Dalamar The Dark

Chapter 17

Dalamar lay in silence, still and barely breathing. He felt as though he'd lain that way for days, sleeping without waking, never dreaming. Beneath his cheek was a thick pillow of down; a blue blanket of soft combed wool covered his nakedness. Somewhere a bird sang, a wren by the sound of the intricate weaving of notes. Incense drifted like memory through the air, hanging low, a gray ghost come to seek him. It smelled of lavender. It smelled of the Temple of E'li, of Silvanost, sun, and soft breezes.

Perhaps I am not dead, he thought.

A hand touched him lightly on the brow, brushing his hair from his cheek, inviting him to wake fully. "You are not," a woman's voice said. It was not a gentle voice, though he thought it could be if she wanted that. "Though I don't blame you if you feel as if you are."

Dalamar opened his eyes and turned onto his back. He was in a small room with only a bed and a table near to hand, a chest at the foot, and a desk for writing. A woman stood beside the bed, tall and lovely. She was, by the look of her, human. Her hair, the color of pure polished silver and arranged in an intricate fantasy of braids, gleamed in the sunlight. She wore black robes of velvet, diamonds and rubies sewn into the seams, and her fingers sparkled with gemmed rings. Her face was lined, but lightly. He knew her! He had seen her in Istar, only she had been younger, and her name, her name was Kesela. He had killed her. She had killed him. In Istar…

He closed his eyes again, swallowing dryly.

No one, it seemed, had killed anyone, and certainly not in fallen Istar.

"My lady," he said, "how long have I been ill?"

"You have not been ill," said the woman. "Illusions are all you suffer from, young mage-illusions and illusions within illusions. I am"-she smiled a little-"not Kesela. I let the illusion borrow my face, my younger face. I am Ladonna. Can you sit and take some of this wine I've brought?"

Ladonna! Dalamar thought he would have to struggle to sit, but to his surprise the feeling of weighty lassitude fell from him as he pushed himself onto his elbow, then sat up. He gathered the blue blanket around his waist. The woman smiled at his modesty.

"I've seen more of you than you imagine, Dalamar Argent, and other things than the body you wear." She watched him sip the wine, then said, "Congratulations. You have been Tested."

He had been, he knew that now, and he remembered every detail of that Test, the casting of spells, the journey through Istar. Ah, the theft of the dragon orb that would undo a king and ravage his kingdom! He had permitted that theft when he might have stopped it. This, in the dreamscape, he'd done for magic, and he knew, even as bitter regret yet clung to the memories, that he would do as much or more in the waking world to defend the integrity of a Test, the integrity of High Sorcery itself, should he be called upon.

"Yes," he said, putting aside the goblet. "I have been Tested. I remember. And I did not fare well."

"Do you think so? Interesting."

The scent of lavender incense drifted around them, the scent of fair Silvanost in the days before a king's nightmare ravaged her. "Then I did not fail?"

"You are hard on your teachers but no, you did not fail. There were no tasks to accomplish, young mage. We only care about whether you are skilled, and your level of devotion to magic. These things we now know. How do you feel?"

Numb, weary, and confused. That's how he felt, and he would not say as much to her or to anyone. "I have heard, my lady, that even those mages who survive the Tests come away with scars. I see none on me." He gestured down the length of his body. "I feel none."

Ladonna shrugged, a small, elegant gesture. "Do you think, then, that you are the wonder of the age, the only mage in Krynn to come away from his Tests with no mark on him at all?"

Like ravens circling, memories of the dreamscape came cawing back to him, screeching in his mind. He was a man who had set Lorac Caladon loose to wreak havoc upon the most beautiful kingdom in all of Krynn. No, he did not think he had come away unscarred. It was, after all, only that his scars did not immediately show.

Ladonna let the matter go. "Now tell me this, Dalamar Argent: Do you feel strong? Do you feel ready to walk abroad in the land, a wizard young in his power and growing stronger?"

Dalamar Argent. Twice she had named him so, and each time the naming had stung. "My lady," he said with all the considerable dignity an elf can summon, "my name used to be Dalamar Argent. It has not been since-" Since it was struck from the records in Silvanesti, making him a non-person. "It has not been since I went to live in Tarsis. My name is Dalamar Nightson."

