Bold, he thought as he reached for her cup and filled it again. She took it, her fingers warm against his. He settled into the chair opposite her. He had not been here since spring, yet it seemed the cushions had only that morning felt the weight of him, the impression of his back still comfortably molded from months of long sitting with books, with thinking, with the dangerous dreams of mages when he fell asleep in the light of the three moons.

"You are a fool," he said quietly. He wasn't certain of that, but he liked to test. "You come here as though you expect good greeting, as though you know me well and can count on civil treatment."

Regene shrugged. She held up the cup of wine, looked around at how comfortably she was situated, and said, "If this is rough greeting, I will likely survive."

Dalamar sipped his wine, the smoky vintage that whispered of Silvanesti in autumn. He closed his eyes and saw the golden forest, heard the shivering of aspen leaves before the first breath of winter. He thought of the forest as he had last seen it, savaged, ruined, the trees falling dead, the forest home to green dragons. Silvanesti had not changed so much in three years, so said all the rumors and news. The prince of the Qualinesti had wed Alhana Starbreeze, and nominally the two elven nations were one. No doubt it all looked promising when discussed in the parlors of the powerful, but the forest yet lay in torment, that torment begun because Lorac Caladon had not the faith in his gods to withstand the onslaught of Phair Caron's dragonarmy. How good it would feel to wring the life from the one of her minions who had survived Lorac's Nightmare!

"I am going," he said, the taste of Silvanesti on his lips, "to take a bit of personal revenge. You need not concern yourself about it."

Regene arched a brow, settling back in the couch. She drew her legs up closer, and a bare ankle peeked out from beneath the hem of her robe. "So Ladonna called you to her and bade you go and find yourself some revenge? I didn't know the lady brokered vengeance."

"When it suits her."

"Your, ah, bit of personal revenge," Regene murmured, "would that have to do with the dwarf Tramd?"

"Yes."

She nodded, satisfied in her reckoning. "Then that's where the storm is." Swiftly, she leaned forward. The hem of her robe slipped up the calf of her leg, revealing white smooth skin. "Let me tell you something, Dalamar Nightson-I know you are bound on some mission for Ladonna. Perhaps for Par-Salian as well." When he shook his head as though to deny, she stopped him. "Don't bother to say I'm wrong. I'm right, and the more you deny, the more certain I am. I want to go with you, whatever it is you're planning, I want to be part of it. Listen! I don't want your glory, I don't want anything more than to be part of what you do. I am young in my craft, but I am strong."

Regene sat back a moment to think. He let her have it, intrigued.

"I am young," she said, "but I am well regarded. There is a thing I want, a goal I have, and I don't know how it will harm you, but I can imagine it would help you. If you take the long view."

"The long view of what?"

"Of your life, Dalamar. I hope-and I don't hope without reason-that one day I'll sit among the Conclave of Wizards. But there are deeds that need doing before that will happen, a reputation to build, a body of work to which I may point before I can think to put myself in nomination."

And a life to live, he thought. They are such headlong fools, these short-lived humans, burning their candles as fast as they might, flinging themselves into a future they imagine and so trust will be. This is the one, he thought, who lectures me about long views.

"You make a nice plan for yourself," he said, forbearing to smile. "Have you noted that they are all well and strong, those wizards of the White Robes who sit in the Conclave?"

Regene nodded. "They are, for which I am grateful." Her sapphire eyes sparked with silent laughter. "Their continued good health provides me with plenty of time to do what I must in order to be what I will."

Dalamar eyed the white robe over the rim of his cup, the mage like a swan sitting comfortably upon his couch. She had many skills beyond illusion-crafting. He knew that because he'd checked. She went high in the regard of the head of her Order, and that meant in the regard of the Master of the Tower himself. She was not his ward, and neither was she his student. Perhaps her standing was better, for Par-Salian used her for his little missions, such as her turn as a guide in the Forest of Wayreth. This, more than anything he knew about her, recommended her to him.

Outside, the breeze grew stronger. Beneath the ever-present smell of garbage a fresher, cleaner scent ran. In this late summer season, when none could be expected, the breeze spoke of rain. Dalamar rose and lifted the window shade. The freshening air sent streamers of smoke drifting out from his front room and into the bedroom.

"The weather looks to turn foul," he said. "Have you a place to stay in the city? I'd be pleased to show you to a good inn."

Regene's eyes followed the small gray thread of smoke, the incense drifting through the arched doorway and into the room where she saw, just in glimpsing, a bed hung with soft netting, the standard drapery of a Tarsian summer rife with black flies. He smiled, a lean humorless twitch of his lips, and he made his choice in that moment. He would take her offer and take her with him to Karthay. Why not? She had her ambitions, and he sensed they would not clash with his own. He rose, took their cups and the bottle of wine, and held it to the light to see how much remained. He then tucked it under his arm, walked toward the bedroom, and said, "Come along, then."

She followed, and in the mirror on the wall he saw her satisfied smile. Later that day, as the sun set in gold over Tarsis, he watched her sleeping and touched her cheek, once in magic. Only that light touch did he need to read what she dreamed, to know what she felt and how deep and strong was her ambition. She would do, he thought, as a companion on this journey. He thought there was some symmetry to the two of them, White Robe and Black, putting their hand to this task, which, when it succeeded, would prevent the Blue Lady from waging her war and tearing apart the fragile balance five years of blood and grief had established.

He lay back, drowsy, listening to the sound of the city growing still at day's end. He thought this task Ladonna had set him would not be so hard in the doing.

In the morning, they woke, the dregs of wine in their cups, the memories of love-making still on their bodies, and they went to find breakfast. Fed, they returned to his rooms, and he told her of Tramd and the avatars and of Ladonna's charge to eliminate him.

"A political assassination?" Regene professed herself surprised that the resources of the Tower would be put to such a use.

"It would surprise me, too," he said, "if that were what's happening. It isn't."

She listened in silence when he told her the fullness of his charge, the intent and the hoped-for outcome. He did not tell her what lay beyond the task accomplished. He made no mention of Palanthas. What, after all, could he say about it? He knew only one more thing about the Tower of High Sorcery at Palanthas than he'd known when he'd left Wayreth. On the Old King's Road, two days before he returned to Tarsis, he had learned in a tavern that the Tower at Palanthas was not shut up and sealed with a curse. It had been-no story lied about that-but it was not now. A mage had entered it, one who had worn red robes in his time and changed them for black after the War of the Lance. That mage had walked through the horrors of Shoikan Grove as a lord walks in his peaceful garden at dawn. As a lord into his palace, he had entered into the Tower. Once inside, he forbade entry to all who approached, and Dalamar did not doubt this made the Conclave of Wizards uneasy. The mage was Raistlin Majere, he of the hourglass eyes and the golden skin. He had not gone out of the story of Krynn as an old Wildrunner once had suggested. He was, it seemed, enlarging his place in the tale.