Adult-FanFiction.org : Books

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
- 17
- 18
- 19
CHAPTER 17

It was a small farm, just an hour's ride from the city: standing alone at the foot of a small hill under the blue summer skies and waiting for the autumn late in coming. Abandoned and left to the elements, the bare windows of the buildings were broken, some of them blocked with wooden boards, while the roof of the cowshed was partly caved in. The path to the main house was long gone, replaced with wild-growing weeds and an occasional weather-beaten tool protruding from the ground.

This decay was real, not an illusion. Under his shirt, plain and unnoticeable, the pendant Raistlin had bought from the magic shop rested coolly against his damp skin, showing him the world as it was in all its beauty and terror, as he walked slowly towards the dwelling past the animal paddocks and hen houses that had been empty for years.

Everything was quiet around him; Digby's occasional snorts in the back, but nothing more. The sun was at its peak, beating down on the desolate farm from a cloudless pool of light.

The house could be a thieves' den now. It could be haunted twice as bad as Jarek's inn. It could be both.

All his senses alert for danger, Raistlin ascended the creaking porch steps with his knife in his right hand; with his left, he pushed at the splintery door.

What he saw as the door gave way was a shadowy hallway from which branched out three little rooms; in the far corner, shrouded in shadows, a rickety staircase rose up into the second floor. The floor was strewn with rubble, and there were rats' nests along the walls edged with mould and filth. He tiptoed in, grimacing a little: the smell of decay was sharp and thick, but, as a welcome change from the suffocating heat outside, the air was curiously still and cold in the house that the Venegases had once occupied.

He chose randomly and headed to the door on the left knowing, hoping, that somewhere among the rusty nails and rotten boards lay the answer: the lock that would fit the key.

The space he entered had once been a kitchen: the ancient stove was still in place, a mute witness to the havoc that nature and humans alike had wreaked. The cabinet doors stood open; he peeked into the one cupboard that remained closed but found it empty. Everything had been looted. He glanced up: perhaps the looters were upstairs, quiet, waiting.

He crossed the kitchen and stepped into another room just as small and stripped. He stood still, listening to the ominous silence, taking in the little details the family had left behind. A black rocking chair by the window, in a surprisingly good condition; a woman's green dress on a nail peg; a pair of broken spectacles on the windowsill. The mother's, perhaps? The birth records at the bottom floor of the Great Library that Raistlin had studied the previous evening told a grim story: Missus Venegas had died giving birth to her third child, who soon followed her to the grave, while the family's first-born child had perished from an illness at a young age. Ildi and her father Ambrus had been the only ones left, and that too ended in tragedy. The dwarf at Jarek's had suggested that Ambrus Venegas had killed himself after the murder. Here, in this house?

Not in the third room, though. Save for an overturned chair, there was nothing there. Just mouse droppings and weeds growing out of the cracks between the floorboards.

Raistlin returned to the hallway and stopped to assess the staircase. The wood was old and grey, but perhaps solid enough. He heard no sounds upstairs, so he placed his booted foot tentatively on the first step and moved his weight upwards, making himself as light as possible. Step by step, the knife ready. Soft and slow, not daring to touch the banister.

He was nearly halfway through when the sagging board underneath him collapsed and went down in a cloud of dust; for one terrifying moment his foot dived into the emptiness and he started to tumble forwards with a loud yell of surprise. He managed to grab hold of the handrail he had been so carefully avoiding just in time, cursing at the racket he had made. If there were people upstairs, his presence was no longer a secret. Breathing hard, he scampered up the remaining steps and reached a landing with two doors.

The door on the right tottered on its hinges, but he went through it anyway, banging his head on the low lintel, and came into what once must have been Ildi's room. The hairbrush on the table still had a few strands of golden hair tangled in it. The great skeleton of a bed stood in the middle, bare and lonesome, occupied by a little doll. Like most dolls, this one too was a member of the aristocracy. Her once fine dress, now tattered and filthy, was of pale blue silk and lace; in her small procelain hand she held a parasol to protect her white complexion from the sun. Shiny locks of hair fell down to her shoulders.

Raistlin stared at the doll, rubbing the swelling on his forehead. Like a lightning from the sky, the image of Crysania pierced his mind again, bordering on desperation. What if she wouldn't contact him? What then?

After what transpired between them in Dergoth, after her show of weakness, she had escaped the camp on horseback, and he'd been worried to the point of anxiety that his reaction, completely justified as it was, had scared her away for good. But when they'd finally found her in that empty plague-ridden village, him and Caramon, praying at a dead man's side, his fears were lifted. At first she wouldn't look at him. She jumped when he took her hands, numb with cold; her entire body was tense like a string. The cut on her lip was rather bad, but accidents happened. He kissed her hands and still she wouldn't look at him; only when he touched her cheek did she slowly lift her gaze to meet his. Then he'd known, and the knowledge was amazing. There was no need for words, for she had already forgiven him. She would always forgive him.

Holding on to that image, pitting it against the dreadful knowledge that this was the beginning of the third day without a word from her, Raistlin continued his search, glad he had something to distract him.

He started back towards the tightly shut door on the other side of the landing, and paused. A whisper. Like a faint wisp of smoke coiling into the air and disappearing. He listened, but it did not come again.

If there was something to be found at the site, this was the last chance: he reached for the knob and was immediately taken aback by the strong impression of not being alone. Even though the upstairs was awash with light, there was a darkness, a vibration that could be sensed rather than seen, and it was moving, gathering forces against him in a terrible rage. Beneath this, however, ran an undercurrent of curiosity that had touched his consciousness at the inn, a sense of affinity and recognition: I killed my loved one. You know how that is.

