Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [81]
Elmara took a deep breath, then nodded. "When should I go?"
Braer smiled. "As soon as I've conjured up crying-towels for us both. Elves hate long, sad farewells even more than humans do."
El tried to laugh, but sudden tears welled up and burst forth.
"You see?" Braer said lightly, stepping forward to embrace her. Elmara saw tears in his own eyes before they embraced fiercely.
*****
The night was soft and still and deep blue overhead as El left the familiar shade of the forest and headed across the rolling hills toward distant Ladyhouse Falls. She felt suddenly naked, away from the sheltering trees, but fought down the urge to hurry. Folk in too much haste make excellent targets for outlaws with bows… and with no foe in sight and a heavy load of sausage, roast fowl, cheese, wine, and bread riding between her shoulder blades, she really had no need to hurry.
She struck the Hastarl road and almost immediately passed by the last marker cairn. It felt marvelous to set foot outside the Kingdom of the Stag for the first time in her life.
Elmara breathed deeply of the crisp air of fast-approaching leaf-fall, and looked at the land around as she went. She was wading through waist-deep brush, where the Great Fires had been set ten years agone to drive the elves out of all these lands and take them for men. But men huddled in ever-more-crowded cities and towns along the Delimbiyr, and summer by summer, the forest crept back to reclaim the hills. Soon the elves-more bitter and swifter with their arrows than they'd once been- would return, too.
Here shadowtops rose like a dark stand of halberds; there two hawks circled high in the clear air. She went on with joy in her step, and did not halt until it grew too dark to go on and the wolves began to howl.
*****
She'd expected more than a few ragged stone cottages and a tumbledown barn-but the road ran on and up through the trees toward a distant roar of water; this must be Ladyhouse Falls.
The road narrowed to a deep-rutted cart trail and turned east. A little path led off it into the trees, along which came the sound of water. Elmara took the way it offered and came out in a field broken by a huge, fire-scarred sheet of rock, with the rushing river hard by, and a high-peaked hall in front of her.
Ivy was thick on its old stones, and its door was dark, but to Elmara's mage-sight it blazed blue, the heart of a web of radiant lines sweeping out across the fields and down the trail she had walked upon. That strand blinked beneath her feet; she stepped aside hastily and advanced thereafter by walking on the mosses beside the trail.
She almost fell over the old woman in dark robes who was kneeling in the dirt, planting small yellow-green things and covering them over deeply.
"I was wondering if you'd stride right through my bed without seeing me at all," she said without looking up, her voice sharp-edged but amused.
Elmara stared, and then swallowed, finding herself shy. "My-pardon, Lady. In truth, I saw thee not. I seek-"
"The glories of Mystra, I know." The wrinkled hands patted another plant into its resting-place-like so many tiny graves,
El thought suddenly-and the white-haired head came up. Elmara found herself looking into two clear eyes of green flame that seemed to thrust right through her like two emerald blades. "Why?"
El found herself bereft of words. She opened her mouth twice, and then the third time blurted out, "I-Mystra spoke to me. She said it'd been a long time since she'd met such a one as me. She asked me to kneel to her, and I did." Unable to meet that bright gaze longer, Elmara looked away.
"Aye, so they all say. I suppose she told thee to worship her well."
"She wrote that, aye. I-"
"What has life taught thee thus far, young maid?"
Elmara raised steady blue-gray eyes to meet that glittering green gaze. The old woman's eyes seemed even brighter than before, but she was determined to hold