They'd been walking for hours, the light never changing, the temperature steady and stifling. Dalamar did not know what was worse; the creatures that he feared running into or the anticipation of that meeting. He felt light-headed and insubstantial, as though the slightest breeze would sweep him away. And he knew that Raistlin, despite his facade, was even weaker. In a fight they would be useless.
"Do not worry yourself, Dalamar," Raistlin said wearily, reading his thoughts, "My reputation in this place ought to be enough to ward off most who mean us harm."
It was a valid point, but somehow Dalamar seriously doubted whether reputation alone would be enough.
They walked on and on, saying very little to one another, each one consumed with his own dark thoughts. The sand beneath their feet gave way to dirt, then to a soft gray grass. The change in vegetation brought them no comfort...it was not a comforting sight in the least. The dead trees became more frequent, their twisted branches reaching toward a lightless sky in a gesture of seeming supplication. Dalamar wondered whether they had ever been alive, if the Abyss had ever been green and verdant before this landscape of sorrow and loneliness grew to cover over everything.
"Master, how are you feeling?" Dalamar asked some time later.
"Like the trees, I think." Raistlin said softly. He looked around him, surveying the horizon. Suddenly he went rigid, eyes fixed on a spot behind Dalamar's left shoulder.
"I think, my friend, that the situation is about to become a great deal more complicated."
The hair on the nape of Dalamar's neck began to rise at the tone in his Master's voice. He turned to look, anticipation tightening in his chest. A black smudge in the distance was moving towards them. It took Dalamar a full minute to see that it was no demon, but a woman. Breath came slamming back into his lungs, and he realized that he had been holding it.
A woman.
In the Abyss, no less. Whatever or whomever she was, her presence here - unmolested and without an escort - was a deeply unsettling sight.
A lone, unharmed woman with black hair and a black raiment, skin pale as a scar, eyes twin holes of suffocation in a perfect porcelain face. Raistlin fidgeted slightly beside him, and Dalamar's fear vanished in a rush of protectiveness. In his weakened condition, Raistlin was in no state to repel the barbs of a demi-goddess, demoness, succubus, or even a particularly bad-tempered mage who'd somehow managed to find her way Below. His hand went to the handle of the dagger he kept in his belt, the other hand reaching into a pouch to grasp a handful of sleeping powder. If he had to, he was more than willing to die in defense of his Master. But Raistlin laid a hand on his arm, staying his movements.
"Let us see if she means us any ill will first, my friend. Not all who wander in the Abyss are treacherous."
"No? This is hardly the place for an evening walk."
"We are here for a pleasant stroll; perhaps there are others as well. Have you no faith left?"
"Very little."
Raistlin laughed, an odd sound in their current surroundings. Another moment passed, and the stranger was within speaking distance.
"And I had really thought," she said, walking up to the two men without hesitation or preamble, "That I'd seen the last of the mortals when the plague struck."
"You had not, Lady. Not all were killed, and some of the strongest thrived." Dalamar replied, placing himself between Raistlin and the woman.
She would have been lovely, shockingly lovely in fact, but for the mean curve of her mouth and the cold glitter in her eyes. A necklace of black pearls set with jet hung about her slim throat, flashing in a light that was not there. She stared up at Dalamar, noting with obvious approval his thick dark hair and high cheekbones, his beautiful eyes and gently pointed ears. Dalamar knew she found him handsome, knew with a weary sort of amusement that most women did. And he did not care. 'I would kill you without hesitation and be troubled by it not at all.' he thought silently, eyeing her.
She smirked, almost as though she'd read his mind, and turned her attention to Raistlin.
"Two mages dressed in very interesting garments, black as the eyes of Fistandantilus - a very telling color indeed for fellows of your order. One a dark elf with the scent of blood on his clothes, the other a Plane-touched arch mage only hours from death. What brings you to my beautiful realm?"
"The last I had heard, my Lady, this land was under the sway of a different goddess. I do not know you. And you, it would seem, do not know me." Raistlin said softly, "I am not Plane-touched. But my death is indeed not far off."
"As you wish, mage. Your golden skin misled me. I am called Fadija, and as the last of my kind left alive in this place I am the rightful heir of the lands around. All others are dead...some sort of sickness that struck some and left others. I alone was spared of the higher order. But you will not have heard of me, of course. I seldom travel to Krynn. And certainly not to communicate with sickly mages and their errant Elvish counterparts. It is good that I found you before the Hounds. They are hungry, and fresh meat is much prized."
Dalamar was liking her less and less. He maintained his protective stance, guarding Raistlin's frail frame from her prying eyes. It was a strange sight indeed, three people casually conversing in the midst of a dead land. Like a tea-party suddenly plucked from some stuffy sitting-room and deposited in the most inhospitable place imaginable.
Still, he reasoned, if this foul woman was truly the new power here, she might be their only hope of coming through alive.
"You mentioned an illness, Fadija. Is this plague so powerful that it can reach even to the planes of magic?" he asked. She turned her menacing glare back to him.
