Dalamar The Dark

Chapter 4

They came, old men and women, children and babes in arms. They left footprints in blood on the stony ground. Their tears watered the earth, and their lamentations terrified the birds of the air. On days of pouring rain and on days of sun, they came walking, staggering through the aspenwood in the golden season, in autumn so beloved of elves. They came, an army of misery, disease, injury, and despair, an army of woe. The careful shaping of the forest fell to ruin before them, and the trail they left behind was one of deer carcasses, sodden campfires, worn out boots, and of their own dead. Old men fell, their hearts broken and refusing to beat. Old women collapsed and did not get up. Small children died of exposure. Mourning, they simply covered the dead with brush and moved on.

In the days of Phair Caron's border raids, the refugees had been a trickle, a few fleeing the burning of villages in the northmost part of the land. By the middle of the month of Autumn Harvest, the trickle became a stream, running down to Silvanost. They shivered in the cool nights, sleeping on stony ground. They had only the clothes on their backs. Some fortunate few carried ragged blankets to wrap round their weeping children. They had no young men to protect them. No one who looked strong enough to turn into a soldier ever survived a ravaged village. Those were killed at once. The draconians sweeping through villages sought them out as robbers seek gold. Before the eyes of screaming old men and women, wailing children, the young and healthy were cut down and killed.

The aged, the sick, the children, these were allowed to leave each village, even encouraged to do so. It was the favorite tactic of Phair Caron's mage, Tramd o' the Dark. "Let them go," he cried over each slaughter. Some said they saw him, a tall human on dragonback. Others said he was a dwarf, still others an ogre. But then others would say, "Who would imagine a dragon letting an ogre ride?" However it was, all agreed that the mage's voice, magic-aided, boomed over the burning villages and towns like the bellowing of a terrible god. "Let them go! Drive them out! Let them spread fear like disease! Let them clog the forest and fill up the cities with need and terror!"

War raged behind this army of woe, little villages aflame, awash in blood. To the east, out by the Bay of Balifor, a great fire burned. The Barrier Hedge was in flames. What then for the elves? What then for the best beloved of the gods?

In the Temple of E'li, the Dawn Prayer lifted upon the winged voices of the old and young, men and women. Day after day, Dalamar woke to it until he could no longer hear it as anything but the sound of desperation. To him, it was the helpless cacophony of people bleating like sheep to a god who-if he had indeed returned to the world as rumor said-had not bothered to stop the hand of Takhisis from ripping apart the kingdom of the Silvanesti. Lords and ladies came to pray, as did merchants and masons and gardeners and servitors. Elves of high station and low trooped in for morning services, for noontide worship, and were often back again for Day's End prayers. The smoke of incense hung in the air, stinging the eyes and making old ladies cough. It did nothing to cover the odor of fear permeating the Temple of E'li and all those others clustered round the Garden of Astarin as reports came to the city of burned villages in the north and west, of battles on the border. Some of those battles between elves and the dragonarmy were victories. Others were not. Troops of Wildrunners practiced war-work on the training grounds around the barracks, their cries and the ringing of steel on steel heard even in the Garden of Astarin. Others moved out of the city, marching north even as flocks of citizens marched to the temples and dark rumor ran like smoke through the city. The Speaker and his council were considering the idea of evacuating the kingdom if Phair Caron broke past Alinosti.

"Why don't they do something?" Dalamar muttered, watching out the window of the scriptorium on one of the last warm days of autumn. One of the last he knew, for each time he went in the forest to hunt for herbs to fill the Temple's storerooms he saw signs that colder weather was coming. Seed dropped fast now. Stalks withered. The plants drew all their life downward to hide it under the ground till spring. Farther north, in the forest where his secret texts lay hidden beneath magical wards, mice and voles had moved inside the cave. He had been obliged to put a warding on each book to protect it from the incursions of nesting creatures.

Lord Tellin looked up from his pages-lists or reports or some small work of his own-past Dalamar to the garden. People stood in small groups, some just come out from service, others waiting to go in. His eye searched for one in particular, Lady Lynntha, who had been each day at the earliest service, lifting her voice in the Dawn Hymn.

