"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 deepsp.a.w.n, it gives birth to creatures it has devoured-stirge after stirge after stirge, in this case."

"Where's the door to this room of monsters?" El asked suspiciously.

"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, h.o.a.rding learning like precious stones, to keep it from others. . . . Why not tell ye? Ye're interested, 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 reveal 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 learning for me by then."

"I-I'll try to return," El said uncertainly. Though she'd now mastered her fear, only the G.o.ds above knew if she'd live that long, or still be able to work magic ... and not be a twisted prisoner 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 transformed 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. Involuntarily she cried out at this destruction, but the wraith answered her with a laugh.

"What need have I of this spell? I can a.s.sume 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 darkness. 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," Myrjala 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, "G.o.ds smile upon ye, Myrjala," 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 Myrjala 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.

"Why didn't you strike at me?" her teacher asked, eyebrows raised. "Have you thought of some other way to shatter a dragontalons spell?"

Elmara spread her hands. "I couldn't think of any way not to hurt ye sorely," she said, "with the spells I have left. I knew I could take the harm and survive-just. The other way, I might have lost a teacher... and worse, a friend."

Myrjala looked into her eyes. "Yes," she agreed quietly, and waved her hand in an encircling gesture.

Abruptly, the two women were standing in a hollow in the lee of the hill, where their camp was. They were facing each other across a campfire that had lit itself; Myrjala's doing, of course.

Sometimes El mused about how little she knew of her tutor's life and powers, though time and again in their long training together she'd realized just how mighty in magic the sorceress known across Faerun as 'Darkeyes' must be. Right now, she felt a curious foreboding as she stared across the fire at Myrjala.

The older sorceress stood looking into the flames, sadness in her eyes. "Your work on the ravine was superlative . . . much better than my own when I was set the same task. You are stronger than Myrjala now in might-of-magic." She sighed, and added, "And now you must go adventuring on your own to try new ways of using spells, and of altering those you know to make them truly your own ... so you can come to full mastery of what you wield and not stand forever in the shadow of a mage-mentor."

Unshed tears glimmered in the dark eyes she raised to meet Elmara's horrified stare. "Otherwise," Myrjala added slowly, "the days and the years will pa.s.s, and both of us shall be the weaker for it-each forever clutching the other's skirts for support, neither growing in her own right."

Elmara stood staring at her in silence.

"Being a mage is a lonely thing," Myrjala said gently, "and this is why. Do you hear my words and agree?"

Elmara looked at her, trembling, and sighed. "So we must part," she whispered, "and I must go on alone ... to face the magelords."

"You aren't ready to resume your vengeance yet. Live, and learn a little more first. Find me when you feel ready to challenge for the Stag Throne, and I'll aid you if I can. Yet if we do not part," Myrjala said softly, "you will have won nothing alone, and that you must do."

Silence hung heavily over the fire for a long time before Elmara nodded reluctantly. Then she said slowly, "There is a secret I have kept from ye; I would not have it lying between us longer. If we are to go separate ways, it is wrong to keep the truth from thee."

She undid the ties of her gown and let it fall. Myrjala watched as Elmara, standing nude in the firelight, murmured the few words she'd held in her memory since that day in the tomb-and her body changed. Myrjala let fall hands that had risen to weave a swift spell if need be, and stared across the fire at the naked man.

"This is my true self," the hawk-nosed man said slowly. "I am Elminster, son of Elthryn ... prince of Athalantar."

Myrjala regarded him soberly, her eyes very dark. "Why took you a woman's shape?"

"Mystra did this to me to hide me from magelords, for my likeness had become known to them ... and, I think, to force me to learn to see the world through a woman's eyes. When I tended ye, ye came to know me as a maid ... I feared that seeking my true form would upset thee and smash the trust between us."

Myrjala nodded. "I have come to love you," she said quietly, "but this-changes things."

"I love ye, too," Elminster said. "It is one of the reasons I... stayed a maid. I did not want to change what we share."

