Dalamar The Dark

Chapter 3

On the first night of Autumn Harvest when the red moon and the silver had but newly risen over the forest, a child looked up from the garden of her family's little home in the Academy District. She was a small girl who had just slipped down from her father's shoulders, their stroll through the garden at an end. In the air the poignant smell of autumn hung, the spicy scent of the year's end. The little girl sighed, for these scents always made her feel sad in a good kind of way. She looked up to see if the pattern of the stars had changed, wondering whether Astarin's Harp had swung up the sky early, as it did in autumn. E'li's Silver Dragon used to hang in the sky, opposite the Five-Headed Dragon of Takhisis, but those constellations were gone, though no one had seen the stars fall from the sky.

"It's why outlanders think the gods are returning to the world," her father had said. "For the Dark Queen is the ruler of evil dragons, and we see those in the world again. Eli is the patron of the good dragons, and those who shine like brass and bronze and copper and gold, even silver, are E'li's."

"But where are the good dragons?" the little girl had asked. She had known only tales of evil dragons in her short life, those who served Takhisis, the red and the black and the white and the blue.

Her father could not say, for he did not know. People asked themselves often where the good dragons were. Never did they find an answer. With E'li, some said. But that begged the other question: As the dragons of Takhisis brought war to the world, where was E'li to counter the evil?

The little girl didn't think long on such complicated subjects. In any case, the Harp was not yet up, but something more interesting was in the sky. A long shape passed across the face of the silver moon, winged and sinuous.

"Look!" she cried. "Father, look! What is it? Oh! Oh! Has E'li come?"

The creature turned, banking wide over the city. The little girl gasped. Her father cried out in dread to recognize the creature as a blood red dragon, dark against the silver moon, its wings wide and streams of fire pouring from between fanged jaws.

"In E'li's name-!" the father cried. His invocation died upon his lips as the dragon swung low. Moonlight glittered on the battle harness of the rider and the wyrm. The light of red Lunitari glinted from one single point, the head of a spear. Blood ran cold in the elf staring up. His daughter's hand clutched his, but he did not feel it.

Throughout the city, bells began to ring, mournful tolling from the docks and the temples, alarmed booming from the Market and Guild Districts. On maps in every hall, in every tower, in the mind of any who had sketched one, it seemed that the distance between the Khalkists and Silvanost had suddenly shrunk, and the prayers of the best beloved of the gods had in them now notes of desperation.

"What spells do you have, Dalamar Argent?"

When Dalamar didn't answer at once, the cleric Tellin Windglimmer looked up from his pen-work and smiled encouragingly. A friendly smile, Dalamar decided, of the kind a lord is pleased to offer a servant if he's feeling generous.

"I have all the spells allowed to me, my lord," Dalamar said, lying smoothly and keeping any thought of his stolen studies and his hidden spellbooks far from his mind. He had seen, only this morning on his initial tour of the Temple's inner precincts, a cold corridor, a locked room round which only whispers hung. In there, behind sealed portals, lay the place where clerics could prepare the dread Circle of Darkness, that ceremony by which an elf was cast out from his kind and flung into exile. Murderers endured that shame, as did traitors and those caught worshiping other gods than the gods of Good or those mages found out in dark or neutral magic. The cold that crept out from beneath that door was like winter's own chill. Even in high summer a man walking there would shiver. Did Dalamar fear the cleric would guess or see some tell-tale trace of his guilt and find reason to condemn him? No. He kept those thoughts hidden from long practice, a habit he dared not break.

"Some of the spells I have learned, my lord, allow me to deal with animals, to befriend or defend against them. I have spells to charm appropriate to my teaching and some divination skills and skills with elements. I am adept at spells of protection and those having to do with weather, and I have made a special study of herbs as they pertain to the workings of magic. If you ask at House Mystic, you will hear that I am a mage of minor account." Now he did smile, a thin curling of his lips. "But even they will tell you I am one of some skill and talent."

