Dalamar The Dark (classics)

by Nancy Varian Berberick

  "And freed the king?"

  "And freed the king. But, sorry to say, he found his freedom in death, and things aren't so good in the Nightmare Kingdom these days."

  "But how was the king freed? How was the spell undone? How did people manage to enter the land and come out alive?" All this Dalamar wanted to know.

  The fisherman shrugged, said some mage or another did it, one of the questers, and he didn't remember much more about it except that the fellow wore red robes and part of his name was the name of a god. "Majere…" he said. "Something, somebody Majere."

  When Dalamar asked to know more of this mage, the fisherman shook his head. He'd told all he knew, and there wasn't more to say. No more news of the mysterious mage came to Silvamori that year, or any year after, though often Dalamar listened to see if more would. Magic and power, these things were as gold and silver to him. Tales of them were nearly as good.

  Still, if one servitor among them was unsatisfied with the amount of news he gathered, most of Silvamori had more news than they knew what to do with. A red mage undoing evil magic in a land where no magic was honored but white, the Speaker of the Stars dead, the children of the Speaker of the Suns running around wild… By the end of the second year of the war, the people of Silvamori and Qualimori decided that all the world beyond their own homes in exile was doomed to damnation.

  "Ah, but things are finally changing," said the Kagonesti fisherman, one day in the spring of the third year of the war. The Blue Army, filled up with humans, ogres, and the foul traitors from Lemish who'd thrown in their lot with the minions of Takhisis, prepared to fling itself against the High Clerist's Tower, that bastion of the Knights of Solamnia that stands at the head of a high mountain pass to ward the way to Palanthas. A rich prize, that city of Palanthas, with access to Coastlund in the west and the Bay of Branchala in the north. That whole sector of Solamnia would be squeezed and starved and find itself pleading for mercy if this ploy worked. "But it won't," said the fisherman, laughing. "Those knights have finally got themselves sorted out and are ready to fight."

  Indeed, they had, and they'd found themselves a general as well. Laurana of Qualinesti went for a soldier, and she aimed for high rank. Well she was, after all, the daughter of a king. They called her the Golden General, and under her leadership the Knights of Solamnia became a force worth counting on. For the first time in all the war, a dragonarmy fled the field of battle, bloody and beaten. "Because they had something called dragonlances," the fisherman said. "Old weapons from old times. Made the difference, it did."

  Soon-gods be praised-dragons of brass and silver and gold and copper were seen in the skies, come at last to defend the people of Krynn against the evil of Takhisis and her servants. At Whitestone Glade, dwarves and humans and elves were making treaties of alliance left and right, swearing to defend each other one and all.

  "And so," said Dalamar Argent, who secretly liked the name Dalamar Nightson, "for whatever reason, the gods of Good have roused at last."

  The fisherman, eyes wide at this near-blasphemy, made a sign against ill luck. "They have their reasons, Dalamar Argent. It's being said near and far that they have been working in the world all along, through the hearts and hands of people of good faith. Look you, aren't the races coming together now, putting aside their differences to work for a common good? Why, I heard it said that last winter the dwarves took human refugees into Thorbardin!" He laughed, as at a good joke. "Who'd ever have imagined that, eh? Enough to rouse any god and make him take notice. And the knights are united again, E'li's dragons come to save us at last… It's been a time of wonders. Which goes to show it was, after all, not just a war on the ground, but a war in the heavens as well."

  So it was, Dalamar thought. He didn't speak his bitterness aloud. He took it with him, though, the question no one dared ask: How many have died praying for this moment so long delayed while gods played their games with each other, moving the people of Krynn around as though they were gaming pieces on a board? He thought of Lord Tellin Windglimmer, the cleric who died with E'li's name on his lips, his prayer unanswered.

  Dalamar thanked the fisherman for his news and, as though in ritual long planned, he went to his house-his own small home, not that of his lover-and took off his white mage's robe, that mark of one who has been dedicated to Solinari. Instead, he dressed in the dun garb of a servant. Earthen brown boots, trews the color of mahogany, a shirt dyed walnut, these were the darkest clothes he could find. So changed, he walked down to the sea to the place where exiles had landed years before, from where exiles would soon again sail. He took with him the embroidered scroll case, that artifact of another time.

