Dalamar the Dark

by Nancy Varian Berberick

  But we are not, he thought, setting aside the cup and slipping again beneath the red woolen blanket. The blasphemy didn't frighten him, and if he dreamed afterward, those dreams did not disturb his sleep.

  A scream tore the silence, ripping the velvet night in the Tower of the Stars. In the bedchamber of the king, the scream sounded again, and this time it was made of words.

  "You must not leave me!"

  Footsteps ran in the corridor, whispering on marble floors. Voices called one to another. Alhana Starbreeze found her father's steward running out the door of his own chamber.

  "What is it?" she cried. "Lelan, my father—"

  The steward hushed her, but the pallor of his plump cheeks gave lie to the calmness he pretended to have. "A nightmare, I'm sure, Princess. Your father has had a nightmare. No more than—"

  Moaning, the Speaker of the Stars cried, "Don't leave—!"

  Alhana ran into his suite, through the antechamber, and into her father's bedroom. Her pale night robes and silent footfalls gave her the seeming of a ghost. The king sat in his bed of silk sheets, clutching satin covers. His eyes starting in his head, he stared at her, open-mouthed.

  "Father!" She flew to his bedside and took his cold hands in hers. "Father, I'm here. It's Alhana." He did not seem to know her. She cast a swift glance at Lelan and saw the steward had already poured a glass of water. "Take this, Father, drink."

  With trembling hands, the Speaker of the Stars took the glass. He drank, the water dribbling. Alhana wiped his chin dry, tenderly as a mother might. "Lelan," she whispered, "light candles, then leave us."

  Light sprang up as Lelan kindled one candle after another, fat white pillars and slender green tapers, all the candles in the Speaker's bedchamber to drive out the darkness of night. The faint scent of honey drifted on the air as the beeswax warmed. When he'd done that, Lelan hung at the threshold, wanting to stay. The sharp glance Alhana gave him decided the moment. He turned and ran down the corridor, his footfalls like whispers and rumors of fear. The steward gone, Alhana took her father's hands again, pressing them warmly. It seemed he knew her now.

  "Alhana," he whispered, "dearest child."

  "A nightmare," she said. "Father, you had a dream. Look, you are here in your own chamber."

  He looked around, but only because he followed her gesture, not because he believed he was anywhere outside of nightmare. Thick woolen rugs lay scattered on the cool marble floor, their bright colors muted by night, blue and green and dawn's pink all changed to gray. Upon deep cushioned chairs were brocaded pillows. Tapestries hung on the pale marble walls, and one long mirror bordered in gold graced the wall opposite his bed. A little writing desk stood below an east-facing window, a place for the king to sit and look out at the Garden of Astarin as he tended his correspondence. In the far corner of the room, a niche made by the joining of marble walls, his personal altar stood, whitest marble upon which sat a golden image of Quenesti-Pah and the wing-spread platinum image of the Dragon's Lord, E'li, whom some in the outside named Paladine. None of these familiar trappings stilled Lorac's restless eye.

  Alhana chaffed his hands, and softly she said, "Tell me, Father. Tell me what you dreamed." For she believed that to expose the nightmare to title light of the waking world would kill its power.

  Shivering, he sighed. "Oh, gods, it was… I went wandering down all the roads of place and time. I walked in the world where the dogs of war are running, and I heard—" He groaned, hunching over. "The voice said, 'You must not leave me! I will perish!' "

  "Who spoke? Father, who spoke?"

  He looked at her, his eyes clearing. She thought he would answer, but he did not. "In my dream I walked through Nordmaar and Balifor and Goodlund, out to the Blood Sea of Istar. And… and when I came there, the dream changed. Right under me, all around me. There was no gaping wound in the world. Alhana, I saw the city itself, Istar!"

  Storied Istar, in all its glory of gold and delight, as she had been more than three hundred years ago when he'd come there, a young elf seeking the Tower of High Sorcery that he might present himself and take the Tests of Magic. The buildings soared high, painted in jeweled tones, gleaming in sunlight, sighing in moonlight. In his dream his soul had sailed upon the chants wafting out from every temple, the voices of elves so beautiful that the Kingpriest himself wept to hear them, his heart so full that words could not express his joy. These were the chants of eternal peace, songs lifted to E'li, whom they named Paladine in Istar, to Quenesti-Pah, to Majere the Master of the Mind, to Kiri-Jolith whose sword wields only justice. In Istar, the Fisher King, Habbakuk, was revered, and Astarin the Bard, whose name means Song of Life.