As though the matter of his name were no concern of hers, she turned from him and crossed the room to the door. Before she opened it, she looked over her shoulder and said, "A servant has come and taken your clothing to be cleaned. You will find replacements in the chest, and your boots are beneath the bed. Rest a while now, but come into the Hall of Mages at the first hour after noon, Dalamar Nightson. You will be expected."

She said no more, and she did not actually trouble with the door. In the space between one breath and another, Ladonna vanished from the chamber, leaving behind only the scent of her perfume and the after-image of bejeweled fingers twinkling.

They met, only three, in the vast Hall of Mages; the Heads of the Orders convened in conference. Their voices echoed thinly, their every breath rustled around the walls up to the very ceiling. They met in perfect confidence that the secret matter they had come to discuss would remain just that, as secret in this room as though it remained unspoken, a secret in their breasts. Their secret, however, did not go unheard by others, though never would it be betrayed. Beneath the marble floor, far below in catacombs deep, lay the crypts, the last, longest home of mages who had, for years uncounted, come here to die or commanded their bodies be brought for entombment. In this hall, the dead observed what work the living did, and no one minded, for the dead were the best keepers of secrets.

Cold, white light shone down from the ceiling, motionless, allowing no shadow as it illuminated the vast hall. It spilled onto the twenty high-backed seats of polished wood, seventeen of those arranged in a semi-circle, three in crescent within that semi-circle. One chair, hewn of mighty granite, the gray shot through with veins of black, sat facing all. Firelight might waken the heart of the twenty mahogany chairs, bringing out the red gleams of polished wood. This light did not. Neither did it make the granite of the tallest, grandest chair in which would sit the Head of the Conclave of Wizards seem less cold than it was.

In this hall of chairs, the Heads of the Orders did not sit but ranged around pacing. The pale light made Par-Salian's robe seem like the dead-white of a funeral shroud, the black velvet of Ladonna's deep as moonless midnight, and like blood lately spilled the robe of Justarius, he who ruled the Order of the Red Robes. He went with a limping walk, for if some mages are not marked visibly by their Tests, others are.

"Ladonna, I've said it before, and I will again: You ask us to take a great risk by delaying our plan. The mage Dalamar has taken his Tests. By all accounts he's done well. What more do you want?"

Ladonna laughed, a low, throaty sound. Neither man mistook it for a sign of humor, this laughter like a growl. "Since when are you averse to risk, Justarius? Something new in the last hour?" His eyes narrowed, glinting with anger. She smiled, and this time not so fiercely. "I don't mind a risk, either, but I like a well-chosen one. Before we send the dark elf to Palanthas, I want him proven."

Justarius said nothing, still glaring. Into the silence, Par-Salian spoke.

"My lady," he said, "my lord. We waste time. We know what danger is brooding in Palanthas, and we have agreed what measure we will take against that. I am sure you agree, Justarius, that we dare not act precipitously. We must know that the tool we use in the Palanthas matter is strong and keen-edged. If we send the wrong man on our mission, we will not have a second chance to send another. Raistlin Majere grows stronger each day and, locked away in his tower-"

His tower. They winced, the lady of the dark robes and the lord of the red.

"Yes, his tower, though I like the sound of that no better than you do. What else to call it? He's shut himself up in there, no one who has tried to enter after him has gotten farther than his doorstep before dying, and not many of those have gotten even so far. Shall we pretend otherwise? No, we are all agreed that we must discover what he's up to, and we are agreed on the way we will do that, what tool we should employ. I say let Ladonna try out our tool. Let her use her dark elf in whatever cause she likes."

Justarius shook his head, his face clouded. He said nothing, not to disagree or agree.

Ladonna lowered her eyes, in courtesy veiling the gleam of triumph she knew must be shining there. Softly, she said, "Very well then, my lords. I thank you for your trust. I will do what I have planned, and I will let you know how well my plan turns out."

Regene of Schallsea stood in the doorway, her back to the jamb, her long legs crossed at the ankle. A studied pose, Dalamar thought as he looked up from the desk and the book he'd found lying there. A small book, this treatise on herb-craft was more of interest for the illustrations than for the outdated prescriptions in its text. Sunlight ran through her dark hair, spinning silver. She was the Regene of the forest, the hunting girl in leathers with her midnight hair bound back from her forehead by a white silk scarf. As he eyed her, so did Regene eye him. Neither found the other easy to read.

