DragonLance - Classics 2 - Dalamar the Dark

by Nancy Varian Berberick

  "But where are the good dragons?" the little girl had asked. She had known only tales of evil dragons in her short life, those who served Takhisis, the red and the black and the white and the blue.

  Her father could not say, for he did not know. People asked themselves often where the good dragons were. Never did they find an answer. With E'li, some said. But that begged the other question: As the dragons of Takhisis brought war to the world, where was E'li to counter the evil?

  The little girl didn't think long on such complicated subjects. In any case, the Harp was not yet up, but something more interesting was in the sky. A long shape passed across the face of the silver moon, winged and sinuous.

  "Look!" she cried. "Father, look! What is it? Oh! Oh! Has E'li come?"

  The creature turned, banking wide over the city. The little girl gasped. Her father cried out in dread to recognize the creature as a blood red dragon, dark against the silver moon, its wings wide and streams of fire pouring from between fanged jaws.

  "In E'li's name-!" the father cried. His invocation died upon his lips as the dragon swung low. Moonlight glittered on the battle harness of the rider and the wyrm. The light of red Lunitari glinted from one single point, the head of a spear. Blood ran cold in the elf staring up. His daughter's hand clutched his, but he did not feel it.

  Throughout the city, bells began to ring, mournful tolling from the docks and the temples, alarmed booming from the Market and Guild Districts. On maps in every hall, in every tower, in the mind of any who had sketched one, it seemed that the distance between the Khalkists and Silvanost had suddenly shrunk, and the prayers of the best beloved of the gods had in them now notes of desperation.

  *****

  "What spells do you have, Dalamar Argent?"

  When Dalamar didn't answer at once, the cleric Tellin Windglimmer looked up from his pen-work and smiled encouragingly. A friendly smile, Dalamar decided, of the kind a lord is pleased to offer a servant if he's feeling generous.

  "I have all the spells allowed to me, my lord," Dalamar said, lying smoothly and keeping any thought of his stolen studies and his hidden spellbooks far from his mind. He had seen, only this morning on his initial tour of the Temple's inner precincts, a cold corridor, a locked room round which only whispers hung. In there, behind sealed portals, lay the place where clerics could prepare the dread Circle of Darkness, that ceremony by which an elf was cast out from his kind and flung into exile. Murderers endured that shame, as did traitors and those caught worshiping other gods than the gods of Good or those mages found out in dark or neutral magic. The cold that crept out from beneath that door was like winter's own chill. Even in high summer a man walking there would shiver. Did Dalamar fear the cleric would guess or see some tell-tale trace of his guilt and find reason to condemn him? No. He kept those thoughts hidden from long practice, a habit he dared not break.

  "Some of the spells I have learned, my lord, allow me to deal with animals, to befriend or defend against them. I have spells to charm appropriate to my teaching and some divination skills and skills with elements. I am adept at spells of protection and those having to do with weather, and I have made a special study of herbs as they pertain to the workings of magic. If you ask at House Mystic, you will hear that I am a mage of minor account." Now he did smile, a thin curling of his lips. "But even they will tell you I am one of some skill and talent."

  Sunlight poured in through the wide windows of the Temple's scriptorium, great swaths of golden light, glittering on the long, sinewy form of a dragon, wings spread, jaws wide. Fangs of ivory, talons of gold, and scales of beaten platinum, here was an image of E'li, the Dragon's Lord himself. Somewhere in the deeps of the Temple, chants were being sung even now, in deep voices and high, the rhythm of them rolling forth and back.

  From the might of the Dragon Queen, protect us, O E'li!

  From her claws and rage, from her fury, defend us!

  From the sway of the Dragon Queen, protect us, O E'li!

  From her fire and sword, from her terror, defend us!

  The light splashed across the red-tiled floor, across the broad marble table where Tellin worked, illuminating the mundane lists so they were as lovely as precious manuscripts. The cleric put down his pen, lifted the list he'd been making, and placed it atop a stack of others.

  "I have asked in House Mystic," Tellin said, "and they make a good report of your skills."

  "But not so good a report otherwise," Dalamar said.

