Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [129]
"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 Faerun 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," Myrjala 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 Faerun 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