The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [59]
There, where someone was standing awaiting him. Mystra provides.
Elminster walked steadily on into the gap, a pleasant smile on his face despite the stirrings in him that his freedom to wander would end here…and darker forebodings.
Those misgivings were not lessened by what met his eyes. The figure ahead was human and very female. Alone and cloakless, dark-gowned, tall and sleek of figure, in a word, dangerous.
Had Elminster been standing in a certain dark hall in Tresset's Ringyl as a scepter fell to dust, rather than panting on a hilltop over the remains of a stag-headed shadow, he'd have seen this beautiful, dark-eyed sorceress before. As it was, he was looking into a pair of proud, cold dark eyes…did they hold a hint of mischief? Or was that suppressed mirth… or triumph?…for the first time.
Her legs, in black boots, were almost impossibly long. Her glossy black hair fell in an unbound flood that was longer. Her skin was like ivory, her features fine, just the pleasant side of angular. She carried herself with serene fearlessness, one long-fingered hand playing almost idly with a wand. Aye, trouble. The sort of sorceress folk cowered away from.
"Well met," she said, making of those words both a challenge and a husky promise, as her eyes raked him leisurely from muddy boots to untidy hair. "Do you work"…her tongue darted into view for an instant between parted lips…"magic?"
Elminster kept his gaze steady on those dark eyes as he bowed. Mindful of Azuth's directive, he replied, "A little."
"Good," the dark lady replied, making the word almost a caress. She moved the wand in her hand ever so slightly to catch his eyes, smiled, and said, "I'm looking for an apprentice. A faithful apprentice."
El didn't fill the silence she left after those words, so she spoke again, just a trifle more briskly. "I am Dasumia, and you are…?"
"Elminster is my name, Lady. Just Elminster." Now for the polite dismissal. "I believe my days as an apprentice are over. I serve…"
Silver fire suddenly surged inside him, its flare bringing back an image of the cracked stone ceiling of the best bedchamber in Fox Tower, and words of silver fire writing themselves across the ceiling, vivid in the darkness: "Serve the one called Dasumia." El swallowed.
"…ye, if ye'll have me," he concluded his sentence, aware of amused dark eyes staring deep into his soul.
"Yet I must tell ye: I serve Holy Mystra first and foremost."
The dark-eyed sorceress smiled almost lazily. "Yes, well…we all do," she said coyly, "don't we?"
"I'm sorry, Lady Dasumia," Elminster said gravely, "but ye must understand… I serve Her more closely than most. I am the One Who Walks."
Dasumia burst into silvery gales of laughter, throwing her head back and crowing her mirth until it echoed back off the stony walls flanking the two mages. "I'm sure you are," she said when she could speak again, gliding forward to pat Elminster's hand. "Do you know how many young mages seeking a reputation come to me claiming to be the One Who Walks? Well, I'll tell you…a dozen this last month, fully two score the month before that, snows and all, and one before you so far this month."
"Ah," Elminster replied, drawing himself up, "but they none of them were as handsome as me, were they?"
She burst out laughing again and impulsively hugged him. "A dream-vision told me to look for my apprentice here…but I never thought I'd find one who could make me laugh."
"Then yell have me?" El asked, giving no sign that he'd sensed her hug delivering many probing magics. More than one warm stirring in his innards told him Mystra's silver fire was hard at work countering hostile attempts to control and influence…and to leave behind at least three means of slaying him instantly by her uttering trigger words. Ah, but it was a wonderful thing to be a wizard. Almost as marvelous