  Tellin shook his head. "In House Mystic they have nothing ill to say of you. In your own House, however ..." He shrugged. "Well, you know as well as I what is being said of you now. You have, all in the space of a month, been confined to your master's hall and then cast out from it." He rose and walked around the long table. The hem of his white robe whispered on the stone floor. He folded his hands inside the sleeves of his robe, leveling a long blue stare at Dalamar.

  A judging stare, Dalamar thought, a weighing look. Well, look as long as you like, my Lord Tellin. You will see what I allow you to see. And he made his eyes hard, his smile cool, challenging the cleric to see past those.

  "It must be hard," Tellin said at last, his voice low and thoughtful, "it must be painful to feel such talent as you have running in you and not be allowed to use it more creatively than you have."

  Dalamar stood still, startled. Without thinking, he hunched his shoulders a little, as though against intrusion. When Tellin smiled, the expression of one who is pleased to have hit a mark, he forced his muscles to relax. He would have to be careful around this one.

  "Yes, I imagine it is hard," Tellin said. "But I hope you will be pleased to exercise your skill more freely here, Dalamar. And, I will see if I can convince House Cleric to teach you more."

  Dalamar's breath caught in his lungs, a hitch he did not let Tellin see. "More, my lord? More of magic ... why?"

  Tellin shrugged. "Because I require you to have more. Look," he said, turning from the subject and back to the work table.

  He swept aside a pile of blank parchment leaves and pulled another, older sheet from under the stack of records. He turned it so each could read it right side up. It was a map. Not all of Krynn did it show. The western lands of Solamnia in the north, Abanasinia in the south, the Isles of Northern and Southern Ergoth, of Cristyne and Sancrist, even the lands beyond Icewall Bay were absent. The maker of this map was interested only in Silvanesti and its near neighbors, and so the Silvanesti Forest looked like the center of the world. The Plains of Dust lay to the west, as did Thorbardin of the Dwarves beneath the Kharolis Mountains. The city of Tarsis lay south from there, and the lands of Estwilde and Nordmaar to the north. Across the Bay of Balifor lay Khur, Balifor, Goodlund, and beyond there the Blood Sea of Istar where, a long time ago, the kingdom of Istar had ruled the world of commerce and culture until the Cataclysm. Now there was only a great whirling maelstrom where that land had once been, a sunken ruin beneath the water and some few isles beyond where minotaurs lived and human pirates lurked.

  "What do you know about the war, Dalamar?"

  Curious, Dalamar took a closer step, and then another. He pointed to Nordmaar, to Goodlund and then Balifor. "Though everyone in the city seems to think there will be one, my lord, I know there already is one. It's been being fought for some time now, since Phair Caron swept into Nordmaar in the summer last year."

  Tellin raised a brow, curious. "That's an odd way to put it. There have been treaties holding the Highlord back for some time now. War has not been imminent, and we have certainly not been in it."

  "Do you think so?" Dalamar shrugged. "Well, most people do. But isn't it odd to think that we, of all the world, will be invisible to the Highlord, that her Dark Mistress will burn her way across Krynn and leave our land untouched? Yes, I know that we are the best beloved of the gods. One hears that all the time. That doesn't seem to matter as regard the treaties House Advocate made with Phair Caron. Those treaties are already ash, my Lord Tellin. And if treaties are ash
, how long before the forest itself is burning?"

  He traced a mark in the air above Silvanesti on the map, the mark indicating the Barrier Hedge that had so long withstood in-comers. One word he whispered, and the invisible mark became visible in the air as a ragged orange glow. Fire!

  Dalamar glanced at the cleric. He saw neither startlement nor anger, but he did see agreement. "But you have thought that, too, haven't you? And you are laying plans against it."

  Tellin's blue eyes glinted sharply. "Yes, I have been putting up stores here in the Temple, and I have been looking north waiting."

  Dalamar glanced out the window, away across the gardens and out beyond the open gate to the road he'd taken from Lord Ralan's hall. He had, only this morning, come from there with cartloads of clothing and bedding, the very things Eflid had set him to sorting in the attics on the hottest days of summer.

  "Waiting for refugees," he said. "Are all the temples of the city making these plans?"