"Do what?" he asked Dalamar, but absently. He saw her, tall and slender, standing a little apart from a group of other young women. She looked around idly. This had been going on since the day she'd come to return Tellin's gift. Her voice was now a regular part of the prayer services.

"Anything." Dalamar saw glances meet, Tellin and Lynntha's. Dangerous, he thought, dangerous, my Lord Tellin. "All they do is pray and feed troops up to the border."

"And these things are nothing?" Tellin reached for his pen, found the quill's tip split, and took up another.

"Yes." Dalamar turned his back to the garden and the people milling there. "Lord Garan, I think, would agree."

Tellin looked up, surprised and perhaps amused to hear so bold an opinion from a servant. He had heard one or two similar opinions in the last weeks. Dalamar had changed since he had returned to the Grove of Learning to take up his studies in magic again. He grew bolder, more confident, and it seemed to Tellin that this was both a good thing and bad. He did want a mage skilled in the healing arts, one who could put his talents to use should that become necessary. Who would not want one near who knew how to imbue a salve with magical properties? And yet… and yet there were these bold, striding opinions, which, even if they sometimes matched Tellin's own thoughts, were not seemly in a servitor.

Perhaps this, he thought, is why we don't allow them too much knowledge of art and literature and magic. They overreach. And yet, Tellin didn't think the reach of this careful and cunning servant often exceeded his grasp.

"Do you think Lord Garan would agree with you, Dalamar? Well, perhaps. But hindsight-"

"Yes," Dalamar interrupted, "it's the best sight. Still, seeing backward, I know that a mistake was made to forge treaties with Phair Caron. Another was made when the king delayed Lord Garan's hand for the sake of building up troops. The Highlord, it seems, built a stronger force than we can muster."

The words fell like the ring of steel into the room. Tellin looked away from the garden, his eyes dark and troubled. He heard the truth of what Dalamar said, and he knew that truth was being whispered in other quarters. Still, it was not right to engage in such speculation with a servitor.

"Easy enough to say," Tellin murmured, shuffling his pages to say he'd done with this talk, "now that all deeds are done."

Dalamar took a moment to decide whether he would accept dismissal. Then softly he said, "I suppose you're right, but seeing forward, I know how that mistake can be rectified."

Tellin put aside his quill again, this time not smiling. "Have you been making war plans, Dalamar? Isn't that better left to-"

"— to my betters?" Dalamar shrugged. "I suppose you might think so, my lord, if you thought the heart of a servitor were not as deeply filled with love for his homeland as the hearts of lords and ladies."

Tellin winced. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean-"

Yes, said Dalamar's cool smile, you meant just that. "Look what my betters have wrought. Have you heard it," he said, "that the refugees from this war are not marching neatly to the cities on the river? People with maps thought they would do that, but people in terror simply run. These are trampling their way to Silvanost, hungry and cold and frightened. Come, I suppose, to see what the best of their betters have to say about things."

Tellin's eyes narrowed at this impudence. Dalamar wondered whether he had pushed the cleric too far. He did not back down, though. He had been a long time considering his plan, and most of this morning looking at the maps in this very room when what he should have been doing was sharpening quills, scraping parchment clean, and laying out the lists of stores for Tellin to review and amend.

"My Lord Tellin," he said, striving to keep a tone that wouldn't alienate his master. "I have a lot of time to think out there in the woods where the herbs are. And I have a chance to hear what is being said in the city among the people. Lords and ladies, they don't look to see if a servant is near. We are invisible to them. And so they speak freely, and we listen freely. I know we elves held our hand too long, and now we suffer for it. We let advocates and emissaries steer our defense, as though we were in some court of law and not at war. We put our trust in treaties that Phair Caron had no mind to honor. Now we are too late to the border with too few soldiers." Softly, he said, "You know that as well as I, my lord."

Tellin looked out the window again. Lynntha's voice lifted in sudden laughter. Her brother had come to escort her home from the Temple. He watched her turn and walk away, lovely on Lord Ralan's arm. Her cheeks were sun-gold. Her silver hair, caught back from her face and captured in a glittering jeweled net, hung heavy on her long slender neck. What would happen to her if the Wildrunners could not hold the border? Who would defend her and keep her safe?

Tellin shuddered and looked at Dalamar, his impertinent servant. "Tell me," he said, reluctant to show enthusiasm, and yet curious. "Tell me what plan you have."

