Lord of the White Robes

Lord of the White Robes

“Bitterness is how we punish ourselves for other people’s sins.” 

― Matshona Dhliwayo

When Palin went into the woods now, he went to gather ingredients for healing poultices. Set adrift after the second departure of the gods and the loss of the magic he had dedicated his life to, he had begun spending increasing amounts of time at the bar of the Inn of the Last Home. He might have lost himself entirely in the bottom of a perpetual glass of Qualinesti wine, had his father not noticed and chased Palin away from the barroom floor.  

“Go do something useful with yourself, lad,” Caramon had said, not unkindly. “You don’t want to go that way. Trust me, I know.”

Palin was not yet so far gone that he had lost respect for his father, and his appreciation for his own mental faculties was such that he was inclined to take the advice. He set aside the wine glass before it became an addiction. Yet there was nothing else that could distract him from the hollow abyss that had taken up residence where his magic had once dwelt. Even his tentative romance with Usha failed to hold his interest. He often felt her forlorn gaze upon his back, the sad golden eyes of this girl who had arguably lost as much as he had. But the attraction he had experienced during the Chaos War had turned awkward and fumbling, and as beautiful as she was, they had very little in common. Conversations between them founded on the rocks of their very different interests. The open, naïve demeanour that Palin had once found charming now grated like a kender’s chatter.

It was the town’s former cleric, Aldo Cassian, who finally offered substantial distraction. Not finding any sanctuary in the ironically named-Solace, Palin had wandered into the greater valley and onto the shores of Crystalmir Lake. Lost in a forlorn stupor, he had almost stumbled upon the the abandoned priest. He found the man kneeling by a bush, examining leaves with a serious mien. Palin hesitated before speaking the man’s name, for Aldo had doffed the shining white raiment of a Revered Son of Paladine in favour of forest greens.

“Cleric Cassian,” he said at last, faintly.  

Aldo stood and smiled, brushing dirt from his plain robes. “No cleric anymore, young Master Majere. Just a simple woodsman. How goes it?”

Palin shrugged, unwilling to delve into his feelings when he already knew what he would find there. “Well enough. Are you looking for berries?”

“There are some lovely blackberries nearby, but no. I have been looking for ingredients to make medicines for the town. Now that we are no longer able to rely on more supernatural means, I thought it prudent to dive back into the methods of our not-so-distant ancestors. There is a great deal of herbcraft available to us if we know where to look.”

Palin stared. It had only been three months since the final departure of the gods, yet rather than dragging himself through each day as the former wizard did, this former devotee of the Platinum Dragon applied himself to finding practical solutions for a world without healers. Palin was seized by a strange combination of contempt and admiration, and he could not have said which was the stronger feeling.

“You can join me,” Aldo added, with a casual air that failed to hide the knowledge in his eyes, “If you care to.”

The former White Robe swallowed and crossed over to Aldo. He was not entirely ignorant of herb-craft, having studied the local plantlife for the collection of his spell components, but he could not say that he knew the strictly medicinal application of every plant in Solace.

He glanced into a cloth back nestled in the grass at Aldo’s feet. “What are you looking for?”

Aldo Cassian swung the pack from his back and took out a leather-bound book. He flipped it open, revealing skilled hand-drawings of different flowers and herbs.

“Take it,” he said gently.

Palin took the book into his hands. Before the gods’ departure from Krynn, Paladine had hinted at some other source of magic, yet in the time since then, Palin had not felt the slightest flicker of any magical source. While he was not prepared to abandon the search, he would need a profession to sustain himself, and he could not imagine working in his father’s inn.

Healer should suit him well enough.

Caramon and Tika’s demeanors visibly improved when they saw their only remaining son applying himself to practical work. Tika laid a generous breakfast on the table each morning before Palin went out with Aldo, and though he only ate perhaps half of it, he did feel better, healthier.

“You’ll do all right,” Caramon said brightly, slapping his son on the shoulder. “It wasn’t the end of the world, after all.” Caramon roared with laughter, as if he had said something witty.

Palin felt a wave of furious irritation roll through him. He was inclined to give his father the benefit of the doubt and not immediately assume that Caramon was trivializing his loss, but the implication that he should carry on blithely, as if becoming a naturalist healer were adequate substitute for his magical vocation, made his whole body stiffen.

“No, not the end of the world,” he whispered. “Just nearly.”

Just the end of my world.

Palin pulled away from his father’s beefy hand. He saw a complicated expression pass over Caramon’s face and knew that he had once again reminded his father of his lost twin. Similar insights had brought Palin both pleasure and longing in the past, but after having met and lost Raistlin himself, Palin found that the knowledge only amplified the hollow longing for magic that plagued him.

“I need to go,” Palin said.

He thought that his father would give up on the conversation, but Caramon’s expression firmed.

“Don’t you think you should wear something more suited for the woods?”

Palin let his eyes drop down to the clothes he was wearing. His white robes, no longer protected by a minor cleaning spell, were stained with dirt and plant residue. They looked more like the robes of an itinerant than a mage, but Palin was not prepared to replace them as easily as Aldo Cassian had.

“They look suited for the woods to me. Goodbye, Father.”

This time he avoided looking at Caramon as he pulled away.

“Palin,” Caramon insisted. “I’m only trying to help.”

 The former mage ignored his father’s plea. There was no sense continuing what Palin saw as a pointless conversation. He had no doubt that his father would advise him to let go and move on, but Caramon hardly seemed qualified to offer such advice. His father’s whole life had been dictated by the ghosts of the past. Palin felt the burden to please his father increase exponentially since the loss of his own brothers in a minor skirmish at the start of the Chaos War, but he would not let Caramon change the dedication to magic that lay at the very core of Palin’s soul.

Even if holding on seemed futile now, he would not let go.

Leaving his father behind, Palin opened the door of the Inn and saw that it was a typical late autumn morning, overcast and grim, with the promise of rain in the long-hanging clouds. He descended the mighty Vallenwood tree as quickly as he could, but when he reached the bottom, he saw more trouble in the form of Usha, scampering down from a neighbouring tree at the same time.

Caramon and Tika had offered Usha shelter after the war. They had given her a job and use of the little house that Sturm had built. Palin's brothers had rarely been home after joining the knighthood, but it had been Sturm's all the same. Palin had been inside only once since the war, to help Usha move in. Once had been enough. Seeing his brother’s simple possessions, packing them away and knowing that Sturm would never touch them again, but been almost unendurable. Worse still was knowing that Tika had given Usha the furniture, the blankets and sheets and other practical household items. If he went back, he would have to see those things again, and know that they belonged to someone else now. Better to avoid it. He had too much else to sort through without examining his grief.

“Palin!” the young woman called out to him as she dropped lightly onto the dirt of the town centre. “Wait!”

Palin adopted a firm pace and strode toward the edge of Solace. When he heard Usha call his name again and start in pursuit, he began to run. Only slightly hampered by the robes that had been his garments for years, Palin’s longer limbs had little trouble outstripping the girl’s. He soon left the town behind, and after a few minutes Usha abandoned the chase. Palin’s mind flashed briefly on the story of the White Hart, the magic deer pursued by Huma Dragonbane. For a moment, he felt like such a creature, a rare and enchanted thing. But there was no magic anymore. No magic spells. No magic creatures. None of the magic in his blood that had once bubbled up with such ecstatic force and sublime subtlety.

Palin’s legs continued to pump under his robes, pulling Solace far behind him. The usual pain of prolonged movement failed to materialize, and the young man continued to move, enjoying the freedom from expectation and the people who burdened him with it. He thought back on the offer that Raistlin had made during his Test. He might have been his uncle’s apprentice if he had taken the Black Robes, and learned all of the secrets contained within the fell covers of the black spellbooks in the Tower of Palanthas. Instead, like a weak fool, he had allowed himself to be constrained by the expectations of his parents.

And how he had paid for his weakness. Palin had little doubt that with Raistlin’s powerful insight, the Chaos War would never have happened. It was not only Palin who had proven himself a fool, but the gods that all of the people of Krynn had depended on, including its Wizards of High Sorcery.

I belong with Aldo, Palin thought bleakly. We wizards proved ourselves no more than clerics after all. We who thought ourselves so gifted and independent, so unique. Just dupes to the stars.

He cleared the trees and saw the Crystalmir Lake appear in the distance. Aldo would be close, for they had agreed to meet on the shore by mid-morning, but Palin could suddenly no longer endure the idea of going about the business of collecting herbs and berries, grinding poultices and mixing medicinal potions whose successes would be determined by the mundane processes of the earth.