Dalamar flicked a faint mark of dust from the sleeve of his robe, smoothing the soft black wool, his fingers brushing the runes marked in silver embroidery on the hem. It was a finer robe than he'd ever worn, and the note he found folded upon the breast said it was a gift from Ladonna herself "to welcome you to the company of mages, Black Robe, Red Robe and White." Of softest wool, the robe sat comfortably on him, hanging from his shoulders as though the finest tailor in all Krynn had taken the measure of him in the night and swiftly sewn from moons rising to sun rising. The sleeve smoothed, he raised a brow, again eyeing his visitor.

"Aren't you concerned they might mistake you for a guest gone astray in that hunting gear?"

Blue eyes flashed, sharply bright. "No one mistakes me if I don't want them to, but you're right. Robes are the costume of the day here, and so robes I will wear." She raised her arms, graceful as a swan lifting in flight, and breathed a short phrase. The air around her sparkled, shimmering. Laughter rang in the chamber as she stood for the barest wink of time utterly disrobed-a glory of long alabaster limbs, rosy breasts and curving hips-then suddenly robed in flowing white, her hair again in two thick braids over her shoulders. She inclined her head. "Better?"

He looked at her, as though she were yet the alabaster woman, then shrugged. "As it pleases you."

"I've come," she said, "to show you the Tower, if you like. You are as welcome here now as the Master of the place himself. You might want to get to know it."

She'd come for more than that, he was certain. Her eyes were too keen, her expression too carefully guarded. She'd come to learn things about him. Whether she'd come in her own behalf or to satisfy the curiosity of others remained to be learned. Well enough. Let her look and watch. Let her try to see what she could uncover.

"I would like to tour the Tower with you, Regene of Schallsea." He picked up the book from his desk. "Perhaps we can start with the library?"

Regene shrugged, then she snapped her fingers. The book vanished out of Dalamar's hand, leaving only a warm tingling behind on his skin.

"No sense carrying it all that way. Now, come with me. We're quite proud of our Tower, and you'll enjoy seeing why."

His hand still warm from her magic, Dalamar followed Regene out of the guest chamber and into the wide reaches of a Tower of High Sorcery.

Magic moved all around, on the air, in the corridors, and in the chambers of the Tower. Its scent hung in every corner, clung to each tapestry on every wall, to the soft settles, to the pillows adorning the chairs, to the very stone, floor, and wall. Dalamar breathed it, filling his lungs with the fragrance. Mages, white and red and black, went and in and out of the vast records room where librarians worked to sort the ever-increasing piles of papers and books that seemed to breed in the Tower of High Sorcery-journals and diaries, old parchments penned two centuries earlier…

"We throw nothing away," Regene said, and she did not exaggerate. "Here in the Tower we keep every scrap that might one day be deemed important."

Row upon row of shelves and bookcases filled each of the records rooms on the first and second floor of the north tower. Mages went among them, some cataloging, some searching.

"What you see here on the first floor is only recently catalogued, the flotsam of the years just before the war and till now. Across the hall are records of ages past. We shrink the storage crates." She held out her palm, her blue eyes laughing. "Make them as small as my hand and unshrink them if we need to find something."

She took him from the first-floor records room and into the rear tower, telling him that this place was only a back door. "Or sometimes a mage who has died will lie in state here until we entomb him in the crypts below the Hall of Mages. Still, after all, the back door, isn't it?"

Down into the crypts she took him, among the dead of the ages, sorcerers and wizards whose names had long been sung in legend, others whose quiet lives left not even a whisper to echo after them. Beyond and below lay the dungeons, dark, damp chambers where no chains hung from the walls and no doors barred the cells. And why should they? Could not the mages of the Tower command magic to hold those they wanted held? Out into the rear courtyard she took him, and when Dalamar saw the gardens there, filled with flowers, with fruit trees and vegetable patches and herb beds, she noted the look on him, the swift shadow of longing, as though he thought of fair Silvanost, that place to which he might never return.

"Come," she said, pointing to the three towers crowning each junction of the high black walls. "If I wagered that you thought those were guard towers, would I lose?"

He looked up, the touch of a fragrant herb still soft on his fingers. "Yes," he said, "you would. What use would this place have for guards and watch-walks?"

