Chapter One

Dalamar walked up the stairs to his Shalafi's study, already well on his way of researching what Raistlin had asked of him. He pushed the door open and walked over to the desk that if he sat on the other side, depending on what Raistlin was doing, the two of them could share space on it. At the moment, and Dalamar had to look twice to confirm what his eyes were seeing, it appeared that Raistlin had decided to take a book to the couch near the fireplace and sit there and read.

Except said book was in his lap, his eyes were closed, and his head was leaning on the back of the couch. His legs stretched in front of him and resting on a stool, and he leaned to the side, with one arm resting on the book, and the other limply beside him.

There was no doubt it Dalamar's mind that his Shalafi had fallen asleep where he sat, it was just that Dalamar was flabbergasted at the sight. Raistlin had, again, worked himself into an exhaustion so complete that sleep had stolen over him mid activity. All in all, it was a sight. The great and fearsome archmagus... sleeping like a baby on a warm couch. Dalamar left him to sleep and decided that if he woke, he would rather be discovered doing what he supposed to be doing and not gaping at the sight.

But seeing him like that reminded the Dark Elf how very young the human Raistlin Majere really was. According to the human standards, mused Dalamar, he had not even reached middle age. He wasn't even thirty. He was the most powerful wizard to walk Krynn, but he was also very terribly young to have done so. He sighed and turned back to his own book.

A deep breath from the couch sounded, then Raistlin began to cough and gasp for breath. Dalamar, recognizing Raistlin's fits, set the book down and ran for his tea. Tea made with water conjured he brought it to his Shalafi who sipped it, then took bigger mouthfuls. His cough calmed and soon the fit ended as Raistlin wiped his mouth. "What did you find?" he asked in a low whisper, lower than usual.

"I found another book on what you asked," said Dalamar. "However, I can find nothing specifically on Spell Seeds, Shalafi."

"Nothing specifically?" Raistlin's brow furrowed as he stood up and walked slowly to his desk, the sleep still clinging to him and making his movements slightly jerky and unsteady. "But you have found something?"

Dalamar blinked before showing him the passage in the book. Raistlin took the book and began to read where his apprentice had indicated. His eyes thinned a bit, but not in any displeasure, more in concentration. Raistlin set the book down, rubbing his eyes, and Dalamar said as he looked out the window, "The hour is very late, Shalafi, and you do look rather tired... I do not mean to sound out of place or above my place, but perhaps you should rest?"

Raistlin looked up at his apprentice, then, as Dalamar held his breath for the tongue lashing to come... and didn't, Raistlin quietly agreed, "You are right, Dalamar."

Raistlin stood, a bit shakily, and Dalamar grasped his elbow to steady him, a slight smile on his face, "At least about this? Here, let me help you..."

Again, but Dalamar supposed it was due to Raistlin's exhaustion, he didn't say anything but allowed Dalamar to guide him to his bed chambers that were right beside the study. Dalamar then left him to his rest and closed the door. He walked back over to the desk and began to read and take notes so that in the morning he would have something more to show Raistlin. A few hours later, and very tired himself, Dalamar stood up from the desk and pushed open the door to look in on his Master. Raistlin was lying on his side, but Dalamar could clearly see from the light of the fire that he was deeply asleep. Dalamar quietly closed the door again before walking up the flight of stairs to his own bedroom to sleep.

Raistlin Majere woke the next morning to a cold fireplace that had died down in the night, buried under the layers of heavy quilts and brocade blankets. His mind still seemed a bit large for his head, a sure sign that last night he had simply over did it... again... and his whole body protested when he feebly pushed himself up into a sitting position with his legs over the side of the bed. The blankets still have wrapped around him, he took stock of the situation.

One very tired mind that still screamed for sleep... check. A body, as frail as it was normally, still screaming for more sleep, yes, definitely in agreement with his head. He looked out the window to see where the sun was to gauge how late he had slept in. With a sigh, and noting how high the sun was in the sky, he knew it was around noon. He made one feeble motion to get up, and then flopped back into the down filled bed, covering himself as he did so, legs still over the side of the bed. One more minute, he cajoled himself. I've already slept the morning away. What could one... more...