And then what? He could not go to the Speaker of the Stars and say, "Beg pardon, my lord king, but my servant has come up with a brilliant plan of defense." Certainly he could not! War plans from the servant of a cleric whose duty it was to keep the records in the Temple of E'li? This was idiocy! And yet, he was curious.

Dalamar sensed that curiosity as if it were something to smell. He crossed the tiled floor and took out a map from the chest of drawers. He spread the map upon the marble table and said, "First, my lord, let us agree that we are not at the center of the world."

Tellin listened, growing by turns astonished, disbelieving, and finally accepting. When Dalamar had finished talking, the sunlight was long gone from the garden, having moved around the back of the Temple. Noontide services had come and gone. Somewhere out by the docks a bell tolled.

"Of course," Dalamar said, and now he smiled a little, "if you think this plan is good, you must take it to whomever you decide needs to hear it and say that it is your own. After all, who would heed the ideas of a servitor?"

Tellin sat back, shaking his head. Who would heed a servitor, indeed? No one. Yet, who but a mage could explain this idea? No one.

Dalamar stood in the Tower of the Stars. He looked up into the high recesses of the chamber and watched the light of stars and the two risen moons glimmering down the walls, dancing on the gems imbedded in the marble walls. Almost, he thought, you can hear that light laughing, singing the songs of the spheres. All around him he felt the ancient magic that had made this marvelous place, echoes of spellcasting done hundreds of years before. Any who chose to attend could feel the wispy remnants of that ancient magic, but none felt that tingling, that echo of mighty spellwork as a mage did. To stand here now was like hearing music drifting out from a distant window, ancient songs and old, old melodies.

Voices of another kind drifted down into the audience chamber from the gallery, ashy whispers with no tones to let him determine one from the other. Beside him, Lord Tellin tried to keep a calm, respectful stillness in this place of power, but the cleric could not hold quiet for long.

Tellin looked around in the great audience chamber, eyes darting here and there, from the magic-wrought walls to the silk-woven tapestries to the nine steps leading to the broad high dais where King Lorac's throne sat, a magnificent high seat of emerald and mahogany. Upon the mahogany where the king's shoulders rested, words of inlaid silver gleamed in the starlight: As lives the land, so live the Elves. Beside the throne a table stood, its surface made of rose glass, and upon that rosy surface an ivory sculpture of cupped hands, empty hands.

Dalamar looked down at the floor and his sandaled feet, and he drew in all his thoughts, gathering them, stilling them, and keeping them safe and private in the quietness within himself. Those empty hands touched him deeply. The eloquence of their beseeching matched a feeling he'd had all his life. Fill me up! Enlighten me! Grant me what I need and deserve! He would not look at the empty hands again. It was enough that he felt the ache of their yearning.

A footstep sounded on the stairs above. Three shadowy figures came down the long winding staircase, their way lit not by torches but by two glowing spheres of magic-made light. The king, Ylle Savath of House Mystic, and Lord Garan of House Protector descended from the gallery to the audience hall. Their robes rustled, whispering to the stone steps-Lady Ylle's green robe of damasked silk, the king's brocaded violet robe, Lord Garan's unadorned robe of rusty gold samite. Dalamar caught his breath, in spite of himself impressed, for these three wore upon their backs more wealth than any servitor might hope to possess in all his life.

When the elf-king's foot touched the floor, the two young men, mage and cleric, each dropped to one knee. Tellin lowered his gaze and then his head. His hands, white-knuckled, were still, but just barely. His face shone whiter than the king's, whiter than his robes. His lips moved, perhaps in prayer. These things Dalamar saw out the corner of his eye, his head only a little lowered.

Soft like the sigh of wind through the aspens, Ylle Savath spoke a word to dismiss the spheres of light. Now only the light of torches shone, and shadows leaping all around the hall as she said, "My lord king, here is a cleric and his servant who have requested audience of us all. The cleric is Lord Tellin Windglimmer. You might remember his grandfather who was head of the Temple of Branchala in the years when I was a child."

The Speaker made a sound of assent.

"And his servant," said Lady Ylle, "is Dalamar Argent, whose mother was Ronen Windwalker and whose father was Derathos Argent of House Servitor." She lifted her head, regarding Dalamar from beneath hooded lids. Her voice was as cool as winter frost. "He is magic-taught."

