"My Lord Tellin," he said, "they are talking of leaving here, the king and the Sinthal-Elish. You've heard the rumor. If things keep on as they are…" He looked away north to the borderlands. "If things keep on, I don't think it will be long before they make up their minds."
Tellin shuddered, his eyes dark in the night. Elves leave the Sylvan Land? Wasn't that, too, a kind of blasphemy? "How could they even consider it?"
Dalamar looked over his shoulder to the Tower of the Stars rising above the whispering crowns of the aspens. Light shone from windows normally dark at this hour. Yes, the king sat waking. He was thinking, turning over the plan presented him by a minor mage of a lowly House, a scheme that bore the taint of blasphemy. Of this, Dalamar was certain, for a dragonarmy savaged his northern reaches, and Lorac Caladon had no choice but to consider all options. Whether he'd choose this one or not, none could say. But he was considering.
"Desperate people, my lord, do things they might not otherwise consider."
Tellin smiled, but without humor. "So you've solved all the problems, have you, Dalamar?"
"No, my lord, not all."
In silence, he followed Tellin through the Garden of Astarin, past Astarin's temple where chanting prayers were sung, round the fragrant beds of jasmine and late wisteria, of starweed and moonflower and nodding columbine. Men and women of House Gardener worked there by the light of tall torches, watering flower beds, for such work was best done at night while the earth has respite from the thirsty sun. The earthy scent of wet dirt drifted up. Fireflies danced in the recesses of each hedge, hungry for the larvae of slugs.
It had been, indeed, love of his homeland that moved Dalamar to conceive this plan he'd put before the king-a real and abiding love such as every elf knows. He had not thought more than this moved him, not until this moment in the Garden of Astarin with the fireflies winking and the scent of jasmine in the air. As he walked, a wild hope rose again in his breast, one he'd thought banished. When his plan succeeded-and he knew it would-he would ask Lord Tellin to present his case to the mages of House Mystic, to ask that he be instructed as all other mages are, fully in the magic art. He dared hope now, for he'd stood among lords and spoken with a king who had heard him out, a king who might well heed what he heard.
When this plan proved itself, he would tell Lord Tellin that he wanted to learn all the magic he could and then one day go to the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth, there to apply to the Conclave of Wizards in hope that they would grant him permission to take his Tests of Sorcery.
Two days later, in the morning, while Dalamar sat in the scriptorium with the usual basket of quills to sharpen, a message came to the Temple, a short missive tersely worded, saying that the servitor Dalamar Argent must go to the home of the Head of House Mystic, and he must be there before the noon hour. Dalamar presented himself long before that time, where he learned-not from Ylle Savath herself but from one of her mages-that he would be among those who would travel north to the borderlands, there to bespell a dragonarmy.
"Let him live or die by his plan," Lady Ylle said on the day that Lorac announced he'd follow the advice of a servitor.
That she'd said as one pronouncing a dark doom. Yet, Dalamar heard her command as the first note of a brave song, one to tell of his dream, long thought impossible, at last waking to reality.
Chapter 5
Phair Caron looked over her army spread out below like a great dark sea, restless and hungry. The long-legged woman in her red dragon armor, the lusty shape of her not hidden by mail and breastplate, stood like a queen overseeing her kingdom. Her hair, normally bundled up under her dragon helm, hung loose now to her shoulders, a golden spill of waving curls to catch the sunlight. It was her beauty that softened, if only a little, a face long ago shaped to hardness by want and rage. Eyes the color of the blue edges of swords, she looked around, satisfied. The tors of the Khalkist Mountains were her stony halls. Rising higher than the towers of any elf-lord, they housed her well. All round their base supply camps ranged, cook tents and food depots, even a small dry of smiths with their forges. The smoke rose up like the smoke over a battleground. Anvils rang as brawny human smiths worked at repairing breastplates and greaves, at forging new blades for swords damaged in the fighting. She could have wished for dwarf smiths, but those were hard to come by, locked up in Thorbardin while the Council of Thanes decided whether or not to get involved in the war.
Phair Caron looked west to the land of Abanasinia, whose spine was the Kharolis Mountains. The estranged cousins of the Silvanesti lived there, the wood-dwelling Qualinesti. Humans lived there, and hill dwarves. Already Verminaard, the Highlord of the Blue Wing, had his eye on them, laying cruel plans and ready to swoop down upon those lands like an eagle after its prey. One day, if not sooner then later, all these lands and all the people who lived therein would belong to Her Dark Majesty. The forces of Takhisis would sweep south to Icewall and north to Solamnia to topple the towers of Vingaard and Solanthus. In her might, the Dark Queen would range even so far as the Ergoths. All of Krynn would be hers, a shrine to her glory built upon the bones of those who defied.
Her blood humming in her, her heart high, Phair Caron looked south, to the dark line of the Silvanesti Forest. The Highlords of Takhisis would be as kings and queens in Krynn. She smiled, a wolfish baring of her teeth. This Highlord would rule from Silvanost, and she would have for her slaves the lords and ladies of Lorac Caladon's court.
A roar came up distantly from below, the sound of her army, the restless hordes of humans and goblins, draconians and ogres. It had not been easy, organizing this army of disparate races. Humans refused to camp near ogres, who would not be anywhere near goblins. No one could get within striking distance of any of the three breeds of draconians without small wars erupting, and among mem, the Baaz hated the venomous Kapaks, who loathed them in turn and despised the Auraks.
A long dark shadow passed over the hilltop as Blood Gem sailed on the warm currents, drifting on the sky. Terror kept all the factions of the Highlord's army in line, the dread of the dragons sunning themselves upon the tors. Often bored between forays into the forest, the mighty wyrms were happy to snatch a recalcitrant ogre or insubordinate human right out from the crowd of his companions and make a proper example of him. The dragons were Phair Caron's insurance of good order. With that general order insured, she practiced the kind of hard-handed control for which she had become known among the Dark Queen's Highlords. Whichever of her lieutenants failed to keep order among his men failed only once. There were, here and in the lands she'd early conquered, plenty of others willing and able to take the place of the man or woman who could not maintain discipline.
Above, a wing of dragons circled in the sky, long lazy rounds that took them out over the aspen forest just turning gold with the approach of autumn. Blood Gem abandoned his lazy circling and went to join his kin. Phair Caron felt the joy in him as he looked down upon the destruction he and his kind had wrought, the smoldering, and the wide swaths of land that would not see a tree again for many long years.
It is good! the dragon called, feeling her thought touch his mind.
It is good, she agreed silently, the woman who had once scrambled in gutter-filth for a bent copper tossed her by an elf too disdainful to wait for her thanks. The flames of her ambition, of her long need for revenge, burned in her blood, firing her heart and her soul. It seemed to Phair Caron, as she stood upon the heights, that she could see as far as Silvanost, as far as that day when Lorac Caladon would be led before her in chains, condemned to death, the sentence carried out by stoning in the widest square of his city.