Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [83]
The dragon stretched out gigantic wings with a creak and a sigh and inclined its head until one wise old eye regarded the goddess. Its voice was a purr so deep that the front of the stone house shivered. "As did all the others… those many, many others. Having the skill doesn't mean one must or will use it rightly, and take the true path."
"True," Mystra answered, a certain soft bitterness in her tone, and then she smiled and laid a hand on its scales. "My thanks, faithful friend. Until next we fly together."
As gently as if it were brushing her with a feather, the dragon stroked her cheek with one massive claw. Then it drew in its wings and melted, dwindling down into the form of a bent, wrinkled white-haired woman with bright green eyes. Without a backward glance, the priestess went into the temple, moving with the slow gait and bent back of age. Mystra sighed, turned away herself, and became a dazzling web of lights that whirled and spun, faster and faster-until she was gone.
*****
The sack Braer had given her proved to hold over twenty silver coins at the bottom, wrapped in a scrap of hide. That was not so many that she could afford to hurl them away for a warm bed every night, at least before the deep snows came down on the world. Hedges and thickets were her bedchambers, but Elmara usually warmed herself of evenings at an inn with a hot meal and a seat as close to the hearth as she could manage. Lone young women walking the roads were few, but conjuring a little mage-fire and looking mysterious always kept any over-amorous local men at a distance.
This night found her in the latest house of raised flagons, somewhere in the Mlembryn lands. To all who would listen, she spun tales of the glory of magic, tales drawn from what Braer and Helm and the streets of Hastarl had told her. Sometimes these tales won her a few drinks, and on nights when the gods smiled, someone else would tell stories of sorcery to top her own, and thereby tell her more of what most folk thought of magic… and win her new marvels to tell on evenings to come.
She had hopes of that happening this night; two men, at least, were edging forward in their chairs, itching to unburden themselves of something, as she warmed to the height of her most splendid tale. "… And the last the king and all his court saw of the nine Royal Wizards, they were standing on thin air, facing each other in a circle, already higher than the tallest turret of the castle, and rising!" Elmara drew breath dramatically, looked around at her rapt audience, and went on.
"Lightnings danced ever faster between their hands, weaving a web so bright that it hurt the eyes to look upon it-but the last thing the king saw, ere they rose out of sight, was a dragon appearing in the midst of those lightnings, fading in, he said…"
And then a curtain across a booth in the back of the room parted, and Elmara knew she was in trouble. The eager men turned hurriedly away, and the room filled with a sudden tension centered on a splendidly dressed, curl-bearded man who was striding across the room toward her. Rings gleamed on his fingers, and anger shone in his eyes.
"You! Outlander!"
Elmara raised a mild eyebrow. "Goodman?"
" 'Lord,' to you. I am Lord Mage Dunsteen, and I bid you take heed, wench!" The man drew himself up importantly, and Elmara knew that though he looked only at her, he was aware of everyone in the room. "The matters you so idly speak of are not fancies, but sorcery." The lord mage strutted grandly forward and said sharply, "Magic interests everyone with its power-but it is, and rightly, an art of secrets-secrets to be learned only by those fit to know them. If you are wise, you will cease your talk of sorcery at once."
At the end of his words, the room was very still, and into that silence, Elmara said quietly, "I was told to speak of magic, wherever I go."
"Oh? By whom?"
"A priestess of Mystra."
"And why," Lord Mage Dunsteen asked