  For a long moment he stood in the sun, a tall dark figure on the shining strand, an elf whose black hair blew around his pale face in the wind off the sea. Waves foamed around his feet and gulls cried in the sky. He turned the case over in his hands again and then again, looking at the silken hummingbirds hovering over ruby roses, those roses faded to brown as though the petals had withered.

  With a cry like a curse, Dalamar hurled that artifact of another time into the sea, the scroll case and the Dawn Hymn to E'li consigned to the streams and the tides and the fishes.

  Two days later, the watch in the crow's nest of the elven ship Bright Sun saw that scroll case bobbing in the waters. He wondered, briefly, what it could be, but then he didn't think more about it, for he was far up among the gulls in the bright blue sky, and it was just then sinking into the sea. Bright Sun was a Qualinesti ship, not one out of Qualimori but one coming into Qualimori from the Nightmare Kingdom. Aboard was an elven prince, Porthios himself, whose sister commanded the Knights of Solamnia, whose father had nearly died of the grief of that. He had with him messages for the two elf kindreds, greetings for his father, and a message to Lord Belthanos and his council-in-exile from their princess.

  "Come home," she had written, Alhana Starbreeze in her far tower in ruined Silvanost. "Prepare ships and come home. Bring clerics to cleanse the temples, mages to unwork the vestiges of evil magic, and Wildrunners to ward all."

  She gave the missive to Porthios, and gave to him the care of those who would return. They had been, over the last months of the war, often in correspondence, a prince and a princess of sundered kindred. No light of love shone in the eyes of one, nothing like that gleamed in the heart of the other. They were, always, the children of their fathers, and when their hearts burned, they burned for their people. And so, at the end of the war when all of Krynn looked around to see what must be put back together, these children of kings wondered whether something long ago broken might again be made whole. Could it be, they said each to the other secretly and in whispers, could it be that we two can make the sundered elven nations whole?

  Chapter 11

  Dalamar stood at the rail of the ship Bright Solinari. At the end of the day, with the sun setting behind, sinking in red glory into the white-maned sea, he stood looking east as the ship rounded the Cape of Nordmaar. Stiff winds filled the sails, and they bellied out proud as a swan's white breast. Beside Bright Solinari, the golden sails of Bright Sun, Porthios's ship, filled and rounded. Six other ships came behind, but these two, Solinari and Sun, kept abreast as though neither would let the other range even a little ahead.

  It was not, Dalamar thought, much of a thing for pride that the elves of Silvanesti must be led home by their estranged cousins.

  Though the world turned toward summer and the winds off the cape carried the quickening scent of green and growing things, here on the sea all winds were hard winds. They sapped the moisture from a man's skin, peeled the flesh from his face where the sun did not, and moaned incessantly in the ear until the sound rode him day and night, waking and sleeping. The Silvanesti, some of whom were seamen but many of whom were not, had no love for the wind, the constant droning. Dalamar didn't mind it. He had become attuned to song in his years with K'gathala; he knew how to hear what the wind sang, what the sea chanted. "Elves are sailing home," they cri
ed, each to the other. "Elves are sailing home."

  He almost turned to look back to the setting sun, to the places he'd been, to K'gathala, who had not wept to see him leave and had not cursed him for a deserter. She had kissed him, wished him well, and whispered, "Come back when you can," though neither thought he would, even if he could. Almost he turned, and then he didn't. That was finished, that was done. He was going home now, and in his belly excitement ran like threads of fire.

  He didn't know what would remain of Silvanost, what of the towers and the temples and the houses of the high folk and low. He had heard tales, dark and grim and filled with sorrow. He had listened, and he had asked questions, and it seemed that no one, no matter how hard he tried, could say what the Sylvan Land truly looked like these days. No matter, no matter. He was going to see for himself, and for mat privilege he paid in rough and long work. A loader of supplies in every port, a swabber of decks, repairer of ropes-with the hemp-torn flesh to prove that- he did not mind the fee.

