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.El drifted closer, trying to see what was disappearing.Stone blocks, aye, but only to clear a way through rubble to the space beyond.In that space—magic! An item here, a broken fragment of apparatus there, a stand yonder, a crucible just here.the helix of smoke was sucking up and stealing away things that Mythanthar had used to work magic, or that held spells stored within them.Was this a thing Mythanthar himself was directing, to snatch away what could be salvaged before other Cormanthan hands seized what he was not there to defend? Or did it serve some other master?It certainly seemed to know where magic might be found.El watched it root through a tangle of fallen spars—ceiling-beams—in one corner, to find whatever had rested on the table beneath, and then.He drifted closer, to peer around the wreckage and see what the helix was after.There was—Suddenly smoky lines were whirling all around Elminster, and Faerun was twisting between them, rushing away.The magical gatherer must have been lurking below the lip of the overhanging debris, deliberately waiting for him.Everything was whirling, now, and El sighed aloud.Whither this time?Mystra, he called almost plaintively, as he was whirled down and away into a darkening, sickening elsewhere, when is my task to begin? And what, by all the watching stars, IS it?Long, long, he spiraled, until he almost forgot what stillness was, and could scarce remember light.Panic clutched at Elminster's heart and thoughts, and he tried to scream and sob, but could not.The whirling continued unabated, through a void that went on and on, heedless of the cries he tried to make.It made no difference to the void whether or not the ghost of a human called Elminster was present, silent or agitated.He was beneath notice, and powerless.Yet if he could do nothing, what was there to worry about? He had striven, and known the love of a goddess, and his fate now lay in Mystra's hands.Hands that he knew could be gentle, belonging to one too wise by far to throw away a tool that could still see much use.As if that thought had been a cue, there came a sudden burst of light around Elminster, and with it an explosion of colors.The smoky cage in which he moved veered into a misty blue area, and raced through it toward a lighter, brighter horizon.Was he rising? It seemed so, as he flashed through clouds of blue mist into—A chamber he'd not seen before, its floor a glistening sea of black marble, its walls high, its ceiling vaulted.A mage's spellhurling chamber, and in it one elven mage, floatingupright, thin, and graceful, pale long-fingered hands moving in almost lazy gestures.A masked mage, whose eyes flashed in surprise at Elminster's sudden appearance.The vortex of smoky lines was already whirling El across the chamber, to where asphere of radiant white light floated, trailing mists of its own as if it was weeping.The mage watched El spin helplessly across the room and plunge into the sphere, the smoky lines vanishing into the stuff of the sphere itself, leaving the human imprisoned.El tried to drift straight on and out through the curving far wall of the sphere, but it was as solid as stone, and his attempt merely took him on a looping journey around the inside of its curves.He came softly to a stop facing the source of a brightening light outside the sphere: the masked mage was drifting closer, head cocked in obvious curiosity."What have we here?" the anonymous elf asked, in a cold, thin voice."A human undead? Or.something more interesting?"El nodded in grave greeting, as one equal to another, but said nothing.The mask seemed to cling to the skin around its wearer's eyes, and to move and flex with it.Beneath it, a superior eyebrow rose in amusement."I require one thing of all thinking beings I encounter: their name," the elf explained flatly."Those who resist me, I destroy.Choose swiftly, or I shall make the choice for you."El shrugged."My name is no precious secret," he said, and his voice seemed to roll out across the chamber.Here, at least, he could be heard perfectly."I am Elminster Aumar, a prince in the human land of Atha-lantar, and the Coronal recently named me an ar-mathor of Cormanthor.I work magic
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