Dalamar The Dark

Chapter 9

The world is lost!

The words whispered in the darkest corner of Lorac Caladon's heart, as they had since the night he'd been awakened from his dream of Istar.

The world is lost unless you heed!

So said the dragon orb. The crystal sphere lay shrouded in heavy white velvet upon its transformed stand. So said this artifact of his Tests in the Tower of High Sorcery, taken by him from a place where he'd been bidden to take nothing. Not taken, he reminded himself. Rescued! I rescued this orb, and it must have been right that I did, for did I not come out of my Tests whole and strong?

Rescued… but soon to be lost again, for the world is lost!

Lorac heard the voice in his heart, in his bones. He heard it in his very soul, and sometimes it seemed that voice counseled despair, while at other times it seemed to offer hope. That's where we stand, he thought as he looked out from his throne to the small conclave he'd gathered in the Tower of the Stars. We stand between despair and hope.

The light of the noontide poured in through the spiraling windows and down into the audience hall. Bitterly bright, that noon sun shed a cruel glare on the marble floor and the bejeweled walls. It made the gems and gold worn by those gathered look like brittle paste, lending them no beauty. Their faces seemed winter-pale and drawn in lines so hard and stark that these might have been the faces of starving people.

Only see these people to know the truth of hopelessness, said his heart.

Or was that the dragon orb speaking? One and all, his people protested that they had hope enough to keep the kingdom alive, hope enough to commit their sons and daughters to the cause of beating back the Dragon Queen's minions. And yet, and yet…

So well do they love you, said the voice of the orb, so well, and thus do they show it, pretending to hope as though pretense might one day change into truth.

He looked at those gathered, his daughter, the Lords of House Protector and House Metalline, the Lady of House Cleric. Each cast secret glances at the white-shrouded object beside the throne. What is that? said the eyes of those who had not long before wondered at the ivory sculpture.

None of the other House Holders were present. This was no gathering of the Sinthal-Elish, no formal seeking of advice from the Houses and the priests of the seven temples. This was a secret council swiftly summoned, each member chosen at the king's will, for the king's purpose.

Lord Garan had come on his griffin, still wearing the grime and the filth of battle-blood, mud, tears, and sweat. The Lord of House Protector hadn't understood the message he'd received from the king last night, the sudden word to come home and to come swiftly. It showed on him, the puzzlement.

Near Garan stood Elaran and Keilar. One spent all her days in prayer, the other spent all his in the making of weapons and armor. "Prayer and weapons, they will be all we need," Elaran had said in the summer when news had come of the first forays of Phair Caron's armies. Keilar had agreed with all his heart and all his faith in the sword-smiths of his House. Now it did seem to each-Lorac saw it in their eyes, was sure he read it in their hearts-that both prayer and sword were failing.

Sunlight moved across the floor in increments so small that only an ancient eye could mark them. Lorac's eye marked each moving of the light, as he marked the changes, war-wrought and cruel, that had come to his people. His heart ached for them all. Garan, who had lost so many of his Wildrunners in this wretched summer, seemed to have aged years in only months. Garan loved his soldiers, every one as though they were his own sons and daughters. Upon scrolls in the libraries of House Protector, their names had been written, made immortal in the annals of the kingdom. If all those scrolls perished, burned by war, it would be Lord Garan who could speak those names still. They lived in his heart.

The world is lost. The land is lost!

As lives the land, so live the elves. Silvanos himself had spoken these words. A prayer, a chant, the sound of one's blood beating in the heart-those simple words were all that and more. They were how an elf understood the world and his place in it. In his heart, King Lorac repeated them reverently. Ah, but who would speak those words otherwise?

And the orb beneath his hand-Lorac started, withdrawing his hand from the thick white velvet shroud. When had he reached to touch the orb? With artful carelessness, he placed his hand on the arm of his throne.

Recalled to his purpose, Lorac said, "My lords and ladies. Will you do me the kindness of paying your attention?"

A form of speaking. Of course they would. All eyes turned to him as he breathed the words of an imaging spell, ancient words, soft and silken, learned in Istar in the years before anyone imagined Takhisis would call dragons back to Krynn.

