DragonLance - Classics 2 - Dalamar the Dark

by Nancy Varian Berberick

  "My lady," he said as she looked up from her breakfast of wine and cheese, "the beginning of the end of the elves is here."

  Chapter 6

  In the dawn of the day, with the sky turning to rosy lavender and the late night mists rising from the little lily ponds in the Garden of Astarin, Alhana Starbreeze went through the Tower of the Stars, through high chambers and low, in search of her father. She went in silence, as was her way. Her soft leather slippers made no sound upon the marble floors. The hem of her azure damasked gown did not whisper against her ankles. She wore upon her arms the golden bracelets her father had given to her mother upon the day of her birth, nine circlets, each shaped like twining vines. These did not ring one against another as she went, for she walked with her hands clasped before her, tightly held so that her knuckles shone white where bone pressed against flesh.

  She went from room to room. In his empty bedchamber a green tunic lay upon the bed, embroidered in silver runes. Beside lay hose of softest brushed wool. At the foot of the bed on the cool marble floor stood Lorac's slippers, golden leather tanned to buttery softness. A small coffer of mahogany chased with silver sat unopened beside the tunic. In it, she knew, lay the Speaker's jewels, necklaces, pendants, circlets to hold his hair from his brow-all made by the most skilled dwarf smiths in the days when there had been commerce between Silvanesti and Thorbardin. That was a long time ago. Now the dwarves kept themselves apart from the world in their mountain fastness, and the Silvanesti elves stayed always within the confines of the Barrier Hedge. The only thing they had in common was their need to keep themselves removed from the rest of the world and a stubborn disdain for outlanders.

  Alhana did not find her father in the library or the music room. She hastened to the solarium, but he was not there. Neither was he in the arboretum, though she had hoped to find him there, enjoying the rising light in those sweet sunny rooms where flowers grew in riotous profusion. She went out onto the gallery where it rounded the well of the audience chamber, and her heart sank.

  A green glow, shimmering and shining, reached up from the floor of the audience hall and stained the white marble rail and balustrades to the unpleasant green of algae scumming on a still pond. A cold sheen of sweat broke out on her face. She had seen this light before, in dark dungeons in the late watches when her father had waked from nightmare.

  Her hand on the cold marble rail, Alhana leaned over, looking down into the well, and mere she saw Lorac Caladon. He sat upon his throne, hunched over a little. He held something cradled in his hands, a thing from which that dreadful light emanated. The green glow shone upward, giving his face a terrible hue, a corpse's hue.

  Alhana shuddered. Her heart pounding, she lifted her skirts and ran swiftly across the floor to the wide, winding staircase.

  "Father!" she cried, her voice ringing in echoes around the gallery and into the well of the chamber below.

  He looked up, but only slowly, as one who is roused from a deep sleep. His face held no color but that of the orb's green glow. With startling suddenness, his eyes flashed, like lightning leaping out from running clouds.

  "Be still!" he called.

  And he was her father. He was her king.

  Alhana stopped midstep, her hand upon the cold marble banister, her foot poised to take the last step.

  "Father?"

  His voice an ugly snarl, he said, "Be still."

  The light of the orb pulsed, like a malevolent heart beating.

  Far away, up in the gallery, she heard the voices of servants talking to each other, a woman's raised in question, a man's enjoining silence. Alhana took a step closer to her father, down from the last stair and onto the floor of the audience hall.

  "Father," she whispered, "Father, you frighten me. Are you well?"

  He did not move, not even to look at her. Another step, and another, and now, by the last light of day, she saw her father's lips tremble. Why, this is the trembling of an old man, she thought, the thought itself like a whisper of treason.

  Lorac old? Lorac trembling? Lorac-oh, dear gods, was he frightened?

  The green glow faded, drawing back from the king's face, from the hall, and returning to the orb itself. Emboldened, Alhana took another step and then another. At last, when Lorac made no protest, she ran swiftly across the hard marble floor, her little slippers pattering now, her arm-rings jangling in metal's harshest voice. She ran, and she knelt beside him, the Speaker on his throne.

  He sat in perfect stillness. His face, like marble, showed no expression, but his eyes, his eyes ...

