Dalamar The Dark

Chapter 14

In the first year of his wandering, Dalamar had little use for the company of anyone-elf, dwarf, human, goblin, or ogre. He lived wild in the reaches outside the cities and towns, wintering under roof when the season blew cold and finding the port cities the most hospitable and the most interesting. He took no lover, for no elfwoman would have him, and in Silvanost the hearts of young men are not filled with longings for outlander women. The fee for his lodging and meals he paid with the steel he earned charming rats from warehouses-inglorious work that he hated.

However, despite his misery, Dalamar was still a reaper of news, and there where the water meets the land he found much to reap. In taverns where seamen gathered, he learned of the rehabilitation of lands long ravaged by war. He heard how after making treaties, the soldiers of the Whitestone Army left the field of battle and returned to their farms, crafts, and shops. In little shops where magic-users traded in spellbooks, herbs, oils, and strange and powerful artifacts, he heard from mages of all the three Orders that the armies of the Dark Queen had no such peaceful intent. The alliance between the armies of red and black and white and blue collapsed at the end of the war, though the armies themselves still maintained control of vast territories. The fallen Highlords ruled their fiefdoms roughly, brandishing their iron fists over the heads of their subjects and quarreling among themselves. In the taverns the drinkers were happy to consider the war over, the matter between gods settled, and they passed winter nights comfortably planning for a springtime that would, at last, not signal the start of another blood-drenched campaign of war. In the mage shops the folk were not so sure that the matter between the gods had all been said and done.

Through the winter, brooding, Dalamar did not think so broadly as this. He considered himself, his choices, and his chances. By night he dreamed of home, aching dreams of loss, and by day he wondered what place he could make for himself in the world outside Silvanesti. He thought of the cities to which he might travel-Palanthas, Tarsis, Caergoth, and North Keep. He thought of the libraries, the opportunities for study…

But he didn't think about journeying to the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth. That old dream lay quiet in him.

Come spring, Dalamar felt dark winds at his back, restless winds, and these seemed always to push him from the places where people congregated, away from the taverns and the bars, from the brothels and the temples and the mage-ware shops. These winds pushed him to the old places where mortals no longer walked. He, who had seen the ruin of his homeland, the ruin of his own place in that kingdom, was surprised to discover a taste for ruins, the skeletons of old cities, old places whose names were only half-remembered, whose stories had long before flown to the winds.

Dalamar walked among the ghosts who haunted Bloodwatch, the fallen tower that used to stand within sight of the Sea of Istar, and was now only a pile of stone. He found ways into the hidden parts of the ruins, went down deep into the earth and discovered vaults filled up with debris- rolls of parchments detailing supplies and requisitions, old chests filled with rusting weapons, and in the farthest corner of the deepest chamber, a golden coffer no larger than his two hands outspread. Though it had lain in dust and the moist cellar air for years unknown, this coffer was clean as though newly made. It sang to him, through his hands, through his bones and his blood, for it held something of magic in it, and he knew by the thrill he felt that here was a dark magic.

With great care, he examined the coffer, detected magical wards, and released them. Within lay a ring of silver, etched with runes and set with a perfectly cut ruby, dark as spilled blood. What power lay in the ring, he did not know, but he took it out from that place. Sitting on the shore, watching the tossing sea, he listened to the wind moaning around the ruins of Bloodwatch for two days and three long nights. He remembered what he had learned in Silvamori, that all things are voiced and all things may sing, and so he learned the language of the wind, the song of the sea, and he spoke with the ghosts wandering by. One told him, at last, what power the ring had. It would dry the blood in the veins of any foe.

Fate directing, in the hour before dawn, a small boat landed on the stony shore below the ruin of Bloodwatch. A goblin slipped out, prowling. In silence, Dalamar sat while the intruder scouted the ruins, waited to hear footsteps coming near, almost hoping…

The last light of the fading stars cast a shadow, a slim dark mark on the ground. He smelled the reek of goblin's breath and sat stony still, pretending to notice nothing. A steel blade hissed free of its sheath. Dalamar turned, all his will pouring into the ruby ring, directing the magic. The goblin's eyes went wide, its jaw dropped as it pulled one rattling gasp of air into its lungs, then fell over, dead. Using the goblin's own knife, Dalamar saw that the blood had indeed dried in its veins. He found nothing but brownish dust wherever he cut.

