"Ahhh!" Staggered, she stepped back, letting her hands fall. Everything was bright and blinding blue wherever she looked— was the whole world alive with magic?
"Yes," Braer replied calmly, reading her thoughts again. "At last you're able to see it. Now," he went on briskly, "you were still having a little trouble with casting a sphere of spells, were you not?"
She turned angry eyes on him, but recoiled again, astonished. The tall, dignified elf she knew stood watching her, but in the special sight the spell gave her was revealed ablaze with magic of great power, and the blue-white glow around him rose into the shadowy shape of a dragon. "Ye—ye're a dragon!"
"Sometimes," Braer shrugged, "I take that shape. But I'm truly an elf who's learned how to take on dragon shape . . . not the other way around. I'm the last reason the magelords did so much dragon hunting in Athalantar."
"The last reason?"
"The others," he said tightly, "are dead. They saw to it very ef¬ficiently."
"Oh," Elmara said quietly. "I'm sorry, Braer."
"Why?" he asked lightly. "You didn't do it—'tis the magelords who should be sorry ... and I and my kin are counting on you to make them so, someday."
Elmara drew herself up. "I intend to. Soon."
The elf shook his head. "No, lass, not yet. You aren't ready... and a single archmage, no matter how mighty, can't hope to suc¬ceed against all the magelords and their servant creatures, if they whelm against you." He smiled and added, "And you haven't even learned to be an archmage yet. Set aside revenge for a time. 'Tis best savored when one waits a long time for it, anyway."
Elmara sighed. "I may die of old age with the magelords still lording it over Athalantar."
"I've read that fear in your mind often, since we first met," Braer replied, "and I know it will drive you until your death—or theirs. It's why you must leave the High Forest before it starts to feel like a cage around you."
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 rush¬ing 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 cov¬ering them over deeply.
"I was wondering if you'd stride right through my bed with¬out 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. El¬mara 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 them with her own, and she did.
"I've learned how to hate, steal, grieve, and kill," she said. "I hope there's more to being a priestess of Mystra than that."
The wrinkled old mouth crooked. "For many, not much more. Let's see if we can do better with thee." She looked down at the bed in front of her and tapped thoughtfully at the loose earth.
"What must I do to begin?" Elmara asked, looking down at the dirt. There seemed to be nothing of interest there, but perhaps the priestess meant that she should tend plants, as Braer had wanted her to learn the ways of the woods. She looked around ... hadn't there been a shovel thrust into the earth nearby?
As if the old woman could read her thoughts (as of course she doubtless could, El thought wryly) the priestess shook her head. "After all these years," she said, "I've learned how to do this right, lass. The last thing I need is eager but careless hands mucking in or a young, impatient tongue asking me questions morn and even through. Nay, get ye gone."
"Gone?"
"Go and walk the world, lass; Mystra doesn't gather tooth¬less, chanting men or maids to kneel to stones carved in her seeming. All Faerun around us is Mystra's true temple."
She waved a bony hand. "Go and do as I bid, thus; and listen well, lass. Learn from mages, without yourself taking the title or spellhurling habits of a wizard. Spread word of the power of magic, its mysteries and lore; make folk you meet hunger to work magic themselves, and give those who seem most eager a taste of spellcasting, for no more payment than food and a place to sleep. Make maids and men into mages."
El frowned doubtfully. "How shall I know when I'm doing right—is there anything I should not do?"
The priestess shook her head. "Be guided by your own heart—but know that Mystra forbids nothing. Go and experi¬ence everything that can befall a man and a maid in Faerun. Everything"
El frowned again. Slowly, she turned away.
That sharp voice came again. "Sit down and eat first, fool-head. Bitterness lends the weak-witted wings . .. always try to make a stop to eat into a time to think, and you'll think more in a season than most think in all their days."
Elmara smiled slightly, threw her cloak back, and sat, reach¬ing for the shoulder sack Braer had given her.
The old woman shook her head again and snapped her fin¬gers. Out of nowhere, a wooden platter of steaming greens ap¬peared in front of El. Then a silver fork blinked into being above it and hung motionless in the air.
Reluctantly El reached out for it.
The old woman snorted. "Frightened of a little magic? A fine advocate of Mystra you'll be."
"I—have seen magic used to slay and destroy and rule through fear," Elmara said slowly. "Wherefore I'm wary of it." She took firm hold of the fork. "I did not choose to look upon Mystra—she came to me."
"Then be more grateful; some wizards dream of seeing her all their lives and die disappointed." The white-haired head bent to regard the dirt again. "If you hate or fear magic so much, why have you come here?"
Silence stretched. "To do a thing I am sworn to do," Elmara said finally, "I'll need strong magic ... and to understand what it is I wield."
"Well, then ... eat, and get you going. Mind you try some of that thinking I suggest."
"Thinking of—what?"
"That, I leave to you. Remember, Mystra forbids nothing."
"Think ... of everything?"
" 'Twould be a welcome change."
*****
The old woman watched until the young maid in the cloak was gone through the trees. Then she went on watching; a few trees were nothing to her.
Finally she turned and walked to the temple, growing as she went, her shape shifting and rising until a tall and shapely lady in shimmering, iridescent robes strolled to the temple door. She turned once more to look where Elmara had gone. Her eyes were dark and yet golden, and little flames danced in them.
"Seen enough?" The voice from the darkness within the door was a deep rumble.
Mystra tossed her head; long, glossy hair slithered and danced. "This could be the one. His mind has the width, and his heart the depth."
The temple rippled, flowed, and shifted, even as she had done, and split, revealing itself as a bronze dragon rising away from around a much smaller, stone house.
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, wrin¬kled 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 sil¬ver 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 El-mara 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 tur¬ret 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 ap¬pearing 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 ten¬sion 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 El¬mara 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, wher¬ever I go."
"Oh? By whom?"
"A priestess of Mystra."
