“My son,” Alhana began, “there is a difference—”
“I am very tired, Mother.” Silvanoshei drew his blanket up over his shoulders and rolled over, so that his back was to her. “May your rest be blessed,” he added.
“Peaceful rest, my son,” said Alhana, bending down to kiss his cheek.
“We will speak of this more in the morning, but I would remind you that the Dark Knights are killing elves in the name of this so-called One God.”
There came no sound from the prince except the bitter music of the chains. Either he stirred in discomfort, or he was settling himself for sleep. Alhana had no way of telling, for Silvanoshei’s face was hidden from her. Alhana made the rounds of the camp, checking to see that those who stood guard duty were at their posts. Assured that all were watchful and alert, she sat down at the river’s edge and thought with despair and anger of the terror that reigned in Silvanost this night.
The river mourned and lamented with her until she imagined that she began to hear words in its murmurings.
Sleep, love; forever sleep Your soul the night will keep Embrace the darkness deep Sleep, love; forever sleep.
The river left its banks. Dark water overflowed, rose up, and drowned her.
Alhana woke with a start to find it was morning. The sun had lifted above the treetops. Drifting clouds raced past, hiding the sun from sight, then restoring it to view, so that it seemed as if the orb were winking at some shared joke.
Angry that she had been so undisciplined as to let herself slumber when danger was all around them, she jumped to her feet. To her dismay, she found that she was not the only one who had slept at her post. Those on guard duty slumbered standing up, their chins on their chests, their eyes closed, their weapons lying on the ground at their feet.
Samar lay beside her. His hand was outstretched, as if he had been about to speak to her. Sleep had felled him before he could say a word.
“Samar!” she said, shaking him. “Samar! Something strange has happened to us.”
Samar woke immediately, flushed in shame to find that he had failed in his duty. He gave an angry roar that roused every elf.
“I am at fault,” he said, bitterly chagrined. “It is a wonder to me that our enemies did not take advantage of our weakness to slit our throats! I had intended to leave with the dawn. We have a long journey, and we have lost at least two hours of travel. We must make—”
“Samar!” Alhana cried, her voice piercing his heart. “Come quickly! My son!”
Alhana pointed to an empty blanket and four broken manacles—manacles no axe had been able to cut. In the dirt near the blanket were deep prints of two booted feet and prints of a horse’s hooves.
“They have taken him,” she said, frightened. “They have taken him away in the night!”
Samar tracked the hoof prints to the water’s edge, and there they vanished. He recalled, with startling clarity, the red horse that had galloped riderless into the forest.
“No one took him, My Queen,” Samar said. “One came to fetch him. He went eagerly, I fear.”
Alhana stared across the sun-dappled river, saw it bright and sparkling on the surface, dark and wild and dangerous beneath. She recalled with a shudder the words she had heard the river sing last night.
Sleep, love. Forever sleep.
15
Prisoners. Ghosts, The Dead and The Living
Palin Majere was no longer a prisoner in the Tower of High Sorcery. That is to say, he was and he was not. He was not a prisoner in that he was, not confined to a single room in the Tower. He was not chained or bound or physically restrained in any way. He could roam freely about the Tower but no farther. He could not leave the Tower. A single door at the lower level of the Tower permitted entry and egress, and that was enchanted, sealed shut by a wizard lock.
Palin had his own room with a bed but no chair and no desk. The room had a door but no window. The room had a fire grate, but no fire, and was chill and dank. For food, there were loaves of bread, stacked up in what had once been the Tower’s pantry, along with crockery bowls—most of which were cracked and chipped—filled with dried fruit. Palin recognized bread that had been created by magic and not the baker, because it was tasteless and pale and had a spongy texture. For drink, there was water in pitchers that continually refilled themselves. The water was brackish and had an unpleasant odor.
Palin had been reluctant to drink it, but he could find nothing else, and after casting a spell on it to make certain it did not contain some sort of potion, he used it to wash down the knots of bread that stuck in his throat. He cast a spell and summoned a fire into existence, but it didn’t help lift the atmosphere of gloom.
Ghosts haunted the Tower of High Sorcery. Not the ghosts of the dead who had stolen his magic. Some sort of warding spell kept them at bay. These ghosts were ghosts of his past. At this turning, he encountered the ghost of himself inside this Tower, arriving to take the dread Test of magic. At that turning, he imagined the ghost of his uncle, who had predicted a future of greatness for the young mage. Here he found the ghost of Usha when he had first met her: beautiful, mysterious, fond, and loving. The ghosts were sorrowful, shades of promise and hope, both dead. Ghosts of love, either dead or dying.
Most terrible was the ghost of the magic. It whispered to him from the cracks in the stone stairs, from the torn threads in the carpet, from the dust on the velvet curtains, from the lichen that had died years ago but had never been scraped off the wall.
Perhaps because of the presence of the ghosts, Palin was strangely at home in the Tower. He was more at home here than he was at his own light, airy, and comfortable home in Solace. He didn’t enjoy admitting that to himself. He felt guilty because of it.
After days of wandering alone through the Tower, locked up with himself and the ghosts, he understood why this chill, dread place was home. Here in the Tower he had been a child, a child of the magic. Here the magic had watched over him, guided him, loved him, cared for him. Even now he could sometimes smell the scent of faded rose petals and would recall that time, that happy time. Here in the Tower all was quiet. Here no one had any claim on him. No one expected anything of him. No one looked at him with pity. He disappointed no one.
It was then he realized he had to leave. He had to escape from this place, or he would become just another ghost among many.
Having spent the greater portion of his four days as a prisoner roaming the Tower, much as a ghost might roam the place it was doomed to frequent, he was familiar with the physical layout of the Tower. It was similar to what he remembered, but with differences. Every Master of the Tower altered the building to suit his or her needs. Raistlin had made the Tower of High Sorcery his own when he was Master. He had shared it with no one except a single apprentice, Dalamar, the undead who served them, and the Live Ones, poor, twisted creatures who lived out their miserable, misbegotten lives below the surface of the ground in the Chamber of Seeing.
Upon Raistlin’s death, Dalamar was made Master of the Tower of High Sorcery. The Tower had been located in the lord city of Palanthas, which considered itself the center of the known world. Previously the Tower of High Sorcery had been a sinister object, one of foreboding and terror. Dalamar was a forward-thinking mage, despite being an elf and a Black Robe (or perhaps because he was an elf and a Black Robe). He wanted to flaunt the power of mages, not hide it, and so he had opened the Tower to students, adding rooms in which his apprentices could live and study. Fond of comfort and luxury as any elf, he had brought into the Tower many objects that he collected over his travels: the wondrous and the hideous, the beautiful and the awful, the plain and the curious. The objects were all gone, at least so far as Palin could discover. Dalamar might have stashed them in his chamber, which was also wizard-locked, but Palin doubted it. He had the impression that if he entered Dalamar’s living quarters he would find them as bare and empty as the rest of the dark and silent rooms in the Tower. These things were part of the past. Either they had been broken in the cataclysmic upheaval of the Tower’s move from Palanthas, or their owner had cast them off in pain and in anger. Palin guessed the latter.