"M-my thanks," El stammered, as they came to a gentle halt. He felt himself lowered into a comfortable, lounging position, lying on yielding but somehow solid air. Azuth was also sitting on nothing, facing him, across a fire that suddenly sprang out of nowhere. Flames danced up from air a handspan above the unmarked rock of the Height. El looked at it, then around at a sky now full of bat-winged, scaled, hissing fiends, clawing at the air with widening, many-toothed smiles as they dived nearer.
"I don't wish to seem ungrateful or critical, High One," he said, "but yon fiends can't fail but notice this light, and we'll have them visiting."
Azuth smiled, and for an instant his arms seemed to flow with slowly marching lights, winking and sparkling. "No," he replied in the calm, musical voice that was at once splendid and laced with excitement... and at the same time soothing and reassuring. "This Height, henceforth, is shielded against fiends...of all kinds...so long as my power endures. Now hearken, for there are things you should know."
Elminster nodded, bright-eyed in his eagerness. His manner brought the ghost of a smile to the lips of the Lord of Spells, who caused both of their hands to be suddenly full of goblets of wine that smoked and glowed. The god began to speak.
Over Azuth's left shoulder, a hulking red monster of a fiend flapped huge wings in a booming clap of fury, clawed at air that seemed to resist it, and burst into flames. With fire raging up and down its limbs, it gibbered, fangs spraying, green spittle, and a flash of unleashed magic burst from its taloned hands and crawled across an unseen barrier for long moments before rebounding with a flash and roar that plucked the pit fiend from its clawing perch on empty air, sending it tumbling away through the air like a tattered leaf.
The god ignored this, as well as the wails and moans of watching, circling fiends that followed, as he addressed Elminster like a gentle teacher, speaking at ease in a quiet place. "All who work magic serve Mystra whether they will or no," he said. "She is of the Weave, and every use of it strengthens her, reveres her, and exalts her. You and I both know a little of what is left of her mortal side. We've seen traces of the feelings and memories and thoughts she clings to in desperation from time to time, when the wild exultation of power coursing through the Weave...that is the Weave...threatens to overwhelm her sentience entirely. No entity, mortal or divine, can last in her position forever. There will be other Mystras, in time to come."
A hand that trailed tiny stars pointed to Elminster, then back at Azuth's own chest. "We are her treasures, lad...we are what she holds most dear, the rocks she can cling to in the storms of wild Art. She needs us to be strong, far stronger than most mortals ... tempered tools for her use. Being bound to us by love and linked to us to preserve her very humanity, she finds it hard to be harsh to us...to do the tempering that must be done. She began the tempering of you long ago, you are her 'pet project,' if you will, just as the Magisters are mine. She creates her Chosen and her Magisters, but she gives the training of them to others, chiefly me, once she grows to love them too much or needs them to be distant from her. The Magisters must needs be distant, that creativity in Art be untrammeled. You, she has grown to love too much."
Elminster blushed and ran a finger around the rim of his goblet. Fiends clawed the air in the distance as he looked down...and was abashed as he might not have been at another time...to find the vessel full of wine again after he had drunk deep.
Azuth watched him with a smile and said gently, "You are now wanting to hear much more of how the Lady of Mysteries feels for you, and not daring to ask. Moreover, you are also dying to know more about what 'Magisters' are and can find tongue to say nothing for fear of deflecting me from whatever wonders I was going to reveal if left to speak freely. Wherefore you are riven and will remember but poorly what follows ... unless I set you at ease."
Elminster found himself wanting to laugh, perhaps cry, and grope for words all at once. He managed a nod almost desperately, and Azuth chuckled once more. Behind him, the air roiled with sudden raging green fire that came out of nowhere, and from its heart boiled two pit fiends, reaching out mighty-thewed and sharp-clawed limbs to clutch at the Lord of Spells … limbs that caught fire for all of the time it took Elminster to gasp in alarm before they met with some invisible force that melted them away, boiling off flesh and gore like black smoke. The screams were incredible, but Azuth's gentle, kindly voice cut through them like lantern light stabbing into darkness.
"Mystra loves you as no other," the god told the mage, "but she loves many, including myself and others neither of us know about, some in ways that would astonish or even disgust you. Be content with knowing that among all who share her love, you are the bright spirit and youth she cherishes, and I am the old wise teacher, None of us is better than the other, and she needs us all. Let jealousy of other Chosen...of other mages of any race, station, or outlook...never taint your soul."
Elminster's goblet was full again. He nodded his understanding to the god through its wisps of smoke, as a score of winged she-fiends stabbed at the god with lances that blazed with red flame...and the air, with a silent lack of fuss, ate both weapons and fire.
One of the dusky-skinned fiend-women strayed a little too close to Azuth in her boldness and lost a wing to hungry empty air in a single blurred instant. Shrieking and sobbing, she tumbled away, falling to death below...a death that came rather more swiftly than the waiting ground, as other erinyes, eyes blazing with bloodlust, swooped on her and drove their lances home. Transfixed, the stricken erinyes stiffened, spurted blood in several directions, and fell like a stone.
Ignoring all of this, the god spoke serenely on. "Magisters are wizards who achieve a measure of special recognition...powers, of course, as we spell hurlers measure things...in the eyes of Mystra, by being 'the best' of her mortal worshipers in terms of magical might. Most achieve the title by defeating the incumbent Magister and lose it by the same means...a process often fatal."
As cornugons and pit fiends raged around the Height, watching their spells claw vainly at the god's unseen barrier, Azuth sipped from his own goblet and continued, "Our Lady and I are working to change the nature of the Magister right now...though not overmuch...to make the Magisters less killers-of-rivals and more creators of new spells and ways of employing magic. Only one wizard is the Magister at a time. By serving themselves, they serve to proliferate and develop magic ... and there is no greater way to serve Mystra. The purpose of her clergy is more to order and instruct, so that novices of the Art don't destroy themselves and Toril many times over before they've mastered basic understandings of magic … but were this task not governing them, the priests of Mystra would bend their talents more to what we now leave to the Magister."
Azuth leaned forward, the fire brighter now, and said through the flames, "You serve Mystra differently. She watches you and learns the human side of magic in all its hues from your experiences and the doings of those you meet...foes and friends alike. Yet the time has come for you to change, and grow, to serve as she'll need you to, in the centuries ahead."
"Centuries?" Elminster murmured and discovered suddenly that he needed the contents of his goblet rather urgently. "Watches me?"
Azuth smiled. "Indiscretions with alluring ladies and all. Set all thoughts of that aside...she needs the entertainment 'you just being you' affords her more than she needs someone playacting to impress her. Now attend my words, Elminster Aumar. You are to learn and grow by using as little magic as possible in the year ahead. Use what is needful and no more."