Dalamar the Dark

by Nancy Varian Berberick

  Magic moved all around, on the air, in the corridors, and in the chambers of the Tower. Its scent hung in every corner, clung to each tapestry on every wall, to the soft settles, to the pillows adorning the chairs, to the very stone, floor, and wall. Dalamar breathed it, filling his lungs with the fragrance. Mages, white and red and black, went and in and out of the vast records room where librarians worked to sort the ever-increasing piles of papers and books that seemed to breed in the Tower of High Sorcery-journals and diaries, old parchments penned two centuries earlier…

  "We throw nothing away," Regene said, and she did not exaggerate. "Here in the Tower we keep every scrap that might one day be deemed important."

  Row upon row of shelves and bookcases filled each of the records rooms on the first and second floor of the north tower. Mages went among them, some cataloging, some searching.

  "What you see here on the first floor is only recently catalogued, the flotsam of the years just before the war and till now. Across the hall are records of ages past. We shrink the storage crates." She held out her palm, her blue eyes laughing. "Make them as small as my hand and unshrink them if we need to find something."

  She took him from the first-floor records room and into the rear tower, telling him that this place was only a back door. "Or sometimes a mage who has died will lie in state here until we entomb him in the crypts below the Hall of Mages. Still, after all, the back door, isn't it?"

  Down into the crypts she took him, among the dead of the ages, sorcerers and wizards whose names had long been sung in legend, others whose quiet lives left not even a whisper to echo after them. Beyond and below lay the dungeons, dark, damp chambers where no chains hung from the walls and no doors barred the cells. And why should they? Could not the mages of the Tower command magic to hold those they wanted held? Out into the rear courtyard she took him, and when Dalamar saw the gardens there, filled with flowers, with fruit trees and vegetable patches and herb beds, she noted the look on him, the swift shadow of longing, as though he thought of fair Silvanost, that place to which he might never return.

  "Come," she said, pointing to the three towers crowning each junction of the high black walls. "If I wagered that you thought those were guard towers, would I lose?"

  He looked up, the touch of a fragrant herb still soft on his fingers. "Yes," he said, "you would. What use would this place have for guards and watch-walks?"

  None, of course, but the Tower had every use for laboratories well removed from the central towers. Powerful magics were worked in those places, such experiments of sorcery that would turn white the hair of the downiest youth and wake the first, most terrible nightmare of the hoariest elder. "And do worse than that," Regene said. "I won't take you there now; they are all in use. But you'll have your chance at them later, when you find the need."

  Last, Regene took him into the south tower by back stairs beyond the level of the Hall of Mages and into the libraries. In that place of wonders she let him roam, watching as he went from aisle to aisle, wandering in and out among shelves of books until, in the stacks far back in the shadowy corners where the oldest tomes were kept, he crossed the path of a dwarf. Silence stood between them, a moment when absent nods might have been exchanged before one moved on or the other did. Their eyes might never have met, and yet they did. In that moment of meeting Regene knew they recognized each other.

  The dwarf laughed, a harsh, hard bark. His lips twisted in a sneering smile, with exaggerated care he stroked his beard, that gesture of insult clear to even those who were not born in Thorbardin. You are no man, you are but a beardless boy and hardly worth my notice.

  Dalamar Nightson stood unmoving, a mage who might have been carved out of obsidian. Unmoving, he was not unmoved. Then his hand twitched, his right hand, his power hand, as though he were preparing to cast a killing spell. Just for an instant, Regene wondered if the charge of hospitality that lay on all who entered the Tower would be broken, breached for the first time in the memory of the oldest mage here. Dalamar lifted his head, his eyes cold, his expression stony. Some communication passed between them, a thing Regene could not sense, for they spoke mind to mind, mage to mage. The dark elf turned, and he walked away. When he returned to her side, Regene felt the anger in him not as fire but as ice. Her blood ran cold. She slipped her hands into the wide sleeves of her robe to hide their sudden shaking.

  Still, she suspected that what she sought to hide, he recognized. He did not speak of it, however, or acknowledge it in any way. It was as though her reaction couldn't possibly matter to him, to laugh at, to soothe, to scorn. With careful politeness Dalamar said, "Thank you for the tour, Regene. I must leave now, for I have an appointment I'd rather not miss."

  She glanced into the shadows to where the dwarf had been. He was gone now. Her eyes on those shadows, she told Dalamar she would gladly guide him to his destination.

  "No," he said, "I can find my way." He bowed, as gallantly as any elf-lord in Silvanost, but his voice was chill. "I bid you good day."