Sunlight poured in through the wide windows of the Temple's scriptorium, great swaths of golden light, glittering on the long, sinewy form of a dragon, wings spread, jaws wide. Fangs of ivory, talons of gold, and scales of beaten platinum, here was an image of E'li, the Dragon's Lord himself. Somewhere in the deeps of the Temple, chants were being sung even now, in deep voices and high, the rhythm of them rolling forth and back.

From the might of the Dragon Queen, protect us, O E'li!

From her claws and rage, from her fury, defend us!

From the sway of the Dragon Queen, protect us, O E'li!

From her fire and sword, from her terror, defend us!

The light splashed across the red-tiled floor, across the broad marble table where Tellin worked, illuminating the mundane lists so they were as lovely as precious manuscripts. The cleric put down his pen, lifted the list he'd been making, and placed it atop a stack of others.

"I have asked in House Mystic," Tellin said, "and they make a good report of your skills."

"But not so good a report otherwise," Dalamar said.

Tellin shook his head. "In House Mystic they have nothing ill to say of you. In your own House, however…" He shrugged. "Well, you know as well as I what is being said of you now. You have, all in the space of a month, been confined to your master's hall and then cast out from it." He rose and walked around the long table. The hem of his white robe whispered on the stone floor. He folded his hands inside the sleeves of his robe, leveling a long blue stare at Dalamar.

A judging stare, Dalamar thought, a weighing look. Well, look as long as you like, my Lord Tellin. You will see what I allow you to see. And he made his eyes hard, his smile cool, challenging the cleric to see past those.

"It must be hard," Tellin said at last, his voice low and thoughtful, "it must be painful to feel such talent as you have running in you and not be allowed to use it more creatively than you have."

Dalamar stood still, startled. Without thinking, he hunched his shoulders a little, as though against intrusion. When Tellin smiled, the expression of one who is pleased to have hit a mark, he forced his muscles to relax. He would have to be careful around this one.

"Yes, I imagine it is hard," Tellin said. "But I hope you will be pleased to exercise your skill more freely here, Dalamar. And, I will see if I can convince House Cleric to teach you more."

Dalamar's breath caught in his lungs, a hitch he did not let Tellin see. "More, my lord? More of magic… why?"

Tellin shrugged. "Because I require you to have more. Look," he said, turning from the subject and back to the work table.

He swept aside a pile of blank parchment leaves and pulled another, older sheet from under the stack of records. He turned it so each could read it right side up. It was a map. Not all of Krynn did it show. The western lands of Solamnia in the north, Abanasinia in the south, the Isles of Northern and Southern Ergoth, of Cristyne and Sancrist, even the lands beyond Icewall Bay were absent. The maker of this map was interested only in Silvanesti and its near neighbors, and so the Silvanesti Forest looked like the center of the world. The Plains of Dust lay to the west, as did Thorbardin of the Dwarves beneath the Kharolis Mountains. The city of Tarsis lay south from there, and the lands of Estwilde and Nordmaar to the north. Across the Bay of Balifor lay Khur, Balifor, Goodlund, and beyond there the Blood Sea of Istar where, a long time ago, the kingdom of Istar had ruled the world of commerce and culture until the Cataclysm. Now there was only a great whirling maelstrom where that land had once been, a sunken ruin beneath the water and some few isles beyond where minotaurs lived and human pirates lurked.

"What do you know about the war, Dalamar?"

Curious, Dalamar took a closer step, and then another. He pointed to Nordmaar, to Goodlund and then Balifor. "Though everyone in the city seems to think there will be one, my lord, I know there already is one. It's been being fought for some time now, since Phair Caron swept into Nordmaar in the summer last year."

Tellin raised a brow, curious. "That's an odd way to put it. There have been treaties holding the Highlord back for some time now. War has not been imminent, and we have certainly not been in it."

"Do you think so?" Dalamar shrugged. "Well, most people do. But isn't it odd to think that we, of all the world, will be invisible to the Highlord, that her Dark Mistress will burn her way across Krynn and leave our land untouched? Yes, I know that we are the best beloved of the gods. One hears that all the time. That doesn't seem to matter as regard the treaties House Advocate made with Phair Caron. Those treaties are already ash, my Lord Tellin. And if treaties are ash, how long before the forest itself is burning?"

