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 52
"Here, put out your hand," Raistlin insisted.
"No!" It was a fierce half-whisper, full of dread at the prospect of being overheard by the other passengers onboard the Soaring Eagle, and it came accompanied with a determinate crossing of arms: the voice and gesture of a sulking girl child defying her guardian.
Almost beside himself with frustration, but still civilised in manner and tone, Raistlin kept holding out his hand. "I really don't see what the problem is."
At this Crysania's eyes - those endless crystal pools of ice and mist into which Raistlin felt he could have gazed for hours on end - grew wide with indignation. Trying to keep her voice low, she answered in a hiss. "The problem is, I'm not going to let you walk me around on a leash like some -" She cut herself short, unable to fill the blank; but the sudden flush colouring her cheeks was only too clear an indication of her unconscious mind completing the gap for her in a way that she could not quite articulate.
"Now, who said anything about a leash?" The word had caught Raistlin unguarded. He had trouble keeping his voice neutral. "It's not like I'd be putting it around your neck."
"I don't care if it's my neck or wrist. It's all the same. I'm not going to do it."
With absolute finality, Crysania turned her face away from him, set on ignoring his existence altogether. But Raistlin could see she was holding herself very tensely, and her cheeks, her neck, were still glowing faintly scarlet from the stirring awareness. Had he not sensed this awareness in her from the beginning, from the moment their eyes had met in the Great Library, and she had shrunk back in her chair, unconsciously and helplessly responsive, yielding under his gaze? Had he not sensed it every time he had touched her, gripped her, held her a little too hard - a quickening, a rush mingling with his own rippling surge of pleasure?
He dropped his gaze to the rope clutched in his hand, fingering its coarse fibers, allowing himself to get increasingly worked up. A leash. He closed his eyes. Gods. She said it, not I.
But when he opened his eyes again, he could tell the awareness was dwindling; already, too fast, his darling sweetheart was slipping back into her cloak of silence. Inwardly cringing at how pathetic he must sound, yet unwilling to let the conversation go, Raistlin hastened to say, "How about I'll just tie one end to my belt here, and you grab hold of the other? Would that be alright with you?"
She replied, with the gusty sea wind muffling her dignified voice, "I do not think I want to hang on to a piece of rope, thank you. It's just as bad. I mean, it's completely..."
"Completely...?" Raistlin echoed, not intending to let her evade the answer, deliberately fuelling himself. Neck and wrists, how about that?
"Well, improper," Crysania finally muttered under her breath, and now the awareness was back again, sharp as lightning: he could hear it in the flutter of her voice and he could see it in the way her posture had increasingly tensed, and he knew with every single cell in his body that she was asking for it, not even knowing what it was; all atremble and throbbing she was standing at the threshold to the dark kingdom, both troubled and fascinated by her peek into that harsh, scathing chasm of pleasure.
Cautious of pushing her too far too fast, spinning the web discreetly yet with absolute intent, Raistlin asked quietly, "Improper how?"
"Well I'm not some sort of... Some sort of..."
Raistlin watched her struggle for an answer, transfixed, filling up with a delicious sense of violation at the thought of completing the sentence for her, with a low whisper in her ear. He had words. A whole collection of expressions that could have been used. She wouldn't know them though; there were no words like that in her straitlaced clerical tomes. But he would teach her. Once she came before him, knelt down and said that she was his, that she belonged to him and this was always meant to be; once she apologised in tears for her behaviour, then he would teach her.
But when would that happen? How long was she going to continue this way? As much as he enjoyed the chase and the challenge of a moving prey, he sometimes had the awful feeling that she was never going to give up, and looking at Crysania now Raistlin felt another flicker of the frustration bordering on madness which had begun to seize him with alarming frequency during their five-day ride from Relgoth to Port O' Call. It was as if he was seeing two different people, one a still, cold, contained figure, and the other a figure of complete gratification. In daylight she would be pale and distant, talking to him as if they had never met before and answering all his remarks with a vagueness, an evasion. But at twilight, sitting across from him at inn tables, her manner would change. She would be demure and obedient, nodding and obliging, obliviously fiddling with her hair that she had started to wear loose - and opposite her, on the other side of the table, he was softly falling into an ecstasy, unable to concentrate on the eating, his attention completely captured by her hand that was now running along the side of her neck in a slow stroking motion, now briefly resting over her throat so that he could almost feel against his own fingertips those fragile collarbones and the pulsing veins underneath the soft warm snow of her skin. For thirty, fourty, fifty excruciating minutes she would sit there like that, as if without the least awareness of what it did to him: nodding, blinking, giving compliant answers without the slightest note of dissent in her sweet tinkling honey voice, the very picture of innocence and purity; a springtime dove, a virginal offering with large empty eyes and cut lily hands, his own beloved, still ready for him to whip her, burn her, tear her, do anything with her that he desired. Blinking, nodding, fiddling, fiddling, nodding, blinking, until he felt he was about to split asunder, fighting in agony the temptation to drop his hand under the table and place it on her knee. Applying pressure, he'd force her legs apart and slide into her saintly slit the fork he was holding in his other hand - be still and it won't hurt, stir and it'll make you bleed; your choice, my love - then take her upstairs where he would finally, after three torturous years, deflower his white flower.