Lord Garan moved restlessly, reacting to the news that the servant kneeling here in the Tower of the Stars was a mage. Steel rang, chiming faintly. Garan wears mail beneath that rich robe! Dalamar thought.

"Him?" Garan whispered to Ylle Savath. "He is trained in magic? Could they find nothing else to do with him?"

Was there no other way to handle the embarrassment of a servant so inconveniently born with magic singing in his blood? Dalamar felt his cheeks begin to flush. He closed his eyes, willing the blood to retreat from his face, willing himself to keep still.

In the quiet, a footfall, slow and light on the marble floor. Lorac Caladon walked into the hall. He put a hand on Tellin's shoulder to bid him stand. He put another on Dalamar's and said, "Rise, young mage."

Dalamar lifted his eyes, and when Lorac offered the barest twitch of a smile, he mirrored it not because he felt it, but to let his king know that he appreciated the courtesy.

"Lord Tellin," said Lorac, his pale eyes growing keen and cool, "I have heard that you wish to come and speak to me of the war."

Tellin lifted his chin, and he held his king's gaze. "I do, my lord king. I am not," he said, bowing to Lord Garan, "one who studies war, and I know there are others who-"

Dalamar glanced swiftly from the king to his counselors and to Tellin mouthing courtesies and compliments and spending his words telling the king how much he did not know about the matter he'd come to lay before them. It would not do.

"My lord king," Dalamar said, stepping a little forward.

Tellin's words died, the eyes of the august turned toward the servant who should have kept his place and remained silent. Dalamar smiled at each, a small, cool gesture of acknowledgment.

"My lord king," he said, as though the silence had been what he was waiting for. "Lord Tellin has been good enough to use his name to get for me a thing my own name or station would not have availed. But now that I am here, and you are here, I will say this: I know that the war does not go well, and I know that the Highlord is bringing forces in from Goodlund and Balifor to augment her army."

"Silence!" Ylle Savath snapped. The light of the wall torches ran in her silvery hair. Shadows made her chin seem sharp, her patrician nose like the beak of an eagle. "Servitor, you have overstepped your bounds." She looked at the king and Lord Garan. "He should be removed."

Lord Garan stepped forward, his face flushed with the same anger that had made Lady Ylle's cheeks go pale. The impertinence of servants was not to be borne, and the presumption of this one who came prating about things of which he had no understanding-!

"I will remove him, my lord king."

Tellin moved, as though to object, but another was before him. Lorac laid a hand on Lord Garan's arm, a firm grip.

"No." Torches flared and sighed in their brackets, the light of their flames ran laughing in the jewels embedded in the wall. Lorac shook his head. A troubled look passed across his face, like a shadow running. "The boy doesn't lie, does he, Garan? He is having no groundless fantasy?"

The Head of House Protector scowled. Garan glared at Dalamar, but he did not deny what Speaker Lorac said.

"Now," said the king to Dalamar, "you have presumed to tell us what we already know. Tell us why you have come to speak the obvious."

"I do not come to speak the obvious, my lord king. I come to speak of a way to turn the tide of this war in our favor. I have a plan, and I think you will appreciate it when you hear it."

"A plan?" Lady Ylle snorted disbelief. "Now we are taking advice on battle tactics from temple servants? Really, Lorac, how much more of your time do you have to waste?"

As much as I please, said the king's haughty glance. Aloud he said, "Patience, my lady. You and I have lived long enough to know that good news comes out of strange quarters. Lord Tellin is spending fistfuls of the goodwill that his family name earns him. No doubt he feels he spends it in a good cause. That says something in the servant's favor. Let us hear what these two have come to say. And"-he looked at Tellin, white in the face, and at Dalamar, who stood straight and tall and still didn't flinch from his king's scrutiny-"let us do so in a more comfortable place."

Lorac turned, looking at none of them, obliging all to follow as he led them into an alcove off the main chamber, a small room redly lit by hearth and torch.

"Are you mad?" Tellin whispered to Dalamar as they followed the king and his counselors. "Speaking that way to the king himself?"

"No," Dalamar murmured. "Quite sane, my lord. And as you will note"-he smiled-"we are here where we need to be."

