Nancy Berberick - Dalamar The Dark

Long-headed, keen-witted, she knew there was something about this dark elf, something that attracted the attention of the Master of the Tower. Par-Salian had sent her out into his Guardian Forest to lead Dalamar Nightson through the winding ways. "Don't make it too easy," he had said, "but get him here."

She had not asked why. No one would dare such a question, but she was curious. This one, this dark elf, a self-taught mage who had been nothing but a servant in Silvanost, seemed interesting to the Master of the Tower. It would serve ambition well to keep near him, to watch him, and to see what she might learn.

Through the wonders of the Tower, Dalamar walked insensible. He passed mages and he did not see them. All the scents of magic that had charmed him no longer touched him. He walked through the Tower, but in his mind, in his soul, he walked through the Silvanesti Forest, through the woods on the border where a dragon died screaming, where the cleric Tellin Windglimmer lay, writhing and choking on his last, futile prayer. All around him, the forest burned while he looked into the black depths of a red dragon helm and saw the burning eyes of a minion of Phair Caron, a mage who had come to kill the illusion crafters.

In his blood, fury ran. Fire! Fire! Fire in the woods! The cry rang in him, tolling like a bell. In bitter memory, Dalamar looked again upon the death-stilled corpse, the body of Lord Tellin, who had not been, after all, the hardest master he'd served. He had been, like so many other elves that season, a man who did not normally think of himself as a warrior. A cleric used to softer days and easier ways, he had taken his courage and gone north to fight in the hope of freeing the homeland from the terror that savaged their borders, in hope of realizing a dream he should not ever have entertained…

And did Dalamar think his own dream killed, murdered on the border that day? Back then, he might have thought so. Now, he didn't. Now, he knew that the roads he walked, the paths of the world leading through wild places, through port cities and ruined towers, even around the rim of Neraka and into Tarsis, were roads fate had guided him to walk. He was, now and then, a child of the Dark Son, that god who best loved secrets and magic. He was Nuitari's. He would have learned that, one way or another. He would have paid for his devotion in the coin of exile, later if not sooner. His rage, the fury in his heart, was for the maiming of his homeland, that forest more precious to him now than it had been when he could freely run the tended paths. He raged for the city, fair Silvanost, more lovely in memory than when he could wake in the morning to the sound of birdsong, the scent of the Thon-Thalas running, the voices of the city, the lords and their ladies, the bakers, the carters, the butcher-boys and the seamstresses as they went in and out the houses of the high folk.

In the library of this mighty Tower, he had looked into the eyes of one who had taken part in the rape of Silvanesti. Eight years ago! It seemed like the merest breath of time since those fiery eyes had glared at him from a red dragon helm. Then the eyes had been those of a man tall as a barbarian Plainsman. Now they were the eyes of a mountain dwarf, a dark mage who, looking at him, had known him and dismissed him as one of no consequence.

Plainsman and dwarf, they were the same man.

Dalamar stopped, only then realizing that he trembled with rage. He stood a long, slow breath, and he saw that the door into the Hall of Mages stood slightly ajar. Inside, the Head of his Order waited, Ladonna who had bid him come here. She had a matter to take up with him. Whatever it was, he would not let her see him as he now stood, pale with rage. He took a breath, only one, and closed his eyes, focusing inward until his mind calmed and his heart no longer beat to the drums of his rage. When he was again still, he put his hand on the door to the Hall of Mages. His lightest touch caused it to shiver, just a little, and to swing slowly, silently inward.

Dalamar looked swiftly around the high dark chamber. He had a sense that it was a cavernous place, stretching wide and reaching high. Even as he did, he understood that it was not nearly so large as it seemed. The light made the illusion, the pale glow seeping down from the ceiling.

Dark as shadows, Ladonna stood before a tall wooden chair, one of three arranged in semi-circle, beyond which nineteen others formed an embracing crescent. One tall granite seat stood so that whoever sat there could look out upon all. To this one, Ladonna had her back, and her hand upon the arm of the mahogany chair seemed white as bone in the strange, unwavering light.

"My lady, I have come as you commanded."

She turned and looked at him through narrowed eyes. He felt her regard like the touch of a cold hand. He did not flinch, even when she said, "You have seen him."

Dalamar nodded, just once. "I have."

"Good. Now come in. There is a thing you and I must talk about."

You have seen him. Good. How, good? Why, good? Curiosity compelled him. Dalamar went deeper into the hall, and as he walked, it seemed to him that the very air was shivering, that the stone floor beneath his feet shifted. He kept his stride, looking neither up nor down.

"I'm making a map, Dalamar Nightson. Come in, and come closer."

She waved her hand again, a languid gesture that caught the pale light from above in the facets of her ringed fingers and trailed it through the air in colors of sapphire and ruby and emerald. Those light trails were like threads, and with these she wove her map upon the gray stone floor. Towers rose up in the middle of the floor, towers as tall as his shoulder, and these warded a dark castle that sat upon the highest peak of a mountain dominating an island. On the next peak, one only a little smaller, a dragon lay coiled in the warmth of the day, sunlight glinting like bright arrows from its talons and steel-blue scales. Ladonna waved her hand again, and now the light of diamonds depicted water shimmering on the floor, the Courrain Ocean and, just outside the embrace of the Isles of Karthay, Mithas and Kothas, a roiling of water like a wound forever unhealing.

"The Blood Sea of Istar," Ladonna said. She smiled a little, and darkly. "You have lately seen what used to stand in that place in the days before the Cataclysm."

In his Tests he had, in the dreamscape where he'd chosen to let Lorac Caladon take a dragon orb from the Tower of Istar. That orb plunged the fairest kingdom of the world into nightmare. He had weighed in the balance the fate of the beloved kingdom and the strictures of High Sorcery, which command that no one may interfere with a mage in his Tests. He had chosen, as he always had, for sorcery, and he would not show sign of regret or sorrow to this woman whose eyes watched him so coldly. Still, and he could not help it, Dalamar looked south and west from the Blood Sea, and without thinking his eye went to find Silvanesti. This magical map did not show it, and in his heart his most private voice whispered his deepest sorrow: No road leads home for you, not even those drawn on maps.

"My lady," he said, turning his eyes from the place he could not see or ever go, turning his mind from the pain to the moment. "Why are you showing me this castle in Karthay?"

And what does this have to do with your satisfaction that I have seen the dwarf mage and he me?

She looked at him long, her gaze keen with reckoning.

"Listen to me, Dalamar Nightson, and learn this well: You have lived through the War of the Lance, you know that gods work ever in the world with mortals as their instruments and weapons, and you know, for you are no fool, that they have not stopped striving, no matter what treaties mortals have inked among themselves."

Dalamar folded his hands inside the wide sleeves of his dark robe, waiting.