In the summer of the year, Dalamar Nightson went north to the ruins of the City of Lost Names and roamed through the wailing streets, searching for what artifacts of magic he might find. He found none, and it seemed to him that someone had been there recently before him. He did unearth a chest filled with a great richness of jewels, necklaces, brooches, rings, and tiaras. None had any magical value, but he took some of the pieces. Most he left hidden beneath his own warding spell.

He went into the Kharolis Mountains in the autumn, walking 'round and 'round the terrible ruins of Zhaman, which the dwarves of Thorbardin now named Skullcap, that fortress which, so legend says, the great mage Fistandantilus caused to be built. What treasure of magic must lie in there! Dalamar listened to the wind and the wailing, but he found no ghosts except for those of dwarves. They had nothing to say to him that did not have to do with the great wars of days gone when fabulous Zhaman was destroyed in the turmoil that ravaged Krynn after the fall of Istar. He would gladly have entered in to see what wonders lay hidden, but the towers had melted and run down the side of the hill upon which it stood, making the shape of the skull for which it was named. All entrances were sealed.

From there Dalamar went to winter in Tarsis, tired of smelling the sea and eating fish in the port cities. Walking upon the ancient seawall of a city that had not stood in sight of the sea in the three hundred and more years since the Cataclysm had reshaped the world, he looked out over the dry plain that had once been a harbor, at the hulls of sea-abandoned ships now serving as hovels for the poor folk of the city who lived cheek by jowl with the outlawed, the bandits, and all those who preyed upon the weak. Five hundred years later, one hardly saw the outlines of hulls, for work had been done to expand each hulk and repair age's damage. Ramshackle rooms had been added on, taken off, added again-all in haphazard fashion.

Outside the breakwater that now broke no water lay the Plains of Dust and, beyond, the foothills of the Kharolis Mountains, nearly a hundred miles distant. Dry wind blew off the plains, gritty with dust and stinking of piles of the garbage Tarsians had long been in the habit of pitching over their walls as though there were still swift currents of water to carry it all out to sea.

Dalamar turned from the hulks and left the wall, walking down into the city. He went through the marketplace, past booths where dark-eyed girls sold flowers and stalls where old women hawked brightly painted pottery. All around the smell of food hung-roasting meats, simmering soups, and fat loaves of bread haloed in steam.

In the darker corners, up against the wall beyond the central plaza, he found the quiet shops where mages gathered, Nuitari's Night, The Three Children, Wings of Magic, all the places where mages in Red robes, Black, and White came to trade magical artifacts for spell components, spell components for spellbooks, and gossip for news. He went into the Old City where he found ruins not unlike those he'd seen in other lands, only these lay within the walls of Tarsis itself. There he found the Library of Khrystann, that underground chamber filled with books and scrolls, very little of it in reasonable order.

Tarsis the Beautiful, Tarsis the Ruin… Dalamar found the place to his liking. He rented chambers above a mageware shop in the marketplace, near the iron gate in the wall where one passes through to the street behind the library. He recalled tales of the war, stories told of how Alhana Starbreeze had met with a disparate band of travelers questing after a dragon orb. There had been a mage among them, that one whose eyes were like hourglasses, whose skin was like gold, but not the gold of sun-the gold of metal. He remembered what had been said aboard Bright Solinari on the way from Silvamori: tales of a mage who made a Silvanesti Wildrunner shudder. Remembering this, Dalamar listened in the marketplace, he haunted the mage-ware shops, curious and hoping to learn about this mage who had broken a green dragon's spell. He heard nothing, and he wondered if Raistlin Majere was gone from the story of Krynn as the Wildrunner had sworn him gone from the story of Silvanesti.

