Dalamar The Dark

Chapter 15

True time settled over the forest, or what Dalamar reckoned must be true time. He had walked under skies where the sun showed only a time and season the maker of the magic wished it to show. Now shadows shifted on the high stone walls, moving by subtle degrees the patient eye knew how to detect. Light changed on the ground, deepening as the day aged, and this, too, the patient eye understood. The time was nearing toward sunset. As in the world he'd left to come here, the season was summer.

The patient eye, the patient soul, Dalamar stood outside the gate that was the only breach in the high black wall surrounding seven towers-nor was it much of a breach, for it was locked and shut tight. He wondered how he would go within.

All around him the Forest of Wayreth rustled. Doves murmured in the eaves of the towers. Wind sighed in the oaks outside the walls. Faintly, the musky scent of ligustrum drifted on the air, though where that hedge-climbing vine grew with its frothing flowers, he could not imagine. Something darted past on the ground. He turned to look, expecting to see that leading shadow, but he saw only a gray rabbit leaping into the brush. He returned to contemplation.

Seven towers loomed above the three high walls, one each at the point of the triangle made by the meeting of those walls, and four within the compound rising above all. The three at each corner where the walls met were obviously secondary towers. Two tall towers, one on the north side of the compound, one on the south, were separated by two smaller ones, fore and behind. A gate breached the wall, but it seemed to have no mechanisms for opening it, at least not on this side.

Dalamar went boldly to the wall, and the great age of the stone made itself known to him, the knowledge seeping into his bones. This was not common stone. Poets named stone "the bones of the earth," but Dalamar knew, standing there, that the stuff the wall was made of was truly that- part of the fabric, the essence of Krynn itself. Upon the walls he found many inscriptions. He went close to see them. Some he could read-magical inscriptions to make the wall strong, warnings to intruders, spells to keep out the prying eyes of any diviner using methods of Seeing-others he could not, though he had mastered three ancient scripts and knew somewhat of four more.

He touched the gate, and, as his fingertips brushed the wood and steel, the air around him changed again, as it had when the towers revealed themselves. This time he did not blink but watched to see what would happen.

The world did not fold, the air did not shimmer, nothing happened at all.

And then he found himself at once on the other side of the wall within the compound. He stood in a courtyard paved with gleaming gray stone, and before him rose the four towers.

"Welcome," said a voice, a woman's, low and laughing.

Dalamar turned swiftly and found himself looking into the eyes of a human woman, a mage in white robes whose hair lay in two thick black braids upon her shoulders. He knew her, but not by her robes. Here was his guide in the forest, betrayed by her sapphire eyes.

"Which," she said, "is the Tower of High Sorcery? You're wondering, aren't you?"

Dalamar said he wasn't wondering that at all. He said he'd reckoned that already. "They are all the Tower. It is as with runes-the name of a rune stands for more than the shape of it. It seems the name 'Tower of High Sorcery' stands for more than the shape of one structure."

"Impressive," she said, but her expression, faintly amused, said something else. Precocious would have been the polite word. Cocky was the word she was thinking. "Come with me."

Dalamar followed her closely, not willing to let her lose him in here as she had done in the forest. With each step he took it seemed that the compound became more and more crowded, filling up with mages of all Orders. Some went in groups, dwarves and humans and elves, all talking. Most of the elves he saw were white robed, and none who passed him seemed to care that he wore the dark robe of exile. Other mages walked singly, head down and focused on some inner conversation. One, a dwarf whose robes were as dark as Dalamar's own, looked up when he passed. Dalamar felt his glance like two burning points of fire, and yet he saw no eyes at all within the shadow of the dwarf's hood.

"Oh, him," said the woman with the sapphire eyes, "don't mind him."

She said it, but Dalamar heard a kind of lean chuckle in her voice, as though she meant exactly the opposite. Be careful of him? Pay attention to him? That he could not determine.