She came around the fire then, and embraced him. "Elminster-or Elmara, or whoever you are-come and eat, one last time. Nothing can change the good work we've done together."

It was dark, and the fire had died down low. Myrjala was a shadow across the flames as she turned her head and asked quietly, "Where will you go?"

Elminster shrugged. "I know not... west to see the Calishar, mayhap."

"The Calishar? Take care, Elminster-" her voice caught on the unfamiliar name, forming it with difficulty "-for Ilhundyl the Mad Mage holds sway there."

"I know. It's why I'll go. There's a score I must settle there. I can't go through life leaving everything unfinished."

"Many do."

"I am not many, and I cannot." He stared into the fire for a long time. "I will miss ye, Lady ... take care."

"G.o.ds keep you safe, too, Elminster." Then they both dissolved in tears and reached for each other.

When they parted, the next morn, both of them were weeping.

Ilhundyl let the lions into the maze when he saw the intruder-but they froze in midsnarl as the intruder's spells caught them. The hawk-nosed mage who'd paralyzed the beasts strode on without even slowing, finding his way unerringly through the illusory walls and around portal-traps to stalk across the terrace before the Great Gate, toward the hidden door. Ilhundyl's lips thinned, and he spoke words he never thought he'd have to use.

Stone statues turned, creaking. Clouds of dust fell from their joints as lightings leapt from their palms. The blue bolts leapt at the hawk-nosed man, who ignored them. The lightnings struck something unseen around the walking man and encircled it, crackling harmlessly.

One of Ilhundyl's long-fingered hands tapped the table before him. Then he raised the other hand, made a certain gesture, and muttered something. Golems stepped out of the solid stone walls of the Castle of Sorcery and lumbered toward the walking wizard. As they came, the lone intruder spoke an incantation. The air in front of the hawk-nosed stranger was suddenly full of whirling blades. In a flashing cloud, they spun over to strike sparks from the armored colossi-who strode stiffly and ponderously through the storm of steel.

Ilhundyl watched the scene expressionlessly, then leaned forward to ring a bell on his table. When a young woman in livery hurried in, face anxious, he said in calm, cold tones, "Order all the archers to the wall by the Great Gate. They are to bring down the intruder by any means necessary."

She hurried out as the golems closed in on the intruder, lifting ma.s.sive arms to smash him like a rotten grape against the stones. The wizard raised his hands. Invisible forces cut a slice of stone away, severing one moving leg from its foot, and slowly, but with awesome, quickening force, the first golem fell.

The Castle of Sorcery rocked, and Ilhundyl started up from his seat in rage, in time to see the second golem fall over the broken remnants of the first, and topple in its turn.

G.o.ds take this intruder! He was perilously close to the walls already. Where were those archers? And then arrows lashed on the terrace like hard-driven black hail, and the Mad Mage smiled as the wizard's body jerked, spun around, and fell, transfixed.

Ilhundyl's smile collapsed into a frown as the screaming body was suddenly upright again. Another arrow took it through the head, which flopped loosely, and the corpse reeled and fell headlong, only to appear upright again with no shaft standing out of its mouth. Two arrows sped into it and the body spun, legs kicking-to jerk erect again in different garb....

"Stop!" Ilhundyl snarled. "Stop firing!" His hands stabbed for the bell, knowing it was too late. By the time his orders were heard and relayed, all the archers were dead. His foe was using some spell that switched one person for another, in a double teleport!

That was a spell he had to learn... this young mage must be taken alive. Or at least destroyed in a way that left his spell-book intact.

Ilhundyl strode out of the room and down the Wind Cavern, where smooth shapes of gla.s.s stood on all sides, pierced by many holes that sang mournful songs when the wind blew. Taking down this mage might cost him all of his Winged Hands- but it would be done, whatever the price. He could always make more....