This year Dalamar had no need to make his living charming rats from warehouses. The baubles out of the City of Lost Names sold handsomely in the marketplace. He settled into winter, spending much of his time in the library in the Old City, among old books and ancient scrolls. He made a further study of herbs, and he expanded his studies to include knowledge of magical runes of all kinds. In a city where half the land is ruin, where outlaws and bandits roam freely outside the walls and in, this last was a good study to make. In short time he knew how to speak the two runes of ancient Istarian-in exact cadence, with perfect focus-that would kill a man standing. He knew the three runes first etched by dark dwarf mages in the bowels of Thorbardin that would find an enemy in his bed and kill him there. He tried that out on a man who lived out in the hulks, a petty thief who'd had the mad idea of picking his pocket one day when he was walking in the market. The man died screaming. No one knew what had befallen but Dalamar, watching the death in a scrying bowl.

In a city where mages congregated, his name became familiar and respected. A rune-master they named him, and his reputation spoke of one who had gathered as many secrets as runes are said to keep. In midwinter he took a lover, and she was no elf but a human woman whose shining black hair fell all the way to her heels, whose eyes were the color of an aspen's bark, gray and sweet. He did not shy from the outlander, as he had done in the past. He was tired of the celibate bed, and he found her swift to laugh and slow to complain of a mage who walked in shadows and kept more secrets than she did hairpins.

He decorated his bedchamber with a tapestry woven in Silvanesti, a lovely weaving of the forest in spring, and he bought a half-case of Silvanesti wine, the kind that tastes of autumn. He drank the wine as one drinks the memories of all that is lost to him, bitterly and sweetly. When spring came again, Dalamar parted with his lover, unwilling to be chained by her expectation of the resumption of their affair upon his return. She didn't weep. She only laughed, and she did not look back when she walked out the door. He stood for a while, breathing the last wisps of her perfume, the musky odor of some golden oil imported from Northern Ergoth, then he sealed his chambers with invisible locks, with warding spells and secret traps. That done, he took up his pack and went down the stairs to pay his landlord rent for the next full year before he left the city. He had, at last, a home.

Into Valkinord he went. He found no magical scrolls, no secret artifacts, and again he saw that someone had been before him. He did find a small shrine to Nuitari, hung with shadows and the thin gray lace of spider webs. He cleaned it and stopped to worship, alone in the dust with the wind and the ghosts, the wanderer among the ruins. He found himself thinking about the Tower of High Sorcery and the hidden forest of Wayreth. Some sources told him that the forest lay at the edge of Icewall Glacier, others declared it would be found in the north part of Abanasinia. Still others took oaths that Wayreth Forest stood near Qualimori- no! — just beyond Tarsis. The forest found, one still had to locate the Tower which, all stories agreed, moved within the forest as easily as fish move in water. In there, no mage would find his way unless he was invited or unless he had so clear a focus on his goal, so unwavering a will to gain it, that nothing of the forest's magic could confuse or deter him. At night he dreamed about the Tower, but in the morning when he woke, he remembered only the barest threads of the dream, the faintest whisper.

That summer, Dalamar traveled as far as Neraka where he learned that the Highlords of Takhisis now often gathered to plot and make ready to launch another campaign against the people of Krynn. He spent a long time sitting in the hills outside the broken city, listening to rumors and feeling the power emanating from the place, a strength of magic and armed force. What power would he gain if he went into Neraka, presented himself to a Highlord, and offered his service? None, he decided, and only another master to serve.

He got up and walked away from Neraka, from the brooding armies of Takhisis, and went down to Southern Ergoth.

Forbidden all elven lands, still Dalamar slipped into Silvamori and went into the tower of Daltigoth, that pile which was, once and a long time ago, one of the five Towers of High Sorcery. This one had been the haunt of mages who'd dedicated themselves to the dark gods. The studies conducted there were grim and terrible, perfections in the arts of torment and woe. Another of the five towers had stood in Goodlund, but even the foundation of that was lost. A third tower was raised up in doomed Istar; there Lorac Caladon had taken his Tests of High Sorcery. That, like all of Istar, lay now beneath the sea, fallen in the Cataclysm. Two towers yet stood-one in Palanthas and one in the secret Forest of Wayreth. Only Wayreth's tower now functioned, kept and warded by its present master, Par-Salian of the Order of the White Robe, and only there could a mage take his Tests of High Sorcery. The tower in Palanthas, well, that one was cursed, and Dalamar had never heard of anyone going in there.