The sound of the mages' voices was the hum of a hive, the colors of their robes like a swirl of pennons. What seemed most remarkable to him was that White Robes and Red, even Black, seemed to have no trouble being in each other's company. In Tarsis and most of the world without, White Robes stayed together, mixing rarely with Red and never with those of his own Order.

"It isn't like that here," she said. "Here, we leave all the baggage on the front stoop, as it were. Here, we don't care which of the three magical children one or the other of us honors. A White robed elf will speak to you as graciously as though you wore snowy samite. Outside, another matter. In here, peace. You come in here, you come to study, to reflect, to breathe the air with mages and speak the arcane language people don't understand who do not hear magic singing in their blood. Or," she said as she stopped before the Foretower, "or you come here to Test." She cocked her head. "That's a flung you'll soon know about, isn't it, Dalamar Argent? The rigors of the Tests?"

In the warm air of summer, a chill touched him, not because she knew he'd come here seeking to take the Tests of High Sorcery. It was a fair guess and an accurate one. It was the use of his old name that chilled him, sending him suddenly, painfully to the last day he'd seen Silvanesti. Not even the smoky autumn wine could do that.

"I am," he said, "not Dalamar Argent. If you send to Silvanost and ask them there, you will learn that Dalamar Argent does not exist. And they should know. They keep meticulous records."

She shook her head as if to say, "But of course Dalamar Argent exists." Aloud, though, she said, "Forgive my mistake. Let us introduce ourselves, then-and properly. I am Regene of Schallsea, and sometimes I'm not what you think I am. You are…?"

"I am Dalamar Nightson," he said, "and, yes, I have come here to take the Tests."

"Deadly things, those Tests," she said, as one would say, "Pesky things, those bees." She led him across the compound and past the knots of mages talking. "There is much you will want to see of our Tower of High Sorcery, but little you will have access to just now. You are a visitor, a guest. We will see if that changes after your Tests. Come inside, if you are well and truly ready."

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her what she knew about testing, but he did not. She turned to see if he was following, and he caught a glimpse of her sapphire eyes. Then, in that moment at the end of the long summer day, they reminded him not of the young woman laughing on the boulder, but of the dragon, cold and fierce, carved in the ivory handle of the knife she'd been tapping on her knee. "I am dangerous," said those eyes, "and don't mistake me." He gestured as a man does to usher a lady forth, and he followed her into the foretower.

The bright light of day's end vanished, leaving him blinking and blind, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the cool darkness within. In moments they did, and he saw the place was but a windowless room, round, with one entrance behind and two doors to the right and left. A Red-robed mage, stooped with age, his white hair thin on his scalp, stood in the exact center of the room.

Dalamar glanced at Regene to take his cue from her. She was, of course, gone.

"Yes, yes, yes," said the mage, his eyes narrowed as though the torches on the walls did not lend the light he needed. "She's gone. Comes and goes, that one. Here and there. Flittering. Sparrow-girl, that's what I call her, and she's no girl at all really, is she?"

"I would not lay a wager, one way or the other," Dalamar said, testing to see if this would elicit more information.

The mage snorted. "Then you've more sense than you look to have. There, there, go there! Go on!" He pointed to a bench, one that had not been there only a moment before. Plump green pillows lay on the seat and against the oaken back. Only to see them bought all of Dalamar's muscles awake with reminders that he had been walking long in the magical Forest of Wayreth-up hill and down, through glades and into twilight. He had not been walking in illusion. Above the bench a book floated, a fat tome. "Go sit, and go see. Go on now, go on."

Dalamar went, and he paused by the book to see his name appearing just as his glance lighted on the page. Dalamar Argent. He looked around at the old man and saw him laughing silently.

"Yes, yes, I know. You're not Dalamar Argent. So you say. Well, sit down, boy," said the man who, aged as he was, did not have as many years as Dalamar. "Sit, Dalamar Whoever You Are, and wait. Keep yourself in patience." He looked right and left. He looked up, and he looked down. "They know you're here."

"Who knows?" Dalamar asked, sitting.

"They know. Now hush, and wait."