What really happened was this: she would push away her plate abruptly, and in a voice that was now detached and impersonal again she would demand to be escorted back to her room. This he did, like a pathetically obedient puppy, and after a coldly polite good night, he would find himself alone in the hallway, staring dumbly at the door that had slammed shut in his face, overstimulated and utterly disoriented, and that burning, vibrating rage that threatened to black everything out already building inside him: it was coming fast on dark wings, all the lights extinguished, just another one of those complete flip-outs he'd had a few times in his life. And this woman, this cleric, this pillar of righteousness was extraordinarily apt at pushing him dangerously close to that region. Right from the start she had turned him into a weak fool and made him unrecognisable to himself. He could practically hear the Queen's vile laughter, or was it Paladine's, or both, the two deities incomprehensibly ganging up to witness his humiliation, and he had to wonder, he really did have to wonder if this was not Paladine's twisted way of punishing him for the choices he'd made, for those flip-outs and all the undeniably inhumane decisions he had taken in his life with full and repeated awareness, but most of all for the fact that once there had been a portal, a lie, a long and elaborate deception, the crowning achievement which He and His cleric, like some hellish team of virtue and rectitude, would never let him live down. As if the loss of magic wasn't brutal enough, Paladine had turned him into a leering comedy figure chasing after a mirage preternaturally good at evading him despite her sightlessness; even in her fairytale slumber in Relgoth she had managed to elude him, shifting at the slightest attempt at a hovering touch, in spite of his best efforts to keep the bed from stirring, and so scene after scene, in infinite replay, the lecherous fool would be left with nothing but his own ever-filling pump in his hand that he would drain compulsively, hopelessly, in the painful knowledge that true release would only be found in the tight fit of her heavenly shrine.
Gods. If he could have seen himself from the outside, he too would have laughed, even if he'd never been one to enjoy uncouth comedy.
But he would not give the gods the pleasure of seeing him beg. Him going to her - that's not how it would play out, not anymore.
Lesson number one: she should have said yes at once.
So when she finally did, he would keep her waiting, just like she had kept him waiting for days by the lotus pond in Paladine's gardens only to jilt him. He would tell her maybe, send her away and close the door.
And then, after some time, he would slip the ring on her finger and let her know what it meant to be his. Completely.
The dark-winged anger was there now; it did not surge, but Raistlin could feel it gathering as he watched Crysania prop up yet another sheet of ice between them. Never finishing her sentence, she had turned her back to him completely; the wind was tossing the loose strands of her hair about her lovely neck, her slim little arm lay on the ship's wooden rail, and he felt a terrible urge to seize her by it, to scrape the flesh of her neck with his teeth. He wanted to make her cry.
But instead he coiled up the rope and calmly put it in his pocket; then with a brisk tug he adjusted his coat and turned to face the sea.
He spoke in a collected voice which betrayed not a shred of the rage and lust that had threatened to spill over. "We'll hit land soon. Half an hour at most. I can see the coastline already."
"It's too soon," said Crysania, turning towards the sea now and grasping the railing to steady herself as a wave lifted the stern. "Your brother won't be expecting us for another week."
Raistlin kept quiet for a while, also clutching the handrail for support, then said, "He won't mind."
Really? he immediately asked himself and, seeing the same doubt reflected on Crysania's face, experienced for an instant a sense of terrible disorder. Again that vortex, that violent whirlpool of doubt: a string of thoughts flashed through his mind - he'll turn you away at the door, she'll never come around, you're on a wild-goose chase for some play magic and that too will end in failure because you cannot create you can only destroy - and the breath left his body, as if he'd been kicked clean in the ribs all over again by the village boys who'd found it hilarious to make him wheeze and gag. Gripped by hideous panic, he tried to focus, finally managing to fix his desperate straying gaze on Crysania - his beacon, his salvation - and as soon as he did that his mind clicked into gear again. She was here with him: his kind, sweet, beautiful bride. He had taken back what was his, and they were almost there - already he could see the houses of Abanasinia on the horizon across the broad grey sea as another swelling wave heaved the ship up; soon, very soon they would be away from everything, in a place where he could have her all for himself. Anyone else would have thought it impossible. A weaker man with lukewarm love would have given up and let go. But he would never do that. He had lied and murdered his way through to this woman, and he would have done so much more, anything at all, if more had been required. Fingering the ring he had put on the chain of the amulet around his neck, Raistlin looked at Crysania and thought, Anything. Anything.
