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 for 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?
Weeping over the ruin of the river, the ravaged Thon-Thalas, the wind felt like nothing out of summer. With its cold clammy fingers, it felt like a winter wind. The reeds along the banks drooped, faintly green at the base, pasty brown along the shaft, black and slimy where the feathery seed pods should now be starting to form. It was as though they tried to grow, managed to stagger, and then fell to die. Fish lay rotting in the coves, silvery sheen turned to the blue of a corpse's lips as the scales rotted. Some of these, it seemed, were whole when they'd died. Others bore the marks of mutation, some with thin, twisted limbs, others with three eyes. One or two had wings, and these, trying to fly, had died; for they had wings, but they did not have lungs that liked air better than water.
Above the misery, the sky hung a pall of ragged clouds. In the air, thin mist stank of death, the tatters that dressed the decay and decorated the corruption seen on all sides.
'By the gods,' whispered Lord Konnal, his hand upon the hilt of his sword. It was a warrior's gesture, and useless here. 'By the gods, I had heard what the place looked like, but I never imagined…'
'It is a bitter sight,' agreed Porthios.
In this, the elf-prince and the Silvanesti House Holder stood in perfect and rare agreement.
Along the banks of the Thon-Thalas, trees stood like blackened skeletons; in summer's season they were winter's ghosts. Writhen by foul magic, they staggered in terrible twisted shapes. Once-proud aspens bowed low, their slender shapes brutalized by the dragon Cyan Bloodbane's nightmarish spells. Some of those trees bled, not sap but red blood as mortals bleed. Some wept, silver tears running down their trunks as rain runs down.
No one dared touch the trunks or anything else, not even the water in the river. Yet, some yearned to do that, aching to reach out with healing touches, aching to comfort the ravaged land. One of these was a cleric, Caylain, a young woman whose cheeks shone white as a ghost's. She reached, now and then, only to remember that she dared not reach too far.
'Dearest E'li,' she whispered, her voice barely heard beneath the muffling of the sleeve she pressed against her mouth and nose. Dalamar heard her, though, for they stood near one another. And he saw the tears streaming down her cheeks as those from the aspens-ever dying, never healing.
Dearest E'li, Dalamar thought, watching the ruin of their homeland slide by. Well, dearest E'li hasn't walked here in a long time.
Dragons did, though. He saw marks of their passage everywhere-snapped branches, the slithering trail of long scaly tails in the mud at the river's edge, and broad flat footprints with the pegged marks of talons. Once, when the skiff came close to the bank, he saw in a nest of mud the jagged shells of leathery eggs, freshly burst. Those eggs had been as large as his torso, and they had held a clutch of dragon young. Soon after, he spotted the sullen gleam of green scales and an eye the size of his hand, evil gold in a midnight iris. These were green dragons, the kind who seldom grew longer than thirty feet-small in comparison to the beasts who had descended from the iron sky over the northern border five years before. Small, but not less dangerous. These greens had great cunning in magic; to them fang and talon were but the crude tools of the lesser of their race. And so, all round the little skiff like a silken cloak, lay spells of protection, magic made and maintained by the two mages who sat, still and silent, in the center of the craft. Eyes closed, lips moving always at the silent weaving of their spell, the mages worked with sweat rolling down their faces, hands clasped so tightly that their knuckles gleamed white. By their strength, those who kept within the skiff were warded from the enticements of the green dragons, safe from the magic that would otherwise lure them into the ravaged forest and to their deaths.
Dragons lived here in the ruined kingdom, yet so did a princess. No, not that. Alhana Starbreeze was more than princess now. She was Speaker of the Stars, for her father was dead. She waited in Silvanost in the Tower of the Stars, anxious for the coming of Porthios and his little fleet. She waited in safety, warded by a full troop of Porthios's own household guard. That troop was a thing Lord Konnal deeply resented, and no one could fail to know it. His face was drawn in lines of indignation; his steely eyes shone with it. Even as he understood it would have been insanity to ask Alhana to wait for protection until he could sail home, he hated the fact that a Qualinesti prince