All around the private chamber of the Speaker, candles glowed, orange pillars scented with barberry, green scented with pine, and white scented with the oils of winter-blooming jasmine. The colors of the candles and their delicate perfumes acted as heralds to the changing season. Tiny points of light danced in a breeze coming through the slivers of space between windows and sills. Shadows jumped and light leaped, drawing the eye round the little room. A wide, tall hearth dominated the south wall, the mantle filled with candles. Before it ranged large, comfortably cushioned chairs.

Wordlessly, the Speaker gestured his guests to chairs and assumed his own nearest the fire without waiting to see how they sorted themselves out. They did not do so easily, for no one could quite reckon where in the arrangement a servant must sit. In the end, and not unhappy with it, Dalamar did not sit at all. He stood behind Lord Tellin's chair and gained for himself a commanding view of all those gathered.

"Children," said the king, "tell me now what you have come to say."

Dalamar glanced at Tellin, as a matter of form, and when the cleric gestured, he said, "My king, it is plain to even the humblest member of my House that the courage of Lord Garan's Wildrunners will not likely stand against the greater numbers of Phair Caron's army."

In the silence following his words, he heard the Speaker's breath hitch, just a little.

Lord Garan hissed a curse. "How dare you say that, mageling?"

Dalamar ignored the insulting tone of Garan's voice and the offensive diminutive. He looked to the king and spoke only to him. "I dare say it, my king, because what I say is true. It might not be convenient that this truth is noticed by a servitor, or that a servitor has considered it and reckoned a way around it, but not the less, what I say is true."

"You have a quick tongue, Dalamar Argent." Lorac leaned forward, looking at Dalamar narrowly over the steeple of his fingers. "A quick tongue, and you would do well to use it now to tell me what plan you have made."

Fire snapped in the hearth, and ashes fell slithering into the fire bed. Dalamar's mouth went suddenly dry, and the words of an old saying came mocking to mind: Who leaps, leaps best when he knows where he will land. Of course, who doesn't leap at all, knowing or unknowing, gets to stand at the edge of the precipice until he must turn back with nothing earned but the failure to act.

Unacceptable.

"I would strike at the Highlord from behind, my king, and-"

Lord Garan's laughter snapped out, stinging. "You'd do that, eh? Haven't you heard that all the northern lands from Khur to Nordmaar are occupied by Phair Caron's army?"

"I've heard," Dalamar murmured, his eyes low, a small smile playing around his lips. He looked up again, assuming an expression of innocent frankness that fooled the Head of House Protector not at all. "No doubt you've heard, my lord, that there is a mage or two in the kingdom with skills that might facilitate my idea? Illusions skillfully cast will make our forces advancing from the south seem invisible to the eyes of the Highlord's army, while at the same time other illusions will make it seem they are being attacked from the north." He smiled, a chill twitch of his lips. "At which time, they'll turn to fight what isn't there, while the Wildrunners surround and attack them… from behind."

Ylle Savath, until then silent, lifted a hand, with the simple gesture capturing the attention of all. "My lord king," she said, "it might be well to remind this servitor that illusions are not the province of White magic. They are the province of Red magic. Here," she said, turning a glance upon Dalamar that was cold as winter and as dangerous, "here we practice constructive magic."

"And yet," Dalamar replied in his mildest tone, "it seems to me that we had better learn to construct some illusions, my lady."

Ylle Savath's eyes glinted sharp as knives. "If you are suggesting we practice any magic other than Solinari's, you come perilously close to blasphemy, Dalamar Argent."

Blasphemy.

The word hung in the stillness of the room. It seemed the flames in the hearth whispered it, once and again. At last Lorac stood, his face expressionless and masked by shadows.

"Young mage," he said, inclining his head in the only bow a king need make, that of courtesy to one of his people. "Young cleric, you have my leave to return to your homes. May E'li bless you on your way."

He lifted a hand and dropped it again. The flames in the hearth fell. The torches dimmed. Thus did the elf-king, the highest of all mages in his land, signal that there would be no more conversation here tonight, on this subject or any other.

