by Ed Greenwood
Carefully, El drew back, and retraced her steps in the night until she found a certain boulder she’d climbed often as a child. Shielded from anyone watching from the palisade, she cast a spell that turned her into a silent, drifting shadow, and went to the walls.
In this form, she could glide along swiftly, without worrying about noise. She hurried around the walls. They enclosed a square and were pierced by two gates. The gap under one of them was large enough for her to pass in shadow-shape … and she was inside. She reared up in the darkness of the wall and looked around hastily. This spell did not last long, and she had no desire to fight her way out of a camp defended by gods-alone-knew how many aroused armsmen.
For there were armsmen here in plenty: two barracksful, at least, by the look of things … guarding loggers, it seemed. Cut timber lay piled everywhere; Elmara shook her head sourly. If she were an angry elf mage, one fireball over the palisade would turn this torchlit camp into a huge funeral pyre. Perhaps someone should suggest it to them.
Later. She had work before her, as always. Where there are lots of armsmen, there were always priests of Tempus, or Helm, or Tyr, or Tyche, or all four … Tempus, at least.
The shadow scudded along behind the barracks and warehouses, seeking a corner where a sword would be standing upright in a wooden block as an altar. Ah … there. So where was the priest? Elmara drifted toward the nearest building. Within was a plain room hung with battered armor—trophies of Tempus, no doubt—and the unwashed man sleeping beneath them reeked of ale. If that was the priest, she thought in disgust, her venture here had failed, and she’d best be out and seeking the shrine to Chauntea before her spell ended.
But first … there was one splendid house in the center of the rest. The lair of the local magelords, doubtless, but she could hear a faint din of laughter and talk from this far off; perhaps they were drinking the night away … and a priest might be there.
The house had guards, but they were bored and resentful of the feasting within, and one soon strolled over to the other to share a jest. The shadow slipped through the spot where he’d stood and in at the door. Thence it ghosted past curtains and hurrying servants into a large, noisy room beyond.
A drifting globe of magical radiance competed with many candies to light up this grand chamber, which was crowded with men in rich robes and women in nothing but gems. All of this drunken company were lolling about on pillows and lounges, spilling as much wine as they were quaffing and talking far too loudly and grandly about what they’d do in the days and hours ahead, and how they’d do it.
To Elmara’s magesight, the place was awash in the blue light of magic, but an inner room, partly visible past one of the many open doors at the back of the chamber, glowed even more brightly. Not wanting to risk her shadow-shape being stripped from her by some defensive spell or ward, or being seen by someone in the room who had the power to pierce spell-disguises, El glided swiftly around the edge of the feast and made for the beckoning doorway.
The room beyond the door was richly furnished and so overlaid by spells that it seemed one thick blue murk to Elmara’s eyes. She stole quickly across the carpet and through an arch, into a bedchamber almost entirely filled by a huge canopied bed.
Now, if I were a mage and had lots of magic to hide, where would I … ? Under the bed, of course.
The skirts of the high bed were no barrier to a shadow, and the space within was almost another small room one could sit in. The blue glow was near blinding now, spilling from a chest and two coffers that sat beneath the bed. As Elmara bent forward to peer at them, her shadow-spell ran out, and she thumped down onto the dusty carpet on hands and knees. She froze, listening tensely—but there came no sound of alarm, or of anyone coming into the room.
The small coffer probably held gems and coins; the larger one and the chest were more likely to hold healing potions, if any were to be found here. There were apt to be some, if things she’d heard in Hastarl were true. With them, a magelord could rescue injured men and earn their gratitude, or bargain with them and force their service … and without them, a magelord could find himself at the mercy of priests and lesser men who might have healing magic, and could do the same to him.
Which chest or coffer held them, though? Elmara drew her dagger, and felt in the hair over her ear for one of the two lockpicks she still carried. A few deft turns and probes, and the lid of the coffer clicked once. She laid down on the floor beside the coffer, and carefully lifted the lid with the point of her dagger.