He traced a mark in the air above Silvanesti on the map, the mark indicating the Barrier Hedge that had so long withstood in-comers. One word he whispered, and the invisible mark became visible in the air as a ragged orange glow. Fire!

Dalamar glanced at the cleric. He saw neither startlement nor anger, but he did see agreement. "But you have thought that, too, haven't you? And you are laying plans against it."

Tellin's blue eyes glinted sharply. "Yes, I have been putting up stores here in the Temple, and I have been looking north waiting."

Dalamar glanced out the window, away across the gardens and out beyond the open gate to the road he'd taken from Lord Ralan's hall. He had, only this morning, come from there with cartloads of clothing and bedding, the very things Eflid had set him to sorting in the attics on the hottest days of summer.

"Waiting for refugees," he said. "Are all the temples of the city making these plans?"

"Yes, we are. But we won't be housing them here in the city. That would be impossible. We don't have the food or the room for that. It would be a disaster to try. " He shrugged, one who'd thought the matter through, or who had heard others speak their own thinking. "In any case, we've made our plans. Clerics in the various temples will gather clothing and bedding and medicaments and send them out to the cities up-river, to Alinosti and Tarithnesti, to Shalost in the west. The temples there will house and feed those who flee the war.

"Here, we are putting by other kinds of supplies, among them herbs for salves and ointments and infusions. These we'll gather and prepare for both the army and the refugees, sending supplies where they are most needed."

"Very neatly planned," Dalamar murmured.

Tellin flicked him a quick glance, wondering whether the mage mocked. "Yes, we think so. And so you see, I'm glad to know that you have made a special study of herbs, Dalamar. Do you know," he asked, eyes keen, his regard sharp and searching, "where the best herbs are to be found?"

Dalamar answered carefully, not certain he understood the intent of Tellin's question. "In the gardens of the temples, my lord, to be sure."

"Indeed. And if that were so, would I have asked my question?"

Dalamar smiled, this time with some real warmth in spite of himself. The cleric did have a little blood in him after all, enough to rise to a flush of anger. "No, my lord, I don't imagine you would have. I do know places across the river and into the forest where one may find such herbs as lobelia and cohosh and gentian and whatever else you might need that doesn't grow in temple gardens. I have made," he said with not the least note of wryness in his tone, "good use of the time I spent away from my Lord Ralan's hall."

Tellin lifted the map from the table and rolled it carefully. "So it seems. And if I tell you to map these places for others to find, will you do that and return here each day in good and fair time?"

Or will I run away north, to the secret place, the cave and the magic? Will I spend illicit hours at forbidden studies? The questions were like longing to Dalamar, an ache in his soul. He had not been able to study those tomes or practice the darker arts in many long weeks. Had he missed them? Yes-the magic more than the darkness.

Sun on tiles, light glinting off the tiny scales of a platinum dragon, these things shone brightly in Dalamar's eyes. He moved to turn away from the glare, but he didn't, for he was struck by a sudden thought, a swift understanding that he did long for something not necessarily darkness. Only magic, only that, and if Lord Tellin could convince the white-robed mages of House Mystic to offer him the teaching he craved, if they were to acknowledge the talent in him, that talent they could not deny but would not honor, he would take his magic there. Like a man standing upon a threshold, he felt drawn one way and then another, into light, into shadow.

Making no choice, hanging in the moment, Dalamar looked at his new master long and with steady gaze. "I will do what you ask, my lord."

"Have I your word?"

Tellin's narrow-eyed glance stung Dalamar to bristling. "The word of a servitor? Why, what good is that to you, Lord Tellin?"

"As good as you show me it is, and I say this with confidence. You don't look like a liar to me, Dalamar Argent."

Dalamar nodded, the nod a small bow, the only one he'd made to Lord Tellin Windglimmer in all the time he'd stood in the scriptorium. "I will go now, and if it pleases you, my lord, I will return before midday."

