We are all exiles.

How spectacularly the gods of Good had failed the elves, who had in all ways professed their abiding love for these deities! They did all for these gods, the children of Silvanos. They permitted no other worship, no other magic, no other gods within the borders of their kingdom.

Dalamar shook his head, eyes on the restless waters of the bay. So much the elves had lost in that trust, so much. E'li and his clan had not been worthy of that love. He thought of Lord Tellin, one among many who'd died for faithless gods. He thought of all the others, the Wildrunners and Windriders, the refugees on the road, all turned into corpses and exiles. Where, then, were the gods they trusted? Nowhere, nowhere to be found.

In the north, upriver beyond Silvanost, lay four spellbooks, three small and one large. He had never had a chance to take them out from the cave, and now they lay hidden, perhaps until some soldier of Phair Caron's stumbled upon them.

But the king will save the city. He will save the land. No minion of the Highlord will dare set foot in the heart of the kingdom… So said everyone aboard this ship, and everyone aboard the others.

Everyone but Dalamar. You leave a thing, you lose a thing. And so the books were lost to him, but he didn't rage and he didn't sorrow. They were but a few of many things lost in the abandoned kingdom. Perhaps it was that he'd gotten from them all he needed-more magic than the mages of House Mystic would give him. A glimpse, said a dangerous thought, of a darker god than elves liked to see. What promises did he make, Nuitari, who was the son of Takhisis and the god of vengeance? How well did he keep them? Dalamar didn't know, but he wondered.

A woman's voice shouted "Look!"

Dalamar saw a sailor point to the sky. High above, where stars had just waked to wonder what great voyage of elves was about to challenge the sea, the sky had changed from deepest blue to the sickish throbbing green of a wound too long unattended, of flesh rotting.

"In Zeboim's name," the sailor whispered. Her cheeks, sun-burnished and brown, drained to ashen. "In her sea-blessed name, what's happened to the sky?"

She swore by an unchancy goddess, the tempestuous daughter of Takhisis, but Dalamar noted that no one of the E'li-worshiping elves had anything to say in response. What should any landsman have to say about the niceties of worship to a sailor who plied Zeboim's realm? Nothing. At the rails dark figures gathered, sailors and Wildrunners and some passengers. All looked up, their faces shining ovals in the darkness. Some pointed to the sky, some kept still, and those, Dalamar was certain, were praying.

The waters of the bay woke, rough and restless, shoving against the shores of Phalinost. Upon the waters the waves ran, like horses galloping to the shore. Dalamar shuddered. The proud arched necks of the waves, Zeboim's Steeds the sailors named them, wore a green tint, and he thought of corpses washed up on the shore, the wreckage of a ruined ship, men and women with seaweed tangled in their hair.

His heart racing, Dalamar gripped the rail. The waters of the bay grew stronger, the waves heavier, and the deck rolled beneath his feet. In the sky, the green glow deepened.

"Some ploy of the Highlord's," an elderly elf-woman murmured. Her husband hushed her, but she went on. "Some new evil of hers to bring against the kingdom!"

Someone's prayer rose up above the frightened voices. "Into your hands, O E'li, we put ourselves. In perfect trust and with perfect faith. We are yours, O Shining One! O Champion Against the Dark, remember us, for we are yours!"

All around the deck people calmed, their voices weaving together in comforting prayer. Trusting, they offered themselves to the god who had not shown himself since first Phair Caron's army savaged Nordmaar, whose own dragons had not come to do battle against the evil dragons of Takhisis. "But he is near," they said. "He will come," they assured themselves, "and he will defend us." Even as the sky above the forest throbbed with eerie green light, even as the best beloved lifted sail and fled, they prayed and they hoped.

Only Dalamar was silent, only he did not pray. In the gods of his fathers he had no trust, for he had seen it broken, time and again. Blasphemy! He knew it. Elves have been cast out for such thoughts, banished from the company of the Children of Light, left to die in the outworld.

Yet, strangely, as he stood shivering in the cold winds off the water, watching the shore fall away, the strange green sky grow distant, Dalamar Argent did not fear his thoughts. He looked around to be sure that no one guessed his blasphemy, but the thoughts themselves-why, they held no fear for him.

All the voices of his past swirled around the ancient king. The voices of childhood, his playmates, his fellow students in the Academy of House Mystic, the young girls in the meadows plucking the flowers of spring and braiding them into their long shimmering hair. Hair like the pelts of foxes; hair the color of a deer's dark eye; tresses like honey poured from the jar. Among them was one who shone like a jewel, golden-haired, her eyes keen and gleaming as brightly as the north star, a light for hearts to steer by. Lorac Caladon had steered by that light all his days.

By the light of Iranialathlethsala's eyes he steered yet, for he saw those eyes in the crystal globe that was his dragon orb.

Your orb, yes, sighed the artifact of Istar. I am yours, and in me you will find all that you need. Look! Look deeper, come closer, find in me what you must have. The voice sighed, soft as the wash of the Thon-Thalas against its banks, soft as a breeze, and it seemed to the elf-king that the voice changed a little. He would not have that it sounded like the voice of his dear Iraniala, yet it did recall her voice, perhaps in the cadence.

My love, he sighed, in his heart, without words. Countless years of joy he recalled, and these were not embittered by the years death had denied him. My love!

Your land, said the orb. Your kingdom, your people. The Dark Queen lurks at your borders, king.

Lorac shuddered, and upon the marble walls of his great audience hall that shuddering was seen in shadow as curtains of darkness flowing down from the heights of the great tower, as light from the moons and the stars did flow.

Takhisis will tear down your kingdom. She will lift up the pieces as her warriors lift the bodies of your slain-spitted upon spears running with blood!

To hear those words spoken in rhythms so like those of Iraniala's, in a voice gone suddenly soft as hers had been, was to hear a terrible doom proclaimed with all the weight and authority of Iraniala's own magic. She had been a Seer…

And she had foreseen her own death. O gods! My Iraniala! I am doomed, she had said on the day she knew the name of her illness and the day of her death. I am lost!

The world is lost!

So said the voice that was not hers and yet seemed so like to hers. The voice of the dragon orb turned mocking suddenly, as the wind shifting over the sea, it turned hard and cold as sleet.

What do you quest after, elf-king? Your queen so long dead? How can you think of her when a darker queen, a Warrior Queen, stands upon your doorstep, ready to tear apart your kingdom and make of your people her most wretched and despised slaves, your men for her armies, your women for their whores, your children for the meat on the boards of her minions so dark and terrible that even she has not granted them names?

Shuddering turned to shivering. Lorac returned his gaze to the orb.

She stood in the crystal silence of the dragon orb, a woman tall and slender, she whose eyes were his guiding light, whose heart held his love, whose body had held and delivered forth a daughter of such rare beauty that poets must shape new forms with which to tell of her grace and charm.