A Whisper in the Walls

By Amber Michelle K.
myaru@etherealvoid.net


Notes: It was rushed. After reading over it again, the "real" story will probably be set at a different time - if I can find a decent Dragonlance timeline, I'll be set. ^^


An exclamation woke him once more.

It was soft, merely a slither upon his consciousness, not really a sound - he had no ears with which to hear it, except in his own mind. But it was vehement, brimming with momentary hostility. There color to it, imagined in the blackness. He opened his eyes and gathered that warmth around himself, the life - such was the lot of his kind, to thrive on the leftovers of mortal emotion.

Again, a vision of the study. Lushly appointed and quite unchanged from its earlier days serving as the library of the Master of Past and Present, it poured forth into place as vividly as if it were indeed real and not a dream, though its warmth was distant and the flighty spring breeze creeping in through the window to ruffle fringes and papers was not felt. The dreamer's awareness of his surroundings did not cause it to ripple and disappear, as it might have in the mind of one of the living. His life was a dream - many of them, until time's river seemed to flow backwards, in circles.

But the unchanging reclined before him - a slender build, robed in black velvet that seemed all the softer for the dreamer's inability to touch it. Deep, rich brown hair soaking in the light of the fire, of candles, and delicate elven features.

The elf's pale lips parted to issue another mutter - a curse, though it was less fervent than the one that awakened the dream. Upon his lap lay a black-bound book, shimmering in the dreamer's sight with a power of its own. Silver runes were etched into the spine, and could be seen on what little of the cover was visible. But all were meaningless, except the last: an hourglass.

He understood, after one lethargic moment, the elf's agitation. And with a strange sort of tingle, almost lifelike, the dreamer smiled.

***


Dalamar snapped the book closed with as much force as his slender hands could manage. The pages were protected, its binding enchanted; nothing he did could damage the thing, though he longed for a moment to see it crumble in his hands. A remnant of his youth, perhaps - his kind had always considered him little more than a hot-blooded child... until they were shown differently.

They didn't keep their noses turned so high now, did they?

Nor did he. Far from having the comfort of knowing he was being confounded by the power of a dragon orb, Dalamar wrestled with a something worse: a book. A gods-cursed book was bringing him to a standstill. It would have been excusasble if he were still an apprentice, but he was Master of the Tower! He was known over Ansalon as one of the most powerful wizards still living on the mortal plane. Yet he could not decipher the Key to one, inconsequential book. It wasn't even a very important book, in comparison to the treasures locked within the laboratory at the top of the Tower - treasures forever lost to him. But it held knowledge he needed in this desperate moment, and that made it important enough.

He held the Key to most of the tomes that were still available to him, revealed to him by his Shalafi, or hard work on his own part, but this one eluded him. One in dozens. He could almost hear the broken, whispering voice, feel the touch of warm breath on his ear in a sneering jibe, "Foolish apprentice." He wouldn't ever be anything more.

Dalamar's training had been effectively ended the day the Portal to the Abyss closed, with Raistlin on the other side. The guardians had not turned on him as he half-believed they would, but it had been a long, hard battle to gain complete control over them - as much as anyone could, with their true master gone. And then longer years passed, agonizing even for him - an elf - as he strived to gain mastery over what was left. The spells, what there was that had not been hidden in the laboratory for his Shalafi's use alone. The Keys to those spells, which had not been revealed to him in their entirety during his training. So much knowledge was lost to him, so many magnificent secrets - he had only his memory to draw from, and in the end he had reconstructed the spells on his own. The wonder, the shimmering power, was now lost to him, but they were his now.

Many would call that evidence of his mastery of the Art. Dalamar only scowled at it. What was he, compared to his teacher? He would forever live in that dark shadow.

But the elf longed for that shadow now. The touch of those burning fingertips on his hand to draw his attention elsewhere, instructions whispered softly - even the pitiless, sardonic gaze. He hated the image, so clear in his mind, as if he need only turn around and ask for the key to this accursed book he held in his hands, and the Shalafi would be just over there behind the desk, to answer.

A slender hand stole from his side to splay across the clasp of his robe. The mark of his hand... No one else ever weilded magic so skillfully. There had never been another whose approval Dalamar wanted quite so badly. The old, familiar pain would remind him of his failure to gain that acceptance for the rest of his life.