  Dismissed, she let him go. When he was gone, she went into the stacks where he had met the dwarf mage. She extended her senses, intuitive and magical, but read nothing there of what had passed between them more than the last rippling of scorn and rage. What, she wondered, would move the dark elf out from his cool silence into rage? She could not imagine, and she did not want to waste time doing that. She was known to the mages of the Tower as a clever young woman. "Long-headed," said Par-Salian of her, meaning she had a fine memory and a keen wit sometimes overlooked in the light of more charming talents of dressing and undressing in illusion. To the observant, those who knew how to look past all her pretty faces, Regene of Schallsea was also known for a young woman of ambition. She hoped—not unrealistically—that one day she would sit as a member of the Conclave of Wizards and have a place in the Hall of Mages among the twenty-one who steered the course of High Sorcery in Krynn.

  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 go
d 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.

  "There are gods, however, who forbear to play this game. You know them, too. They are the three magical children, the gods of High Sorcery. They cherish balance above all things, and we who practice their Art know that if the balance between the three spheres fails…"

  Dalamar shuddered. "Then magic will fail."

  She lifted a hand to tuck back a small wisp of her silver hair. Gems sparked on her fingers, dazzling. "Exactly. Let Paladine and Takhisis play at war, let Gilean watch and record all in sublime impartiality-no matter to them if balance fails. But we who walk on sorcery's way must always strive to keep the balance of light and dark so that our magic may survive. Did not Istar show us that?"

  "My lady, no one knows how precious the balance better than a dark elf. You tell me what I already know."

  She raised a brow, one cool brow, and he fell silent. In the silence nothing stirred, not even the image of the map on the floor; it was as though the oceans she'd drawn had frozen, as though the towers she'd raised hung in the very moment between the lash of the earthquake and the rumbling of stone.

  "Well," she said in a voice that raised the hair on the back of his neck, "let me see, master mage, if I can tell you something you don't know. This balance we cherish has fallen into danger of tipping." Her eyes narrowed, glittering and dangerous. "The one who works to overweight the scales is that mage you met recently in the library"-her lips moved in a cruel smile-"a mage whom you know from other days."

  Boldly he spoke, for there was only one other way to speak, and that was in fear. Not now, not ever. "The mage I knew in other days, my lady, was a tall Plainsman, a barbarian in red armor who rode upon a crimson dragon. The mage I saw today is a dwarf."

  "Yes, and if you see him again outside this Tower, you might see not a Plainsman or a dwarf. You might not see a man, but a lovely woman or a child. His name, the one his parents gave to him in Thorbardin, is Tramd Stonestrike. He is known to most others as Tramd o' the Dark. We spoke, lately, you and I, about the marks a mage's Test can leave on him. This one's Test left him a rotting ruin, blind, incapable of leaving his bed, of feeding himself or keeping himself clean. All he has left to him is his mind and magic."

  "A mind," Dalamar said, suddenly understanding, "that he sends abroad in avatars."

  "Yes. He is a wanderer, one who seeks everywhere for the spell or the talisman or the artifact that will restore him to health. You met him in Silvanesti because he had come upon a way to facilitate his search-he attached himself to the army of the Highlord Phair Caron. He went through all the lands she conquered, searching for the magic he needs. After the war, he walked thr
ough the world he helped to wound, still searching. At times, he turns up here, checking the libraries and the records rooms."

  "He has not, it seems, been successful wherever he searches."

  "He hasn't. But he has found another Highlord to serve, and she most certainly has made promises to him, promises he has chosen to trust. She is the Blue Lady."

  The Blue Lady, that one who sat even now in Sanction, waiting for her chance to begin the war anew for the Dark Queen, she whose forces filled Neraka. Her title rang like the clash of distant swords in the chamber, echoing. She was, he knew, the sister of the mage who had broken the Nightmare gripping Silvanesti.

  "Is she so powerful, then, my lady, that you fear she will tip the balance in the battle between the gods?"

  "She is powerful and growing stronger. She has the favor of Her Dark Majesty, and she has Tramd to make such magic for her as the world has not lately seen. He is stronger now than he was when Phair Caron was his Highlord. Some things he has learned in his wanderings, if not the one thing he seeks." She paused, a thoughtful silence in which she allowed him to see her considering. "And other things are happening, far away in Palanthas. Another force… well, we can talk about that in proper time. For now, we have gone far afield. Would you like to undertake a mission for me, Dalamar Nightson?"

  Dalamar's pulse quickened. She had the look on her of one who is about to bestow a boon. He could guess what boon that was. "My lady, only name it. I will do it."

  "Kill the dwarf. Not the avatar, that is but inspired clay. When it falls, the mind of the man flies homeward again back to Karthay and the ruin that is his body. Kill that ruin when there is no avatar for his mind to fly back to, and you kill the dwarf himself." She laughed then, for she saw his eyes shining, the eagerness leaping. "I thought you would find this mission to your liking. But understand: By undertaking my mission, you risk the ire of Her Dark Majesty. Tramd is part of her work."