  "It is," Lorac said to his daughter, "as though I am telling you a dream, and yet telling you a thing that happened in waking life. For it did. It did happen that way when I went to Istar, there to take my Tests."

  Then he grew still, his eyes suddenly shuttered. His lips moved to shape two words: Save me! It seemed to Alhana that those two words caused the light of the candles to dim and the air in the chamber to grow suddenly cold.

  In a low voice, Lorac told how in the sky above Istar the light changed from the lovely golden of sunset to a shivering green. Dreaming, he'd looked around himself, fear quivering in the far and secret chamber of his heart. From where the green light? He followed the light until the Tower of High Sorcery rose up before him. Out from the Tower, like beams lancing out from a lighthouse on a storm-swept night, the light shone. From there, as well, came the voice. Save me!

  In his dream, Lorac walked past gates that swung open at his word. The guardians of the Tower, creatures of magic set to ward by mages most powerful, stepped back before him. Mages came to greet him, and they led him inside where an old man, a mage whose name no one knew, told him he was expected. The world will be lost! The cry echoed throughout the Tower, down all the corridors, in all the chambers, high and low, as Lorac followed the old man. Yet, though the cry echoed, no one in this dream but Lorac seemed to hear it or feel the urgency growing in its tone. Led by the nameless mage, he wended the maze of corridors, passing through one chamber after another, and it seemed to him that the Tower went on forever, wide as the sky and broad as the world itself. At last, they stopped in a small chamber, one no larger than could fit two grown men standing abreast.

  "And the nameless mage, he said that I must not touch or take anything. I must leave all as I saw it."

  "And did you?" Alhana asked, her face white in the candle's light.

  "I told him—I told him I would do as he wished. And the man vanished. When I looked back into the room…"

  When he looked back into the room, he saw that a table had appeared, a simple trestle of scarred wood. Upon it sat an ivory stand, like two hands cupped, which held a clear glass ball shining in the unlit gloom. Save me, the globe whispered. Disaster is near and you must not leave me here in Istar. If you do, I will perish and the world will be lost! He reached, and he lifted the globe. It warmed in his hands, and he looked around again, like a thief in the night. Take nothing, the old mage had said, touch nothing. Await me here. But the orb, nestling in his hands, cried out in piteous tones, cried out for the sake, not of itself, but of the world it longed to save. Swiftly, silently, the young mage, who was the old man who dreamed, whispered the words of a spell. The crystal globe became as nothing, not only invisible but without substance. That nothing he put inside his robe, and he walked out of the little chamber, out of the towers, and out of the city that soon would fall and, in falling, change the face of the world.

  "Child," said Lorac Caladon, he who was a king, the Speaker of the Stars, "my child, I am ashamed to confess it. I left the city a thief."

  Silence settled upon the room. In the corridor beyond Lorac's door, torches whispered to themselves in their brackets on the walls, the hushed voice of tamed fire. Somewhere down that corridor Lelan waited, the chamberlain who obeyed his princess but surely did not sleep for fear his master would call him and not be heard
.

  "Father," said Alhana, leaning close to kiss his cheek. She took his hand again and pressed it to her own cheek. "You are no thief. You simply had a nightmare, and one cannot be blamed for what deed he does in dream. Now, I beg you, please settle yourself and try to sleep again."

  Unspoken between them was the knowledge that the day to come would bring another round of council meetings, and Lord Garan of House Protector would come to give what news his Windriders brought from the borders. Lately his news had been good, or not bad. Phair Caron held her position, brooding in the foothills of the Khalkist Mountains, but no one expected that to be the case for long. Garan would plead again to make an offensive strike, to fall upon the Highlord and take her by surprise. The Speaker and the Head of House Protector did not agree. Lorac demanded patience until more troops could be moved to the borderlands. Garan said patience would be the death of them. "She is building up her own forces, my lord king. I know it! Let me strike now!" This time, perhaps, he would plead his case with sufficient vigor to convince Lorac that what elven troops now stood at the border would be enough to make such a strike effective.