He stopped running while he was still in the shadow of the trees, with the long grasses brushing his knees. His breath slowed and evened out, yet the fury that pumped through his blood did not lessen.

“How dare you!” Palin screamed at the sky. “How dare you call yourselves gods!”

Oh, but there was no one left to hear him, was there. If he stood here long enough and waited for night to fall, he would see one small, desolate yellow moon, and a jumble of stars that failed to form coherent images.

“Fools! No better than any mortal! You took it all with you. You had no right!”

His voice was a man screech is his own ears, bitter and terrible, but it felt so good to finally let loose the fury in his soul. Who else was there to blame, after all, but the idiot deities who had been too stupid to realize what the Greygem had contained. Dougan Redhammer, Reorx himself, had gambled away the artifact as stupidly as any mortal.

“A gully dwarf might have shown more cunning!” Palin shouted.

He fell silent with the awareness of his words falling back, from the hollow heavens to the earth.

“Palin, lad,” Aldo Cassian’s soft voice called out to him. “Are you well?”

Palin’s robes were caught by the thorns and burs of a spindly bush as he turned. He saw the cleric coming from the trees with his hands out like a hunter trying to gentle a deer.

Just like Huma and the White Hart, Palin thought again. He didn’t resist the panicked laugher that clawed its way up his throat. It emerged in a bitter, hoarse bark.

“Well? Who can be well now? We’ve been abandoned. Left all alone in a merciless universe. Everything that people said after the Cataclysm, every accusation against the gods, every lack of faith that they dared to chide us for—they’re true! It’s all true,” he insisted.

Aldo swallowed and shook his head. “Palin—they had no choice. Isn’t that what you said, what your father said after the war? They made a bargain for us with Chaos.”

“Oh, yes, and was it not their fault that they had to make that bargain? They who left the Greygem to bounce around Krynn since the Age of Might?”

He saw Aldo’s brown eyes crinkle with confusion and remembered that not many people were aware of the connection between the Father of the Gods and the Greygem.

“It doesn’t matter,” Palin whispered. “Nothing matters!”

Aldo crept closer, still holding out his hand. Slowly, the other arm reached up to join it. There was a hot star of fury and confusion in Palin’s chest, and it grew as he stood trembling, while the cleric approached. The morning had grown even cooler, a chill wind was rising with the promise of the coming winter, but it was still warm enough to give rise to a mist. Rolling off the still surface of the lake, the grey torrent thickened as it approached and began creeping across the grasses.

Aldo reached him at the same time the mists did. The grey moisture curled around their feet in lazy, thick tendrils as the healer reached out to lay gentle hands on Palin, one of his chest and one on his shoulder. A few months ago, a divine touch might have quieted Palin’s raging heart, but now, in the absence of Paladine, he felt the pulse of his blood quicken further.

“Palin,” Aldo said. “Listen lad, there is still much to live for. We must have faith.”

It was entirely the wrong thing to say. The star of rage in Palin’s chest burst, and fury travelled through him in a grey burst. He released an incoherent scream of rage and pushed the former cleric away from him. Palin was no warrior, but he was younger than Aldo, and there was strength in his arms from his recent travels. He expected to see the man stumble, but the portly healer fell onto the ground.

The man who had been a Revered Son of Paladine crashed back into the mist that curled through the grasses, and Palin heard a sharp sound, like a rock cracking a window. He was horrified to see blood pouring onto the grass from behind Aldo’s head. The healer’s eyes gave a final, slow blink and then lay still. Palin reached down through the thickening mist and felt behind the man’s head. There was a long, sharp rock stuck in the back of Aldo’s head that Palin could have sworn had not been on the ground. It was slim and pointed and look like a stone knife jutting from the cleric’s skull.

Palin stumbled back from the body. There was blood on his hands from where he had touched Aldo’s head, thick and red and dripping from between Palin’s fingers. The mist was now so thick around him that he could hardly see beyond his own hands. He thought that he should go back to town, bring the healer’s body back home. But there would be questions. The town constabulary would want to know how this had happened. Palin could see his freedom constrained or confiscated entirely.

He might even be hanged. His father was respected, but not politically influential, and there was only so much that Caramon could do against a murder charge.

“Murder,” Palin whispered.

The word bounced through the mist and then back again as if in an echoing chamber.

Murder. Murder. Murder.

“No!” he shouted. “It was an accident!”

Murder. Murder.

“I didn’t mean to do it. He brought it on himself. They all do it. Every day I see it in my father’s eyes. The relief! He’s glad that the magic is gone, that I can’t touch it anymore. He won’t say it, but I know! And Aldo felt the same. He thought to “purify” me,” Palin spat the word. “But I am still dedicated to the magic. I won’t forget! I will never forget!”

The mist rose tenaciously higher, and Palin could finally see nothing. This was a fog such as he had never witnessed, as thick and impenetrable as a grey wall. The former mage stumbled forward to where Aldo’s body had lain, but even when Palin fell to his hands and knees and felt about in the grass, he failed to find the man’s remains. Even the grass felt strange, rubbery and featureless.

“What is this?” Palin whispered. His voice was dampened and distant, as if he were listening to someone speaking from another room.

“Who is doing this?” he shouted.

Who. who.

The mist felt completely unnatural, magical, yet Palin knew that it could not be. There was no one and nothing left on Krynn who could perform such feats.

Perhaps the All Father had returned, he thought with a chill, while his children were far away, and made good on his promise to destroy their little world. This time not with fire, but with a mere blink or his eye or wave of his hand. Was Palin the only one left in the world, he wondered, or was everyone caught up in this awful mist, damned to wander alone for eternity.

The idea didn’t frighten him as much as it should have. If it were so, he would never have to face the consequences of Aldo Cassian’s death. He would never have to face the devastation in his father’s eyes. It was a cowardly notion, and Palin did not consider himself a cowardly man, but who would not wish to avoid the greatest of punishments for a mere accident.

And if there was something wrong with his thinking, if his conscience clamoured for attention, it was easy enough to turn away when he seemed to be the only man left in the world.

Palin was tempted to start walking, but he was already turned around enough that he might walk straight into the lake, if it were still there. Instead, he stood still. If the mists were natural, they would soon clear, and he would determine a course of action. If they were unnatural, making plans now would not help him.

He waited for a long time, silent and still, yet he was plagued by the feeling that the earth itself was moving at a speed faster than dragons. The mist was a solid wall, but he thought that if he might look beyond it that he would see the whole universe flying past.

Palin’s eyes drooped and eventually he could stand no more. With no hope of ever seeing Solace again, he curled up on the ground and fell into a sleep as deep as the one that had carried his uncle through decades in the Abyss itself.  

When he woke once more, it was night. A low moan of pain escaped Palin, and he turned over on limbs that ached from sleeping on small hard rocks and rough grass. He sat up carefully, rubbing long, slim hands across his face, scrubbing away the dirt and some of the soreness.

When he opened his eyes, he thought that the light on his skin and the stained white robe was brighter than usual. The small yellow satellite that the people of Solace had taken to simply calling “the moon” never shed such radiance even when full. Hardly daring to breathe, Palin turned his eyes up to the heavens. He thought he felt his heart skip a beat when he saw the enormous white moon, full and brilliant and dominating the dome of the sky.

“What is this?” he whispered.

Leveraging himself up with one hand, Palin examined the landscape. Crystalmir Lake had vanished entirely, and he knew that his impression of movement had been correct. The mists that he thought must have transported him to this place lingered still, in slow tendrils that withdrew when he reached out to touch them. The impression of animation was very strong, and Palin had little doubt that the mists were magical in nature, however impossible that might be.

The former wizard stood on a hill overlooking the last, narrow edge of a forest. Turning around, he saw the greater part of the forest was at his back. The trees were largely pines, with needles grown long and dense. The wood was partially concealed by sinuous tendrils of fog and a heavy curtain of mist, but some of the plants appeared to be familiar, things that Palin had seen in Solace and on his travels across Ansalon, while other grasses, vines and seeds were alien. His recent studies with Aldo provided no further illumination, despite the cleric’s masterful knowledge of plantlife.

The thought of Aldo brought with it a tremendous rush of guilt and near-terror, and Palin wondered if his attack on the cleric were in some way connected with the bizarre mists that had brought him to this place. Drawing a line between the two events would appear irrational to those unschooled in magic, but Palin’s tutelage had often demonstrated that strong emotions and magical events occurred in confluence. Although the gods’ departure from Krynn had eliminated the magic of the three moons, Paladine’s claim that there was still magic to be found in the world rang ominously in Palin’s memory. It was possible, he speculated, that he had in some way accessed that magic during his mad frenzy of anger at the failed deities and the accident with Aldo.

