Nancy Berberick - Dalamar The Dark

"Yes," she said. "It's really all about control, Dalamar Nightson."

"What is?" he asked, wearily opening his eyes.

"Well, all of it." She pulled up her legs tight to her chest, wrapped her arms round her shins and rested her chin on her knees. "Control of yourself. You do that well, don't you? Control of your life-not a concept with which most elves have intimate understanding, I dare say-and, of course, control of the magic each time you embrace it."

Ah, magic, the forest and the paths that led to nowhere. "So, it has all been illusion," he said.

Her blue eyes shone suddenly bright. "The hill and the road up? Not at all. Do your legs feel like you've been walking through an illusion?"

They did not.

She sat up, sweeping her arms wide, embracing all the woodland around, the Forest of Wayreth. "All this is real, and all this is magic. The Master of the Tower is in control of this magic, but that doesn't mean you've lost control- which might be part of the problem."

And then she was gone, vanished, her mossy boulder showing no sign she'd ever been there. Gone, too, was the wine-flask from Dalamar's hand and his pack from the ground.

South into the glades went the wanderer, through meadows where butterflies danced on daises and ruby humming-birds floated over the sweet soft throats of honeysuckle. South into the sunlight, Dalamar walked beside streams where fish shone like bright silver and dragonflies the color of blue steel darted. When he walked through all the wonders of springtime, he came back to the boulder and the blue-eyed woman. He turned from her before she could speak, and he went away west into an endless purpling twilight. Stars hung low over the trees, and the three moons graced the darkling sky but never moved, not even a hand's width across the night. Owls woke in the oaks and bats flitted. A fox barked, another answered. A shadow darted across his path. He looked, and he again saw her, the trickster, the blue-eyed woman, smiling at him and sitting on her gray craggy boulder.

Magic and control. Someone else controlled the forest he wandered in; someone else knew where all the paths led to, and where they all led away from. Magic and control. Dalamar smiled a little.

She looked around, found his pack, and took out the leather wine-flask. He refused when she offered, but politely.

"I've had enough of Silvanesti, of any place outside here. For now." He did not smile, though he wanted to, and he chose his next words with care. "I am here, where I need to be."

"What makes you think that?" asked the dark-haired woman.

He sketched a bow, not so deep but respectful. "All the reports of my senses seem to lie, and yet my feet lead me always here, to this place. You said it yourself: the magic in this forest isn't mine to control; the way and the road belong to someone else. But if I cannot control the magic, I can control my response to it."

She looked at him, a long sapphire stare, and then she threw back her head, her laughter sailing up through the trees. In the next breath, the trees and the tall gray oaks receded all around, drawing back from Dalamar and the woman. Moving, they made no sound, and whatever birds or squirrels inhabited bough or nest made not the least protest. Withdrawing, the trees left a wide clear space-not a glade of waving grasses but a close-cropped sward through which a broad road passed. Six knights riding abreast might have passed comfortably on that road, though they would have had to pass round the boulder, the moss-cloaked stone. Above, the sky shone deeply blue, shading toward the end of the day.

His belly clenching with excitement, his skin tingling as it does when magic is being done, Dalamar looked around, trying to catch a glimpse of the Tower of High Sorcery. He saw nothing, not rising stone, not gated walls… nothing.

"Remember," said the woman, her voice soft as with distance.

Quickly, he ruined back to her. In the act of slipping from the stone, the woman vanished. As though mist had risen from the ground, the boulder shimmered behind a gray veil, and the air around it shivered. A man must blink; the eye does it, not the will. In the instant that he did, Dalamar felt all the world change around him, as though the forest folded itself in upon itself, collapsing and then suddenly springing whole and straight again.

The boulder was gone. No mark of it remained on the firmly packed earth of the road. In its place-and in the place of many trees! — rose great high walls of shining stone. Dalamar's heart leaped, and the blood raced through his veins, singing. He saw not one tower, a solitary monolith such as that at Daltigoth. He saw seven towers.

True time settled over the forest, or what Dalamar reckoned must be true time. He had walked under skies where the sun showed only a time and season the maker of the magic wished it to show. Now shadows shifted on the high stone walls, moving by subtle degrees the patient eye knew how to detect. Light changed on the ground, deepening as the day aged, and this, too, the patient eye understood. The time was nearing toward sunset. As in the world he'd left to come here, the season was summer.

The patient eye, the patient soul, Dalamar stood outside the gate that was the only breach in the high black wall surrounding seven towers-nor was it much of a breach, for it was locked and shut tight. He wondered how he would go within.

All around him the Forest of Wayreth rustled. Doves murmured in the eaves of the towers. Wind sighed in the oaks outside the walls. Faintly, the musky scent of ligustrum drifted on the air, though where that hedge-climbing vine grew with its frothing flowers, he could not imagine. Something darted past on the ground. He turned to look, expecting to see that leading shadow, but he saw only a gray rabbit leaping into the brush. He returned to contemplation.

Seven towers loomed above the three high walls, one each at the point of the triangle made by the meeting of those walls, and four within the compound rising above all. The three at each corner where the walls met were obviously secondary towers. Two tall towers, one on the north side of the compound, one on the south, were separated by two smaller ones, fore and behind. A gate breached the wall, but it seemed to have no mechanisms for opening it, at least not on this side.

Dalamar went boldly to the wall, and the great age of the stone made itself known to him, the knowledge seeping into his bones. This was not common stone. Poets named stone "the bones of the earth," but Dalamar knew, standing there, that the stuff the wall was made of was truly that- part of the fabric, the essence of Krynn itself. Upon the walls he found many inscriptions. He went close to see them. Some he could read-magical inscriptions to make the wall strong, warnings to intruders, spells to keep out the prying eyes of any diviner using methods of Seeing-others he could not, though he had mastered three ancient scripts and knew somewhat of four more.

He touched the gate, and, as his fingertips brushed the wood and steel, the air around him changed again, as it had when the towers revealed themselves. This time he did not blink but watched to see what would happen.

The world did not fold, the air did not shimmer, nothing happened at all.

And then he found himself at once on the other side of the wall within the compound. He stood in a courtyard paved with gleaming gray stone, and before him rose the four towers.

"Welcome," said a voice, a woman's, low and laughing.

Dalamar turned swiftly and found himself looking into the eyes of a human woman, a mage in white robes whose hair lay in two thick black braids upon her shoulders. He knew her, but not by her robes. Here was his guide in the forest, betrayed by her sapphire eyes.