Chants rose up and fell, birdsong stitched through the staid rhythm like silver thread through a dark tapestry. Another voice drifted through the temple-song, soft and low, a woman's voice murmuring in the garden. Dalamar and Tellin looked out the window and saw Lady Lynntha. She stood, silvery in the sunlight, her long hair bound high upon her head and held there with gemmed pins so that it seemed she wore a glittering crown.

"I wish to see the Lord Tellin," she said, soft to a gardener walking by. "Will you find someone to announce me?"

Tellin blushed, his face flamed red and he glanced at Lynntha's hands and the small scroll case she held. Dalamar noted this, and he said nothing about it, but he did volunteer to show the lady into the scriptorium.

"Yes," Tellin said, eyes on his papers again. "Please do that."

Dalamar bowed, hiding his curiosity, and walked out into the garden. "My lady," he said, gesturing toward the open window behind. "I have come from Lord Tellin Windglimmer, for I have heard it that you wish to see him."

She glanced at him only briefly, not recognizing him as one who had lately served in her brother's hall. Her hands held the scroll case gently, careful of the delicate embroidery. She hung in a hesitating moment, as though some hard-won resolve were melting. She took a breath, and it did not seem to hearten her.

"Servant," she said, her eyes straying past him to the window and the cleric sitting at his desk. Her cheek flushed, not so brightly red as Tellin's, only the delicate tint of a rosy pink petal. "I have changed my mind. I don't need to see Lord Tellin. Only take this to him." She put the scroll into Dalamar's hands. "Say to him that I appreciate the care he took in crafting this, but I cannot accept it. I cannot…"

She turned and left. With no other word she walked out of the garden, her slender back straight, her shoulders a firm line against the pain Dalamar had seen in her long eyes. And what is that? He wondered, walking back into the scriptorium. What is that between a member of House Cleric and one of House Woodshaper? A hopeless dream, and my new master won't be happy to have this gift of his back.

Yet Tellin was not so unhappy as Dalamar had imagined he would be. He took the scroll case and looked at it a long moment, then set it upon a stack of unused parchment, the colorful embroidery bright against the creamy vellum. He looked up, and when he saw Dalamar still standing there he said, "A gift returned, and a gift exchanged."

"How exchanged, my lord?"

Tellin touched the case, an exquisitely embroidered hummingbird under his fingertips. "When I gave her this gift she thought fit to return, the scroll had no case. Now," he said, stroking the silken bird gently, "now it does."

All this Dalamar considered interesting, and he thought about it later in the evening when the sun had set and he was unpacking, yet again, his meager possessions. Was he a fool, Lord Tellin Windglimmer, to set his heart on a woman he had no chance to win? They treated their marriages like gifts from the gods, those of House Woodshaper-gifts not bestowed outside their own clans. A fool, yes, Lord Tellin was that.

And yet, such foolishness Dalamar understood. He, too, had set his heart upon a thing he must struggle to have and might not gain. "I will see," Tellin had said, "if I can convince House Mystic to teach you more… because I require you to have more." He'd made his offer almost casually, a man with some power who uses it easily. How would it be, Dalamar thought, to trust this lordling cleric? Well, not difficult, for he would not be forsaking his secrets in hope of gaining what Tellin suggested he might have. He'd keep his secrets and see what happened. Quietly in him, like the first thin tendrils of smoke to signal a fire, an old dream roused. It was seldom granted that servitors be taught magic, never that they learn enough to venture out of the kingdom across the Plains of Dust and into the Forest of Wayreth where stood the Tower of High Sorcery, the only one of the five ancient citadels of learning to have survived the Cataclysm. The Tests of High Sorcery were administered in that tower, grueling exercises in magic devised by the Conclave of Wizards, the heads of the orders of the White, Red, and Black Robes. The mage who survived his Tests was one reckoned worthy of respect anywhere in Krynn.

How, thought Dalamar, how would it be if I could take the Tests…?

He looked around at his new quarters. The room allowed him in the Temple was no larger man that in Lord Ralan's house, but it was bright, having two windows, one facing east into the garden, the other facing north. As he settled for sleep, the scents of the garden drifting in through the windows, it seemed to him that no matter how things turned out, whether he learned more of white magic or sipped his dark secrets, he'd found better work than he'd had in a while.