She turned to him and asked, "So what happens when we land?"
Still focused on observing her perfect face, hardly even hearing his own answer, Raistlin said, "We'll go straight on. We've got some seven hours before sunset to make it to the Halfway Inn in Dewtide village. We definitely won't be stopping in Crossing."
She seemed alarmed. "Why? What's in Crossing?"
"Pirates. Cults. Lots of dodgy characters. I'd fit in perfectly, of course," he added jestingly, slipping the chain back inside his shirt, "but I wouldn't let you anywhere near them."
As usual, she didn't respond to his jokey tone. But lately Raistlin could have sworn that there appeared at times something akin to a smile on her features, an unmistakably pleased expression that she would work in vain to hide. So he leaned in a little closer and said in that same tone, "Who am I kidding. They wouldn't stand a chance against you."
There was the tiniest twitch at the right corner of Crysania's mouth, that thin half-smile almost appearing. But then her expression grew tense again. "It's just that I feel so uncomfortable barging in unexpected," she said with a hesitant frown. "I've only ever met his wife once."
"We won't be barging in. It's a two-day ride anyway from Crossing. And if you want, we can always stop in Dewtide for an extra day or two."
She pondered this for a while, quiet amidst the creaking of the ship and the washing of the waves. Her worried look deepened. "Do you think the people out there already know?"
"I'd be surprised if they did," Raistlin said, hitching to his belt loop one end of the rope he had once more taken out of his pocket. "It's only been a little over a week, and news travels very slowly in this part of the world."
"But they'll hear about it eventually. Word gets about. People will talk."
"Well let them talk. The town mayors have no authority whatsoever to arrest us."
"But your brother will be caught in the middle. I don't like that. It's not fair on him and it's not fair on his wife."
"Look, life in Solace is as country as country can get. It's a kind of unwritten law among the villagers that they should stand by their own kind no matter what. Especially one as popular as my brother." After an annoyed pause, he went on. "So if it's Caramon's word against some foreign rumour-mongers, who do you think they're going to believe?"
"But I'm not their kind. I'm just the head priestess from a far-away capital who just happens to be excommunicated and deposed. 'For severe violations of religious and moral values,'" she added, bitterly echoing the town crier's words.
"A fine phrasing, that. Guaranteed to impress the layman. But what's it based on? On the hyperbolic imagination of a greedy, opportunistic, low-level secretary. We'll set them straight. Tell them you did no such thing."
Crysania fell quiet. Thinking over his words, her eyes began to fill with a sad expression of baffled anguish and shame, and when she spoke, it was in a thin and agonised voice. "I suppose they've sent copies of that letter everywhere."
Raistlin did not answer at once. Then, leaning his elbows on the railing, he said, "I should think so."
If there was one thing he was certain of, it was that no copies had been made. Not a single one. Because Revered Son Zoltan had been a nice man who had wanted to depose the Revered Daughter nicely, without humiliation. It's not helping matters for us to stir up the public, Zoltan had pronounced in a tremulous tone of righteousness, while shoving in his robe pocket the letter which eventually had so luckily found its way back to its sender and was presently sitting in one of Raistlin's bags among his notes and his maps and the spell components he had confiscated from the tower. Idly, Raistlin's thoughts turned from Zoltan Wargo and the letter to Gaspar Cloade, and he wondered, with as much interest as one might wonder about the fate of a worn-out pair of shoes, whatever had become of the man. There had been much enthusiastic talk of rewarding Cloade for his laudable loyalty, and Raistlin could not but find himself highly amused at the idea of the Agents of Paladine's Retribution, those dismal apes, actually paying the steadfast secretary a hefty sum of cash for something he hadn't even done. And now the same apes probably were on their way to Gaarlus, which was even funnier, galloping at breakneck speed in the opposite direction and hoping to catch them with their pants down. Such had been Revered Son Adik's most fervent hope: let's catch them with their pants down. The cleric had gone on and on about it, spitting and foaming, furiously fantasising about the impending surprise charge into some shady candlelit bedroom where they would drag the Nuitari scum and his whore apart screaming and naked. Raistlin huffed a dry laugh to himself. For what Adik had expected to see upon opening the imaginary door was without the faintest doubt quite conservative compared to what acts of perversion the Nuitari scum had in mind. But you had to forgive them their lack of vision. They could be a bit boring, those reverends. A bit straight-and-narrow.
Smirking at the thought of how perfectly he had managed to hoodwink those sad fuckers, Raistlin turned his gaze back to Crysania and immediately felt the conceited smile drop from his face. She wasn't laughing. She found nothing amusing about the situation. The expression of shame and sadness remained in place, and something about the way his dearest stood there, so small and fragile, her hair a little moist from the salty sea air, told Raistlin that the vehemence with which she had held on to the idea of return was quite gone from her. She knew it was over. It was simply too deep - the pit he had dug and pushed her into.
