Nancy Berberick - Dalamar The Dark

That one, Ladonna thought, should never have survived his Tests.

Down and down she went, greeting and receiving greeting, until she came at last to the study where the Master of the Tower waited. On the threshold of his study, she smiled. He did, indeed, wait. For though she had not announced her visit, he knew of it nonetheless. It was that way between them, Ladonna and Par-Salian. They had not been lovers in many long years; still the connection remained, the bond unbroken.

"Good evening, my old dear," said Ladonna, coming quietly into the Master's study.

Par-Salian smiled with a mixture of affection and impatience. He disliked that expression, and yet her impulse to speak it pleased him. He looked up from the book spread open upon the polished oak desk and tugged a little at his thin white beard.

"Is he here?" he asked. "Your dark elf, is he here?"

"My dark elf?" She shrugged at the designation, then nodded. She supposed he was her dark elf, at least by virtue of the fact that she had brought him to the Master's attention. "He's here. He'd have been a while wandering in the wood, but Regene found him." Her eyes sparkled with sudden amusement. "She didn't make it too easy for him, but she got him here in better time than he'd have made for himself. Time, after all, is our dearest coin these days."

It was, and it was in short supply. Par-Salian closed the book and settled against the back of his chair with a sigh. He supposed he should have felt brighter, more eager at the start of what work this dark elf might do, but he hadn't felt bright or eager in some time-not since the end of the war. He looked around at the silk wall-hangings woven by an elf-woman in Silvanesti a long time ago. They shimmered to life, the delicate silken threads, the pictures they made as Ladonna went around the room, kindling candles with the touch of her finger. Light glinted on the jewels decorating the elaborate fantasy of braids she'd made of her silver tresses. It gleamed from brass fittings and silver candle holders and slid down the silver chasing of the mirror upon the wall. The book-lined walls seemed to sigh in the shadows, leather spines shimmering. All the air hung with the scents of herbs and spices and some things not so pleasingly perfumed. Spell components were sometimes lovely and sometimes not. Here was the study of the Master of the Tower of High Sorcery.

At Wayreth, he reminded himself carefully, the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth. There had been a time when only this tower functioned, the last of five original towers. That was not so now. Now another, darker tower was opened.

Candlelight on silver tresses, the gleam caught Par-Salian's eye, and he smiled. White mage, dark wizardess, they had been each other's strength during the hard times of the War of the Lance when it seemed that the gods would rend the world between them. In seasons of doubt, she had been beside him. She would, he thought, stand by him in the harder times to come. He gazed at her fondly. She had been the one who taught him that each pole on the plane of life-Good and Evil-had its place and had its complement. Without one, there would not be the other, and there would be no balance.

Par-Salian sighed, a weary sound, for gods strove one against the other again-Paladine against Takhisis. He tried to imagine what strength the world would find to withstand another round of that. The same strength it always had, he supposed: the strong-hearted people of Krynn. And the striving was necessary, he knew it. Ladonna had taught him that. In the godly striving is tension, and tension keeps the balance. She was right, and the striving was eternal, never to be settled. No matter what treaties mortals made among themselves, still Takhisis plotted, and still Paladine planned against those plots. Already one of the Dark Queen's Highlords, Kitiara Majere, was growing strong and restless in Sanction, eager and ready to strike in the name of the Dark Queen, sundering the peace of Whitestone. The Blue Lady she named herself, for blue as steel was her armor, and blue was the dragon she rode. Like a wolf scenting weakness, she knew the races and nations who had forged the Whitestone Treaty were not ready for a resurgence of Takhisis's forces, that few believed such a thing was possible. She could, if allowed to grow strong enough, fight a war whose outcome would be far different than the first.

As if she weren't enough, lately there had risen another who conspired in spite of both gods, a mage whose power had grown strong in the few years of his young life. Raistlin Majere. If the Silvanesti elves had found reason to thank and praise him for lifting Lorac's Nightmare from their land, Par-Salian knew that no one had reason to be grateful for him now. He was the Blue Lady's brother, though not her ally. His sister had ambitions to rule nations. Raistlin's ambition was deeper and more terrible. What form it took, the Conclave of Wizards did not know. They did know that he had the strength to break the curse that, ever since the Cataclysm, had sealed the Tower of High Sorcery at Palanthas and take that stronghold for himself.

"Your dark elf," he said, stretching his arms high, working shoulders weary with bending over books. "Will he be worthy, Ladonna?"

She walked past the banks of candles to the window. Outside, the twilight glowed, warm and fragrant with the scent of the forest, a magical forest, a Guardian Forest such as those that once stood to ward all five Towers of High Sorcery. The one that had warded Daltigoth had caused intruders to fall into dreamless sleep. That around Goodlund's tower inflamed the uninvited with uncontrollable passions. When Istar had reigned, the forest guarding the tower there induced a simple forgetfulness so that intruders failed to remember why they'd come that way. Not so gentle the forest around the Tower at Palanthas. Shoikan Grove was home to spectres and monsters and dread, so deep madness was the only way out. And yet, though five towers were built, only two remained. It was not impossible to imagine that Wayreth's tower, too, could fall one day.

Turning from the window, Ladonna said, "I think-I think, mind you-that this one, this Dalamar, might well be a man with enough courage to help us do what must be done about that most dangerous of mages in Palanthas."

That most dangerous of mages… She did not speak his name. She never did unless the speaking was unavoidable. Ladonna hated Raistlin Majere, and she feared him. Par-Salian knew how much it pained her to admit, even to herself, that she, the Mistress of her Order, must be wary of the dark-robed mage who had so precipitously taken over the Tower of Palanthas. He also knew that were she and Raistlin Majere to meet in ritual contest, his magic would best hers, and then there would be a new head of the Order of Black Robes, one who would rule from his own Tower, and with whom Par-Salian would have less than cordial relations.

"Your dark elf-"

"Dalamar Argent."

"Dalamar Argent, then. I haven't heard it said he's had much formal training. How much could he have, really? Ylle Savath of House Mystic would have put out her own eyes before teaching him dark magic, yet here he is in black robes, calling himself a mage."

Ladonna's eyes flashed. "Lady Ylle never taught him Nuitari's magic. He is-or he was-a servitor. You've heard how that is-all the food and clothing and work you could want. Nothing more than that, though. She hardly permitted him any instruction at all, and only grudged him the little she did to keep him from turning to wild magic"-she smiled sourly-"or to dark magic. No, he has little formal training, something of the magic of the Wilder Elves, something of White magic, and everything else he's picked up along the way. But it is also true that Dalamar has been three years in his exile, and you know this as well as I do: If that doesn't kill one of his kind, it makes him strong and canny beyond his years." She tilted her head to smile at him, that smile slow as a drawl. "He is that, strong and canny. And he is-or could be-our man."