Dalamar The Dark

Chapter 1

"Tell me, then," said Eflid Wingborne, his head tilted slightly back as he looked down the length of his thin nose at the small bundle Dalamar had placed in the exact center of the narrow cot. "Will you be easier to find now, Dalamar Argent, or will I still have to send servants to hunt you down when I need you?"

Dalamar stood still in the shaded corner of the small room. In the shadow, he shaped his expression to one that might lead Lord Ralan's steward to believe he considered a humble answer. In truth, he considered no such thing at all. He concentrated upon the image of two hands holding hard to something-the temper it would do him no good to lose.

"You will find me," he said, eyes low to hide his contempt. "Never worry, Eflid-"

"Lord Eflid."

Dalamar held back the sardonic smile that twitched at the corners of his lips. Lord Eflid, indeed, by virtue of the fact that his mother had been briefly wed to a lordling of so minor a family within House Woodshaper that the name of it was not recorded except in small letters at the end of a long, long scroll. Eflid had not been the son of that man, but he still claimed the title, at least among the servitors he ruled.

"Never worry," Dalamar said again. He looked up, leveling a long cool stare at the steward, the kind he knew gave Eflid shivers. "I am here."

Eflid's eyes narrowed, glittering and green. "And here you'll stay, boy-no more wandering for you. Be grateful Lord Ralan hasn't dismissed you entirely. I've heard they are looking for a servitor down by the docks, a boy to haul fish and repair nets. Let me look up and not find you when I want you, and that's where you'll be working."

Boy, he said, boy. With nearly ninety years to him, Dalamar was young by elf standards, but he was no boy. Yet Eflid's sneering address said that were Dalamar to attain one hundred years and ninety, still he'd be a boy in the eyes of those he served. Dalamar met Eflid's narrow stare and did not look away, and so Eflid must.

His face flushing with anger, and with shame for having been the first to turn his glance, the steward growled, "Now unpack your gear and get to work. You're expected in the kitchen. There are floor tiles in the oven room needing repair." He pulled his lips back from his teeth in a cruel imitation of a smile. "Don't you have some pretty little spell you can work on them? To keep your hand in, as it were?"

Laughing, Eflid left the room, not closing the door behind. Alone, Dalamar looked around at his new quarters. Motes sparkled, golden bits of dust dancing in the light of the sun shafting in through the east-facing window. The light was not so misty as it had been when it shone on the path away from the Servitor District and the house that had been Dalamar's family home for so many years. His father had inherited the small house from an uncle who had been canny enough to save the steel coin to purchase it from a woman who repaired leather shoes. Until then, his father and mother and Dalamar himself had lived in the halls of those they served, a family who met during the days only in passing and sometimes spent an evening together after the high folk had no more use for them. The little house with its tiny garden had become Dalamar's upon the death of his parents, and he had lived there, with the permission of the Head of House Servitor and of Lord Ralan, ever since. Five years he'd gone out from his home to that of his master, each day in the dawn, and five years he'd returned there in the long purple twilights of summer and the short sharp ending of winter days. No more, and the privacy afforded him in his own home, the sense of being master there where no one could order him about, was all gone. Now he must live in Lord Ralan's house, quartered in this small room in the servant's wing. Here among those too poor to have their own houses, among the untrustworthy, he would stay. Lord Ralan had declared it, and Trevalor, the head of House Servitor, had agreed.

Dalamar turned from the glittering shaft of sunlight to the bed. The room afforded him little by way of furniture, only this bed, a small table upon which stood a thick white candle, and a chest of drawers by the window. He had no chair for himself and none to offer a visitor.

From the bundle on the bed, he took out his clothing. He did not wear the dun clothes of a servant but the white robe of a mage. This was not usual, for among the Silvanesti, who structured their lives to conform to a rigid caste system, no one was lower than servitor, and none deemed less worthy of learning the High Art of Sorcery. Dalamar's talent was strong, though, and when House Mystic learned of it, they did what they must for fear that, unguided, he would go outside the bounds of Solinari's white magic to wild magic or worse, to Lunitari's red or Nuitari's black magic. They made him a mage, dedicated him to god-Solinari, and taught him grudgingly. For the teaching, he was glad but never grateful.