"It is not the plague. I do not know what it is. Everything, all of those I knew, are fading somehow. They become insubstantial, and then nothing at all. It is horrible to behold, and seems to be extremely painful. Whether it is tied to the sickness that is ravaging your kind I do not know. But I am not sorry. My road to power is open now, and...dear me, what is the matter with your friend?"
Dalamar looked behind him to where Raistlin was bent almost double with agony. A small rivulet of blood ran down the side of his mouth and dripped onto the blackened grass. Dalamar put his arm around his master's shoulders, helping him to straighten without a word. He reached into his pocket for a cloth but, finding none, was compelled to wipe the blood away with his own fingertips. It was a respectful act, not at all condescending or coddling. A few short years ago Dalamar would never have dreamed of performing such a familiar gesture. He had cared only for the power this man could bring him, not for the man. The seared handprint on his chest - a scar left from less companionable days - still pained him sometimes, even though it had healed most of the way. The two mages had not been friends. Compatriots, yes. Teacher and student, certainly. But their friendship had only grown during those dark months when all the world was dying all around them and there seemed little point in aloofness. Fadija looked on with disgust and irritation, annoyed that Raistlin's illness had interrupted her speech. She huffed a sigh and glanced around them impatiently.
"Lady, he is in great need. It is not the plague. He has an immunity to that, it would seem. You are witnessing the last stages of the price he paid for power. If you wish to be rid of the burden we present, I ask that you guide us to our destination." Dalamar kept his voice steady, though nothing would have brought him greater pleasure than to backhand the arrogant woman. But they needed her; needed to rely on a stranger to help them. It was an awful feeling, and Dalamar cursed himself for his weakness.
Fadija smirked, tapping her long black nails against the pallid flesh of her forearm.
"Let the weakling ask. No, in fact. Let him beg." she demanded.
"He is no weakling! You are a fool not to know him, woman, when you seem to know Fistandantilus! This is Raistlin Majere! The most powerful mage ever to have lived!" his voice cracked. He was speaking too loudly, he knew it, and Raistlin next to him was coughing again. The last thing in the world that Dalamar wanted was to be a care-worn nursemaid. But fate had dealt him a hand that he had every intention of playing out. Fadija watched them in silence, and Dalamar continued. "He is my teacher! I have witnessed the most beautiful and strange and terrible things in the world...and a great many things that should not have existed at all...because he has shown them to me! You speak of power, but I see no power in a spoiled little demi-brat trying to rule over a dead land now that the grown-ups have all gone away! Were I you, my 'lady', I would learn to keep a civil tongue in my head or risk losing it!"
"Dalamar." Raistlin said hoarsely, silencing him. He moved to stand in front of the dark Elf, looking down at the diminutive woman with twin fires burning in his hourglass eyes.
"You will guide us or you will join the rest of your species. My counterpart is not a very smooth liar. Surely you are clever enough to see that my illness is not a natural one. I have the sickness that killed your people...and mine. I am cursed, lady. Cursed to kill all who come near me. And only I can remove the sickness once another has been infected."
The change that came over Fadija at these words was stunning. The small amount of color in her face slowly drained away, her eyes growing wide and fearful. One hand clutched at her throat, and she took a step back, all semblance of bravado gone.
"You have been infected," Raistlin's voice was hypnotic, soft and whispery and riveting, "Even now you feel the flush creeping beneath your skin, don't you? Insinuating itself in your veins, working against your immortal blood in the most vicious way, rendering you less substantial by the moment. I alone can save you now, but we have very little time. The antidote will be yours...if you lead us to the place we wish to go."
"You lie!"
"Do I? Can you bear to take that risk, lady?"
Dalamar suppressed a small smile. He had seen many fall beneath Raistlin's power of suggestion. Most sentients were terribly predictable.
Fadija looked from one to the other, seeming to wilt in defeat.
"I will take you there. But where are you going?"
Raistlin gestured vaguely into the distance. "Beyond those hills there is a portcullis that we must enter. It leads to another realm, a place where there is said to dwell a powerful mage that my associate and I very much wish to consult. If you take us to the portcullis and see that we are not harmed in the process, I will preserve your life and leave you to rule this kingdom forevermore."
"I know of the gateway, but we will have to cross a great deal of empty ground. There is nothing to eat or drink here fit for humans, and no shelter. You will die even if we are not attacked." Fadija seemed horrified at the thought of helping them, but more terrified of the sickness she imagined she had contracted.
"That is not your concern. Your only task is to keep these Hounds you speak of - and anything else that may harbor a taste for human meat - away from us as we travel. Agreed?"
"Agreed, arch-mage. But you will hold to your half of the bargain or I will hunt you down even in the lands beyond." Fadija said, trying desperately to reclaim some of her former haughtiness. Raistlin nodded once, curtly, and gestured for the conquered goddess to lead on.
They had found a guide. Now the journey was simply a race against time, and not an insurmountable battle with Abyssal foes. Dalamar sighed in relief and re-shouldered the pack that contained their dwindling supplies and the medicine that Raistlin needed to keep going. Together the trio headed off into the distance, and the portcullis that would lead them to their future.