Cold, white light shone down from the ceiling, motionless, allowing no shadow as it illuminated the vast hall. It spilled onto the twenty high-backed seats of polished wood, seventeen of those arranged in a semi-circle, three in crescent within that semi-circle. One chair, hewn of mighty granite, the gray shot through with veins of black, sat facing all. Firelight might waken the heart of the twenty mahogany chairs, bringing out the red gleams of polished wood. This light did not. Neither did it make the granite of the tallest, grandest chair in which would sit the Head of the Conclave of Wizards seem less cold than it was.
In this hall of chairs, the Heads of the Orders did not sit but ranged around pacing. The pale light made Par-Salian's robe seem like the dead-white of a funeral shroud, the black velvet of Ladonna's deep as moonless midnight, and like blood lately spilled the robe of Justarius, he who ruled the Order of the Red Robes. He went with a limping walk, for if some mages are not marked visibly by their Tests, others are.
"Ladonna, I've said it before, and I will again: You ask us to take a great risk by delaying our plan. The mage Dalamar has taken his Tests. By all accounts he's done well. What more do you want?"
Ladonna laughed, a low, throaty sound. Neither man mistook it for a sign of humor, this laughter like a growl. "Since when are you averse to risk, Justarius? Something new in the last hour?" His eyes narrowed, glinting with anger. She smiled, and this time not so fiercely. "I don't mind a risk, either, but I like a well-chosen one. Before we send the dark elf to Palanthas, I want him proven."
Justarius said nothing, still glaring. Into the silence, Par-Salian spoke.
"My lady," he said, "my lord. We waste time. We know what danger is brooding in Palanthas, and we have agreed what measure we will take against that. I am sure you agree, Justarius, that we dare not act precipitously. We must know that the tool we use in the Palanthas matter is strong and keen-edged. If we send the wrong man on our mission, we will not have a second chance to send another. Raistlin Majere grows stronger each day and, locked away in his tower-"
His tower. They winced, the lady of the dark robes and the lord of the red.
"Yes, his tower, though I like the sound of that no better than you do. What else to call it? He's shut himself up in there, no one who has tried to enter after him has gotten farther than his doorstep before dying, and not many of those have gotten even so far. Shall we pretend otherwise? No, we are all agreed that we must discover what he's up to, and we are agreed on the way we will do that, what tool we should employ. I say let Ladonna try out our tool. Let her use her dark elf in whatever cause she likes."
Justarius shook his head, his face clouded. He said nothing, not to disagree or agree.
Ladonna lowered her eyes, in courtesy veiling the gleam of triumph she knew must be shining there. Softly, she said, "Very well then, my lords. I thank you for your trust. I will do what I have planned, and I will let you know how well my plan turns out."
Regene of Schallsea stood in the doorway, her back to the jamb, her long legs crossed at the ankle. A studied pose, Dalamar thought as he looked up from the desk and the book he'd found lying there. A small book, this treatise on herb-craft was more of interest for the illustrations than for the outdated prescriptions in its text. Sunlight ran through her dark hair, spinning silver. She was the Regene of the forest, the hunting girl in leathers with her midnight hair bound back from her forehead by a white silk scarf. As he eyed her, so did Regene eye him. Neither found the other easy to read.
Dalamar flicked a faint mark of dust from the sleeve of his robe, smoothing the soft black wool, his fingers brushing the runes marked in silver embroidery on the hem. It was a finer robe than he'd ever worn, and the note he found folded upon the breast said it was a gift from Ladonna herself "to welcome you to the company of mages, Black Robe, Red Robe and White." Of softest wool, the robe sat comfortably on him, hanging from his shoulders as though the finest tailor in all Krynn had taken the measure of him in the night and swiftly sewn from moons rising to sun rising. The sleeve smoothed, he raised a brow, again eyeing his visitor.
"Aren't you concerned they might mistake you for a guest gone astray in that hunting gear?"
Blue eyes flashed, sharply bright. "No one mistakes me if I don't want them to, but you're right. Robes are the costume of the day here, and so robes I will wear." She raised her arms, graceful as a swan lifting in flight, and breathed a short phrase. The air around her sparkled, shimmering. Laughter rang in the chamber as she stood for the barest wink of time utterly disrobed-a glory of long alabaster limbs, rosy breasts and curving hips-then suddenly robed in flowing white, her hair again in two thick braids over her shoulders. She inclined her head. "Better?"
He looked at her, as though she were yet the alabaster woman, then shrugged. "As it pleases you."
"I've come," she said, "to show you the Tower, if you like. You are as welcome here now as the Master of the place himself. You might want to get to know it."
She'd come for more than that, he was certain. Her eyes were too keen, her expression too carefully guarded. She'd come to learn things about him. Whether she'd come in her own behalf or to satisfy the curiosity of others remained to be learned. Well enough. Let her look and watch. Let her try to see what she could uncover.
"I would like to tour the Tower with you, Regene of Schallsea." He picked up the book from his desk. "Perhaps we can start with the library?"
Regene shrugged, then she snapped her fingers. The book vanished out of Dalamar's hand, leaving only a warm tingling behind on his skin.
"No sense carrying it all that way. Now, come with me. We're quite proud of our Tower, and you'll enjoy seeing why."
His hand still warm from her magic, Dalamar followed Regene out of the guest chamber and into the wide reaches of a Tower of High Sorcery.
Magic moved all around, on the air, in the corridors, and in the chambers of the Tower. Its scent hung in every corner, clung to each tapestry on every wall, to the soft settles, to the pillows adorning the chairs, to the very stone, floor, and wall. Dalamar breathed it, filling his lungs with the fragrance. Mages, white and red and black, went and in and out of the vast records room where librarians worked to sort the ever-increasing piles of papers and books that seemed to breed in the Tower of High Sorcery-journals and diaries, old parchments penned two centuries earlier…
"We throw nothing away," Regene said, and she did not exaggerate. "Here in the Tower we keep every scrap that might one day be deemed important."
Row upon row of shelves and bookcases filled each of the records rooms on the first and second floor of the north tower. Mages went among them, some cataloging, some searching.
"What you see here on the first floor is only recently catalogued, the flotsam of the years just before the war and till now. Across the hall are records of ages past. We shrink the storage crates." She held out her palm, her blue eyes laughing. "Make them as small as my hand and unshrink them if we need to find something."
She took him from the first-floor records room and into the rear tower, telling him that this place was only a back door. "Or sometimes a mage who has died will lie in state here until we entomb him in the crypts below the Hall of Mages. Still, after all, the back door, isn't it?"