  He did not wonder, looking out at the leaping sea, why he did not mind, though he had for so much of his life resented his servitor status. Then, he had been chained by tradition and law as strongly as though by forged steel links. Now, he wore no chain. He had the kind of freedom no other elf aboard this ship or any of the others possessed. He had made a choice no elf here would dare to make, and he'd made it with all his heart.

  Gold spilled across the sea, the last of the day. In the west, the moons were rising, pale ghosts of themselves in this light. The Cape of Nordmaar slipped past, that land where dragons still lived, the remnants of dragonarmies yet lurked. Those, claimed Porthios, would be hard to root out. "As hard as the green dragons who made their home in the Silvanesti Forest." His sun-gold face had gone a little pale when he'd said that. Whose did not when thinking on the greens who had made claim to the land that one of their own had ravaged? The aftermath of war came not only in ruined trade, broken cities, the legions of dead whose bones yet bleached in the sun on the Plains of Dust, rotted in the Khalkist Mountains, and lay frozen into Icewall Glacier. It was found in the scattered forces of the broken dragonarmies, mortal folk, and dragons who held with deathgrips to their dark corners, who fought among themselves, terrorized the civilian population, and waited only for another leader to pull them together and make of them what they had been: the terror of Krynn.

  Dalamar leaned a little over the rail, watching porpoises leaping, the shining curve of their backs glittering. Some said there were creatures who lived in the sea who looked like porpoises but were other-sea-elves, the sailors called them, people of elf-kind who had found their own way to survive the Cataclysm.

  Well, Dalamar thought, we all find ways.

  Him, he must find a way, too. He was sailing home, returning to a land that had once loved its people, but one that the Children of Silvanos wouldn't find so welcoming now. To the land of E'li he sailed, to the land where the gods of Good had once ruled, where they would be set up again. Not by his hand would that happen, though, and not in answer to any prayer of his heart. Dalamar Nightson his lover had named him, saying it was a strange name for a Light Elf, yet a fitting one-almost fitting. In the cave north of Silvanost, that secret place from years gone, it might well be that his hidden spellbooks yet remained. It might well be. If they were, if even one was, he would lay his hand upon it, and he would do a thing his heart now clearly called him to do.

  To the Dark Son, from a dark son…

  Those words had dedicated four spellbooks to god-Nuitari, that dark god who was the son of Takhisis and Sargonnas, the god of Vengeance. A better god, this one, for though he walked in darkness, he made no game of what he loved and what he treasured. Nuitari loved only magic, only secrets, only those. A better god for one who had spent his life chained by tradition and kept from the magic he so loved, the magic that fueled his heart with passion.

  To the Dark Son, from a dark son…

  Those words would as fittingly dedicate the heart of Dalamar Nightson, for he had not done with gods, only with those of Good who had made promises they had not remembered to keep until the world lay broken, their game board in ruin.

  "Who was he?" asked the Wildrunner, Elisaad Windsweep. Off to the west, the first thin line of Silvanesti's coast stretched dark as an ink-line. So far out, the coves were straightened by distance, the sweet curves but a sketch. Nonetheless, the winds of home blew off those shores. Home! Every heart on Bright Solinari yearned westward, longing to see the forested shores, the shining towers… Beyond reason, they longed for what they'd left and had only the smallest idea of what actually remained. In cabins, on decks, and in the hold where the cargomen tended their loads, tales of Silvanesti sang on the air, stories of the homeland so long left, so deeply missed.

  Elisaad stepped across the deck and came a little closer to the soldier who sat perched on the pile of rope. "Raistlin Majere," she said, "the mage who ended the Nightmare. Who was he?"

  Dalamar, kneeling near and winding another pile of rope, picked up his head to listen.

  "Not was," said the soldier. "Is. He's not dead, just gone from our story." He was an elder, this soldier, Arath Wingwild his name, and he had a way of smiling that made everyone near seem no older than a child at his father's knee. Elisaad appeared to like that; Dalamar didn't. Still, he wanted the story as much as Elisaad, and so he kept quiet. Though the hemp scraped his palms raw, he kept working, and he listened.

