Dragons of Spring Dawning - Margaret Weis [179]
The golden eyes lowered their gaze to the gates of the Tower, to the horrible fluttering robes that hung from those gates.
No ordinary mortal could have stood before those terrible, shrouded gates without going mad from the nameless terror. No ordinary mortal could have walked unscathed through the guardian oaks.
But Raistlin stood there. He stood there calmly, without fear. Lifting his thin hand, he grasped hold of the shredded black robes still stained with the blood of their wearer, and tore them from the gates.
A chill penetrating wail of outrage screamed up from the depths of the Abyss. So loud and horrifying was it that all the citizens of Palanthas woke shuddering from even the deepest sleep and lay in their beds, paralyzed by fear, waiting for the end of the world. The guards on the city walls could move neither hand nor foot. Shutting their eyes, they cowered in shadows, awaiting death. Babies whimpered in fear, dogs cringed and slunk beneath beds, cats’ eyes gleamed.
The shriek sounded again, and a pale hand reached out from the Tower gates. A ghastly face, twisted in fury, floated in the dank air.
Raistlin did not move.
The hand drew near, the face promised him the tortures of the Abyss, where he would be dragged for his great folly in daring the curse of the Tower. The skeletal hand touched Raistlin’s heart. Then, trembling, it halted.
“Know this,” said Raistlin calmly, looking up at the Tower, pitching his voice so that it could be heard by those within. “I am the master of past and present! My coming was foretold. For me, the gates will open.”
The skeletal hand shrank back and, with a slow sweeping motion of invitation, parted the darkness. The gates swung open upon silent hinges.
Raistlin passed through them without a glance at the hand or the pale visage that was lowered in reverence. As he entered, all the black and shapeless, dark and shadowy things dwelling within the Tower bowed in homage.
Then Raistlin stopped and looked around him.
“I am home,” he said.
Peace stole over Palanthas, sleep soothed away fear.
A dream, the people murmured. Turning over in their beds, they drifted back into slumber, blessed by the darkness which brings rest before the dawn.
Raistlin’s Farewell
Caramon, the gods have tricked the world
In absences, in gifts, and all of us
Are housed within their cruelties. The wit
That was our heritage, they lodged in me,
Enough to see all differences: the light
In Tika’s eye when she looks elsewhere,
The tremble in Laurana’s voice when she
Speaks to Tanis, and the graceful sweep
Of Goldmoon’s hair at Riverwind’s approach.
They look at me, and even with your mind
I could discern the difference. Here I sit,
A body frail as bird bones.
In return
The gods teach us compassion, teach us mercy,
That compensation. Sometimes they succeed,
For I have felt the hot spit of injustice
Turn through those too weak to fight their brothers
For sustenance or love, and in that feeling
The pain lulled and diminished to a glow,
I pitied as you pitied, and in that
Rose above the weakest of the litter.
You, my brother, in your thoughtless grace,
That special world in which the sword arm spins
The wild arc of ambition and the eye
Gives flawless guidance to the flawless hand,
You cannot follow me, cannot observe
The landscape of cracked mirrors in the soul,
The aching hollowness in sleight of hand.
And yet you love me, simple as the rush
And balance of our blindly mingled blood,
Or as a hot sword arching through the snow:
It is the mutual need that puzzles you,
The deep complexity lodged in the veins.
Wild in the dance of battle, when you stand,
A shield before your brother, it is then
Your nourishment arises from the heart
Of all my weaknesses.
When I am gone,