"Now!" El whispered, more to herself than to her teacher, and brought her trembling arms together.
Obediently the two huge spheres of flame moved, pinwheel¬ing across the cavern toward each other. Elmara took one care¬ful pace backward without looking away from the flames, and then another. It was as well to be far away when the two fiery spheres—touched!
There was a blinding flash of light, as tortured tongues of flame leapt wildly out in all directions; the cavern rocked with the force of the mighty blast. Heat rolled over Elmara, and the force of the explosion smashed into her, plucked her from her feet and hurled her spinning back into—nothing. The fury of the blast roared past her, and slowly died away. El found herself floating motionless in midair as the echoes of the explosion boomed and rolled around her and rocks and dust fell on her from the unseen ceiling far above.
"Myrjala?" she asked the darkness anxiously. "Teacher?"
"I'm fine," a calm voice replied from very near at hand, and El felt herself turning in the air to look into the dark, intent eyes of the older sorceress, who was floating upright in midair beside her. Myrjala's bare body was as dusty and sweat-dewed as her own; around them, the cavern was still uncomfortably hot.
Myrjala leaned forward and touched El's arm. They began to descend. "To protect us both," she explained, "I had to spin my spell shield around you, then make it pull me into it; my apolo¬gies if I startled you."
El waved that away as they sank to the cavern floor together. "My apologies," she said, "for working too powerful an inferno for this space—"
Myrjala smiled, and dismissed those words with a wave of her own. "This was what I intended. You followed my instruc¬tions perfectly—something many apprentices never manage in twice the years of study you've had."
"I had experience in following dictates in my time as a priestess," Elmara said, settling to the still-warm stone floor.
Myrjala shrugged. "As much as any adventurer-priestess, perhaps. You were given a goal, and forged your own way to¬ward it." She bent to pluck up her robe from the floor and mop her face with it. "True obedience is learned by folk who spend years drudging away at some endless task, with little hope of betterment or reward, following petty orders issued by small folk who've mastered the tyrant's whip or tongue without any real power to deserve such swagger."
"Was that thy experience?" El asked teasingly, and Myrjala rolled her eyes.
"More than once," she replied. "But seek not to divert my at¬tention from your schooling—you can hurl spells as well as some archmages, but you've not yet mastered them all." She leaned forward, speaking earnestly. "One who has truly mas¬tered sorcery feels each magic, almost as a living thing, and so can control its effects precisely, using it in original and unex¬pected ways or to modify the enchantments of others. I can tell when a pupil develops such a feel for a spell . . . and so far, you've acquired this intimate control over less than half the spells you cast."
Elmara nodded. "I'm not used to talking about magic in this way ... but I understand ye. Say on."
Myrjala nodded. "When you revert to prayer, calling on Mys¬tra to empower you, I see that attunement in every magic, but that's a feel for the goddess and the flow of raw spell-energy, not a mastery of the structure and direction of the unfolding magic."
"And how shall I acquire this mastery over all spells I use?"
"As always, there's only one way," Myrjala said, shrugging. "Practice."
"As in, 'practice until ye're sick of it,'" El said with a wry smile.
"Now you understand aright," Myrjala replied. Her answer¬ing smile was eager. "Let's see how well you can shape a chain lightning to strike and follow the light-spheres I'll conjure . . . green is untouched, and a change to amber means your light¬ning has found them."
Elmara groaned and gestured down at the bright rivulets of sweat on her dust-coated body. "Is there no rest?"
"Only in death," Myrjala replied soberly. "Only in death. Try not to remember that when most mages do ... too late."
*****
"Why have we come here?" Elmara asked, staring around into the chill, dank darkness. Myrjala laid a comforting hand on her arm.
"To learn," was all she said.
"Learn what, exactly?" El asked, looking around dubiously at inscriptions she could not read and strangely shaped stone coffers and chests of glassy-smooth stone that bristled with up¬swept horns. However odd the shapes she was seeing, she knew a tomb when she stood in one.
"When not to hurl spells and seek to destroy," Myrjala replied, voice echoing from a distant corner of the room. Motes of light suddenly danced and whirled in a cluster around her body—and when they died away, Myrjala was gone.