None, of course, but the Tower had every use for laboratories well removed from the central towers. Powerful magics were worked in those places, such experiments of sorcery that would turn white the hair of the downiest youth and wake the first, most terrible nightmare of the hoariest elder. "And do worse than that," Regene said. "I won't take you there now; they are all in use. But you'll have your chance at them later, when you find the need."

Last, Regene took him into the south tower by back stairs beyond the level of the Hall of Mages and into the libraries. In that place of wonders she let him roam, watching as he went from aisle to aisle, wandering in and out among shelves of books until, in the stacks far back in the shadowy corners where the oldest tomes were kept, he crossed the path of a dwarf. Silence stood between them, a moment when absent nods might have been exchanged before one moved on or the other did. Their eyes might never have met, and yet they did. In that moment of meeting Regene knew they recognized each other.

The dwarf laughed, a harsh, hard bark. His lips twisted in a sneering smile, with exaggerated care he stroked his beard, that gesture of insult clear to even those who were not born in Thorbardin. You are no man, you are but a beardless boy and hardly worth my notice.

Dalamar Nightson stood unmoving, a mage who might have been carved out of obsidian. Unmoving, he was not unmoved. Then his hand twitched, his right hand, his power hand, as though he were preparing to cast a killing spell. Just for an instant, Regene wondered if the charge of hospitality that lay on all who entered the Tower would be broken, breached for the first time in the memory of the oldest mage here. Dalamar lifted his head, his eyes cold, his expression stony. Some communication passed between them, a thing Regene could not sense, for they spoke mind to mind, mage to mage. The dark elf turned, and he walked away. When he returned to her side, Regene felt the anger in him not as fire but as ice. Her blood ran cold. She slipped her hands into the wide sleeves of her robe to hide their sudden shaking.

Still, she suspected that what she sought to hide, he recognized. He did not speak of it, however, or acknowledge it in any way. It was as though her reaction couldn't possibly matter to him, to laugh at, to soothe, to scorn. With careful politeness Dalamar said, "Thank you for the tour, Regene. I must leave now, for I have an appointment I'd rather not miss."

She glanced into the shadows to where the dwarf had been. He was gone now. Her eyes on those shadows, she told Dalamar she would gladly guide him to his destination.

"No," he said, "I can find my way." He bowed, as gallantly as any elf-lord in Silvanost, but his voice was chill. "I bid you good day."

Dismissed, she let him go. When he was gone, she went into the stacks where he had met the dwarf mage. She extended her senses, intuitive and magical, but read nothing there of what had passed between them more than the last rippling of scorn and rage. What, she wondered, would move the dark elf out from his cool silence into rage? She could not imagine, and she did not want to waste time doing that. She was known to the mages of the Tower as a clever young woman. "Long-headed," said Par-Salian of her, meaning she had a fine memory and a keen wit sometimes overlooked in the light of more charming talents of dressing and undressing in illusion. To the observant, those who knew how to look past all her pretty faces, Regene of Schallsea was also known for a young woman of ambition. She hoped-not unrealistically-that one day she would sit as a member of the Conclave of Wizards and have a place in the Hall of Mages among the twenty-one who steered the course of High Sorcery in Krynn.

Long-headed, keen-witted, she knew there was something about this dark elf, something that attracted the attention of the Master of the Tower. Par-Salian had sent her out into his Guardian Forest to lead Dalamar Nightson through the winding ways. "Don't make it too easy," he had said, "but get him here."

She had not asked why. No one would dare such a question, but she was curious. This one, this dark elf, a self-taught mage who had been nothing but a servant in Silvanost, seemed interesting to the Master of the Tower. It would serve ambition well to keep near him, to watch him, and to see what she might learn.

Through the wonders of the Tower, Dalamar walked insensible. He passed mages and he did not see them. All the scents of magic that had charmed him no longer touched him. He walked through the Tower, but in his mind, in his soul, he walked through the Silvanesti Forest, through the woods on the border where a dragon died screaming, where the cleric Tellin Windglimmer lay, writhing and choking on his last, futile prayer. All around him, the forest burned while he looked into the black depths of a red dragon helm and saw the burning eyes of a minion of Phair Caron, a mage who had come to kill the illusion crafters.

