Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [102]
Elmara slowed, eyeing the water's edge. Gray waves rolled endlessly up onto the pebbles, and then sucked them back. The water ahead was glowing where Mystra had walked above it.
Unbroken by the rolling waves, a shining path lay across the waters ahead of her. The goddess was growing distant now, still striding across the waves.
Gingerly, Elmara walked into the surf, and found her boots still dry. A fine mist covered her, but her feet did not plunge through the waters… she was walking on the waves! Emboldened, she began to hurry now, striding along in haste to catch up.
They were walking out to sea, leaving the island well behind. The breezes blew past, cool and steady, driving the sea to shore. Elmara hurried until her breath was coming in gasps, not quite daring to run on the moving waves… yet drew no closer to the glowing figure ahead.
El was just beginning to wonder where they were hurrying to when a cold, clear voice from just ahead of her said, "You have failed me."
Ahead, the glowing figure dimmed, fading quickly above the dark waves. Elmara started to run in earnest now, but the radiant waves in front of her grew darker and darker, until the path was gone, and the figure too-and she was suddenly walking on the water no more, but plunged into icy depths.
She rose, struggling, cold water crawling in her throat and nose as she coughed and thrashed… and a wave slapped her in the face. She spat out water and clawed her way around, so the next swell lifted her under the shoulders and carried her along.
Back toward the island, now only a dark spot on the running gray seas. She was alone in the chill waters, at night, far from land…
*****
In the breeze howling its way over the hilltop there came a sudden whirl of sparkling lights, rising up into a singing cloud of winking radiance. From its heart stepped a tall, dark-robed figure.
He strode to the bare stone block, looked down at it for a moment, and said coldly, "Rise!"
There was a sigh and a stirring from the stone in front of him, and wisps of pearly light began to stream from it, tugged by the quickening wind. The radiance swirled, thickened, and became a translucent figure-a woman who held a tome. She extended the book to the robed man, who stretched forth his hand in a quick gesture. Brief lightnings played around the book, and then died. Satisfied, the man took it.
The ghostly face leaned close. Its entreating whisper was almost a sob. "Now will ye let me rest, Mage Most Mighty?"
Ilhundyl nodded once. "For a time," he said curtly. "Now-go!"
The spirit's shadowy form wavered above the stone block, as if it were whipped in a gale, and her faint voice came again. "Who was the young mage, and what is her fate?"
"Death is her fate, and so she is nothing, of course," Ilhundyl said, and there was a clear edge of anger in his cold tones. "Go!"
The lich moaned and sank back into the stone; the last that could be seen of her before she faded utterly was a pair of spread, beseeching hands.
Ilhundyl ignored them, hefted the weighty book in his hands, and smiled coldly across the breezy night at the third hilltop, where only rubble remained of the shattered True Altar of Mystra. If he had learned one thing in all his years of spell work and ruthless advancement, it was that the Mistress of Magic valued magical might above all. Wherefore Ilhundyl proudly wore the "Mad Mage" title men whispered behind his back. Soon, soon he'd be the most powerful, the Magister over all Faerun-and then they'd be too busy screaming to whisper and work against him.
He stiffened, peering into the night. A blue flame was rising