With word and song and gesture, Dalamar drew wonders from the earth, and he pulled down terrors from the sky. He conjured a misty world where there was no sky and no earth existed. There, he walked among shadow-beings and ghosts. He stood beside dryads in their glens and spoke with centaurs from the darkest part of Darken Wood. Demons came to stand before him, creatures with two heads or nine eyes, beings whose breath was a fume of acid, whose breast held no heart but only the empty place where a heart should have beat; horned beings, fanged beings, creatures with wings as leathery as any dragon's. They called him lord and came bowing and pleading for a chance to serve him. These creatures he brought to him, summoning them with magic and the force of his unbending will, and he sent them away again, but not before he gained from each the promise to return at his command. Thus he bound creatures to himself that would have terrified others to see.
In rapture, he summoned the ghost of a Dragon Highlord, and that one he laughed at, for she was Phair Caron and she wept and wailed at his feet, blood pouring from the empty sockets where her eyes should have been, her fingers wet with that blood. He turned from her, still laughing, and now he saw that he was not standing upon the foggy plain but in a street with tall buildings rising up all around him, with smooth pavement beneath his feet and the sweet scent of gardens in the air-
"I am in Silvanost!" Dalamar took a long slow breath. His head ached with memories of conflicting dreams, some sweet, others nightmares. "I am in Silvanost. Or-or am I in Tarsis? No, no, not there. I am at the Tower."
"Tarsis?" The tall human woman beside him smiled, though that smile at best was never more than a sneer. Her dark robe glittered in the shining day, sewn with diamonds and hemmed in rubies. Her black hair, piled high in a crown of braids, shimmered with ropes of pearls.
"Regene," he said, thinking he stood again with the White Robe who liked so well to change her shape.
"Who?" said the woman, frowning. "Don't you recognize me, Dalamar Argent? Or have you been too long in the taverns, sitting in shadows and drinking your pale elven wine?"
He did recognize her, even as she asked the question, he did recognize her. "My lady," he said, to Kesela of the Black Robes.
She laughed, a low, throaty sound. "Well, now that you've got me straight, look around and get yourself straight. You're not in Tarsis, of all places! And we're certainly not at the Tower yet, but we're close. It's yonder, far into the woods. Look, you can see the trees of the Guardian Forest." She snorted her disdain. "Though it looks more like a Warding Woodland to me. I suppose the city has grown so big around it that it seems diminished."
Dalamar looked around him. Behind, he caught a glimpse of shining houses. Roofs supported domes of glass so that the inhabitants need not suffer without their gardens in winter but could tend them in warmth all year round. He was in Istar! And, after all, where else would he be? He was in Istar with Lady Kesela, she whose name turned the blood of brave men to water, whose reputation for ruthlessness was the shame of her father, a Solamnic Knight, and the delight of the dark gods she worshiped. They had come here on the wings of magic, bearing scrolls of ancient work and beauty to give to the Master of the Tower of High Sorcery, this wizardess of fearsome repute and he, her apprentice. This gift they brought with little fanfare, for if it was not a secret, still it was not something they would trumpet through the city. The Kingpriest had already declared the worship of the dark gods unwelcome in his city. Talk ran all around Krynn that he would soon declare it outlawed and then turn his eye toward those who worshiped the gods of Neutrality.
Voices rose and fell, singing and chattering, laughing and shouting, Istar talking to itself. All around them the city streets flowed with people-darting kender, dwarves out of Thorbardin, elves from Silvanesti, humans from the Solamnic Plain, from Khur and Nordmaar. Mages went among them, and clerics of all kinds, though it wasn't but a moment before Dalamar's eye picked out the truth of what rumor had been saying. There were more clerics and mages wearing white robes than red, and hardly any black robes at all. The more precious this gift they bore, for the Master of Tower had no mind to purge his libraries of texts because some king who thought himself the arbiter of Krynn's religion had no sense of balance and proportion. And, it would not be doubted, in exchange for this scroll, Lady Kesela would come away with something of value, a charm, a talisman, the favor of the Master of the Tower. She did not give from graciousness.
"Come," Lady Kesela said, not looking at him, not imagining he wouldn't follow. "Attend me."
He did, resenting her tone but showing no sign of that. He had borne more and worse in exchange for her teaching and judged it a good bargain. Sunlight shone, glinting from Kesela's midnight hair as they set out through the city.
The scent of herbs and flowers perfumed the air. Stone arches of magnificent craft swept over the boulevard, and from their crowns flowering plants cascaded, decorating the stone that decorated the street. Incense drifted out from minor temples, and always the song of worship drifted through the streets in voices so pure they rang like bells. Istar, the jewel of Krynn, swirled all around them in sight and scent and sound. A choir of voices rose up as though upon wings, soaring out from a temple as the two dark-robed mages passed by.
"Elven voices," Dalamar said, moving aside to let a silken lady pass where, otherwise, she'd have to have had to step into the gutter. She smelled of exotic perfumes, complex notes of scent mingled like the woven notes of song. "My lady, I heard it in the taproom at the inn that they are gathering a choir at the Great Temple of Paladine made all of elves, for the purity of their voices. The Kingpriest, they say, will have no others than elves in all the choirs of all the temples."
"You mean," she said drily, "of all the temples dedicated to the gods of Good. What elf would serve in the temples where they worshiped the gods of Neutrality or those of Evil?"
Dalamar smiled into her narrow-eyed jibe. No elf would but those who made the hard choice, the aching choice to walk the shadowed paths outside of Silvanesti. You are dead to us! The cry was the same, heard by every elf who wore the red robes or the black. You are dead to us! Dead to them, but wakened to gods no elf of Silvanesti dared hear.
Through the swirling city they went, past the markets and across the wide, sunny verandas where pretty girls sold flowers from their carts, while jugglers tossed balls and pins for the laughter of children. Lords and ladies rode by in gilded carriages, and thin-cheeked urchins dashed in and out between the horses of the guards trotting beside, shouting for boon. Now and then a hand reached out from a carriage window, gloved and spilling coins. The children shrieked and laughed and praised the generosity of the one who had not deigned to even glance out the window.
By the time they left the city proper and came within sight of the Tower's Guardian Forest, fresh breezes filled the air, smelling of loam and leaves. The shadow of the wood stretched out, reaching like long fingers. Kesela hung back a proper distance to allow her apprentice to go before her. Dalamar leading, they stepped into the shadow and took the first path, a narrow ribbon winding away into the trees. Sunlight spilled down through the branches, dappling the shade, and all the while they walked in and out of light and shadow, through bright patches and dark, until they came to a tall iron fence whose highly wrought gates stood open, as in invitation. No Tower of High Sorcery stood beyond the fence, no building of any kind, only woodland stretching as far as they could see.