Dalamar the Dark

by Nancy Varian Berberick

  Blasphemy! It was blasphemy in the Silvanesti kingdom to think such a thing.

  Dalamar shivered, quick excitement running up his spine. He could choose if he wanted to choose. He could make a forbidden god his own in secret and silence, and no one would know. Such power there was in secrets! Smiling, he walked through the garden, a generous place enclosed on three sides by hedges of wisteria, on the fourth by the servants' wing of the hall. Though they waited for him in the kitchens, he took time to enjoy the heady scent of dewy roses and the tang of curly mint underfoot. Water bubbled from a fountain, a marble basin held in the hand of a statue of Quenesti-Pah, the goddess offering comfort. A golden finch settled on the rim of the basin, bright feathers already changing to autumn dress.

  Dalamar did not walk alone there. A cleric passed him on the path. The tall young elf nodded greeting to him, a lord by the look of him, high-headed and comfortable. His robe of white samite gleamed in the morning light. Silver thread embroidered the sleeves, and upon his finger a ring shone, a silver dragon whose eye was a bright amethyst. A cleric of E'li, no doubt come on the business of the Temple.

  Dalamar returned the absent, silent greeting in kind, in no mood to tug the forelock or wish anyone the blessings of E'li. The cleric went round the north side of the garden and through an arched gate. Beyond lay the private garden of the lord and his family. This one was confident of his welcome.

  Dalamar went into the dark kitchen where the cross-eyed cook stood scowling, fair certain what his own welcome would be. Waves of heat greeted him, rippling in the air, the heat of the night's baking still trapped in the cavernous stone room.

  "Aye, there he is," growled the cook, a woman so thin it seemed she was but flesh stretched too tightly over bitter bones. "Lord Eflid promised me I'd have you this morning early, Master Mage. Now where have you been, eh? Out running again…?" Her voice became as the voice of an insect buzzing, nothing to pay heed to, and Dalamar walked past her through the kitchen and into the oven room where the scent of years of baking clung to the walls with stubborn, yeasty persistence.

  Dalamar knelt on the floor before the first broken tile. He pressed his hands together, feeling the tingling of magic as he gathered up the words of a spell, stone-heal. The smell of the kitchen faded. He dropped into a state of being none but a mage could know, that state of touching power from gods, of taking it and shaping it and using it to his will. The cook's voice receded, words growing thin, like mist rising to sun.

  "…Who he thinks he is, some ragtag little mageling out of the Servitor District… never did teach him his manners or how to behave among his betters… never should have given him the white robe-never. Too far above himself, that's what…"

  The spell words invoked the bright energy of magic, that energy sparkling in Dalamar's blood, warming his heart, lending him power only mages and gods knew. This was all that mattered, magic and nothing more. For it, he would do everything.

  The red dragon drifted in the midday sky, slipping effortlessly from updraft to downdraft, one current to another. Wide wings spread, long tail moving like a ship's rudder, Blood Gem traversed the sky, the first of the highlord's dragons to sail out over the aspen forest of the Silvanesti. He looked down through the canopy of trees and saw the silver threads of rivers running. Along the great Thon-Thalas, he saw towns, small and large, their buildings like smudges on the land. Here, in these little towns, they did not build so much with stone. Here they built with wood. He opened his jaws wide to grin.

  So much tinder, he said to the rider upon his back, the long-legged human woman who heard him not with her ears but in her mind.

  No, Phair Caron said, her voice slipping into Blood Gem's mind like a tendril of black smoke. Not tinder! We'll burn the forest if we must, but something must remain. We're to take these arrogant elves down from their high perches, but we have to leave something for the army to occupy and a cowed populace ready to work for the Dark Queen and support her advance. Dead elves do us no good at all.

  Blood Gem snorted, and a small fireball burst alight in the sky. Dead elves offer no resistance, and we can fill up that aspenwood—or what my kin and I will leave of it—with slaves to do whatever work will be required.

  Phair reached out to pat the red's shoulder, not a gesture the dragon felt, but one he recognized and appreciated in its intent. It isn't about working slaves, my friend. Or it's not all about that. What it's all about is reaping souls, eh?

