Chapter Seven

With words softly whispered, words to slip from the memory as soon as they were heard, the Lord of the Tower of High Sorcery lighted the candles scattered about his chamber, those on the table, those on his desk, those set upon small stone shelves built into the walls themselves. Light sprang, shadows scurried back, and Valin stood calmly, watching the change.

"Welcome again, sir mage," Dalamar said, smiling a cool, humorless smile. "You grace me with your company."

That much Valin didn't believe. So said his silence, grimly held. He knew his strengths, and he had long ago reckoned his weaknesses, so he had the good sense not to fall into wordplay with one so powerful as Dalamar the Dark.

"Thank you for seeing me, my lord," he murmured and said no more.

Dalamar eyed him, toe to top, a disdainful smile upon his lips. "Well, of course. It is a pleasure." He gestured to the same chairs they'd occupied a few nights earlier. "Please make yourself comfortable."

This time, though, Valin noted, he offered no wine, no banter, no pretense at pleasantry. He kept his place, unwilling to let himself become comfortable here. He must be on his guard always.

"What is this game you're playing with Crysania?" Valin asked bluntly.

Slender shoulders shrugged casually. Dalamar ignored the question.

"I must admit, you are not what I expected." Narroweyed, Dalamar scrutinized the human. Again the slender shoulders rose and fell as some opinion was confirmed through observation.

Whatever the opinion, it mattered not at all to Valin.

"I repeat, what are you trying to do to Crysania?"

Dalamar made himself comfortable in a low, deep chair. He gestured again for Valin to do the same. Again Valin refused. The dark elf's eyes flared.

"I said sit."

Valin did, almost before he could think.

"Now," Dalamar said, his voice low and easy, "the matter of the Dragon Stones is between your mistress and me, nothing I choose to discuss with you." Candlelight rose and fell, flickering on the walls and the ceiling. The dark elf sat a long moment in silence, his fingers steepled, his eyes closed. Then, when Valin had thought himself forgotten, Dalamar said, "But I thought perhaps we might be able to help each other in other ways."

Valin sat straight in his chair, unbending in his watchfulness.

"Help each other? How? I was not aware that I needed your help. I certainly never imagined that you would need mine."

"You are mistaken, sir mage, and so you can't see that we want the same thing, you and I. Because we do. We are in a unique position to help each other. And Crysania."

Outside the window, soft moanings sounded, low cries to chill the blood. Here were the sounds of Shoikan Grove at night, the daemons, the ghosts, the terrors that warded the tower at all times. Valin swallowed once, then again, but when he spoke, he made no attempt to hide the suspicion in his voice.

"Assuming that we do want the same thing, my lord, why would you want to help me or Crysania?"

Dalamar nodded, as though at the fair question of an apt student. "Well said. I want to know more about the Dragon Stones. I will admit…" He let his voice trail in feigned reluctance to speak further. "Well, I had hoped that I might be able to use them myself. But I could not."

"Because one of the stones is good?" Valin guessed.

Dalamar nodded.

Valin sat forward. "Then how do you imagine Crysania will be able to use the Dragon Stones? According to your legends, one of them is evil. Yes, she is no mage as we are, and so the touch of that stone wouldn't harm her as it would me, but she is still a cleric of Paladine. The touch of that stone would do her no good." He paused, then said, "The goddess you think she will be able to contact once those stones are rejoined is not one who loves her. Nor one she loves."

Dalamar looked at him, an inscrutable expression on his face. "She is sending you away, is she not?"

Valin started at the sudden change in subject. His face flushed in anger and embarrassment. "How do you know that?"

A small stone bowl sat upon the table at Dalamar's side. Water, clear and still, sat within. The dark elf let his fingers trail across the still surface, watching the ripples run out to the sides.

"I know," he said at last, "because I know your lady. I know…" He paused, staring at the colorful rug that lay beneath their feet. Yet his mind seemed far away, as if whatever held his attention was far away. When he looked up again, a small light gleamed in his eyes, of laughter perhaps. "So that you will understand, I will tell you a story you might be interested to hear. I first knew Crysania during the War of the Lance."

Valin swallowed, shifting carefully in his chair. He had heard something about this. There were few on Krynn who had not heard it in some form or another, the story of Crysania's adventures during the Blue Lady's War.

His eyes upon the rug again, his thoughts upon some other time, Dalamar spoke. His was a charming voice when he wanted it to be. He wished it so now.

"In those days, your Revered Daughter was new to her faith. But even as young as she was, she was strong and powerful, absolute in her conviction. She was one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen, and one of the coldest."

Valin opened his mouth to protest what seemed to him a slander. He snapped it shut just as quickly as Dalamar continued.

