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Evermore: The Gathering	By : RosaTenebrum Category: A through F > Dragonlance Views: 9663 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own the Dragonlance series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 13
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CHAPTER 13

sand. sun. emptiness.

unbearable heat, unbearable pain.

please don't leave me alone in the darkness!

farewell, revered daughter.

a low and distant thunder. the dull thud thud thud of my slowing heart, a taste of blood and dust.

I've never been this scared in my entire life - alone, wounded, in the middle of nowhere, in another dimension. the strength is leaving my body, but I try to crawl, crawl on blistering hands and knees. but where to, in what direction? nothing and no one here. I know my eyes are open, but there is nothing.

a fair judgement: I do not complain. a worthless servant.

naughty little girls go to the Abyss.

poison and blood dance in the dark behind my eyes, tiny spots with ugly, mocking faces: you failed, they cackle in sing-song voices, you failed, you failed. you, you, you. Platinum Father? no answer. a hot, lazy wind sweeps across the desert; grains of sand fly into my eyes and sting.

I try to draw breath, but it burns. everywhere burns. pain so great is stops being pain.

and yet it is but a faint shadow of the pain I feel inside. my tears, they hit the cracked earth.

you threw me in front of beasts. you stepped over my broken body and left me in the darkness.

just because I never dared to open my mouth and say what I now say loud and clear: my love, my love.

I know you can no longer hear me, so how come all of a sudden you are here again, smiling at me, lifting me up from the ground? a wild surge of joy shoots through me; I have been given a second chance. gently you touch my hair and take my chin between thumb and forefinger; you lift my face up and plant a kiss of life on my charred lips. I'm so afraid you will go away, but you don't; you kiss me again, this time with more passion, and draw me against you.

you have forgiven me.

I give in, allow myself to drown in the consuming, fiery embrace. I do not remember the pain. It is as if it happened to someone else.

but an awareness comes: I am in a dream, it is the same dream over and over and over again. I hold on to you like one drowning; I do not want to...

wake up.

With an anguished cry, Crysania jerked upright out of her sleep, her heart pounding anxiously against her chest. Her face was wet with tears. Sweat stood out in beads on her forehead.

For long moments she sat there in the quiet of the night, tangled in her sheets, trying to get a hold of reality.

When she felt like she had calmed down a little, she fell back on the bed and curled up into a ball, drawing her knees up against her chest. After the dream, the nightmare, there was nothing else to do but lie absolutely still and wait for the terrible waves to crash and recede: sorrow turning to shame, shame to self-loathing, and back to sorrow again.

For almost two months now, the dream had stayed away. She had started to believe she had finally beat it, but tonight had proved her wrong. If anything, the recurring images had been brighter and clearer than ever: the shadow of the sun on the stone, the merciless blue of the sky, the orange of the flames.

His smile.

It was not the pain and the fear in the dream that scared her the most; it was the moment she stirred awake and knew he was gone. That, and the happiness she always felt near the end - happiness that most people would have found terribly wrong, that she herself had found wrong - only to know it would never be.

Because he was gone.

So explain this: how come he had stood in her room two days ago talking to her - or was it only the day before? She could not say for certain. Had it really happened, or was she finally losing her mind? Perhaps it would a mercy, and best for everyone, if they locked her away and let someone else become the leader of the church instead, someone who did not come with a burden of lies on their shoulders.

But explain this: if that morning had been just a product of her breaking mind, how come she had lost her inner map as completely as could be, bumping against the edges of furniture in a dazed shock, like a disoriented bird lost inside a house? How come she had suddenly felt as if she were choking, and numb all over, and fighting to draw breath? How come her legs had betrayed her and she had dropped to her knees and vomited on the lavatory floor?