He'd worn the white robe for nearly two years now, but before all, Dalamar was still a servant, his talent and skill at the command of others. So it had been today, his hours claimed and counted. All the while he worked, Dalamar felt himself pulled away, his attention barely on his task, his soul yearning northward to a place no steward or elf-lord knew about. In a cave beyond the river lay the hiding of his secret studies. There he kept dark tomes filled with magic forbidden to all elves. He'd discovered the books by accident, found them tucked in the far reaches of the little cave, a treasure left by some bold dark mage who'd come secretly into the elven kingdom where none such would ever be welcome. Come and gone, he'd left his books behind, and they'd lain there a long count of years. Each bore an inscription that had, upon first sight, struck fear into Dalamar's heart. To the Dark Son, from a dark son, by night are we bound. Thus had a mysterious mage dedicated himself to the son of the Dragon Queen, to Nuitari whose obsidian halls lay in mansions of the sky just beneath the secret moon, the black moon. Yet soon Dalamar's fear had eased, and during the months of the summer past, he had taught himself more about magic, spells, incantations, and arcane philosophy than he'd been allowed to learn with House Mystic. The little northern cave was Dalamar's refuge. His secret trips there, time stolen from his master, were the cause of Eflid's anger and, ultimately, the reason for Dalamar's new status among Lord Ralan's servants, housed and untrustworthy.

Dalamar tossed a spare robe of plain white wool and two sets of hose onto the bed. He tucked a pair of boots into the corner, soft dark leather ones he'd only lately purchased and not yet worn. A belt of knitted wool, the color of the sky when the last light is nearly gone, and the small bone-handled knife a mage is allowed for ceremonial use were the only other things he'd brought here from his home.

Outside the window, the morning grew warm. The air sat heavily over the city as it does when a storm is brooding. Though no breeze blew, still Dalamar smelled the herbs in the kitchen garden, the twining scents of mint and basil, of horehound and sage and sweet thyme. Before he'd been caught away from his work, he'd been assigned to assist the old man from House Gardener who tended Ralan's herb beds. Now he was consigned to the hot kitchen and the cross-eyed cook whose best delight was to harry potboys and torment the young girls who stood in the corners to flirt with the bakers' lads. The loss of his privacy, these menial tasks, this fee he paid for a day away was steep indeed. Yet, though he did not like the price, he did not regret it. He had chosen his path this morning, clear-eyed and knowing what he might have to pay.

Dalamar thought about choices as he walked out of the room and down the long airy corridor. No one would think he had any, a servitor whose life's path was ordained by ancient custom. Yet this year, in the summer, Dalamar had made a choice, one no one imagined he would consider. He must learn more of magic than the crumbs House Mystic granted.

Sunlight splashed into the corridor from open doors and wide windows. Shadow barred the tiled floor where sunlight did not reach. Into sun and out to shadow he went, walking. How far would he go for the Art of High Sorcery denied him by House Mystic? All the way to the Dark Son himself? Out in the light of the day, in the thickness of the air, Dalamar looked away north, not to the small place where his secrets were kept, but farther to the land beyond the forest where the armies of Takhisis brooded. She was god-Nuitari's mother, that Dragon Queen, and his father was the god of Vengeance, Sargonnas himself. Their son was a child of magic and secrets, and Dalamar could think of no better god to whom he could dedicate his own secret heart.

Blasphemy! It was blasphemy in the Silvanesti kingdom to think such a thing.

Dalamar shivered, quick excitement running up his spine. He could choose if he wanted to choose. He could make a forbidden god his own in secret and silence, and no one would know. Such power there was in secrets! Smiling, he walked through the garden, a generous place enclosed on three sides by hedges of wisteria, on the fourth by the servants' wing of the hall. Though they waited for him in the kitchens, he took time to enjoy the heady scent of dewy roses and the tang of curly mint underfoot. Water bubbled from a fountain, a marble basin held in the hand of a statue of Quenesti-Pah, the goddess offering comfort. A golden finch settled on the rim of the basin, bright feathers already changing to autumn dress.

