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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
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CHAPTER 16

348 AC - Winter Pines Hall, Palanthas

It was the book that started it.

Up until that one fateful evening in her father's library, Crysania's rebellion had smouldered within her quietly, yet strongly enough to cause hoped-for damage: for half a year after her coming of age she had successfully sabotaged every prospect of marriage, strategically and tactically making herself as unappealing as possible to the young and not-so-young bachelors crowding around her at dancing balls. Word travelled fast. The suitors eyed her longingly from a distance, but never invited her to dance: not the girl who knew much more than they did, who did not laugh at their bad jokes nor accept their worse gifts. According to some jilted admirers, she did not even give them her hand to kiss, and what's more - the abomination of all abominations, the shame of all shames! - she did not curtsey. Just looked at you noncommittally, even disdainfully, with her grey eyes.

Of course, the lack of proposals was tremendously upsetting to her lady mother. Amelia Tarinius simply could not understand what was wrong, and although Crysania felt a little bad for her mother, she had no intentions of stopping. She felt strangely liberated by her reputation as the Scary Girl, and what sense of rejection she might have felt as even her girl cousins began to avoid her, whispering and falling silent whenever she appeared, was made glorious by the knowledge that she was her own self, a defiant and confident young woman who would not play by the rules of others. "That's our cousin Crysania. She said she doesn't like needlework," the girls would whisper as she passed them by, and the short and simple ew following that moronic statement made the corners of her mouth tilt up in a smile. Oh, how she pitied their ignorant, narrow minds.

And then there was the matter of looks. Oliva had told her that she was an exceptionally beautiful girl and that her beauty would drive men mad with passion; the servant's words had made Crysania uncomfortable and she did not believe her at first, but at the ball in honour of her sixteenth birthday and official entry into the marriage market, she had learnt the hard and unpleasant way that Oliva had not in fact been far off the mark. To her immense shock and surprise, and contrary to what she had foolishly enough been expecting, the bachelors seeking her hand in marriage were not interested in a witty exchange of opinions with her - what interested them in her lay under her gown. Most of the young boys were too gentle and shy, to be sure, but she could nevertheless see the lust in their eyes, and the old widowers... Crysania had to stifle a shiver whenever she remembered their sweaty hands lightly groping her under the pretense of dancing.

Sadly enough, she had no say over the way she was dressed and styled at public gatherings, but at home she stopped wearing the gowns of her mother's choice, those tactically designed atrocities that put the wearer's breasts on display. She hated the screaming colours, the yellows and blues and greens of the tafts and silks and damasks and velvets, and she absolutely hated the money tied up in them, in useless fripperies. She hated the necklaces and earrings, dreaming that she would come across that girl in the forest again and give her all her jewellery and innumerable satin shoes. But since she could not, she did the next best thing: she wandered around Winter Pines Hall in a plain night gown, bare-footed and hair undone, upsetting her mother even more. She even stopped putting coal under her eyes, discarded the red buttery ointment she was supposed to dab on her lips and emptied into the pond the red cheek powder imported from Qualinesti. Without it, there were no roses in her cheeks: she was as pale as snow. She liked her image in the mirror better than before. Dishevelled and unkempt, she looked like the ghost she felt herself to be.

And yet all the time she knew that through her actions she was only delaying the inevitable. Her rebellion was neat and tidy, working to ease her soul into a destined surrender.

It was the book that made it serious, and turned the smouldering into a blaze.

Knowing that her father was out of the house and her mother asleep on the second floor, Crysania had taken the key and slipped into the library. The familiar, well-loved scent embraced her: she inhaled deeply the sweetness of leatherbound books and rich polished wood, for a moment pretending that she lived in a world where she could freely walk into a library at any time and read all the books she had ever wanted to read.

But here, in this world, she had to be quick. She walked past the shelves, scanning the titles hastily, pulling out a few books here and there, looking for something to catch her interest. Her heart beat with fear and anticipation; she jumped at every little creak and groan the old house made, certain that her mother would suddenly appear behind her. She skipped the poetry section - the only section women were encouraged and allowed to study - and moved straight on to history and science, feeling genuinely sorry for all the Palanthine ladies who would never learn about those matters. She ran an adoring hand along the dusty spines as she walked, her resolve growing ever stronger with every step: her place was not by the fireside with an embroidery and a handful of children - one could not make a difference by the fireplace. There had to be another way. An escape. She had only to find it.