That had been only too real, and she shuddered at the embarrassing memory of the cleaning lady clearing up the mess she had made. Almost as unbearable was to think of the lie she had spoken to the girl afterwards: Send word I'm suffering from a mild food poisoning and will be staying in my room for a day or two. The girl had also obediently cleared away the pieces of the broken vase. Araminta was worried, Lady, when you didn't let her in. Said she'd heard a crash. And she had told the girl, flat out lied to her, I had a dizzy spell, that's all.

Except it wasn't just a dizzy spell, and she was not losing her mind either.

It was real, and she was now willing to accept it. She didn't know how it was possible, but he had stood there in her room and watched her and spoken to her, and she could now finally think that thought without it plunging her into a black spiralling pit of nauseating terror. He'd stood there, asking for one moment of her time.

The sound of his voice. Precisely as she remembered: emotionless at the edges, but tender on the inside. Something commanding in it that sent an odd and pleasant shiver through her, those slightly hissing sibilants that made her spine tingle. Revered Daughter. The way he said it. On his lips it always sounded wrong. Blasphemous. So dark and... dirty.

She forced herself to think of his name - the name she had fought to forget, hoping that by doing so she would in time cease to grieve over what happened and only the mere emotionless memory of it would remain, hoping that eventually a whole day would go by without him crossing her mind and yet fearing it all the same: the years would go by and one day it would feel like Raistlin Majere had never existed.

She baffled herself, probably even more than she did the others. She had done so much work to forget, and now what was she doing? She had already let in his name, and from his name there was only a short ways to the Abyss. To that day. The day her life broke. The day when she learned exactly how worthless she was. The day she failed.

And now, above all that, his voice in her room, demanding to speak to her.

She tried to push it back, but again it was there, that sickening feeling she remembered so well from the time she had spent with the mage: the feeling of wanting to both run and stay.

Well, she had run, indeed she had. More than that, she had caved in like a coward. Like a fool she had stood there in front of him, helpless and lost for words and scared to death - a reaction her mother no doubt would have praised as a beautiful demonstration of ladylike demure. But that was not who she was and how she behaved. She was not one to shy away from the truth, to back down from unpleasant confrontations. Come hell or high water, she did not avert her gaze, had never done so. Even as a little girl, she would look at wounds right away, to see how bad they were, secretly despising her cousins who would cover their eyes tightly with their hands at the slightest suggestion of deformity. Lesions and nosebleeds and small dead animals would stop her in her tracks - not out of fright, but out of curiosity that she could not quite place. To face what she feared - that had always been her policy.

A memory came to her, as clear as the autumn day that surrounded it.

She was fifteen, and she was riding in a carriage with Aunt Cora Fynes and her three daughters, when the coach driver suddenly brought the horses to a halt. Curious, she drew aside the curtain and craned her head around the window, just in time to get a glimpse of the group of people ahead and something on the ground between them that was covered with a plain grey cloth, before Aunt Cora's reproving hands descended firmly on her shoulders: Young lady, you should know better than to lean out like that.

The driver jumped off his seat and went to examine; on his return he informed them that there had been a lamentable accident - a man had fallen off his horse and, alas, perished. Cousins Eudora, Rufina and Celavia gasped and paled at least two shades, grasping hands and leaning onto each other for support. Dear god, said Aunt Cora, although she was not a religious woman, although she was convinced, along with the rest of the Houses of Tarinius and Fynes, that belief in the old gods was barbarism at its peak, not someone of note, I hope. Assured otherwise, Aunt Cora busied herself with consoling her daughters (oh girls, oh my little cupcakes, no tears to roughen your cheeks now; soon, soon will all be past, it is just a man from the village and he is behind the curtain), which gave Crysania a chance to take a peek outside at the scene of accident as they passed it with due solemnity. Unfortunately she did not see all that much, but what she did see enthralled her: a hand in an unnatural position, protruding from under the blanket. Mesmerized, she tried to picture the look on the victim's face. Were his eyes open? Was there an expression of horror frozen on his features? And, moreover, was his neck... But her imaginings came to an abrupt end, as the curtain was suddenly drawn in a brisk movement, and Aunt Cora's cool, powdered hands covered her eyes.