Dalamar did not walk alone there. A cleric passed him on the path. The tall young elf nodded greeting to him, a lord by the look of him, high-headed and comfortable. His robe of white samite gleamed in the morning light. Silver thread embroidered the sleeves, and upon his finger a ring shone, a silver dragon whose eye was a bright amethyst. A cleric of E'li, no doubt come on the business of the Temple.

Dalamar returned the absent, silent greeting in kind, in no mood to tug the forelock or wish anyone the blessings of E'li. The cleric went round the north side of the garden and through an arched gate. Beyond lay the private garden of the lord and his family. This one was confident of his welcome.

Dalamar went into the dark kitchen where the cross-eyed cook stood scowling, fair certain what his own welcome would be. Waves of heat greeted him, rippling in the air, the heat of the night's baking still trapped in the cavernous stone room.

"Aye, there he is," growled the cook, a woman so thin it seemed she was but flesh stretched too tightly over bitter bones. "Lord Eflid promised me I'd have you this morning early, Master Mage. Now where have you been, eh? Out running again…?" Her voice became as the voice of an insect buzzing, nothing to pay heed to, and Dalamar walked past her through the kitchen and into the oven room where the scent of years of baking clung to the walls with stubborn, yeasty persistence.

Dalamar knelt on the floor before the first broken tile. He pressed his hands together, feeling the tingling of magic as he gathered up the words of a spell, stone-heal. The smell of the kitchen faded. He dropped into a state of being none but a mage could know, that state of touching power from gods, of taking it and shaping it and using it to his will. The cook's voice receded, words growing thin, like mist rising to sun.

"… Who he thinks he is, some ragtag little mageling out of the Servitor District… never did teach him his manners or how to behave among his betters… never should have given him the white robe-never. Too far above himself, that's what…"

The spell words invoked the bright energy of magic, that energy sparkling in Dalamar's blood, warming his heart, lending him power only mages and gods knew. This was all that mattered, magic and nothing more. For it, he would do everything.

The red dragon drifted in the midday sky, slipping effortlessly from updraft to downdraft, one current to another. Wide wings spread, long tail moving like a ship's rudder, Blood Gem traversed the sky, the first of the highlord's dragons to sail out over the aspen forest of the Silvanesti. He looked down through the canopy of trees and saw the silver threads of rivers running. Along the great Thon-Thalas, he saw towns, small and large, their buildings like smudges on the land. Here, in these little towns, they did not build so much with stone. Here they built with wood. He opened his jaws wide to grin.

So much tinder, he said to the rider upon his back, the long-legged human woman who heard him not with her ears but in her mind.

No, Phair Caron said, her voice slipping into Blood Gem's mind like a tendril of black smoke. Not tinder! We'll burn the forest if we must, but something must remain. We're to take these arrogant elves down from their high perches, but we have to leave something for the army to occupy and a cowed populace ready to work for the Dark Queen and support her advance. Dead elves do us no good at all.

Blood Gem snorted, and a small fireball burst alight in the sky. Dead elves offer no resistance, and we can fill up that aspenwood-or what my kin and I will leave of it-with slaves to do whatever work will be required.

Phair reached out to pat the red's shoulder, not a gesture the dragon felt, but one he recognized and appreciated in its intent. It isn't about working slaves, my friend. Or it's not all about that. What it's all about is reaping souls, eh?

For the Dark Queen.

Phair Caron nodded, again an unseen gesture, but one felt.

