thickness of the air, Dalamar looked away north, not to the small place where his secrets were kept, but farther to the land beyond the forest where the armies of Takhisis brooded. She was god-Nuitari's mother, that Dragon Queen, and his father was the god of Vengeance, Sargonnas himself. Their son was a child of magic and secrets, and Dalamar could think of no better god to whom he could dedicate his own secret heart.
Blasphemy! It was blasphemy in the Silvanesti kingdom to think such a thing.
Dalamar shivered, quick excitement running up his spine. He could choose if he wanted to choose. He could make a forbidden god his own in secret and silence, and no one would know. Such power there was in secrets! Smiling, he walked through the garden, a generous place enclosed on three sides by hedges of wisteria, on the fourth by the servants' wing of the hall. Though they waited for him in the kitchens, he took time to enjoy the heady scent of dewy roses and the tang of curly mint underfoot. Water bubbled from a fountain, a marble basin held in the hand of a statue of Quenesti-Pah, the goddess offering comfort. A golden finch settled on the rim of the basin, bright feathers already changing to autumn dress.
Dalamar did not walk alone there. A cleric passed him on the path. The tall young elf nodded greeting to him, a lord by the look of him, high-headed and comfortable. His robe of white samite gleamed in the morning light. Silver thread embroidered the sleeves, and upon his finger a ring shone, a silver dragon whose eye was a bright amethyst. A cleric of E'li, no doubt come on the business of the Temple.
Dalamar returned the absent, silent greeting in kind, in no mood to tug the forelock or wish anyone the blessings of E'li. The cleric went round the north side of the garden and through an arched gate. Beyond lay the private garden of the lord and his family. This one was confident of his welcome.
Dalamar went into the dark kitchen where the cross-eyed cook stood scowling, fair certain what his own welcome would be. Waves of heat greeted him, rippling in the air, the heat of the night's baking still trapped in the cavernous stone room.
'Aye, there he is,' growled the cook, a woman so thin it seemed she was but flesh stretched too tightly over bitter bones. 'Lord Eflid promised me I'd have you this morning early, Master Mage. Now where have you been, eh? Out running again…?' Her voice became as the voice of an insect buzzing, nothing to pay heed to, and Dalamar walked past her through the kitchen and into the oven room where the scent of years of baking clung to the walls with stubborn, yeasty persistence.
Dalamar knelt on the floor before the first broken tile. He pressed his hands together, feeling the tingling of magic as he gathered up the words of a spell, stone-heal. The smell of the kitchen faded. He dropped into a state of being none but a mage could know, that state of touching power from gods, of taking it and shaping it and using it to his will. The cook's voice receded, words growing thin, like mist rising to sun.
'… Who he thinks he is, some ragtag little mageling out of the Servitor District… never did teach him his manners or how to behave among his betters… never should have given him the white robe-never. Too far above himself, that's what…'
The spell words invoked the bright energy of magic, that energy sparkling in Dalamar's blood, warming his heart, lending him power only mages and gods knew. This was all that mattered, magic and nothing more. For it, he would do everything.
The red dragon drifted in the midday sky, slipping effortlessly from updraft to downdraft, one current to another. Wide wings spread, long tail moving like a ship's rudder, Blood Gem traversed the sky, the first of the highlord's dragons to sail out over the aspen forest of the Silvanesti. He looked down through the canopy of trees and saw the silver threads of rivers running. Along the great Thon-Thalas, he saw towns, small and large, their buildings like smudges on the land. Here, in these little towns, they did not build so much with stone. Here they built with wood. He opened his jaws wide to grin.
So much tinder, he said to the rider upon his back, the long-legged human woman who heard him not with her ears but in her mind.
No, Phair Caron said, her voice slipping into Blood Gem's mind like a tendril of black smoke. Not tinder! We'll burn the forest if we must, but something must remain. We're to take these arrogant elves down from their high perches, but we have to leave something for the army to occupy and a cowed populace ready to work for the Dark Queen and support her advance. Dead elves do us no good at all.
Blood Gem snorted, and a small fireball burst alight in the sky. Dead elves offer no resistance, and we can fill up that aspenwood-or what my kin and I will leave of it-with slaves to do whatever work will be required.
