'Servitor,' he said, 'you dress strangely for a mage.'
Dalamar's tongue leaped nimbly for the lie. 'I haven't practiced magic since the war, my lord. I was the servant of Lord Tellin Windglimmer and served him in the Temple of E'li. He was pleased to have me learn the ways of magic. He's dead now, and no one seems to have taken as much interest.' His history neatly amended, he shrugged. 'No matter. I'm pleased to have remembered some little of what I learned.' He glanced at the river and the calming surface of the water. Now he didn't have to feign his feeling. 'I wish I had been able to do more for the Wildrunner.'
'Indeed,' Konnal said, eyes no less narrow, no less cold. 'I've never approved of teaching a servitor the arts of magic. They get above themselves and find their heads filled with ideas they can't properly understand. Nothing but trouble comes of that.'
He seemed to expect a reply, and Dalamar had none that would please him. After a moment, eyes properly lowered, he murmured, 'If you have no other question, my lord, I'll return to minding the crates.'
Konnal gestured curtly and sent Dalamar to his work. Somewhere upriver, a long moaning howl wound through the thickness of green mist. A dragon called, and another answered. In the water around the skiff, one small line of bubbles sailed up to break the brackish surface. Then all was still and remained so for the rest of the journey.
Chapter 12
The pain of the land moaned in Dalamar's very bones. He felt it most keenly as the little skiff put in at the docks on the north side of the city. He stepped gingerly from the vessel to creaking wood, hoping the rotting posts would hold. It was not easier when he walked into the city. In the Arts District the towers had tumbled, and the fair buildings of marble and quartz were fallen to ruin.
'It might have been a thousand years since we last walked here,' whispered the cleric Caylain to one of her fellows. Her face was as pale as Solinari's moon, her long eyes wide and dark with sorrow.
The rose marble walls of the museums and theaters and libraries bore the wounds of cracks, and smaller buildings had fallen in on themselves, roofs shattered, walls collapsed. The statuary lining the streets were unrecognizable. Where the generals on their wide-winged griffins? Where the Wildrunner, bow nocked, fierce eyes glaring? Where the gods, Kiri-Jolith with his Sword of Justice, E'li, the dragon rampant? Where, Quenesti-Pah, her arms outstretched, and the Blue Phoenix, and Astarin with his harp? Gone, all gone, their images melted, shattered, fallen to dust and blown away. Not even ravens clung to the ruined aspen branches.
Down the long boulevard from the Arts District to the Garden of Astarin, on shattered pavers, the cracks oozing slime as green as the mist hanging in the air, the first elves to return from Silvamori went like a funeral. All walked in silence, each in grief, until at last they came to the Garden of Astarin. Then did they cry out, the lords and the Wildrunners and the clerics. They cried to see the garden, the boxwood that framed it into a star only naked sticks, brown and lifeless. They wept for the silence of the place and sobbed to see the Tower of the Stars. This, of all the structures in the city, had fared worst. Turrets lay in piles of rubble on the ground, and the walls bore cracks that went right through to the heart of the stone. The gems that once studded the walls lay scattered about the lifeless grounds, fallen years before.
And the elves wept, they wept, to see their princess, Alhana Starbreeze, come out from that ruin to greet them, for in her amethyst eyes lay all her pain, her grief for her father's folly and death, her sorrow for the land. None could look into those eyes and not think her aged beyond the count of her years. None could look and not weep, for she was now-as once her father had been-the embodiment of the land.
Only Dalamar kept still, only he didn't weep or cry out, and that was because had he shouted, he'd have shouted in rage against those very gods whose statues now lay fallen, those gods who played out their bids for power in the hearts of mortals, jockeying for position as though Krynn were only a khasboard and Silvanesti simply a quarter of the field.
