumbling statuary. In doing so, his eyes fell across the open register...and suddenly blazed as brightly as Mardasper's own accursed eye.
The elf whirled around again, surging forward like a striking snake...and Mardasper practically thrust the Scepter into his nose, snapping, "Have a care, sir!"
"This man!" the elf spat, stabbing a daggerlike finger onto the last name entered in the book. "Is he still here?
Mardasper looked into that incandescent gaze from inches away, trying to keep the fear out of his own eyes and knowing he was failing. He swallowed once then said...his voice surprisingly calm in his own ears..."No. He visited only briefly, this morn, departing not long ago. Headed west, I believe."
The elf snarled like an angry panther and whirled away again, heading for the door. The staff followed him, trailing black spell flames, two large green gems in its head coming alight to look uncannily like eyes.
"Would you like to leave a message for this Elminster, if he should stop at the tower again?" Mardasper asked in the grandest, most doom-laden voice he could manage, as the elf practically tore the door open. "Many do."
The elf turned in the doorway, and let the staff fly into his hand before he snapped, "Yes! Tell him Ilbryn Starym seeks him and would be pleased to find him prepared for our meeting." Then he stormed out, the door booming shut behind him. Its rolling thunders told the tale of the violence of its closing.
Mardasper stared at it until the wards told him the elf was gone. Then he ran a hand across his sweat-beaded brow and almost collapsed across the lectern in relief.
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!"