"Like ice she was. As cold and beautiful as a glacier. As unreachable. Or so she seemed to me. And yet there was fire in the ice. The woman is made of contradictions. She told me once that she had an unusual ambition, a sense of purpose, that burned like a flame in her. Her goal was to bring goodness to the world. She felt that she had been called upon to confront and destroy all evil. So she went into the Abyss."

Valin nodded. This he knew, yet even so, the name of that dark and terrible place still had the power to make him shiver.

Dalamar seemed not to notice. "You have heard of the mage Raistlin Majere?"

"I have," Valin said. "Who has not?"

A look passed over the dark elf's face, one to make Valin think of a man in the grip of old hauntings. "Very few. With Raistlin accompanying her, Crysania passed through the portal. Raistlin went to find the power to rule the world. Crysania went to find the strength to bring the world goodness."

Dalamar looked up, caught Valin's glance, and held it.

"Now, a fine mage such as you are surely knows that the portal has been sealed by my own hand, but at the time, the portal was thought to be impassable. No seal warded it because the ancients, thinking to make impassable what they could not seal, had set a spell upon the gate. To gain entrance required a Wizard of the Black Robe and a cleric of Paladine, working as one. They thought it impossible that one so dark-hearted and one so good would work together, trusting each other implicitly."

Silence settled, long and deep. Not even the moans from without could be heard. Then Dalamar smiled, a cold gesture from a chill heart. In that smile, Valin understood that the dark elf knew a secret none but he and Crysania knew. He knew of a silent, secret kiss, stolen and cherished in the temple gardens.

"You see," Dalamar said, "the ancients had not considered the folly of the human heart."

It was all Valin could do to keep his eyes upon Dalamar's, to keep himself from looking away like a schoolboy caught doing what he should never have done. He managed, but the effort left him sweating and cold.

Dalamar's voice softened, as if he knew Valin's pain. "Thus Crysania went into the Abyss with the man she loved. Raistlin Majere."

"Raistlin!" Valin had heard the stories about the connection between Raistlin and Crysania. Tales of Raistlin were told around campfires and whispered wherever mages gathered. The most often told, the darkest and the most wonderful, was that Raistlin Majere had fought the Dark Queen and prevented her from entering the world, at the sacrifice of his own life.

Dalamar trailed his hand in the water again, making ripples, watching them expand.

"She never told you this, did she?"

Valin admitted it.

"Well, I suppose it's a thing you should know about her. Her faith and strength and Raistlin's power took them through the portal. Her faith and strength protected Raistlin. And when he had no more use of her, he abandoned her to die there."

Valin groaned. He'd heard that, he knew it, but to hear it now, in this place, was to hear it for the first time.

"As you know," Dalamar said, gauging Valin's reaction and smiling over what he reckoned, "the lady was near death when Caramon brought her back through the portal."

"Raistlin's brother," Valin murmured. These names were well known throughout Krynn. Raistlin and Caramon, Tanis Half-Elven, these were among the nine Heroes of the Lance, men and women who had plumbed the depths of their souls and found the courage to battle the Dark Queen and save the world.

"Yes." Dalamar nodded, remembering. "Tanis Half-Elven and I were here, on this side of the portal, when Caramon came back through. It was, in the end, his love that saved his brother. It can be said—it has been said—that his love saved us all. Some even say Raistlin's love had a part in that salvation, his love for his brother Caramon and for Crysania. Raistlin faced the Dark Queen alone, holding her at bay until Caramon could bring Crysania to safety."

Valin sat still, enchanted by the tale.

"And then Caramon sealed the portal with the Staff of Magius. I was near death when they came out. When it was over, when they were trying to save her and me, Tanis said Crysania wept and told of fires and burning, how her flesh was burnt from her bones, the bones burnt black and splitting in the tremendous heat."

Valin closed his eyes, trying to shut out those words, trying not to imagine the pain his lady had endured. And yet he could not close his heart or the grief that raged there.

"She said this," Dalamar sighed. "But there was not a mark on her. Except for one thing."

Valin opened his eyes. "Except that she went into the portal sighted and came out blind."

"Yes. Her faith and that of her clerics helped her to heal from the experience, but nothing could return the sight the gods themselves had taken. I sealed the portal, and no one has passed through it since."

He rose to his feet, an incongruous smile on face. "Well done of me, don't you think?"

Tears stung Valin's throat. How childish he had been, how innocent, how foolish, to think himself worthy of Crysania! How she must have laughed—but, no, she wouldn't laugh at him. She wouldn't even pity him. She had known the great legends in the flesh. She had compassion enough to save the world. He swallowed, afraid that his voice would not serve him when he spoke.

"What does this have to do with what is happening now?" he managed to ask.

Dalamar crossed the room, took a delicate blue crystal cup from the sideboard, and filled it with wine. He made a show of offering the same to Valin, but Valin shook his head.