The Speaker of the Stars lifted his hand, gnarled and old. He gestured with one finger as though it were an artist's brush. He drew images upon the air, a map broad and tall. It showed the world of the Silvanesti, a world of beloved forests, of beauty and grace, of people whose lives moved in quiet, well-ordered rounds of peaceful watches, for long generations untroubled and untouched by the clamor of the folk who lived outside. Here was the Silvanesti Nation, shown from its northern border, now burning, to the southern tip where stood the port of Phalinost. Even now the broad bay was filling with a fleet of tall ships. White sails shining in the sun, filling with the wind, those swan-breasted ships tugged restlessly at their moorings, eager for the sea.

"Now, heed," said the elf-king.

Alhana's hand tightened on his shoulder, then loosed. He felt it trembling, slightly. Lord Garan held still, but Elaran and Keilar looked up, their eyes narrowing.

"Lord Garan, tell me: How did you leave the border-land?"

Garan drew himself up tall, the Lord of the Wildrunners. He took a step forward. "My lord king, Phair Caron has harried us all the summer long. She fights us now in autumn, but she hasn't claimed any land for herself. It all lies still in our hands."

A sigh whispered around the chamber, echoing hollowly. What Lord Garan said was truth, and yet it was not. Towns and cities in the north stood empty now, their towers the halls of ghosts. The dragonarmy had done nothing but drive out the people, whipping them down to the south, down to Silvanost, the capital of the Silvanesti. The first of a sea of them had entered the city only this morning, ragged, weeping, some-it must be said-half-mad with grief and rage. These were the first. It was said by Wildrunners who had seen them that more would follow. Silvanost would choke on the ever-swelling river of refugees, for the Highlord would not abandon the tactics that had served her well till now. Phair Caron would move swiftly and strongly, in hatred sweeping down through the emptied land to camp outside the walls of the city until towered Silvanost starved in winter and begged for surrender terms before spring.

"Tell me this, Lord Garan: Can you beat her back?"

The old warrior lifted his head proudly, standing eye to eye with his king. "We will die to the last man and woman trying."

Lorac nodded. It was the reply he had expected. "If you don't die to the last man and woman, if you spend the rest of the season till winter fighting Phair Caron and her dark goddess, can you win?"

Lord Garan did not drop his gaze, and he did not stand any less proudly. "My lord king, we will not know until we try."

Robes rustled. From outside the hall came the quiet murmurings of servants in their goings and comings, a voice lifted in question, another laughing to answer. In the hall, silence sat upon all. Elaran glanced at Keilar. The weapon-smith kept still, his hands quiet. Only his eyes moved, darting from one to another, then to the king.

"Tell me this, Lord Garan, and speak truly: If you spend the rest of the season till winter and through to spring righting Phair Caron, can you win?"

Lord Garan's face flushed. His long eyes glittered. "My lord king-"

"Can you win, my old friend? Or will you stand beside me all winter long, each time I must turn away another refugee driven down from the northlands, from the midlands, from outside our very city? Will you stand and say, 'Forgive us, but we are choking on refugees now and we cannot feed ourselves. You may not enter here, but you may go out into the forest and die knowing how sorry we all feel about that.' Will you stand with me and say that?"

A silence settled in the great audience hall. Only breathing was heard.

The world is lost! Unless you heed!

The elf-king almost shouted those very words, the dictum of the orb. They beat in him like the rhythm of his own heart. He'd heard them over and again, waking and sleeping, and he found in them, curiously, not despair but hope. Unless you heed… The orb spoke of hope, and it spoke of power. It spoke of promise, and it spoke of a way to defeat the Highlord Phair Caron.

Not only her defeat did it promise. It promised the defeat of the Dark Queen herself, the ruin of Takhisis. O you sweet gods of Goodness and Light! How to measure that boon if it were granted?

The world is lost, unless you heed me! Come and take what I have for you. If you do otherwise, the world is lost!

Lorac rose from the Emerald Throne. Though the orb remained hidden beneath the white velvet shroud, in his heart, in his veins, in his very blood, he felt its light pulsing, a drumbeat calling him to action. He looked at his daughter, Alhana, white as marble, her eyes glittering as with fever. What he would say would not surprise her. He had formed his plan alone, but he had spoken of it to her, for Alhana would play a heavy part in it. A burden unasked for would fall upon her slender shoulders. She did not smile to encourage; she had been all the night protesting. No matter, no matter, he knew what must be done.

