Thorarinn Gunnarsson - Dragonmage of Mystara

Night seemed to gather like standing water from a gentle rain, slowly filling the narrow streets and alleys of the city and the low places where the walls met the cobbled streets. The gray stone of the buildings and the dull bluish tiles of the roofs deepened and gradually seemed to disappear into the shadows. The bitterness of the long winter had given way to a mild and pleasant spring, but night still came early to the Highlands, and the cold still seemed to gather with the darkness.

Alessa Vyledaar stood at the window of her private chamber, watching the deepening shadows of the approaching night. The wide window was one of the principal reasons why she had made this chamber her own, even if it was yet another flight of stairs higher in the Wizards' Residence of the Academy. She had never been comfortable in Byen Kalestraan's old chambers, which had seemed to her like a windowless cavern, dark and remote. But there had also been a rather disquieting presence to those chambers, almost as if they were haunted. She had never been one to worry much about ghosts, but she did not trust anything that might have involved

Kalestraan and the traitor wizards.

She had always felt a vague awareness in that place, almost as if something were calling out to her, or perhaps seeking something. The presence was so vague, in fact, that she had never been certain it was real and not just her own passive antipathy for Byen Kalestraan, a man she had never liked or trusted even before he had proven himself a traitor and assassin. She had simply preferred not to live with that constant distraction. But lately, even in her new chambers, a distant voice had been calling to her from far away.

This evening the mysterious voice was especially persistent, and less distant than it had ever seemed before. Alessa did her best to ignore it as she waited in her chamber for the carriage that was to take her to dinner that night with Solveig White-Gold. She had tried to pass the time with her spellbook, but she had soon realized the distraction was too great. The effort to ignore the voice disturbed her concentration, so that she had learned nothing. She gave it up at last, closing the book and hiding it away. But that left her alone with the voice and her own thoughts. On the nights when the voice was especially persistent, it would invade even her dreams with dim visions of dragons and strange monsters and endless, unexplained toil in the dreary desolation of some cold, dry wasteland.

Slowly Alessa began to realize that there was indeed a difference in the quality of the voice tonight. Always before, no matter how loud or determined it had been, it had simply been some unintelligible voice echoing in her mind, without any sense of direction except that it was always stronger and clearer in the chambers that had been left empty with the death of the traitor Byen Kalestraan. But this evening she sensed beyond all doubt that it was calling to her, even if she did not understand the words. She felt certain that if she followed the voice, it would lead her to its source.

That thought gave her a moment's hesitation-indeed, more than a moment. Whatever else the voice might be, she believed with all her heart that it was evil. Something about the voice and the dreams it conjured awakened a vague memory of fear, so distant that she had no clue of what she feared. All she knew was that her deepest instinct told her to run from that voice, to avoid it at all costs, even to destroy it if she could. And yet she had to know what it was. She could not simply ignore a thing of that nature, leaving it free to work its evil. If Kalestraan had brought a being or force of unknown magic into the Academy, it had to be found and the building made safe.

It also occurred to her that the voice might somehow be a clue to the location of the Collar of the Dragons. She had never been entirely sure just what the collar was, but she knew that it was an heirloom of tremendous value and importance to the dragons. Finding the collar had become Alessa's responsibility when she had replaced Byen Kalestraan as the senior wizard of her order, and she had never been able to discover even the smallest clue about where the traitorous wizards might have hidden it. Finding the collar was becoming more critical than ever. The dragons would be returning to the Highlands any time now, and they expected their treasure to be returned to them.

Having weighed her choices, Alessa decided to act while the mysterious call still seemed strong enough to lead her to its source. Caution told her not to do this alone, that she needed the support of at least one other senior wizard to help her if it proved to be a trap. And yet she preferred to keep this secret to herself until she knew what was involved. She slipped quietly out of her chamber, pausing a moment at the door to make certain no one was about. Since the lamps had not yet been lit, the passages of the Wizards' Residence were dark and gloomy in the gathering dusk.

She descended the stairs slowly and cautiously, then paused and smiled with amusement at her own fancies. She was the mistress of this place, not a thief in the night. All the same, she paused for a moment when she came to Kalestraan's door, reviewing in her mind all the magical traps that he might have employed to guard his most hidden secrets. He had been a Fire Wizard, and his traps would have somehow involved fire, possibly sudden jets of flame shot into the face of the curious or brilliant flashes of light to blind probing eyes. Her greatest advantage was that she knew the same fire magic, and her level of experience was nearly equal to what Kalestraan's had been.

Again Alessa reminded herself nervously that she was not stealing into the domain of a deadly enemy. She had been within these chambers time and again, seeking clues to the location of the stolen Collar of the Dragons. Sir George Kir-bey had also helped her search this place, and his knowledge of magical traps and hiding places was even greater than her own. She had little reason to be concerned until she actually found the source of that mysterious voice, but then she would have to be very careful indeed.

Forcing back her fears, she opened the door of Kalestraan's former chambers and stepped into the darkness, quietly speaking a word of command to bring the magical lamps to life. The first room had been Kalestraan's office, the place where he had worked or received visitors in private. A door at the back of the room led into a small storage chamber. She knew that same door also led to the only hiding place that they had ever been able to find, but she had known about this secret place since Kalestraan's death and she also knew that the thing calling to her was not there. That lay beyond the third door, in the shadows deep in a narrow opening between two groups of bookcases, which led to the senior wizard's personal suite.

Alessa opened the door and spoke the word commanding the lights as she stepped inside, pausing for a moment to look about. The room looked just as it always had; she had ordered that nothing was to be removed or changed in any way, so that any possible clues to Kalestraan's conspiracies would not be lost. Now she moved more slowly and cautiously than ever as she began to trace the source of the mysterious call. If any traps remained, this was the most likely place for them. She hoped that any protective magic would have been designed in such a way that it recognized her as Kalestraan's successor, in a sense the heir to his secrets. The fact that the mysterious voice had been calling to her, and to her alone, certainly suggested that such a distinction had been made.

The voice was now louder than ever, so close that it no longer drew her in any specific direction. For a moment, she wondered if her search would be in vain. Then, as she remained standing just inside the door, she closed her eyes to permit the lure of the mysterious voice to guide her, without the distraction of searching for its source by sight. All her attention was given to her mind's ear, as it were, letting the silent voice guide her. The source of the call seemed a little more certain to her now, and she took slow, cautious steps in that direction, fighting the urge to open her eyes. The knowledge that she could be walking blindly into a trap kept her nerves on edge.