"What does this old tale have to do with what is happening now? With wars and Dragon Stones and the strange silence of the gods? Can you not guess, sir mage? Well, I will spare you the effort. You asked how it is I can imagine that Crysania will be able to use the Dragon Stones if the goddess they bring her is Takhisis herself." He lifted his cup as in salute. "I tell you I imagine that anyone who has in her the strength Crysania has can do almost the impossible."

Valin almost believed that himself, and so his next question had not to do with that. His next question was the one Crysania herself had been asking. "Tell me, my lord, what do you think to gain by giving a Revered Daughter of Paladine the chance to speak with the Dark Queen?"

Dalamar shrugged as though the question were of no importance. "Don't worry about that, sir mage. I'll never tell you, and you will never guess. But listen! You know her; you know she will go. She must, for she will not be searching to speak with my queen. She will be searching, always and ever, for a chance to speak with her own god. So let us get down to business, the business for which I called you here."

A chill ran in ripples along Valin's spine. Dalamar's mask of graciousness fell from him, leaving his face white, his eyes like a midnight sky.

"I can make it so that she will never send you away," Dalamar said gravely.

Valin's heart jumped. "But what could you do that would make her love me? And even if you could cast such a spell, I would not want to force her—" He stopped himself, his feelings too raw.

Dalamar laughed, a sound from dark caverns. "I did not say I would make her love you, desert mage. Only that I could fix it so she would not send you away. Although it isn't impossible to think that with my help, you might find a way to earn Crysania's love."

It was all he wanted! Everything he dreamed of, the very thing he worked for!

His voice hoarse, his throat dry, Valin said, "What could you do to… to give me this chance?"

Dalamar settled comfortably in his chair and set the blue crystal cup on the table beside him. "I told Crysania I would pick the guide for the trip to Neraka. You could be that guide."

Valin's hope sank. "How? She has already said she will not take me."

"I will cast a spell to alter your appearance."

Valin shook his head. On his feet now, he prowled the room, restless suddenly, wishing he hadn't come here and certain he must not make a deal with this mage. Beyond that certainty, however, lay something else—his urgent heart, his love for the Revered Daughter of Paladine. Like the ancients, he had not reckoned on the foolishness of the human heart. Dalamar knew this. Valin understood now how completely his love bound him to this path he now stood ready to take. Still, he objected. He must try to find a hole in Dalamar's plan, all the while hoping there was none.

"Make me look like someone else?" he said. "Crysania won't be taken in by that trick."

The dark elf smiled, almost benignly. "Not make you look like someone else, mage. Like something else. Let Crysania send you away. I will give her a gift for her travels. A tiger. A white tiger of the desert to take your place, to serve as her guardian and companion."

Valin stopped his prowling. Behind him gaped the window, and beyond lay Shoikan Grove, a place as filled with traps as this tower chamber seemed to be.

"Of course," added Dalamar, "there are drawbacks. You will have only a limited ability to communicate. And—"

Valin held his breath, waiting for him to continue.

"—and the spell will not be reversible. It will have a limited life, however." He stopped, his eyes gleaming. "It will last only until the lady proclaims her love for you."

Valin struggled, like a fly caught in a spider's web, knowing himself doomed, fighting because he had to.

"This is absurd! What would be your reward for such a spell? And why should I agree to such foolishness?"

Dalamar shrugged, then settled back, his long thin fingers again steepled. "You will agree because you love her, and I offer you the only chance of being at her side on this dangerous quest. I offer this chance because, as I told your lady, I wish to know the fate of the Dragon Stones. You will be my eyes and ears, reporting back to me as you travel."

He would never do it. He would never go with her disguised, constrained to tell Dalamar about their every discovery, each hope, each turn in the road. Never!

So he would lose her, she whom he could not bear to lose.

Valin bowed his head. His eyes on the carpet that earlier had so interested Dalamar, he whispered, "I will accept your spell."

And may all the gods help us, for our hearts are good and our hope is strong.

It was an old prayer, one of the first he'd ever learned. Valin repeated it now in his secret heart, but it gave him no comfort.

Lagan Innis looked up from his packing, dark eyes alight with his determination. "Yes, I am going with you. >Don't bother arguing."

Valin sighed, making his point for what he hoped was the last time. "Lagan, the lady will need you here. She's asked only me to go out to Kalaman, and I'm not asking you to accompany me."

"No matter," the dwarf said. "I'm going anyway. I've been on those roads, Valin! I know what's going on there, I know you will need a companion. And the lady will agree once I put it to her that way."

He stopped, looking around the small cleric's cell at the spare furnishings, the bed, the nightstand, and the one small wardrobe in the corner. He didn't look like a man who would regret leaving comfortable quarters. Valin knew his friend too well to think that. He looked like a man trying to ask a difficult question.

"What?" Valin asked, gently because he guessed what Lagan would say next.

