Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [125]
It was very similar to the prayer-spell that Braer had 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 truly 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 her. "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 Faerun