Phair reached out to pat the red's shoulder, not a gesture the dragon felt, but one he recognized and appreciated in its intent. It isn't about working slaves, my friend. Or it's not all about that. What it's all about is reaping souls, eh?
For the Dark Queen.
Phair Caron nodded, again an unseen gesture, but one felt.
All they did, she and her dragons, was for the Dark Queen, for Takhisis. Dark Lady, you are my light, Phair Caron thought, the thought a prayer. In darkness, yours is the light of balefires, of funeral pyres. In darkness, yours is the hand that reached out to me. She sighed, thinking of the dire glory of Her Dark Majesty. It had been but a mere handful of centuries since Takhisis had re-entered the world and come back from the Abyss after the fall of Istar. Her door into the world was-and Phair Caron thought the irony delicious- the ruin of the very Temple of Istar where the mad Kingpriest of the city-state had proclaimed himself a god and brought down the ire of all deities upon the world that condoned his madness. During those centuries Takhisis had wandered abroad, laying plans, seeking allies among the ruthless to elevate to commanders in her growing army- Phair Caron grinned, a wide, wolfish grin-and waking dragons to pair with those commanders. Now Takhisis had an army of ogres and goblins, of dragonmen and humans, led by her commanders, her highlords.
And waking dragons, Blood Gem echoed, sighing as though he yet recalled his long sleep and sudden waking. Now we are here. We are hungry to fight in her cause, Highlord, and we yearn to taste elf blood.
Phair Caron spoke aloud, her words carried upon the wind of their flight. 'Soon enough. Soon enough you'll have what you want.' She laughed, suddenly and sharply. 'But elf blood is a pale drink, my friend. Watery and weak.' She pointed downward to where the Thon-Thalas widened and the lights of Silvanost could be seen in the distance. 'These elves have no use for any god but their puling gods of Good, Paladine-E'li, as they call him-and his weakling lot. They'll all be on their knees to us before the moons go dark.'
And it would be, Blood Gem knew, like sweet wine on the Dark Lady's lips to see those Silvanesti elves bow the neck to her highlord, to be forced to tear down their pale temples to weak gods and use their vaunted skills to erect shrines to the dark gods. Morgion of the Black Wind would spread disease through their ranks. Hiddukel would turn all their feeble truths to lies. At last Takhisis herself, Her Dark Majesty, would rule in that land where her followers had for so long been forbidden to enter.
The dragon climbed higher and turned north toward the borders of the Silvanesti. Behind, in the southern foothills of the Khalkist Mountains, the bulk of Her Dark Majesty's army waited, thousands of soldiers, humans, ogres, goblins, and- Blood Gem made a sound of disgust-and draconians, the misbred dragonmen, spawn of an evil magic-making that corrupted the eggs of dragons. These were Takhisis's fiercest fighters. All the army waited impatiently to fall upon this forested land of wealth and beauty that for centuries had been denied to everyone but the Silvanesti themselves. High in the peaks of those foothills, a strong wing of red dragons brooded, impatient to take to the sky and, with their riders, lead that dark army into battle.
It will be a glorious battle, the dragon mused, his thought matching his rider's.
Phair laughed, the sound wind-torn from her throat and flung out to the hard blue sky. 'It will be, and we will soak the forest with elf blood!'
Soon?
The highlord said nothing, but Blood Gem knew her, deeply as dragons know their riders. She had laid her plans in the winter, and those plans called for an army so strong that the elf defenders would crumble before it. A blood-lusty soldier, she was also a canny strategist. She would not commit her army until she was certain her numbers would overwhelm the elves. More soldiers were coming down from Goodlund and across the Bay of Balifor. Once these arrived, she would be ready. Until then, she would play as a cat played with a mouse-cruel games to amuse herself. Phair Caron despised elves, and of all elves, she despised Silvanesti most. If anyone needed a picture of that hatred's birth, Blood Gem knew the perfect one.
A near-grown girl shivered in the shabby winter streets of Tarsis, her rags clutched around thin shoulders, the bones of her face too clearly defined by hunger-carved flesh. In glittering gold, a party of Silvanesti walked past,
