"Kill her!" the dwarf shouted to the grimlock, who wanted nothing more than to do that. "Kill the mage!"
Enraged, the grimlock lunged for Regene with taloned hands. The axe caught it at the elbow, severing its right arm. Blood black as pitch spouted from the wound, and the beast-man shrieked. Screaming in a language whose every word sounded like curses, the grimlock twisted aside, staggering back. It hit the wall of light and was flung forward again. Regene dashed in, the axe high above her head like a headsman's blade. She let it fall, and the beast-man died, the shining blade buried between the grimlock's shoulders.
Regene turned, her sapphire eyes shining with her triumph-
— And the light-prison collapsed around her as she and the corpse of the grimlock vanished.
The carrion stench of the dead grimlock lingered on the air, not covered by the sticks of pungent incense Tramd lit. "Now," said Tramd, waving his hand to disperse the fragrant smoke. "Will you tell me what I want to know, Dalamar Nightson? Who sent you?"
Dalamar noted the change of address, and he did not indicate his satisfaction or curiosity in any way. Once again, the dwarf offered him wine. Again, he declined to take the cup. "I will tell you nothing, Tramd, and I don't see why it matters that you know."
"Do you not?" Tramd looked around the tower chamber. The only light in the room now was that of the sun, strong at mid-morning and growing stronger. "It matters to your friend. Do you doubt that?"
Dalamar did not. "What goes on between you and me seems to matter a great deal to Regene. But what matters to her, as you have surely seen, doesn't so much matter to me."
A small, sea-scented breeze drifted through the window, carrying the sharp cries of gulls. Dalamar thought he heard the sea itself, but so high up, that was only his imagination. He wondered where Regene was, but not in words, for he did not doubt Tramd would be able to scan his thoughts. He buried the wondering in a deeper field of varying emotions.
"Ah," Tramd sighed. He pressed his lips together, shaking his head in disappointment. "Then it must be as you wish. I can do no more." He lifted his hand, a languid gesture, almost a weary one. But not weary, not really, for in his eyes a cold killing light shone, and glee.
Dalamar turned, his belly tightening. In the corner behind him, darkness gathered, shadows coalescing in despite of sunlight and spreading on the stone floor to become substantial, vaguely man-shaped, and tall. Pale eyes glared in the darkness-not points of light, but simply places where darkness was not. Cold flowed out from that darkness, wintry fingers determined to find warmth and kill it.
Swiftly, Dalamar lifted his hands in the dance of magical gesture, and his voice in a spell sung in Kagonesti words to charm the coalescing shadow.
"Heed," he sang, "hear and heed! In my words, find my need. Hear, heed and hear! My song commands, come not near!
The lightless being shivered, but not under the sway of magic, only with grim laughter.
"I hear," the Shadow hissed, its voice like wind in frozen leaves, "and I do not heed. I hear and care not for your need!"
Closer it came, cold running before it. The first edge of its darkness touched Dalamar, and weakness flowed through him, turning his knees watery. Trembling, he lifted his hands again, and he sang another spell, a charm to put the creature to sleep. But shadows don't sleep, they only hide, and this Shadow laughed as the magic ran through it, effectless.
Closer, closer, the darkness flowed closer, and now it seemed to Dalamar that his muscles were turning to tallow. Useless! He staggered and scrambled around in his mind for the catalog of his spellwork, the magic he knew, whatever he could grab and use before this Shadow sucked all the life from his body. But his wit was like numb hands, like fingers too cold and weak to pick up and use anything. Chants seemed like nonsense, filled with sounds that were not words. The Shadow came closer, reaching with its winter grasp.
Tramd laughed. From some safe place, the dwarf called, "You have made a poor choice, mageling! And I will enjoy watching you die of it!"
The taunt did not sting. It was so much noise swallowed into the incessant ringing in Dalamar's ears as his strength leeched out of him. A spell, a spell… something to chase away the darkness-
"Shirak!" he shouted and fell, coughing on the word, weak as a fevered man whose lungs were filling with fluid. Staggering, he stepped back before the light, the small wavering globe that was all his magic could manage. As he staggered, so did the Shadow, but not for long. The light shivered, his magic sighed, and the Shadow lunged.