Nothing happened. Cautiously she raised her head to peer into it—and saw only coins. Bah!
She was working on the chest when someone came into the room—no, two people, a man who was laughing in anticipation and someone else. A maid for his pleasure, doubtless. The door slammed shut, and a bolt clacked into place.
The bed creaked just over Elmara’s head. Ducking involuntarily, she pursed her lips and paused in her work on the lock. It would make a loud clicking sound when she forced it open.
She did not have to wait very long—when the man was roaring with laughter at his own jest, he made more than enough noise to drown out the sound of the chest opening. Unloading it onto the carpet while the couple bounced and rolled around on the bed just above her was a long, sweaty business, but Elmara’s care was rewarded: along one side of the chest, under a robe that shimmered blue to her gaze with its own magic, were a row of metal tubes, each stoppered with a wax-sealed cork, and neatly labeled. One gave the power of flight, and the others were all for healing. Aye!
With a triumphant smile, El slid them into her boots and carefully repacked the chest, casting a longing look at the spellbook fastened into the lid. Nay; her task now was to begone from here, as fast as she could without raising an alarm.
Not so easily done. She could hardly hope to cast a spell right underneath a magelord—even a magelord in the throes of passion—without being heard.
And then she heard him grunt, above her head, and say, “Ahhh, yes, by all the gods! Now out, girl—out! I’ve work to do yet ere I sleep! Stay, mind—I’ll be back out for you later!” The bolt was opened, and then the door, and then she heard both being put back again.
Elmara tensed under the bed. She had a few slaying spells—but a sphere of flames is little use if one wants to survive a fight in a small room … still less if one wants to do it without alerting a fortress full of armed men.
She also had something smaller: a fleshflame. Hmmm.
And then the curtains in front of her were jerked aside, and a kneeling man thrust his head in under the bed, seeking his riches.
He stared in amazement at Elmara, as her hands shot out and grasped his head by both ears, drawing her toward him.
“Greetings,” she purred, murmured the few words that called up the magic, and kissed him.
Flame spat from her parted lips into the incoherently struggling magelord. He stiffened, clutched at her convulsively, and then sagged to the carpet, teeth clicking as his chin hit the floor.
Smoke drifted from the dead wizard’s mouth and ears as she dragged the chest over to him, opened it again, and left him kneeling with his head in it. When he was found, perhaps they’d think something inside it slew him.
Coolly, Elmara rose from under the bed. The door was closed and bolted. Good. She ducked back under the bed, and took out the spellbook. Flipping through it rapidly, she found the wizards’ spell she wanted.
It was very similar to the prayer-spell that Braer bad taught her. Kneeling with the book open before her, she prayed fervently to the Lady of Mysteries.
Brightness seemed to flare inside her—and abruptly she was standing just outside her ward in the meadow, the spellbook in her hands. “Thanks be, Mystra,” she told the stars, and went in.
The spicy scent of turtle soup wafted through the cave. Intent on keeping it from burning, Elmara barely heard the faint voice from behind her.
“Who—who are you?”
She turned to see the sorceress tr
uly awake for the first time. Large, hollow eyes stared into her own. The sorceress reached up a hand to brush matted hair aside, and that hand trembled. There must have been something on that crossbow quarrel. Even with the potions, the sorceress had been a long time recovering.
Elmara went on stirring the soup with a long bone—all that was left of a deer her spells had brought down days ago—and said, “Elmara of Athalantar. I … worship Mystra.” Those large eyes held her own as if clinging to a last crumbling handhold, and El added, “And I will be a foe of the magelords of this realm until they are all dead, or I am.”
The woman let out a long, shuddering breath, and leaned back against the wall of the cave. “Where—what place is this?”
“A cave in the north of Athalantar,” El told bet “I brought ye here more than a tenday ago, after I rescued ye from armsmen in the Haunted Vale. How came ye to be there, in a ring of quarrels?”
The woman shrugged. “I … was newly arrived in Athalantar, and met with a patrol of armsmen. They fled, gathered more of their fellows, and came to slay me. From some things they said, it seems they’re under orders to slay any wizards they meet who aren’t magelords. I was tired and careless … and was overwhelmed.”