  Alhana Starbreeze covered her father's hands with her own, gently. When he did not resist, she lifted the orb and set it upon the stand. In the moment she did, she nearly dropped it. The stand, once white ivory and shaped like two hands lifted in offering, had changed. It was the same stand. She knew it. She could see that, but something had warped it. Something had scraped and clawed it, and now it was not two hands at all, but one large, broad claw with five talons curled. Into those talons, into that claw, the dragon orb of Istar fit as neatly as it had always done.

  "My child," whispered the king, her father looking up at her, "my poor Alhana."

  His eyes were awash in sadness so deep, so terrible, that Alhana, seeing them, felt she would fall into them as into a drowning pool.

  "Father." She touched his face and held it with both hands. Beneath her hands she felt a trembling, the flesh of his face quivering. It was, she thought in horror, in pity, as though he longed to weep but had lost the ability. "Father, please tell me. What is wrong?"

  He looked at her from within the frame of her white hands, and now she saw that his pupils were dilated, grown so wide that they gave his eyes the appearance of being coal black. Alhana shivered, and she withdrew her glance in fear. But she did not withdraw her hands, for she feared that if she let him go, her father, the king of all the Sylvan Land, would fall away, spinning down into a terrible dark place.

  "My child," he said, his voice quavering. "My child, the world is lost."

  What spell had the orb cast to catch him? What spell out of doomed Istar worked here in Silvanost?

  "No," she murmured, stepping back, her hands still on him so that he, too, must rise. "No," she said softly, urgently, her arm around his shoulders. How thin they seemed! How bowed down with care! "Father, the world is not lost. Neither is the kingdom. We have the gods on our side. We have E'li himself, and so we will prevail."

  Lorac said nothing to agree or protest. Breathing shallowly, like a man in sleep, he allowed her to lead him down from the throne and up the long winding staircase to his chambers. They went in haste, or as quickly as Alhana could manage, for though she neither saw nor heard servants in the gallery, she did hear their voices in the various chambers they passed. She must not allow Lorac to be seen in this condition, not under any circumstance.

  Once safely inside her father's suite, she found his chamberlain there, old Lelan, and gave the king into his care. Whispering and hushing, Lelan took the king to his bed and settled him there, sweeping all his careful arrangement of clothing to the floor and tossing the mahogany coffer into a corner of the room as though it were all some pile of leaves blown in with the wind.

  "What has happened to him, Lady?" he asked, pulling the bedsilk up over the king's shoulders, daring from long affection to smooth the king's hair back from his face as he would a feverish child's.

  Alhana shook her head. "I don't know. I found him like this." She said nothing of the Orb. "Tend him as best you can, Lelan, and be certain to say nothing to anyone. My father will come to himself soon, and we will see that he suffers only from lack of sleep and too much care. I don't have to tell you how deeply it would embarrass him to learn that news of this"-she groped for a word-"this discomfiture had reached anyone's ears."

  Lelan bowed. "It will be as you say, my lady."

  It would be, she knew, and that knowledge made up the full sum of her confidence as she walked out into the gallery again. Dow
n in the audience hall where the Emerald Throne sat, where the Dragon Orb crouched upon the transformed stand, green light again pulsed. Very faintly it shone now, as though from a great distance.

  By the light of that glow Alhana Starbreeze had the sudden vision of her own hands upon the crystal globe, her own fingers grasping the smoothness of the Orb, light shining through and showing what flesh hid-bones and muscle and even blood pulsing through veins. She saw herself lifting the Orb and carrying it all the way up to the gallery, there to lean out over the rail and fling this artifact of unholy Istar down to smash upon the cold marble of the floor below.

  And yet, even as she longed to do that, she knew she would not. In some far part of her soul she knew that she must not. The Orb was not only an artifact of Istar, it was an artifact of Lorac Caladon's Test of Magic. The Orb and the King of the Silvanesti were inextricably linked.

  The world is lost! So the king had whispered, so her father had groaned as he stared into the light of an orb that had seen the Cataclysm take Istar down into the sea and reshape the face of Krynn.