Later that day she had overheard Aunt Cora reporting to her mother in worried tones about the "morbid curiosity" her daughter had shown towards the dead body.

Morbid curiosity - those words had angered her deeply then. She had always taken pride in her nerves of steel and inner courage that girls of her age - and women in general, for that matter - seemed to lack, and Aunt Cora was dismissing it as morbid curiosity? But now, thirteen years later, Crysania had to wonder whether there was some truth to her aunt's words after all. Perhaps what she had always taken for healthy curiosity was something different, a terrible flaw that ran deep and wide within her.

A moment of your time. One moment.

Crysania closed her eyes, and ordered herself to understand completely and once and for all the thing she still could not understand. It is over. He meant for you to die. Everything he said to you was a lie. End of.

And yet she knew she was already considering it, and the thought was incredibly attractive even as it was ludicrous.

To give her mind something else to do, and knowing sleep would not come again, Crysania stood up and left the bed. The birds were quiet still - two hours or so until the morning prayers. She knew she absolutely had to attend the prayers today; three days absent in a row was too much. No food poisoning would last that long.

The floor was cold under her bare feet. She worked her way to the altar, but not before she had once again made sure the balcony door was tightly locked.

She knelt and brought her palms together to pray, hoping this time there would be an answer to what she had been asking for these past days. Platinum Father, tell me why. Please show me the reason for his return. How did he manage it? What happened? But no answer came, and Crysania thought she was beginning to understand why. She had, yet again, failed as a cleric. In her fright she had failed to follow Paladine's example and turned down a lost soul in search of... something.

"Platinum Father," she muttered in regret. "Forgive me, Bright Father. My courage failed me, and I forgot myself." Paladine knew; after everything, he would understand.

Crysania got up and fumbled for the bowl of water to wash the traces of tears from her face. The cold water woke her up and cleared her thoughts. Refreshed and full of resolution, she decided she would spend the silent hours before dawn planning the rest of her inaugurial speech. Already she was behind schedule with it; she might as well make up for the lost time now.

She took a seat, and found some paper and a quill: they were always there at her disposal, in the same spot in the right-hand corner of the writing table. She sat collecting her thoughts for a moment. Was there something else she wanted to say about inner beauty and deceptive looks? That theme had come very easily: to not judge by appearances was one of Paladine's main commandments, and Crysania had surmised it would carry great exemplary weight to hear about it from someone to whom the visible world no longer existed. At least so she believed, and she was certainly well-read in rhetorics, even though the professional orators who had approached her and whom she had gracefully refused had a hard time believing it. An aristocratic Palanthine lady writing a speech of her own, by Reorx's beard! A sure sign of the end times for those of the more conservative persuasion.

She decided she had exhausted her first theme. She moved on to the second one, which was forgiveness, and began to write, picking up the thread of thought she had last dictated to Araminta. ...or that by persecuting another man we can damage him more fatally than we damage our own hearts in the process...

Like all aristocratic girls, Crysania had been carefully educated in calligraphy as a child; her hand flowed over the paper with a smooth motion, forming ornate loops and swirls. She knew her writing must be askew and all over the place, with the lines and letters crashing into each other, but she was no longer embarrassed by it. No one else but Araminta ever saw her scribbles.

A message. From your god.

She ignored the distractive little voice in her head and went on. "If we never fell," she wrote, "we should not fully know the marvellous love of the Platinum Father. For we shall see verily in his arms, without end, that, although we have sinned in this life, and notwithstanding this, we shall see that we were never hurt in His love, never the less of worth in His sight..."

Suppose she arranged a short meeting. For religious reasons, obviously. Suppose Paladine spoke to her again afterwards.

Stop it.