He hushed, he sat, and he waited. The mage left the room, slipping quietly into the corridor leading into south tower. Once, a swift shadow passing, Dalamar saw the Black-robed dwarf-he of the burning glance, the hidden eyes-passing by the doorway in the corridor that led out from the foretower and into the north tower. The dwarf didn't pause. He never turned his head, yet Dalamar had the feeling that his presence was again noted.

Quiet as a cloud drifting, Ladonna, the Mistress of the Order of the Black Robes, went out from her chambers on the thirteenth level of the north tower and went down the stairs, the winding granite way, trailing the hem of her silk robe and the scents of magic behind. She liked to sweep grandly down the stairs, to hear the sigh of her hem on the steps, the respectful murmur of the mages in the corridors as she passed.

"My lady, the gods grant you health, my lady… Good-even, my lady…"

She liked that and counted it worth the walk to see the students with their arms full of scrolls turn and stare, the elders with their heads full of spells and schemes step aside to let her pass. She went past the guest rooms where visitors rested, past the solaria and the chambers where students sat poring over old scrolls and freshly penned books. She knew by name each of the Black-robed mages she encountered, and she recognized most of the others. Smiling and greeting, Ladonna had an eye out for one of the dark robes, the dwarf who spent all his days in the libraries and all his nights in his chamber studying. She'd known him long and not liked him even a little. It had been a great frustration to her when he hadn't died in the war. He should have, for what mischief he'd worked then, he had learned how to double now. As she went, she watched out for him, and she saw him neither in corridor or solarium or on his way to his chamber. Sitting late in the south tower, no doubt, haunting the libraries like some wretched ghost. Well, he wasn't exactly that, and he wasn't exactly not.

That one, Ladonna thought, should never have survived his Tests.

Down and down she went, greeting and receiving greeting, until she came at last to the study where the Master of the Tower waited. On the threshold of his study, she smiled. He did, indeed, wait. For though she had not announced her visit, he knew of it nonetheless. It was that way between them, Ladonna and Par-Salian. They had not been lovers in many long years; still the connection remained, the bond unbroken.

"Good evening, my old dear," said Ladonna, coming quietly into the Master's study.

Par-Salian smiled with a mixture of affection and impatience. He disliked that expression, and yet her impulse to speak it pleased him. He looked up from the book spread open upon the polished oak desk and tugged a little at his thin white beard.

"Is he here?" he asked. "Your dark elf, is he here?"

"My dark elf?" She shrugged at the designation, then nodded. She supposed he was her dark elf, at least by virtue of the fact that she had brought him to the Master's attention. "He's here. He'd have been a while wandering in the wood, but Regene found him." Her eyes sparkled with sudden amusement. "She didn't make it too easy for him, but she got him here in better time than he'd have made for himself. Time, after all, is our dearest coin these days."

It was, and it was in short supply. Par-Salian closed the book and settled against the back of his chair with a sigh. He supposed he should have felt brighter, more eager at the start of what work this dark elf might do, but he hadn't felt bright or eager in some time-not since the end of the war. He looked around at the silk wall-hangings woven by an elf-woman in Silvanesti a long time ago. They shimmered to life, the delicate silken threads, the pictures they made as Ladonna went around the room, kindling candles with the touch of her finger. Light glinted on the jewels decorating the elaborate fantasy of braids she'd made of her silver tresses. It gleamed from brass fittings and silver candle holders and slid down the silver chasing of the mirror upon the wall. The book-lined walls seemed to sigh in the shadows, leather spines shimmering. All the air hung with the scents of herbs and spices and some things not so pleasingly perfumed. Spell components were sometimes lovely and sometimes not. Here was the study of the Master of the Tower of High Sorcery.

At Wayreth, he reminded himself carefully, the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth. There had been a time when only this tower functioned, the last of five original towers. That was not so now. Now another, darker tower was opened.

