Nancy Berberick - Dalamar The Dark

However, despite his misery, Dalamar was still a reaper of news, and there where the water meets the land he found much to reap. In taverns where seamen gathered, he learned of the rehabilitation of lands long ravaged by war. He heard how after making treaties, the soldiers of the Whitestone Army left the field of battle and returned to their farms, crafts, and shops. In little shops where magic-users traded in spellbooks, herbs, oils, and strange and powerful artifacts, he heard from mages of all the three Orders that the armies of the Dark Queen had no such peaceful intent. The alliance between the armies of red and black and white and blue collapsed at the end of the war, though the armies themselves still maintained control of vast territories. The fallen Highlords ruled their fiefdoms roughly, brandishing their iron fists over the heads of their subjects and quarreling among themselves. In the taverns the drinkers were happy to consider the war over, the matter between gods settled, and they passed winter nights comfortably planning for a springtime that would, at last, not signal the start of another blood-drenched campaign of war. In the mage shops the folk were not so sure that the matter between the gods had all been said and done.

Through the winter, brooding, Dalamar did not think so broadly as this. He considered himself, his choices, and his chances. By night he dreamed of home, aching dreams of loss, and by day he wondered what place he could make for himself in the world outside Silvanesti. He thought of the cities to which he might travel-Palanthas, Tarsis, Caergoth, and North Keep. He thought of the libraries, the opportunities for study…

But he didn't think about journeying to the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth. That old dream lay quiet in him.

Come spring, Dalamar felt dark winds at his back, restless winds, and these seemed always to push him from the places where people congregated, away from the taverns and the bars, from the brothels and the temples and the mage-ware shops. These winds pushed him to the old places where mortals no longer walked. He, who had seen the ruin of his homeland, the ruin of his own place in that kingdom, was surprised to discover a taste for ruins, the skeletons of old cities, old places whose names were only half-remembered, whose stories had long before flown to the winds.

Dalamar walked among the ghosts who haunted Bloodwatch, the fallen tower that used to stand within sight of the Sea of Istar, and was now only a pile of stone. He found ways into the hidden parts of the ruins, went down deep into the earth and discovered vaults filled up with debris- rolls of parchments detailing supplies and requisitions, old chests filled with rusting weapons, and in the farthest corner of the deepest chamber, a golden coffer no larger than his two hands outspread. Though it had lain in dust and the moist cellar air for years unknown, this coffer was clean as though newly made. It sang to him, through his hands, through his bones and his blood, for it held something of magic in it, and he knew by the thrill he felt that here was a dark magic.

With great care, he examined the coffer, detected magical wards, and released them. Within lay a ring of silver, etched with runes and set with a perfectly cut ruby, dark as spilled blood. What power lay in the ring, he did not know, but he took it out from that place. Sitting on the shore, watching the tossing sea, he listened to the wind moaning around the ruins of Bloodwatch for two days and three long nights. He remembered what he had learned in Silvamori, that all things are voiced and all things may sing, and so he learned the language of the wind, the song of the sea, and he spoke with the ghosts wandering by. One told him, at last, what power the ring had. It would dry the blood in the veins of any foe.

Fate directing, in the hour before dawn, a small boat landed on the stony shore below the ruin of Bloodwatch. A goblin slipped out, prowling. In silence, Dalamar sat while the intruder scouted the ruins, waited to hear footsteps coming near, almost hoping…

The last light of the fading stars cast a shadow, a slim dark mark on the ground. He smelled the reek of goblin's breath and sat stony still, pretending to notice nothing. A steel blade hissed free of its sheath. Dalamar turned, all his will pouring into the ruby ring, directing the magic. The goblin's eyes went wide, its jaw dropped as it pulled one rattling gasp of air into its lungs, then fell over, dead. Using the goblin's own knife, Dalamar saw that the blood had indeed dried in its veins. He found nothing but brownish dust wherever he cut.

In the summer of the year, Dalamar Nightson went north to the ruins of the City of Lost Names and roamed through the wailing streets, searching for what artifacts of magic he might find. He found none, and it seemed to him that someone had been there recently before him. He did unearth a chest filled with a great richness of jewels, necklaces, brooches, rings, and tiaras. None had any magical value, but he took some of the pieces. Most he left hidden beneath his own warding spell.

He went into the Kharolis Mountains in the autumn, walking 'round and 'round the terrible ruins of Zhaman, which the dwarves of Thorbardin now named Skullcap, that fortress which, so legend says, the great mage Fistandantilus caused to be built. What treasure of magic must lie in there! Dalamar listened to the wind and the wailing, but he found no ghosts except for those of dwarves. They had nothing to say to him that did not have to do with the great wars of days gone when fabulous Zhaman was destroyed in the turmoil that ravaged Krynn after the fall of Istar. He would gladly have entered in to see what wonders lay hidden, but the towers had melted and run down the side of the hill upon which it stood, making the shape of the skull for which it was named. All entrances were sealed.

From there Dalamar went to winter in Tarsis, tired of smelling the sea and eating fish in the port cities. Walking upon the ancient seawall of a city that had not stood in sight of the sea in the three hundred and more years since the Cataclysm had reshaped the world, he looked out over the dry plain that had once been a harbor, at the hulls of sea-abandoned ships now serving as hovels for the poor folk of the city who lived cheek by jowl with the outlawed, the bandits, and all those who preyed upon the weak. Five hundred years later, one hardly saw the outlines of hulls, for work had been done to expand each hulk and repair age's damage. Ramshackle rooms had been added on, taken off, added again-all in haphazard fashion.

Outside the breakwater that now broke no water lay the Plains of Dust and, beyond, the foothills of the Kharolis Mountains, nearly a hundred miles distant. Dry wind blew off the plains, gritty with dust and stinking of piles of the garbage Tarsians had long been in the habit of pitching over their walls as though there were still swift currents of water to carry it all out to sea.

Dalamar turned from the hulks and left the wall, walking down into the city. He went through the marketplace, past booths where dark-eyed girls sold flowers and stalls where old women hawked brightly painted pottery. All around the smell of food hung-roasting meats, simmering soups, and fat loaves of bread haloed in steam.

In the darker corners, up against the wall beyond the central plaza, he found the quiet shops where mages gathered, Nuitari's Night, The Three Children, Wings of Magic, all the places where mages in Red robes, Black, and White came to trade magical artifacts for spell components, spell components for spellbooks, and gossip for news. He went into the Old City where he found ruins not unlike those he'd seen in other lands, only these lay within the walls of Tarsis itself. There he found the Library of Khrystann, that underground chamber filled with books and scrolls, very little of it in reasonable order.