  Lorac looked up. The king seemed far older in the eyes of his daughter than he had only this morning. "Child, it was a dream, but… it was a dream of truth."

  The night fell into utter silence. Alhana did not hear cricket-song, the nightingales in the Garden of Astarin had no voice. "Father, what do you mean? What are you saying? That you, of all people, did steal—?"

  "I did not steal it," he said, his face changed, growing oddly cold and still. "I did not steal the globe. I rescued it."

  With more energy than Alhana imagined he had, Lorac left his bed. He put on his robe of blue silk, his slippers of soft green leather, and took his daughter by the hand. An urgency was on him now. His fingers grasped hers with enough strength to make her wince.

  "Father, what—?" He pulled her toward the door and the corridor beyond. "Where—?"

  Once outside his chambers he took her to the railing, the marble ward against the far drop below. Behind them torches flared in silver wall brackets. Somewhere a woman's voice whispered, and a man's murmured in reply. Nearby were the libraries, and a light shone out from under a heavy oaken door-scribes working late.

  "Look," the Speaker said, pointing down into the well beyond the railing, down into the audience chamber. His throne stood there, mahogany and emerald, and the Words of Silvanos inlaid with silver. As lives the land, so live the Elves. Beside the throne stood a rose glass table. "Do you see those ivory hands, there on the table?"

  She did. The sculpture hadn't been there even this morning.

  "I had it commissioned in the summer. I thought the time might come…" He stopped, then said, "The hands are empty now." Lorac's voice echoed into the well, the echoes like wings rustling round the throne and the ivory sculpture. "But come, come with me."

  He pulled her along. She followed, thinking they would take the spiraling staircase down into the audience hall. They did not. He took her far down the corridor past closed doors and curtained alcoves to a smaller, darker staircase. They entered a narrow doorway, and she had to duck her head to pass through.

  The air in that lightless place smelled faintly damp. Lorac whispered, "Shirak!" and a globe of golden light appeared above his head, moving as he did and lighting the way down narrow stone steps through a passage Alhana had known about but never taken. This way lay a dungeon, not one for keeping prisoners-those were dealt with in other towers.

  Cold seeped through the soles of her soft slippers as she ran after her father. Down and around, spiraling into darkness with only that one golden light bobbing above, at last, she saw green light pulsing in the distance below-light like the kind you see when sun shines through aspen leaves in spring. When they reached the floor at last, Lorac led her to the far corner of the dungeon, a place where-had it been meant to hold prisoner-bars would have been erected, chains installed. Upon a small table, not one so lovely as that beside Lorac's throne, sat a crystal globe. It seemed no larger than a child's marble, and yet Alhana knew instinctively that this was not the case. It felt larger, no matter what sight told her. She closed her eyes, not wanting to see it. In the utter darkness, an image sprang: The strange sculpture of empty hands beside her father's throne filled at last, filled with this orb that seemed small yet felt large.

  "Father, what is it?"

  He turned to her, smiling. "It is a Dragon Orb, Alhana."

  She frowned, stepping closer, then away. Power pulsed in the globe, throbbing like a heart in the night. The skin on the back of her neck prickled. "This is what you took?"

  "Rescued," said the king quickly. "I rescued it. It cried out to me, and I rescued it. This orb has the power to command dragons. It was one of five, crafted by wizards in a far distant time. Two we know are lost. This third is here. The others…?" He shrugged. "I don't know where they are, or if they still exist. But I do know this, for I have studied what small lore is left of them-a mage with the strength of will to control the magic of an orb will be able to control dragons."

  A damp breeze drifted through the dungeon, touching Alhana's cheek with cold fingers. "And the mage who tried but could not control the orb? What would happen to him, Father?"

  Lorac turned to her, his pale face shining, his eyes alight. Ignoring her question, he said, "How would it be, my Alhana, if suddenly Phair Caron found her dragons answering to my will? How-?" He cocked his head, his eyes gone soft and unfocused, as they had been when first he woke from his nightmare. "Listen. Do you hear it? The world will be lost…"

  Alhana heard nothing, but she did not say so. Softly, she touched her father's arm, the silk sleeve of his robe cold and damp under her fingertips. "Father, come away. Come away. You frighten me!"