Cardinals sang their chipping songs in the hedges of the Garden of Astarin. Late-goers, they were the last songbirds to sleep, the heralds of nightingales. The light of half-moons shone down, red and silver on the path away from the Tower of the Stars. Dalamar's blood sang brave songs, as it did when he was preparing to work magic. He had stood before the king, before Heads of Households, and he had laid out a bold plan, one he knew could work.

"It was a waste," Tellin said, "a waste of time and a waste of-"

Dalamar raised an eyebrow. "And a waste of the good will your family name gets you? Do you really think so, my lord?"

Tellin snorted. "Did you see the way Lady Ylle reacted to your idea? 'Blasphemy,' she called it. I tell you, Dalamar, you won no friends there. You won no favor with Lord Garan either, lecturing him on battleground tactics. What, by the names of all the gods of Good, makes you think either of them will second your plan to the king, even if Lorac is interested in it?"

Dalamar stopped, standing a long moment listening to the night. Wind sighed in the trees. Somewhere in the darkness a child laughed, and a woman's voice lifted in even-song, a lullaby for her baby. Lights glimmered in all the hollows and on all the hills. Towers built of marble rose up white in the starlight, some grand and high with wings of rooms reaching out from the base, others smaller and built in humbler imitation of their wealthy neighbors. A nightingale sang, and another joined in, their sweet liquid notes sounding in his heart like the very song of the nighttime forest.

"My Lord Tellin," he said, "they are talking of leaving here, the king and the Sinthal-Elish. You've heard the rumor. If things keep on as they are…" He looked away north to the borderlands. "If things keep on, I don't think it will be long before they make up their minds."

Tellin shuddered, his eyes dark in the night. Elves leave the Sylvan Land? Wasn't that, too, a kind of blasphemy? "How could they even consider it?"

Dalamar looked over his shoulder to the Tower of the Stars rising above the whispering crowns of the aspens. Light shone from windows normally dark at this hour. Yes, the king sat waking. He was thinking, turning over the plan presented him by a minor mage of a lowly House, a scheme that bore the taint of blasphemy. Of this, Dalamar was certain, for a dragonarmy savaged his northern reaches, and Lorac Caladon had no choice but to consider all options. Whether he'd choose this one or not, none could say. But he was considering.

"Desperate people, my lord, do things they might not otherwise consider."

Tellin smiled, but without humor. "So you've solved all the problems, have you, Dalamar?"

"No, my lord, not all."

In silence, he followed Tellin through the Garden of Astarin, past Astarin's temple where chanting prayers were sung, round the fragrant beds of jasmine and late wisteria, of starweed and moonflower and nodding columbine. Men and women of House Gardener worked there by the light of tall torches, watering flower beds, for such work was best done at night while the earth has respite from the thirsty sun. The earthy scent of wet dirt drifted up. Fireflies danced in the recesses of each hedge, hungry for the larvae of slugs.

It had been, indeed, love of his homeland that moved Dalamar to conceive this plan he'd put before the king-a real and abiding love such as every elf knows. He had not thought more than this moved him, not until this moment in the Garden of Astarin with the fireflies winking and the scent of jasmine in the air. As he walked, a wild hope rose again in his breast, one he'd thought banished. When his plan succeeded-and he knew it would-he would ask Lord Tellin to present his case to the mages of House Mystic, to ask that he be instructed as all other mages are, fully in the magic art. He dared hope now, for he'd stood among lords and spoken with a king who had heard him out, a king who might well heed what he heard.

When this plan proved itself, he would tell Lord Tellin that he wanted to learn all the magic he could and then one day go to the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth, there to apply to the Conclave of Wizards in hope that they would grant him permission to take his Tests of Sorcery.

Two days later, in the morning, while Dalamar sat in the scriptorium with the usual basket of quills to sharpen, a message came to the Temple, a short missive tersely worded, saying that the servitor Dalamar Argent must go to the home of the Head of House Mystic, and he must be there before the noon hour. Dalamar presented himself long before that time, where he learned-not from Ylle Savath herself but from one of her mages-that he would be among those who would travel north to the borderlands, there to bespell a dragonarmy.

"Let him live or die by his plan," Lady Ylle said on the day that Lorac announced he'd follow the advice of a servitor.

That she'd said as one pronouncing a dark doom. Yet, Dalamar heard her command as the first note of a brave song, one to tell of his dream, long thought impossible, at last waking to reality.