"Now hear me," he said to Lord Garan. "Listen," he said to Elaran and Keilar. "I will not play at gambling with the lives of my people. Plans have been laid against this day, and this is what will happen: You, my Lord Garan, will sent out your scouts and you will bid them go to every village and town and city where people yet live, and into the woods where the refugees wander. They will proclaim this message: 'Gamer up your families and go down to the sea. Go to Phalinost where every person will find a place made and waiting for him. Prepare for a sea journey, and know that you will return.' "

"Exile," Garan whispered, the terrible word like sentence of death. "Speaker, will you do that? Will you lead us all out of the land into exile while the foul armies of Takhisis flow into the kingdom and hold it forever against us?" In his eyes Lorac saw such pain as war-gotten wounds had never given him. "Tell me, Lorac Caladon: Have I failed you, then?"

Like an ache in the heart of the king, those words from the proud warrior.

"You have not failed me, my old friend." The Speaker of the Stars came down from the dais. He took Garan's hands in his, unconsciously shadowing the ritual blessing a king gives a new-made Wildrunner. So had these two stood, many years before, offering and accepting fealty. "No king has had better service than I have had from you, but I must ask you this one more time to serve me again in this cause of shepherding our people to safety. You will not be long gone from the kingdom, and when you and our people return, you will see that all has been done for the best."

"I will not be gone long. My lord king-what about you?"

Lorac turned from him, releasing his hands, and went back to his throne. It seemed to him that the steps to the dais had grown steeper in the moments since he'd descended, steeper and longer. When he reached the throne, his daughter took his hand. He looked into her eyes, the deep amethyst pools that so reminded him of her mother. There he saw fear, reckoning, and, above all other things, courage. He turned, and he looked down at the four gathered.

"I will remain," he said.

He let them gasp and murmur, and when his silence enjoined theirs, he said, "I will remain. 'As lives the land, so live the elves.' If you imagine that I am prepared to give up my kingdom-our Sylvan Lands! — to the darkness, you imagine wrongly.

"I have a magic to work," said the elf-king. With one swift twitch of long fingers, he whipped the white shroud from the orb, revealing the crystal globe grasped in the clawed talon. "Here is a dragon orb, and I don't expect that any of you will know what that is…" He let the words trail, waiting to see whether any would contradict him. None did. "No matter. I do know what it is, and I believe the magic I work in company with this orb will be strong enough to save us all. But I will not risk the lives of my people while my belief is tested. Thus, only I will stay, with a guard of Wildrunners to ward and watch. My daughter will lead the people out from the kingdom, just as it will be she who will lead you back."

Now he heard her breathe, his Alhana Starbreeze. He turned to look at her and saw that all the color had drained from her face. A marble princess, she stood with her hand upon her breast, her eyes widening. He thought for a moment-only a moment! — that she would refuse him, that she would demand to stay. She did neither thing. She was the daughter of kings, the child of queens. She would accept and discharge whatever duty he laid upon her, for his sake and, more importantly, for the sake of their embattled kingdom. She took a step toward him and she bowed her head, not a daughter to her father, but a subject to her king.

"With the help of Lord Garan, with the prayers of Lady Elaran, with the iron goodwill of Lord Keilar and each of the House Holders, I will do as you wish, my lord king."

So close did she stand to him that Lorac saw the first tear shining in her eyes. None other saw what he did, the pearl of her grief. They saw only a princess whose courage matched her beauty, Alhana Starbreeze whom they would follow anywhere, even into exile.

On the last day of the month of Autumn Twilight, the day elves named Gateway, the sky stretched out over the Cooshee Gulf, hard and bright and blue as ice. Winter prowled near, the wolfish season whose teeth were cruel, whose claws knew nothing about mercy. Gulls creaked in the sky, and wind hummed along the ratlines already skimming over with a thin coating of ice.

The deck beneath Dalamar's boots groaned, an aching sound as though the ship could not bear the thought of leaving the shore and must moan for the loss of sweet Silvanesti. Such moaning as this was heard all through the close-packed hold of King's Swan, the cries of the seasick and the weary and those who felt the strings of their hearts stretched tight to breaking. All around the ship other vessels bobbed, rising and falling with the sea, as one after another, captains set sail and left the bay to follow Wings of E'li, Lord Garan's flagship. King's Swan would have her turn soon.