  He turned, and though he looked at her, he did not see her. His were the eyes of a young man who stood a long time ago in the Tower of High Sorcery at Istar, the eyes of an old man who not even an hour ago woke screaming from nightmare. He said nothing, though, and he let her lead him away from the dragon orb, back up the narrow cold stairs.

  In the morning, when the last rosy fingers of dawn were withdrawing and leaving behind a hard blue autumn sky, Dalamar woke to the tolling of all the bells in the city of Silvanost. Over the tolling, he heard frightened voices and running feet.

  "What is it, my lord?" he called to Tellin, hurrying past his window. Lord Tellin didn't know, and Dalamar dressed to find a better answer. Outside, he found the temple-folk, clerics and servants alike, running into the streets already clogged with people, students running from the Academy District, advocates from the Embassy District. From the Market District and the Servitor District in the west, men and women and children came, following their neighbors to the heart of Silvanost, to the Garden of Astarin round which the temples clustered, where the Tower of the Stars stood, tall against the sky. Griffins sailed above the Tower, their wings golden in the new day, their harsh cries, like battle cries, filling the sky.

  "What's happened?" Dalamar asked his master again.

  Grimly, looking north, Tellin said, "The Barrier Hedge is on fire. Phair Caron's dragons have set it alight!"

  A cleric, overhearing, cried out. Others picked up her shout and sent it round and round the gathering until the Wildrunners at the gates of the Tower looked at each other, silently wondering whether they would be called upon to quell a panicky mob.

  "Look," Dalamar said, pointing north and then south, east and then west.

  Ripples of motion shivered through the crowd, starting at the four corners and making itself into a parting of the sea of people as, one after another, the lords and ladies of the Sinthal-Elish left their homes and went among their clans, speaking words of comfort or offering quieting gestures. They came, one and all, to the Tower of the Stars, for it had been appointed that they meet with the Speaker at this hour. Not one of them, not even Lord Garan of House Protector, looked up to the griffins and the Windriders. They went as though upon
any ordinary day. From them, calm emanated, and certainty and a measure of peace.

  All would be well said the Householders by gestures and with words. The people heeded, for how could they not? These were their lords. This was the council of the king, and who should know better? In groups and singly, the citizens of Silvanost returned to their homes or the tasks they had left. In the sky the griffins circled, round the top of the Tower of the Stars, and one of all that crowd looked up at them and expressed his unease.

  "It doesn't look good, my lord," Dalamar Argent said to the cleric beside him. "Windriders circling the Tower as if they expect some attack from the sky, the Barrier Hedge on fire…" He looked away north. He had never seen the Barrier Hedge. In all his life he had never gone father than his secret cave in the north of the woods, but he could imagine the hedge now, a wall of flame. "Phair Caron has made her move at last."

  Chapter 4

  They came, old men and women, children and babes in arms. They left footprints in blood on the stony ground. Their tears watered the earth, and their lamentations terrified the birds of the air. On days of pouring rain and on days of sun, they came walking, staggering through the aspenwood in the golden season, in autumn so beloved of elves. They came, an army of misery, disease, injury, and despair, an army of woe. The careful shaping of the forest fell to ruin before them, and the trail they left behind was one of deer carcasses, sodden campfires, worn out boots, and of their own dead. Old men fell, their hearts broken and refusing to beat. Old women collapsed and did not get up. Small children died of exposure. Mourning, they simply covered the dead with brush and moved on.

  In the days of Phair Caron's border raids, the refugees had been a trickle, a few fleeing the burning of villages in the northmost part of the land. By the middle of the month of Autumn Harvest, the trickle became a stream, running down to Silvanost. They shivered in the cool nights, sleeping on stony ground. They had only the clothes on their backs. Some fortunate few carried ragged blankets to wrap round their weeping children. They had no young men to protect them. No one who looked strong enough to turn into a soldier ever survived a ravaged village. Those were killed at once. The draconians sweeping through villages sought them out as robbers seek gold. Before the eyes of screaming old men and women, wailing children, the young and healthy were cut down and killed.