  For the Dark Queen.

  Phair Caron nodded, again an unseen gesture, but one felt.

  All they did, she and her dragons, was for the Dark Queen, for Takhisis. Dark Lady, you are my light, Phair Caron thought, the thought a prayer. In darkness, yours is the light of balefires, of funeral pyres. In darkness, yours is the hand that reached out to me. She sighed, thinking of the dire glory of Her Dark Majesty. It had been but a mere handful of centuries since Takhisis had re-entered the world and come back from the Abyss after the fall of Istar. Her door into the world was—and Phair Caron thought the irony delicious—the ruin of the very Temple of Istar where the mad Kingpriest of the city—state had proclaimed himself a god and brought down the ire of all deities upon the world that condoned his madness. During those centuries Takhisis had wandered abroad, laying plans, seeking allies among the ruthless to elevate to commanders in her growing army—Phair Caron grinned, a wide, wolfish grin—and waking dragons to pair with those commanders. Now Takhisis had an army of ogres and goblins, of dragonmen and humans, led by her commanders, her highlords.

  And waking dragons, Blood Gem echoed, sighing as though he yet recalled his long sleep and sudden waking. Now we are here. We are hungry to fight in her cause, Highlord, and we yearn to taste elf blood.

  Phair Caron spoke aloud, her words carried upon the wind of their flight. "Soon enough. Soon enough you'll have what you want." She laughed, suddenly and sharply. "But elf blood is a pale drink, my friend. Watery and weak." She pointed downward to where the Thon-Thalas widened and the lights of Silvanost could be seen in the distance. "These elves have no use for any god but their puling gods of Good, Paladine—E'li, as they call him—and his weakling lot. They'll all be on their knees to us before the moons go dark."

  And it would be, Blood Gem knew, like sweet wine on the Dark Lady's lips to see those Silvanesti elves bow the neck to her highlord, to be forced to tear down their pale temples to weak gods and use their vaunted skills to erect shrines to the dark gods. Morgion of the Black Wind would spread disease through their ranks. Hiddukel would turn all their feeble truths to lies. At last Takhisis herself, Her Dark Majesty, would rule in that land where her followers had for so long been forbidden to enter.

  The dragon climbed higher and turned north toward the borders of the Silvanesti. Behind, in the southern foothills of the Khalkist Mountains, the bulk of Her Dark Majesty's army waited, thousands of soldiers, humans, ogres, goblins, and—Blood Gem made a sound of disgust—and draconians, the misbred dragonmen, spawn of an evil magic-making that corrupted the eggs of dragons. These were Takhisis's fiercest fighters. All the army waited impatiently to fall upon this forested land of wealth and beauty that for centuries had been denied to everyone but the Silvanesti themselves. High in the peaks of those foothills, a strong wing of red dragons brooded, impatient to take to the sky and, with their riders, lead that dark army into battle.

  It will be a glorious battle, the dragon mused, his thought matching his rider's.

  Phair laughed, the sound wind-torn from her throat and flung out to the hard blue sky. "It will be, and we will soak the forest with elf blood!"

  Soon?

  The highlord said nothing, but Blood Gem knew her, deeply as dragons know their riders. She had laid her plans in the winter, and those plans called for an army so strong that the elf defenders would crumble before it. A blood-lusty soldier, she was also a canny strategist. She would not commit her army until she was certain her numbers would overwhelm the elves. More soldiers were coming down from Goodlun
d and across the Bay of Balifor. Once these arrived, she would be ready. Until then, she would play as a cat played with a mouse-cruel games to amuse herself. Phair Caron despised elves, and of all elves, she despised Silvanesti most. If anyone needed a picture of that hatred's birth, Blood Gem knew the perfect one.

  A near-grown girl shivered in the shabby winter streets of Tarsis, her rags clutched around thin shoulders, the bones of her face too clearly defined by hunger-carved flesh. In glittering gold, a party of Silvanesti walked past, holding the hems of their robes high out of the running gutter. One turned and saw Phair, the child whose face looked more like a skull than not. With one hand the elf drew aside the hem of his robe, the silk and the brocade all glimmering with jewels. With the other he covered his mouth and nose as one of his companions tossed a copper coin at Phair. The coin fell into the gutter, landing in a pool of muck.

