Dalamar the Dark

by Nancy Varian Berberick

  Dalamar eyed the white robe over the rim of his cup, the mage like a swan sitting comfortably upon his couch. She had many skills beyond illusion-crafting. He knew that because he'd checked. She went high in the regard of the head of her Order, and that meant in the regard of the Master of the Tower himself. She was not his ward, and neither was she his student. Perhaps her standing was better, for Par-Salian used her for his little missions, such as her turn as a guide in the Forest of Wayreth. This, more than anything he knew about her, recommended her to him.

  Outside, the breeze grew stronger. Beneath the ever-present smell of garbage a fresher, cleaner scent ran. In this late summer season, when none could be expected, the breeze spoke of rain. Dalamar rose and lifted the window shade. The freshening air sent streamers of smoke drifting out from his front room and into the bedroom.

  "The weather looks to turn foul," he said. "Have you a place to stay in the city? I'd be pleased to show you to a good inn."

  Regene's eyes followed the small gray thread of smoke, the incense drifting through the arched doorway and into the room where she saw, just in glimpsing, a bed hung with soft netting, the standard drapery of a Tarsian summer rife with black flies. He smiled, a lean humorless twitch of his lips, and he made his choice in that moment. He would take her offer and take her with him to Karthay. Why not? She had her ambitions, and he sensed they would not clash with his own. He rose, took their cups and the bottle of wine, and held it to the light to see how much remained. He then tucked it under his arm, walked toward the bedroom, and said, "Come along, then."

  She followed, and in the mirror on the wall he saw her satisfied smile. Later that day, as the sun set in gold over Tarsis, he watched her sleeping and touched her cheek, once in magic. Only that light touch did he need to read what she dreamed, to know what she felt and how deep and strong was her ambition. She would do, he thought, as a companion on this journey. He thought there was some symmetry to the two of them, White Robe and Black, putting their hand to this task, which, when it succeeded, would prevent the Blue Lady from waging her war and tearing apart the fragile balance five years of blood and grief had established.

  He lay back, drowsy, listening to the sound of the city growing still at day's end. He thought this task Ladonna had set him would not be so hard in the doing.

  In the morning, they woke, the dregs of wine in their cups, the memories of love-making still on their bodies, and they went to find breakfast. Fed, they returned to his rooms, and he told her of Tramd and the avatars and of Ladonna's charge to eliminate him.

  "A political assassination?" Regene professed herself surprised that the resources of the Tower would be put to such a use.

  "It would surprise me, too," he said, "if that were what's happening. It isn't."

  She listened in silence when he told her the fullness of his charge, the intent and the hoped-for outcome. He did not tell her what lay beyond the task accomplished. He made no mention of Palanthas. What, after all, could he say about it? He knew only one more thing about the Tower of High Sorcery at Palanthas than he'd known when he'd left Wayreth. On the Old King's Road, two days before he returned to Tarsis, he had learned in a tavern that the Tower at Palanthas was not shut up and sealed with a curse. It had been—no story lied about that—but it was not now. A mage had entered it, one who had worn red robes in his time and changed them for black after the War of the Lance. That mage had walked through the horrors of Shoikan Grove as a lord walks in his peaceful garden at dawn. As a lord into his palace, he had entered into the Tower. Once inside, he forbade entry to all who approached, and Dalamar did not doubt this made the Conclave of Wizards uneasy. The mage was Raistlin Majere, he of the hourglass eyes and the golden skin. He had not gone out of the story of Krynn as an old Wildrunner once had suggested. He was, it seemed, enlarging his place in the tale.

  None of this did Dalamar say to Regene, for whatever she professed of the shape of her own ambition, his was to please Ladonna with the completion of her mission. He would not chance it that this would look to Regene like a good way to add to her body of work. He would use her as she offered, but he would do no more.

  After that, the two mages spoke only of ways to get to Karthay, and they did not deliberate long. They chose the wings of magic over the white-winged sails of ships that would take them over the sea. They left on the morning of the next day, and each thought, Well, I know how far I'll trust this one, and that far should get me what I want.