Thinking of towers, of the dream he had lately had, the one he had long held, he went through the Tower of High Sorcery at Daltigoth. Water dripped ceaselessly down the walls, outside and in. Winds sighed through broken stone. In the dungeons, piles of bones lay, brown and gnawed. In the upper chambers, nothing remained of the people who'd lived and worked there, not even the sob of a ghost. He went up and down crumbling stone stairs and brushed the dust of ages from musty tapestries. In libraries, he found nothing, not the least scroll, the smallest book. Here he didn't wonder whether some treasure hunter had been before him. The vast chambers and the deep vaults all had the look of places that had been systematically emptied a long time ago. Libraries, studies, scriptoria, laboratories… through all these Dalamar wandered listlessly and with little interest in what he saw. He had something else on his mind.

"It's time," Dalamar said, standing in the wide space that might once have been a vast reception hall. He did not speak loudly, but the echo of his words ran 'round and 'round the tower, bounding from the stone walls, leaping down the stairs, and falling into the well. The time had come to search and see if he could find the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth, to see whether the Master of the Tower would grant him the chance to take his Tests. He looked around and saw the hem of his black robe grayed with dust, his own footsteps marked behind him and before.

Shouldering his pack, Dalamar walked out the door, past the crumbling gargoyles, and down the shattered stone stairs. The courtyard tumbled with weeds. A wind blew stiffly off the waters of the Straits of Algoni, cold and smelling of the sea. Gulls cried in the hard blue sky, their voices like wounds on the silence. Something dark darted, swiftly caught out the corner of his eye. Dalamar looked up, and looking, he took a step into the courtyard.

Pain shot through him, lancing from his back and leaping through to his chest. He choked, he tried to turn to defend himself, and a flying weight hit him, driving him down to the broken pavement. Laughter rang out, leaping from the high walls of the ruined tower, shrieking in the sky, and burning in his mind like fire. He struggled, trying to throw off the weight that pinned and held him hard to the ground. Heart hammering, he kicked, twisting his shoulders. He never moved the weight, never stopped the shrieking laughter, but he got a breath, a short staggered gasp of air, and-

They were not cracked paving stones beneath Dalamar's cheek, tearing the flesh. Blood from his cut cheek seeped into the earth of a forest floor. A thin breeze drifted, smelling of oak and faintly of distant pine. Dalamar, groaning, finished taking his breath. He got his hands under him and found no weight held him. Carefully, he pushed to his knees, and he heard a soft chuckle.

"Gently, mage," said a low voice, the speaker clearly amused. "Gently."

He looked up, slowly, and saw a woman perched upon a tall boulder, smiling as she tapped the shining blade of a dagger against her knee. Two sapphires gleamed in the grip of the blade, the eyes of a dragon etched into the ivory grip. Dalamar noted the weapon, and he saw no threat in the eyes of the woman tapping rhythms against her knee with the blade. Though she sat, he knew she was tall as he, her long legs said so. Dressed in hunting leathers and a red shirt, she wore her night-black hair bound back from her face by a white scarf. A human, he noted, and tall as a barbarian Plainswoman, though she hadn't the look of one of those. Too pale of cheek, and too dark of hair, and not many Plainswomen had eyes the exact color of sapphires.

"Who are you?" he asked, climbing to his feet. One swift glance showed him he'd lost his pack. The little pouch of steel coins, his spare boots, the last leather flask of his autumn wine… all were gone. "Who are you?" he repeated coldly, and though the look he bent on her had chilled the blood of strong folk, this woman never moved but to smile.

"Best to ask, Dalamar Nightson, where am I? Or, more to the point, where are you?"

Wind sighed high in the treetops, and it didn't smell of the sea. It dropped low, and it carried the scent of the woman, her leathers, the faint tang of sweat, and the sweetness of the herbs with which she washed her hair. A stream gurgled, water talking to stone on its way by. He stood in an upland forest, so said the boulders strewn about, great chunks of stone of the kind found in the Kharolis Mountains. God-flung stone, the dwarves said, debris from the Cataclysm.

"Where are you?" asked the woman, tapping the dagger's blade against her knee. The rhythm quickened, suddenly impatient. "Where are you, Dalamar Nightson?"

"In the Forest of Wayreth," he said, his heart thudding in his chest.

