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 cried, 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