  Chapter 19

  Dalamar stood on the shore of a grim isle. The groaning of the sea and the weary sigh of waves against the rocky shore filled the gray dawn. He looked from the cheerless sky to where Regene walked toward a broad arm of stone thrust out from the land. All around lay bleached bones, shattered skulls, and the wretched shards of once proud keels. These were not the remains of one shipwreck but many. They were not friendly harbors, the stony shores of Karthay. Hardly anyone put into them on purpose. Few who found themselves flung here by storm or chased by the pirates who haunted Mithas and her sister isle Kothas lived to bemoan their fate. Here was Karthay, that isle where the dark dwarf lived.

  Regene stopped in her walking and waved him down the beach. He went, picking his way over stones, kicking aside bones. When he rounded the promontory, he saw that a road met the beach perhaps a quarter-mile away. Broad and smooth, it led in winding stages up the mountainside to where a towered citadel crowned the high peak. No magic warded the road, no traps, no barriers were erected. But then, why should there be? Somewhere near, on one of the lesser peaks behind the citadel, a dragon the color of blue steel lurked. He had seen it in Ladonna's magic-wrought map, and he remembered her warning.

  High in the sky, gulls creaked, their gray wings and white backs catching the first glimmer of the day. Regene looked up to the crags rising above the sea. Her cheeks, always known to him as rosy and plump, shone pale now.

  "Do you feel it?" she whispered. He had to step closer to hear her. "Do you feel it, Dalamar?"

  He stood still, extending his senses, reaching in magic all around the isle, up to the sky, down to the sea, around the stone and mountains.

  "Feel what?"

  She shuddered. "It's been a long time since I've been outside the Tower. We are all calm in there, a peaceful lot. We study, and we observe the courtesy of the Master's hospitality." She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. "And—you may have noticed—though Black Robes and White Robes and Red practice their magic, spin their spells, work their charms and talismans, we don't much feel the… the intrusion of another Order's sorcery. I feel it here, though, Black magic like claws raking my skin."

  "Interesting." Dalamar looked up the hill to the towered citadel. "Hadn't you considered that?"

  "I did," she said. "I just didn't think one place could hold so much evil." She looked at him along the length of her shoulder, eyeing him. He saw her re-thinking him, looking back to two nights in his bed, to conversations in his rooms. He saw her recognize him. "I hadn't thought," she said, not marveling and not afraid, "that you were part of this."

  Dalamar shrugged. "I am what I am, Regene. Part of the dark, as you are part of the light. One, I think, is no better or worse than the other."

  Her sapphire eyes widened, just for an instant, as though she heard blasphemy. Then, swiftly she said, "Yes, of course. We know that, we mages."

  Cold wind ran down the road, down the hill to the sea. "But outside the world of the Tower," Dalamar said, "where theory meets the hard bones of the world, what we know is not so pretty as it once seemed, is it?"

  She didn't answer. He nodded, and he didn't waste time wondering whether he had been foolish to bring her on this journey. In the instant he determined that she showed a sign of failing him, he would cast her aside as a warrior the weapon whose blade was chipped, whose grip was cracked.

  You have visitors, said the dragon, the blue whose name was Blade.

  On a bed of silks and satin, in a chamber high above the sea, a dwar
f groaned, his mouth a ruin of split lips and bleeding gums, his teeth rotted, his flesh scaled. His beard hung in white tatters. His skull shone gray through patches of stringy hair. In his mind, an image flashed, dragon-sent to this one who could see nothing outside his own window. A dark elf walked upon the shore, heading for a White-robed mage not far ahead. He knew them! He had felt the dark elf's hatred days before in the library, but he hadn't thought it would amount to more than the wrath of a pup who had no chance at him. The White Robe, he knew her, too.

  He did not rage; he did not fall into fear. Tramd o' the Dark was one who long knew how the stars were patterned and what those patterns meant. A diviner, he could read hearts and minds. He understood how mages thought, how power ran. Best of all, he understood how swiftly the winds of politics can drop into calms and deflate the sails of the powerful with no more warning than a simple announcement.

  You have visitors.

  These two were Tower-sent. He knew it because he knew they were not minions of the Blue Lady, and no one else hated him enough to dare his citadel. Well enough, he thought, let them come, and let them try their luck. The winds are not so calm yet, and we may be able to work up a storm here.