Dalamar leaned his arms on the rail and looked out across the bay to Phalinost, gleaming in the last light of day. Gulls sailed around the tall towers, gray ghosts haunting the empty city. Dalamar imagined that no one lived there now but the rats and the gulls. What he thought was very nearly the truth.

We are all exiles.

How spectacularly the gods of Good had failed the elves, who had in all ways professed their abiding love for these deities! They did all for these gods, the children of Silvanos. They permitted no other worship, no other magic, no other gods within the borders of their kingdom.

Dalamar shook his head, eyes on the restless waters of the bay. So much the elves had lost in that trust, so much. E'li and his clan had not been worthy of that love. He thought of Lord Tellin, one among many who'd died for faithless gods. He thought of all the others, the Wildrunners and Windriders, the refugees on the road, all turned into corpses and exiles. Where, then, were the gods they trusted? Nowhere, nowhere to be found.

In the north, upriver beyond Silvanost, lay four spellbooks, three small and one large. He had never had a chance to take them out from the cave, and now they lay hidden, perhaps until some soldier of Phair Caron's stumbled upon them.

But the king will save the city. He will save the land. No minion of the Highlord will dare set foot in the heart of the kingdom… So said everyone aboard this ship, and everyone aboard the others.

Everyone but Dalamar. You leave a thing, you lose a thing. And so the books were lost to him, but he didn't rage and he didn't sorrow. They were but a few of many things lost in the abandoned kingdom. Perhaps it was that he'd gotten from them all he needed-more magic than the mages of House Mystic would give him. A glimpse, said a dangerous thought, of a darker god than elves liked to see. What promises did he make, Nuitari, who was the son of Takhisis and the god of vengeance? How well did he keep them? Dalamar didn't know, but he wondered.

A woman's voice shouted "Look!"

Dalamar saw a sailor point to the sky. High above, where stars had just waked to wonder what great voyage of elves was about to challenge the sea, the sky had changed from deepest blue to the sickish throbbing green of a wound too long unattended, of flesh rotting.

"In Zeboim's name," the sailor whispered. Her cheeks, sun-burnished and brown, drained to ashen. "In her sea-blessed name, what's happened to the sky?"

She swore by an unchancy goddess, the tempestuous daughter of Takhisis, but Dalamar noted that no one of the E'li-worshiping elves had anything to say in response. What should any landsman have to say about the niceties of worship to a sailor who plied Zeboim's realm? Nothing. At the rails dark figures gathered, sailors and Wildrunners and some passengers. All looked up, their faces shining ovals in the darkness. Some pointed to the sky, some kept still, and those, Dalamar was certain, were praying.

The waters of the bay woke, rough and restless, shoving against the shores of Phalinost. Upon the waters the waves ran, like horses galloping to the shore. Dalamar shuddered. The proud arched necks of the waves, Zeboim's Steeds the sailors named them, wore a green tint, and he thought of corpses washed up on the shore, the wreckage of a ruined ship, men and women with seaweed tangled in their hair.

His heart racing, Dalamar gripped the rail. The waters of the bay grew stronger, the waves heavier, and the deck rolled beneath his feet. In the sky, the green glow deepened.

"Some ploy of the Highlord's," an elderly elf-woman murmured. Her husband hushed her, but she went on. "Some new evil of hers to bring against the kingdom!"

Someone's prayer rose up above the frightened voices. "Into your hands, O E'li, we put ourselves. In perfect trust and with perfect faith. We are yours, O Shining One! O Champion Against the Dark, remember us, for we are yours!"

All around the deck people calmed, their voices weaving together in comforting prayer. Trusting, they offered themselves to the god who had not shown himself since first Phair Caron's army savaged Nordmaar, whose own dragons had not come to do battle against the evil dragons of Takhisis. "But he is near," they said. "He will come," they assured themselves, "and he will defend us." Even as the sky above the forest throbbed with eerie green light, even as the best beloved lifted sail and fled, they prayed and they hoped.

Only Dalamar was silent, only he did not pray. In the gods of his fathers he had no trust, for he had seen it broken, time and again. Blasphemy! He knew it. Elves have been cast out for such thoughts, banished from the company of the Children of Light, left to die in the outworld.

