“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 flaring into silver lightning that shocked through him. His arms flew apart convulsively, and then tightened again around the lightning as if it were something solid he could crush. Not that Elminster was thinking of crushing anything.

Or thinking at all.

He was too busy screaming in pain.

The high, throat-stripping shriek of a young female dancer lost in agony and horror spat out of him into the night, as lightning slammed through him, his every hair standing on end like a straining dagger, snapped back out of him, then roared back into him again. It was as if a thousand spears thrust through him, tore back out, and then thrust right back in repeatedly through the same gaping wounds.