by Ed Greenwood
Elmara hastily readied her mightiest destroying spell—and paused, waiting tensely.
In front of her, the wraith of a man was building itself out of the empty air—tall, thin, and regal, robed in strange garb adorned with upswept horns like the chests, and standing on nothingness well above the rune-graven floor. Eyes that were two emerald flames fixed Elmara with a powerful, deeply wise gaze, and a voice spoke in her head. “Why have ye come to disturb my sleep?”
“To learn,” El said quickly, not lowering her hands.
“Students seldom arrive with ready slaying spells,” was the reply. “That is more often the style of those who come to steal.” Vertical columns of emerald radiance suddenly leaped into being all over the chamber, and from the ceiling jumbled bones descended into each shaft of light, to drift therein lazily. A score or more skulls stared at Elmara. She looked at them and then back at the wraith.
“These are what remains of thieves who’ve come here?”
“Indeed. They came seeking some glorious treasures of Netheril … but the only treasure that lies here is myself.” The voice paused, and the wraith drifted a little nearer. “Does this change the purpose of thy visit?”
“I have been a thief, but I did not come here hoping to bear anything away but lessons,” Elmara replied.
“I shall let ye keep that much,” the cold voice replied.
“Let me keep lessons? Ye can deny them?”
“Of course. I mastered magic in Thyndlamdrivvar … not as the wizards of today seem to, plucking spells from tombs or foolish tutors the same way small boys steal apples from others’ trees.”
“Who are ye?” El whispered, eyes straying to watch the skulls drift and dance.
“I now go by the name of Ander. Before I passed into this state, I was an archwizard of Netheril—but the city where I lived and the great works I wrought seem to have all vanished ’neath the claws of passing years. So much for striving … and there’s a valuable lesson for ye to bear away, mageling.”
El frowned. “What have ye become?”
“I have passed beyond death by means of my art. I understand from such conversations as these—so my knowledge may be clouded by untruths said to me—that all the wizards of today can manage is to preserve their bodies, shuffling about as crumbling, putrefying wreckage until they collapse altogether … ye call them ‘liches,’ I believe?”
Elmara nodded uncertainly. “Aye.”
The green eyes of the wraith glowed a little more brightly. “In my day, we mastered our bodies, so we can become solid or as ye see me now, and pass from one state to another at will. With long practice, one even learns to turn only a hand solid, and leave the rest unseen.”
“Is this something that can be taught?”
The emerald eyes danced in mirth. “Aye, to those willing to pass beyond death.”
“Why,” asked Elmara softly, “would anyone want to pass beyond death?”
“To live forever … or to finish a task that drives and consumes one’s days, as vengeance on magelords consumes thine … or to—”
“Ye know that about me?”
“I can read thy thoughts, when ye are this close,” the Netherese wraithwizard replied.
Elmara stepped back, raising her hands with fresh resolve, and the undead sorcerer sighed in her mind.
“Nay, nay—cast not thy petty spell, mageling. I’ve worked ye no harm.”
“Do ye feed on thoughts and memories?” El asked in sudden suspicion.
“Nay. I feed on life-force.”
El took another step back, and felt a light touch on her shoulder. She turned and stared into the endless grin of a floating skull, bobbing inches away from her nose. She leaped back with a little cry. The sorcerer sighed again.
“Not the life-force of intelligent beings, idiot. Think ye I’ve no morals, just because ye see bones and all the trappings of death? What is so evil about death? ’Tis something that befalls all of us.”
“What life-force, then?” El asked.
“I have a creature imprisoned on the other side of that wall called a deepspawn, it gives birth to creatures it has devoured—stirge after stirge after stirge, in this case.”
“Where’s the door to this room of monsters?” El asked suspiciously.
“Door? What need have I of doors? Walls are no barrier to me.”
“Why are ye revealing all this to me?”
“Ah, there speaks a living wizard, fearful and mistrustful of all others, jealous of power, hoarding learning like precious stones, to keep it from others.… Why not tell ye? Ye’re interested, and I’m lonely. While we speak, I learn what I want to hear from your mind, so it matters not what we talk about.”
