Saeraede wailed, flames streaming from her mouth, and fell away from Elminster, her mists receding into a standing cloud whose dark and despairing eyes pleaded with his for a few fleeting moments before it collapsed and dwindled away to whirling dust.
El was still staggering and coughing, his hands at his ravaged throat, when Azuth strode forward and unleashed a magic whose eerie green glow flooded the runes and the dust that had been Saeraede alike.
Like a gentle wave rolling up a beach, the god's spell spread out to the crevice Ilbryn had hidden in and every other last corner of the ravaged cavern. Then it flickered, turned a lustrous golden hue that made Beldrune gasp, and rose from the floor, leaving scoured emptiness behind.
Azuth strode through the rising magic without pause, caught hold of the reeling Elminster by the shoulders, and marched him one step farther. In mid-stride they vanished together...leaving three old mages gaping at a fallen throne in a shaft of sunlight in a pit in the forest that was suddenly silent and empty.
They took a few steps toward the place where so much death and sorcery had swirled...far enough to see that the runes were now an arc of seven pits of shivered stone...then stopped and looked at each other.
"They're gone an' all, eh?" Beldrune said suddenly. That's it...all that fury and struggle and in the space of a few breaths ... that's it. All done, and us left behind an' forgotten."
Tabarast of the Three Sung Curses raised elegantly white tufted eyebrows and asked, "You expected things to be different, this once?"
"We were worthy of a god's personal protection," Caladaster almost whispered. "He walked with us and shielded us when we were endangered...danger he did not share, or he'd never have been able to deal with that fireball as he did."
"That was something, wasn't it?" Beldrune chuckled. "Ah, I can see myself telling the younglings that... a little more pepper, indeed."
"I believe that's why he did it," Tabarast told him. "Yes, we were honored...and we're still alive, unlike that ghost sorceress and the elf … that's an achievement, right there."
They looked at each other again, and Beldrune scratched at his chin, cleared his throat and said, "Yes... ahem. Well. I think we can just walk out, there at the end where the fire burst out of the cavern, that way."
"I don't want to leave here just yet," Caladaster replied, kicking at the cracked edge of one of the pits where a rune had been. "I've never stood with folk of real power before, at a spot where important things happen … and I guess I never will again. While I'm here, I feel … alive."
"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.
Albaertin of Marsember
from A Small But Treasonous Chapbook
published in The Year of the Serpent
"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.