A sudden flutter of movement seized Palin’s attention and he turned to see a deer gracefully skipping out of the wood, heading for a broad, shallow stream at the base of the hill. Even as Palin watched, more animals emerged from the trees. Their movements were tense and uneasy, and Palin tensed in turn.

The sound of heavy banging and thrashing echoed from somewhere in the woods, and Palin did not stop to think before he threw himself down the hill after the deer, foxes and raccoons. He stumbled half-way and fell onto the grass. The slope of the hill created momentum and he began rolling downward, just as he had in the hills of Solace when he was a child. But a child’s game had never contained anything like the roaring from the woods, and Palin rolled frantically to put more distance between himself and the threat.

The hill abruptly ended, and Palin landed with a splash in the icy stream. He held back a shout as wet rocks poked at his exposed skin and the stream soaked his robe, then used a boulder in the centre of the stream to take cover from the thing in the woods. He kept his back to the trees so that he could lean against the rocks and conceal his body. One he had settled against the stone, Palin sneaked a glance around the side. His heart beat faster when he saw the daunting form of a hill giant emerge from the woods. The creature was draped in filthy rags and carried an enormous branch as a club. It sniffed at the air and peered behind tree trunks while Palin watched. The deer and other animals in the stream with Palin fled to the other side, but the giant seemed to take little notice of them.

“I know yer out here, little man,” the giant rumbled. “I smell yer.”

The creature belched a menacing laugh, and Palin held his breath. More than anything, he wished for his magic. His only weapon was the knife that he carried up his sleeve, the only weapon permitted to wizards of High Sorcery. After the gods had gone, he might have freely taken a sword in the knife’s stead. His parents had suggested as much, but the thought had filled Palin with revulsion.

The giant poked about, moving inevitably closer to Palin’s position. The monster’s olfactory claim was no idle boast, and Palin knew enough about animals with superior senses of smell to understand that the water would not throw this creature off the scent. If anything, it might carry Palin’s scent to the shore and betray his position more quickly.

Palin poked his head back around the rock and saw the giant stepping into the stream, just as if he had been following the former wizard’s thoughts. There was no help for it. He would have to run. But with no knowledge of the surrounding area, or even if he was still on Krynn at all, Palin didn’t give much credence to his chances. Nevertheless, he tensed his muscles and burst upward to a standing position, launching himself across the stream. He heard the hill giant bellow with triumph and tensed in anticipation of his own destruction.

He gasped with relief when he heard the monster slip on the cold, wet rocks and go tumbling into the stream. A rough shout of pain alerted him that the creature had been at least superficially injured. Conscious of a narrow window of escape, Palin forced himself to run more quickly. He passed into the small outcropping of woods and prayed —although to whom he did not know— that there was nothing more terrible than the giant inside.

The wet gasps of his breath in his ears cloaked anything Palin might have heard inside the trees. Except for the crunch of sticks and the clatter of pebbles under his own feet, he was conscious of nothing, while his vision was a grey blur that darkened with each step until he saw only leaves so green they were almost black, and the shadows that lay thick all around him.

Yet even his breath was not so loud that he failed to hear when the giant once more took up a lumbering pursuit, slamming into trees and crushing fallen branches beneath huge, clumsy feet. A rough bellow shook the forest and woke the sleeping birds who fled, shrieking, into the midnight sky.

Palin felt his heart give a painful jolt that sent a renewed rush of desperate energy through his body, but he was keenly aware that he would not last for much longer. When the ground tilted under him, he used the slope to build up speed naturally. He did his best not to lose his footing again, but when he reached the bottom of the slope in a sudden, great rush, he stumbled on a rock and fell forward. His breath exploded from his lungs while a pained moan escaped him.

I’m going to die here, Palin thought bleakly, and I don’t even know where I am.

Slowly, Palin’s breath evened out and he realized that the sounds of pursuit had vanished. He thought it might be possible that his dogged flight had thrown off the giant, especially after the creature had been injured, but there was something about the place where he had fallen that made him feel uneasy. It was eerily silent, utterly still. Palin felt the cool breeze on his face, but the leaves of the trees seemed to be utterly still. He pulled himself painfully upward and stood with his hands on his knees, wheezing for breath and wishing that he had taken Tanin’s offer of a personal exercise program when he had had the chance.

A light tittering immediately straightened him. He saw a slight, humanoid shadow, staring out from the trees with luminous, flickering eyes. A curious wave of dread swept over Palin and he stumbled back, waving his hands through the air in a futile attempt to ward off the creature as it oozed closer.

A flicker of the clear, white moonlight passed through the trees, and Palin caught a glimpse of the thing’s face. He immediately recognized the pointed features of a kender, but this thing was like no kender he had ever seen. Its face was twisted and corrupt, and the feral light in its eyes was a demon’s glare.

“Dear gods,” Palin whispered before he could catch himself. It was clear that his prayers had once more been ignored.

“The only gods here are in the mist,” the kender whispered back. Its jaws stretched open, revealing fangs that grew longer as Palin watched.

He hadn’t thrown the giant off his trail, Palin realized. The giant had been afraid of this.

There was only one creature that he knew of that grew teeth like that, and although he had never encountered a vampire before, he knew something of its weaknesses. Palin snatched a fallen branch with a jagged end from the forest floor. It felt good in his hand, solid and reassuring, although he wasn’t at all sure that he would be able to drive it through the creature’s body.

The vampire threw back its head and emitted a bone-chilling peal of laughter that made Palin draw back in a full-body cringe. His ears rang painfully, and he felt something suspiciously wet drip down the right side of his face. Still he did not drop the wood.

The kender scowled hideously and launched itself through the air, mouth wide open and fangs shining silver in the moonlight. Palin thrust at it with the stick but stumbled with the kender vampire suddenly dissolved into a fine mist. The creature rematerialized a few feet away and laughed again. The sound was not as painful as the first time, but Palin could already see that the end. Sooner or later—very likely sooner—he was going to lose the last of his energy, and then the creature would have him. Then he, the mage who had played a critical role in the defeat of the very Father of the Gods, would die here in this strange, dark place, alone and so very far from home.

He thought of Aldo Cassian, lying quiet and still next to the lake, and knew that he deserved it.

Palin watched his hand holding out the branch in front of him, watch it shake with terror and exhaustion, and wished more than anything that the branch was his staff. The useless, brittle, empty Staff of Magius that he had given to Raistlin before his uncle had left Krynn for the last time. Palin could picture the staff perfectly just as it had been the last time he had used it, alight with power before the forces of Chaos. He had often longed for it after the end of the war and wished fiercely that he had kept it with him.

In the white light of the moon, Palin could clearly imagine that the crystal from the staff and the clawed hand sat at the jagged stick he wielded against the vampire. The image was so real, and he so desperate, that the keyword escaped him before he could reconsider.

“Shirak,” Palin whispered.

The vampire shrieked and dematerialized as brilliant light exploded through the forest. Palin gasped and almost dropped the stick in his hand. What had been a rough, fallen branch was now polished wood and thrumming with power. It was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the Staff of Magius.

He didn’t waste time gaping. The staff had a teleportation property that he had never used because he had always travelled with companions and the spell could only transport one. Teleportation without a firm destination was extremely dangerous, but staying in the woods with these monsters was riskier by far, so he grasped the polished wood firmly and pictured himself far from the kender vampire, somewhere safe. The warm wood gave the impression of hesitation, as if it were not sure where it should go or even if it should obey, and Palin gripped it more firmly, squeezing his eyes shut and giving a firmer mental command. A sudden thrill of magic coursed through his blood, and a rough sob escaped Palin.

It had all been worth it. All of the terror, even the awful encounter with Aldo in by the lake. All of it had been worth it just to feel this again.

The magic, lost and now returned to him.

As if it were responding to his certainty, the crystal flared, and Palin vanished.

The stone giant called Nabon hovered near the edge of the Wanderers’ camp. His thick grey body leaning against an even thicker oak tree, he stared pensively into the woods. The Iron Hills were utterly black, despite the campfire  that leaped and sparked with the sorcerous shadow play of Madame Vadoma, Madame Magda Kulchevich’s spiritual successor in the tribe.

Vadoma had never met Magda, the fierce and brave first leader of Sithicus’ Vistani. She had come through the mists long after Magda’s cursed daughter Inza had fatally betrayed her mother. But the Vistani Wanderers had needed a leader, and they had begged the foreign bard to stay among them in Sithicus, where they had so many sworn enemies. They had been honest about the risk, or as honest as they could be. No one could have known then that the nature of the land itself was changing. Lord Soth, who had in his own strange way protected Magda's Wanderers, had vanished, either destroyed or having escaped the domain entirely— an unprecedented victory against the Dark Powers of the Mists, if it were true—and the werebadger Azrael ruled the peoples of Sithicus now, although many whispered that there was something dark and awful in the Great Chasm, something far more powerful than the petty, mad king.

