Down into the crypts she took him, among the dead of the ages, sorcerers and wizards whose names had long been sung in legend, others whose quiet lives left not even a whisper to echo after them. Beyond and below lay the dungeons, dark, damp chambers where no chains hung from the walls and no doors barred the cells. And why should they? Could not the mages of the Tower command magic to hold those they wanted held? Out into the rear courtyard she took him, and when Dalamar saw the gardens there, filled with flowers, with fruit trees and vegetable patches and herb beds, she noted the look on him, the swift shadow of longing, as though he thought of fair Silvanost, that place to which he might never return.
"Come," she said, pointing to the three towers crowning each junction of the high black walls. "If I wagered that you thought those were guard towers, would I lose?"
He looked up, the touch of a fragrant herb still soft on his fingers. "Yes," he said, "you would. What use would this place have for guards and watch-walks?"
None, of course, but the Tower had every use for laboratories well removed from the central towers. Powerful magics were worked in those places, such experiments of sorcery that would turn white the hair of the downiest youth and wake the first, most terrible nightmare of the hoariest elder. "And do worse than that," Regene said. "I won't take you there now; they are all in use. But you'll have your chance at them later, when you find the need."
Last, Regene took him into the south tower by back stairs beyond the level of the Hall of Mages and into the libraries. In that place of wonders she let him roam, watching as he went from aisle to aisle, wandering in and out among shelves of books until, in the stacks far back in the shadowy corners where the oldest tomes were kept, he crossed the path of a dwarf. Silence stood between them, a moment when absent nods might have been exchanged before one moved on or the other did. Their eyes might never have met, and yet they did. In that moment of meeting Regene knew they recognized each other.
The dwarf laughed, a harsh, hard bark. His lips twisted in a sneering smile, with exaggerated care he stroked his beard, that gesture of insult clear to even those who were not born in Thorbardin. You are no man, you are but a beardless boy and hardly worth my notice.
Dalamar Nightson stood unmoving, a mage who might have been carved out of obsidian. Unmoving, he was not unmoved. Then his hand twitched, his right hand, his power hand, as though he were preparing to cast a killing spell. Just for an instant, Regene wondered if the charge of hospitality that lay on all who entered the Tower would be broken, breached for the first time in the memory of the oldest mage here. Dalamar lifted his head, his eyes cold, his expression stony. Some communication passed between them, a thing Regene could not sense, for they spoke mind to mind, mage to mage. The dark elf turned, and he walked away. When he returned to her side, Regene felt the anger in him not as fire but as ice. Her blood ran cold. She slipped her hands into the wide sleeves of her robe to hide their sudden shaking.
Still, she suspected that what she sought to hide, he recognized. He did not speak of it, however, or acknowledge it in any way. It was as though her reaction couldn't possibly matter to him, to laugh at, to soothe, to scorn. With careful politeness Dalamar said, "Thank you for the tour, Regene. I must leave now, for I have an appointment I'd rather not miss."
She glanced into the shadows to where the dwarf had been. He was gone now. Her eyes on those shadows, she told Dalamar she would gladly guide him to his destination.
"No," he said, "I can find my way." He bowed, as gallantly as any elf-lord in Silvanost, but his voice was chill. "I bid you good day."
Dismissed, she let him go. When he was gone, she went into the stacks where he had met the dwarf mage. She extended her senses, intuitive and magical, but read nothing there of what had passed between them more than the last rippling of scorn and rage. What, she wondered, would move the dark elf out from his cool silence into rage? She could not imagine, and she did not want to waste time doing that. She was known to the mages of the Tower as a clever young woman. "Long-headed," said Par-Salian of her, meaning she had a fine memory and a keen wit sometimes overlooked in the light of more charming talents of dressing and undressing in illusion. To the observant, those who knew how to look past all her pretty faces, Regene of Schallsea was also known for a young woman of ambition. She hoped-not unrealistically-that one day she would sit as a member of the Conclave of Wizards and have a place in the Hall of Mages among the twenty-one who steered the course of High Sorcery in Krynn.
Long-headed, keen-witted, she knew there was something about this dark elf, something that attracted the attention of the Master of the Tower. Par-Salian had sent her out into his Guardian Forest to lead Dalamar Nightson through the winding ways. "Don't make it too easy," he had said, "but get him here."
She had not asked why. No one would dare such a question, but she was curious. This one, this dark elf, a self-taught mage who had been nothing but a servant in Silvanost, seemed interesting to the Master of the Tower. It would serve ambition well to keep near him, to watch him, and to see what she might learn.
Through the wonders of the Tower, Dalamar walked insensible. He passed mages and he did not see them. All the scents of magic that had charmed him no longer touched him. He walked through the Tower, but in his mind, in his soul, he walked through the Silvanesti Forest, through the woods on the border where a dragon died screaming, where the cleric Tellin Windglimmer lay, writhing and choking on his last, futile prayer. All around him, the forest burned while he looked into the black depths of a red dragon helm and saw the burning eyes of a minion of Phair Caron, a mage who had come to kill the illusion crafters.
In his blood, fury ran. Fire! Fire! Fire in the woods! The cry rang in him, tolling like a bell. In bitter memory, Dalamar looked again upon the death-stilled corpse, the body of Lord Tellin, who had not been, after all, the hardest master he'd served. He had been, like so many other elves that season, a man who did not normally think of himself as a warrior. A cleric used to softer days and easier ways, he had taken his courage and gone north to fight in the hope of freeing the homeland from the terror that savaged their borders, in hope of realizing a dream he should not ever have entertained…
And did Dalamar think his own dream killed, murdered on the border that day? Back then, he might have thought so. Now, he didn't. Now, he knew that the roads he walked, the paths of the world leading through wild places, through port cities and ruined towers, even around the rim of Neraka and into Tarsis, were roads fate had guided him to walk. He was, now and then, a child of the Dark Son, that god who best loved secrets and magic. He was Nuitari's. He would have learned that, one way or another. He would have paid for his devotion in the coin of exile, later if not sooner. His rage, the fury in his heart, was for the maiming of his homeland, that forest more precious to him now than it had been when he could freely run the tended paths. He raged for the city, fair Silvanost, more lovely in memory than when he could wake in the morning to the sound of birdsong, the scent of the Thon-Thalas running, the voices of the city, the lords and their ladies, the bakers, the carters, the butcher-boys and the seamstresses as they went in and out the houses of the high folk.
In the library of this mighty Tower, he had looked into the eyes of one who had taken part in the rape of Silvanesti. Eight years ago! It seemed like the merest breath of time since those fiery eyes had glared at him from a red dragon helm. Then the eyes had been those of a man tall as a barbarian Plainsman. Now they were the eyes of a mountain dwarf, a dark mage who, looking at him, had known him and dismissed him as one of no consequence.