He was still a few hurrying paces short of the archway that led into the north tower when the horned suit of armor beside it clanked down from its pedestal and strode toward him, raising its weapons. Ilhundyl spoke a soft word and turned one of the rings on his hand, then cast a spell with a few swift, snarled phrases. Acid burst out from between his fingers in a sphere of acrid purple flames that expanded as it flew. The hissing sphere crashed over the armor and spattered to the floor beyond. Smoke rose from flagstones as it ate away at them; the molten blobs that had been the armor crashed down into the widening pits in the stone, breaking into vapors and droplets.

Another suit of armor was already coming through the door from the next chamber. Ilhundyl sighed at this childishness and hurled his second-and last-acid sphere spell. There was a flash this time as the purple flames struck something in the air and rebounded on the master of the Calishar. Ilhundyl had time for a single pace back before the acid drenched him.

Smoke hissed, and Ilhundyl fell without a sound, dwindling into vapor rather than blood and bone. Out of the air on the far side of the gallery, the Mad Mage faded back into view, and said scornfully, "Fool! Think yourself the only wizard in all Faerun to use images and spells of deceit?"

He waved an imperious hand, and stone spikes suddenly erupted from the air to his right. He pointed, and obediently they flew toward the armored figure. Long before they reached it some force dragged them aside-to smash through the many-curved gla.s.s figures. Ilhundyl's wind sculptures toppled into ruin, and the Mad Mage's eyes blazed in fury.

"Seven months to fashion those!" he snarled. "Seven months!"

Rays of amber radiance leapt from the archwizard's out-thrust hands toward the armored figure. His target abruptly vanished, and the rays stabbed past where it had been, to touch the far wall of the chamber. The stones of the wall seemed to boil briefly as the rays sheared through them, opening a large hole, and continued on across empty air to bore through the distant wall of the north tower in the same manner. Outside, an unseen guard shouted a startled warning to his fellows.

The furious ruler of the Calishar was still staring at the destruction he'd caused when the armored figure winked into view a little behind him and well to the right, at the spot the stone spikes had appeared from-and its armored fists swung down, striking apparently empty air with solid smacks. The visible Ilhundyl fell to the floor without a sound and winked out of existence. An instant later, the Mad Mage reappeared at the far end of the gallery in a blind, snarling fury. "You dare-?"

He growled out a stream of words that echoed and rolled with power, and the Castle of Sorcery shook around him. Impaling spikes shot up from the floor, transfixing the armored figure from below, and then with a thunderous roar, a score of stone blocks crashed down from the high ceiling and smashed the intruder flat. As the dust of their landings rolled lazily across the floor, wall-panels opened all along the gallery. From behind the panels drifted three dead-looking, rotting beholders, eyestalks questing stiffly back and forth for a foe. A glowing cage on a chain plunged down from a ceiling trapdoor, burst open as its spell-glow faded, and six winged green serpents boiled out of it, jaws snapping angrily as they swooped around the gallery, seeking prey. Here and there on the gallery floor, stone blocks turned over with slow uneasiness to reveal glowing magical glyphs.

The hard-eyed Mad Mage waited with hands raised to unleash more destruction as the chamber settled into slow silence. The undead eye tyrants floated menacingly about, finding nothing to turn their beams on, and the flying snakes darted excitedly here and there. One snake dived at Ilhundyl, and he crisped it in the air with a single muttered word. Silence fell again. Perhaps he really had managed to destroy the intruder.

The Mad Mage spoke another spell to raise the stone blocks from the shattered armor. They drifted upward obediently- and then rose to one side. Ilhundyl's jaw dropped. He watched in horror as the blocks, undead beholders, snakes, gla.s.s shards, and all began to move in a slow spiral before him.

"Cease!" Ilhundyl cried, and called up the strongest shatter-spell he knew. The spiral's rotation faltered for one breath-stopping moment. . . and then resumed, quickening until things were whirling rapidly around the chamber.

