They put him ashore on the far western side of the southernmost tip of the kingdom. The fleet of eight ships had watched the Dark Escort, men and women at the rails, standing in grim silence, watching, then turning away one after another, putting their backs to him. In the sky, gray clouds hung down in rain; no gulls cried. The water rose and fell, heaving and choppy with white manes curling on the wave-tops. Zeboim's Steeds, even these seemed to turn and run from the abomination of the dark elf.
At the end of the day, they set him ashore on the dock near a tavern roaring with laughter and cursing and song. The stink of sweat and ale and greasy food flowed out the doors, turning Dalamar's stomach each time he had to breathe it. This was still Silvanesti, but the little port town had more a feel of other lands about it than elven lands. His escort paid for his passage aboard an outbound merchant ship, a three-master whose white sails shone impossibly bright against the lowering sky.
"Take him safely, Captain," said Lord Porthios, handing over the fee and never looking at Dalamar. "Put him ashore wherever he wills."
"Ar, he's a dark 'un," the minotaur said, eyeing Dalamar narrowly. "An exile, eh? Ay, well, as long as he's paid for it makes no matter to me." He offered to close the deal with a drink, but Porthios thanked him with chill politeness and refused. What elf would drink with an outlander, and one whose ship would soon hold a despised exile? None, and certainly not this prince of the Qualinesti.
All this happened around Dalamar, above him where he sat huddled in his dark cloak, shivering in the rain. It hardly seemed to him that it was happening to him at all. He could not but shake and shiver, as though with fever. He could not feel more than that, for icy numbness held him in merciless grip. My heart must be beating, he thought. Otherwise I'd have fallen over dead. But he could not feel the pulse.
"He is dead to us," they had said. It seemed he was, indeed. This is shock, he told himself, and this is not going to last. Then, no matter if it lasts forever. I don't care.
He had no gear to stow, no mage-fare, no packs and parcels of fragrant spell components and precious spellbooks. The dark elf owned nothing, only the dun trews and shirt, his boots and the black hooded cloak that signaled his status. He rose and went up the gangplank when ordered to do so. Once on board, he turned to look back. In the rigging, sailors scrambled to unfurl the sails. On deck, the captain shouted orders, bidding his rowers to bend their backs and pull. The ship caught the wind, moving quickly under oar and under sail.
Dalamar did not look to the shore or to the forest beyond. Instead, he looked at the sea, at the wide gulf growing between him and his homeland. He felt something stir in him then, something sharp and painful as fangs. Before he could acknowledge it, he turned from the rail and set his eyes upon the vast and boundless sea. A shaft of sunlight shot through the clouds, illuminating the tossing waves. He looked away from that, too, from the light and the brightness of water.
"I have nothing to do with light," he said. Saying, hearing the words and his own voice, he felt the stirring of pain again. This time he let it come, the long aching flood. He was getting good at embracing pain.
Thus did the dark elf begin his wandering.
Chapter 14
In the first year of his wandering, Dalamar had little use for the company of anyone-elf, dwarf, human, goblin, or ogre. He lived wild in the reaches outside the cities and towns, wintering under roof when the season blew cold and finding the port cities the most hospitable and the most interesting. He took no lover, for no elfwoman would have him, and in Silvanost the hearts of young men are not filled with longings for outlander women. The fee for his lodging and meals he paid with the steel he earned charming rats from warehouses-inglorious work that he hated.
However, despite his misery, Dalamar was still a reaper of news, and there where the water meets the land he found much to reap. In taverns where seamen gathered, he learned of the rehabilitation of lands long ravaged by war. He heard how after making treaties, the soldiers of the Whitestone Army left the field of battle and returned to their farms, crafts, and shops. In little shops where magic-users traded in spellbooks, herbs, oils, and strange and powerful artifacts, he heard from mages of all the three Orders that the armies of the Dark Queen had no such peaceful intent. The alliance between the armies of red and black and white and blue collapsed at the end of the war, though the armies themselves still maintained control of vast territories. The fallen Highlords ruled their fiefdoms roughly, brandishing their iron fists over the heads of their subjects and quarreling among themselves. In the taverns the drinkers were happy to consider the war over, the matter between gods settled, and they passed winter nights comfortably planning for a springtime that would, at last, not signal the start of another blood-drenched campaign of war. In the mage shops the folk were not so sure that the matter between the gods had all been said and done.
Through the winter, brooding, Dalamar did not think so broadly as this. He considered himself, his choices, and his chances. By night he dreamed of home, aching dreams of loss, and by day he wondered what place he could make for himself in the world outside Silvanesti. He thought of the cities to which he might travel-Palanthas, Tarsis, Caergoth, and North Keep. He thought of the libraries, the opportunities for study…
But he didn't think about journeying to the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth. That old dream lay quiet in him.
Come spring, Dalamar felt dark winds at his back, restless winds, and these seemed always to push him from the places where people congregated, away from the taverns and the bars, from the brothels and the temples and the mage-ware shops. These winds pushed him to the old places where mortals no longer walked. He, who had seen the ruin of his homeland, the ruin of his own place in that kingdom, was surprised to discover a taste for ruins, the skeletons of old cities, old places whose names were only half-remembered, whose stories had long before flown to the winds.
Dalamar walked among the ghosts who haunted Bloodwatch, the fallen tower that used to stand within sight of the Sea of Istar, and was now only a pile of stone. He found ways into the hidden parts of the ruins, went down deep into the earth and discovered vaults filled up with debris- rolls of parchments detailing supplies and requisitions, old chests filled with rusting weapons, and in the farthest corner of the deepest chamber, a golden coffer no larger than his two hands outspread. Though it had lain in dust and the moist cellar air for years unknown, this coffer was clean as though newly made. It sang to him, through his hands, through his bones and his blood, for it held something of magic in it, and he knew by the thrill he felt that here was a dark magic.
With great care, he examined the coffer, detected magical wards, and released them. Within lay a ring of silver, etched with runes and set with a perfectly cut ruby, dark as spilled blood. What power lay in the ring, he did not know, but he took it out from that place. Sitting on the shore, watching the tossing sea, he listened to the wind moaning around the ruins of Bloodwatch for two days and three long nights. He remembered what he had learned in Silvamori, that all things are voiced and all things may sing, and so he learned the language of the wind, the song of the sea, and he spoke with the ghosts wandering by. One told him, at last, what power the ring had. It would dry the blood in the veins of any foe.