"It is," Lorac said to his daughter, "as though I am telling you a dream, and yet telling you a thing that happened in waking life. For it did. It did happen that way when I went to Istar, there to take my Tests."
Then he grew still, his eyes suddenly shuttered. His lips moved to shape two words: Save me! It seemed to Alhana that those two words caused the light of the candles to dim and the air in the chamber to grow suddenly cold.
In a low voice, Lorac told how in the sky above Istar the light changed from the lovely golden of sunset to a shivering green. Dreaming, he'd looked around himself, fear quivering in the far and secret chamber of his heart. From where the green light? He followed the light until the Tower of High Sorcery rose up before him. Out from the Tower, like beams lancing out from a lighthouse on a storm-swept night, the light shone. From there, as well, came the voice. Save me!
In his dream, Lorac walked past gates that swung open at his word. The guardians of the Tower, creatures of magic set to ward by mages most powerful, stepped back before him. Mages came to greet him, and they led him inside where an old man, a mage whose name no one knew, told him he was expected. The world will be lost! The cry echoed throughout the Tower, down all the corridors, in all the chambers, high and low, as Lorac followed the old man. Yet, though the cry echoed, no one in this dream but Lorac seemed to hear it or feel the urgency growing in its tone. Led by the nameless mage, he wended the maze of corridors, passing through one chamber after another, and it seemed to him that the Tower went on forever, wide as the sky and broad as the world itself. At last, they stopped in a small chamber, one no larger than could fit two grown men standing abreast.
"And the nameless mage, he said that I must not touch or take anything. I must leave all as I saw it."
"And did you?" Alhana asked, her face white in the candle's light.
"I told him-I told him I would do as he wished. And the man vanished. When I looked back into the room…"
When he looked back into the room, he saw that a table had appeared, a simple trestle of scarred wood. Upon it sat an ivory stand, like two hands cupped, which held a clear glass ball shining in the unlit gloom. Save me, the globe whispered. Disaster is near and you must not leave me here in Istar. If you do, I will perish and the world will be lost! He reached, and he lifted the globe. It warmed in his hands, and he looked around again, like a thief in the night. Take nothing, the old mage had said, touch nothing. Await me here. But the orb, nestling in his hands, cried out in piteous tones, cried out for the sake, not of itself, but of the world it longed to save. Swiftly, silently, the young mage, who was the old man who dreamed, whispered the words of a spell. The crystal globe became as nothing, not only invisible but without substance. That nothing he put inside his robe, and he walked out of the little chamber, out of the towers, and out of the city that soon would fall and, in falling, change the face of the world.
"Child," said Lorac Caladon, he who was a king, the Speaker of the Stars, "my child, I am ashamed to confess it. I left the city a thief."
Silence settled upon the room. In the corridor beyond Lorac's door, torches whispered to themselves in their brackets on the walls, the hushed voice of tamed fire. Somewhere down that corridor Lelan waited, the chamberlain who obeyed his princess but surely did not sleep for fear his master would call him and not be heard.
"Father," said Alhana, leaning close to kiss his cheek. She took his hand again and pressed it to her own cheek. "You are no thief. You simply had a nightmare, and one cannot be blamed for what deed he does in dream. Now, I beg you, please settle yourself and try to sleep again."
Unspoken between them was the knowledge that the day to come would bring another round of council meetings, and Lord Garan of House Protector would come to give what news his Windriders brought from the borders. Lately his news had been good, or not bad. Phair Caron held her position, brooding in the foothills of the Khalkist Mountains, but no one expected that to be the case for long. Garan would plead again to make an offensive strike, to fall upon the Highlord and take her by surprise. The Speaker and the Head of House Protector did not agree. Lorac demanded patience until more troops could be moved to the borderlands. Garan said patience would be the death of them. "She is building up her own forces, my lord king. I know it! Let me strike now!" This time, perhaps, he would plead his case with sufficient vigor to convince Lorac that what elven troops now stood at the border would be enough to make such a strike effective.
Lorac looked up. The king seemed far older in the eyes of his daughter than he had only this morning. "Child, it was a dream, but… it was a dream of truth."
The night fell into utter silence. Alhana did not hear cricket-song, the nightingales in the Garden of Astarin had no voice. "Father, what do you mean? What are you saying? That you, of all people, did steal-?"
"I did not steal it," he said, his face changed, growing oddly cold and still. "I did not steal the globe. I rescued it."
With more energy than Alhana imagined he had, Lorac left his bed. He put on his robe of blue silk, his slippers of soft green leather, and took his daughter by the hand. An urgency was on him now. His fingers grasped hers with enough strength to make her wince.
"Father, what-?" He pulled her toward the door and the corridor beyond. "Where-?"
Once outside his chambers he took her to the railing, the marble ward against the far drop below. Behind them torches flared in silver wall brackets. Somewhere a woman's voice whispered, and a man's murmured in reply. Nearby were the libraries, and a light shone out from under a heavy oaken door-scribes working late.
"Look," the Speaker said, pointing down into the well beyond the railing, down into the audience chamber. His throne stood there, mahogany and emerald, and the Words of Silvanos inlaid with silver. As lives the land, so live the Elves. Beside the throne stood a rose glass table. "Do you see those ivory hands, there on the table?"
She did. The sculpture hadn't been there even this morning.
"I had it commissioned in the summer. I thought the time might come…" He stopped, then said, "The hands are empty now." Lorac's voice echoed into the well, the echoes like wings rustling round the throne and the ivory sculpture. "But come, come with me."
He pulled her along. She followed, thinking they would take the spiraling staircase down into the audience hall. They did not. He took her far down the corridor past closed doors and curtained alcoves to a smaller, darker staircase. They entered a narrow doorway, and she had to duck her head to pass through.
The air in that lightless place smelled faintly damp. Lorac whispered, "Shirak!" and a globe of golden light appeared above his head, moving as he did and lighting the way down narrow stone steps through a passage Alhana had known about but never taken. This way lay a dungeon, not one for keeping prisoners-those were dealt with in other towers.
Cold seeped through the soles of her soft slippers as she ran after her father. Down and around, spiraling into darkness with only that one golden light bobbing above, at last, she saw green light pulsing in the distance below-light like the kind you see when sun shines through aspen leaves in spring. When they reached the floor at last, Lorac led her to the far corner of the dungeon, a place where-had it been meant to hold prisoner-bars would have been erected, chains installed. Upon a small table, not one so lovely as that beside Lorac's throne, sat a crystal globe. It seemed no larger than a child's marble, and yet Alhana knew instinctively that this was not the case. It felt larger, no matter what sight told her. She closed her eyes, not wanting to see it. In the utter darkness, an image sprang: The strange sculpture of empty hands beside her father's throne filled at last, filled with this orb that seemed small yet felt large.