And then there was the Guilt. 

Nabon closed the heavy silver folds of his eyelids. The guilt of Sithicus had risen much like the Mists – slowly, inexorably. It was a darkness that whispered in the ears of every captive citizen of the domain. It summoned to mind every cruelty, every crime, even the pettiest of misdeeds. It was as tireless as the undead, taking rest neither by day nor night.  Even the sun itself was no terror to the Guilt. 

In the time of Lord Soth, Nabon reflected, recalling the past had been next to impossible, and the creatures of the land had yearned for memories to give them shape. Now it was impossible to forget, and all of Sithicus longed for Soth’s blank, faceless terror to return.  

The sound of soft footsteps turned the giant back to the fire. A Vistani man reached up to touch the Nabon’s shoulder lightly, looking at him with concern. 

“Won’t you come back to the fire, Friend Giant?” 

Friend Giant. There it was. No matter how long he stayed with the Wanderers, Nabon would never be more than a mere friend. Never one of them. Having been drawn into the Mists, Nabon had long ago lost his own world and would never again have a place of his own. The Wanderers only accepted him because their own tribe in Sithicus was so fragmented, and they needed all the support and protection they could find. The stolen Vistani skin on Nabon’s feet and legs too so often gave them the false impression that Nabon deserved their friendship. The undead maverick that had called itself the Bloody Cobbler had harvested the soles of the Wanderers after Inza’s treachery had destroyed their owners, and given what remained to Nabon. The flesh of dead men had healed the legs that Azrael had cruelly destroyed, but it could only heal the body, never the spirit. 

“Come back to the fire,” the tribesman murmured. “It is not safe so far outside the circle. You know this.”

“I know. But I think I have to leave soon.”

The human patted his shoulder. “I know the itching in my feet as well as you. But for tonight, listen to Madame Vadoma.”

Nabon nodded and cast one last look at the forest before trudging back to the flames. As he settled by the campfire, Madame Vadoma turned to look at him. He saw the piercing regard and shifted before her dark eyes. The tale in the fire drew to an end, as did the voice of tribe’s rauni, their witch-leader, but Madame Vadoma did not look away. 

“Is there something amiss, Friend Nabon?” she asked. 

“No, nothing,” he muttered. 

Nothing more than what is ever amiss in this accursed land. 

The human woman uttered a low, husky chuckle, as if she had heard his thoughts. Perhaps she had. The Vistani had their ways, and Madame Vadoma was more skilled in their tricks than most. 

“I sense that we are going to have company tonight,” Madame Vadoma murmured. “The vista chiri had been passing on their messages. There is a stranger in the woods.”

Nabon started numbly at the woman. The vista chiri? 

“The birds,” Madame Vadoma said gently. “Perhaps before your time. The little red birds you see sometimes near the caravans. Once, long ago, the Vistani openly welcomed any giorgio

The stone giant called Nabon hovered near the edge of the Wanderers’ camp. His thick grey body leaning against an even thicker oak tree, he stared pensively into the woods. The Iron Hills were utterly black, despite the campfire  that leaped and sparked with the sorcerous shadow play of Madame Vadoma, Madame Magda Kulchevich’s spiritual successor in the tribe.

Vadoma had never met Magda, the fierce and brave first leader of Sithicus’ Vistani. She had come through the mists long after Magda’s cursed daughter Inza had fatally betrayed her mother. But the Vistani Wanderers had needed a leader, and they had begged the foreign bard to stay among them in Sithicus, where they had so many sworn enemies. They had been honest about the risk, or as honest as they could be. No one could have known then that the nature of the land itself was changing. Lord Soth, who had in his own strange way protected Magda's Wanderers, had vanished, either destroyed or having escaped the domain entirely— an unprecedented victory against the Dark Powers of the Mists, if it were true—and the werebadger Azrael ruled the peoples of Sithicus now, although many whispered that there was something dark and awful in the Great Chasm, something far more powerful than the petty, mad king.

And then there was the Guilt. 

Nabon closed the heavy silver folds of his eyelids. The guilt of Sithicus had risen much like the Mists – slowly, inexorably. It was a darkness that whispered in the ears of every captive citizen of the domain. It summoned to mind every cruelty, every crime, even the pettiest of misdeeds. It was as tireless as the undead, taking rest neither by day nor night.  Even the sun itself was no terror to the Guilt. 

In the time of Lord Soth, Nabon reflected, recalling the past had been next to impossible, and the creatures of the land had yearned for memories to give them shape. Now it was impossible to forget, and all of Sithicus longed for Soth’s blank, faceless terror to return.  

The sound of soft footsteps turned the giant back to the fire. A Vistani man reached up to touch the Nabon’s shoulder lightly, looking at him with concern. 

“Won’t you come back to the fire, Friend Giant?” 

Friend Giant. There it was. No matter how long he stayed with the Wanderers, Nabon would never be more than a mere friend. Never one of them. Having been drawn into the Mists, Nabon had long ago lost his own world and would never again have a place of his own. The Wanderers only accepted him because their own tribe in Sithicus was so fragmented, and they needed all the support and protection they could find. The stolen Vistani skin on Nabon’s feet and legs too so often gave them the false impression that Nabon deserved their friendship. The undead maverick that had called itself the Bloody Cobbler had harvested the soles of the Wanderers after Inza’s treachery had destroyed their owners, and given what remained to Nabon. The flesh of dead men had healed the legs that Azrael had cruelly destroyed, but it could only heal the body, never the spirit. 

“Come back to the fire,” the tribesman murmured. “It is not safe so far outside the circle. You know this.”

“I know. But I think I have to leave soon.”

The human patted his shoulder. “I know the itching in my feet as well as you. But for tonight, listen to Madame Vadoma.”

Nabon nodded and cast one last look at the forest before trudging back to the flames. As he settled by the campfire, Madame Vadoma turned to look at him. He saw the piercing regard and shifted before her dark eyes. The tale in the fire drew to an end, as did the voice of tribe’s rauni, its witch-leader, but Madame Vadoma did not look away. 

“Is there something amiss, Friend Nabon?” she asked. 

“No, nothing,” he muttered. 

Nothing more than what is ever amiss in this accursed land. 

The human woman uttered a low, husky chuckle, as if she had heard his thoughts. Perhaps she had. The Vistani had their ways, and Madame Vadoma was more skilled in their tricks than most. 

“I sense that we are going to have company tonight,” Madame Vadoma murmured. “The vista chiri had been passing on their messages. There is a stranger in the woods.”

Nabon started numbly at the woman. The vista chiri? 

“The birds,” Madame Vadoma said gently. “Perhaps before your time. The little red birds you see sometimes near the caravans. Once, long ago, the Vistani openly welcomed any giorgio -those humans who were not Vistani- able to follow the vista chiri to the camp. For those who survived the journey, sanctuary was provided.”

“But no more,” Nabon concluded. 

“It is difficult to believe that any land could be harsher than Barovia, but Sithicus is that. Our enemies here are numerous and powerful, and we can no longer afford to be so welcoming.”
 
“But you intend to welcome this newcomer. Why?”

Somewhere in the distant, blackened wood of the Iron Hills, Nabon thought that he heard the birds tweeting their messages, passing on their knowledge. Madame Vadoma did not appear to be alarmed, but the other Wanderers were not so phlegmatic. The small band withdrew weapons from their clothing and stood, arranging themselves into a rough battle formation. 

Madame Vadoma, still seated, waved a dismissive hand. 

“That won’t be necessary. The one who approaches is no threat to us at this time. I have seen it in the fire. Merely keep on your guard. Remember that nothing in Sithicus is innocent, particularly one who has been drawn here by the Mists.”

Nabon’s ears twitched with interest. “It is a Mist-walker that comes?”

“Yes, stone giant, one who has been drawn here just as you were.”

“Might I serve as guide, then?”

Vadoma’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “You hope that he comes from your own world, that you might have news of all that has passed. I do not believe that this is so.”

Nabon’s shoulders slumped, but he persisted. “But you are not certain.”

The rauni offered a languid shrug. “Not entirely. But you would make a good guide to an outsider. The rest of us were all born here in the Mists. Very well,” she said with brusque finality, “The traveller is your responsibility.”