In his blood, fury ran. Fire! Fire! Fire in the woods! The cry rang in him, tolling like a bell. In bitter memory, Dalamar looked again upon the death-stilled corpse, the body of Lord Tellin, who had not been, after all, the hardest master he'd served. He had been, like so many other elves that season, a man who did not normally think of himself as a warrior. A cleric used to softer days and easier ways, he had taken his courage and gone north to fight in the hope of freeing the homeland from the terror that savaged their borders, in hope of realizing a dream he should not ever have entertained…

And did Dalamar think his own dream killed, murdered on the border that day? Back then, he might have thought so. Now, he didn't. Now, he knew that the roads he walked, the paths of the world leading through wild places, through port cities and ruined towers, even around the rim of Neraka and into Tarsis, were roads fate had guided him to walk. He was, now and then, a child of the Dark Son, that god who best loved secrets and magic. He was Nuitari's. He would have learned that, one way or another. He would have paid for his devotion in the coin of exile, later if not sooner. His rage, the fury in his heart, was for the maiming of his homeland, that forest more precious to him now than it had been when he could freely run the tended paths. He raged for the city, fair Silvanost, more lovely in memory than when he could wake in the morning to the sound of birdsong, the scent of the Thon-Thalas running, the voices of the city, the lords and their ladies, the bakers, the carters, the butcher-boys and the seamstresses as they went in and out the houses of the high folk.

In the library of this mighty Tower, he had looked into the eyes of one who had taken part in the rape of Silvanesti. Eight years ago! It seemed like the merest breath of time since those fiery eyes had glared at him from a red dragon helm. Then the eyes had been those of a man tall as a barbarian Plainsman. Now they were the eyes of a mountain dwarf, a dark mage who, looking at him, had known him and dismissed him as one of no consequence.

Plainsman and dwarf, they were the same man.

Dalamar stopped, only then realizing that he trembled with rage. He stood a long, slow breath, and he saw that the door into the Hall of Mages stood slightly ajar. Inside, the Head of his Order waited, Ladonna who had bid him come here. She had a matter to take up with him. Whatever it was, he would not let her see him as he now stood, pale with rage. He took a breath, only one, and closed his eyes, focusing inward until his mind calmed and his heart no longer beat to the drums of his rage. When he was again still, he put his hand on the door to the Hall of Mages. His lightest touch caused it to shiver, just a little, and to swing slowly, silently inward.

Dalamar looked swiftly around the high dark chamber. He had a sense that it was a cavernous place, stretching wide and reaching high. Even as he did, he understood that it was not nearly so large as it seemed. The light made the illusion, the pale glow seeping down from the ceiling.

Dark as shadows, Ladonna stood before a tall wooden chair, one of three arranged in semi-circle, beyond which nineteen others formed an embracing crescent. One tall granite seat stood so that whoever sat there could look out upon all. To this one, Ladonna had her back, and her hand upon the arm of the mahogany chair seemed white as bone in the strange, unwavering light.

"My lady, I have come as you commanded."

She turned and looked at him through narrowed eyes. He felt her regard like the touch of a cold hand. He did not flinch, even when she said, "You have seen him."

Dalamar nodded, just once. "I have."

"Good. Now come in. There is a thing you and I must talk about."

You have seen him. Good. How, good? Why, good? Curiosity compelled him. Dalamar went deeper into the hall, and as he walked, it seemed to him that the very air was shivering, that the stone floor beneath his feet shifted. He kept his stride, looking neither up nor down.

"I'm making a map, Dalamar Nightson. Come in, and come closer."

She waved her hand again, a languid gesture that caught the pale light from above in the facets of her ringed fingers and trailed it through the air in colors of sapphire and ruby and emerald. Those light trails were like threads, and with these she wove her map upon the gray stone floor. Towers rose up in the middle of the floor, towers as tall as his shoulder, and these warded a dark castle that sat upon the highest peak of a mountain dominating an island. On the next peak, one only a little smaller, a dragon lay coiled in the warmth of the day, sunlight glinting like bright arrows from its talons and steel-blue scales. Ladonna waved her hand again, and now the light of diamonds depicted water shimmering on the floor, the Courrain Ocean and, just outside the embrace of the Isles of Karthay, Mithas and Kothas, a roiling of water like a wound forever unhealing.

"The Blood Sea of Istar," Ladonna said. She smiled a little, and darkly. "You have lately seen what used to stand in that place in the days before the Cataclysm."

