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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 20

Raistlin poured more wine into the cup and sat back, contemplating the rich, sour taste: Jarek's compliments, compensation for the ghost episode. It was the third glass already and he was feeling a little tipsy, but let's face it, there was nothing else to do, and besides, the drink went some way to alleviate the pain in his head. It did nothing, however, for the restlessness he felt within. He had already gone through Ambrus Venegas's notes countless of times, he had made some notes himself about the city of Redwald and stared at the heap of maps he had borrowed, in the kender sense of the word, from the library; he had thought about Crysania long and hard, he had taken another glass of wine, and thought about her again. That was it. That was his night, and it was still a long way till dawn.

It was an understatement to say he was looking forward to moving on; his eyes were constantly drawn to the map spread on the table. Sitting in immobility, just gazing at the mishmash of meticulously drawn rivers and roads, he imagined the journey ahead: there would be days and nights of riding, an assortment of roadside inns to visit and plenty of camp fires to light. The route they would take was imprinted on his mind, but he went through it again: they would follow the Great Southern Road out of Palanthas, through the Vingaard Mountains and across Solamnia - the detour was necessary, they couldn't head straight east, because the Khalkist Mountains were hard, if not impossible, to cross, and anyway he wanted to avoid Neraka at any cost. So, down through Solamnia it was, all the way to the Hamilton Bridge and from there across the New Sea to Crossing in Abanasinia, still on towards the Plains of Dust and where the city of Redwald was supposed to lay at their easternmost edge. The place where he would take back the magic. Whatever magic it was, and by force, if necessary.

But he was getting ahead of himself. His gaze shifted westward, back to Abanasinia, and landed on the little black dot amidst the green woods, next to the blue splash of Crystalmir Lake: Solace, the worst shithole of a town in living memory. Another place he wanted to steer clear of at any cost, but, as it happened, that was the shortest route, and as he imagined the look on Caramon's face when he found him on his doorstep with Crysania, Solace suddenly seemed like a good prospect.

Raistlin scoffed a laugh, shaking his head. Caramon, the great imbecile, had fallen for Crysania; he had seen it in Caramon's every look and gesture a long time before he'd actually heard him say it, and Raistlin did not think those delusions ever really died out, not completely, not even when it became painfully clear that his brother was wildly overreaching himself. What a farce. Caramon had stood there in the tent, a married man declaring his love and telling Crysania she was not like any other woman he'd ever known - of course not: there were tavern whores and then there were class acts -, and Crysania, politely demanding Caramon to let go of her, trying to make him understand that she did not share his feelings, and Caramon going into a desperate fit, shouting all red in the face that Raistlin, his brother, his twin, his own flesh and blood, did not deserve her love.

Raistlin had watched from the doorway, an amusing little play. But for a moment, when he had seen Caramon touch her and heard those words coming from his lips - that he did not deserve to be loved - a thought had run through his mind that had never been there before: fear, rage, a sense of betrayal - it was all of these things and none, and he had stepped into the tent all numb and edgy, to put an end to Caramon's embarrassing ideas about all three of them.

Raistlin stared into the cup, at the blood-red liquid in the bottom. Caramon could say whatever he liked, but it wouldn't make any difference. Crysania was his. Completely and utterly his own. Smiling, Raistlin swirled the wine round and round, staring, lost in thought.

Good evening, my lord magus.

Startled, Raistlin looked up. A young girl's voice, inside his head: he had heard the words as clearly as if they had been spoken in his ear. He turned in his chair and was not all that surprised to see Ildi Venegas sitting on the bed, looking at him with a tilted head, her small hand habitually pressed on her gory throat.

"Good evening, Ildi," Raistlin said softly, urging himself to proceed cautiously with the girl this time. She had not shown herself since that night in the cellars, and he needed more information.

Magus went to the house. Magus found the notes.

Ildi's mouth did not move, but the words rang loud and clear in Raistlin's mind. "Yes. The notes are here," he confirmed, tapping the pile with a finger. "Why did you want me to have them?"

The ghost looked at him gravely for a moment. Then: Magus sad. Want to make magus happy.

Confounded at the unexpected answer, Raistlin took a sip of the wine. He didn't like being told what he felt. He put the cup back and demanded, much more coldly now, "Why didn't you talk to me before, like this?"

Ildi crossed her hands over her throat. Not know how, until kind magus released me.

"I released you by going to the house?"

A single nod.

"And how about your father? Did I by any chance release him too?"

A frightened look spread across Ildi's pallid features; she shook her head quickly and put a warning finger to her lips.