Yet, strangely, as he stood shivering in the cold winds off the water, watching the shore fall away, the strange green sky grow distant, Dalamar Argent did not fear his thoughts. He looked around to be sure that no one guessed his blasphemy, but the thoughts themselves-why, they held no fear for him.

All the voices of his past swirled around the ancient king. The voices of childhood, his playmates, his fellow students in the Academy of House Mystic, the young girls in the meadows plucking the flowers of spring and braiding them into their long shimmering hair. Hair like the pelts of foxes; hair the color of a deer's dark eye; tresses like honey poured from the jar. Among them was one who shone like a jewel, golden-haired, her eyes keen and gleaming as brightly as the north star, a light for hearts to steer by. Lorac Caladon had steered by that light all his days.

By the light of Iranialathlethsala's eyes he steered yet, for he saw those eyes in the crystal globe that was his dragon orb.

Your orb, yes, sighed the artifact of Istar. I am yours, and in me you will find all that you need. Look! Look deeper, come closer, find in me what you must have. The voice sighed, soft as the wash of the Thon-Thalas against its banks, soft as a breeze, and it seemed to the elf-king that the voice changed a little. He would not have that it sounded like the voice of his dear Iraniala, yet it did recall her voice, perhaps in the cadence.

My love, he sighed, in his heart, without words. Countless years of joy he recalled, and these were not embittered by the years death had denied him. My love!

Your land, said the orb. Your kingdom, your people. The Dark Queen lurks at your borders, king.

Lorac shuddered, and upon the marble walls of his great audience hall that shuddering was seen in shadow as curtains of darkness flowing down from the heights of the great tower, as light from the moons and the stars did flow.

Takhisis will tear down your kingdom. She will lift up the pieces as her warriors lift the bodies of your slain-spitted upon spears running with blood!

To hear those words spoken in rhythms so like those of Iraniala's, in a voice gone suddenly soft as hers had been, was to hear a terrible doom proclaimed with all the weight and authority of Iraniala's own magic. She had been a Seer…

And she had foreseen her own death. O gods! My Iraniala! I am doomed, she had said on the day she knew the name of her illness and the day of her death. I am lost!

The world is lost!

So said the voice that was not hers and yet seemed so like to hers. The voice of the dragon orb turned mocking suddenly, as the wind shifting over the sea, it turned hard and cold as sleet.

What do you quest after, elf-king? Your queen so long dead? How can you think of her when a darker queen, a Warrior Queen, stands upon your doorstep, ready to tear apart your kingdom and make of your people her most wretched and despised slaves, your men for her armies, your women for their whores, your children for the meat on the boards of her minions so dark and terrible that even she has not granted them names?

Shuddering turned to shivering. Lorac returned his gaze to the orb.

She stood in the crystal silence of the dragon orb, a woman tall and slender, she whose eyes were his guiding light, whose heart held his love, whose body had held and delivered forth a daughter of such rare beauty that poets must shape new forms with which to tell of her grace and charm.

And now he saw his daughter, shown to him in the glass, his Alhana Starbreeze, standing at the prow of Wings of E'li, his flagship, his pride. The salt winds blew back her hair, a dark pennon sailing against a leaden sky. She lifted her hand to shade her eyes against the limitless horizons.

Lost! She is lost!

His heart twisted, wrenching in his breast, and he saw all the fleet behind his flagship, straggling out and losing their way, some turning east and some north. The wind in the sails roared, and it moaned down the ratlines, humming in the ropes like mourners at a funeral.

The world is lost! So said the wind, so said the voice of the orb.

"No!" cried the king, sitting back from the orb but never taking his hands from it. "Show me no dark visions! Make good your promises, the ones you tempt and tease with."

The green light pulsed, a heart beating in stone, a mind roaming and questing always, touching his and dropping back, then touching again.

Very well. You have been a long time admitting your wish, Elf-king, but I am here to grant it. Now heed, and heed me well! What you want can be, and I will be the agency of its birth. You need only dream.

Only dream. Lorac sat closer to the crystal globe again, letting himself touch the green glow with his mind. Only dream. He closed his eyes, and yet he saw the beating light.