In his Tests he had, in the dreamscape where he'd chosen to let Lorac Caladon take a dragon orb from the Tower of Istar. That orb plunged the fairest kingdom of the world into nightmare. He had weighed in the balance the fate of the beloved kingdom and the strictures of High Sorcery, which command that no one may interfere with a mage in his Tests. He had chosen, as he always had, for sorcery, and he would not show sign of regret or sorrow to this woman whose eyes watched him so coldly. Still, and he could not help it, Dalamar looked south and west from the Blood Sea, and without thinking his eye went to find Silvanesti. This magical map did not show it, and in his heart his most private voice whispered his deepest sorrow: No road leads home for you, not even those drawn on maps.

"My lady," he said, turning his eyes from the place he could not see or ever go, turning his mind from the pain to the moment. "Why are you showing me this castle in Karthay?"

And what does this have to do with your satisfaction that I have seen the dwarf mage and he me?

She looked at him long, her gaze keen with reckoning.

"Listen to me, Dalamar Nightson, and learn this well: You have lived through the War of the Lance, you know that gods work ever in the world with mortals as their instruments and weapons, and you know, for you are no fool, that they have not stopped striving, no matter what treaties mortals have inked among themselves."

Dalamar folded his hands inside the wide sleeves of his dark robe, waiting.

"There are gods, however, who forbear to play this game. You know them, too. They are the three magical children, the gods of High Sorcery. They cherish balance above all things, and we who practice their Art know that if the balance between the three spheres fails…"

Dalamar shuddered. "Then magic will fail."

She lifted a hand to tuck back a small wisp of her silver hair. Gems sparked on her fingers, dazzling. "Exactly. Let Paladine and Takhisis play at war, let Gilean watch and record all in sublime impartiality-no matter to them if balance fails. But we who walk on sorcery's way must always strive to keep the balance of light and dark so that our magic may survive. Did not Istar show us that?"

"My lady, no one knows how precious the balance better than a dark elf. You tell me what I already know."

She raised a brow, one cool brow, and he fell silent. In the silence nothing stirred, not even the image of the map on the floor; it was as though the oceans she'd drawn had frozen, as though the towers she'd raised hung in the very moment between the lash of the earthquake and the rumbling of stone.

"Well," she said in a voice that raised the hair on the back of his neck, "let me see, master mage, if I can tell you something you don't know. This balance we cherish has fallen into danger of tipping." Her eyes narrowed, glittering and dangerous. "The one who works to overweight the scales is that mage you met recently in the library"-her lips moved in a cruel smile-"a mage whom you know from other days."

Boldly he spoke, for there was only one other way to speak, and that was in fear. Not now, not ever. "The mage I knew in other days, my lady, was a tall Plainsman, a barbarian in red armor who rode upon a crimson dragon. The mage I saw today is a dwarf."

"Yes, and if you see him again outside this Tower, you might see not a Plainsman or a dwarf. You might not see a man, but a lovely woman or a child. His name, the one his parents gave to him in Thorbardin, is Tramd Stonestrike. He is known to most others as Tramd o' the Dark. We spoke, lately, you and I, about the marks a mage's Test can leave on him. This one's Test left him a rotting ruin, blind, incapable of leaving his bed, of feeding himself or keeping himself clean. All he has left to him is his mind and magic."

"A mind," Dalamar said, suddenly understanding, "that he sends abroad in avatars."

"Yes. He is a wanderer, one who seeks everywhere for the spell or the talisman or the artifact that will restore him to health. You met him in Silvanesti because he had come upon a way to facilitate his search-he attached himself to the army of the Highlord Phair Caron. He went through all the lands she conquered, searching for the magic he needs. After the war, he walked through the world he helped to wound, still searching. At times, he turns up here, checking the libraries and the records rooms."

"He has not, it seems, been successful wherever he searches."

"He hasn't. But he has found another Highlord to serve, and she most certainly has made promises to him, promises he has chosen to trust. She is the Blue Lady."

The Blue Lady, that one who sat even now in Sanction, waiting for her chance to begin the war anew for the Dark Queen, she whose forces filled Neraka. Her title rang like the clash of distant swords in the chamber, echoing. She was, he knew, the sister of the mage who had broken the Nightmare gripping Silvanesti.

"Is she so powerful, then, my lady, that you fear she will tip the balance in the battle between the gods?"