Out the corner of his eye, he saw something black racing, low on the ground like a hound running. He braced and turned. He saw nothing but forest, trees running upslope, mighty oaks, broad of girth and rough-barked. Sunlight shone through the leaves. So tall were the trees that to stand looking up gave him the feeling of being far down, perhaps beneath the sea where the sky, when seen at all, was but a round disk. As water ripples, so did the light ripple, running with shadow. As water speaks, so did the forest, wind sighing through the oaks.

"What was that?" he asked, turning to the woman.

But she was gone.

Only sun-dappled moss sat on the boulder, thick and golden green. Not even the least scratch marred the softness. All around the stone the moss grew undisturbed. He touched it-springy and cool. He lifted his head and breathed the air. Nothing lingered of the dark-haired woman's scent, not even the faintest trace of leather.

"Very well," he said. Excitement ran in his belly. His heart beat, and the rhythm of it was the same as the beat of the tapping blade. "I am in Wayreth Forest."

And the forest does not, he thought even as he looked around, lie just east of Qualimori after all. It didn't lie north of Tarsis or south of Abanasinia. Apparently, the Forest of Wayreth stood wherever it pleased to stand. Be that as it was, he did not stand in sight of his true goal, the Tower of High Sorcery. If the moving forest had caught him, Dalamar had yet to catch the Tower.

Trees marched, streams gurgled, and in the sky, high white clouds ran before the north faring wind. The path northward through the oaks was a slender one, winding and climbing. All the light in the forest seemed to be behind him. There, glades stretched out, islands of meadows starred by flowers. A stag leaped, sun glinting off the six points of its tall crown of antlers. Dalamar would have taken his oath that he heard a bluebird singing, though no bluebird prefers forests to fields. Out the corner of his eye- Dalamar nodded, understanding-out the corner of his eye, he saw something dark, flying this time, a shadow streaking through the trees, ranging northward.

Dalamar Nightson turned his back on the glades, on the stag and the bluebird's song, and followed the shadow.

Dalamar climbed up rock-strewn paths, around washed-out paths, and broad oak trees, and over boulders that surely giants had wedged between the fat oaks. The stout boots he wore, those that had served him well in rough ruins, might as well have been a lord's velvet slippers. His ankles turned on small rocks in the path; he slipped on scree and slid backward, cursing the distance lost. He bled from cuts, and he ached from bruises. Always, he got up again.

The birds who flitted in this northern wood-crows and rooks mostly-had raucous voices, and they followed him like a mocking mob as he climbed. He looked around, trying to see the leading shadow, that swift streak of darkness. Nothing. He looked straight ahead, attending only a little to his peripheral vision, hoping to catch the glimpse. He did not, but he refused to let himself consider turning back. He had never walked an easy path and had never chosen the straight road, the even ground. It made no sense to do that now. The wind dropped, falling away as though it had no mind to lead him farther. Sweat rolled ceaselessly down his face and itched between his shoulders.

He went on, muscles aching, heart thudding hard in his chest, and the pulse in his neck hammering. For a time he went to the rhythm of a prayer, one that began as a request for strength from the Dark Son, from Nuitari of the Night. Soon he had no strength or mind to frame his prayer in words. Soon he let only the hammering of his heart act as his plea. Climbing, slipping back, climbing again, he went on until at last he fell and lay still. His heart beat into the earth. His sweat stained the stones as he lay still on the hard road up.

When at last he stood, he saw a gentling of the path, a leveling of the way. He saw it as a man sees vindication. He put his back into the climb, shouldering forward against the rise, and he walked onto level ground. There he stood, panting and sweating before a large mossy-shouldered boulder upon which sat the dark haired woman, tapping her sapphire-eyed dagger against her knee.

Smiling, she said, "Where are you, Dalamar Nightson?"

He didn't answer. He could not. His throat closed up with sudden thirst, and his knees turned weak.

"Ah," she said, brushing a lock of raven hair from her forehead. She reached behind the boulder and lifted his pack. Rummaging through it as familiarly as though the contents were her own, she pulled out a leather flask and handed it to him. "You look like you need this."