But the thing was, the rebels would have found out anyway. Even if he had not written any letters, they would have come up with some other excuse to kick off the coup, and then Adik or Farag would have declared himself the leader of the church and used his new position to gain access to Astinus's tomes. So, quite frankly, if he had not been there to protect her and if he had not taken her out of the city when he did, she would have ended up at the stake. Everyone could see that. She would understand. She did not need to know about it right now, but if Farag ever caught them and blabbered it all out to her, as he undoubtedly intended to do, she would understand. But nonetheless - what a stupid, stupid blunder! Although it had felt remarkably good to look Adik in the eye and see his life fading away with the blade locked deep in his gut, on hindisight he should have picked throat over belly - with a sliced neck it would have been much more difficult for the acolyte to communicate his knowledge to Farag - the big revelation, the great headline: Brother Beldinas is actually the wizard! He had never meant them to know; he should have stopped to put Adik out of his misery once and for all. But he'd been so feverish to get to Crysania that even the tiniest delay, combined with the desire to make the bastard acolyte suffer, seemed to drive him crazy. That's how it always was with her: mistake after mistake, just because she made him so goddamned weak. With the magic gone, it seemed to him that the weakness had become like a disease: gone were the withdrawal symptoms, those terrible headaches and occasional nosebleeds, but worse than any pain was the emptiness inside him, the gaping hole that he desperately needed her to stitch up by any means, all the time.
The ship was slowing down, preparing to dock. Casting his gaze across the rolling New Sea, towards the red and gold autumn trees on the approaching shore, Raistlin spent a moment exploring the scenery. Out here the season far was advanced - the snows would be coming in a month most likely. They would spend the winter at Caramon's, and during those four months he would decipher the rest of Venegas's notes, see if they would bring any light to the three-dimensional labyrinth with the Dohian word qiameth written on its wall. And then, at first thaw in Mishamont, they would leave and ride eastwards to find the city beyond the invisible. Again Raistlin wondered if the place Crysania had visited in her sleep - the In-between where she had conversed with the dead woman - was somehow related to the Venegas case. He could not rid himself of the feeling that everything was connected in some puzzling way. It was like a haunting melody that he could almost recall, or having the right word on the tip of his tongue but being unable to utter it.
"Looking good," he announced to Crysania, scanning the docks and the faces he was starting to make out on the shore. "No armed soldiers or crazed clerics in sight."
She was visibly relieved, but nevertheless drew up the hood of her white fur-lined cloak to cover her hair that was gathered over one shoulder with a simple pearl clasp. Raistlin found that his eyes were repeatedly drawn to it, and every time he had to resist the urge to undo the clasp and run his fingers through the black fragrant tresses, as shiny and smooth as the silk of the white travelling gown she had taken from the manor and was now wearing together with her brown, snugly-fitting leather bodice. In the past he had never seen her in ordinary clothes - insofar as you could call an expensive upper class wardrobe ordinary - and he was rather enchanted by the novelty of it, although if he was asked to choose between the everyday dresses and the virginal vestments, there'd be no contest.
"Ready?" he asked, flipping his eyes back to her face. "Let's get to the ramp. I want us to get out before it gets crowded."
When she reached out her hand to him, instead of offering her his belt loop he calmly placed in her palm the other end of the rope. As Crysania realised what it was she lifted her face in silent accusation.
"Keeps me at an arm's length, doesn't it?" Raistlin said in answer to her quiet blame. "Since you're so keen on that."
She looked displeased, but after an instant she did close her hand around the rope, tentatively, and as she did, a flash of curiosity crossed her features.
For a moment they stood without knowing and knowing exactly what to do, until at last Raistlin gave the rope a tug, small and gentle, but one that forced Crysania to take a step forward; she paused, startled, her lips parting in a little involuntary sigh.
His own heart was beating like mad as he gave the rope another pull, harder this time. She said nothing but held on - how coarse the knotted rope must feel against her fingers, the ivory fingers of his pretty little plaything, still raw from the rose thorns, how painfully rough and inviting - and he could feel her grip tighten, slowly going from light to tight to very, very tight.
By the time he had given the rope a third, a fourth tug, he had to struggle to keep under control his breathing that was fast trying to grow heavy and uneven. Fighting to maintain at least a semblance of composure, he was preparing to pull again even harder when Crysania's grip suddenly slackened.
Running her hand along the rope's length to where it was attached to his side, she slipped a finger through his belt loop and stood waiting, fading behind the sheet of ice, her face as impassive and lifeless as it was in her portrait which hung on the wall among the rows of ancient faces lining the dark hallways of her childhood home.
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