"We will not command you, young mage, to take up this apprenticeship. We cannot, for the one who does this work will put his life and perhaps his very soul at risk the moment he speaks his acceptance. And if he is found out"- Par-Salian shook his head-"he will die. That death will be a terrible thing, and a long, long time coming."

Dalamar took that warning seriously. Yet, hadn't he been risking his life, by some accounts even his soul, for magic's sake since the first moment he felt the sparkle of magic in his blood? To serve as apprentice to the one mage in all of Krynn who could make the Heads of the Three Orders afraid…! He smiled, but secretly, in the shadow of his hood. What wonders of sorcery could he learn from this mage who'd stolen a Tower right out from under the eyes of the three most powerful magic-users in Krynn? Uncounted! What power could he gain, what strength, what insights? They were legion!

Dalamar lifted his hands and put back the hood of his robe, letting those gathered clearly see his face and his eyes. One and all, the Heads of the Orders kept still, allowing him the choice.

"My lords, my lady, I accept the apprenticeship, and I accept your mission."

Justarius nodded grimly. Ladonna said nothing. In the eyes of Par-Salian, Dalamar saw not satisfaction but, strangely, sorrow.

It was as though, knowing what had been, the Master of the Tower could know what might be. The thought a warning, Dalamar looked back…

"Tell me, then," said Eflid Wingborne, his head tilted slightly back as he looked down the length of his thin nose at the small bundle Dalamar had placed in the exact center of the narrow cot. "Will you be easier to find now, Dalamar Argent, or will I still have to send servants to hunt you down when I need you?"

Dalamar stood still in the shaded corner of the small room. In the shadow, he shaped his expression to one that might lead Lord Ralan's steward to believe he considered a humble answer. In truth, he considered no such thing at all. He concentrated upon the image of two hands holding hard to something-the temper it would do him no good to lose.

"You will find me," he said, eyes low to hide his contempt. "Never worry, Eflid-"

"Lord Eflid."

Dalamar held back the sardonic smile that twitched at the corners of his lips. Lord Eflid, indeed, by virtue of the fact that his mother had been briefly wed to a lordling of so minor a family within House Woodshaper that the name of it was not recorded except in small letters at the end of a long, long scroll. Eflid had not been the son of that man, but he still claimed the title, at least among the servitors he ruled.

"Never worry," Dalamar said again. He looked up, leveling a long cool stare at the steward, the kind he knew gave Eflid shivers. "I am here."

Eflid's eyes narrowed, glittering and green. "And here you'll stay, boy-no more wandering for you. Be grateful Lord Ralan hasn't dismissed you entirely. I've heard they are looking for a servitor down by the docks, a boy to haul fish and repair nets. Let me look up and not find you when I want you, and that's where you'll be working."

Boy, he said, boy. With nearly ninety years to him, Dalamar was young by elf standards, but he was no boy. Yet Eflid's sneering address said that were Dalamar to attain one hundred years and ninety, still he'd be a boy in the eyes of those he served. Dalamar met Eflid's narrow stare and did not look away, and so Eflid must.

His face flushing with anger, and with shame for having been the first to turn his glance, the steward growled, "Now unpack your gear and get to work. You're expected in the kitchen. There are floor tiles in the oven room needing repair." He pulled his lips back from his teeth in a cruel imitation of a smile. "Don't you have some pretty little spell you can work on them? To keep your hand in, as it were?"

Laughing, Eflid left the room, not closing the door behind. Alone, Dalamar looked around at his new quarters. Motes sparkled, golden bits of dust dancing in the light of the sun shafting in through the east-facing window. The light was not so misty as it had been when it shone on the path away from the Servitor District and the house that had been Dalamar's family home for so many years. His father had inherited the small house from an uncle who had been canny enough to save the steel coin to purchase it from a woman who repaired leather shoes. Until then, his father and mother and Dalamar himself had lived in the halls of those they served, a family who met during the days only in passing and sometimes spent an evening together after the high folk had no more use for them. The little house with its tiny garden had become Dalamar's upon the death of his parents, and he had lived there, with the permission of the Head of House Servitor and of Lord Ralan, ever since. Five years he'd gone out from his home to that of his master, each day in the dawn, and five years he'd returned there in the long purple twilights of summer and the short sharp ending of winter days. No more, and the privacy afforded him in his own home, the sense of being master there where no one could order him about, was all gone. Now he must live in Lord Ralan's house, quartered in this small room in the servant's wing. Here among those too poor to have their own houses, among the untrustworthy, he would stay. Lord Ralan had declared it, and Trevalor, the head of House Servitor, had agreed.

Dalamar turned from the glittering shaft of sunlight to the bed. The room afforded him little by way of furniture, only this bed, a small table upon which stood a thick white candle, and a chest of drawers by the window. He had no chair for himself and none to offer a visitor.

From the bundle on the bed, he took out his clothing. He did not wear the dun clothes of a servant but the white robe of a mage. This was not usual, for among the Silvanesti, who structured their lives to conform to a rigid caste system, no one was lower than servitor, and none deemed less worthy of learning the High Art of Sorcery. Dalamar's talent was strong, though, and when House Mystic learned of it, they did what they must for fear that, unguided, he would go outside the bounds of Solinari's white magic to wild magic or worse, to Lunitari's red or Nuitari's black magic. They made him a mage, dedicated him to god-Solinari, and taught him grudgingly. For the teaching, he was glad but never grateful.

He'd worn the white robe for nearly two years now, but before all, Dalamar was still a servant, his talent and skill at the command of others. So it had been today, his hours claimed and counted. All the while he worked, Dalamar felt himself pulled away, his attention barely on his task, his soul yearning northward to a place no steward or elf-lord knew about. In a cave beyond the river lay the hiding of his secret studies. There he kept dark tomes filled with magic forbidden to all elves. He'd discovered the books by accident, found them tucked in the far reaches of the little cave, a treasure left by some bold dark mage who'd come secretly into the elven kingdom where none such would ever be welcome. Come and gone, he'd left his books behind, and they'd lain there a long count of years. Each bore an inscription that had, upon first sight, struck fear into Dalamar's heart. To the Dark Son, from a dark son, by night are we bound. Thus had a mysterious mage dedicated himself to the son of the Dragon Queen, to Nuitari whose obsidian halls lay in mansions of the sky just beneath the secret moon, the black moon. Yet soon Dalamar's fear had eased, and during the months of the summer past, he had taught himself more about magic, spells, incantations, and arcane philosophy than he'd been allowed to learn with House Mystic. The little northern cave was Dalamar's refuge. His secret trips there, time stolen from his master, were the cause of Eflid's anger and, ultimately, the reason for Dalamar's new status among Lord Ralan's servants, housed and untrustworthy.