Through the east window the light of the two moons shone, the red mingling with the silver. The lights of the Tower of the Stars graced the darkness, the tower itself glittering with gems caressed by that moonlight. Dalamar closed his eyes, sinking into darkness, seeking sleep as chanting from the Temple made a heartbeat for the night.

From the might of the Dragon Queen, protect us, O E'li!

From her claws and rage, from her fury, defend us!

From the sway of the Dragon Queen, protect us, O E'li!

From her fire and sword, from her tenor, defend us!

When at last he fell asleep, Dalamar did not dream of magic or the threat from the north or any other thing. His sleep was long and deep, but once he woke, thirsty in the night, and poured water from the green pitcher beside his bed. He had a thought in his mind, waking, and that was of the map he had seen on Lord Tellin's worktable, that one in which the Silvanesti Forest sat as though it were the center of the world.

But we are not, he thought, setting aside the cup and slipping again beneath the red woolen blanket. The blasphemy didn't frighten him, and if he dreamed afterward, those dreams did not disturb his sleep.

A scream tore the silence, ripping the velvet night in the Tower of the Stars. In the bedchamber of the king, the scream sounded again, and this time it was made of words.

"You must not leave me!"

Footsteps ran in the corridor, whispering on marble floors. Voices called one to another. Alhana Starbreeze found her father's steward running out the door of his own chamber.

"What is it?" she cried. "Lelan, my father-"

The steward hushed her, but the pallor of his plump cheeks gave lie to the calmness he pretended to have. "A nightmare, I'm sure, Princess. Your father has had a nightmare. No more than-"

Moaning, the Speaker of the Stars cried, "Don't leave-!"

Alhana ran into his suite, through the antechamber, and into her father's bedroom. Her pale night robes and silent footfalls gave her the seeming of a ghost. The king sat in his bed of silk sheets, clutching satin covers. His eyes starting in his head, he stared at her, open-mouthed.

"Father!" She flew to his bedside and took his cold hands in hers. "Father, I'm here. It's Alhana." He did not seem to know her. She cast a swift glance at Lelan and saw the steward had already poured a glass of water. "Take this, Father, drink."

With trembling hands, the Speaker of the Stars took the glass. He drank, the water dribbling. Alhana wiped his chin dry, tenderly as a mother might. "Lelan," she whispered, "light candles, then leave us."

Light sprang up as Lelan kindled one candle after another, fat white pillars and slender green tapers, all the candles in the Speaker's bedchamber to drive out the darkness of night. The faint scent of honey drifted on the air as the beeswax warmed. When he'd done that, Lelan hung at the threshold, wanting to stay. The sharp glance Alhana gave him decided the moment. He turned and ran down the corridor, his footfalls like whispers and rumors of fear. The steward gone, Alhana took her father's hands again, pressing them warmly. It seemed he knew her now.

"Alhana," he whispered, "dearest child."

"A nightmare," she said. "Father, you had a dream. Look, you are here in your own chamber."

He looked around, but only because he followed her gesture, not because he believed he was anywhere outside of nightmare. Thick woolen rugs lay scattered on the cool marble floor, their bright colors muted by night, blue and green and dawn's pink all changed to gray. Upon deep cushioned chairs were brocaded pillows. Tapestries hung on the pale marble walls, and one long mirror bordered in gold graced the wall opposite his bed. A little writing desk stood below an east-facing window, a place for the king to sit and look out at the Garden of Astarin as he tended his correspondence. In the far corner of the room, a niche made by the joining of marble walls, his personal altar stood, whitest marble upon which sat a golden image of Quenesti-Pah and the wing-spread platinum image of the Dragon's Lord, E'li, whom some in the outside named Paladine. None of these familiar trappings stilled Lorac's restless eye.

Alhana chaffed his hands, and softly she said, "Tell me, Father. Tell me what you dreamed." For she believed that to expose the nightmare to title light of the waking world would kill its power.