As she turned the corner to start a new shelf her eyes were immediately drawn to a large volume protruding halfway out of its nest, as if beckoning her to come and read. With a curious sense of solemnity that had suddenly enveloped her, Crysania walked slowly along the opulent red carpet and went up on tiptoe to seize the book. It was very old and musty, but the title shone brightly in golden letters: The Gods of Krynn. Crysania snorted derisively. Even children knew gods did not exist. She was about to put the book back and look for a more interesting one, but then something in her - perhaps the alluring sense of the forbidden - made her want to take a closer look at its pages.

The volume was so heavy and large she had to use both hands to lift it onto a reading lectern. Contempt mingling with curiosity, she started skimming through the yellowing pages adorned with black and white picture drawings of the gods that, according to the chronicler, had long ago abandoned Krynn, on account of the folly of one man by the name of Beldinas Pilofiro. The ruler of the Holy Empire of Istar, Pilofiro had sought the power of the gods and by doing so he had invoked their wrath: the gods had sent a fiery mountain on Istar and turned their backs on people. Baffled, Crysania inspected the drawing of the man who had asked to become god among gods. That was proof enough it was just a fable, she concluded: no human being would ever aspire to godhood. True or not, the story gave her shivers all the same, and she closed her eyes in a fit of fevered frenzy: there was so much life outside Winter Pines Hall! So much history, so much desire and knowledge. She needed to be a part of it.

On the pages following the introduction, there was a section describing the deities one by one. Mishakal, Solinari, Reorx, Majere, Kiri-Jolith... The exotic names rang like a mantra. Utterly immersed, Crysania turned page after page until she came to a picture that made her breath catch. She stared and stared and stared: it was the scariest, ugliest thing she had ever seen, but she could not stop looking at it. Surrounded by five screaming dragon heads, the black-haired woman in the picture was naked, save for the snakes coiling around her arms and waist. In one hand she dangled a severed human head by the hair, while the other was cupped around her unnaturally heavy breasts in a lewd caress. Her face was both beautiful and repelling; she looked directly at the reader, fixing her with her black ferocious stare, the cruel smile on her lips revealing a set of fang-like teeth. But the worst thing was that she was squatting on top of a man lying down beneath her, and the man's member, swollen and long, was half buried between her open thighs as he lifted his hips to thrust deep into her with a look of indescribable ecstasy on his panting face. Seized by revulsion and a terrible undertone of something else, Crysania read the description and looked at the woman again. Her name was Takhisis, and she was the head of the Dark Pantheon, the Queen of the Abyss. The man writhing under him in incestuous pleasure was her son Nuitari, the god of black magic. Together, the mother and son smiled upon revenge, hatred, ambition. Crysania swallowed. Was this what the world outside was like?

Quickly, she turned a leaf and was lifted into a different world, a world of light and truth: Paladine, the supreme leader of the deities of Good, bathing in love and forgiveness. His eyes were old and kind, and they were looking at her with love that she did not need to deserve. All of a sudden tears were welling up in Crysania's eyes. She thought of the girl in the forest and how she would have liked to help her; she thought of the rods and spikes at the back of her father's carriages, designed to prevent the poor from getting close, and a rankling sense of the injustice of it all took hold of her. Almost trembling with emotion, she had to make an effort to remember that Paladine did not exist. But for a while she thought how wonderful it would be if He did.

As she stood there gazing at the picture, a shadow crept over the page and she instinctively realized that what she had feared had now happened: she looked up, eyes still brimming, and saw her mother standing there in front of her, smileless and cold. Before Crysania had time to do anything at all, her mother's hand rose in the air and came back down in a blur of white pearls: a hot pain flashed across Crysania's ear, and even hotter across her soul.

"Wicked child!" Amelia Tarinius screamed. "You are possessed! Possessed by an evil spirit!"

Crysania's head was ringing, but she did not flinch nor bring her hand over her ear. For what seemed an eternity she merely stared at her mother, unable to conceive of what she had just done: she had never been hit before, had never been so profoundly hurt in body and soul. The tears that Paladine had brought had dried; she wanted to cry, but she found there was something cold and hard inside her that would not yield to weeping.

"Do you not know what happens to naughty little girls?" Her mother's voice was shaking with hardly controlled anger. "They go to the Abyss!"

