right beside the last prince of Athalantar. Floating with it was a dagger…and as he recognized it, it slowly turned and rose, offering its hilt to his hand.
El looked down at it, smiled, and shook his head. 'No. That's a way out I'll never take,' he said.
The dagger winked out of existence…and promptly reappeared off to Elminster's left, in the hand of a robed man, his back to El, who promptly drove it into the back of another robed man. The victim stiffened as his wound spat forth a blue radiance, and the blade of the murderer's dagger flared up into a blue flame that swiftly consumed it. The dying man turned, his wound leaking a trail of tiny stars, and El saw that it was Azuth. Face convulsed in pain, the god clawed with his bare hands at the face of the man who stabbed him… and the radiance leaking out of him showed El the face of the recoiling murderer. The slayer of Azuth was … Elminster.
'No!' El shouted, raking at the vision with his hands. 'Away!
'Such ambitions are not mine,' El snarled, 'and shall never be, if Mystra grant it so. I am content to walk Faerun, and know its ways more than I know the deep mysteries … for how can I truly appreciate the one without the other?'
The dying Azuth swirled away, and out of the stars that had been his blood strode a man El knew from memories not his own, spell-shared with him once in Myth Drannor. It was Raumark, a sorcerer-king of Netheril who'd survived the fall of that decadent realm to become one of the founders of Halruaa. Raumark the Mighty stood alone in a hall of stout white pillars and vast echoing spaces, at the top of a high dais, and his face was both pale and grim.
Carefully he cast a spinning whorl of disintegration, testing it by dragging it through one of the giant pillars. The ceiling sagged as the top of the sheered-off pillar fell away into heavy crashing shards to the unseen floor below. Raumark watched the collapse, stone-faced, and brought the whorl back to spin in front of him, just beyond the lip of the dais.
He nodded down at it, as if satisfied…and jumped through it.
The scene died with Raumark, to be replaced by a view of a dusty tomb. A man El did not recognize but somehow knew was a Chosen of Mystra was taking an old and tattered grimoire out of a shoulder sack and placing it into an opened casket, the same task El had done so often for the Lady of Mysteries.
This Chosen, however, was in the grip of a seething fury, his eyes blazing with near madness. He plucked a cobwebbed skull up out of the casket, gazed into its sightless eye sockets, and snarled at it, 'Spell after spell I just
He flung the skull back into its resting place and shoved the stone lid closed violently, the stony grating so loud that El winced. The Chosen strode forward with red fire in his eyes and said, 'To live forever…why not? Seize a healthy body, snuff out its mind, ride it to ruin, then take the next. I've had the spells for a long time… why not use them?'
He resumed his determined walk, fading like a ghost through Elminster…but when the Athalantan turned his head to watch what happened to the Chosen, the man was gone, and the tomb he'd left fast fading behind him.
'Such a waste,' El murmured, unshed tears glimmering in his eyes. 'Oh, Mystra, Lady Mine, must this go on? Torment me no more, but give me some sign. Am I worthy to serve you henceforth? Or are ye so displeased with me that I should ask ye for death? Lady, tell me!'
It was a shock to feel the sudden tingling of lips upon his…Mystra's lips, they must be, for at their touch the thrill of raw power surged through him, making him feel alert and vigorous and mighty.
Elminster opened his eyes, lifting his arms to embrace her…but the Lady of the Weave was no more than a dwindling face of light, beyond his reach and receding swiftly into the void. 'Lady?' he gasped almost despairingly, stretching out beseeching arms to her.
Mystra smiled. 'You must be patient,' her calm voice came quietly into his ear. 'I shall visit you properly in time to come, but I must set you a task for me, first: a long one, perhaps the most important you'll ever undertake.'
Her face changed, looking sad, and she added, 'Though I can foresee at least one other task that might be judged as important.'
'What task?' El blurted out. Mystra was little more than a twinkling star now.
'Soon,' she said soothingly. 'You shall know very soon. Now return to Faerun…and heal the first wounded being you meet.'
The darkness melted away, and El found himself in his clothes again, standing in the woods outside the ruins. A few paces away, two men were talking with an elf, all three of them sitting with their backs against the trunks of gnarled old trees. They broke off their converse to look up at him rather anxiously.
One of the mages suddenly sprouted a wand in his hand. Leveling it at Elminster, he asked coolly, 'And you would be…?'
El smiled and said, 'Dead long ago, Tenthar Taerhamoos, save for the fact that Mystra had other plans.'
The three mages blinked at him, and the elf asked rather hesitantly, 'You're the one they call Elminster, aren't you?'
'I am,' El replied, 'and the mission laid upon me is to heal ye.' Ignoring a suddenly displayed arsenal of wands and winking rings, he cast a healing spell upon Starsunder, then another on Umbregard.
He and Tenthar locked gazes as he finished his castings, and El inclined his head toward the ruins and asked,' 'Tis all done, then?'
'All but the drinking,' Tenthar replied…and there was suddenly a dusty bottle of wine in his hand. He rubbed its label, peered into it suspiciously, drew out its cork, sniffed, and smiled.
'Magic seems to be reliable once more,' he announced, holding out his other hand and watching four crystal goblets appear in it.
'Mystra's need is past, I think,' El told him. 'A testing is done, and many dark workers of magic have been culled.'
Tenthar frowned and said, 'It is the way of the cruel gods to take the best and brightest from us.'
Umbregard shrugged as he accepted a glass and watched several other bottles appear out of thin air. 'It is the way of gods to take us all,' he added, 'in the end.'
Starsunder said then, 'My thanks for the healing, Elminster. As to the way of gods, I believe none of us were made to live long. Elf, dwarf, human. , even, I think, our gods themselves. The passage of too many years does things to us, makes us mad … the losses-friends, lovers, family, favorite places…and the loneliness. For my kind, a reward awaits, but that doesn't make the tarrying here any less wrenching, it only gives us something to look at, beyond present pain.'
Elminster nodded slowly. 'There may well be truth in thy words.' He looked at Starsunder sidelong then and asked, 'Did we meet, however briefly, in Myth Drannor?'
The moon elf smiled. 'I was one of those who disagreed with the Coronal about admitting other races into the Fair City,' the elf admitted. 'I still do. It hastened our passing and gained us nothing but all our secrets stolen. And you were the one to break open the gates. I hated you and wished you dead. Had there been an easy, traceless way, I might have made things so.'
'What stayed your hand?' El asked softly.
'I took your measure, several times, at revels and in the Mythal, and after. And you were as we…alone, and striving as best you knew how. I salute you, human. You resisted our goading, conducted yourself with dignity, and did well. Your good deeds will outlive you.'
'My thanks,' Elminster replied, his eyes bright with tears as he leaned over to embrace the elf. 'To hear that means a lot.'
The Fair Maid was elbow-to-elbow crowded. It seemed the High Duke's latest idea was to send huge armed caravans along the perilous road. Ripplestones looked like a drovers' yard, with beasts bawling and on the move everywhere. Inside, shielded a trifle from the dust if not the din, Beldrune, Tabarast, and Caladaster were sharing a table with a haughty mage from the Sword Coast, brimming tankards in every hand. The talk was of spells and fell monsters vanquished and wizards who would not die rising from their tombs, and folk were crowding around to listen.
'Why, that's