The foreign giant wondered if he had made a mistake when he felt her decision fall upon him like a stone. He had undertaken more than he quite understood, and he wondered, too late, if he had been manipulated into a task that none of the isolationist Vistani would have found palatable. But he thanked the implacable Vadoma because he was unwilling to risk his place among the Wanderers. There were sympathetic looks from the others, and a few claps on the giant’s back before he stood. The woods were very dark, and he knew better than most the monstrous creatures that walked the night in Sithicus. 

“Should I wait here for him?” Nabon was ashamed to hear a note of pleading in his voice. 

“It is better if you find him. This one has no allegiance here yet, and bringing him out of danger can only benefit us all.”

With a resigned sigh, the stone giant stood and trudged to the edge of the camp. Away from the luminous warmth of the Vistani fire, Nabon blinked to activate his Dark Vision. He resisted the urge to look back at the Wanderers or plead his safety with Madame Vadoma. A thrill went down his back, all the way to the stolen skin of his feet, when he stepped into the woods. Even in terrible danger, he felt the rush of stepping away from settled places, the knowledge of the wind, earth and sky welcoming him home. 

The Dark Vision common to all giants served him well, and he could see in shades of grey for a few dozen feet in every direction almost as well as he might in the day. Branches and long grasses crunched under Nabon’s long feet, the only sound outside of the occasional hoot from an owl and, far off, the eerie voices of wolves. Nabon looked up at the sky. The moon was full, even huger and more brilliant than it had been from the Vistani camp. He frowned. In fact it was improbably huge, more than twice the size that it had been a half an hour previously. Even a larger-looking moon shrank in size throughout the night, as it moved higher in the sky. 

The giant blinked twice, dismissing his Dark Vision so that he might look upon the moon with eyes that processed light. An involuntary gasp escaped him. This was not the flickering, red-streaked single moon that had ruled over Sithicus since Lord Soth’s departure. 

This was Solinari.

One of the three of moons of Krynn, the world from which Lord Soth had hailed, it had disappeared shortly after Soth had. Nabon scanned the skies for blood-red Lunitari and saw nothing. It was possible that he was wrong, yet he remembered the clear illumination of the white moon from Soth’s time distinctly, and he saw no difference.

A shiver that was not just from the cold night ran down Nabon’s back and arms. He sensed change in the air. A stranger newly appeared and the landscape of Sithicus shifting as it had not in many years. He hoped that the change would be for the good. 

Yet, in the domain of the Mists, that was so rarely the case.

A bright flare of light broke through a bare spot in the overhanging foliage, and Palin looked up at white moon that hung like a great lamp in the night. It was Solinari, or close enough as to make no difference. Now that he had escaped the deadly creatures that haunted this place, at least for the moment, Palin was able to examine his surroundings. The Staff of Magius remained fixed and warm in his hand, pulsing with power, but he was not ready to turn his attention to it. If the staff’s return were a trick, some awful slight of hand, Palin did not think he would be able to bear it. Instead he watched the moon. The shadows that crossed it were the same as those that had given depth and texture to Solinari. They were the same, but the longer that Palin looked at it the more he thought that they were not entirely the same. There was the face of the god, but instead of the benevolent, serene smile Palin that had beamed over Krynn, this Solinari seemed to be grinning mirthlessly down at the surface of the world, and the grin had teeth. 

Palin pulled his soaked robes more tightly around his chest in a vain attempt to find warmth. The brisk autumn winds had done nothing to dry the cloth, and the former devotee of Solinari feared that he would soon become ill. He fell a chill moving through his body, light but threatening to grow more violent. Increasingly, he despaired of his situation. He had no idea of where he was, where to find shelter, or even of what was safe to eat, and this woods was full of monsters and wild animals. Unless he found a solution to any of his problems, he considered his ultimate survival unlikely. 

A rustle of movement up ahead drew his wary gaze. He glimpsed a dark shadow, something long and flowing, in the distance. A beam of moonlight passed over it, and Palin saw that it was a person, heavily cloaked and walking in the opposite direction.

“Hello!” Palin shouted.

He began to run toward what might be his only chance of escaping the awful forest. The other person continued moving forward, as if they had not heard him.

“Wait for me! Please!”

At last the newcomer slowed to a graceful stop. A hand emerged from a wide, black sleeve, and Palin saw that the appendage was slim, but long and strong, the hand of a man. The hand beckoned him onward, and Palin kept running, but no matter how hard he ran he never seemed to catch up.

“Wait!”

Only when Palin stumbled to a halt, shivering with terror and exhaustion, did the man he was pursuing at last turn and push back his dark hood. 

Palin fell back in shock, destabilized and dumbfounded by the utter incongruity of seeing Raistlin Majere’s hourglass eyes. The former White Robe stared while the spectre of his uncle pointed to a bush full of berries. The Black Robe paced forward and back again, then stood still, his dark garments fluttering in the night winds. Palin ran for the bushes and saw that the berries appeared edible, similar to raspberries. He filled the inner pocket of his robes, watching Raistlin carefully the entire time. 

“Where is this place?” Palin called out. He again pursued his uncle, but with each step he took, Raistlin moved back another. 

“Uncle, please! Am I am on Krynn? Have the gods returned?”

He did not truly believe that they had, and was not surprised when Raistlin shook his head with clear impatience. 

“Then where?” Palin pleaded. 

“Beware,” Raistlin whispered at last. “Beware, my nephew.”

The archmage turned away and immediately vanished into the trees. Palin shouted and ran to where he had last seen Raistlin, but the woods were empty and cold. 

“Uncle!” he howled. Palin turned lost circles with his soaked robes clinging to his him and his arms thrust out, beseeching. “Come back!”

Shortly after the reappearance of Solinari in the sky, Nabon heard a man shouting. Voices carried far in the Iron Hills, sometimes farther than could be rationally explained, though rarely when help was called for. The unearthly creatures that haunted the wood were said to hear a whimper from a hundred miles away, and be drawn to it like wolves to the scent of fresh blood.

The giant listened carefully in the hope of being the first one to reach the mortal in the wood. He thought it unlikely that there were two people stumbling about alone in the wood at midnight, and so this must be the new mist-walker, and Nabon’s charge from Madame Vadoma.

“Uncle! Come back!”

Nabon’s brow furrowed. Perhaps there were two more people in the wood, but he thought it peculiar and alarming that the rauni had mentioned nothing of another. Had she meant to send him into danger, or were her own powers of foretelling failing her?

Though at first he hesitated, the giant decided to follow the voice to its source and worry about the rest later. Once he had recovered the first individual, it would be a simple matter for both of them to go in search of the second together.

Palin crashed into the bushes where he had last seen Raistlin and found nothing, not so much as a hint of a robe. There in the thickest copse, the overhanging vegetation was so dark that the young mage could not see even a sliver of the moon that so closely resembled lost Solinari. With no other idea of where to go,he pushed through the branches and found himself stuck in a tangle of burs and brambles, all clinging tenaciously to the wet wool of his autumn robes. Palin cursed and retreated, only to find himself stuck in place, a prison of the trees in every direction. The forest itself seemed to be holding him immobile.

His impression was confirmed when the branches holding him began to constrict, and what he had vaguely taken for the truck of a tree split open to reveal a gaping maw filled with long, sharp teeth, all of them dripping with rancid, sap-like ichor. The tangle of branches slowly drew him toward the open mouth. Palin desperately resisted the urge to scream. Using the techniques of his magical schooling, he deliberately ignored his mortal peril and slowed his panicked breathing so that he could think clearly.

He felt his pulse return to something approaching normal and only then used his limited control of his arms to lift the Staff of Magius. He left it dark, but visualized the vines and brambles dropping away. A bright crackle of power, invisible but furious, moved through his arms and down the staff. The plant creature howled from its fanged maw and the tendrils dropped away. Palin gasped with relief and rapidly freed himself, running away from the plant before it could recover from its shock.

Palin clutched his staff close, desperately grateful for its presence. Even just working the artifact made him feel like a mage again, made him feel like himself for the first time since the end of the Chaos War. He was now certain that it was no trick or illusion. The staff was real and it worked. How, Palin did not know, and for the time being did not care.

Once he had returned to the less sparsely grown area woods, where the moon was still clear, Palin looked around, hoping to see Raistlin again. He thought he must have searched behind every trunk and leaf, although with far more caution after his encounter with the hungry creature that had so closely resembled an oak, but he failed to find his uncle. Lost, cold and hungry as he was, Palin wondered if he had imagined Raistlin entirely. Yet there was the matter of the berries. Raistlin had shown him where to find food.