He drank the wine, glaring at her. He drank, and all the smoky sweetness of the Silvanesti Forest in autumn drifted around him and through him as the first mists of the season drift through the aspenwood. The ache he felt then was not an ache of muscle, not a weariness of bone. What he felt was like the melting of ice, the cracking, the groaning. He closed his eyes, tears stung, and grief held tight to his throat. Tighter to his heart did he hold, and he forbade tears, forbade himself to show any sign of sorrow or weakness before this prankster, this sapphire-eyed woman.

"Yes," she said. "It's really all about control, Dalamar Nightson."

"What is?" he asked, wearily opening his eyes.

"Well, all of it." She pulled up her legs tight to her chest, wrapped her arms round her shins and rested her chin on her knees. "Control of yourself. You do that well, don't you? Control of your life-not a concept with which most elves have intimate understanding, I dare say-and, of course, control of the magic each time you embrace it."

Ah, magic, the forest and the paths that led to nowhere. "So, it has all been illusion," he said.

Her blue eyes shone suddenly bright. "The hill and the road up? Not at all. Do your legs feel like you've been walking through an illusion?"

They did not.

She sat up, sweeping her arms wide, embracing all the woodland around, the Forest of Wayreth. "All this is real, and all this is magic. The Master of the Tower is in control of this magic, but that doesn't mean you've lost control- which might be part of the problem."

And then she was gone, vanished, her mossy boulder showing no sign she'd ever been there. Gone, too, was the wine-flask from Dalamar's hand and his pack from the ground.

South into the glades went the wanderer, through meadows where butterflies danced on daises and ruby humming-birds floated over the sweet soft throats of honeysuckle. South into the sunlight, Dalamar walked beside streams where fish shone like bright silver and dragonflies the color of blue steel darted. When he walked through all the wonders of springtime, he came back to the boulder and the blue-eyed woman. He turned from her before she could speak, and he went away west into an endless purpling twilight. Stars hung low over the trees, and the three moons graced the darkling sky but never moved, not even a hand's width across the night. Owls woke in the oaks and bats flitted. A fox barked, another answered. A shadow darted across his path. He looked, and he again saw her, the trickster, the blue-eyed woman, smiling at him and sitting on her gray craggy boulder.

Magic and control. Someone else controlled the forest he wandered in; someone else knew where all the paths led to, and where they all led away from. Magic and control. Dalamar smiled a little.

She looked around, found his pack, and took out the leather wine-flask. He refused when she offered, but politely.

"I've had enough of Silvanesti, of any place outside here. For now." He did not smile, though he wanted to, and he chose his next words with care. "I am here, where I need to be."

"What makes you think that?" asked the dark-haired woman.

He sketched a bow, not so deep but respectful. "All the reports of my senses seem to lie, and yet my feet lead me always here, to this place. You said it yourself: the magic in this forest isn't mine to control; the way and the road belong to someone else. But if I cannot control the magic, I can control my response to it."

She looked at him, a long sapphire stare, and then she threw back her head, her laughter sailing up through the trees. In the next breath, the trees and the tall gray oaks receded all around, drawing back from Dalamar and the woman. Moving, they made no sound, and whatever birds or squirrels inhabited bough or nest made not the least protest. Withdrawing, the trees left a wide clear space-not a glade of waving grasses but a close-cropped sward through which a broad road passed. Six knights riding abreast might have passed comfortably on that road, though they would have had to pass round the boulder, the moss-cloaked stone. Above, the sky shone deeply blue, shading toward the end of the day.

His belly clenching with excitement, his skin tingling as it does when magic is being done, Dalamar looked around, trying to catch a glimpse of the Tower of High Sorcery. He saw nothing, not rising stone, not gated walls… nothing.

"Remember," said the woman, her voice soft as with distance.

Quickly, he ruined back to her. In the act of slipping from the stone, the woman vanished. As though mist had risen from the ground, the boulder shimmered behind a gray veil, and the air around it shivered. A man must blink; the eye does it, not the will. In the instant that he did, Dalamar felt all the world change around him, as though the forest folded itself in upon itself, collapsing and then suddenly springing whole and straight again.

The boulder was gone. No mark of it remained on the firmly packed earth of the road. In its place-and in the place of many trees! — rose great high walls of shining stone. Dalamar's heart leaped, and the blood raced through his veins, singing. He saw not one tower, a solitary monolith such as that at Daltigoth. He saw seven towers.