Shivering, he sighed. "Oh, gods, it was… I went wandering down all the roads of place and time. I walked in the world where the dogs of war are running, and I heard-" He groaned, hunching over. "The voice said, 'You must not leave me! I will perish!' "

"Who spoke? Father, who spoke?"

He looked at her, his eyes clearing. She thought he would answer, but he did not. "In my dream I walked through Nordmaar and Balifor and Goodlund, out to the Blood Sea of Istar. And… and when I came there, the dream changed. Right under me, all around me. There was no gaping wound in the world. Alhana, I saw the city itself, Istar!"

Storied Istar, in all its glory of gold and delight, as she had been more than three hundred years ago when he'd come there, a young elf seeking the Tower of High Sorcery that he might present himself and take the Tests of Magic. The buildings soared high, painted in jeweled tones, gleaming in sunlight, sighing in moonlight. In his dream his soul had sailed upon the chants wafting out from every temple, the voices of elves so beautiful that the Kingpriest himself wept to hear them, his heart so full that words could not express his joy. These were the chants of eternal peace, songs lifted to E'li, whom they named Paladine in Istar, to Quenesti-Pah, to Majere the Master of the Mind, to Kiri-Jolith whose sword wields only justice. In Istar, the Fisher King, Habbakuk, was revered, and Astarin the Bard, whose name means Song of Life.

"It is," Lorac said to his daughter, "as though I am telling you a dream, and yet telling you a thing that happened in waking life. For it did. It did happen that way when I went to Istar, there to take my Tests."

Then he grew still, his eyes suddenly shuttered. His lips moved to shape two words: Save me! It seemed to Alhana that those two words caused the light of the candles to dim and the air in the chamber to grow suddenly cold.

In a low voice, Lorac told how in the sky above Istar the light changed from the lovely golden of sunset to a shivering green. Dreaming, he'd looked around himself, fear quivering in the far and secret chamber of his heart. From where the green light? He followed the light until the Tower of High Sorcery rose up before him. Out from the Tower, like beams lancing out from a lighthouse on a storm-swept night, the light shone. From there, as well, came the voice. Save me!

In his dream, Lorac walked past gates that swung open at his word. The guardians of the Tower, creatures of magic set to ward by mages most powerful, stepped back before him. Mages came to greet him, and they led him inside where an old man, a mage whose name no one knew, told him he was expected. The world will be lost! The cry echoed throughout the Tower, down all the corridors, in all the chambers, high and low, as Lorac followed the old man. Yet, though the cry echoed, no one in this dream but Lorac seemed to hear it or feel the urgency growing in its tone. Led by the nameless mage, he wended the maze of corridors, passing through one chamber after another, and it seemed to him that the Tower went on forever, wide as the sky and broad as the world itself. At last, they stopped in a small chamber, one no larger than could fit two grown men standing abreast.

"And the nameless mage, he said that I must not touch or take anything. I must leave all as I saw it."

"And did you?" Alhana asked, her face white in the candle's light.

"I told him-I told him I would do as he wished. And the man vanished. When I looked back into the room…"

When he looked back into the room, he saw that a table had appeared, a simple trestle of scarred wood. Upon it sat an ivory stand, like two hands cupped, which held a clear glass ball shining in the unlit gloom. Save me, the globe whispered. Disaster is near and you must not leave me here in Istar. If you do, I will perish and the world will be lost! He reached, and he lifted the globe. It warmed in his hands, and he looked around again, like a thief in the night. Take nothing, the old mage had said, touch nothing. Await me here. But the orb, nestling in his hands, cried out in piteous tones, cried out for the sake, not of itself, but of the world it longed to save. Swiftly, silently, the young mage, who was the old man who dreamed, whispered the words of a spell. The crystal globe became as nothing, not only invisible but without substance. That nothing he put inside his robe, and he walked out of the little chamber, out of the towers, and out of the city that soon would fall and, in falling, change the face of the world.

"Child," said Lorac Caladon, he who was a king, the Speaker of the Stars, "my child, I am ashamed to confess it. I left the city a thief."