"Teacher?" El asked, more calmly than she felt. From the darkness near at hand there came an answer of sorts: inscrip¬tions that had been mere dark grooves in the stone walls and floor filled with sudden emerald light. El turned to face them, wondering if she could puzzle some meaning out of these writ-ings—and then, with a sudden touch of fear, saw wisps of radi¬ance rising from them, thickening and coiling to coalesce into...
Elmara hastily readied her mightiest destroying spell—and paused, waiting tensely.
In front of her, the wraith of a man was building itself out of the empty air—tall, thin, and regal, robed in strange garb adorned with upswept horns like the chests, and standing on nothingness well above the rune-graven floor. Eyes that were two emerald flames fixed Elmara with a powerful, deeply wise gaze, and a voice spoke in her head. "Why have ye come to dis¬turb my sleep?"
"To learn," El said quickly, not lowering her hands.
"Students seldom arrive with ready slaying spells," was the reply. "That is more often the style of those who come to steal." Vertical columns of emerald radiance suddenly leapt into being all over the chamber, and from the ceiling jumbled bones de¬scended into each shaft of light, to drift therein lazily. A score or more skulls stared at Elmara. She looked at them and then back at the wraith.
"These are what remains of thieves who've come here?"
"Indeed. They came seeking some glorious treasures of Netheril. .. but the only treasure that lies here is myself." The voice paused, and the wraith drifted a little nearer. "Does this change the purpose of thy visit?"
"I have been a thief, but I did not come here hoping to bear anything away but lessons," Elmara replied.
"I shall let ye keep that much," the cold voice replied.
"Let me keep lessons? Ye can deny them?"
"Of course. I mastered magic in Thyndlamdrivvar .. . not as the wizards of today seem to, plucking spells from tombs or fool¬ish tutors the same way small boys steal apples from others' trees."
"Who are ye?" El whispered, eyes straying to watch the skulls drift and dance.
"I now go by the name of Ander. Before I passed into this state, I was an archwizard of Netheril—but the city where I lived and the great works I wrought seem to have all vanished 'neath the claws of passing years. So much for striving ... and there's a valuable lesson for ye to bear away, mageling."
El frowned. "What have ye become?"
"I have passed beyond death by means of my art. I under¬stand from such conversations as these—so my knowledge may be clouded by untruths said to me—that all the wizards of today can manage is to preserve their bodies, shuffling about as crum¬bling, putrefying wreckage until they collapse altogether ... ye call them 'liches,' I believe?"
Elmara nodded uncertainly. "Aye."
The green eyes of the wraith glowed a little more brightly. "In my day, we mastered our bodies, so we can become solid or as ye see me now, and pass from one state to another at will. With long practice, one even learns to turn only a hand solid, and leave the rest unseen."
"Is this something that can be taught?"
The emerald eyes danced in mirth. "Aye, to those willing to pass beyond death."
"Why," asked Elmara softly, "would anyone want to pass be¬yond death?"
"To live forever ... or to finish a task that drives and con¬sumes one's days, as vengeance on magelords consumes thine ...or to—"
"Ye know that about me?"
"I can read thy thoughts, when ye are this close," the Nether¬ese wraithwizard replied.
Elmara stepped back, raising her hands with fresh resolve, and the undead sorcerer sighed in her mind.
"Nay, nay—cast not thy petty spell, mageling. I've worked ye no harm."
"Do ye feed on thoughts and memories?" El asked in sudden suspicion.
"Nay. I feed on life-force."
El took another step back, and felt a light touch on her shoulder. She turned and stared into the endless grin of a float¬ing skull, bobbing inches away from her nose. She leapt back with a little cry. The sorcerer sighed again.
"Not the life-force of intelligent beings, idiot. Think ye I've no morals, just because ye see bones and all the trappings of death? What is so evil about death? 'Tis something that befalls all of us."
"What life-force, then?" El asked.
"I have a creature imprisoned on the other side of that wall . . . called a deepspawn, it gives birth to creatures it has de¬voured—stirge after stirge after stirge, in this case."