Without speaking, Crysania walked past her mother and quit the library, outwardly composed but out of joint inside, a vague terror growing within her. She hardly registered the following events, mother informing father in hysterical tones that their daughter had been reading a book on religion, the teary Oliva being reprimanded for not keeping an eye on her, herself being sent to her room early. She was still outside of her body when her mother came in much later and sat beside the bed for a while, smoothing her hair without saying a word. She could tell her mother was crying, but whether it was from disappointment or love, Crysania did not know. Before she left, she planted a small kiss on her throbbing ear. It was the first time her mother had ever kissed her.

Only when she was gone, did Crysania allow her own tears to come. In the autumn night that seemed so very long and dark, she covered her face with her hands, surrendering to the wrecking sobs that poured out of her across the crisp white linen of her embroidered nightgown and the pale flowery fields of her canopied bed. What an ungrateful daughter she was! She had been given everything and she had let down everyone. "I'm sorry, mother," she whispered between the sobs and swallows, "I'm sorry, father! Oh, Paladine!" The god's name slipped out unintended, but the comfort it gave was oddly soothing. "Paladine, make me become like other girls! Make me adore needlework and hate books!" She squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated on choosing herself a husband - now she would do it, she would have to! Giles Tindall, maybe? Or Aldren Swales? Surely they were both marvellously handsome, were they not? Everyone said so, so it must be true. And nice - they were both very nice, too. A girl could count herself lucky if she were to marry either, surely.

She did not want it to happen, but from contemplating the good qualities of the bachelors Tindall and Swales Crysania's mind suddenly took a drastic turn and pelted down a very different path, a path that lay hidden behind her dreams and led to somewhere she did not want to go. But she was powerless to stop herself, and sometimes, like now, she found herself imagining that on route through the woods she was abducted by highwaymen, dangerous highwaymen with shady intentions. Because those things did happen - take Miss Jessamine Lisle, for example. One day she might just as well be travelling alone in the carriage, with only the driver to defend her. He would be no match for the hardened criminals, of course: they would stop the carriage, drag him screaming off his horse, and brutally execute him in front of her eyes. The leader of the bandits would then grab her, tell her not to worry with a mean sort of smile and ride off into the night with her. What came next in this little vision of hers was so sordid and weird that she couldn't even venture into thinking it clearly beyond mere flashes of images that made her entire body flush. Tonight it was even worse than before: for some reason, her mind shot from those obscure images to the twisted picture of the Dark Queen and her son in all its awful detail. With a groan, Crysania buried her face in her pillow, trying to drive back the terrible thoughts and replace them with images of wedding gowns and doves. There was something seriously wrong with her, there must be!

Much as she had expected, the prayer she had uttered did not help: she felt better for having shared her grief with the ancient god, but she still preferred books to needlework and still had no candidate for husband in mind. But she did decide that, were she ever to fall in love, against all odds, she would never betray and never leave. It would be eternal. Because what would be the point, otherwise?

Feeling clear-headed all of a sudden, Crysania dried her cheeks and pulled herself together, ashamed of the outpour of emotion. Fine. So she was different. She was something more than the other girls; she had something that they missed. She made a promise to herself that in the future she would command her emotions like a lieutenant in war. Tears were for other women.

The early morning rain beating against the windows woke her. Driven by an urge she could not quite explain, she got up and sat down at the vanity. The gold-framed mirror reflected her face: her eyes were puffy from last night's crying and her hair was messy from sleep. On a whim, she grabbed a bunch of it and started to slowly twine it around her wrist, as far as it would go; she pulled slightly, wincing at the tingling sensation in her scalp. She continued to pull, and, not at all intending to, tugged a little harder, ending with a violent yank. She gasped at the depth of that sensation: a bright, sharp pain that breached her walls. Startled, she let go.

But she had come up with a thought. There was one thing she could do that could not be fixed in a day, that would earn her at least a year's exemption from social gatherings and delay marriage.

Once the decision was made, it did not take long for her to carry the plan through. In a matter of moments she was sitting with her fingers curled around the silver scissors, her long raven strands falling on the floor around her. She worked the scissors at a furious pace, illogically and in every direction, gaining speed and satisfaction from thinking of their reaction, until she was left with hair no longer than the level of her ears.

She stared at the stranger in the mirror: the stranger's face crumpled in tears. Oh why did she always have to take everything to extremes?

She sat there trembling, breathing hard through her nose. Her fingers opened and closed, compulsively clutching the silver scissors.

She had been screaming for so long, without a sound.
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Evermore: The Gathering