Dragonlance - Classics - Dalamar the Dark by Nancy Varian Berberick

Author:Nancy Varian Berberick [Berberick, Nancy Varian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Action & Adventure, Elves, Dragons, Monsters, Magic, Heroes
ISBN: 9780786915651
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Published: 2000-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Dalamar stood at the rail of the ship Bright Solinari. At the end of the day, with the sun setting behind, sinking in red glory into the white-maned sea, he stood looking east as the ship rounded the Cape of Nordmaar. Stiff winds filled the sails, and they bellied out proud as a swan's white breast. Beside Bright Solinari, the golden sails of Bright Sun, Porthios's ship, filled and rounded. Six other ships came behind, but these two, Solinari and Sun, kept abreast as though neither would let the other range even a little ahead. It was not, Dalamar thought, much of a thing for pride that the elves of Silvanesti must be led home by their estranged cousins.

Though the world turned toward summer and the winds off the cape carried the quickening scent of green and growing things, here on the sea all winds were hard winds. They sapped the moisture from a man's skin, peeled the flesh from his face where the sun did not, and moaned incessantly in the ear until the sound rode him day and night, waking and sleeping. The Silvanesti, some of whom were seamen but many of whom were not, had no love for the wind, the constant droning. Dalamar didn't mind it. He had become attuned to song in his years with K'gathala; he knew how to hear what the wind sang, what the sea chanted.

"Elves are sailing home," they cried, each to the other. "Elves are sailing home." He almost turned to look back to the setting sun, to the places he'd been, to K'gathala, who had not wept to see him leave and had not cursed him for a deserter. She had kissed him, wished him well, and whispered, "Come back when you can," though neither thought he would, even if he could. Almost he turned, and then he didn't. That was finished, that was done. He was going home now, and in his belly excitement ran like threads of fire.

He didn't know what would remain of Silvanost, what of the towers and the temples and the houses of the high folk and low. He had heard tales, dark and grim and filled with sorrow. He had listened, and he had asked questions, and it seemed that no one, no matter how hard he tried, could say what the Sylvan Land truly looked like these days. No matter, no matter. He was going to see for himself, and for mat privilege he paid in rough and long work. A loader of supplies in every port, a swabber of decks, repairer of ropes—with the hemp-torn flesh to prove that— he did not mind the fee.

He did not wonder, looking out at the leaping sea, why he did not mind, though he had for so much of his life resented his servitor status. Then, he had been chained by tradition and law as strongly as though by forged steel links. Now, he wore no chain. He had the kind of freedom no other elf aboard this ship or any of the others possessed.

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