“Ye know all about me?” El whispered, looking around for Myrjala.
“Aye—all thy secrets, and fears. Yet be at ease. I shan’t reveal these to others, nor attack thee. Improbable as it seems, I can see ye truly did not intend to steal from me, or hurl magic against me.”
“So now what will ye do with me?”
“Let ye go. Mind ye return, in ten seasons or so, and talk with Ander again. Thy mind’ll have fresh memories and learning for me by then.”
“I—I’ll try to return,” El said uncertainly. Though she’d now mastered her fear, only the gods above knew if she’d live that long, or still be able to work magic … and not be a twisted prisoner of some magelord or other.
“That’s all any mortal can promise,” Ander said, drifting nearer. “Take this gift from me, sith ye did not come to seize anything.”
A shaft of light descended in front of Elmara’s nose, and within it hung an open book, a book of circular pages, open at one. As El stared at the crawling runes on that page, they seemed to writhe and reform until she could suddenly read them. It was a spell that completely and permanently transformed the gender of the wizard casting it. El swallowed. She’d almost grown used to being a woman, but … The page was tearing itself free of the book, right in front of her eyes. Involuntarily she cried out at this destruction, but the wraith answered her with a laugh.
“What need have I of this spell? I can assume any solid form I choose! Take it!”
Numbly, El reached forth her hand into the light and took the page. As she did so, she was abruptly plunged into darkness. The emerald glows, the wraithwizard, and the bones and all were gone.
All that remained in the silent room was her own feeble mage-fire, and the crumbling page in her hand. She stared around for a moment, and then carefully rolled the parchment and thrust it into her bodice.
Then she stiffened as a quiet chuckle sounded deep in her mind, followed by the words, Remember Ander, and return. I like thee, man-woman. El stood for a long time in the gloom, silent and unmoving, before she said, “And I thee, Ander. I will come back to visit thee.” Then she walked to where Myrjala had disappeared. “Teacher?” she called. “Teacher?”
All was dark and silent. “Myrjala?” she said uncertainly, and at that name, motes of light sparkled into being in front of her, and she saw her tutor’s dark and friendly eyes for a moment, before the light specks swirled around her too, and took her from the tomb.
“This is very important to ye,” El said, standing on a barren hill in the westernmost reaches of the Haunted Vale.
“And even more to you. This is your greatest test of all,” Myrjala replied, “and if you succeed, you’ll have done something more useful to Faerûn than most mages ever accomplish. Be warned: this task will take at least a season, and drain some of your life-force.”
“What is the task?”
Myrjala waved an arm at the ravine below them—a place of bare stones, weeds, and the ashen stumps of trees consumed in a long-ago fire. “Bring this place back to life, from where this spring rises to where it joins the Darthtil half a day’s walk hence.”
El stared at her “Bring it to life with spells?”
Her teacher nodded.
“How shall I begin?”
“Ah,” Myr
jala said, rising into the air. “Trying, and setting right mistakes, and trying again is the best part of the task. I shall meet with ye on this spot, a year from now.”
Then brightness flared about her, and she was gone.
El closed her mouth on now-useless protests and questions, then opened it again to say quietly, “Gods smile upon ye, Myrjala,” and then looked down at the barren gully. Learning its ways had to be the beginning of the task.
The dragon’s talons enfolded Elmara. She calmly watched them close around her, doing nothing … and the gigantic claws faded away an instant before touching her Then the quickening breeze blew the last spell-mists away, and she was facing Myrjala across a bare hilltop, on this rainy, windswept day in Eleint, Year of the Disappearing Dragons. Clouds raced past, low in the heavy gray sky.
“Why didn’t you strike at me?” her teacher asked, eyebrows raised. “Have you thought of some other way to shatter a dragontalons spell?”
