Part 24 (2/2)
El waved that away as they sank to the cavern floor together. ”My apologies,” she said, ”for working too powerful an inferno for this s.p.a.ce-”
Myrjala smiled, and dismissed those words with a wave of her own. ”This was what I intended. You followed my instructions 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 toward 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 attention 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 mastered sorcery feels each magic, almost as a living thing, and so can control its effects precisely, using it in original and unexpected 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 Mystra to empower you, I see that attunement in every magic, but that's a feel for the G.o.ddess 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 answering 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 lightning 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 gla.s.sy-smooth stone that bristled with upswept 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 cl.u.s.ter 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: inscriptions 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 writings-and then, with a sudden touch of fear, saw wisps of radiance 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 disturb 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 descended 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 foolish 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed beyond death by means of my art. I understand 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 crumbling, 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s beyond death.”
”Why,” asked Elmara softly, ”would anyone want to pa.s.s beyond death?”
”To live forever ... or to finish a task that drives and consumes 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 Netherese 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 floating skull, bobbing inches away from her nose. She leapt back with a little cry. The sorcerer sighed again.
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