Part of him smirked, but through the lacy curtain of his mirth, El fought to quell ever-wilder excitement as he reached the bottom of the slope.
Only to lose his breath under a thrilling onslaught of fresh nerves as he felt the nearness of Mystra. Right ahead of him.
A weighty taste in the air came from the silent gloom behind a rising old tree that smelled of bear.
He didn’t even have time for a hint of fear before he saw a dark wall of fur that must be that beast shambling away along the line of trees, afire with Mystra’s power just as his own mind was.
Blue fire deepened in his brain, bringing certainty. The goddess of all magic was riding the bear’s mind just as he was riding Amarune’s.
Before El knew it, the moonlit trees were behind him, and he was crawling into bear-smelling darkness, over muddy, loose stones in a musky earthen den tapestried in descending roots and floored with gnawed old bones green with mold. As he crawled on, the ground dropped down into a stony cavern tall enough to stand in, aglow with Mystra’s fire.
Where two great, keen eyes he’d not seen for long centuries suddenly opened in the air in front of him.
Stealing away his breath again.
Elminster gazed into them, dumbstruck. Floating orbs of silver-blue fire regarded him with love and an excitement to match his own. Eyes he’d feared he’d never see again.
Amarune’s body lacked the feel for the Art that his aching old frame had possessed, but strain though he might, he could sense nothing false about what loomed before him. This was Mystra, though the heat in his mind remained a whispering echo of her full power.
Yet Our Lady of Mystery could easily hold back, cloaking her divine might to seem less than she was, and often-usually-did so. The eyes of deepening silver-blue fire were linked by softly coursing threads of the same radiance, lines like lightnings too gentle to crackle or spit, to… things strewn among rocks on the cavern floor.
A gauntlet with gems inset in the knuckles, a wand, a ring, other small items still hidden among the stones.
“Some blood of my mortal self spilled on these trifles of Art in the time before I became Mystra,” came the warm whisper of the goddess, both in his head and filling the cavern as if she were awakening in purring languor right beside his ear. “When you came nigh, El, the nearness of your mind alerted me. I am… preoccupied much, now.”
“Ye collected these things when ye were Midnight?” El blurted, trembling in a sudden chaos of wanting to know so much, yet not knowing what he dared ask. Her love-or at least fondness-was in his head and all around him, But something was subtly different in it, a distance that had not been there once, or rather one that had grown since Midnight had ascended to replace the Mystra his far younger self had first touched and tasted. Gone was the Mystra whose mind would long ago have merged with his to let them converse wordlessly, thoughts flashing.
Something was rising in him, something urgent. Before he quite knew what it was, he felt a flash of confusion and wonder, alarm strangled by awe. Amarune Aumar had awakened.
“I did,” the Lady of Magic replied as if nothing had happened, though fond regard washed out of her bright silver-blue fire into Amarune, causing a mental turmoil of astonished pleasure tinged with bewilderment. “The bear keeps them safe here, and I see through his eyes and guide him. It is good you came to me, El; I have many unfinished tasks for you.”
“L-lady?” Rune dared to blurt, then. “Who are you?”
“I,” the fire behind the eyes replied, as tenderly as any gently drawn sword, “am Mystra. I am magic.”
That last word became a thunderclap that raced away into unseen distances, only to return a rolling echo of deep, teeth-chattering force that made small stones fall and patter in the bear’s den, and the living roots groan and murmur all around them.
I am the fire in all things. That whisper came soft and calm, uttered only in the depths of their shared mind.
Then Mystra seemed to shake herself and added, “More than ever, El, I need your service. You I can truly trust, where so many others have turned from me or fallen. I can coerce, of course, but I will no longer make that mistake of lesser gods. The work of slaves is nigh worthless. For deeds to have true and lasting meaning, they must done willingly. Elminster Aumar, El mine, are you still mine? Are you with me?”
“As ever,” Elminster burst out, finding himself on the choking edge of tears in an instant. “Goddess, command me!”
Blue fire flooded through him, leaving him gasping, overwhelmed by Mystra’s pleased satisfaction.
“You must be my roving hands, skulking alone,” she said, eyes flashing with resolve, showing power enough to make Amarune’s mind cower. “I charge you to preserve magic wherever and whenever you can, keeping to the shadows as much as possible. Bold confrontations and invoking my name are clumsy marks of pride I would fain put behind me forever. So, El, be my-forgive me, Amarune-my Silent Shadow.”
Amarune fought to make her lips gasp; El was too distracted to relinquish control over them. He felt amusement washing through his mind on tides of blue fire as Rune managed her gasp, then gave him a rueful mental shove as she yielded her mouth back to him. It was some moments later before he managed to reply, “Lady, I will.”
“Employ disguises. Be the thief you once so ably were in Hastarl. Steal and copy magic, and then hide the copies so that, whatever befalls the originals, my Art will survive for those yet unborn.”
“Lady,” Elminster repeated, “I will.”
“Recruit new Chosen, and gather them here for me to confer with. I need many, and they must be different from my daughters and from each other, for that kinship was another misstep. Yet, we both know how rarely the needed loyalty and strength are found together-and above all, I must have those I can trust.”
El nodded, remembering Khelben and Sammaster, Laeral, and too many elven ladies who were all so willing, yet had faded so swiftly under the ravages of too much Art. Betrayals, defiances, independence, and weaknesses. Gone, now, all of them. Gone…
His Alassra, fled and mad somewhere, brain-burned by the roaring Blue Fire that was not Mystra, the plague of wild fury that had snuffed out the lives of thousands in a blazing instant, and many more in the days and seasons that had followed…
“Lady,” he said huskily, “I will.”
“Continue what you have done so well for so long: preserve and strengthen the Art-not magic bestowed by others, but magics worked by the caster’s own craft and knowledge.”
“Lady, I’ve done that for so long,” El told her truthfully, “that I do not know if I could now refrain from doing so. It is what I do.”
“It is. Yet the fall of Azoun heralded your newest task. It is time to do what Storm and Dove have both suggested. By any means you deem best-becoming their head or turning their leaders to my service-recruit Cormyr’s wizards of war. They must become the ready allies, helping hands, and spies for all my Chosen.”
All my Chosen?
Ah, Storm and Alassra, of course. If there were more, and Mystra desired him to know of them, she would reveal them…
She was right, of course. If he was to manage any of these tasks, he sorely needed new allies-with his own body lost to him, Alassra crazed, Storm’s magic all but gone, and the work already far more than he and Storm could handle.
“Soon enough, you’ll again have a body of your own,” Mystra murmured among El’s racing thoughts. She was reading them, of course, and “In the meantime,” the goddess whispered, “I can aid the one you have. You have been sorely wounded in my service.”
The silver-blue fires changed, and in the mind they were sharing, Amarune recoiled in fear.
The floating eyes flared larger, brighter… and nearer.
“Embrace me,” Mystra commanded.
Somewhat warily, with Amarune on the verge of whimpering at the back of their shared mind-an image of her fearful staring eyes flaring to outshine Mystra’s huge orbs-Elminster stepped forward and spread his arms wide.
The shield-sized eyes of silver-blue drifted together, merging in smooth silence right in front of him, and