All they did, she and her dragons, was for the Dark Queen, for Takhisis. Dark Lady, you are my light, Phair Caron thought, the thought a prayer. In darkness, yours is the light of balefires, of funeral pyres. In darkness, yours is the hand that reached out to me. She sighed, thinking of the dire glory of Her Dark Majesty. It had been but a mere handful of centuries since Takhisis had re-entered the world and come back from the Abyss after the fall of Istar. Her door into the world was-and Phair Caron thought the irony delicious- the ruin of the very Temple of Istar where the mad Kingpriest of the city-state had proclaimed himself a god and brought down the ire of all deities upon the world that condoned his madness. During those centuries Takhisis had wandered abroad, laying plans, seeking allies among the ruthless to elevate to commanders in her growing army- Phair Caron grinned, a wide, wolfish grin-and waking dragons to pair with those commanders. Now Takhisis had an army of ogres and goblins, of dragonmen and humans, led by her commanders, her highlords.

And waking dragons, Blood Gem echoed, sighing as though he yet recalled his long sleep and sudden waking. Now we are here. We are hungry to fight in her cause, Highlord, and we yearn to taste elf blood.

Phair Caron spoke aloud, her words carried upon the wind of their flight. "Soon enough. Soon enough you'll have what you want." She laughed, suddenly and sharply. "But elf blood is a pale drink, my friend. Watery and weak." She pointed downward to where the Thon-Thalas widened and the lights of Silvanost could be seen in the distance. "These elves have no use for any god but their puling gods of Good, Paladine-E'li, as they call him-and his weakling lot. They'll all be on their knees to us before the moons go dark."

And it would be, Blood Gem knew, like sweet wine on the Dark Lady's lips to see those Silvanesti elves bow the neck to her highlord, to be forced to tear down their pale temples to weak gods and use their vaunted skills to erect shrines to the dark gods. Morgion of the Black Wind would spread disease through their ranks. Hiddukel would turn all their feeble truths to lies. At last Takhisis herself, Her Dark Majesty, would rule in that land where her followers had for so long been forbidden to enter.

The dragon climbed higher and turned north toward the borders of the Silvanesti. Behind, in the southern foothills of the Khalkist Mountains, the bulk of Her Dark Majesty's army waited, thousands of soldiers, humans, ogres, goblins, and- Blood Gem made a sound of disgust-and draconians, the misbred dragonmen, spawn of an evil magic-making that corrupted the eggs of dragons. These were Takhisis's fiercest fighters. All the army waited impatiently to fall upon this forested land of wealth and beauty that for centuries had been denied to everyone but the Silvanesti themselves. High in the peaks of those foothills, a strong wing of red dragons brooded, impatient to take to the sky and, with their riders, lead that dark army into battle.

It will be a glorious battle, the dragon mused, his thought matching his rider's.

Phair laughed, the sound wind-torn from her throat and flung out to the hard blue sky. "It will be, and we will soak the forest with elf blood!"

Soon?

The highlord said nothing, but Blood Gem knew her, deeply as dragons know their riders. She had laid her plans in the winter, and those plans called for an army so strong that the elf defenders would crumble before it. A blood-lusty soldier, she was also a canny strategist. She would not commit her army until she was certain her numbers would overwhelm the elves. More soldiers were coming down from Goodlund and across the Bay of Balifor. Once these arrived, she would be ready. Until then, she would play as a cat played with a mouse-cruel games to amuse herself. Phair Caron despised elves, and of all elves, she despised Silvanesti most. If anyone needed a picture of that hatred's birth, Blood Gem knew the perfect one.

A near-grown girl shivered in the shabby winter streets of Tarsis, her rags clutched around thin shoulders, the bones of her face too clearly defined by hunger-carved flesh. In glittering gold, a party of Silvanesti walked past, holding the hems of their robes high out of the running gutter. One turned and saw Phair, the child whose face looked more like a skull than not. With one hand the elf drew aside the hem of his robe, the silk and the brocade all glimmering with jewels. With the other he covered his mouth and nose as one of his companions tossed a copper coin at Phair. The coin fell into the gutter, landing in a pool of muck.