  Alhana turned her back on the light pulsing like a long slow heartbeat, and she went along the gallery to her own quarters. There she sat in the embrasure of the tall window that faced northward. A wisp of fragrance drifted through the open window, the scent of morning in Silvanost, of the dewy herb beds in the Garden of Astarin, the pungent odor of boxwood, the sweetness of breads and cakes as the bakers trundled their wares to the kitchen doors of their customers. It all smelled too normal, so real and safe. And yet, not much was normal these days, and what was real- the war on the border, the refugees on the King's Road, a hungry horde, a shambling host-did not inspire her to feel safe.

  *****

  Lord Tellin sat in utter stillness, quiet in body, quiet of speech, quiet-Dalamar was certain-in heart and soul. Sitting beneath a tall aspen, beneath leaves gone golden, the cleric was like a statue, something hewn from the raw strong stone of the earth, unmoved and unmoving. He sat but a hand's breadth from a fall that would have killed him if he moved too swiftly or the wrong way, a long stony tumble to the floor of a narrow glen.

  Did he breathe? Dalamar looked up from his work of sorting spell components and squinted at Tellin. Faintly, the sweat-stained cloth of his white robe rippled over Tellin's breast. He breathed, but only barely.

  The Windriders on griffins had long since flown away north, gone in the night under cover of darkness to take their positions for the battle. Dalamar didn't miss them. The odor of lion's musk and bird mustiness was not a pleasant one. He looked up at the sky where storm clouds hung low. Beneath them the aspen leaves glowed like a king's hoard of gold. All around them, mages and Wildrunners sorted themselves out into two groups, the sound of them like the rattle of swords, the rumble of storms soon to come. Tellin, though, sat at peace beneath the branches of a lone aspen, and didn't seem to hear them. Upon his knee lay a scroll containing the Dawn Hymn to E'li, but he had a keener eye for the embroidered scroll case than for the scroll itself. It might be argued that he knew the hymn by heart, but if it were, Dalamar wouldn't be the one arguing. If Lord Tellin had any prayer in his heart now, it was that all the barriers of tradition and law fall before a returning hero, that Lord Ralan would grant a cleric his sister's hand.

  Dalamar bent his head over his work, checking to see that the oils he had brought-of heliotrope, mimosa, and sandalwood-remained safely stoppered in their earthen vials. He had sealed these with wax from candles on the altars of E'li. So Ylle Savath had commanded all her mages to do. He lifted each and smelled, scenting nothing on the wax and so knowing the seals were true. He examined each small pouch of herbs, flax seed, rowan bark, and elf dock. All these were sound, no pouch had become torn or uncinched in the northward run.

  A damp wind rose up, chill here in the north of the kingdom, smelling of rain and sorrow. Aspen leaves rattled, sounding like regret, and on the wings of the wind came the faint trace of smoke. Tellin looked around frowning, then shook his head, realizing the truth of the smoke. It didn't come from this encampment of Wildrunners. Lord Konnal, Garan's second and the commander of his ground forces, had firmly forbidden fires. They were too close to the border for that. This smoke was old and heavy, the smoke of a large burning that had happened some time ago.

  "A village," Dalamar said.

  Tellin nodded. The smoke was the death-flag hung above one of the villages or towns that had fallen to Phair Caron's raiding parties. They'd seen too many of those on the way north, ghost-villages where the land lay black, where trees stood staggering with their bark burned off and others lay felled by axes for the savage joy of killing when there were no more elves to murder. And there had been murder done, great murder and terrible killing. The proof lay in the wolf-picked bones littering the villages, the empty-eyed skulls gleaming white in the moonlight. By sign of clothing, it became sickeningly clear that reports of selective killing-of the murder of men and women of fighting age only-were true. The dragonarmy was depriving the elves of defenders and leaving the weak and hungry to drain resources.