Ilhundyl backed away, for the first time in years knowing the cold taste of fear. More wind-sculptures shattered as the aerial maelstrom swept blocks or undead beholders through them. Their shards glittered in a rising circle to join the spiral, now sweeping down the gallery at Ilhundyl.

The Mad Mage backed away, then turned and ran, hands flashing through hasty and intricate spell-pa.s.ses. Abruptly there were running Ilhundyls all over the chamber, flickering here and there in a complex dance. The whirlwind swept them all up. One body was promptly dashed against a wall; it crumpled like a broken doll and was gone. Another Ilhundyl suddenly appeared on a balcony high in the gallery, and cast a glowing crystal down into the storm below. The gem flashed once-and in that flash of radiance it and all the whirling items vanished, leaving the chamber empty save for the shattered gla.s.s spires on their pedestals.

Ilhundyl looked down on them and said coldly, "Be revealed."

The hawk-nosed mage melted into view-on the balcony beside him, inside his protective spellshields!

Ilhundyl recoiled, frantically trying to think of a spell he could safely use against a foe so close. "Why have you come here?" he hissed.

The intruder's eyes met his own coldly. "Ye tricked me, hoping to send me to my death. Like the mages of Athalantar, ye rule by fear and brutal magical might, using thy spells to slay or maim folk-or entrap them in beast-shape."

"So? What do you want of me?"

"Such a question is more appropriately asked before attacking," Elminster replied dryly, and then answered, "Thy destruction. I would put an end to all mages who behave as ye do."

"Then you'll have to live a long, long time," said Ilhundyl softly, "and I've no interest in your doing so."

He spoke three words, his fingers moved-and lightning leapt from a shield set high on the far wall of the gallery. Its bright, many-stroked crackling web raked the balcony. Ilhundyl pulled at his magical shieldings as the blue-white bolts danced and spat around him, dragging them aside to expose his foe to the furious energies. The edge of the shield rolled back, lightnings snapping over it viciously, and the Mad Mage saw Elminster stagger.

The ruler of the Calishar roared in triumph and leveled his left hand to unleash a bolt from the ring on his middle finger. There was no way he could miss this upstart wizard, barely three paces away. His life-leeching bolt stabbed out-and rebounded!

Ilhundyl screamed as his own spell tore at his innards, and tried to flee, struggling toward the archway that led off the balcony. Then Elminster's hand touched the stone floor-and the balcony broke off and plunged down the wall. Ilhundyl fell with it, roaring out a desperate word.

A few feet from the floor, his magic took effect; their crashing plummet slowed to a gently drifting descent. In the tumult, neither man noticed a glowing, floating pair of eyes appear low down at one end of the gallery, to calmly survey the battle.

Ilhundyl turned to the wall and raised his hand again. Another ring winked. And the wall slowly sprouted a ma.s.sive arm, reaching out for Elminster with stony fingers. Elminster spat out a spell, and the hand shuddered in a burst of force and rock shards that hurled the hawk-nosed mage out of the settling balcony. He skidded across the floor, toppling another gla.s.s sculpture.

Ilhundyl snarled out an incantation, stabbing his thumbs forward at Elminster. The prince felt himself plucked up from amid the gla.s.s and thrown across the room. El spread his hands in a grand, sweeping gesture, and an instant before he would have smashed with bone-shattering force into the gallery wall, the wall suddenly wasn't there any more. With a grinding rumble, the ceiling began to fall. Ilhundyl stared up at tumbling stone blocks for a moment, and then broke into a run, gabbling the words of another spell.

Outside the Castle of Sorcery, Elminster drifted to the ground, upright and alert. His feet touched the stones of the terrace, he turned toward the north tower, and then felt slashing pain as something unseen cut him across the ribs!

It felt like spreading fire! El sprang back, doubling up in agony, and threw up his hands to protect his face. The next sweep of the invisible blade took the tip off one of his fingers. He could see its edge now, a shimmering line of force edged with his own blood. Ilhundyl faded into view behind it, grinning, and slashed down with his conjured blade again at Elminster's hands.