Phair scrambled for it, never minding that she had to scrape through mud and worse to find it. Here was a week's worth of food! Enough to keep her sister out of the brothels where most of the gutter-girls went to earn their bread. Phair had served there herself at need, but never would she let her sister do that. Never. When she looked up, a word of thanks on her lips, she saw only the backs of the elves and heard one say, "Filthy gutter wretch. Why did you do that, Dalyn? The creature is no concern of ours."

"None," his companion had agreed. "But that will keep it from following."

But the gutter creature had followed, Blood Gem thought as he soared over the Sylvan Land. She followed those elves right home, didn't she? It took her a while of years, but she did. And now, a highlord in the army of the goddess elves most hate, Phair Caron had a kind of thanks to offer for their treatment of her, that thanks too long deferred.

Blood Gem banked and turned, soaring away north again. When he came within sight of the Khalkists and the northern border of the Sylvan Land where the trees were not so thick, he felt the uplifting currents of hot air. Three villages were afire, the acrid fumes of terror and dying wafted up to the sky. All around the smoking ruins, bodies lay, most looking like they'd been nailed there. Some had been- nailed by spears and ashwood lances. They looked like insects pinned to a display board. An impatient detachment of the dragonarmy had broken through the burning barrier into the stony area beyond where those three villages had lain. The dragonmen weren't going unmet, for even as they ran raging into a fourth village downriver, elves met them with bows and steel.

Phair Caron laughed again, and again the sound of it was torn from her lips. "Look there! Defenders. Now, that won't do, will it?"

It would not. With startling speed, the red dragon dropped down from the sky, bursting out of the bitter blue sky right over the battle. On the ground, the elves looked up, their faces pale ovals. One, a bold fool, lifted his bow and drew to launch an arrow. Blood Gem roared, the sound so loud the air trembled, the earth itself shook. Screams, like the thin whine of gnats, came up from the battleground. The elf who fancied himself a fortunate archer fell to his knees, terrified. His bow, like a little stick of tinder, fell to the ground.

Tinder, Blood Gem thought. Ah…

He thrust hard with his mighty wings, gaining the heights again, and turned round over the village. Nothing was afire there, not house, not barn, and certainly not the crowding aspenwood. This wasn't good. On the ground, a phalanx of draconians charged into the midst of the defenders, maces whistling, their ghastly voices like the screaming of stones. From so high up, Blood Gem saw the blood gleaming on the terrible points of the maces, though he did not smell it. Just as well, just as well. Had he smelled the blood he'd have been able to smell the misbegotten dragonmen too. He banked and turned. Upon his back, Phair Caron shouted a wild battle cry.

Roaring, Blood Gem dropped low over the aspens as the draconians drove the elves into the darkness of the forest. Behind, a house burst into flames, the fire kindled by a flaring torch in a draconian fist. Inside a woman screamed, a child wailed, their cries damped by the whoosh and roar of the roof catching. The sweet stench of burning flesh drifted upon black smoke.

"A pretty little fire!" Phair Caron shouted. "But we can do better!"

Blood Gem filled up his lungs with air and, as though those lungs were a bellows, he pushed air out past the place in his throat where dragonfire lived. Death's own banner, flames poured from between his fanged jaws. Flames touched the tops of the aspens, and Blood Gem flew past those, firing the trees beyond and to either side. Elf voices shouted in terror. Men, women, and children were herded into a deadly trap, bounded on three sides by fire and on the other by creatures from nightmare, winged draconians whose reptilian eyes held no warmth, whose powerful tails could break the bones of a foe with one swipe. The least of the tribes of dragonmen, these were the Baaz, and they loved nothing better than killing. Some, it was said, did feast on their kills.

"Now take us back," the highlord shouted. "This has been diverting, but I have work yet to do before the night is over."

Reluctantly, Blood Gem turned north toward the Khalkists and the army's camp. Behind them and below, the draconians finished their work, burning every house in the village, killing each man and woman and child they found. One or two escaped. Phair Caron could see it from the heights, but she did not regret that. Let them run. Let them flee downriver to the other towns, wailing the song of their terror until it reached the ears of the elf-king, Speaker Lorac himself. Let him know she was coming!