Dalamar stumbled, he fell to one knee and rolled away from the advancing darkness. Magic! Where was it in him? Deep, he plunged deep into himself, into the heart of him, the soul, and he flung off fear and all dread of the weakness sapping his strength. Light, said his mind, light and fire and-
The Shadow reached for him with arms grown broad and long. Strength and life drained out from Dalamar, running from him as though it were his very blood. Fed upon his strength, the Shadow surged forward to grasp even more. Dalamar gathered his waning strength and his faltering wit. In his mind he put the image of his need, of fire and light and a weapon. He lurched to his feet, to the sound of Tramd's laughter, he rose and filled his right hand with a fiery lance. He had nothing of magic or wit to form protection for himself.
The Shadow reached. Dalamar's flesh blackened and peeled back from bone. Someone screamed-ah, gods! — it was he, the sound of his pain and that of Tramd's laughter weaving one around the other, becoming a single, terrible anthem. Howling in rage, rage dispelling pain, Dalamar drew back his arm to let fly the flame-lance, his eyes on the eyes of the Shadow. And so he saw what he had not before. He knew that Shadow, that reaching wight. In those pale eyes he saw consciousness, wit, soul and pleading urgency. He saw a sapphire glint! Regene! Too late he knew illusion, in the moment he let fly the lance.
The Shadow screamed, and Tramd's illusion fell away. Regene fell, struck by the fiery lance, her robe, her very flesh, burning. Dalamar flung himself forward and beat out flames with his good hand. Eyes wide with pain, choking, Regene tried to form some word, some warning. She need not have, Dalamar felt danger behind him in the itching between his shoulders, the crawling of his skin.
Raging, Dalamar turned, stumbling in weakness. Tramd backed away, groping behind him for a weapon. Dalamar smiled coldly to see that, for it told him the thing he needed to know-Tramd had spent himself deeply to support the light-cage, to call forth the grimlock, and to create this illusion that cloaked Regene. A fool would think he had nothing more to spend, but a wise man would see that he had not so much as he would like.
"Dwarf," Dalamar said, his voice rasping, his hand trembling even as he reached within for one last burst of strength, one last weapon. "You've been dying since the day of your Test. It is time for that to end."
Sweat glistened on Tramd's face and ran into his red beard. He took another step backward. Behind him, Dalamar heard groaning, Regene's breathing sounded like a death-rattle and like sobbing all at the same time. Rage rose up in Dalamar, and with it such strength as he did not think he could find. He lifted his burned hand, the flesh peeled from the bone, the bone glaring white at him, glistening with his own blood and the thin lines of blood vessels and muscle. He felt the pain, and he embraced it, changing it to strength. Fingers moved, his fingers, bones shining in the sunlight pouring in from the window. He created, from magic and from his own will, a lightning-lance, the kind that had killed a dragon.
Eyes wide with fear, Tramd dug down deep for his magic, and he came up wanting. Light shimmered before him, as though he'd been trying to magic a shield. The light turned dark, and the darkness collapsed upon itself. He tried again, and Dalamar let him, a cat toying with a mouse. The collapsing darkness before Tramd shifted, changed, magic still struggling. Fear and rage both battled in him, giving him a mad look.
Laughing, Dalamar let fly his bolt. It sizzled on the air, and the darkness before Tramd coalesced at last, turning to something black as o
bsidian, strong as steel. The bolt hit, exploding into a burst of blinding light.
The sting of ozone hung in the air. Dalamar filled up his lungs with the smell, and he filled up his hands again with power and magic. He hurled no bolt now but fistfuls of energy, the stuff of which lightning is born. He flung these bright weapons, one after another. Tramd's magic trembled and it wavered. The dwarf turned as his shield collapsed. Three more balls of energy Dalamar threw, and in the exact moment he did, Tramd lifted his hands in one last spell.
Nothing happened, and then all the killing power Dalamar had flung turned back on him in a wave of energy like an ocean's wave. Crested red as the sea-waves are crested white, it surged back, screaming on the air and not to be turned.
Strangely still and numb to pain or fear, Dalamar thought, There is my death.
A hand grabbed his ankle, tumbling him. He fell, hit stone, then something soft and yielding. Regene! He scrambled aside, dragging Regene with him, and rolled until he hit a stone wall. The wave passed over him, burning and clawing at his skin, bearing down on his chest.