  "Yes, we are. But we won't be housing them here in the city. That would be impossible. We don't have the food or the room for that. It would be a disaster to try. " He shrugged, one who'd thought the matter through, or who had heard others speak their own thinking. "In any case, we've made our plans. Clerics in the various temples will gather clothing and bedding and medicaments and send them out to the cities up-river, to Alinosti and Tarithnesti, to Shalost in the west. The temples there will house and feed those who flee the war.

  "Here, we are putting by other kinds of supplies, among them herbs for salves and ointments and infusions. These we'll gather and prepare for both the army and the refugees, sending supplies where they are most needed."

  "Very neatly planned," Dalamar murmured.

  Tellin flicked him a quick glance, wondering whether the mage mocked. "Yes, we think so. And so you see, I'm glad to know that you have made a special study of herbs, Dalamar. Do you know," he asked, eyes keen, his regard sharp and searching, "where the best herbs are to be found?"

  Dalamar answered carefully, not certain he understood the intent of Tellin's question. "In the gardens of the temples, my lord, to be sure."

  "Indeed. And if that were so, would I have asked my question?"

  Dalamar smiled, this time with some real warmth in spite of himself. The cleric did have a little blood in him after all, enough to rise to a flush of anger. "No, my lord, I don't imagine you would have. I do know places across the river and into the forest where one may find such herbs as lobelia and cohosh and gentian and whatever else you might need that doesn't grow in temple gardens. I have made," he said with not the least note of wryness in his tone, "good use of the time I spent away from my Lord Ralan's hall."

  Tellin lifted the map from the table and rolled it carefully. "So it seems. And if I tell you to map these places for others to find, will you do that and return here each day in good and fair time?"

  Or will I run away north, to the secret place, the cave and the magic? Will I spend illicit hours at forbidden studies? The questions were like longing to Dalamar, an ache in his soul. He had not been able to study those tomes or practice the darker arts in many long weeks. Had he missed them? Yes-the magic more than the darkness.

  Sun on tiles, light glinting off the tiny scales of a platinum dragon, these things shone brightly in Dalamar's eyes. He moved to turn away from the glare, but he didn't, for he was struck by a sudden thought, a swift understanding that he did long for something not necessarily darkness. Only magic, only that, and if Lord Tellin could convince the white-robed mages of House Mystic to offer him the teaching he craved, if they were to acknowledge the talent in him, that talent they could not deny but would not honor, he would take his magic there. Like a man standing upon a threshold, he felt drawn one way and then another, into light, into shadow.

  Making no choice, hanging in the moment, Dalamar looked at his new master long and with steady gaze. "I will do what you ask, my lord."

  "Have I your word?"

  Tellin's narrow-eyed glance stung Dalamar to bristling. "The word of a servitor? Why, what good is that to you, Lord Tellin?"

  "As good as you show me it is, and I say this with confidence. You don't look like a liar to me, Dalamar Argent."

  Dalamar nodded, the nod a small bow, the only one he'd made to Lord Tellin Windglimmer in all the time he'd stood in the scriptorium. "I will go now, and if it pleases you, my lord, I will return before midday."

  Chants rose up and fell, birdsong stitched through the staid rhythm like silver thread through a dark tapestry. Another voice drifted through the temple-song, soft and low, a woman's voice murmuring in the garden. Dalamar and Tellin looked out the window and saw Lady Lynntha. She stood, silvery in the sunlight, her long hair bound high upon her head and held there with gemmed pins so that it seemed she wore a glittering crown.

  "I wish to see the Lord Tellin," she said, soft to a gardener walking by. "Will you find someone to announce me?"

  Tellin blushed, his face flamed red and he glanced at Lynntha's hands and the small scroll case she held. Dalamar noted this, and he said nothing about it, but he did volunteer to show the lady into the scriptorium.

  "Yes," Tellin said, eyes on his papers again. "Please do that."

  Dalamar bowed, hiding his curiosity, and walked out into the garden. "My lady," he said, gesturing toward the open window behind. "I have come from Lord Tellin Windglimmer, for I have heard it that you wish to see him."

