There was no doubt in the eyes of any how the platinum chain would behave. But forms must be honored, so it is among elves. Forms must be honored, even when they made no sense to the moment.

"May the gods preserve you," Caylain murmured.

Yet another form. No one in the chamber believed for an instant that any god they prayed to would preserve him. Caylain turned and walked out from the room, the hem of her robe whispering to the floor, her pale hands folded tightly. Lord Konnal followed, and Alhana after him with Porthios at her side, matching her step for step. Only the Qualinesti looked at Dalamar, his swift glance seen in reflection, perhaps thought secret. It was the glance of a warrior who wonders how well the courage of a man will stand him in his steepest test.

Well enough, said Dalamar's wry smile. Well enough, and you need not wonder.

Porthios's eyes flashed suddenly, the prince unhappy to have his thoughts so easily read, so ironically answered. Then he, too, no longer looked at the prisoner within the platinum circle. He walked from the chamber, his hand at the small of Alhana's back, guiding her as men politely guide women, in courtesy.

Alone, alone, Dalamar stood. In his belly fear sat, hard and cold and leeching poison. What road had he chosen, what road in the darkness would he walk?

Then came the ghosts, each reflected in mirrors, first hazily, then more clearly, marching to the sound of a platinum chain creeping ever closer, scraping upon the floor. Each phantom had his face. All the ghosts were him.

Ghost-Dalamar walked in wilderness, in foreign lands where the people did not know his name. He wandered the streets of fabled cities, and he was shunned. He walked in darkness, alone as only an elf can understand, and it seemed to him that his heart had broken long ago. Only lifeless shards rattled around in his breast now. He saw his name vanish from all the records of the Silvanesti. He saw himself un-made, and he heard his name in the mouths of humans, dwarves, kender, and others. Lord Dalamar! "Lord," they said, the title spoken in awe, sometimes with respect. In the mouths of many of them his name was the same as another word for fear.

He smiled to see that. Even as he did, the ghostly images swayed, sliding on the platinum, shifting in the mirrors, unforming and forming again.

Dalamar saw three mages, three with their heads together, talking or arguing. One was an old man in white robes, another a beautiful silver-haired woman in dark. The third was a limping man in his middle years, and he wore red. They turned from their talking and looked at him, their faces on all sides of him and behind, their eyes glittering with fierce knowledge, with slashing ambition, with stern commitment. Even in this vision Dalamar felt the weight of their regard, knowing that weight had crushed some, but not knowing whether or not it would crush him. He did not flinch, though he knew many others had, and in his heart rang these words, this greeting to the three: "I have nothing to lose." The three looked at one another, and the wizardess in the dark robes said to her companions that these were the words of the truly free.

Again the vision shifted, and now Dalamar saw himself standing upon a threshold. Before him was a door beyond which only darkness lay, a maelstrom of ambition, a storm of hatred and longing and power so deep and strong that the foundations of the world did shake to support it. He put his hand upon the skull-shaped doorknob and pushed.

The images in the mirrors flowed again, slowly now, like thick blood running. Dalamar saw himself standing with two other mages, a man in white robes and a woman wearing red.

"Are you ready?" asked the red-robed woman. She looked at him with a lover's eyes, and he read desperation and a hopeless fear in there.

The vision flowed faster now, running like a river in spate, racing, whirling, swirling all around him. If he could have moved, Dalamar would have turned from it. Yet had he done that, the vision would have followed.

Fire rose up out of the ocean. A hole gaped wide in the sea that he somehow knew for the Turbidus Ocean. Darkness, bred of rage, flowed out from that fiery rift and all around the clash of battle thundered, the screams of the dying, the rage of dragons, illuminated by fire and the battle-light flashing from swords. Someone screamed. It was he! And all the blood was running out of him even as eyes so terrible he dared not meet their glance raked him, tearing flesh from his bones, clawing to find something in him-his soul. Takhisis, he thought, for her name is the name of terror. A voice like the howling in a madman's mind shrieked in laughter.

Not she! The faithless whore! Not she!

And still the terrible eyes tore at him, peeling him layer by layer, skin from muscle, muscle from bone, soul from body. Ah, Nuitari! Shield me-

Never he! The serpent-son! Never he!

All the world fell away, even as the body fell from his soul. He saw now only insanity, destruction, no light, no darkness, nothing but ravening and annihilation, madness feeding on madness and rage upon rage like wolves turning upon each other. Towers tumbled and cities burned around him. Pledges came undone. Oaths unraveled. In all lands, among all kindred, brothers turned upon brothers, sons murdered their fathers, mothers their daughters. Children cut their teeth on the sword's blade and played with daggers in the cradle, while disease ran like fire, and fire ate stone. Stone rained down like stars falling out of the sky and gods ran screaming, wailing in midnight places. There was no evil now, no good. There was not that slender path between the poles upon which red-robed mages so carefully trod. There was only the maw of destruction that understood nothing of the balance of life and death, the eternal struggle between light and dark.

All this Dalamar saw in those terrible, devouring eyes, all this and more… and worse.

He saw his soul, and it lay in the clawed hand of that father of emptiness. About him fluttered something small and dully gleaming, something light as parchment and empty, empty with no magic in it or anything to love. It was the soul of a man whose touch made no mark in the world, the soul of a useless man, a helpless man. Emptiness drained the life out of this effectless soul as it drained out the life of the world.

Emptiness. Never to be filled, and even the weeping of gods did cease…

And he stood again upon the threshold of the chamber whose door presented a knob like a grinning silver skull. He saw a mage standing in the shadows, dark-robed, his face hidden, his eyes not even two gleams of light in that darkness.

"Come," said the mage, his voice a strange, dry whisper.

"Shalafi," whispered Dalamar, the image in the mirrors, the man in the circle. "Master," he said, as a student to his teacher. But what teacher, where? And in the mirrors five small marks, spaced as though they were the prints of all the fingers of a man's spread hand, appeared upon the breast of each image of Dalamar. Dark they were, then they were red, and the red ran slowly, like blood dripping down.

A man screamed, and then no one screamed. Then there was only darkness, and the touch of cold platinum round his ankles, the chain come so close now that it did begin to bind him, circling him around and around, the links piling up and climbing to his knees as a line of light opened in the darkness behind.

"And so you see," whispered a voice, that of Caylain the cleric. "And so you see what road you will travel, Dalamar Argent. A road of blood and darkness."

So he had seen, and though it seemed only an instant in passing, these visions had flowed over him, around him, and through him for twelve hours. His leaden limbs knew that, his knees shaking with exhaustion, his belly growling with hunger. His throat, dry as a desert, knew that.