Now you must trust me, isn't it so, Elf-king? You must trust me as once I trusted you.

A shiver of memory rippled across Lorac's mind, across the green glow and the mind of whatever being touched him through the crystal.

Dream, Lorac Caladon. Dream of the world you will save, dream of the people who will go all their days touched by your vision. Ah, dream, Elf-king.

"Who are you?" Lorac whispered.

In his mind, in his heart, he felt as though someone had smiled upon him. Warmth filled him, bone and blood, and it seemed to him then that he sat in a garden on the first day of spring when breezes are perfumed with the waking of the world. He heard his heart beating, and the green light pulsed in perfect rhythm to match.

I am he who will save your lost kingdom, Elf-king!

Until now Lorac Caladon had been very careful not to engage the mind he sensed living in the orb, very careful not to extend his own magic to touch the magic within the crystal sphere. This was, after all, an artifact out of Istar, and it was a thing that had lived in older days than even those of the Kingpriest. Still, he dared now what he had never dared before, what all his training and all the wisdom of his many long years had cautioned: Do not engage the magic of such a thing as this dragon orb. Do not, unless you are certain you can control it.

He touched the magic, and as his hands grasped the orb, he felt it running in him, eager and swift.

I am yours, said the orb, like a woman sighing in her lover's bed, like the shore to the sea.

"You are mine," whispered the elf-king, his face hollowed by shadows, made unwholesome in the green light.

Unwholesome, green, and sickly… but when he saw his reflection in the orb, he saw himself not as unwholesome, not as one whose shadow-sculpted face most resembled a skull. When he saw himself in the orb, King Lorac Caladon saw a young warrior with a shining sword girded on, a king to save the land, a father to rescue his children from the dark terrors of the night. A soldier of E'li, of Paladine the Eternal Champion!

In the globe, in his mind, the elf-king lifted up his sword and all the light of stars, the light of the red moon and the silver, chased down the steel, running like water and blood.

Beneath his hands, the orb shifted size, growing, swelling, so that he must extend his arms now to keep his hands on it, wide as though to embrace it. In the crystal he dreamed himself a golden warrior in the heart of his kingdom. All around him in vision he saw the forests and glades, each tree gently shaped and coaxed, grown by the devoted elves of House Woodshaper, those whose blood knew the blood of the sprits of nature. He saw the mighty Thon-Thalas running down to the sea, surging past the cities and the towns, running past the towers of his people. In Silvanost, the precious jewel upon the breast of the Sylvan Lands, the temples to the gods shone pearly white in the streaming sunlight, clustered round the Garden of Astarin. His heart swelling with love, Lorac Caladon cried:

"We are the children of the gods! We are their firstborn, their best beloved! We are what gods meant all the mortals of the world to be, and we are most deserving of their love!"

He shouted it, that shining warrior, and he never blushed to wonder whether he was wrong. How could he be? Centuries of lore had taught him this creed, and when he looked around him, in waking and in vision, he saw the proofs of lore everywhere.

"For the Sylvan Lands!" cried the warrior, his yellow hair blowing back, his eyes shining.

Behind him where he did not see, in the tiniest corner of his vision, his saving-dream, a small corruption throbbed, a darkness on the land like the first small spot of disease upon the lung of a fair young queen. Unseen, unfelt yet, still it was there and quietly killing.

In the Tower of the Stars, the elf-king howled high to the heavens, shrieking to the gods. So loudly did he scream that the echoes of his agony rolled 'round and 'round his circular walls, like thunder never-ending. So long did he scream that his throat began to bleed, and he would have choked on the blood, but that was not to be permitted.

Out from the orb leaped a dragon, wings wide, fangs gleaming, he who had been prisoned there since before the days of Istar's glory, who had watched as a kingpriest thought he might like to become a god, who had found a way out of the destruction to come by whispering his dire warnings and false promises to a young mage flushed with his first glory, to Lorac Caladon. He had heard Takhisis call her dragons and wake them. Like fire in him, the sound of the goddess's call, like flames running all through his mind and his soul. Awake! Awake! My dragons, awake! But, enspelled and unable to find a way out from his crystal prison, Viper had remained trapped-until now.