Tipping his chair on two legs, hooking an elbow around its back, Raistlin studied the ghost, trying to decide what to make of the situation. All too convenient, he thought for at least the hundredth time since it all started. All of a sudden she could speak to him through thoughts? In two hundred years he was the only one who could have discovered the key and released her? He found that hard to believe and altogether suspicious.

But Ildi looked back at him candidly, with a small smile on her bluish lips. "Listen," Raistlin said to the girl. "Why me? You've been here for two hundred years and more. Why not someone else?"

She frowned in confusion. You. I gave the key to you.

Raistlin let the chair fall back forward and rested his elbows on his knees, his coldly inquisitive eyes never straying from the ghost's face. Clearly she was a little bit simple - but from the shock of her death or even before that, one couldn't tell.

Ildi did not become flustered under his scrutiny. Quite the contrary: the smile returned to her lips and she shot Raistlin a look from beneath her lashes, tucking an errant hair behind her ear.

Yours now.

The voice in which she spoke these two words in Raistlin's mind was breathy, daring. "Mine?" Raistlin simply said, intrigued and repelled at the same time.

By way of an answer, Ildi hopped off the bed and sank down on her knees before him. I want to serve lord magus. Help him on his journey. To Redwald.

"Redwald! Have you been there? Have you seen the city? I need to know."

Ildi nodded slowly, her face serious. With father. Before he got mad.

"It's said the city exists beyond the invisible," Raistlin said, speaking deliberately slow. "Can you tell me what that means?"

She shook her head, and a look of disgust briefly crossed her face. It's magic. I don't know any magic.

"Your father did, though. He learnt it in Redwald, didn't he?"

Ildi gave a nod tinted with sadness and once again covered her throat with both her hands.

"I don't suppose you know anything about that, either," Raistlin said, surveying the ghost with obvious distaste.

Her face distorted: she looked like she was going to cry. Don't be mad, magus, please. I want to help.

Raistlin spread his hands. "I don't see how."

Now her face lightened up. Talking rapidly, she gestured with her hands, filling Raistlin's mind with words and images. Scare enemies. See where magus can't. Go first. Warn danger.

She paused, then gave a slanted smile. Pleasure magus.

Before Raistlin could do anything, Ildi got up from her kneeling position and spun her naked body slowly around like a dancer, lifting her wet hair and letting it cascade back down over her shoulders, seemingly forgetting the embarrassment her messy throat normally caused her; she spun around again, once, twice, sliding her hands slowly and sensually over her tiny breasts and narrow hips, all the time gazing at him with that sultry, seducing smile.

Raistlin looked at the ghost like he would a lifeless object, his mind ticking and turning, serching for ways in which this girl could be useful to him, this phantom girl who was twirling and writhing before him, reaching out to him in the only way she thought he would respond to.

"All right," he said in a cool tone which the ghost clearly did not expect and which consequently made her stop her spinning. "Suppose I needed your help. How would I summon you?"

Ildi's face was awash with disappointment at Raistlin's reaction, or rather the lack of it, but she raised her chin and cupped her hands around her mouth to mime a holler.

"I see. I'd have to call out your name."

A nod.

"And to make you leave?"

She blinked her eyes innocently. Magus ask.

Raistlin shook his head and uttered a short, angry laugh. "Do you take me for a fool? There is always a power word. Otherwise you might just stay. And by the way," he added in a low, nasty voice, locking eyes with the girl, "you'd be wise not to try to trick me ever again. I don't like that."

Ildi flinched, dropping her gaze.

"The power word," Raistlin demanded. "Out with it."

Slowly, without raising her eyes, Ildi drew a finger across her throat, imitating a knife cutting into flesh.

A gesture, then, instead of a word. Raistlin kept staring at the girl, his intention to be gentle with her forgotten. "Look at me," he said harshly, waiting until the ghost lifted her eyes to his. "Call out your name, make a gesture. Are you absolutely sure about this? Think very hard now before you answer. 'Cause I really don't need you appearing uncalled and when it suits you."

Only when magus wants, she hastened to reply and then repeated, emphatically, Yours now.

Raistlin relaxed a little. He leaned back in his chair, starting to warm to the idea.

Will magus have me? Ildi asked again in a plaintive voice, unnerved by his silence. Hope mingled with desperation glittered in her eyes.

"I don't know," Raistlin said without interest. "Maybe you should try a bit harder."

Magus, please.

He looked at her blankly. "I don't think I heard you right."

Lord magus, please.