Candlelight on silver tresses, the gleam caught Par-Salian's eye, and he smiled. White mage, dark wizardess, they had been each other's strength during the hard times of the War of the Lance when it seemed that the gods would rend the world between them. In seasons of doubt, she had been beside him. She would, he thought, stand by him in the harder times to come. He gazed at her fondly. She had been the one who taught him that each pole on the plane of life-Good and Evil-had its place and had its complement. Without one, there would not be the other, and there would be no balance.

Par-Salian sighed, a weary sound, for gods strove one against the other again-Paladine against Takhisis. He tried to imagine what strength the world would find to withstand another round of that. The same strength it always had, he supposed: the strong-hearted people of Krynn. And the striving was necessary, he knew it. Ladonna had taught him that. In the godly striving is tension, and tension keeps the balance. She was right, and the striving was eternal, never to be settled. No matter what treaties mortals made among themselves, still Takhisis plotted, and still Paladine planned against those plots. Already one of the Dark Queen's Highlords, Kitiara Majere, was growing strong and restless in Sanction, eager and ready to strike in the name of the Dark Queen, sundering the peace of Whitestone. The Blue Lady she named herself, for blue as steel was her armor, and blue was the dragon she rode. Like a wolf scenting weakness, she knew the races and nations who had forged the Whitestone Treaty were not ready for a resurgence of Takhisis's forces, that few believed such a thing was possible. She could, if allowed to grow strong enough, fight a war whose outcome would be far different than the first.

As if she weren't enough, lately there had risen another who conspired in spite of both gods, a mage whose power had grown strong in the few years of his young life. Raistlin Majere. If the Silvanesti elves had found reason to thank and praise him for lifting Lorac's Nightmare from their land, Par-Salian knew that no one had reason to be grateful for him now. He was the Blue Lady's brother, though not her ally. His sister had ambitions to rule nations. Raistlin's ambition was deeper and more terrible. What form it took, the Conclave of Wizards did not know. They did know that he had the strength to break the curse that, ever since the Cataclysm, had sealed the Tower of High Sorcery at Palanthas and take that stronghold for himself.

"Your dark elf," he said, stretching his arms high, working shoulders weary with bending over books. "Will he be worthy, Ladonna?"

She walked past the banks of candles to the window. Outside, the twilight glowed, warm and fragrant with the scent of the forest, a magical forest, a Guardian Forest such as those that once stood to ward all five Towers of High Sorcery. The one that had warded Daltigoth had caused intruders to fall into dreamless sleep. That around Goodlund's tower inflamed the uninvited with uncontrollable passions. When Istar had reigned, the forest guarding the tower there induced a simple forgetfulness so that intruders failed to remember why they'd come that way. Not so gentle the forest around the Tower at Palanthas. Shoikan Grove was home to spectres and monsters and dread, so deep madness was the only way out. And yet, though five towers were built, only two remained. It was not impossible to imagine that Wayreth's tower, too, could fall one day.

Turning from the window, Ladonna said, "I think-I think, mind you-that this one, this Dalamar, might well be a man with enough courage to help us do what must be done about that most dangerous of mages in Palanthas."

That most dangerous of mages… She did not speak his name. She never did unless the speaking was unavoidable. Ladonna hated Raistlin Majere, and she feared him. Par-Salian knew how much it pained her to admit, even to herself, that she, the Mistress of her Order, must be wary of the dark-robed mage who had so precipitously taken over the Tower of Palanthas. He also knew that were she and Raistlin Majere to meet in ritual contest, his magic would best hers, and then there would be a new head of the Order of Black Robes, one who would rule from his own Tower, and with whom Par-Salian would have less than cordial relations.

"Your dark elf-"

"Dalamar Argent."

"Dalamar Argent, then. I haven't heard it said he's had much formal training. How much could he have, really? Ylle Savath of House Mystic would have put out her own eyes before teaching him dark magic, yet here he is in black robes, calling himself a mage."