Silence settled upon the room. In the corridor beyond Lorac's door, torches whispered to themselves in their brackets on the walls, the hushed voice of tamed fire. Somewhere down that corridor Lelan waited, the chamberlain who obeyed his princess but surely did not sleep for fear his master would call him and not be heard.

"Father," said Alhana, leaning close to kiss his cheek. She took his hand again and pressed it to her own cheek. "You are no thief. You simply had a nightmare, and one cannot be blamed for what deed he does in dream. Now, I beg you, please settle yourself and try to sleep again."

Unspoken between them was the knowledge that the day to come would bring another round of council meetings, and Lord Garan of House Protector would come to give what news his Windriders brought from the borders. Lately his news had been good, or not bad. Phair Caron held her position, brooding in the foothills of the Khalkist Mountains, but no one expected that to be the case for long. Garan would plead again to make an offensive strike, to fall upon the Highlord and take her by surprise. The Speaker and the Head of House Protector did not agree. Lorac demanded patience until more troops could be moved to the borderlands. Garan said patience would be the death of them. "She is building up her own forces, my lord king. I know it! Let me strike now!" This time, perhaps, he would plead his case with sufficient vigor to convince Lorac that what elven troops now stood at the border would be enough to make such a strike effective.

Lorac looked up. The king seemed far older in the eyes of his daughter than he had only this morning. "Child, it was a dream, but… it was a dream of truth."

The night fell into utter silence. Alhana did not hear cricket-song, the nightingales in the Garden of Astarin had no voice. "Father, what do you mean? What are you saying? That you, of all people, did steal-?"

"I did not steal it," he said, his face changed, growing oddly cold and still. "I did not steal the globe. I rescued it."

With more energy than Alhana imagined he had, Lorac left his bed. He put on his robe of blue silk, his slippers of soft green leather, and took his daughter by the hand. An urgency was on him now. His fingers grasped hers with enough strength to make her wince.

"Father, what-?" He pulled her toward the door and the corridor beyond. "Where-?"

Once outside his chambers he took her to the railing, the marble ward against the far drop below. Behind them torches flared in silver wall brackets. Somewhere a woman's voice whispered, and a man's murmured in reply. Nearby were the libraries, and a light shone out from under a heavy oaken door-scribes working late.

"Look," the Speaker said, pointing down into the well beyond the railing, down into the audience chamber. His throne stood there, mahogany and emerald, and the Words of Silvanos inlaid with silver. As lives the land, so live the Elves. Beside the throne stood a rose glass table. "Do you see those ivory hands, there on the table?"

She did. The sculpture hadn't been there even this morning.

"I had it commissioned in the summer. I thought the time might come…" He stopped, then said, "The hands are empty now." Lorac's voice echoed into the well, the echoes like wings rustling round the throne and the ivory sculpture. "But come, come with me."

He pulled her along. She followed, thinking they would take the spiraling staircase down into the audience hall. They did not. He took her far down the corridor past closed doors and curtained alcoves to a smaller, darker staircase. They entered a narrow doorway, and she had to duck her head to pass through.

The air in that lightless place smelled faintly damp. Lorac whispered, "Shirak!" and a globe of golden light appeared above his head, moving as he did and lighting the way down narrow stone steps through a passage Alhana had known about but never taken. This way lay a dungeon, not one for keeping prisoners-those were dealt with in other towers.

Cold seeped through the soles of her soft slippers as she ran after her father. Down and around, spiraling into darkness with only that one golden light bobbing above, at last, she saw green light pulsing in the distance below-light like the kind you see when sun shines through aspen leaves in spring. When they reached the floor at last, Lorac led her to the far corner of the dungeon, a place where-had it been meant to hold prisoner-bars would have been erected, chains installed. Upon a small table, not one so lovely as that beside Lorac's throne, sat a crystal globe. It seemed no larger than a child's marble, and yet Alhana knew instinctively that this was not the case. It felt larger, no matter what sight told her. She closed her eyes, not wanting to see it. In the utter darkness, an image sprang: The strange sculpture of empty hands beside her father's throne filled at last, filled with this orb that seemed small yet felt large.