  In the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth, the avatar walked out from the library, down the long stairs and through the rear tower to the courtyard. Past the beds of herbs and vegetables, he went into the outer tower and into the laboratory where people were used to seeing this wight they knew as Tramd. It closed the heavy oaken door and flung down the bar. It walked to a long table, to the wide expanse of black marble. There it stood, just for a moment, still as breathless night. Then it filled up its chest with air, spoke one word of command in the deep voice all the Tower folk had known as Tramd's. The word spoken, the breath expelled, and the avatar collapsed. It fell to dust, not more than the clothing it wore remained. In the morning, it would be said that the dwarf had killed himself with some carelessness at his work. Now, no one knew, no one missed him.

  At the same time, in Karthay, where the breezes blew in chill from the sea and the first gray light of dawn leaked into the shadowed chamber, the dwarf mage came to himself, blind, rotting, and filled up with pain as his mind inhabited the ruin of his body. He forced his lungs to fill with air. He let that air go again, seeping, and on the breath one word drifted, a word of command. In the shadows behind his bed something lurched, stiff-legged and jerky. Like moonlight sparkling on a dark sea, the mind of the mage went into the clay of a new avatar. Again a dwarf, but this time his hair gleamed red as copper, his eyes blue as the sea. He had the broad shoulders of a forgeman, the scarred hands, the keen eye that knew how to look into the heart of fire and see how well his iron was faring.

  Said the mage with the voice of the avatar, the dwarf to the dragon, "Where are they?"

  On the road up.

  "Get rid of them," he said, and he went to the window to watch the dragon lift off, the wide wings spread, sun running on blue scales. The red eye of the beast gleamed as he opened his jaws wide to roar. Light glinted off fangs as long as Tramd's arm. A sense of bloodlusty anticipation filled his mind as Blade soared out over the island, the sound of his eagerness rebounding from the peaks and all the towers of the citadel.

  The dragon came screaming out of the morning sky like storm falling, wide leathery wings blotting out the sun. Standing at the first bend of the road, Dalamar felt the shadow of the wyrm cold as winter wind. Looking up, he saw the beast's eyes glaring hatred. Dust eddied on the road, small whirlwinds of the dragon's passing. He pointed east and Regene took his meaning at once. Face white as her robe, she positioned herself so that the dragon, coming in fast, was between two mages. Dalamar gestured, a swift dance of the hands that made the first movement in a spell she would know. She did the same.

  Dalamar turned his attention inward. The dragon roared, but he ignored it, reaching deep into himself where his magic lay, that sparkling well from which all wonders can be lifted. He gathered his strength as the dragon circled high above them, each pass bringing it lower.

  "Use yourself carefully!" he called to Regene. "There's a mage waiting for us, and I doubt he's lying helpless in his bed!"

  She laughed, the sound wild and harsh as the voice of the sea. "Oh, a fine plan! Fight and kill a dragon, then go on to the mage! What's the difference between madness and courage, Dalamar Nightson?"

  Dalamar flung back his head, laughing up to the sky. "Not much!"

  "For Solinari, then!" she shouted, her dark hair whipping back, her sapphire eyes burning.

  As she shouted, so did Dalamar's heart lift in prayer to the Dark Son, to Nuitari who was his trusted god. "Your wish is my will, O Dark Son! An it please you, I strike for the sake of the magic you so love!"

  In silence, gods speak, and Dalamar knew the will of his god as he felt himself fill with strength, secure in the knowledge that whatever else he was, Nuitari was an honest god who made no promises and so failed no promises. Joy ran in him like fiery wine, burning and delighting all at once.

  "Come down!" he shouted. "Come down, dragon! Try us!"

  Lightning poured from between the dragon's jaws. With swift, powerful wing thrusts, Blade tore across the sky, so low over the heads of the mages that the wind of his passing rocked them backward. Sunlight flashed on fangs and talons, glinting off steely blue scales. The carrion stench of the beast's breath sickened him.

  Dalamar plunged deeply down to the place within himself where his magic lay, and he thrust both fists up to the sky. Lightning leaped from each hand, and one bolt struck the beast full in the chest, pushing him hard, staggering his flight. Another struck from behind, Regene's flashing spear of light. The tang of ozone stung his nostrils. No scent of burned flesh filled the sky-the dragon's hide was tougher than that-but the roar of pain deafened Dalamar. Blade bellowed, raging as he shot away over the beach. As two dancers in perfect synchronous motion, Dalamar and Regene turned to track his flight.