The touch of a reptilian mind, cold and dry and with no other feeling than death-lust, froze the mind of Lorac Caladon, making motionless his hands. He could not scream. He could not breathe. He felt that mind twine around his like a snake around the limbs of a helpless child. His heart had no prayer. Fear felled faith. His soul turned chill, and the magic in him writhed like something dying.

And then-in an instant! — that dragon-mind was gone from his, the grip broken. Lorac breathed, but only once. Then came another mind, a stronger one, and this one seized him heart and soul in a taloned grip the like of which Viper could not hope to achieve. Too late, too late, he knew he had opened the magic of the orb and that was like opening a door. Another dragon, this one stronger, this one crueler, came rushing in. Viper roared, but the sound of his fury was already distant, the beast banished. In the soul of Lorac Caladon, a voice whispered words, like fire rushing, like wild wind in the winter-bare forest, the voice of another dragon.

Now you may scream, my little mageling-king!

Lorac did scream, so long and so hard that at last he became voiceless. Yet, unvoiced, still he screamed, and all his dreams of the golden warrior come to save his kingdom turned into nightmares, dreams grown so hideous as to sow the seeds of madness into a mind once celebrated for wit and wisdom and cunning.

He did not scream wordlessly, and he did not howl as beasts howl in the wilderlands. He screamed the words he had learned at his mother's knee.

"We are the land, the land is us!"

And so-it must be, it must be, for the mightiest mage of the Silvanesti spoke in the fullness of his magic-the insanity of the king fell upon his land and every living thing became warped, twisted in body, twisted in soul, imprisoned within the nightmare of the king as Lorac Caladon fell spiraling into despair.

The Nightmare King went out from his palace, his Tower of the Stars, and before him his guard of Wildrunners ran screaming, their faces etched in horror, their eyes the eyes of those who stand at the brink of the Abyss, the dread of damnation opening before them, the bone-white hands of the Dark Queen reaching to snatch them. In prayers one hears of that place-Save us from the Abyss, O E'li! Turn our step from there, O Guardian of Light! — in the darkest hours of night one imagines it. These, the flower of Lorac's army, the ones who would not leave their king no matter the danger, these saw the Abyss, that place in which dwells the darkest of goddesses and all the torments she can devise, torments for the body, the flaying of flesh, the shattering of bones, the blinding, the mutilations, the rivers of blood and fountains of tears. He showed this to them, with his merest glance he shaped it like their worst fears, their most secret dread. Wailing like demented children, they fled him, the Nightmare King. He laughed to see them flee, laughed to feel their madness running in him as though it were the blood running in his veins.

As the first winds of winter blew around him, cold and clawing, he turned to look at the Tower of the Stars, the shining beauty of masonry and magic, made in the days of Silvanos and raised up as a seat of power from which the line of that storied king had ruled in majesty for centuries. His glance made the marble run as the wax of a candle melts. The turrets rumbled, and the tower bent and twisted as though it were an old man writhing in grief.

The Nightmare King laughed, and he turned his back on the place of power. Howling as banshees howl, as the mad howl, he strode through the Garden of Astarin, and everywhere he went harm followed. Birds fell dead, small bundles of bone and feathers. He trod upon them and they woke, savage creatures dragon-shaped, with needle teeth and a lust for blood, their feathers changed to scales, their hearts to malignance. He touched the plants as he walked, moonvine and winter jasmine, the thorny rose and the winding wisteria. In this first hour of winter, they bloomed, their flowers the color of bruises and blood, their fragrance vileness and pestilence. The Nightmare King's shadow fell upon the boxwood, and the hedges collapsed, taken by disease; blighted, they fell into piles of brown bubbling slime.

Singing a madman's song, he went into each of the temples and made the marble walls melt. The altars collapsed under his merest glance. Wands of incense turned putrid. Scrolls burst into flame, and the smoke of those burnings rose up to a sky the color of bile. The houses of the lords and ladies collapsed. The homes of the humble ran like molten lava. All this because the Nightmare King cast his glance upon them.

He went walking through his kingdom, the golden warrior debased. No more the straight-backed king, the wisdom-bearer. No more the lover of the land. His thoughts were poison. The sky above his kingdom turned to roiling green, and when the rains came, they fell as acid, hissing and burning. Each stream he passed turned to blood, running into the mighty Thon-Thalas until that river itself became a red-running artery. He went in despair, in hatred, his mind ruled by the will of a venomous green dragon. The flesh rotted from his limbs, the hair fell from his head so that shining patches of skull gleamed in the green light.

