The little girl didn't think long on such complicated subjects. In any case, the Harp was not yet up, but something more interesting was in the sky. A long shape passed across the face of the silver moon, winged and sinuous.
"Look!" she cried. "Father, look! What is it? Oh! Oh! Has E'li come?"
The creature turned, banking wide over the city. The little girl gasped. Her father cried out in dread to recognize the creature as a blood red dragon, dark against the silver moon, its wings wide and streams of fire pouring from between fanged jaws.
"In E'li's name-!" the father cried. His invocation died upon his lips as the dragon swung low. Moonlight glittered on the battle harness of the rider and the wyrm. The light of red Lunitari glinted from one single point, the head of a spear. Blood ran cold in the elf staring up. His daughter's hand clutched his, but he did not feel it.
Throughout the city, bells began to ring, mournful tolling from the docks and the temples, alarmed booming from the Market and Guild Districts. On maps in every hall, in every tower, in the mind of any who had sketched one, it seemed that the distance between the Khalkists and Silvanost had suddenly shrunk, and the prayers of the best beloved of the gods had in them now notes of desperation.
"What spells do you have, Dalamar Argent?"
When Dalamar didn't answer at once, the cleric Tellin Windglimmer looked up from his pen-work and smiled encouragingly. A friendly smile, Dalamar decided, of the kind a lord is pleased to offer a servant if he's feeling generous.
"I have all the spells allowed to me, my lord," Dalamar said, lying smoothly and keeping any thought of his stolen studies and his hidden spellbooks far from his mind. He had seen, only this morning on his initial tour of the Temple's inner precincts, a cold corridor, a locked room round which only whispers hung. In there, behind sealed portals, lay the place where clerics could prepare the dread Circle of Darkness, that ceremony by which an elf was cast out from his kind and flung into exile. Murderers endured that shame, as did traitors and those caught worshiping other gods than the gods of Good or those mages found out in dark or neutral magic. The cold that crept out from beneath that door was like winter's own chill. Even in high summer a man walking there would shiver. Did Dalamar fear the cleric would guess or see some tell-tale trace of his guilt and find reason to condemn him? No. He kept those thoughts hidden from long practice, a habit he dared not break.
"Some of the spells I have learned, my lord, allow me to deal with animals, to befriend or defend against them. I have spells to charm appropriate to my teaching and some divination skills and skills with elements. I am adept at spells of protection and those having to do with weather, and I have made a special study of herbs as they pertain to the workings of magic. If you ask at House Mystic, you will hear that I am a mage of minor account." Now he did smile, a thin curling of his lips. "But even they will tell you I am one of some skill and talent."
Sunlight poured in through the wide windows of the Temple's scriptorium, great swaths of golden light, glittering on the long, sinewy form of a dragon, wings spread, jaws wide. Fangs of ivory, talons of gold, and scales of beaten platinum, here was an image of E'li, the Dragon's Lord himself. Somewhere in the deeps of the Temple, chants were being sung even now, in deep voices and high, the rhythm of them rolling forth and back.
From the might of the Dragon Queen, protect us, O E'li!
From her claws and rage, from her fury, defend us!
From the sway of the Dragon Queen, protect us, O E'li!
From her fire and sword, from her terror, defend us!
The light splashed across the red-tiled floor, across the broad marble table where Tellin worked, illuminating the mundane lists so they were as lovely as precious manuscripts. The cleric put down his pen, lifted the list he'd been making, and placed it atop a stack of others.
"I have asked in House Mystic," Tellin said, "and they make a good report of your skills."
"But not so good a report otherwise," Dalamar said.
Tellin shook his head. "In House Mystic they have nothing ill to say of you. In your own House, however…" He shrugged. "Well, you know as well as I what is being said of you now. You have, all in the space of a month, been confined to your master's hall and then cast out from it." He rose and walked around the long table. The hem of his white robe whispered on the stone floor. He folded his hands inside the sleeves of his robe, leveling a long blue stare at Dalamar.
A judging stare, Dalamar thought, a weighing look. Well, look as long as you like, my Lord Tellin. You will see what I allow you to see. And he made his eyes hard, his smile cool, challenging the cleric to see past those.
"It must be hard," Tellin said at last, his voice low and thoughtful, "it must be painful to feel such talent as you have running in you and not be allowed to use it more creatively than you have."
Dalamar stood still, startled. Without thinking, he hunched his shoulders a little, as though against intrusion. When Tellin smiled, the expression of one who is pleased to have hit a mark, he forced his muscles to relax. He would have to be careful around this one.
"Yes, I imagine it is hard," Tellin said. "But I hope you will be pleased to exercise your skill more freely here, Dalamar. And, I will see if I can convince House Cleric to teach you more."
Dalamar's breath caught in his lungs, a hitch he did not let Tellin see. "More, my lord? More of magic… why?"
Tellin shrugged. "Because I require you to have more. Look," he said, turning from the subject and back to the work table.
He swept aside a pile of blank parchment leaves and pulled another, older sheet from under the stack of records. He turned it so each could read it right side up. It was a map. Not all of Krynn did it show. The western lands of Solamnia in the north, Abanasinia in the south, the Isles of Northern and Southern Ergoth, of Cristyne and Sancrist, even the lands beyond Icewall Bay were absent. The maker of this map was interested only in Silvanesti and its near neighbors, and so the Silvanesti Forest looked like the center of the world. The Plains of Dust lay to the west, as did Thorbardin of the Dwarves beneath the Kharolis Mountains. The city of Tarsis lay south from there, and the lands of Estwilde and Nordmaar to the north. Across the Bay of Balifor lay Khur, Balifor, Goodlund, and beyond there the Blood Sea of Istar where, a long time ago, the kingdom of Istar had ruled the world of commerce and culture until the Cataclysm. Now there was only a great whirling maelstrom where that land had once been, a sunken ruin beneath the water and some few isles beyond where minotaurs lived and human pirates lurked.
"What do you know about the war, Dalamar?"
Curious, Dalamar took a closer step, and then another. He pointed to Nordmaar, to Goodlund and then Balifor. "Though everyone in the city seems to think there will be one, my lord, I know there already is one. It's been being fought for some time now, since Phair Caron swept into Nordmaar in the summer last year."
Tellin raised a brow, curious. "That's an odd way to put it. There have been treaties holding the Highlord back for some time now. War has not been imminent, and we have certainly not been in it."
"Do you think so?" Dalamar shrugged. "Well, most people do. But isn't it odd to think that we, of all the world, will be invisible to the Highlord, that her Dark Mistress will burn her way across Krynn and leave our land untouched? Yes, I know that we are the best beloved of the gods. One hears that all the time. That doesn't seem to matter as regard the treaties House Advocate made with Phair Caron. Those treaties are already ash, my Lord Tellin. And if treaties are ash, how long before the forest itself is burning?"