Thinking of food, Palin’s stomach tensed and rumbled, and he reached into his pocket for a handful of the tiny fruit. He had only eaten a few when what sounded like twigs and leaves cracking under a heavy footstep had the young man who had once trained as a war wizard assuming a battle-ready pose with his staff high above his head. As exhausted as he was, his arm trembled and his whole body shivered in the midnight chill. He did his best to appear ready for any foe, although he was uncertain that he had sufficient power left to confront so much as a common rat.

At last the bushes to the left of Palin parted and a huge, stone-grey creature stepped through. It had the height of a giant, and regarded Palin with a calculating stare.

“The woods are no place to wander at night,” the creature rumbled. “You must come with me.”

With the memory of the vicious forest giant still fresh, and near-delirious from the cold and the shock of all that had happened to him, Palin did not really hear the newcomer’s offer. He swung the Staff of Magius in a wide, terrified arch and prayed with the desperation of a man who believes that he is already doomed.

“Solinari, aid me!” Palin screamed.

A beam of light from the improbably familiar moon fell on Palin and the staff in his hand turned as white as molten metal before it struck the face of his new foe.The grey giant screamed and fell to the ground, clutching its eyes and moaning with terror and agony.

Elation ran through Palin’s veins. This was the magic returned to him, the true magic that he had dreamed of every night since the departure of the gods. The Staff was a complex artifact that could perform certain feats independent of its user, but not this great torrent of power. That had been Palin’s alone; he had channelled it through the staff and he was now certain that he would be able to do so through the medium of a spell. Unfortunately, he had used his very last incantation by the end of the battle against Chaos. Not so much as a cantrip lingered in Palin’s brain. If he were to truly cast again, in the refined way of an educated mage, he would have to find resources in this place: other wizards to learn from or spellbooks to study. He would need to find pen and paper; to begin building his own spell collection again, as well as studying the local flaura and fauna for likely spell components.

He was so absorbed by these compelling thoughts that it was several moments before he perceived, through the giant’s moans, that the creature was repeating the same words again and again:

“Help me. Help me.”

Nabon clutched at his eyes, rubbing and pressing in an attempt to dismiss the white light that dominated his vision. The light pressed on him so that he saw nothing else, and it burned as if he had stared into the sun for hours.

“Help me. Help me,” he pleaded.

There was no one there but the wizard who had inflicted the injury on him, but he remembered the terror on the young man’s face and hoped that the mist-walker had blinded him in self-defence rather than malice.

A tentative hand on his arm startled him, and Nabon forced himself to relax.

“I’m sorry,” the stranger whispered. “I didn’t mean to… it should only be temporary.”

He didn’t sound at all sure.

“Can’t you take it away?”

“No. You need time to recover. Or I can take you to a cleric…if you have one.”

“What’s a cleric?” Nabon muttered.

He heard a sigh in his ear, and then the stranger gripped his upper arm and began leveraging the stone giant to his feet. “I suppose it was too much to hope for. Here, help me get you up.”

Nabon put his other hand on the forest floor and slowly stood, keeping his head down to protect it from dangers he could not longer see.

“I’ll stay with you,” the wizard whispered. “Don’t worry.”

Nabon felt a slight lightning of his mood. With the wizard probably already beginning to feel the Guilt of Sithicus, the giant had no doubt that he would stay with him at least until his eyesight returned. There would be no need to persuade the mist-walker of the necessity of returning to the Wanderer camp, and no chance of Madame Vadoma’s directive failing.

The dark powers were on his side tonight, it seemed, although, as ever, no blessing was pure. Nabon hoped fiercely that the damage done to his eyes was not permanent.

The young human shifted his grip on Nabon’s arm. “Which way should we go?”

“There was a large oak tree with a fallen branch next to it. Walk by it and keeping going straight.”

The mist-walker found the big oak soon enough and stopped to place Nabon’s hands on the bark.

“Here?”

Nabon nodded and leaned against the tree.

“Careful!” the wizard gasped. “There was a tree near here that tried to eat me.”

A dry laugh bubbled up from Nabon’ chest. “I know them. They’re not truly trees, but monsters that conceal themselves in the thickest tangles.”

“So I discovered,” the mage huffed impatiently.

With some of his strength returning, Nabon remember the man calling out for a companion just before the stone giant had found him.

“We should search for your uncle before we leave here.”

The mist-walker inhaled sharply. “Why do you say that?” The mage’s voice cracked like a whip, and Nabon flinched.

“You were calling for him when I came...weren’t you?” He asked weakly when the human failed to respond.

“Perhaps...I thought I saw him. Before I came here,” he added so quickly that Nabon was certain he was lying, although he saw no reason why the mage would want to.

“So you don’t need to find him?” he asked uncertainly.

“No!” The mist-walker shouted, then audibly calmed his breath when Nabon flinched again. No,” the human repeated more softly. “He doesn’t need our help. I’m alone here.”

Confused but eager to be on the way, Nabon didn’t argue. The started west from the oak tree, and Nabon thought that they would find the Wanderer camp within the hour. Yet with his eyes compromised, his memory of other landmarks was vague, and it was not long before he lost the way. They might have been moving for twenty minutes or two hours when the human abruptly stopped walking.

“It’s very late,” the mage said. “And I’m exhausted. We need to sleep.”

Nabon wanted to protest, but he was no longer sure the Vistani camp was near and he was beginning to feel the pull of sleep himself.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you much with setting up camp.”

The human released a sharp bark of laughter. “I have nothing to set up a camp with. I’ve only found a tree we can put our backs to.”

“Check it with a stick first.”

“Good idea,” the mist-walker muttered.

He heard the mage poking around at the trunk of the tree, and when the plant failed to reveal itself as a man-eating monster, the mist-walker pulled on Nabon’s arm and exerted guiding pressure until the stone giant sat down and felt the bark of the tree.

“Sleep,” the mage said softly once they were settled, “and make sure to keep your eyes shut even when you wake. The sunlight can damage your eyesight further without you knowing.”

Nabon sighed and nodded his head against the tree. More good news.

He wasn’t sure how long he had been sleeping when the mage began gently shaking his arm.

“Giant. Wake up.”

Nabon’s eyelids flew open and he looked around, hoping to see something, but the same white light greeted him everywhere.

“Close your eyes, I said,” the human insisted. “You’ll certainly go blind like that.”

The giant clenched his eyes shut again, even through the terror that clenched his heart. He deserved to go blind. He had left his people on Oerth, abandoned his duties and spent his careless life on the road when he should have been supporting his clan. That the Mist had taken him was the least of what he had earned.

It was the Guilt talking, but the worst part about the Guilt of Sithicus was that you could know it for what it was and still be wrapped in its power. Everyone was guilty of something. In Soth’s time, the domain had made you forget your past. In the time of Azrael and the thing that lingered in the Rift, the domain made you remember everything.

“It’s overcast,” the wizard said. “There’s very little sunlight, but for you it’s too much.”

“Do you see any change to my eyes?” Nabon asked.

“You will be the first one to notice, not me. Here,” the stranger said, “have some berries.”

He thrust a handful of sticky, half-crushed fruit into Nabon’s hand. The giant devoured the berries without complaint and was hungry enough to hear his stomach rumble when he had finished.

“Do you have any more?”

“Sorry.”

The mage’s voice shook and there was a rough, clattering sound that Nabon belatedly recognized as the man’s teeth knocking together.

“Are you well?” he asked.

There was a short pause and the sound of cloth on cloth. “No, not really. I’m,”—a rough cough tore the air, “I’m cold. My clothes are wet. It’s nearly winter and I don’t even know where I am.”

“You’re in Sithicus.”

“That tells me nothing, except that there must be elves here. Right? The word is Silvanesti.”

Nabon shook his head. “I don’t know what that means. But yes, there are elves in Sithicus. Mostly elves, and some of the Vistani. And other things. Things you don’t want to meet.”

“I’ve already met a few of them. There was a giant that tried to turn me into paste, which was why I attacked you. Sorry about that,” the young man muttered.

“No trouble at all. Or well, I mean, of course I’m not happy about it,” Nabon corrected himself at once, feeling foolish, “But I understand. You’re lucky to have survived these woods, alone in the dark.”

“But you’ve never heard of Silvanesti.”

“No, sorry,” Nabon said. “Nor is anyone else likely to have, to be honest. You’re very far from home.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because, with the exception of the unlucky few born to this place, everyone is far from home. The Vistani travel the Mists from domain to domain, and the rest of us are transported from our own distant worlds to the Demi-Plane of Dread.”

“The Demi-Plane of Dread,” the mage whispered. “So you’re telling me that I’ve travelled to an entirely different plane of existence. That’s why Solinari looks wrong.”

“Does it? It looks exactly the same as it did to me, at least before it disappeared.”

“So it disappeared here too?” the traveller asked, an eager, trembling note in his voice.