Ladonna's eyes flashed. "Lady Ylle never taught him Nuitari's magic. He is-or he was-a servitor. You've heard how that is-all the food and clothing and work you could want. Nothing more than that, though. She hardly permitted him any instruction at all, and only grudged him the little she did to keep him from turning to wild magic"-she smiled sourly-"or to dark magic. No, he has little formal training, something of the magic of the Wilder Elves, something of White magic, and everything else he's picked up along the way. But it is also true that Dalamar has been three years in his exile, and you know this as well as I do: If that doesn't kill one of his kind, it makes him strong and canny beyond his years." She tilted her head to smile at him, that smile slow as a drawl. "He is that, strong and canny. And he is-or could be-our man."

Wind sighed through the forest. An owl cried in one of the towers on the warding wall. Far away in Palanthas, ghosts groaned in Shoikan Grove, doubtless music to the ears of the renegade mage who would make ghosts of the plans of gods and men.

"And what must be done with your dark elf?" Par-Salian asked.

Ladonna shrugged. That careless gesture didn't hide the gleam in her eyes, her sudden satisfaction. "He must take his Tests. It is only when he comes out of those alive that I'll know if he's the one. If he fails… well, if he fails, we'll clean up the mess and find another, for something must be done about Palanthas."

On that matter, they agreed.

"Very well," said Par-Salian, "you may leave the matter to me. Where is he?"

"Still waiting in the reception area in the foretower."

Par-Salian shrugged. "As good a place as any, then."

She smiled and praised his sagacity, then she settled comfortably into a corner of the large chair near the window, listening to the night and the owls while the Master of the Tower returned to his reading. The discussion of her dark elf ended, she still had that dwarf to consider. If she could have him banished from the Tower, she would do that in the instant, but he'd done nothing to earn that, at least not yet. This trip to the Tower he'd come bearing gifts, magical artifacts he'd found in his travels.

"And books for the library," he'd told her, sweeping a bow to mimic the respect he did not feel. "I spend so much time there, it seemed only right to offer something in return." He'd smiled, a pale skinning of his teeth. His eyes had not lighted with it, but then she seldom saw them light with any emotion.

By Nuitari's night, she thought, how much longer can that pile of rotting flesh and bone live? She shivered a little. The carcass of him didn't have to live long at all, did it? Only the mind to slip in and out of the avatars he made for himself.

The breeze drifting in from the forest brushed chill on her skin. An owl cried suddenly, sharp and piercing; a rabbit screamed, caught. Ladonna watched the light of the red moon and the silver glinting from the gems on her beringed fingers. She felt the dark moon surging in her heart, as though a god spoke warning. She had heeded this warning before, and she did not forget it now. Raistlin Majere was a problem, she did not deny, and his sister the Blue Lady was another. No mage herself, the Blue Lady employed mages of the strongest magic. The best of these, the canniest and most vicious, sat late in the library tonight, the dwarf reading and studying that he might craft stronger, fiercer magics for his lady. They were in the thrall of Takhisis, those two, the Blue Lady and the dwarf.

Tramd o' the Dark, he called himself. Tramd Heading For the Abyss, Ladonna named him. She would rather send him there sooner than later.

Outside the window, the three moons rode the sky, each the sign of one of the three magical children, Solinari, Lunitari, Nuitari. They went on balanced paths, in unbroken rhythm swinging across the sky. They were always the image of the balance that kept the world turning, the seasons passing, the magic running. Without that balance, the world would fall apart in chaos. The Blue Lady threatened that balance, she and her dark dwarf mage.

We are beset, she thought. On one side by a Dragon Highlord who would rip the world apart and deliver the bleeding corpse into the hands of the Queen of Darkness; on the other by a mage who has taken possession of a Tower of High Sorcery and thought it might be a good idea to challenge the gods themselves, those of Good, those of Neutrality, those of Evil.

A book thumped closed.

The Master of the Tower of High Sorcery rose from his desk and dropped a chaste kiss upon her cheek as he passed. Gone to see to the dark elf, she thought. Then, smiling, she settled back against the pillows to watch the moons travel.

The dark elf and the dwarf… perhaps there was a way to settle all things at once.