  "Raistlin Majere is a human," said Arath, his nose wrinkling a little, as elves' noses tended to do when outlanders were under discussion. "A mage, and it's said he went to Wayreth and took his Tests of High Sorcery earlier than most do." His expression darkened. He didn't actually shudder, but he came close. "They didn't deal kindly with him-"

  "The wizards there?"

  "No, girl. The Tests." The west wind freshened. Arath picked up his head, wondering whether he scented the forest yet. He did not, only the salt sea. "The wizards, they don't come down in favor of a mage or against. They administer the Tests, that's all. What comes of them, well, the mage determines. He passes or he fails on the merit of his knowledge of magic, his ability, and his strength. I've heard it said the Tests always take something from a mage, leaving him marked in some way. This one, this Raistlin Majere, he passed his Tests, but he paid a high fee. Ruined his health, it's said. Frail as a lamb in winter. If you saw him"-now the teller shuddered-"well, you'd know. His skin is a terrible golden color, not sun-gold, not that. Like the metal itself, that kind of gold. And his eyes-"

  "His eyes are gold?"

  "No. They are black, and the irises… they're shaped like an hourglass."

  Elisaad snorted, plainly unbelieving. "It's a fantastic enough story. You don't have to add your own touches."

  Arath shook his head. "None of these things are my making, girl. What I tell you is true. I saw him in Tarsis with his companions. I was part of Lady Alhana's guard when she went wandering. I saw him when he and his companions met her."

  Winding the hemp, leaving small spots of bright blood on the rope, Dalamar remembered the fisherman's story. Some humans, a half-elf, an elf-maid, a kender, and a dwarf-those were the folk who'd given aid to Alhana Starbreeze, the princess wandering in foreign ports. These, the searchers who wanted a dragon orb, went into the Nightmare Kingdom to break the spell of Cyan Bloodbane. The mage, Raistlin Majere, was one of the humans.

  Gulls cried overhead, gray against the blue sky. Dalamar looked westward to the coastline coming nearer… to home.

  "He has a great power, that mage," Arath said. "It's said all over the ports-in the darker quarters-that if he isn't one to be reckoned with right now, he will be soon."

  "A hero?" asked Elisaad.

  The old warrior snorted. "Depends on what you mean by that."

  "Well, he saved the kingdom, didn't he?"

  "He did, but as I hear it, he wanted the dragon orb more than he cared about the kingdom." Arath shrugged. "Ice water in his veins would warm things up f
or him. He looked at me once, just once, only glancing, and it was like falling into some dark place where the best thing you'll find is terror." Arath pushed away from the rail, away from the memory. "He's gone from the Red magic to the Black, that's what I hear. And so it's just as well he's gone from our story, and since he is, there no need to worry about him more."

  "Well, I wasn't worrying about him," Elisaad muttered, not to Arath but to his back as he walked away. "I was just curious."

  She walked away, but Dalamar stayed where he was, winding rope and listening to the sea and the cries of the sailors as they worked in the rigging. Home, he thought. Home. But the story of the mage with the hourglass eyes, he who had gone from Red magic to Black, lingered with him, winding like a whisper through all his other thoughts. Who was he? And, more insistent: How did he come to such power that he could lift a green dragon's enchantment from a whole land? Like as not he wouldn't learn the answers to those questions, soon or ever. The mage Raistlin, as Arath had said, was gone from the story of Silvanesti.

  By slow, aching degrees, the first skiff made its way up the Thon-Thalas River. It was filled with temple-gear, for the returning elves deemed proper that before anything be set in order, the Temple of E'li must be reconsecrated. The altars must be cleansed, new candles set, and new wands of incense lighted. A lot had been taken out of E'li's Temple for the flight to Silvamori-altar stones, statues of the god, all of the scrolls from the scriptorium. Tapestries sat in long rolls in water-proofed crates, as did jeweled candelabra of silver and gold-all the accoutrements of worship. Dalamar, whose credentials as a servant and who had once worked in the Temple, stood in the back of the skiff. Who better to begin the task of cleaning out the debris?