  Voices rose, then hushed suddenly, the sound of the Wildrunners getting ready to depart. Lord Garan had made his plans so that the city of Sithelnost would not be caught between two armies, so that it would not find itself on the fall-back route if-gods forbid-his army should have to retreat. So the Wildrunners and the mages now sat at the stony edge of the forest, west of the Thon-Thalas and well north of Sithelnost. The Trueheart Mines lay but ten miles outside the western bounds of the forest itself, the high tors where Phair Caron had her base camp less than half that distance north and east. Most of the soldiers would continue north to the border, there to wait word to begin the attack on Phair Caron's army. All but a few of the mages would stay here, hidden below in the glen. Protected by a guard of Wildrunners posted high on the glen's walls, the mages would be able to work their magic in reasonable safety. Those of the mages who went with the bulk of the army were strong in the skills of mindspeaking so that they could relay Lord Garan's commands back to Ylle Savath.

  Ravens spun out, black over the glen, cawing and rasping and sailing down low. Something lay dead down there, and the raucous ravens rejoiced.

  Lord Tellin said, "You wish you were going with the Wildrunners, don't you, Dalamar?"

  Dalamar shrugged, head low as he replaced the pouches and vials into his leather scrip. Never looking behind to the drop below, to the ravens calling the feast, Tellin came and sat beside Dalamar, his erstwhile servant.

  "It doesn't seem fair, does it? That you have to stay here when you want to be there."

  Again Dalamar shrugged. He hadn't yet become used to Lord Tellin's keen eye, quick questions, and the uncomfortable insight. Sometimes it seemed the cleric could look right into a person's heart and see the joys there, the fears, and the sorrows. Others among the army liked that, Wildrunners coming to a cleric for comfort and assurance in these days before the battle. Dalamar didn't like it at all. He was too used to his privacy and well content to keep to himself. And, were truth to be told-though this truth must never be!-he found little comfort in the idea of E'li's abiding love. Each time he heard the phrase or listened as some cleric spoke of the god as the Dragon's Lord, the Defender of Good, he felt like one hearing the hollowness of a lie.

  Where was E'li the Defender while young elves were being killed by the legions of Takhisis? Where was the Dragon's Lord while warriors on dragonback drove old men and women and children out onto the road to starve and die? Not here, certainly not here.

  The wind grew damper, cooler still. "It's all right," Dalamar said, breathing the smoke of a cruel burning. "I'm here, my lord, and taking my part in the plan."

  It was a small part, though perhaps only he thought so, for Dalamar, who had conceived this bold plan Lady Ylle and Lord Garan had scorned and Speaker Lorac had embraced, was not chosen to stand in the enspelled chain of mages, bound hand and heart to each other and dedicated, body and soul, to the weaving of those p
owerful spells of illusion that would confuse the Highlord's army and give the Silvanesti their chance to rid their borders of the threat that had so long brooded there. No, he was to be a minor part of his own idea's execution, in the web of the magic but standing only to support the working mages with his own strength so theirs would not fail. What, after all, could a mage do in such a strong weaving of magic if he had but simple apprentice skills? Nothing, nothing. And yet, murmured a bitterness in his heart, he was not what they thought him, was he? He had more skill than they might imagine, those skills acquired and nurtured in a darker place than any school Ylle Savath permitted.

  "Come on," Dalamar said, cinching his scrip tight and standing to stretch his long legs. "Let's see if we can find ourselves a place in the ravine before every mage around starts crowding in."

  "Ah," said Lord Tellin, "I'm not going into the ravine. I'm going north with the Wildrunners." He twisted a wry smile. "They say it's all very nice to have a cleric with the army, but better if he earns his keep. I'm going to be one of the runners between the commanders of the ground troops. But I'll walk down with you. There's a Wildrunner down there who wants me to bless a medallion. Come on, let's

  go."

  In brooding silence Dalamar followed the cleric down

  the winding narrow path that would take them to the glen's floor. The lower they went the fainter the sounds of the departing Wildrunners became. The breeze that had quickened above, died now between the stony walls of the glen. From below drifted the cries of ravens at their bloody festival. The way was rough and the footing unsteady. As Tellin's sure stride took him down the path, and the white shape of him was seen now only as shimmering in shadows, Dalamar remembered a thing he'd overheard about himself one night in the kitchen of Lord Ralan's hall: "If that one was a dwarf, you'd say he was of all dwarves the most dour. I don't think there's even a word in our tongue to say as much about him."