"What has happened to him, Lady?" he asked, pulling the bedsilk up over the king's shoulders, daring from long affection to smooth the king's hair back from his face as he would a feverish child's.
Alhana shook her head. "I don't know. I found him like this." She said nothing of the Orb. "Tend him as best you can, Lelan, and be certain to say nothing to anyone. My father will come to himself soon, and we will see that he suffers only from lack of sleep and too much care. I don't have to tell you how deeply it would embarrass him to learn that news of this"-she groped for a word-"this discomfiture had reached anyone's ears."
Lelan bowed. "It will be as you say, my lady."
It would be, she knew, and that knowledge made up the full sum of her confidence as she walked out into the gallery again. Down in the audience hall where the Emerald Throne sat, where the Dragon Orb crouched upon the transformed stand, green light again pulsed. Very faintly it shone now, as though from a great distance.
By the light of that glow Alhana Starbreeze had the sudden vision of her own hands upon the crystal globe, her own fingers grasping the smoothness of the Orb, light shining through and showing what flesh hid-bones and muscle and even blood pulsing through veins. She saw herself lifting the Orb and carrying it all the way up to the gallery, there to lean out over the rail and fling this artifact of unholy Istar down to smash upon the cold marble of the floor below.
And yet, even as she longed to do that, she knew she would not. In some far part of her soul she knew that she must not. The Orb was not only an artifact of Istar, it was an artifact of Lorac Caladon's Test of Magic. The Orb and the King of the Silvanesti were inextricably linked.
The world is lost! So the king had whispered, so her father had groaned as he stared into the light of an orb that had seen the Cataclysm take Istar down into the sea and reshape the face of Krynn.
Alhana turned her back on the light pulsing like a long slow heartbeat, and she went along the gallery to her own quarters. There she sat in the embrasure of the tall window that faced northward. A wisp of fragrance drifted through the open window, the scent of morning in Silvanost, of the dewy herb beds in the Garden of Astarin, the pungent odor of boxwood, the sweetness of breads and cakes as the bakers trundled their wares to the kitchen doors of their customers. It all smelled too normal, so real and safe. And yet, not much was normal these days, and what was real- the war on the border, the refugees on the King's Road, a hungry horde, a shambling host-did not inspire her to feel safe.
Lord Tellin sat in utter stillness, quiet in body, quiet of speech, quiet-Dalamar was certain-in heart and soul. Sitting beneath a tall aspen, beneath leaves gone golden, the cleric was like a statue, something hewn from the raw strong stone of the earth, unmoved and unmoving. He sat but a hand's breadth from a fall that would have killed him if he moved too swiftly or the wrong way, a long stony tumble to the floor of a narrow glen.
Did he breathe? Dalamar looked up from his work of sorting spell components and squinted at Tellin. Faintly, the sweat-stained cloth of his white robe rippled over Tellin's breast. He breathed, but only barely.
The Windriders on griffins had long since flown away north, gone in the night under cover of darkness to take their positions for the battle. Dalamar didn't miss them. The odor of lion's musk and bird mustiness was not a pleasant one. He looked up at the sky where storm clouds hung low. Beneath them the aspen leaves glowed like a king's hoard of gold. All around them, mages and Wildrunners sorted themselves out into two groups, the sound of them like the rattle of swords, the rumble of storms soon to come. Tellin, though, sat at peace beneath the branches of a lone aspen, and didn't seem to hear them. Upon his knee lay a scroll containing the Dawn Hymn to E'li, but he had a keener eye for the embroidered scroll case than for the scroll itself. It might be argued that he knew the hymn by heart, but if it were, Dalamar wouldn't be the one arguing. If Lord Tellin had any prayer in his heart now, it was that all the barriers of tradition and law fall before a returning hero, that Lord Ralan would grant a cleric his sister's hand.
Dalamar bent his head over his work, checking to see that the oils he had brought-of heliotrope, mimosa, and sandalwood-remained safely stoppered in their earthen vials. He had sealed these with wax from candles on the altars of E'li. So Ylle Savath had commanded all her mages to do. He lifted each and smelled, scenting nothing on the wax and so knowing the seals were true. He examined each small pouch of herbs, flax seed, rowan bark, and elf dock. All these were sound, no pouch had become torn or uncinched in the northward run.
A damp wind rose up, chill here in the north of the kingdom, smelling of rain and sorrow. Aspen leaves rattled, sounding like regret, and on the wings of the wind came the faint trace of smoke. Tellin looked around frowning, then shook his head, realizing the truth of the smoke. It didn't come from this encampment of Wildrunners. Lord Konnal, Garan's second and the commander of his ground forces, had firmly forbidden fires. They were too close to the border for that. This smoke was old and heavy, the smoke of a large burning that had happened some time ago.
"A village," Dalamar said.
Tellin nodded. The smoke was the death-flag hung above one of the villages or towns that had fallen to Phair Caron's raiding parties. They'd seen too many of those on the way north, ghost-villages where the land lay black, where trees stood staggering with their bark burned off and others lay felled by axes for the savage joy of killing when there were no more elves to murder. And there had been murder done, great murder and terrible killing. The proof lay in the wolf-picked bones littering the villages, the empty-eyed skulls gleaming white in the moonlight. By sign of clothing, it became sickeningly clear that reports of selective killing-of the murder of men and women of fighting age only-were true. The dragonarmy was depriving the elves of defenders and leaving the weak and hungry to drain resources.
Voices rose, then hushed suddenly, the sound of the Wildrunners getting ready to depart. Lord Garan had made his plans so that the city of Sithelnost would not be caught between two armies, so that it would not find itself on the fall-back route if-gods forbid-his army should have to retreat. So the Wildrunners and the mages now sat at the stony edge of the forest, west of the Thon-Thalas and well north of Sithelnost. The Trueheart Mines lay but ten miles outside the western bounds of the forest itself, the high tors where Phair Caron had her base camp less than half that distance north and east. Most of the soldiers would continue north to the border, there to wait word to begin the attack on Phair Caron's army. All but a few of the mages would stay here, hidden below in the glen. Protected by a guard of Wildrunners posted high on the glen's walls, the mages would be able to work their magic in reasonable safety. Those of the mages who went with the bulk of the army were strong in the skills of mindspeaking so that they could relay Lord Garan's commands back to Ylle Savath.
Ravens spun out, black over the glen, cawing and rasping and sailing down low. Something lay dead down there, and the raucous ravens rejoiced.
Lord Tellin said, "You wish you were going with the Wildrunners, don't you, Dalamar?"
Dalamar shrugged, head low as he replaced the pouches and vials into his leather scrip. Never looking behind to the drop below, to the ravens calling the feast, Tellin came and sat beside Dalamar, his erstwhile servant.
"It doesn't seem fair, does it? That you have to stay here when you want to be there."