Gray and sweating, the dwarf lifted a hand, that hand trembling, and it had no magic in it, but it did have a dagger. Sunlight gleamed on the blade, glinting as it swooped down, hungry for blood.
Regene coughed, and on the coughing, she rose, not swiftly, not strongly, but in time. Like silver streaking, like the silver hand of her own god descending, the shining blade cut the air, cut into the breast of Regene of Schallsea. Dalamar's hand shot up, clamping round the wrist of the dwarf mage. He snapped bone, and the avatar screamed. The knife fell from his hand and Dalamar snatched it up. In one swift motion, he lunged to his feet, knife grasped awkwardly in his left hand. He struck an upward blow, a heart-blow. Blood poured out from the breast of the avatar, spilling over Dalamar's hand onto Regene's ruined robes.
"Go!" she whispered, her sapphire eyes dimming, her face livid in the sunlight streaming in from the windows. Dying, she said, "Find the mage-"
Dalamar ran swiftly down long corridors until he found what he sought, the guarded door and clutch of dwarf soldiers outside. There were four, but he didn't care. He tore through them like a storm. Turning their weapons to slag, he killed one of them with only a glance. Two more rushed him, and these he reduced to ash as though their living flesh and bone were no more than the clay of which Tramd o' the Dark made his avatars. The fourth did not stay. He fled and got no farther than the stairwell before he met the fate of his fellows.
Servants cried out, but none on this floor. Dalamar heard them, men and women, and they shouted in several languages. Some were human, others dwarves, one or two were even elves. Servants and slaves, the staff of the Citadel of Night made up with the captives from Tramd's forays in war.
The door would not be locked; he knew it instinctively. What man lying on his sick bed manages that? What man so helpless forbids entry to the servants who will feed, clothe, and clean him? None.
Dalamar opened the door and entered into a bedchamber hung with satins and draped in silks. All around him he saw the booty of a man who had wandered far in war- silver-hinged chests from the North Keep in Nordmaar, tapestries from the halls of the wealthy in Palanthas. From Zhakar he'd stolen silver statuary and golden plate. From Kernen in Kern he had paintings. From Thelgaard Keep he had shields and lances, axes and swords. He didn't seem to have cared much about order. The stolen treasures lay all around, as though in a museum's vast storeroom.
Neither could Tramd see what treasure he had. He lay upon a bed of silk and satin, eyeless, his ruined body reeking, his limbs covered in scabrous flesh. His head tossed weakly, one side to another. Some time in the morning, servants must have lit incense and perfumed the air with oils. The incense was ash now, the oils not enough to cover the stench in the bedchamber of this mage who had fared so ruinously in his Tests of High Sorcery. Not even the breeze blowing in from the sea could do more than stir the stench.
"I see you, Tramd," Dalamar said, standing as near as he must and not minding the reek. "I see you."
The dwarf's head rolled from side to side, a blind man trying to place the speaker. His body quivered, but that was the trembling of his illness, not the will acting on muscle. Scabbed lips parted, and a line of spittle ran down this thin, patchy beard. He groaned, and the sound he made might have been a word. It might not have been. He had used his avatar's body in magic, but he had used his own strength as well.
Dalamar looked around and plucked a weapon from the wall, an axe with a fine, honed blade. He walked to the bed, his shadow on the dwarf.
"Do you feel me near, dwarf?"
The mage on the bed moaned. Silk coverings rustled. He could do no more.
"Now I think it a shame that you cannot see me. I think it a pity that you won't be able to look into my eyes when I kill you."
Outside in the corridor voices gathered, whispering. Servants had come, and soldiers, but no one ventured to cross the threshold. Softly, the hinges on the door creaked. Slowly, someone drew it closed. He had not been beloved, the master of this fortress. No one would interfere here. No one would challenge the mage who had come to kill their master.
Wind sighed across the window sill. The sea rushed to the shore far below and rushed out again. Somewhere a dragon's corpse floated, turning up, belly to the sky. Gulls would feed on that corpse, and sooner or later the sea would soften what even swords could not hurt. Then the gulls and fishes would pry the scales from the belly and pry the flesh from the bones.
