Chapter 15

True time settled over the forest, or what Dalamar reckoned must be true time. He had walked under skies where the sun showed only a time and season the maker of the magic wished it to show. Now shadows shifted on the high stone walls, moving by subtle degrees the patient eye knew how to detect. Light changed on the ground, deepening as the day aged, and this, too, the patient eye understood. The time was nearing toward sunset. As in the world he'd left to come here, the season was summer.

The patient eye, the patient soul, Dalamar stood outside the gate that was the only breach in the high black wall surrounding seven towers-nor was it much of a breach, for it was locked and shut tight. He wondered how he would go within.

All around him the Forest of Wayreth rustled. Doves murmured in the eaves of the towers. Wind sighed in the oaks outside the walls. Faintly, the musky scent of ligustrum drifted on the air, though where that hedge-climbing vine grew with its frothing flowers, he could not imagine. Something darted past on the ground. He turned to look, expecting to see that leading shadow, but he saw only a gray rabbit leaping into the brush. He returned to contemplation.

Seven towers loomed above the three high walls, one each at the point of the triangle made by the meeting of those walls, and four within the compound rising above all. The three at each corner where the walls met were obviously secondary towers. Two tall towers, one on the north side of the compound, one on the south, were separated by two smaller ones, fore and behind. A gate breached the wall, but it seemed to have no mechanisms for opening it, at least not on this side.

Dalamar went boldly to the wall, and the great age of the stone made itself known to him, the knowledge seeping into his bones. This was not common stone. Poets named stone "the bones of the earth," but Dalamar knew, standing there, that the stuff the wall was made of was truly that- part of the fabric, the essence of Krynn itself. Upon the walls he found many inscriptions. He went close to see them. Some he could read-magical inscriptions to make the wall strong, warnings to intruders, spells to keep out the prying eyes of any diviner using methods of Seeing-others he could not, though he had mastered three ancient scripts and knew somewhat of four more.

He touched the gate, and, as his fingertips brushed the wood and steel, the air around him changed again, as it had when the towers revealed themselves. This time he did not blink but watched to see what would happen.

The world did not fold, the air did not shimmer, nothing happened at all.

And then he found himself at once on the other side of the wall within the compound. He stood in a courtyard paved with gleaming gray stone, and before him rose the four towers.

"Welcome," said a voice, a woman's, low and laughing.

Dalamar turned swiftly and found himself looking into the eyes of a human woman, a mage in white robes whose hair lay in two thick black braids upon her shoulders. He knew her, but not by her robes. Here was his guide in the forest, betrayed by her sapphire eyes.

"Which," she said, "is the Tower of High Sorcery? You're wondering, aren't you?"

Dalamar said he wasn't wondering that at all. He said he'd reckoned that already. "They are all the Tower. It is as with runes-the name of a rune stands for more than the shape of it. It seems the name 'Tower of High Sorcery' stands for more than the shape of one structure."

"Impressive," she said, but her expression, faintly amused, said something else. Precocious would have been the polite word. Cocky was the word she was thinking. "Come with me."

Dalamar followed her closely, not willing to let her lose him in here as she had done in the forest. With each step he took it seemed that the compound became more and more crowded, filling up with mages of all Orders. Some went in groups, dwarves and humans and elves, all talking. Most of the elves he saw were white robed, and none who passed him seemed to care that he wore the dark robe of exile. Other mages walked singly, head down and focused on some inner conversation. One, a dwarf whose robes were as dark as Dalamar's own, looked up when he passed. Dalamar felt his glance like two burning points of fire, and yet he saw no eyes at all within the shadow of the dwarf's hood.

"Oh, him," said the woman with the sapphire eyes, "don't mind him."

She said it, but Dalamar heard a kind of lean chuckle in her voice, as though she meant exactly the opposite. Be careful of him? Pay attention to him? That he could not determine.

The sound of the mages' voices was the hum of a hive, the colors of their robes like a swirl of pennons. What seemed most remarkable to him was that White Robes and Red, even Black, seemed to have no trouble being in each other's company. In Tarsis and most of the world without, White Robes stayed together, mixing rarely with Red and never with those of his own Order.

"It isn't like that here," she said. "Here, we leave all the baggage on the front stoop, as it were. Here, we don't care which of the three magical children one or the other of us honors. A White robed elf will speak to you as graciously as though you wore snowy samite. Outside, another matter. In here, peace. You come in here, you come to study, to reflect, to breathe the air with mages and speak the arcane language people don't understand who do not hear magic singing in their blood. Or," she said as she stopped before the Foretower, "or you come here to Test." She cocked her head. "That's a flung you'll soon know about, isn't it, Dalamar Argent? The rigors of the Tests?"

In the warm air of summer, a chill touched him, not because she knew he'd come here seeking to take the Tests of High Sorcery. It was a fair guess and an accurate one. It was the use of his old name that chilled him, sending him suddenly, painfully to the last day he'd seen Silvanesti. Not even the smoky autumn wine could do that.

"I am," he said, "not Dalamar Argent. If you send to Silvanost and ask them there, you will learn that Dalamar Argent does not exist. And they should know. They keep meticulous records."

She shook her head as if to say, "But of course Dalamar Argent exists." Aloud, though, she said, "Forgive my mistake. Let us introduce ourselves, then-and properly. I am Regene of Schallsea, and sometimes I'm not what you think I am. You are…?"

"I am Dalamar Nightson," he said, "and, yes, I have come here to take the Tests."

"Deadly things, those Tests," she said, as one would say, "Pesky things, those bees." She led him across the compound and past the knots of mages talking. "There is much you will want to see of our Tower of High Sorcery, but little you will have access to just now. You are a visitor, a guest. We will see if that changes after your Tests. Come inside, if you are well and truly ready."

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her what she knew about testing, but he did not. She turned to see if he was following, and he caught a glimpse of her sapphire eyes. Then, in that moment at the end of the long summer day, they reminded him not of the young woman laughing on the boulder, but of the dragon, cold and fierce, carved in the ivory handle of the knife she'd been tapping on her knee. "I am dangerous," said those eyes, "and don't mistake me." He gestured as a man does to usher a lady forth, and he followed her into the foretower.

The bright light of day's end vanished, leaving him blinking and blind, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the cool darkness within. In moments they did, and he saw the place was but a windowless room, round, with one entrance behind and two doors to the right and left. A Red-robed mage, stooped with age, his white hair thin on his scalp, stood in the exact center of the room.