Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [87]
She was not a pretty woman. Her fierce hawk nose and dark, serious gaze made many a man and most maids draw back from her, and she rode garbed as a warrior in boots and breeches, avoiding the robes and airs of most mages. None of the Blades felt inclined to lure her to bed, even if the threat of defensive spells weren't hanging around her. Her first demand was for time to study the spellbooks Lhangaern would never read again… and the second was for a chance to use them.
The Blades granted her that, riding out to make red war on a band of brigands who oppressed that land. In the crumbling old keep the defeated band used as their stronghold, Elmara found wands they could not use and books of spells they could not read, and bore these out in triumph.
All the next winter, as the howling winds piled up snow deep and cold outside, the Blades sat before fires, sharpened their swords, and told restless tales of what bright deeds they'd done and what brighter things they would do when summer came again. Apart from them, the young sorceress studied.
Her eyes grew deep-set and heavy-lidded, and her body ever more gaunt. She squinted as she went about and used few words, her wits distant and confused-for all the world as if the spells baffled her. Yet she could conjure fires in rooms that the winter had chilled and light for them all to see by without enduring the smoke of fires and candles or the work of chopping firewood.
The Blades learned to keep out of her way, for their every plan brought from her an earnest torrent of moral questions: "Should we slay such a man? Is it right?" or "But what has the dragon done to us? Would it not be more prudent to leave it in peace?"
Winter passed, and the Blades took to the road again-and fell afoul of the Bright Shields, an arrogant and widely known band of lawless adventurers. They fought in the streets of Baerlith, and the dreams of several Blades died there. Elmara pleaded with the two Bright Shields mages who stood against her not to fight, but to share their spells, "laying the glories of magic before all."
The two mages laughed their derision, and hurled slaying spells-but the wizard of the Blades was no longer there. She reappeared behind the two and struck them down with the hilt of a dagger she held. Then she wept when the other Blades, over her protests, cut their throats while they lay senseless. "But they could have taught me so much!" the maid wailed. "And where is the honor in slaying those who lie asleep?"
Yet at the end of that day, the Bright Shields were no more, and the Blades took coins, armor, horses, and all for their own. Their sorceress found herself the owner of boots and belts and rings and rods and more that glowed with the deep blue of enchantments. She couldn't wait to use them but dared not try to wield most of them-yet. The Blades might think her a sorceress, but she was a priestess of Mystra, with no better magecraft than an eager but untutored apprentice… and having seen their hot tempers, she did not reveal this truth.
And so it went as the long hot summer passed. The Blades rode from triumph to triumph, saddlebags bulging with coins, throwing what riches they couldn't carry liberally into the laps of willing ladies wherever they went-all but their dark and serious sorceress, who kept apart, spending her nights wrestling with spells rather than wenches.
Then came the day Tarthe found a merchant's account of a trip across the high hills north of Ong Wood, and of a vale where griffons flew out of a lone keep and drove his band away. They were collared griffons, their breasts bearing shields with the mark of Ondil of the Many Spells.
That excited moment of decision, when they had all leapt at the thought of plundering the Floating Tower, seemed long ago now as they tethered their horses in the shadow of its grim and silent bulk.
Tarthe turned to the fierce-eyed woman with the wand. The sun gleamed