She smiled and stretched out a hand to touch Elmara’s own. “My thanks,” she said softly, eyes very large and dark in her beautiful bone-white face. “I am Myrjala Talithyn, of Elvedarr in Ardeep. They call me ‘Darkeyes.’ ”
Elmara nodded. “Soup?”
“Please,” Myrjala said, sitting back against the cave wall. “I have been wandering,” she said slowly, “in my dreams, and have seen much.”
Elmara waited, but the sorceress said no more, so she dipped a drinking jack—all she had—into the soup, wiped its dripping flanks, and handed it to Myrjala. “What brought ye all the way to Athalantar?” she asked.
“I was riding overland to visit elven holds up the Unicorn Run when I first met with the armsmen, and they slew my horse. After, I walked to where you found me,” Myrjala replied, and looked around. “Where am I now?”
“Above the ruins of Heldon,” Elmara said simply, licking soup from her fingers.
Myrjala nodded, drank deep of the steaming soup, and shuddered at its heat. Then she raised her black, liquid eyes again to meet Elmara’s gaze, and said, “I owe you my life. What can I give you in return?”
Elmara looked down at her hands, and found them trembling with sudden excitement. She looked up, and blurted, “Train me. I know some spells, but I’m a priestess, not a mage. I need to master sorcery in my own right, to hope to hurl spells well enough to destroy the magelords.”
Myrjala’s dark brows arched upward at El’s last words, but she said only, “Tell me what you’ve mastered thus far.”
Elmara shrugged. “I’ve learned to blast foes, and to use their anger against them.… I can create and hurl fire, and jump from place to place, take shadow-shape, and rust or master steel. But I know nothing of wise spell-strategies against a clear-headed foe, or the details of just what most wizards’ spells do, or how one can best use one spell with another, or …”
Myrjala nodded. “You’ve learned much … most mages never even notice they lack such skills—and if someone dares point it out to them, they lash out in anger to slay the one who revealed it to them, rather than giving thanks.”
She took another sip of soup and added, “Aye, I’ll train you. Someone had better; there’re wild wizards in plenty out roaming Faerûn already. When you’ve come to trust me, you might tell me why you want to slay all the magelords in this land.”
Elmara’s thoughts raced. “Ah,” she began, “I …”
Myrjala held up a restraining hand. “Later,” she said with a smile. “When you’re ready.” She made a face, and added, “And when you’ve learned just how much salt to put into soup.”
They laughed together then, for the first time.
FOURTEEN
NO GREATER FOOL
Know this, mageling, and know it well: there is no greater fool than a wizard. The greater the mage, the greater the fool, because we who work magic live in a world of dreams, and chase dreams … and in the end, dreams undo us.
KHELBEN “BLACKSTAFF” ARUNSUN
WORDS TO WOULD-BE APPRENTICES
YEAR OF THE SWORD AND STARS
Fire was born, swirling into furious life where the air had been empty moments before. Swiftly it grew in two places in the huge cavern, until Elmara’s intent face was lit by two huge spheres of flame. A double-throated roar began, rising in tone and fury as the spinning spheres grew larger. El stared from one whirling conflagration to the other, sweat running down her face like water over rocks and dripping steadily from her chin. Across the chamber, Myrjala stood unmoving, watching expressionlessly. The twin fireballs grew even larger, seeming to pluck flames from the air as they rolled over and over.
“Now!” El whispered, more to herself than to her teacher, and brought her trembling arms together.
Obediently the two huge spheres of flame moved, pinwheeling across the cavern toward each other. Elmara took one careful pace backward without looking away from the flames, and then another. It was as well to be far away when the two fiery spheres—touched!
There was a blinding flash of light as tortured tongues of flame leaped wildly out in all directions; the cavern rocked with the force of the mighty blast. Heat rolled over Elmara, and the force of the explosion smashed into her, plucked her from her feet and hurled her spinning back into—nothing. The fury of the blast roared past her, and slowly died away. El found herself floating motionless in midair as the echoes of the explosion boomed and rolled around her and rocks and dust fell on her from the unseen ceiling far above.