  She glanced at him only briefly, not recognizing him as one who had lately served in her brother's hall. Her hands held the scroll case gently, careful of the delicate embroidery. She hung in a hesitating moment, as though some hard-won resolve were melting. She took a breath, and it did not seem to hearten her.

  "Servant," she said, her eyes straying past him to the window and the cleric sitting at his desk. Her cheek flushed, not so brightly red as Tellin's, only the delicate tint of a rosy pink petal. "I have changed my mind. I don't need to see Lord Tellin. Only take this to him." She put the scroll into Dalamar's hands. "Say to him that I appreciate the care he took in crafting this, but I cannot accept it. I cannot..."

  She turned and left. With no other word she walked out of the garden, her slender back straight, her shoulders a firm line against the pain Dalamar had seen in her long eyes. And what is that? He wondered, walking back into the scriptorium. What is that between a member of House Cleric and one of House Woodshaper? A hopeless dream, and my new master won't be happy to have this gift of his back.

  Yet Tellin was not so unhappy as Dalamar had imagined he would be. He took the scroll case and looked at it a long moment, then set it upon a stack of unused parchment, the colorful embroidery bright against the creamy vellum. He looked up, and when he saw Dalamar still standing there he said, "A gift returned, and a gift exchanged."

  "How exchanged, my lord?"

  Tellin touched the case, an exquisitely embroidered hummingbird under his fingertips. "When I gave her this gift she thought fit to return, the scroll had no case. Now," he said, stroking the silken bird gently, "now it does."

  All this Dalamar considered interesting, and he thought about it later in the evening when the sun had set and he was unpacking, yet again, his meager possessions. Was he a fool, Lord Tellin Windglimmer, to set his heart on a woman he had no chance to win? They treated their marriages like gifts from the gods, those of House Woodshaper-gifts not bestowed outside their own clans. A fool, yes, Lord Tellin was that.

  And yet, such foolishness Dalamar understood. He, too, had set his heart upon a thing he must struggle to have and might not gain. "I will see," Tellin had said, "if I can convince House Mystic to teach you more ... because I require you to have more." He'd made his offer almost casually, a man with some power who uses it easily. How would it be, Dalamar thought, to trust this lordling cleric? Well, not difficult, for he would not be forsaking his secrets in hope of gaining what Tellin suggested he might have. He'd keep his secrets and see what happened. Quietly in him, like the first th
in tendrils of smoke to signal a fire, an old dream roused. It was seldom granted that servitors be taught magic, never that they learn enough to venture out of the kingdom across the Plains of Dust and into the Forest of Wayreth where stood the Tower of High Sorcery, the only one of the five ancient citadels of learning to have survived the Cataclysm. The Tests of High Sorcery were administered in that tower, grueling exercises in magic devised by the Conclave of Wizards, the heads of the orders of the White, Red, and Black Robes. The mage who survived his Tests was one reckoned worthy of respect anywhere in Krynn.

  How, thought Dalamar, how would it be if I could take the Tests ... ?

  He looked around at his new quarters. The room allowed him in the Temple was no larger man that in Lord Ralan's house, but it was bright, having two windows, one facing east into the garden, the other facing north. As he settled for sleep, the scents of the garden drifting in through the windows, it seemed to him that no matter how things turned out, whether he learned more of white magic or sipped his dark secrets, he'd found better work than he'd had in a while.

  Through the east window the light of the two moons shone, the red mingling with the silver. The lights of the Tower of the Stars graced the darkness, the tower itself glittering with gems caressed by that moonlight. Dalamar closed his eyes, sinking into darkness, seeking sleep as chanting from the Temple made a heartbeat for the night.

  From the might of the Dragon Queen, protect us, O E'li!

  From her claws and rage, from her fury, defend us!

  From the sway of the Dragon Queen, protect us, O E'li!

  From her fire and sword, from her tenor, defend us!

  When at last he fell asleep, Dalamar did not dream of magic or the threat from the north or any other thing. His sleep was long and deep, but once he woke, thirsty in the night, and poured water from the green pitcher beside his bed. He had a thought in his mind, waking, and that was of the map he had seen on Lord Tellin's worktable, that one in which the Silvanesti Forest sat as though it were the center of the world.