Disclaimer: I am neither Margaret Weis nor Tracy Hickman, and I am unaffiliated with Wizards of the Coast. As such, Dragonlance doesn't belong to me, I make no money from this, and I am merely borrowing for your fun and my own.
Dalamar watched from his post by the door of the laboratory as Raistlin re-checked the preparations for the time travel spell. It looked perfect to him, but he also knew the spell was currently beyond his ability to read, let alone cast, so that didn't mean much. Dalamar had every confidence in his Shalafi, however.
Finally satisfied, Raistlin stood precisely in the center of the circle and raised his hands. The sand circle began to glow, and Raistlin's golden eyes glittered in the shadows of his hood.
Dalamar's hair started lifting with the sheer power in play in the laboratory, and he grinned. The joy of being able to actually see this was unbelievable! There couldn't be more than two mages on all of Ansalon capable of such a thing. He schooled himself to memorize the details – one day, he would be the mage in the center of the circle.
A tiny skittering from the side of the room caught his eye as a mouse scurried out from behind the bookcase. Dalamar gasped and lunged towards it – it must not touch the circle, not now! The mouse jumped over his grasping hands and sped straight into the circle, scattering the sandy daeg rune.
Dalamar lifted his eyes to look at his Shalafi. Raistlin was wrapped up in the magic. Face exultant, he raised one arm…
Dalamar raised his aching head from the floor, disoriented by the utter blackness. What was he doing on the floor, anyway? The stone was cold. "Shirak," he commanded. Nothing happened, and the splitting headache worsened so that he could hardly think. "Honestly," he grumbled, trying to remember what had happened and if it was likely to be safe to open the door. He remembered the mouse and groaned. His Shalafi was going to kill him for real this time.
"Shalafi?" asked Dalamar. Then louder: "Shalafi?" This was bad. Really bad.
A pair of disembodied eyes appeared in front of him. "The Master of the tower is hurt. You help him." The spectre demanded.
"Yes," said Dalamar, scrambling to his feet and feeling for the latch on the door. After a couple of tense moments, the door opened, letting in dim light from the stairs. Dalamar turned back, seeing a small form slumped in the center of a blackened circle of scorched sand. Stopping to fumble for a candle, which he lit with far more effort than such a minor thing should take, Dalamar stepped into the circle and knelt down beside his Shalafi. If it even was his Shalafi.
The person lying unconscious had fair skin and brown hair. He wasn't wearing black robes – there was a bit of what looked like common garden dirt and greenery around him, but decidedly no proper clothing. He was far too small and youthful for his Shalafi. A child, though Dalamar wasn't familiar enough with humans to know what age. The bone structure, however… and it wasn't like Raistlin had been born with golden skin and white hair. Of course.
The spell must have backfired in such a way as to turn everything within the circle back to what it had been at an earlier time. That would explain the dirt instead of velvet robes, too.
"You must help the master," the spirit demanded, glaring imperiously.
"Raistlin?" he asked, touching the kid's shoulder. Raistlin didn't respond. He was, however, breathing. Dalamar grimaced. If he couldn't cast the spell himself, there wasn't the slightest chance of him figuring out how to undo this any time soon. Maybe it was only physical, and Raistlin would be able to undo it when he came round. But if affected mind as well as matter, he was down a Shalafi and up a child.
Shaking his head, Dalamar carefully lifted the kid in his arms. He was an ungainly weight, all skinny legs and sharp elbows. "I am putting the Shalafi to bed," he informed the spirit. "I do not know how to reverse the magic."
The eyes watched him disapprovingly as he carried Raistlin down the stairs. Teleporting was far too risky with his head in its current state, but oh the stairs were long. At least he was going down.
Then he came to Raistlin's door, and had to argue with the spirit there for a good minute before it would agree that the child was the master of the tower, and that the master was hurt and would want to go to bed. Then he had to make sure the spirit would let him back in again if he left.
It wasn't until a lot later that Dalamar realized that he had acknowledged a kid as his master and master of the Tower.
A/N: does anyone know if Dalamar had siblings, especially younger siblings? I don't know much about his early life.