“Well, yes, after Lord Soth left.”

“Lord Soth! You must be joking.”

Nabon heard the heavy shifting of wet cloth as the wizard stood up and moved away.

“Wait, where are you going?” the giant called out.

“If you’re going to lie to me, I have no reason to stay.”

“But I haven’t lied to you at all. You can’t leave me here!”

“If you’re saying that you’ve seen Lord Soth, then this must be Krynn. Lord Soth is of Krynn. He can’t possibly be anywhere else.”

“Why not?”

“Because that is the nature of his curse. At the very moment that the fiery mountain fell on Krynn, Soth failed to save his wife and infant son—”

“—from dying in the fire,” Nabon finished. “They turned him and his loyal men into the cursed undead, and for hundreds of years Soth walked the face of his world, spreading terror wherever he went. Yes, I know the story. We all know the story. It is the nature of this land to force us to remember our sins. Always. Soth ruled here for many years, but he is gone now,” Nabon conceded, “And if he still exists on your world, it is perhaps because for your people, he never left. The Mists have incalculable powers to steal souls, and perhaps to put them back once they are no longer amusing to them. I heard tell that Lord Soth failed to respond to the provocations of this place. He was rarely seen by anyone outside of his keep.”

The rustle of cloth told the giant that the stranger had moved back towards him. He felt the body heat of the wizard in front of him and stood still, despite that fey ache inside of him that told him to smash the insolent man down where he stood. When Nabon was a child, he had been raised to believe that everything on the surface of the world was a dream, and killing humans or elves and other surface dwellers had no meaning. In decades since he had the stone warrens of his people, he had met enough surface dwellers to know that they were as real as he, but the very land of Sithicus told him to surrender to the old notions. Sithicus whispered to save himself from the magician that had taken his sight.

“You tell me Lord Soth was here for years. And did you ever hear of anyone else from my world?”

“The White Rose,” he muttered, pushing back to the violent desire, “But she disappeared when Soth did.”

“I’ve never heard of her. You've never heard of another? A wizard robed in black, with golden skin and hourglass eyes?”

There was an undeniable urgency in the mist-walker’s voice, but Nabon didn’t need to think on it before he shook his head. “No, never.”

The wizard sighed, and a gasp shook his whole body. He coughed and sat back down on the ground.

“I need to get you to a healer,” Nabon said. “You’re very sick.”

When the stranger had recovered, he took a deep breath.

“So are you. We’ll get there together. My name is Palin, by the way,” he said. He reached out with his hand, and when Nabon returned the gesture, the wizard very lightly touched the tips of his finger’s to the stone giant’s. “Palin Majere of Solace, on Krynn.”

Still sightless, Nabon’s gaze wandered to where he knew the clasp of their fingers to be. He wondered what this meant. The Mists never sent anyone here for the good, and good rarely came of meeting a mist-walker. But then, he had been a mist-walker himself, and he still tried his best to be a good man in the evil land that held him captive. Despite the unfortunate circumstances of their first meeting, the wizard was no killer or monster.

“And I’m Nabon of Oerth,” he said at last, hoping he wasn’t making a mistake.

*

They stayed in the clearing that night. Nabon hinted at even more terrible dangers lurking in the land by moonlight; with the giant blinded and Palin doubled over in illness, shivering and coughing, travel would be impractical, if not fatal.

Palin was still able to built a fire, and though he considered abstaining, in the end he  determined that monsters were still preferably to dying of cold. He hung up his robes on an overhanging branch, and regretted it as he felt even more terrible. The mage sat shivering in his small clothes by the fire, willing the dampness from them, and when he finally put the warm, dry white robes back on he thought that he had never felt such a profound sense of relief.

The cough lingered, though. Palin shook through another round of hacking gasps, then coughed again as he began to laugh.

“What is it?” Nabon asked. “Did you see something?”

“No, no. I just thought of a story my father told me.” He stopped, unwilling to reveal any further details to this man he had just met, but the giant’s blinded eyes could not hide his sudden eagerness.

“Tell me,” Nabon insisted. “There’s precious little to do here. So we often tell stories, especially among the Vistani.”

“Are those your people?”

The giant hesitated, and Palin tensed for a lie, but the grey creature waved a noncommittal, slab-like hand. “Of a sort. I suppose you might say they adopted me.”

“Why is that?” Palin asked. He was curious, but he also wanted to know if the giant would be willing to offer up his stories as freely as he expected from Palin.

The giant blinked several times and waved his fingers in front of his face. “Is it getting lighter out?”

“No.” Although everything in him screamed to be nice, to cooperate, Palin refused to yield to the giant’s equivocating. He had benefited precious little in this life from being nice. Perhaps it was time he tried doing what he really wanted.

Quietly, Nabon sighed. “Oh, very well. I suppose it’s only fair. And it will tell you a great deal about the nature of this land. Certainly, that cannot be emphasized enough.”

Nabon shifted against the tree, visibly discomfited, and Palin felt a flush of shame travel up his cheeks. He had only wanted to test the giant’s trustworthiness, but there should not have been a need. The grey-skinned giant was the only being in this strange place that had not viciously attacked him, had in fact exerted unusual effort to help him, and Palin had repaid him by taking away his sight and treating him like an enemy. It was true that the giant had appeared to be an aggressor in those first moments, but Palin had acted rashly.

The whisper of a notion occurred to the mage that perhaps Nabon had not appeared to be an aggressor at all. Perhaps Palin had known from that very first moment that the giant was no foe, but he had wanted so badly to feel that rush of sorcerous power and ecstasy that he had ignored the signs of benevolence entirely.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Palin said before Nabon could start his story. “I’m the one who should be telling you more.”

He waved away his companion’s protests, although the giant might have continued if a violent cough had not wracked Palin’s chest. Although he was not as physically fit and strong as his brothers had been, Palin had always been healthy, but a night spent running in terror through the woods, dressed in soaking wet robes, had not benefited him.

“My uncle was a great wizard,” Palin began once the cough had subsided. “Perhaps the greatest that ever walked the face of Krynn: Powerful enough to have challenged the gods themselves for supremacy. Even Lord Soth did not dare stand against Raistlin Majere,” he insisted in a voice made feverish with pride, “And he had opportunity enough to try. But I never met my uncle. He died when when he was still a young man, not even having reached his thirtieth year.”

“How did he attain such mastery in so short a time?” Nabon asked when Palin paused for breath.

“That remains a mystery. My father claims that my uncle had access to the knowledge and works of an ancient wizard, which certainly aided his advancement, but his native talent was said to be peerless.”

That was not all that Caramon had said. Palin’s father claimed that Raistlin’s rapid acquisition of power and knowledge had been unnatural, a dark gift from the spirit of the wizard Fistandantilus, who had planned to take over Raistlin’s body and use it as a vehicle of immortality. Palin had no doubt that his father was telling the truth as he saw it, but Caramon’s knowledge of magic, while considerable for a layman, was all second-hand, unschooled, and terribly biased. That Caramon had feared for his twin brother, Palin had always known. It had been present in every fearful glance he had given to his own son. Fear had always coloured Caramon’s view of magic, and he had restricted his loved ones according to his fear.

It was difficult to remember this without bitterness. Caramon had done the best that he could, according to his own best judgment, but his concerns had held Palin back for years.

“Yet as fantastical as his ability was, my uncle’s physical health was just as poor. On my world, all aspiring wizards must undergo a trial of magic and character known as the Test. It’s a poor term for a gauntlet used to determine whether a mage is worthy of living or dying. Yes,” Palin said softly, seeing the startled expression cross the face of his audience, “Failure always means death, or in rare cases, the loss of one’s magic. I think,” he added, even more softly, “I would choose death over that other outcome.”

“What happened to your uncle?” The giant appeared to be engrossed in the tale, and Palin was pleased with his new companion’s interest. His whole life, he had been discouraged from talking about his uncle, from asking questions about him or speaking of the stories he had heard from travellers passing through the Inn of the Last Home.

“My uncle passed the Test, of course, but at the permanent and total loss of his health. What little physical strength he possessed before he entered the Tower of Wayreth, where the Test is always conducted—or nearly always--,” he amended, considering his own Test, “was lost.

“Furthermore, he was physically changed in ways that would make him instantly identifiable among any race on Krynn. His skin, which was once as pale as my own, turned a shimmering metallic gold. His light brown hair turned white, although he was only twenty-one years old, and his blue eyes became golden. The pupils were the most striking feature of all, for their round human shape took on the form of hourglasses. This was not a decorative feature, but a sorcerous transformation, through which every glance my uncle took showed him the flow of time. Everything that he looked upon withered and died even as he watched it. The youngest, freshest maiden appeared as a shriveled crone. A handsome young man was a bent gaffer.”

