Briefly El wondered how far along the road those two bumbling mages had gotten to yestereve on their recalcitrant mules. He chuckled. The way Mystra's whims ran, no doubt he'd find out soon enough.
The sky was blue and clear, and a brisk wind blew just this side of chilly, a grand day for walking, and the last prince of Athalantar was enjoying it. Rolling farm fields with rubblestone walls spread out on either side of the road, here and there, boulders too big to be moved thrust up out of the tillage like tomb markers or the snouts of gigantic, petrified monsters of the underearth....
He was obviously remembering too many bards' ballads, and too few hours of plowing and haying. The air had that wet, earthy smell of fresh-plowed land, and if a certain Athalantan had to walk Toril alone, days like these at least made one feel alive and not a doddering survivor staggering toward a waiting grave.
The laughter of swift rushing water came to Elminster's ears from off to the left, and over the brow of the next rise its source came into view. A stream rushed past, cutting away across the fields in a small, deep-cut gorge. Ahead, it ran beside the road for a time, in its fall from what had to be a mill.
Ah, good. According to the last farmer, this must be Anthather's Mill. A tall fieldstone building, towering over a fork in the road. A fork, of course, which was bereft of any signs.
The stream rushed out of the pool below the mill dam, a creaking wheel turning endlessly in its wake. Men smudged white with flour were loading a cart by the roadside, adding bulging sacks to an already impressive pile. The horses were going to have a hard pull. One of the men saw El and murmured something. All of the men looked up, took their measure of the stranger, and looked back to their work, none of them halting in the hefting, tossing and heaving for a moment.
El spread his hands to show that he meant to draw no weapon, stopping beside the nearest man. "Well met," he said. "I seek the Riven Stone, and know not my road from here."
The man gave him an odd look, pointed up the left-hand road, and said, " 'Tis easy enough to find, aye-straight along that, a good stride, until you're standing in the middle of it. But yon's just a stone, mind, there's nothing there."
El shrugged and smiled. "I go following a vow, of sorts," he said. "Have my thanks."
The miller nodded, waved, and looked down for the next sack. Somewhat reassured, Elminster strode on.
It took some hours of walking, but the Riven Stone was clear enough. Tall and as black as pitch, it rose out of scrub woods in a huge, helmlike cone...cloven neatly in half, with the road running through the gap. There were no farms nearby, and El suspected the Stone enjoyed the usual "haunted" or otherwise fell reputation such landmarks always attracted...if they weren't deemed holy by one faith or another.
No sigils, altars, or signs of habitation met his view as he came around the last bend and saw just how large the stone was. The cleft must have been six man-heights deep or more, and the way through it was long and dim. The inside surfaces of the stone were wet with seeping groundwater, and the faintest of mists drifted underfoot there in the gap.
There, where someone was standing awaiting him. Mystra provides.
Elminster walked steadily on into the gap, a pleasant smile on his face despite the stirrings in him that his freedom to wander would end here...and darker forebodings.
Those misgivings were not lessened by what met his eyes. The figure ahead was human and very female. Alone and cloakless, dark-gowned, tall and sleek of figure, in a word, dangerous.
Had Elminster been standing in a certain dark hall in Tresset's Ringyl as a scepter fell to dust, rather than panting on a hilltop over the remains of a stag-headed shadow, he'd have seen this beautiful, dark-eyed sorceress before. As it was, he was looking into a pair of proud, cold dark eyes...did they hold a hint of mischief? Or was that suppressed mirth ... or triumph?...for the first time.
Her legs, in black boots, were almost impossibly long. Her glossy black hair fell in an unbound flood that was longer. Her skin was like ivory, her features fine, just the pleasant side of angular. She carried herself with serene fearlessness, one long-fingered hand playing almost idly with a wand. Aye, trouble. The sort of sorceress folk cowered away from.
"Well met," she said, making of those words both a challenge and a husky promise, as her eyes raked him leisurely from muddy boots to untidy hair. "Do you work"...her tongue darted into view for an instant between parted lips..."magic?"
Elminster kept his gaze steady on those dark eyes as he bowed. Mindful of Azuth's directive, he replied, "A little."
"Good," the dark lady replied, making the word almost a caress. She moved the wand in her hand ever so slightly to catch his eyes, smiled, and said, "I'm looking for an apprentice. A faithful apprentice."
El didn't fill the silence she left after those words, so she spoke again, just a trifle more briskly. "I am Dasumia, and you are...?"
"Elminster is my name, Lady. Just Elminster." Now for the polite dismissal. "I believe my days as an apprentice are over. I serve..."
Silver fire suddenly surged inside him, its flare bringing back an image of the cracked stone ceiling of the best bedchamber in Fox Tower, and words of silver fire writing themselves across the ceiling, vivid in the darkness: "Serve the one called Dasumia." El swallowed.
"...ye, if ye'll have me," he concluded his sentence, aware of amused dark eyes staring deep into his soul.
"Yet I must tell ye: I serve Holy Mystra first and foremost."
The dark-eyed sorceress smiled almost lazily. "Yes, well...we all do," she said coyly, "don't we?"
"I'm sorry, Lady Dasumia," Elminster said gravely, "but ye must understand ... I serve Her more closely than most. I am the One Who Walks."
Dasumia burst into silvery gales of laughter, throwing her head back and crowing her mirth until it echoed back off the stony walls flanking the two mages. "I'm sure you are," she said when she could speak again, gliding forward to pat Elminster's hand. "Do you know how many young mages seeking a reputation come to me claiming to be the One Who Walks? Well, I'll tell you...a dozen this last month, fully two score the month before that, snows and all, and one before you so far this month."
"Ah," Elminster replied, drawing himself up, "but they none of them were as handsome as me, were they?"
She burst out laughing again and impulsively hugged him. "A dream-vision told me to look for my apprentice here...but I never thought I'd find one who could make me laugh."
"Then yell have me?" El asked, giving no sign that he'd sensed her hug delivering many probing magics. More than one warm stirring in his innards told him Mystra's silver fire was hard at work countering hostile attempts to control and influence...and to leave behind at least three means of slaying him instantly by her uttering trigger words. Ah, but it was a wonderful thing to be a wizard. Almost as marvelous as being a Chosen.
Dasumia gave him a smile that held rather more triumph than welcome. "Body and soul I'll have you," she murmured. "Body and soul." She whirled away from him and looked back over her shoulder to purr provocatively, "Which shall we sample first, hmmm?"
* * * * *
"Now, really, Droon! I ask you: would we have had such widespread mastery of magic, such legions of capable or nearly capable mages, from sea unto sea and to the frozen wastes and uttermost east, if Myth Drannor still stood proud? Or would we have had closed, elite ranks of those who dwelt or had free admittance to the City of Song... and the rest of us left to fight for what scraps the glittering few deigned to toss to us, or that we could plunder from old tombs...and the liches lurking in them?" Tabarast turned in his saddle to make a point, almost fell out of it despite the tangle of sashes and belts he'd lashed himself on with, and thought it prudent to face forward again, merely gesturing airily with one hand. His mule sighed and kept on plodding.