A gull cried loud in the sky over the gardens, and another answered. Beyond the walls, beyond the temple, the low, constant sound of the city rose and fell as Palanthas woke to another day of rumor and fear and burning heat.

"Valin, you…" Lagan stopped. He cleared his throat. "It's not that I failed Nisse, is it? That's not why you don't want to take me along. Is it?"

Valin closed his eyes, ashamed. He'd lied to Crysania this morning when he told her he'd undertake her mission to Kalaman. He had to lie, for it was important to his plan that she believed him gone. He'd stood so close to her, lying, that he couldn't imagine she'd detected his breathing, a little edgy, a little ragged, and not known him for a fraud. Still, she hadn't, and she'd accepted his word and thanked him with all her heart. It had been hard to lie to her, and now it was no easier to lie to Lagan.

"Listen," he said, making the word heavy with importance, as Lagan himself might. "Lagan, I don't think you failed Nisse. I could never think that. I know you did all you could do for her, and I know your prayers are good ones, my friend. If Paladine had been near to hear them, he'd have granted you the strength you needed to heal Nisse's wounds."

"Ach! If this, if that!" Lagan shoved a small pouch into his pack, then took it out again, hefting it in one hand, then the other, as though weighing it. It was a lovely thing of purple velvet, embroidered in silver dwarf runes. In the pouch he kept the few small talismans of his calling, a flake of sliver he swore was a paring from one of the scales of the silver dragon that was one of Paladine's avatars, and a little book of prayers he had himself transcribed from ancient texts.

Valin took Lagan's pack from the bed and sat down. "You can stitch the world with 'ifs,' my mother says, and still what is, remains what is. In this case, Lagan, 'what is' isn't pretty. It is an ugly picture of a war storm brewing and a silence of gods. We must all do what we can, and I don't think anyone will do more than the Revered Daughter of Paladine."

Lagan nodded, still tossing his rune-marked pouch from one hand to the other. "She's going, isn't she? She's going to take that journey to Neraka."

Valin nodded. "And I won't be able to be with her. But I hope—Lagan, I hope you will be. I've asked her only this morning to take you when she goes."

The dwarf asked softly, "Will she?"

All his heart was in his eyes, his sorrow over a death he once would have been able to prevent, his fear that his god—no matter what anyone said to the contrary!—had found him unworthy, that now Crysania must feel the same.

Valin forced himself to laugh and, laughing, he cuffed his friend on the shoulder. "Yes! Of course she will. She said she'd intended to anyway."

That was truth, and so much easier to speak than the lies he'd been telling since he returned from the Tower of High Sorcery.

Lagan drew a long breath and let it out slowly. "All right, then. But I wish you weren't going to Kalaman. I wish you were going on Crysania's quest." He kicked the pack on the floor and sent it skittering across the room. "Ach! I wish no one was going anywhere!"

"Well, I suppose we can stitch the world with wishes, too, and not much would change."

For a long moment, silence stood between them, and then Lagan said, "Maybe she'll change her mind about you, desert mage."

The color rose to Valin's cheeks, but he said nothing.

"It's been known to happen," Lagan said, "that a woman reconsiders things when enough time has passed."

Valin snorted. "Does everyone know how I feel about Crysania?"

"Not everyone. Just me, and that's because I know you. Has she given you any hope?"

"None."

Hand to hand, Lagan tossed the pouch, the silver runes twinkling in the early morning sunlight falling through the window. "That doesn't mean you haven't taken any, though, does it?"

Valin got up from the bed and picked up his own pack. Lagan's questions cut too close to a truth he dared not reveal. "I take hope where I can, my friend. You learn to do that early when you live in the desert. I hope there will be water. I hope there will be grass for the horses. I hope the woman I love will love me."

Lagan laughed, a low warm sound, and took Valin's pack from his hands. "I hope she will, too, my friend. But now it's time to get you on your way."

Valin followed Lagan out of the small room into the hallway. The temple was quiet and dark, filled with only the small sounds of clerics waking to their day He'd not chosen the hour of his leaving. Crysania herself had, deeming it important that his journey remain a secret for as long as possible.

"Lagan," he said when they came to the gates opening out to the city, "there is one thing I need you to do for me."

"Name it."

"I have sent for my brother, and he will arrive here soon. I've asked him to be part of Crysania's quest, to guard her as I would have done. He will come here looking for me, but someone must tell him what has happened to send me away, and someone must present him to the lady Will you do that?"

Lagan put Valin's pack into his hands. "I'll do it, and don't you worry about it."

"And Crysania…"

The dwarf nodded. "I'll look after her, too. Now go—go, and Paladine's blessing be on you, friend mage."

And so he'd done all he could do in the service of doing… perhaps what he should not be doing. Valin pushed the doubt aside, bade his friend farewell and good luck, and went out to take the road he had chosen… for good or for ill.