"I will tell you," Dalamar said to the dying man on the bed, "what you have so dearly wanted to know. I have come to kill you, Tramd, and it will be my personal pleasure. You killed many good men and women in the battle for Silvanesti."
He stopped, watching the dwarf groan, watching his cracked lips bleed with his effort at speech. Standing there, Dalamar heard the forest burning. He heard the Wildrunners shouting. He heard a dragon dying, and the last prayer of a cleric who had put all his faith in gods who did not seem to know or care. Sunlight ran on the honed edge of the axe's blade, sliding down the curve as Dalamar shifted it from hand to hand.
"I have come in the name of Ladonna of the Tower of High Sorcery. I have come in the name of those who revere the High Art, the gift of the three magical children. I have come in my own name, Tramd Stonestrike, to remove you from the ranks of Her Dark Majesty's servants. There will be Light," he said, "and there will be Dark."
He lifted the axe higher, right over his head.
The dwarf heard the lifting, the sigh of air on the blade. He groaned and found a word. "No," he sobbed, "no."
"Yes," said Dalamar, very gently. "Yes."
He let fall the axe, a headsman, an executioner come to avenge early deaths and late.
"Yes," he said to the dead man. "There will be balance."
Dalamar put back the axe, the blood still running. He rolled the corpse to the floor and snatched up a sheet from the bed. With the silk he wrapped up the head, the eyes still staring, the ruined mouth still gaping.
"My lord," said one, a human woman, bowing to him as she spoke. "What is your will?"
He looked at her, and she cringed from his glare. "Go," he said, and he didn't care if she took the word to mean she must leave him alone or she must go out from the citadel and never come back. They made, servants and soldiers, the choice they had wanted to make for long years. They fled.
Dalamar didn't watch them. Their running footsteps meant nothing to him. He carried the head of Tramd o' the Dark, wrapped in bloody silk, back to the chamber where he had left Regene. She lay dead, her blue eyes wide, her lips a little parted. He knelt beside her, brushed her dark hair from her face, and he closed her eyes. He stayed that way for a time, listening to people flee the castle. Then he lifted her in his arms, took up the proof of the dwarf mage's death, and spoke a word of magic.
The floor fell away. The walls fell away. In the grip of the transport spell, Dalamar Nightson shouted, and this time he didn't cry a spell. T
his time he shouted a curse.
Out on the ocean, as far as the rim of the Blood Sea of Istar, sailors pointed north and they pointed east. A great fire burned on the Worldscap Mountains on Karthay. The flames of it reached as high as the tallest peak, then higher still. The smoke of the burning roiled out over the sea, darkening the day to dusk.
Epilogue
Dalamar walked through light and through darkness, up a winding stone staircase that seemed to have no end. Once he looked back over his shoulder, and he could not see the steps behind. They were lost in shadow and the fitful flaring of the torches upon the wall. He had no hand-light, for something had been done to dampen his magic. In the pit of his belly, fear fluttered.
The darkness of Shoikan Grove had not frightened him. He had walked beneath trees whose limbs were arms reaching down to grab him, through shadows where disembodied eyes glared at him. Beneath his feet, twigs had turned to skeletal hands, those hands plucking at the hem of his robe, but he had not faltered. Not even when ghosts came wandering out from the depths of that haunted wood did he allow himself fear. He had entered the precincts of the Tower of High Sorcery at Palanthas as boldly as though he were walking into his own home. The lightless courtyard, the great doors that opened of their own accord, even the soft, almost gentle voice, that bade him, "Enter, apprentice," did not disconcert him. But now, here, without his magic, Dalamar felt fear.
It is but an effect of his magic, he told himself as he went ever upward. He will not permit my magic, and so that is what must be. Here is the road I have chosen, and it has wound all the way from Silvanost to Palanthas. This is the road I will trust.
"Shalafi," he whispered, trying out the title, the Elvish word for "master." "It will be as you wish."
Up through the darkness and the light he went, never missing a step, though so many lay hidden in shadow and not all were of the same depth or breadth. No rail warded the unwary climber. A fall from this staircase would be a killing plunge, and yet it seemed to Dalamar that he'd found the rhythm of the uneven steps in the first moment he began his ascent. The higher he went the quicker his pulse-the old feeling he'd always known when he wandered from the safe ways, the quiet paths.
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