Raistlin pushed the door ajar and saw a room much cleaner and better preserved than the rest of the house. The absence of windows had kept the weather at bay, while also giving the room a dark and heavy feel. Furniture-wise it was the same as the others: a decrepit table with faded chairs, another old bed and some more damaged closets, all cheap and badly built. Having carpets and curtains would have been a luxury beyond a peasant's means.

As soon as he stepped in, the presence became stronger. "You in here with me, Venegas?" Raistlin called, his hand closing tighter around the hilt of his knife. Instead of an answer, the air grew lighter, easier to breathe. He wasn't surprised; he was getting tired of the ghost's cowardice.
He tried all the cabinets and locks, finding only moth-eaten clothes and boots covered in dried-up mud. Nothing of interest, nothing of value. He opened a drawer and saw a collection of butterflies pinned to a display board, then another, and yet another. Venegas really seemed to have enjoyed slaughtering butterflies.

He went through all the cabinets once more to make sure and then just stood looking around with his hands on his hips: would he have to return to the library and start all over, searching for clues without even knowing where to begin? The questions raced in his mind as something caught his eye under the bed that hadn't been visible from the other side. Intrigued, he bent down to have a closer look and saw the corner of what appeared to be a large travelling trunk.

He got down on his knees and pulled the trunk out into the open; it was not heavy, it glided smoothly over the dust.

The trunk was locked. He took the key out of his pocket and inserted it into the rusty lock. He paused: please turn. It did.

Coughing, he lifted the lid, filling the air with the cry of the black iron hinges. Inside, all that could be seen were some papers scattered in piles over the bottom, tied with coarse twine. The papers were yellow and fragile, but they looked dry and relatively clean, having lain undisturbed in their nest for two hundred years and more.

Curious, Raistlin picked up the topmost pile. This was what Ildi Venegas had wanted him to find: so what was it?

A closer examination revealed them to be hand-written notes, and though the pages were brittle, threatening to crumble in his fingers, he could still make out the words. That they were Venegas's scribblings seemed beyond doubt: apparently the farmer had known how to read and write, but his spelling was atrocious and old-fashioned, making the writing slow to read. Raistlin skimmed through the first batch of notes and picked up the second pile, his brows rising in consternation as a thread began to emerge. Incredulously, he read on, and the further he read, the more thrilled he became. Was this really happening? Was he really crouching in an old house, in an old bedroom by an empty fireplace, reading the notes of a simple peasant who somehow, against all plausibility, had practised magic without having it in his blood? Who had studied the magic of the east, as he called it, and managed to cast spells?

The idea was as intriguing as it was undeniably frustrating.

Venegas described the ancient city of Redwald. Redwald... Raistlin had read that name somewhere. According to his memory, the city no longer existed, had perhaps never existed in the first place. Raistlin frowned, looking at the papers. Was he supposed to believe that Venegas had been to that non-existent city?

He did not know how much time passed; but when he stopped reading, his leg had gone to sleep. Hardly even noticing, Raistlin let his hand holding the paper fall and stared blankly at the chipped wall before him.

Too convenient. Too good to be true.

Still, too good to pass.

Quickly, as if afraid that they might vanish, Raistlin collected all the notes and tucked them in his bag, closed the trunk and pushed it back into its tomb under the bed.

He was just starting the hazardous descend down the stairs, when something stopped him. A slow creaking motion: for a moment he thought of a carcass dangling from a noose, but then he realized what it was and his blood chilled.

Someone was rocking in the chair downstairs, creaking softly, back and forth.

Fair enough: he had stolen Venegas's papers. Would he have to fight him now, and his eastern magic?

There was no other exit; he did not even want one. He needed to see.

Raistlin flicked his knife out - completely useless, of course, under the circumstances, but oddly reassuring nonetheless - and started to descend.

Back and forth, back and forth. And something else: a thin sound, a jingle. He noticed his head had started to hurt again.

Five more steps. His reflexes had always been fast: whatever Venegas would do, he'd do it quicker. On the other hand, it could be Ildi. Perhaps she had something more to tell him.

Raistlin took the final step and paused. The rocking behind his back had stopped, too. Slowly, he turned around to look into the room.

No one there. The chair still. The spectacles on the windowsill. The green dress on the wall. Coward, he thought spitefully.

But in all honesty, he exited through the main door a little faster than he had intended to. Relieved to be back outside in spite of himself, he stood in the yard a while longer and let his eyes roam over the derelict farm and its buildings, undetermined whether he should go or stay, wondering whether he had missed something. A low rumble distracted him; he raised his head and looked. Thunder in the distance, finally?

But the heat kept up. No rain had fallen when he returned to the inn an hour later, weary and dusty from the journey.

"Before you ask," said Bessie as she saw him approach, reaching under the counter and producing a small envelope. "This came in the morning right after you left."

The weariness left him; very calmly, he took the envelope and went up the flight of stairs just as calmly, resisting the urge to run. In his room he broke the seal and unfolded the enclosed paper in a frenzy, annoyed at the delay; he couldn't get it open fast enough. He scanned quickly through the letter, and the rush of relief almost knocked him over. He slumped down onto the bed, clutching the piece of paper in his hands.

Two days. She had lasted two days.

Once, twice more, he read the words written on official church paper, with Paladine's triangle embossed in silver at the top. "The Platinum Father tells me to receive you tomorrow at noon in the south wing of the temple. You will present your case briefly. My secretary Gaspar Cloade, whom you have already met, will guide you in and likewise guide you out when you are done. You will meet him by the entrance across from the fountain."

Raistlin's lips curved up into a victorious smirk.

At noon, in the south wing of the temple.

Tomorrow.
- 17
- 18
- 19
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Evermore: The Gathering