“Myrjala?” she asked the darkness anxiously. “Teacher?”
“I’m fine,” a calm voice replied from very near at hand, and El felt herself turning in the air to look into the dark, intent eyes of the older sorceress, who was floating upright in midair beside her. Myrjala’s bare body was as dusty and sweat-dewed as her own; around them, the cavern was still uncomfortably hot.
Myrjala leaned forward and touched El’s arm. They began to descend. “To protect us both,” she explained, “I had to spin my spell shield around you, then make it pull me into it; my apologies if I startled you.”
El waved that away as they sank to the cavern floor together. “My apologies,” she said, “for working too powerful an inferno for this space—”
Myrjala smiled, and dismissed those words with a wave of her own. “This was what I intended. You followed my instructions perfectly—something many apprentices never manage in twice the years of study you’ve had.”
“I had experience in following dictates in my time as a priestess,” Elmara said, settling to the still-warm stone floor.
Myrjala shrugged. “As much as any adventurer-priestess, perhaps. You were given a goal, and forged your own way toward it.” She bent to pluck up her robe from the floor and mop her face with it. “True obedience is learned by folk who spend years drudging away at some endless task, with little hope of betterment or reward, following petty orders issued by small folk who’ve mastered the tyrant’s whip or tongue without any real power to deserve such swagger.”
“Was that thy experience?” El asked teasingly, and Myrjala rolled her eyes.
“More than once,” she replied. “But seek not to divert my attention from your schooling—you can hurl spells as well as some archmages, but you’ve not yet mastered them all.” She leaned forward, speaking earnestly. “One who has truly mastered sorcery feels each magic, almost as a living thing, and so can control its effects precisely, using it in original and unexpected ways or to modify the enchantments of others. I can tell when a pupil develops such a feel for a spell … and so far, you’ve acquired this intimate control over less than half the spells you cast.”
Elmara nodded. “I’m not used to talking about magic in this way … but I understand ye. Say on.”
Myr
jala nodded. “When you revert to prayer, calling on Mystra to empower you, I see that attunement in every magic, but that’s a feel for the goddess and the flow of raw spell-energy not a mastery of the structure and direction of the unfolding magic.”
“And how shall I acquire this mastery over all spells I use?”
“As always, there’s only one way,” Myrjala said, shrugging. “Practice.”
“As in, ‘practice until ye’re sick of it,’ ” El said with a wry smile.
“Now you understand aright,” Myrjala replied. Her answering smile was eager “Let’s see how well you can shape a chain lightning to strike and follow the light-spheres I’ll conjure … green is untouched, and a change to amber means your lightning has found them.”
Elmara groaned and gestured down at the bright rivulets of sweat on her dust-coated body. “Is there no rest?”
“Only in death,” Myrjala replied soberly. “Only in death. Try not to remember that when most mages do … too late.”
“Why have we come here?” Elmara asked, staring around into the chill, dank darkness. Myrjala laid a comforting hand on her arm.
“To learn,” was all she said.
“Learn what, exactly?” El asked, looking around dubiously at inscriptions she could not read and strangely shaped stone coffers and chests of glassy-smooth stone that bristled with upswept horns. However odd the shapes she was seeing, she knew a tomb when she stood in one.
“When not to hurl spells and seek to destroy,” Myrjala replied, voice echoing from a distant corner of the room. Motes of light suddenly danced and whirled in a cluster around her body—and when they died away, Myrjala was gone.
“Teacher?” El asked, more calmly than she felt. From the darkness near at hand there came an answer of sorts: inscriptions that had been mere dark grooves in the stone walls and floor filled with sudden emerald light. El turned to face them, wondering if she could puzzle some meaning out of these writings—and then, with a sudden touch of fear, saw wisps of radiance rising from them, thickening and coiling to coalesce into …