With a final yawn, Raistlin was asleep again, one arm stretched out toward the head of the bed, half rolled in that direction and his blankets wrapped around him. When he next opened his eyes, the sun was still high in the sky, but his own internal sense of time told him that at least an hour more had been spent lazing in bed.

He sat up, his mind feeling a bit more back to normal, and even though he was still frail, at least this time around he didn't feel like falling right back to sleep again. He got up, dressed and did what every human male needed to do in the morning to get themselves ready for the day before walking out into his study. Dalamar was already there, and curse the elf for not needing as much sleep as he did, appeared to have been there all morning. "Did you sleep well, Shalafi?" he asked. "You were quite tired last night."

"I slept," answered Raistlin simply. "Somewhere in my sleep fogged mind, I recall you saying you found a book with something about the Spell Seeds in it?"

"Ah yes, this one..."

And so the rest of the day went, except when Dalamar would disappear for about an hour and return with food and drink. Raistlin nibbled on the fruit while reading the book that Dalamar had found. Finally, with the sun again long since set, Raistlin wisely called it a day before he could end up in the same exhausted state he had been in last night. "First, apprentice, I want you to go up to my lab and bring me the jar of Hisoria."

Dalamar got up and exited the study. He fairly jogged up the steps, pushed open the door to the largest lab in the Tower, then ran carefully, but quickly down the stairs. As he was about to push open the door he heard a muffled, "Shit...!"

Then an extremely loud crash as something heavy hit the floor and sounded like it shattered all over the floor. Dalamar pushed the door open in alarm to regard the damage.

Raistlin lay on the floor behind his desk, a chair overturned, and a bookshelf was laying on the floor, seemingly as if it had been pulled down... Dalamar set down the jar on his Shalafi's desk and ran around the desk to see how badly Raistlin was hurt. He gingerly rolled Raistlin over onto his back as Raistlin moaned a little. Quickly grabbing the cloth out of Raistlin's pocket, he held it to stop the bleeding from the severe cut on Raistlin's right temple. He then looked up, seeing the room from that angle.

And put two and two together as he pieced together events that led up to him finding Raistlin lying on the floor with a nasty cut to his head. First, Dalamar saw where Raistlin had hit his head... on the corner of his own desk. He could see where the blood shone on the dark wood. Then he saw the bookshelf laying on the floor... and the broken chair. He cursed the accident.

It came too clear. He could see Raistlin taking one of his chairs to stand on to reach, like he had so many times in the past, the top shelf for a book. The leg had snapped under his weight, meaning that the chair would have likely broken anyway had anyone sat on it. In his desperation to stop the fall he had grabbed hold of the shelf, but the motion of falling had already been set in motion, and he only pulled the shelf down after him. The force of the fall sent him down, and his head connected with his desk to land where he lay, unconscious, on the floor.

Dalamar quickly checked for other injuries, but besides the sprained or broken left wrist, and the blow to the head, he couldn't find any. Dalamar braced and wrapped his wrist, then bandaged his head before taking the risk of moving him. Raistlin was a dead weight in his arms, although he was breathing. Dalamar laid the man in his bed and then waited.

The sun came up and morning dawned before Raistlin rolled his head to the side with a low moan and cracked his eyelids open. Dalamar moved to his side quickly and anxiously asked, "Shalafi? Are you all right?"

"My head hurts..." he murmured holding his right hand to his head. "So does my wrist..."

"I can only imagine," mused Dalamar. "Tell me, how did you manage to fall? I only heard you shout in alarm then came in to find you on the floor..."

Raistlin blinked twice slowly. "I don't know..."

Dalamar was a bit startled at the alarm and... he could even say he saw fear... in Raistlin's eyes. "Shalafi...?"

"I don't know..." Raistlin murmured again. "Tell me... is Shalafi my name? It sounds... elven..."