"Father, what is it?"

He turned to her, smiling. "It is a Dragon Orb, Alhana."

She frowned, stepping closer, then away. Power pulsed in the globe, throbbing like a heart in the night. The skin on the back of her neck prickled. "This is what you took?"

"Rescued," said the king quickly. "I rescued it. It cried out to me, and I rescued it. This orb has the power to command dragons. It was one of five, crafted by wizards in a far distant time. Two we know are lost. This third is here. The others…?" He shrugged. "I don't know where they are, or if they still exist. But I do know this, for I have studied what small lore is left of them-a mage with the strength of will to control the magic of an orb will be able to control dragons."

A damp breeze drifted through the dungeon, touching Alhana's cheek with cold fingers. "And the mage who tried but could not control the orb? What would happen to him, Father?"

Lorac turned to her, his pale face shining, his eyes alight. Ignoring her question, he said, "How would it be, my Alhana, if suddenly Phair Caron found her dragons answering to my will? How-?" He cocked his head, his eyes gone soft and unfocused, as they had been when first he woke from his nightmare. "Listen. Do you hear it? The world will be lost…"

Alhana heard nothing, but she did not say so. Softly, she touched her father's arm, the silk sleeve of his robe cold and damp under her fingertips. "Father, come away. Come away. You frighten me!"

He turned, and though he looked at her, he did not see her. His were the eyes of a young man who stood a long time ago in the Tower of High Sorcery at Istar, the eyes of an old man who not even an hour ago woke screaming from nightmare. He said nothing, though, and he let her lead him away from the dragon orb, back up the narrow cold stairs.

In the morning, when the last rosy fingers of dawn were withdrawing and leaving behind a hard blue autumn sky, Dalamar woke to the tolling of all the bells in the city of Silvanost. Over the tolling, he heard frightened voices and running feet.

"What is it, my lord?" he called to Tellin, hurrying past his window. Lord Tellin didn't know, and Dalamar dressed to find a better answer. Outside, he found the temple-folk, clerics and servants alike, running into the streets already clogged with people, students running from the Academy District, advocates from the Embassy District. From the Market District and the Servitor District in the west, men and women and children came, following their neighbors to the heart of Silvanost, to the Garden of Astarin round which the temples clustered, where the Tower of the Stars stood, tall against the sky. Griffins sailed above the Tower, their wings golden in the new day, their harsh cries, like battle cries, filling the sky.

"What's happened?" Dalamar asked his master again.

Grimly, looking north, Tellin said, "The Barrier Hedge is on fire. Phair Caron's dragons have set it alight!"

A cleric, overhearing, cried out. Others picked up her shout and sent it round and round the gathering until the Wildrunners at the gates of the Tower looked at each other, silently wondering whether they would be called upon to quell a panicky mob.

"Look," Dalamar said, pointing north and then south, east and then west.

Ripples of motion shivered through the crowd, starting at the four corners and making itself into a parting of the sea of people as, one after another, the lords and ladies of the Sinthal-Elish left their homes and went among their clans, speaking words of comfort or offering quieting gestures. They came, one and all, to the Tower of the Stars, for it had been appointed that they meet with the Speaker at this hour. Not one of them, not even Lord Garan of House Protector, looked up to the griffins and the Windriders. They went as though upon any ordinary day. From them, calm emanated, and certainty and a measure of peace.

All would be well said the Householders by gestures and with words. The people heeded, for how could they not? These were their lords. This was the council of the king, and who should know better? In groups and singly, the citizens of Silvanost returned to their homes or the tasks they had left. In the sky the griffins circled, round the top of the Tower of the Stars, and one of all that crowd looked up at them and expressed his unease.

"It doesn't look good, my lord," Dalamar Argent said to the cleric beside him. "Windriders circling the Tower as if they expect some attack from the sky, the Barrier Hedge on fire…" He looked away north. He had never seen the Barrier Hedge. In all his life he had never gone father than his secret cave in the north of the woods, but he could imagine the hedge now, a wall of flame. "Phair Caron has made her move at last."