  Phair scrambled for it, never minding that she had to scrape through mud and worse to find it. Here was a week's worth of food! Enough to keep her sister out of the brothels where most of the gutter-girls went to earn their bread. Phair had served there herself at need, but never would she let her sister do that. Never. When she looked up, a word of thanks on her lips, she saw only the backs of the elves and heard one say, "Filthy gutter wretch. Why did you do that, Dalyn? The creature is no concern of ours."

  "None," his companion had agreed. "But that will keep it from following."

  But the gutter creature had followed, Blood Gem thought as he soared over the Sylvan Land. She followed those elves right home, didn't she? It took her a while of years, but she did. And now, a highlord in the army of the goddess elves most hate, Phair Caron had a kind of thanks to offer for their treatment of her, that thanks too long deferred.

  Blood Gem banked and turned, soaring away north again. When he came within sight of the Khalkists and the northern border of the Sylvan Land where the trees were not so thick, he felt the uplifting currents of hot air. Three villages were afire, the acrid fumes of terror and dying wafted up to the sky. All around the smoking ruins, bodies lay, most looking like they'd been nailed there. Some had been nailed by spears and ashwood lances. They looked like insects pinned to a display board. An impatient detachment of the dragonarmy had broken through the burning barrier into the stony area beyond where those three villages had lain. The dragonmen weren't going unmet, for even as they ran raging into a fourth village downriver, elves met them with bows and steel.

  Phair Caron laughed again, and again the sound of it was torn from her lips. "Look there! Defenders. Now, that won't do, will it?"

  It would not. With startling speed, the red dragon dropped down from the sky, bursting out of the bitter blue sky right over the battle. On the ground, the elves looked up, their faces pale ovals. One, a bold fool, lifted his bow and drew to launch an arrow. Blood Gem roared, the sound so loud the air trembled, the earth itself shook. Screams, like the thin whine of gnats, came up from the battleground. The elf who fancied himself a fortunate archer fell to his knees, terrified. His bow, like a little stick of tinder, fell to the ground.

  Tinder, Blood Gem thought. Ah…

  He thrust hard with his mighty wings, gaining the heights again, and turned round over the village. Nothing was afire there, not house, not barn, and certainly not the crowding aspenwood. This wasn't good. On the ground, a phalanx of draconians charged into the midst of the defenders, maces whistling, their ghastly voices like the screaming of stones. From so high up, Blood Gem saw the blood gleaming on the terrible points of the maces, though he did not smell it. Just as well, just as well. Had he smelled the blood he'd have been able to smell the misbegotten dragonmen too. He banked and turned. Upon his back, Phair Caron shouted a wild battle cry.

  Roaring, Blood Gem dropped low over the aspens as the draconians drove the elves into the darkness of the forest. Behind, a house burst into flames, the fire kindled by a flaring torch in a draconian fist. Inside a woman screamed, a child wailed, their cries damped by the whoosh and roar of the roof catching. The sweet stench of burning flesh drifted upon black smoke.

  "A pretty little fire!" Phair Caron shouted. "But we can do better!"

  Blood Gem filled up his lungs with air and, as though those lungs were a bellows, he pushed air out past the place in his throat where dragonfire lived. Death's own banner, flames poured from between his fanged jaws. Flames touched the tops of the aspens, and Blood Gem flew past those, firing the trees beyond and to either side. Elf voices shouted in terror. Men, women, and children were herded into a deadly trap, bounded on three sides by fire and on the other by creatures from nightmare, winged draconians whose reptilian eyes held no warmth, whose powerful tails could break the bones of a foe with one swipe. The least of the tribes of dragonmen, these were the Baaz, and they loved nothing better than killing. Some, it was said, did feast on their kills.

  "Now take us back," the highlord shouted. "This has been diverting, but I have work yet to do before the night is over."