She wrote on, firmly and decisively: "And by the assay of this falling we shall have a high, marvellous knowing of love in Paladine. For strong and marvellous is that love which may not, nor will not, be broken for trespass..."

The words came easy, she almost managed to get lost in writing, but then she remembered something - something else Raistlin had said - and a tremor swept through her, so hot and compelling that her hand stopped. She was not entirely sure if she had heard it, or just imagined that she had.

Sweetheart.

A word she would have died to hear two years ago. And the way he had said it had been so casual too, like it was the most natural thing in the world for him to call her that.

But no, she must have imagined it. Shaking her head slightly, Crysania resumed her writing. Her hand moved faster, ever faster - but not fast enough to fool her mind that always seemed to find a path to where she did not want to go.

She laid the quill on the table and sat motionless with her hands on her lap, thinking of what she had just written, thinking of Paladine's silence in answer to her prayers, of His marvellous love that would not be broken for trespass. But still...

Four broken fingers. Seven broken ribs. Pierced lung. Broken leg. Strained arm. Concussion. Blood poisoning. Several burn injuries. Innumerable bruises.

And the lies. The deep, hurtful lies.

All of which could have been avoided. If only she would have tried harder and not been such a coward back then, she could have brought out the kind man within. The man who would not seek to destroy Paladine and become god. The only god.

The thought was astonishing, almost inconceivable, and the amount of damage he had caused, not just to her but to innocent people in their thousands was absolutely terrifying. The entire army had been wiped out in Dergoth, all those men who, like her, had no idea what they had signed up for, many of them not very much more than children. Holding open the portal inside the fortress, she had felt the blast that swept across the plains and would have lost her balance if Raistlin hadn't held her so tightly. That was when she still believed they were going to change the world; in only a few more hours she would learn that her part was over and the man that she had (loved) would return to the world alone: he would fight the final battle against the Dark Queen in Palanthas not simply to dethrone her but to take her place, burning and destroying everything in his way, randomly pointing his finger at innocent people, killing and maiming them at his will.

The thought turned her stomach, and she could feel sweat breaking out at the back of her neck. Shivering with chill despite the late summer heat, Crysania tugged her lace shawl tighter around her shoulders. Inconceivable, that's what it was. But Raistlin no longer had those kind of aspirations, surely? Not anymore? Or what if, she thought, with sudden excitement but not quite convinced, what if the idea was so inconceivable simply because it was not true? Was there even the slightest possibility that she had got it all wrong?

Crysania stood up, her face vivid with challenge and hope. She would have to go through with it. Now that she thought about it, really thought about it, it became clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that she would have to arrange a brief - a very brief - meeting with the mage. It was more than just a matter of religious principle - it was a way to closure, an opportunity to put an end to it all with a shred of honour and dignity. Then the dream would go away, too. She was certain of it.

Nothing bad would happen to her. There would be people close by, perhaps even in the same room, people who knew the truth, Gaspar maybe... A prickle of anger suddenly contracted Crysania's brows as she remembered what Raistlin had said about the secretary. Weak, was she? Not able to handle upsetting information? She'd show them.

For a moment she simmered with indignation at her subjects, but then she checked her thoughts. It was entirely possible - oh was it really? - that Raistlin had lied to her: maybe he had not exchanged one word with Gaspar, only fished out his name. The only way to find out was to confront Gaspar, in a roundabout way. If the secretary expressed nothing but blank confusion, she would back off gracefully and claim misinformation was given to her. But if Gaspar confirmed everything...

Crysania went over to the bed, pushed her feet into her slippers and slipped into the robe hanging over the back of a chair.

She would be strong, she would show the mage - and everyone else besides - that she was in control and that he could not hurt her again. She would meet him as the strong cleric she knew she was, not as the broken woman he thought he had left behind. She would lead the conversation; her displeasure would be directed at what he had done to the gods and the world, not what he had done to her.

And this time she would be the one to say farewell.
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Evermore: The Gathering