"Is she so powerful, then, my lady, that you fear she will tip the balance in the battle between the gods?"

"She is powerful and growing stronger. She has the favor of Her Dark Majesty, and she has Tramd to make such magic for her as the world has not lately seen. He is stronger now than he was when Phair Caron was his Highlord. Some things he has learned in his wanderings, if not the one thing he seeks." She paused, a thoughtful silence in which she allowed him to see her considering. "And other things are happening, far away in Palanthas. Another force… well, we can talk about that in proper time. For now, we have gone far afield. Would you like to undertake a mission for me, Dalamar Nightson?"

Dalamar's pulse quickened. She had the look on her of one who is about to bestow a boon. He could guess what boon that was. "My lady, only name it. I will do it."

"Kill the dwarf. Not the avatar, that is but inspired clay. When it falls, the mind of the man flies homeward again back to Karthay and the ruin that is his body. Kill that ruin when there is no avatar for his mind to fly back to, and you kill the dwarf himself." She laughed then, for she saw his eyes shining, the eagerness leaping. "I thought you would find this mission to your liking. But understand: By undertaking my mission, you risk the ire of Her Dark Majesty. Tramd is part of her work."

Now Dalamar's pounding heart pumped blood as cold as snow melt. No matter, no matter. Revenge lay within his reach. Close at hand, too, lay a chance to stand high in Ladonna's favor. For these things Dalamar would risk his life and count the gamble a good one.

"My lady, I don't seek the Dark Queen's ire, but I will not be paralyzed by fear of it."

"It is my hope that you will not be," Ladonna murmured wryly. "And my hope that you will remember that dragon, who suns himself by day on the peaks and wards the mage in his helplessness by night."

He lifted his head then, looking her boldly in the eye. "I will not forget. Nor will I forget that it is your hope that I will not fail this test you set me."

Ladonna's expression showed surprise, only a flicker. "A test? Have you not had enough of tests?"

"It seems not."

"Well, well. You are a keen one, aren't you? Yes, this is another test. Are you eager to know what lies beyond the test, should you succeed?"

Dalamar shrugged.

She looked at him again, again to search. When she had done so, she said, "Palanthas lies beyond the test."

Palanthas, where the only other surviving Tower of High Sorcery lay, surrounded by Shoikan Grove and a host of undead and ghosts and worse to discourage trespassers. No one had been in Palanthas's Tower since the fall of Istar. Sealed with a curse, the curse itself bound by the blood of the Master of that tower, a mage who flung himself from the highest battlement and fell, impaled, upon the iron fence far below. Since that time, no one had entered the Tower of High Sorcery at Palanthas.

"And what is in Palanthas for me, my lady?"

"No," she said, "I will tell you none of that. There we stray into matters best discussed by the Master of this Tower. Go relieve the world of that dwarf, then we will deal in questions and answers."

"Very well," he said, his eyes still on hers. "I will do that, my lady."

She smiled then, and it was not a warm smile. In that instant, the interview was over. She turned on her heel and walked away. The dark sweep of the hem of her robe whispering to the floor was the only sound in the high wide chamber. Upon that floor her illusion still sat, the frozen sea and the towers of the citadel upon the mountains of Karthay, and the dragon like an image forged in blue steel.

In the hour of dawn, as the first rosy fingers of light spread out upon the sea, shining on whitecaps and gilding the wings of gulls as they sailed over the heights where the water met the cliffs of northmost Karthay, a dwarf mage roused from his tortured sleep in the castle all folk around knew as the Citadel of Night. The air in his chamber hung thick with incense, fragrances meant to cover the darkly sweet stench of death and rotting emanating from his body. He cared nothing for what smelled sweet or ill. These perfumes he allowed for the sake of those who tended him, the servants who fed and cleaned and clothed him.

He had only one care, only one purpose, and the stench of his long, long dying never diverted his mind from it. The mage did not move, for he could not. His limbs were useless to him, long ago withered, his muscles contracted and unavailing, the flesh shrunken and juiceless. None would think, looking at him, that here was a dwarf out of Thorbardin who had once been thick-chested and so strong of arm and leg that in all the contests of strength he entered, no other dared hope for honor and prize. Those arms and legs were gone from him, just as if they had been cut from his body with an axe. Neither had Tramd eyes to open upon waking. Those were long ago taken from him. Plucked out. Burned out. Perhaps they'd been squeezed out. Sometimes his memory said one thing, sometimes it said another. Many long years had passed since his Tests in the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth, many since he'd walked the winding paths through the unstill forest and found the gates to the Tower. In those days, Her Dark Majesty, Takhisis Queen of Night, had not roused the dragons from their long slumber. In those days, the mortal races of Krynn did not dream, even in the most terrible of their nightmares, that the Dark Queen would spread her wings wide over the world again, once more to set out upon her quest to rule the hearts and souls of all races, to feel the world tremble as every man and woman bent the knee to her.

Thus, this morning as every morning, Tramd woke blindly, yet not in blindness at all. Though the magic of his Test had taken his physical sight from him, that same magic had given a kind of sight back. With his mind, he reached out and lifted to life the avatar all those in the Tower of High Sorcery knew as Tramd. Most like his own body, when it was hale and whole, was this avatar. The dark beard, the barrel chest, the arms thick and strong. Sometimes he stood before mirrors, gazing at the avatar through the avatar's own eyes, and thought nothing had changed, nothing since the day he first walked into the Tower all those years before. Sometimes, fleetingly… and then the impression faded before the reality known only to the dwarf who lay rotting on his bed of silks and satin, ever-dying, never dying.

This morning he gazed in no mirror. He let the avatar do nothing but clothe itself and relieve the pressure of its swollen bladder. He did not let it feed itself, though so closely linked were the senses of the avatar and the mind of the mage that its hunger was as his own.

He sent it out into the corridors of the Tower, sent it walking in the first light of day into the garden in the rear courtyard. Past beds of herbs it went, speaking to no one. None of those who tended the plants seemed to notice. Tramd was not known for his congeniality, not known for his charm.

At the command of the mage, the avatar went to that outer tower that faced north, into the first-floor laboratory where he had been for the past week, laboring over experiments of a lifting nature, magics with a winged bent, and those which made as nothing the pull of gravity. He kept no record of his work there, made no note at all but in his own mind. These were the most secret magics, spells he worked for the Blue Lady, spells that had come to him in the ecstasy of prayer, the praise-words he used to glorify Takhisis. Those spell words he put together here, with knowledge gained from the ancient texts found in the Tower's library. He fitted them one to another as a poet fits together the words of his lays. Word to word, line to line, he sought to shape a spell that would make the Blue Lady, the Highlord Kitiara, into the flashing sword in the cruel right hand of the goddess of the Abyss. If at last he crafted the magic she desired, he would have-so promised the Highlord-that which he most longed for: A body whole and hearty, restored to him by the Dark Queen herself.