"She is powerful and growing stronger. She has the favor of Her Dark Majesty, and she has Tramd to make such magic for her as the world has not lately seen. He is stronger now than he was when Phair Caron was his Highlord. Some things he has learned in his wanderings, if not the one thing he seeks." She paused, a thoughtful silence in which she allowed him to see her considering. "And other things are happening, far away in Palanthas. Another force… well, we can talk about that in proper time. For now, we have gone far afield. Would you like to undertake a mission for me, Dalamar Nightson?"

Dalamar's pulse quickened. She had the look on her of one who is about to bestow a boon. He could guess what boon that was. "My lady, only name it. I will do it."

"Kill the dwarf. Not the avatar, that is but inspired clay. When it falls, the mind of the man flies homeward again back to Karthay and the ruin that is his body. Kill that ruin when there is no avatar for his mind to fly back to, and you kill the dwarf himself." She laughed then, for she saw his eyes shining, the eagerness leaping. "I thought you would find this mission to your liking. But understand: By undertaking my mission, you risk the ire of Her Dark Majesty. Tramd is part of her work."

Now Dalamar's pounding heart pumped blood as cold as snow melt. No matter, no matter. Revenge lay within his reach. Close at hand, too, lay a chance to stand high in Ladonna's favor. For these things Dalamar would risk his life and count the gamble a good one.

"My lady, I don't seek the Dark Queen's ire, but I will not be paralyzed by fear of it."

"It is my hope that you will not be," Ladonna murmured wryly. "And my hope that you will remember that dragon, who suns himself by day on the peaks and wards the mage in his helplessness by night."

He lifted his head then, looking her boldly in the eye. "I will not forget. Nor will I forget that it is your hope that I will not fail this test you set me."

Ladonna's expression showed surprise, only a flicker. "A test? Have you not had enough of tests?"

"It seems not."

"Well, well. You are a keen one, aren't you? Yes, this is another test. Are you eager to know what lies beyond the test, should you succeed?"

Dalamar shrugged.

She looked at him again, again to search. When she had done so, she said, "Palanthas lies beyond the test."

Palanthas, where the only other surviving Tower of High Sorcery lay, surrounded by Shoikan Grove and a host of undead and ghosts and worse to discourage trespassers. No one had been in Palanthas's Tower since the fall of Istar. Sealed with a curse, the curse itself bound by the blood of the Master of that tower, a mage who flung himself from the highest battlement and fell, impaled, upon the iron fence far below. Since that time, no one had entered the Tower of High Sorcery at Palanthas.

"And what is in Palanthas for me, my lady?"

"No," she said, "I will tell you none of that. There we stray into matters best discussed by the Master of this Tower. Go relieve the world of that dwarf, then we will deal in questions and answers."

"Very well," he said, his eyes still on hers. "I will do that, my lady."

She smiled then, and it was not a warm smile. In that instant, the interview was over. She turned on her heel and walked away. The dark sweep of the hem of her robe whispering to the floor was the only sound in the high wide chamber. Upon that floor her illusion still sat, the frozen sea and the towers of the citadel upon the mountains of Karthay, and the dragon like an image forged in blue steel.

In the hour of dawn, as the first rosy fingers of light spread out upon the sea, shining on whitecaps and gilding the wings of gulls as they sailed over the heights where the water met the cliffs of northmost Karthay, a dwarf mage roused from his tortured sleep in the castle all folk around knew as the Citadel of Night. The air in his chamber hung thick with incense, fragrances meant to cover the darkly sweet stench of death and rotting emanating from his body. He cared nothing for what smelled sweet or ill. These perfumes he allowed for the sake of those who tended him, the servants who fed and cleaned and clothed him.

He had only one care, only one purpose, and the stench of his long, long dying never diverted his mind from it. The mage did not move, for he could not. His limbs were useless to him, long ago withered, his muscles contracted and unavailing, the flesh shrunken and juiceless. None would think, looking at him, that here was a dwarf out of Thorbardin who had once been thick-chested and so strong of arm and leg that in all the contests of strength he entered, no other dared hope for honor and prize. Those arms and legs were gone from him, just as if they had been cut from his body with an axe. Neither had Tramd eyes to open upon waking. Those were long ago taken from him. Plucked out. Burned out. Perhaps they'd been squeezed out. Sometimes his memory said one thing, sometimes it said another. Many long years had passed since his Tests in the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth, many since he'd walked the winding paths through the unstill forest and found the gates to the Tower. In those days, Her Dark Majesty, Takhisis Queen of Night, had not roused the dragons from their long slumber. In those days, the mortal races of Krynn did not dream, even in the most terrible of their nightmares, that the Dark Queen would spread her wings wide over the world again, once more to set out upon her quest to rule the hearts and souls of all races, to feel the world tremble as every man and woman bent the knee to her.