As fell the king, so fell the land. In every part of the Silvanesti Forest, the trees that had been so lovingly tended by the elves of House Woodshaper bent and bled, sap running from them, leaves falling, bark peeling as though they languished in disease. In the forest the deer fell dead. In the river the fish became monsters, fanged things, growing legs and arms and crawling up onto the land.

The Nightmare King strode wide across his kingdom, turning everything to dying. A long, slow dying it was, for this nightmare that rode Lorac Caladon came from a dragon who knew the devices of the Dark Queen well. Cyan Bloodbane was his name, and he had spent time in the Abyss, learning his trade.

Each, dragon and Nightmare King, heard the howling of the land, the screaming of the trees, the shrieking of the birds and animals as Lorac's nightmare caught them and broke them, making from the ruin creatures more horrible than any outside of dementia. They reveled in it, drunken with their own rage. And they heard the wailing of the mortal folk, caught in the terror. Some of them were elves, others were not.

It must not be said, though, that in his madness the elf-king failed of his promise to rid the kingdom of the dragonarmy of Takhisis. Lorac Caladon, who had ruled the Silvanesti for six times as long as the span of the longest-lived human, kept his promise.

Phair Caron rampaged through his land, burning and killing, seeking the fair city of Silvanost. She had endured losses in her battle against Lord Garan's army, not the least the mage who was her finest captain. He was gone, his avatar killed and changed to dust, his mind returned to the prison of his ruined body somewhere far away. She cursed the loss and cursed the mage, but she eased her rage in killing. And so, it was in a small town on the Thon-Thalas that the hand of Lorac Caladon found her. She paused in the slaughter of children and felt herself fall, fast and hard, into a dark and terrible place.

Falling, she had not the wit to wonder whether her mind was whole. When the fall ended, she had no wit at all. She stood, not in a ruined elven village, but in Tarsis, the city of her childhood. She stood outside the doors of the brothel in which she had, at need, earned the money it would take to keep her little sister alive, fed and clothed- and out of this very place. Not far from here, some streets over, across the boulevard that marked the territory of whore from that of the finer folk, she had scrambled in a gutter for an elven coin.

All around her she heard laughter and rough music. She heard men growling and roaring like animals. The voices of women rose up in shrieking laughter and fell low in sobbing, and still the men came in and out of those rough wooden doors, entering eager, returning sated. She knew the place. She went a step forward and then another, like a child tiptoeing to the door she'd been forbidden to enter. She knew who ruled beyond that door. She knew-

The door opened wide. A woman stood upon the threshold, dressed in black silks thin as gossamer and artfully torn to look like the rags of a gutter-girl. Her golden hair spilled down her shoulders, her face the canvas of some demented hand that had painted upon it with rouges and kohl to make her white cheeks red and her pale eyes dark.

"Phair!" cried the woman in drunken laughter. She opened her arms to welcome in yet another man to the brothel and grabbed him before he got past her, giggling and then howling laughter as he kissed and fondled her. Over his shoulder, she cried, "Sister, come in! I have kept your pallet ready for you!"

'Twas then the Highlord of Takhisis fell to screaming, 'twas then she saw all she'd tried lifelong to prevent, her sister grasping greedily the coin offered for use of her body.

Phair Caron ran among her army, hair streaming, mouth gaped wide in shrieking as she tore at her eyes, finally plucking them from the sockets so that she might cease to see the living nightmare into which she'd been plunged. It mattered not at all that she went running now with bleeding holes where her blue eyes once were. Still she saw the horror. Still she saw the nightmare that ruled her mind, and that nightmare did not end until at last, thinking her a foeman charging, screaming in their own nightmares, three of her warriors fell upon her and hacked her, shrieking, to death.

The dragonarmy did not again ravage the Kingdom of Silvanesti. Some got out, but most did not. All, those who fled and those who stayed, died raving, screaming and shrieking, in nightmare defeated.

And in the audience chamber of the Tower of the Stars, the body of the Speaker sat in perfect stillness, eyes starting wide, mouth open in a wrenching, soundless scream.