Elmara spread her hands. “I couldn’t think of any way not to hurt ye sorely,” she said, “with the spells I have left. I knew I could take the harm and survive—just. The other way, I might have lost a teacher … and worse, a friend.”
Myrjala looked into her eyes. “Yes,” she agreed quietly, and waved her hand in an encircling gesture.
Abruptly, the two women were standing in a hollow in the lee of the hill, where their camp was. They were facing each other across a campfire that had lit itself; Myrjala’s doing, of course.
Sometimes El mused about how little she knew of her tutor’s life and powers, though time and again in their long training together she’d realized just how mighty in magic the sorceress known across Faerûn as ‘Darkeyes’ must be. Right now, she felt a curious foreboding as she stared across the fire at Myrjala.
The older sorceress stood looking into the flames, sadness in her eyes. “Your work on the ravine was superlative … much better than my own when I was set the same task. You are stronger than Myrjala now in might-of-magic.” She sighed, and added, “And now you must go adventuring on your own to try new ways of using spells, and of altering those you know to make them truly your own … so you can come to full mastery of what you wield and not stand forever in the shadow of a mage-mentor.”
Unshed tears glimmered in the dark eyes she raised to meet Elmara’s horrified stare. “Otherwise,” Myrjala added slowly, “the days and the years will pass, and both of us shall be the weaker for it—each forever clutching the other’s skirts for support, neither growing in her own right.”
Elmara stood staring at her in silence.
“Being a mage is a lonely thing,” Myrjala said gently, “and this is why. Do you hear my words and agree?”
Elmara looked at her, trembling, and sighed. “So we must part,” she whispered, “and I must go on alone … to face the magelords.”
“You aren’t ready to resume your vengeance yet. Live, and learn a little more first. Find me when you feel ready to challenge for the Stag Throne, and I’ll aid you if I can. Yet if we do not part,” Myrjala said softly, “you will have won nothing alone, and that you must do.”
Silence hung heavily over the fire for a long time before Elmara nodded reluctantly. Then she said slowly, “There is a secret I have kept from ye; I would not have it lying between us longer. If we are to go separate ways, it is wrong to keep the truth from thee.”
She undid the ties of her gown and let it fall. Myrjala watched as Elmara, standing nude in the firelight, murmured the few words she’d held in her memory since that day in the tomb—and her body changed. Myrjala let fall hands that had risen to weave a swift spell if need be, and stared across the fire at the naked man.
“This is my true self,” the hawk-nosed man said slowly. “I am Elminster, son of Elthryn … prince of Athalantar.”
Myrjala regarded him soberly, her eyes very dark. “Why took you a woman’s shape?”
“Mystra did this to me to hide me from magelords, for my likeness had become known to them … and, I think, to force me to learn to see the world through a woman’s eyes. When I tended ye, ye came to know me as a maid … I feared that seeking my true form would upset thee and smash the trust between us.”
Myrjala nodded. “I have come to love you,” she said quietly, “but this—changes things.”
“I love ye, too,” Elminster said. “It is one of the reasons I … stayed a maid. I did not want to change what we share.”
She came around the fire then, and embraced him. “Elminster—or Elmara, or whoever you are—come and eat, one last time. Nothing can change the good work we’ve done together.”
It was dark, and the fire had died down low. Myrjala was a shadow across the flames as she turned her head and asked quietly, “Where will you go?”
Elminster shrugged. “I know not … west to see the Calishar, mayhap.”
“The Calishar? Take care, Elminster—” her voice caught on the unfamiliar name, forming it with difficulty “—for Ilhundyl the Mad Mage holds sway there.”
“I know. It’s why I’ll go. There’s a score I must settle there. I can’t go through life leaving everything unfinished.”
“Many do.”
“I am not many, and I cannot.” He stared into the fire for a long time. “I will miss ye, Lady … take care.”
“Gods keep you safe, too, Elminster.” Then they both dissolved in tears and reached for each other.
When they parted, the next morn, both of them were weeping.