He continued to look at her without expression. She seemed confused, not knowing what he wanted. She tried going down on her knees again and putting her hands together in a begging gesture. Please. Please.

"I can't hear you," Raistlin said in a low monotone, with a mean sort of smile that he did not even know was there.

Lord magus, I'm begging you, will you please have me? Ildi's voice was trembling, shot through with threatening tears. Her eyes were huge with distress.

Raistlin leant in towards the girl crouching on the floor and half-whispered, looking her deep in the eye, "We'll see. Now, get up," he added briskly in a normal tone.

Ildi did as she was told and immediately scrambled to her feet. Raistlin was about to say something else, but then he saw her eyes had fixed on something on the table behind him. He turned to look and saw what it was. Picking up the page he had torn from the Palanthas Year in Review, he turned back to the ghost and held it up for her to see. "There's you," he said, "and what they wrote about your death."

Ildi's eyes darkened with pain. She stared at the page as if hypnotized and began to approach it slowly, wet footprints following in her wake. She looked at her portrait for some moments, then turned her haunted gaze towards Raistlin, the sultriness long gone from her expression: she was just a frightened child, alone and unable to understand.

Why did he kill me? Did he not love me?

Taken aback, Raistlin looked at the girl without speaking; she had opened a door through which a cold wind blew on him, and behind that door, somewhere in the distance, he could see Caramon dying in the flames and crying for help, and standing above him, driving the flames ever higher, creating a swirling maelstrom of incinerating fury, was the self-obsessed man Raistlin had seen in the Dark Queen's mirror: the man who could not create, only destroy.

Raistlin looked at the gruesome scene for a moment, feeling the terrible cold of the gale, and then calmly shut the door on it. No consequences. Only the strong survived. That was how the world turned.

"I don't know," he simply said to the girl. But as he said it his eyes slid away from her perplexed, questioning gaze.

It was getting late. The headache was returning. "Ildi."

She turned her hopeful and eager face towards him.

Raistlin did not say anything else, only repeated the gesture that was supposed to make the ghost leave: the knife across the throat, which two hundred years ago had ended her earthly life.

Ildi's face took on a sad expression, but she made no resistance. Slowly, very slowly and without a sound, she faded out of sight.

Raistlin sat where he was a little longer, weighing the opportunities. The ghost might prove useful, she really could, and not just in Redwald, but even before that. In the meantime, he could try to get some sleep. Just a couple of hours. He corked the wine, got up, took off his trousers and went to bed.

He left the inn early in the morning, without much sleep, and headed out into a world with no change: the bright morning sun lay like a blanket above the city's white walls, creating shadows and promising no rain. The streets were empty still. Only a few stray cats and a middle-aged woman brooming the steps witnessed his walk, and she too quickly averted her eyes when she saw the colour of his robe.

Hours passed and time lost its meaning. His existence became a stretch of meaningless events following one another: he visited the library and without enthusiasm explored the different floors, he stopped for a moment at a street corner to watch a despicable comedy play performed by a troupe of lousy actors. He passed the same signs and the same buildings more than twice, wandering through the streets with the thought of seeing Crysania soon again as his sole guiding light. He felt awful. No headache right now, it rarely came in the morning, but he noticed his hands had started to shake again, and several times he had to touch his nose to make sure he was not bleeding.

When the six long hours had finally expired, Raistlin started towards the Temple Gardens, throbbing with expectation. This was it. Today was the day. All manner of things would be well. He may have screwed up a little, but that was in the past and she knew it. Still, a thought came to him as he approached the western gate: what if, despite what she'd said, she would come accompanied by a set of bodyguards and church officials who would seize him and throw him in jail? Ridiculous to think that. He discarded the thought and opened the gate.

He paced quickly across the fresh-smelling lawn, his eyes stuck on the trimmed topiary bushes; behind them, he could already hear the water singing in the fountain in the middle of the lotus pond.

He turned the corner just when the church bells rang in midday; the pond came into view, the altar too, and he stopped cold in his tracks.

Raistlin stared at the scene before him, astonished.

The garden was empty. Crysania was not there.

For a while his mind tried to convince him that he had come to the wrong place, but that was futile: he knew full well there was only one western altar and only one lotus pond in Paladine's Gardens.

He waited. For twenty minutes. For an hour.

The sun shifted; the statue of Paladine, one of the innumerable, cast a long shadow across the lawn. Reluctantly, as if pulled against his will, Raistlin turned to look.

The sun blazed at zenith. Before it, encircled in rays of glory, Paladine met his gaze in wordless triumph: victorious, eternal, born to be god.
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Evermore: The Gathering