Dalamar sucked in a breath. "Shalafi... no... it isn't... it's what I call you. It means 'Master' in Silvanesti. But it isn't your name. Do you not know your own name?"

That look of fear crept into Raistlin's eyes again and he whispered even lower, "No... I don't. I don't even know where I am..."

Dalamar had to leave then. He could not stand to be in there. After he managed to regain his composure, he set about doing what he had claimed he was leaving to do; find something to help Raistlin's headache and wrist pain. He also wanted to find something, anything, about head injuries. He felt extremely out of his league, but when he came back, he was the very picture of calm and control as he brought in a tray with a bowl of thin soup, a mug of Raistlin's tea, and a phial of willow bark that he had read up on. While most healers used the bark as a fever reducer, it was also just as useful as a painkiller and an anti-inflammatory. He set the tray down on the night stand beside the bed and helped Raistlin into a sitting position with the pillows propping him up.

"What is that smell?" asked Raistlin.

"That's your tea, Shalafi... Raistlin..." said Dalamar. "Oh, I should mention... your name is Raistlin Majere. You are the most powerful archmagus on Krynn... does any of that sound familiar to you?"

Raistlin mouthed his own name and the information, although paraphrased into, "Raistlin... Majere... I'm an archmage... the most powerful there is..."

Dalamar held his breath. "No, it does not," Raistlin then said and Dalamar felt as if something had deflated within himself. "This upsets you? Why?"

"You're my teacher, my Master. I am your apprentice..." Dalamar waited for some sort of recognition but was rewarded with nothing. "My name is Dalamar... Dalamar Nightson."

Raistlin blinked but shook his head, "No, I'm sorry. I don't remember you."

Dalamar sighed and ran a hand through his dark hair, then brightened, knowing that quite often patients tended to pick up on the moods of their caretakers. It was left up to him to make sure his Shalafi returned to health, and would be his own failure if Raistlin did not. Finally Dalamar used a small table as a tray to serve Raistlin's meal on. For a moment Raistlin looked at everything as he tried to place it. "It is strange. I feel I should know, should recognize all of this, but I cannot."

Dalamar smiled a bit, "Don't worry, Shalafi, I am sure it will come in time. Eat your soup and drink your tea."

Slowly, Raistlin began to eat. About halfway through the soup he stopped with a simple, "I've had enough..."

Dalamar took the opportunity to fix one flaw he had always worried about, "But you've eaten half. I'm half your size, and we elves never eat as much as human men, but you've only eaten half of what I would eat..."

Raistlin looked at him strangely, but continued to eat. Finally there was nothing left and he also finished his tea. With a sour look on his face he asked, "Did I like that stuff?"

"No, but you always needed it, and likely still do," said Dalamar. "You have always been rather frail, and after your Test your lungs developed some sort of illness, from what you've told me, that the tea helps relieve."

Dalamar then handed him the phial, "Now, I would like you to take two swallows of that..."

Raistlin did so, and his sour look returned, "That's even worse than the tea..."

"Yes... I would imagine so," mused Dalamar as he took the small table. "Now, you try to rest. That willow bark should help with the pain and bring down the swelling. I looked at your wrist while you were unconscious and it does not appear to be broken. But, when the swelling goes down, I would like to take another look at it."

Raistlin gingerly touched his bandaged left wrist, tried to move it, gasped with the sudden pain, but said, "No... it's only sprained. How... do I know that?"

"Another part of your past you have never told me about," admitted Dalamar. "Though I have heard rumors that you were a healer before you became a mage. Or something like that. Perhaps that would be it."

"Perhaps," mused Raistlin, before he yawned.

Dalamar helped him ease back into the pillows and back into a laying position, "Now, I think you need rest. Sleep heals, and from the look of things you could use plenty of it."

Raistlin nodded his head, winced from the pain the motion caused and relaxed into his pillows as Dalamar pulled the blankets up over his shoulders to under his neck. "Rest well, Shalafi."

Raistlin didn't respond as sleep had again taken him as soon as he closed his eyes.