“But why was this done to him?” the giant gasped.

“The Conclave of Wayreth, lead by the archmage Par-Salian, determined my uncle’s fate. To curb Raistlin’s ambition. To teach him humility. Of course, if they had only treated him with humanity, as one worthy of their time and attention and not just their fear, much might have changed for the better.”

It occurred to Palin that he was speaking not only of Raistlin, but of himself. The Conclave was prone to repeating its errors, he saw, even as the gods of Krynn had been inclined to do the same.

“The worst of it, perhaps, was that he was always ill, constantly on the edge of death, and wracked by an awful cough that shook his body and often brought up blood from his lungs.”

He shook his head. “When I was a child, I used to pretend to be him, to be the great Archmage Raistlin Majere, Master of the Tower of High Sorcery in Palanthas. I would wrap myself up in my mother’s winter coat, which happened to be black, and grab a long stick from the valley to serve as my magic staff. And I would trail after my two brothers, hacking and coughing and speaking in a whisper, while they played at being our father and one of his friends, sword-fighting draconians in the War of the Lance. They always tried to make me play another warrior but, even when I was six years old, I only ever wanted to be one thing.”

Palin wrapped his robes more tightly around his body and tried not to think about how his brothers, especially serious Tanin, had whispered that their parents would be so angry if they caught Palin playing at being Raistlin.

“At least wear the white bed sheet instead, if you have to be a wizard,” Tanin insisted.

“No! Uncle Raistlin wore black.”

Even then, the boys had heard enough whispers in corners to know that their uncle’s story had not ended well. Palin had insisted on continuing his game, but Tanin’s heavy-handed warnings had been all too true. Tika had caught him wrapped up in the black coat one day, throwing sand and chanting a “magic spell” that was so much nonsense. Palin could still remember his mother’s face turning as white the bed sheets that he had rejected in favour of the dark coat.

His mother had forbidden him from playacting at magic again, and the coat had immediately been bleached and re-dyed forest green. Palin could still remember his mother standing out in the snow, the winter sun setting her red curls on fire while she furiously dipped the coat in bleach, again and again.

“You speak of your uncle in the past. Yet when I found you in the woods you were calling for him. Or was that another uncle?”

Palin drew a long breath. “No. No, I was calling for him. I saw something in the wood that I can’t explain. It was Raistlin, and I saw him as clearly as I see you now. I ran after him, but however fast I ran, I could never catch up. Then he vanished.”

“I see. You must be very careful in Sithicus,” Nabon said. “The things you see here cannot be trusted. It is not like it was back on my world, nor on yours. This place is made of mist and shadows, all-too-real illusions. You must be wary of them. Never chase after the mists.”

Palin coughed again and wrapped himself more tightly in his robes while he leaned back on a tree and watched the leaves and branches fluttering in the midnight wind. He peered through the foliage, still yearning to see the even darker flutter of black velvet robes and the glint of hourglass eyes.

“Do you think you will be well again soon?” Nabon eventually asked, an anxious note in his voice. “You must help me to see again.”

“Tomorrow perhaps,” Palin sighed.

No further denizens of the Iron Wood disturbed their rest that night, and Nabon woke refreshed, although still entirely blind. The mage reminded him to close his eyes, to protect them from the sun and surrounding foliage, and when Nabon continued to forget, Palin tore a strip from his own robes and bound the giant’s eyes so they would not be damaged.

“But when will I regain my eyesight?” Nabon asked.

An echoing silence broken by a cough answered him, and the giant did not ask again. He gave directions as best he could, but when they failed to stumble across the Vistani camp he could only conclude that they were very far off course.

“Go east,” he said at last. “You will not find the Wanderers, but there is an elven village at the edge of the woods.”

Palin shifted course and walked, but with both the giant and the mage tormented by their respective maladies, they clung to one another like the proverbial babes in the woods. Nabon felt the mage trembling and shivering next to him as they advanced.

“Tell me your story, then,” Palin said. “We have time.”

So the giant told the wizard of how he had been taken by the Mists some thirty years past, pulled from his own world into the strange realm that the learned called a demi-plane, a prison located somewhere between the Prime Material Plane and the Abyss. Although it was peopled largely by the living, Sithicus and its neighbouring domains were governed by strange, unnatural laws and the whims of the dark powers that controlled them.

“Every so often, another being is pulled into this place, seemingly only for the entertainment of the things that govern the Mists. So it was with me. I had left my own people and their customs for the lure of the open road. I sometimes believe that this is a punishment to which I have been condemned for that terrible abandonment of my duties.”

The mage made a small sound, and Nabon instinctively dropped his covered gaze down to the human. “What do you think, good mage?”

“It is possible,” the mage said, with great reluctance in his voice. “It seems that I might have committed some transgression before appearing here.”

“Yes, that is often the way. The Mists never seem to take the entirely innocent, perhaps because they have no dominion over them. Yet it often seems to be the case that the mistwalkers are goaded to commit some crime before their transportation, perhaps by the whispers of the Mists themselves.”

“Do you truly believe so?” 

Nabon hesitated. Although it was a real possibility, he could not say for certain if the Mists were ultimately responsible for the misdeeds of those they tormented, or if they were merely able to command and control those unfortunate beings who had condemned themselves to this torment. From the keen, seeking tone of the wizard’s voice, Palin had certainly done something sufficiently criminal to land himself in Sithicus. The renewed appearance of Solinari in the night sky also made Nabon think that there was significance to the mage’s arrival.

“I cannot be sure,” he said at last, and tried not to flinch when he heard a harsh exhale from the wizard. “I can only tell you that this is a place of tremendous danger, and that few ever escape it.”

“Lord Soth did.”

“Yes, and before that event, I would have told you that no one ever escapes the Demiplane of Dread. It is that rare. But I was speaking of my own journey. Once I arrived here, and after I had become accustomed to my new station in life, I began to think that I had been blessed rather than cursed, for here in this new land I knew no one and was beholden to neither family nor clan. I could make my own future. So I thought, until I met…Azrael.”

The last he whispered, casting his blind gaze anxiously about, worried to have attracted the attention of that terrible being.

“Who is that?” The mage was astute enough not repeat the name.

“The ruler of this place, after Soth’s departure. Some say its true lord, although I have reason to believe otherwise.”

“And what would the difference be?”

“In this place, the lord and the land are nearly one. The lord can never leave the land, but the land grants the lord extraordinary powers, towering supernatural abilities. Nothing escapes the notice of the lord. But there are other terrors here. The one I mentioned is a creature who has plagued the peoples of this land with murder and torture for as long as Sithicus has had a name. He once served Lord Soth, and he was the one who found me shortly after I arrived. He captured me, and he shattered the legs that had carried me across the world of my birth and beyond.

“I was imprisoned by that foul werebeast for many years. It was only when a creature called the Bloody Cobbler arrived with the soles of murdered Vistani to sew to my legs and feet that I was able to break free from Az...from his prison.

“The gift of the Cobbler gave me back my legs, and more. For the first time since the Mists took me from Oerth, I had a people. I could feel the presence of the Vistani travellers in Sithicus, sense them at a distance, and they knew that I was connected to them as well. It is not the same as it was with my own clan,” Nabon conceded, “They are not giants. And yet in some ways it is better. My own people never understood my need to wander, to keep moving and know that I was satisfied only when I could feel the earth shifting under my feet.”

It was perhaps not the whole truth, but it was close enough, and Nabon was no longer sure if he would return to Oerth again, even if given the chance. As awful as it was, over time Sithicus crept into the blood, into the bones.

“And Azrael?” Palin murmured.

“Azreal is only satisfied when he knows that he has broken his victim in every way. When he has destroyed every reason that makes life worth living. Yet…there is another,” Nabon whispered, “with far greater power.”

“The true lord of the land,” Palin guessed. “Soth’s replacement.”

“Yes. But I cannot speak of it here. Not in the Iron Wood. Not so close.”

“Later then. Where do your feet tell you to go now?”

Having made such a grandiose statement of his connection to the Wanderers, Nabon was afraid to now say that it wasn’t entirely magical, but still required some sight and direction. He was also beginning to wonder if the Wanderers could help them at all. The Vistani people had many secret skills, but they were not especially known for healing.

“East to the elves,” he repeated, “They’ll have healers there.”

“Where did these elves come from if Lord Soth was the first one to rule the realm?”

“They were mistwalkers. Like us.”

“So they were from Krynn. Lord Soth’s world. My world.”

“Very likely. Perhaps you can ask them.”