Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [127]
Elmara nodded. "I'm not used to talking about magic in this way… but I understand ye. Say on."
Myrjala 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…
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 leapt 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