The ghost of a sardonic smile brought a chill to his skin, the memory not seen, so much as felt. A pall fell over the study, shadowing the elf's gaze, and his hand dropped to his side again. The fire burned low now, the candle following suit, flickering and spitting as the wax melted into itself. The window stood open to allow fresh air to wend its way into the Tower's musty confines.

Ever since the Majere boy's test, the air about the Tower had been different. Where once Dalamar had slept soundly, wrapped in the comfort of darkness, now his dreams were restless - filled, tainted with what could only be memory. Whispered warnings, snide instructions. If he were a little more gullible, he might even believe it was real.

Foolish elf.

"Foolish, am I?" Dalamar rose to his feet with a scowl twisting his beautiful features, the book still clutched in his hand. "Yes... perhaps I am. A pathetic upstart seeking to best his master."

The book went back to its place on the shelf behind him, shoved in with more force than was strictly necessary. Its silver runes glinted teasingly in the dimness, mocking him as its author would have done, were he standing there beside him. The elf spun around, neck prickling as if he was indeed being watched... yet there was nothing there. No golden eyes glittered their amusement at him from beneath a velvet black hood, no sibilant whisper greeted him with a biting reprimand.

Silence. It was too silent, full of the haunting certainty lurking at the back of Dalamar's mind that this place was beginning to hold him in the thrall of its power, rather than the other way around. Master of the Tower... his ghost remained in the very bones of the ancient stone, immovable as it had been during the Cataclysm. Hurricanes and blasting winds descended on Palanthas as if clearing way for the disaster in Istar, yet the Tower had emerged unscathed, its grove hardly touched. And so, too, seemed the spirit of its owner.

"The Master will not have it. Is that it?" He spoke to empty air, though Dalamar knew better than to think that nothing was there. Wraiths and darker things awaited his bidding in whatever dark place they resided, always aware of the doings in the Tower - they must hear him now, ranting like a madman. But it watched - whatever 'it' was - and he knew it was no creature of his that he addressed now. "Do you torment me now, so many years after your fall?"

There was no reply; he had not expected one, although some small part of his mind wished differently. Only a lingering current in the air, of things familiar - sacrasm, rose petals, the scent of blood red wine... the whispers, coming to life in the very stone, as they did in his dreams. His little trick for Palin's Test was returning to haunt him.

The dark elf shivered in a sudden chill, imagined electricity skittering along his spine. The hidden eyes disappeared, their burden lifting from his shoulders abruptly. The soft fingers of a breeze rustled in through the window, slithered through his hair, faded.

Perhaps he was going insane. He cast his eyes about the study, clenching his fists and drawing a deep breath in an attempt to calm his nerves. Nothing was there. Books sat innocently upon their shelves, papers ruffled listlessly in another breeze, the fire crackled low in the grate. The candle was nearly burned out, languishing in a puddle of hot wax in its holder. Nothing - no hint of the past, no imagined golden gaze. Everything had left him.

It had been the same at Jenna's, the night before. More peculiar then, so far away from everything familiar that conjured the ghost within his mind to begin with. The wine... But it was more than that, more than his imagination. More than a dream. Hallucinations were not as tangible as these stirrings in the very fabric of the walls around him.

Perhaps he was jumping at nightmares. She hadn't felt anything, upon awakening. He had not been able to relate to her just what terrified him so much in that instant before waking that he'd been torn out of sleep shouting - like a child crying for his mother. Jenna wasn't aware of what was happening, had no idea what he saw and heard when he closed his eyes to rest. She must think him a fool. But... perhaps...

"Jenna," he murmured through dry lips, nails biting into his palms. Her name lingered in air thick with darkness, no longer moved by the spring breeze, heady like the secent of the perfume laced through her hair and dabbed at her wrists... Yes, perhaps she would be of some help to him...

Dalamar pushed out of the study with shaking hands, left the door standing open without guard. So feverish and hurried were his steps that he was quite a way down the staircase before he realized that he had other methods of reaching the red-robed wizardess than something as mundane as walking. He felt the mocking laughter again, this time within his own mind, and he bit out another soft curse before chanting the words that would sweep him away on the paths of magic.

The Master of the Tower fled.