  Like a comet streaking across the dawn, the dragon arced down, and now it had a target. Regene knew she was the prey in the instant before Dalamar did.

  "Hold!" he shouted. "Fight! Don't run—!"

  But she ran, heedless of his advice, unable to hear or simply compelled by instinct. No speed saved her. None could have.

  Shrieking, Blade yanked her from the ground and banked, turning sharply, heading once more toward Dalamar. Regene's white robe blossomed in blood along the right sleeve. She was alive, that much Dalamar knew, for he saw her face, her sapphire eyes, even the prayer moving on her lips. Solinari, reach out your hand!

  "What then?" Dalamar shouted. "Will you fling a corpse at me, dragon? Or will you hold her up to protect you? She's not much of a shield."

  Blade laughed, the sound like the blast of fire in Dalamar's mind. He passed once over the mage and then again, his prey limp now in his grasp. Small, warm drops of blood splashed on Dalamar's upturned face, tasting like the sea's salt on his lips. Regene's own lips still moved to shape a prayer whose words the wind tore away.

  Blade unclenched his talons and Regene fell, tumbling from the heights of the sky.

  Was she worth the expenditure of strength to save? Between the space of one heartbeat and another, Dalamar decided. Deciding, he reacted on the instant, sending all his strength up through his shoulders and along his arms, pushing up against the sky, in magic thrusting against the pull of gravity. Regene's fall slowed, but only a little. She hit the stony ground hard, the breath blasting out of her lungs. Dalamar staggered, feeling the fall itself through the circuit of his magic, his own bones rattled by the impact. He shook himself and looked around.

  Regene groaned warning, choking only a word, a name. "Dalamar!"

  Dalamar turned in time to see Blade sweep down from the sky, screaming in baleful glee. Wide black wings blotted out the sun, casting cold shadow on the winding road and the two mages. Spurred by rage, Dalamar gathered the lightning one more time and sent it lancing up to the sky. One bolt after another he
flung. Weakened as he was, his aim was not so true as he'd have wished. Four of the hissing lightning lances missed the dragon, and only one hit. That one, though, that was enough. It struck the blue dragon between the eyes, burning the thin scales there and the shattering the dragon's skull to splinters.

  Blade fell lifeless from the sky, the impetus of his last wing thrust taking him down into the sea.

  The dragon's death-scream echoed against the cliffs, bounding from peak to peak and all around the towers of the Citadel of Night. Tramd watched the beast fall with the eyes of his avatar. In the avatar's ears, in his own, that scream resounded. The death of the noble beast who had flown in the battles over the Plains of Solamnia, fought for and taken Dargaard Keep, and led an army in the bitter fight for the High Clerist's Tower had fallen, unmarked by any in the Blue Lady's army but him.

  "Return to your Queen," whispered the dwarf to the dragon, once part of the proud wing best beloved of Takhisis. "One last time let your soul fly to hers."

  He turned from the window and stood in perfect silence, listening to the voices in the corridor outside his bedchamber. Servants ran, shouting one to another. A clash of metal. The ring of mail and the stamp of boots. His guard, a troop of dwarves out of the darkest warrens of Thorbardin-the worst of the clans, the ruined sons, the benighted whom the thanes of their clans cast out from the society of their kin-came to ward his door. They were his and the Blue Lady's. On the bed, his body lay, faintly twitching, always dying. This dying hulk his guard would defend to the last breath, theirs or his.

  He had no fear of the two mages on the road. It had been a long, long time since Tramd knew fear. He was, though, curious. They would come here, these two, searching not for the avatar but for the body of the mage, and he would like to know—from one or the other of them—who had sent them. Where in the Tower of High Sorcery lay his enemy? Who was this foe who thought a chance at the death of Tramd worth the life of these two mages? It would be useful to know. He would not again slip an avatar into the Tower; most of his work was finished there. But he would like to know who in that Tower he would drag out from there, who-after the Blue Lady launched her war-he would rip from the ruined halls of magic that he might practice the long slow arts of killing upon his enemy's quivering body.