Out of the dawn mists it rose, dark and old and misshapen, more like a gigantic, many-fissured tree stump than a tower. The sleepless and stumbling man silently cursed Mystra's dictate to use no needless magic for perhaps the hundredth time and winced at the blisters his boots were giving him. It had been a long and weary way hence from the lands of the Lady of Shadows.
Aye, this was it: Moonshorn Tower, just as Her vision had shown him: relief-carved phases of the moon proceeded around the worn stone arch that framed its massive black, many-strapped and bolted door.
As he approached, that door opened and a yawning man stepped out, shuffled a short distance away from the tower, and emptied a chamber pot into a ditch or cesspit somewhere in the tall grass. As the pot-emptier straightened, El saw that the man was of middling years and possessed of raven-dark hair, good looks framed by razor-edged sideburns, one normal...and deep brown...eye, and one eye that blazed like a distant star, white and glowing.
He saw Elminster and stiffened in wary surprise for a moment before striding back to bar passage through the open door. "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?"
Elminster was too tired to indulge in witty repartee, but he noted with some satisfaction that the state of the morning sunlight touching the tower matched the vision granted to him last night... or early this morn ... or whenever. "I do," he replied simply.
"You venerate Holy Mystra, Lady of All Mysteries?"
Elminster smiled at the thought of how shocked this Mardasper would be if he knew just how intimately a certain falling-down-exhausted mage had venerated Mystra. "I do," he said again.
Mardasper gave him a hard look, that blazing eye stabbing out at the hawk-nosed Athalantan, and moved his hands in a tiny gesture that El knew to be a truth-sensing spell.
"All who enter here," the guardian said, gesturing with the chamber pot as if it was a scepter of office, "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 agree to all this," El told him. "My name is Elminster Aumar. Here's my spellbook and the sole item of magic I yet carry: a dagger that can be made to glow as one desires, bright or dim. It can also purify water and edibles it touches and is guarded against rusting, I know of no other powers."
“This is all?" the fire-eyed guardian demanded, staring intently into Elminster's face as he accepted the book and the sheathed dagger. "And 'Elminster' is your true and usual name?"
“This is all, and aye, Elminster I am called," the Athalantan replied.
Mardasper gestured that he should enter, and they passed into a small chamber, dark after the bright sunlight, that held a lectern and much dust. The guardian wrote down Elminster's name and the date in a ledger as large as some doors El had seen, and waved at one of three closed doors behind the lectern.
That stair leads to the upper levels, wherein are kept the writings you doubtless seek."
El inclined his head and replied wearily, "Have my thanks."
Writings I doubtless seek? he thought. Well, perhaps so....
He turned, his hand upon the pull-ring of the door, and asked, "Why else would a mage come to Moon-shorn Tower?"
Mardasper's head snapped up from the ledger, and his good eye blinked in surprise. The other one, El noticed, never closed.
"I know not," the guardian said, sounding almost embarrassed. "There's nothing else here."
"Why came ye here?" El asked gently.
The guardian locked eyes with him in silence for a time, then replied, "If my stewardship here is faithful and diligent for four years...two being already behind me...the priests of Mystra have promised to end the spell upon me that I cannot break." He pointed at his staring eye and added pointedly, "How I came to have this is a private matter. Ask no more on this, lest your welcome run out."
El nodded and opened the door. Probing magics sang and snarled around him for a moment. Then the darkness inside the door became a shrinking, receding web that melted away to reveal a smooth-worn, plain stone stair leading up. As the last prince of Athalantar set his hand upon its rail, an eye seemed to appear in the smooth stone just above his hand and wink at him.. but perhaps it was just his over-weary imagination. He went on up the stair.
"To work!" The balding, bearded mage in the stained and patched robe threw up the shutter and set its support bar firmly in the socket, letting sunlight spill into the room.
"Aye, Baerast," the younger wizard agreed, wrapping his hands in a cloth to keep dust from them before he caught up the next support bar, "to work it is. We've much to do, to be sure."
Tabarast of the Three Sung Curses peered over his spectacles a trifle severely and said, "The last time you made such enthusiastic utterance, dearest Droon, you spent the entire day with some Netherese chiming-ball child's toy, trying to make it roll by itself!"
"As it was meant to do," Beldrune of the Bent Finger replied, looking hurt. "Is that not why we labor here thus, Baerast? Is restoring and making sense of the scraps of elder magic not an exalted calling? Doth not Holy Mystra Herself smile betimes upon us?"
"Yes, yes, and aye besides," Tabarast said dismissively, waving away the argument like three-day-old feast table scraps. "Though I doubt overmuch if she was impressed by a failed effort to resurrect a toy." He hefted the last support bar. "Yet, passing on from that trifle, let us recollect together."
He thrust the last bar into its socket, settled it with a slap, and turned to the vast and uneven table that filled most of the room, in several places almost touching the massive and crammed bookshelves ranked along the walls.
Sixty or more untidy piles of tomes rose here and there from a carpet of scrolls, scraps of old parchment, and more recent notes that completely covered the table, in places the writings were three layers deep. The papers were held flat by a motley assortment of gems, ornate and aged rings, scraps of intricate wire or wrought metal that had once been parts of larger items, candle-topped skulls, and stranger things.
The two mages thrust out their hands above the pages and moved them in slow circles, as if a tingling in their fingertips would locate a passage they were seeking. Tabarast said slowly, "Cordorlar, writing in the failing days of Netheril... the dragonsblood experiments..." His hand shot out to grasp a particular parchment. "Here!"
Beldrune, frowning, said, "I was tracing a triple-delayed-blast fireball magic some loosejaw named Olbert claimed to have made by combining earlier magics from Lhabbartan, Iliymbrim Sharnult, and...and … agghh, the name's gone now." He looked up. "So tell me: what dragonsblood experiments? Stirring the stuff into potions? Drinking it? Setting it aflame?"
"Introducing it into one's own blood in hopes that it would bring a human wizard longevity, increased vigor, the same immunity to certain perils that some dragons enjoy, or even full-blown draconic powers," Tabarast replied. "Various mages of the time claimed to have enjoyed successes in all of those areas. Not that any of them survived or left later evidence we've found yet, to bear out any such claims." He sighed. "We've got to get into Candlekeep."
Beldrune smote his forehead and said, "That again? Baerast, I agree, wholeheartedly and with every waking scrap of my brain. We do indeed have to be able to look at the tomes in Candlekeep...but we need to do so freely, whenever thoughts take us hence, not in a single or skulking visit. I somehow doubt they'll accept us as the new co-Keepers of Candlekeep if we march in there and demand such access."