"Where's the door to this room of monsters?" El asked suspi¬ciously.
"Door? What need have I of doors? Walls are no barrier to me."
"Why are ye revealing all this to me?"
"Ah, there speaks a living wizard, fearful and mistrustful of all others, jealous of power, hoarding learning like precious stones, to keep it from others. . . . Why not tell ye? Ye're inter¬ested, and I'm lonely. While we speak, I learn what I want to hear from your mind, so it matters not what we talk about."
"Ye know all about me?" El whispered, looking around for Myrjala.
"Aye—all thy secrets, and fears. Yet be at ease. I shan't re¬veal these to others, nor attack thee. Improbable as it seems, I can see ye truly did not intend to steal from me, or hurl magic against me."
"So now what will ye do with me?"
"Let ye go. Mind ye return, in ten seasons or so, and talk with Ander again. Thy mind'll have fresh memories and learn¬ing for me by then."
"I—I'll try to return," El said uncertainly. Though she'd now mastered her fear, only the gods above knew if she'd live that long, or still be able to work magic ... and not be a twisted pris¬oner of some magelord or other.
"That's all any mortal can promise," Ander said, drifting nearer. "Take this gift from me, sith ye did not come to seize anything."
A shaft of light descended in front of Elmara's nose, and within it hung an open book, a book of circular pages, open at one. As El stared at the crawling runes on that page, they seemed to writhe and reform until she could suddenly read them. It was a spell that completely and permanently trans¬formed the gender of the wizard casting it. El swallowed. She'd almost grown used to being a woman, but. . . The page was tearing itself free of the book, right in front of her eyes. Invol¬untarily she cried out at this destruction, but the wraith an¬swered her with a laugh.
"What need have I of this spell? I can assume any solid form I choose! Take it!"
Numbly, El reached forth her hand into the light and took the page. As she did so, she was abruptly plunged into dark¬ness. The emerald glows, the wraithwizard, and the bones and all were gone.
All that remained in the silent room was her own feeble mage-fire, and the crumbling page in her hand. She stared around for a moment, and then carefully rolled the parchment and thrust it into her bodice.
Then she stiffened as a quiet chuckle sounded deep in her mind, followed by the words, Remember Ander, and return. I like thee, man-woman. El stood for a long time in the gloom, silent and unmoving, before she said, "And I thee, Ander. I will come back to visit thee." Then she walked to where Myrjala had disappeared. "Teacher?" she called. "Teacher?"
All was dark and silent. "Myrjala?" she said uncertainly, and at that name, motes of light sparkled into being in front of her, and she saw her tutor's dark and friendly eyes for a moment, before the light specks swirled around her too, and took her from the tomb.
*****
"This is very important to ye," El said, standing on a barren hill in the westernmost reaches of the Haunted Vale.
"And even more to you. This is your greatest test of all," Myr¬jala replied, "and if you succeed, you'll have done something more useful to Faerun than most mages ever accomplish. Be warned: this task will take at least a season, and drain some of your life-force."
"What is the task?"
Myrjala waved an arm at the ravine below them—a place of bare stones, weeds, and the ashen stumps of trees consumed in a long-ago fire. "Bring this place back to life, from where this spring rises to where it joins the Darthtil half a day's walk hence."
El stared at her. "Bring it to life with spells?"
Her teacher nodded.
"How shall I begin?"
"Ah," Myrjala said, rising into the air. "Trying, and setting right mistakes, and trying again is the best part of the task. I shall meet with ye on this spot, a year from now."
Then brightness flared about her, and she was gone.
El closed her mouth on now-useless protests and questions, then opened it again to say quietly, "Gods smile upon ye, Myr¬jala," and then looked down at the barren gully. Learning its ways had to be the beginning of the task.
*****
The dragon's talons enfolded Elmara. She calmly watched them close around her, doing nothing... and the gigantic claws faded away an instant before touching her. Then the quickening breeze blew the last spell-mists away, and she was facing Myr¬jala across a bare hilltop, on this rainy, windswept day in Eleint, Year of the Disappearing Dragons. Clouds raced past, low in the heavy gray sky.