Ilhundyl let the lions into the maze when he saw the intruder—but they froze in midsnarl as the intruder’s spells caught them. The hawk-nosed mage who’d paralyzed the beasts strode on without even slowing, finding his way unerringly through the illusory walls and around portal-traps to stalk across the terrace before the Great Gate, toward the hidden door. Ilhundyl’s lips thinned, and he spoke words he never thought he’d have to use.
Stone statues turned, creaking. Clouds of dust fell from their joints as lightings leaped from their palms. The blue bolts leaped at the hawk-nosed man, who ignored them. The lightnings struck something unseen around the walking man and encircled it, crackling harmlessly.
One of Ilhundyl’s long-fingered hands tapped the table before him. Then he raised the other hand, made a certain gesture, and muttered something. Golems stepped out of the solid stone walls of the Castle of Sorcery and lumbered toward the walking wizard. As they came, the lone intruder spoke an incantation. The air in front of the hawk-nosed stranger was suddenly full of whirling blades. In a flashing cloud, they spun over to strike sparks from the armored colossi—who strode stiffly and ponderously through the storm of steel.
Ilhundyl watched the scene expressionlessly, then leaned forward to ring a bell on his table. When a young woman in livery hurried in, face anxious, he said in calm, cold tones, “Order all the archers to the wall by the Great Gate. They are to bring down the intruder by any means necessary.”
She hurried out as the golems closed in on the intruder, lifting massive arms to smash him like a rotten grape against the stones. The wizard raised his hands. Invisible forces cut a slice of stone away, severing one moving leg from its foot, and slowly, but with awesome, quickening force, the first golem fell.
The Castle of Sorcery rocked, and Ilhundyl started up from his seat in rage, in time to see the second golem fall over the broken remnants of the first, and topple in its turn.
Gods take this intruder! He was perilously close to the walls already. Where were those archers? And then arrows lashed on the terrace like hard-driven black hail, and the Mad Mage smiled as the wizard’s body jerked, spun around, and fell, transfixed.
Ilhundyl’s smile collapsed into a frown as the screaming body was suddenly upright again. Another arrow took it through the head, which flopped loosely, and the corpse reeled and fell headlong, only to appear upright again with no shaft standing out of its mouth. Two arrows sped into it and the body spun, legs kicking—to jerk erect again in different garb.…
�
�Stop!” Ilhundyl snarled. “Stop firing!” His hands stabbed for the bell, knowing it was too late. By the time his orders were heard and relayed, all the archers were dead. His foe was using some spell that switched one person or another, in a double teleport!
That was a spell he had to learn … this young mage must be taken alive. Or at least destroyed in a way that left his spellbook intact.
Ilhundyl strode out of the room and down the Wind Cavern, where smooth shapes of glass stood on all sides, pierced by many holes that sang mournful songs when the wind blew. Taking down this mage might cost him all of his Winged Hands—but it would be done, whatever the price. He could always make more.
He was still a few hurrying paces short of the archway that led into the north tower when the horned suit of armor beside it clanked down from its pedestal and strode toward him, raising its weapons. Ilhundyl spoke a soft word and turned one of the rings on his hand, then cast a spell with a few swift, snarled phrases. Acid burst out from between his fingers in a sphere of acrid purple flames that expanded as it flew. The hissing sphere crashed over the armor and spattered to the floor beyond. Smoke rose from flagstones as it ate away at them; the molten blobs that had been the armor crashed down into the widening pits in the stone, breaking into vapors and droplets.
Another suit of armor was already coming through the door from the next chamber. Ilhundyl sighed at this childishness and hurled his second—and last—acid sphere spell. There was a flash this time as the purple flames struck something in the air and rebounded on the master of the Calishar. Ilhundyl had time for a single pace back before the acid drenched him.
Smoke hissed, and Ilhundyl fell without a sound, dwindling into vapor rather than blood and bone. Out of the air on the far side of the gallery, the Mad Mage faded back into view, and said scornflilly, “Fool! Think yourself the only wizard in all Faerûn to use images and spells of deceit?”