And so, in the ruin of high places, the high met. In aching gardens, among trees only weakly healing and others simply dying, among the skeletons of boxwood and hydrangea and peonies, Porthios of the Qualinesti greeted Alhana of the Silvanesti. The two exchanged dry kisses of state while Qualinesti Wildrunners warded the Tower of the Stars and the Head of House Protector, Lord Konnal, stood by. His unhappiness was not veiled, and all who saw him knew he had no love for Porthios, to whom he had stood subservient on the voyage home. Anyone with eyes knew he disliked the idea that Alhana seemed so willing to welcome this Qualinesti so warmly.
Dalamar saw no more of that meeting. 'Go,' said Lord Konnal, even as the rest went to greet their princess. 'You are not wanted here. Start your work in the Temple of E'li.'
Dalamar went, wandered the temple grounds, and walked in the broken building. In sanctuaries and meditation rooms, the wind echoed mournfully. In the scriptorium where he had, for a while, been the one who sharpened the quills and scraped the parchments clean for new use, was only dust. Beyond the window the garden lay dead; not even weeds grew. Where had he stood on the morning he'd taken the little embroidered scroll case from the hand of Lady Lynntha for Lord Tellin Windglimmer? There, by that broken wall? So changed was everything, every place, that nothing woke the ghosts of memory.
Dalamar walked once down the chill corridor that ended in a room still sealed after five years. This was the place, the secret place, where a Circle of Darkness would be set if ever there was reason to do so. Here murderers and traitors were condemned to the worst punishment the Silvanesti could devise: exile. Here worshipers of the gods of Neutrality or those of Evil, mages found in magic other than white magic had been judged and cast out from the people. Upon the walls of that sealed chamber, the platinum mirrors were fixed. The Chain of Truth lay within, a wide circle of platinum links spread around the room where the accused would stand, waiting for gods to bid the chain to bind him or be still to keep him safe. He did not stay long there, for it was a cold place. When he left that place he saw, just a glimpse, a shadow on the broken earth outside. Someone else walked these grounds.
Aye, well, he thought, good luck finding comfort here.
So thinking, Dalamar went through the rest of the ruined Temple, walking through the debris of years and listening to the dry wind moaning, the skitter and scrabble of old leaves on cracked marble floors. He walked into the garden, windblown, wild as any heathen forest. Who could recognize this place now?
Dalamar stood among the ruin of the Temple and looked north to the place where, all that summer before the war, he had kept hidden his most precious secret, his found spellbooks, his dark tutors. They tugged, a little, memories of those books. What pulled harder, what called in a stronger voice, was a resolution he had made, far away on the shores of Silvamori. Dalamar Nightson must tell a god that he had a new name.
Who will know? he wondered, looking out over the wall to the Tower of the Stars. Who will know if I am here taking ruin's inventory, or if I am not? No one.
He went quickly through the city, through desolate gardens whose borders would not now be discerned by any who had not known them before war and nightmare. Above, the aspens reached aching branches to the sky, like black claws and rotting bones. The sun shone harshly, glaring at him as he went. The ferry was gone, the enspelled turtles who used to pull it fled or killed, but he found a place where the river ran thinly, speaking of damming upstream. Someone had erected a bridge, perhaps the Qualinesti guard, and this he took to the other side. There, he ran into the darker shadows of the forest. Running, he soon came to a place where once two paths had forked. He saw only barest sketches of them on the land now. He swerved into the darker forest, leaping blowdowns easily. Running, he shouted aloud, the sound like thunder in the silence of a forest emptied of all life but malignant life, secret, sullen, brooding life. He felt what he always used to feel when he left the tended paths, the designated ways. All the strictures of his life, all the ridiculous rules, all the choking ties that bound him to the intractable pattern of life among the Silvanesti fell away.
Running, Dalamar was free. But, running, he was not alone. Swift behind him, silent behind him, ran others, like shadow-hounds coursing his trail.
Dalamar stood still on the edge of the path down to the ravine, extending his senses as far as he could, both natural and arcane. His magic had long ago fallen; the wards he set years before were dead. Below the mouth of the cave gaped, dark and wide. Would the wards on the books themselves have held? He didn't know, though they were Nuitari's, or work dedicated to him. Perhaps they would have survived.