  Reluctantly, Blood Gem turned north toward the Khalkists and the army's camp. Behind them and below, the draconians finished their work, burning every house in the village, killing each man and woman and child they found. One or two escaped. Phair Caron could see it from the heights, but she did not regret that. Let them run. Let them flee downriver to the other towns, wailing the song of their terror until it reached the ears of the elf-king, Speaker Lorac himself. Let him know she was coming!

  Chapter 2

  On days of sun, Dalamar labored indoors in his lord's steamy kitchen, in the musty wine cellars where he was set to catching rats, or in the attics under the high eaves, where it was Eflid's pleasure to give him the task of sorting through old clothing during the breathless hours of hot afternoons. On days of rain, Eflid made certain that Dalamar worked outside, sometimes in the gardens to brace slender plants against the downpours, sometimes after the rain, slogging through mud to repair what damage had been done.

  "It's not fair," murmured the young woman who served at the lord's breakfast table. "He treats you worse than he treats any of us, Dalamar. How do you stand it?"

  "It's our way," Dalamar said. They stood in the doorway to the kitchen garden, looking out into the day hung heavily with mist and leaden clouds. He plucked a wisp of straw from the floor, a stray bit of packing from a crate of wine. "An old pattern. Eflid wants something from me, and I want to be sure he's not going to get it."

  The young woman, Leida, the daughter of a mother who had served in Ralan's hall all her life, child of a father who yet served there, looked at him with luminous green eyes. She had once thought she was in love with a Wildrunner, a young man she saw striding about the city, handsome in his leathers and green shirt. No matter that their life-paths would never cross. No matter that a son of House Protector would never have looked her way but to tell her to refill his mug of ale. When war took the charming soldier north, Leida had wept for as long as an hour, and then she turned her attention closer to home and the dark-eyed mage who seemed suddenly more handsome than the Wildrunner for being so much nearer.

  "What, then?" she asked Dalamar. "What does Eflid want?"

  Using only the agile fingers of his right hand, Dalamar tied a knot in the straw. "A servant humble and biddable."

  Leida laughed, her green eyes sparkling. "He'd spend all his days trying to make you into that, and he'd die never seeing it done."

  "They're his days to spend." Dalamar shrugged. "And that's how he wastes them."

  "And you? You don't mind it?"

  He looked at her long, and when he answered, he spoke coolly. "I mind."

  Leida shuddered, for she saw something in his eyes to make her think of a wolf lurking beyond the light of a campfire.

  That morning, rain had poured down in sheets. Now at noon, the sky was still. Clouds hung leaden, threatening to burst, and the garden was filled with mist and the fragrance of mint and thyme and sweet chamomile. Brown muddy water ran like small rivers round the beds, carving new sh
apes. Leida's yellow hair loved the mist, springing into little curls around her cheeks. She wore it short, though elf women seldom did, because she liked the feeling of air tickling her neck.

  A pretty neck it was, Dalamar thought. A gloss of mist, perhaps of sweat, lent a sheen to the skin of her slender neck. He lifted a finger and caught the droplet. His eyes on hers, feeling her move toward him though she moved not at all, he tasted it. Rain. Lightning flickered fitfully, illuminating the garden. Leida's eyes widened. She lifted her head in the way she had of showing off her charming ears. Sweetly canted, they were like the petals of some lovely flower, white and elegant. Her lips moved in a sudden smile. She glanced over her shoulder to the silent, cavernous kitchen. Potboys had finished their work of scrubbing the pans and plates from breakfast. The cook had gone into the storeroom beyond to take the count of what would be needed to prepare the evening meal. The bakers, who labored in the night, were long asleep in their quarters.

  Leida looked into the eyes of the mage. Perilous eyes sometimes, strange eyes at best, she'd never looked there without feeling a quickening of her breath and the excited leap of her heart. Dangerous, warned the little chill running down her spine.

  "Dalamar, there is a quiet place I know…"

  A quiet place in the attic, in the little room where the linen was kept. In her own small chamber, perhaps. Or his. Dalamar leaned close to taste the rain on her neck. Eflid forbade any union between the servants in Lord Ralan's hall. He would have no alliances forged, no distractions created. He would lift the minds and hearts from us all if he could, Dalamar thought, and have a small army of automatons.