Thus, this morning as every morning, Tramd woke blindly, yet not in blindness at all. Though the magic of his Test had taken his physical sight from him, that same magic had given a kind of sight back. With his mind, he reached out and lifted to life the avatar all those in the Tower of High Sorcery knew as Tramd. Most like his own body, when it was hale and whole, was this avatar. The dark beard, the barrel chest, the arms thick and strong. Sometimes he stood before mirrors, gazing at the avatar through the avatar's own eyes, and thought nothing had changed, nothing since the day he first walked into the Tower all those years before. Sometimes, fleetingly… and then the impression faded before the reality known only to the dwarf who lay rotting on his bed of silks and satin, ever-dying, never dying.

This morning he gazed in no mirror. He let the avatar do nothing but clothe itself and relieve the pressure of its swollen bladder. He did not let it feed itself, though so closely linked were the senses of the avatar and the mind of the mage that its hunger was as his own.

He sent it out into the corridors of the Tower, sent it walking in the first light of day into the garden in the rear courtyard. Past beds of herbs it went, speaking to no one. None of those who tended the plants seemed to notice. Tramd was not known for his congeniality, not known for his charm.

At the command of the mage, the avatar went to that outer tower that faced north, into the first-floor laboratory where he had been for the past week, laboring over experiments of a lifting nature, magics with a winged bent, and those which made as nothing the pull of gravity. He kept no record of his work there, made no note at all but in his own mind. These were the most secret magics, spells he worked for the Blue Lady, spells that had come to him in the ecstasy of prayer, the praise-words he used to glorify Takhisis. Those spell words he put together here, with knowledge gained from the ancient texts found in the Tower's library. He fitted them one to another as a poet fits together the words of his lays. Word to word, line to line, he sought to shape a spell that would make the Blue Lady, the Highlord Kitiara, into the flashing sword in the cruel right hand of the goddess of the Abyss. If at last he crafted the magic she desired, he would have-so promised the Highlord-that which he most longed for: A body whole and hearty, restored to him by the Dark Queen herself.

He worked long in the laboratory, the mage in the avatar's body. At noon he let the avatar go, sent it to the kitchens in the north tower where it prepared a meal for itself and then returned to work. When, at dusk, it left the laboratory again, the avatar paused on the way across the courtyard. A dark figure slipped out of the gate, a mage in a black robe. The last light glinted on silver runes stitched into the hems of the sleeves, runes of protection and warding. There went the dark elf, that one who had killed the dragon upon which Tramd had flown into battle. The mageling had tested here, or so rumor said, and he had obviously done well enough to find himself walking around alive. Most of the newly tested enjoyed the chance to leave the Tower by the speediest, and it cannot be denied, most theatrical manner, to flash forth in magic to their destination. This one, however, seemed to prefer a quieter exit. Tramd muttered a curse, not a real one meant to kill or maim, just a half-hearted, sour imprecation, but he did not finish it. Like a ghost, a white shadow drifting, another figure left the compound, but she did not walk out of the Tower grounds and into the Guardian Forest. She stood a moment, tall in her white robes, her dark hair drifting around her cheeks in the lazy breeze at day's end. She lifted her head and her arms, raising them as a swan lifts her wings. She left the compound in that magical flash, that theatrical burst of light, and the after-image was, indeed, one of a swan in sudden flight.

Regene of Schallsea, he thought. Well, well.

But he thought no more about it. Not then. The avatar was weary, the muscles and bones of it aching with the work it had done. He let it go back to its chambers. He let go the connection between his mind and its body, but not before the avatar had arranged itself in some comfortable semblance of sleep. No matter, though, if the thing slumped to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs like some puppet whose strings are broken. No one dared intrude upon Tramd o' the Dark, or this thing they thought was he. It would lie, undisturbed, until the mage himself woke, once again in blindness, once again in the tall towers of the Citadel of Night, to rouse the avatar and work another day upon his spells of lifting, the magics that flew in the face of gravity.