Outlands

A revelation in the light of day

You can't choose what stays and what fades away

-No Light No Light, Florence and the Machine

Raistlin opened his eyes, then started up quickly. Gods, they were in Wayreth. Quickly, before someone saw-

He staggered to his feet, legs like water. He stumbled backward, reached out and grabbed for a shelf- but it tore down under his hands, scattering mouldy jars across the floor with a crash. Raistlin fell down, banging elbows and hips on the hard, stone floor.

His body ached all over, the strength lapsing and draining fast after the rush of casting. If someone came in now-

But no one did, even after all that noise. Raistlin listened hard, but there was nothing. Just his own breathing, and those of one, two, three people.

Three? Raistlin fumbled around on the floor, found his staff. "Shirak."

Just that command felt like opening a vein, his own blood rushing out across the floor, along with his own strength. Raistlin huddled against the wall; the room was freezing, his whole body starting to shake.

There, on the floor was Tasslehoff. And beside him Caramon and Crysania. Had he slipped in his casting? No wonder he was so drained, bringing all four of them here. And now he had to deal with Caramon and Crysania-

Exhaustion washed over him; he realised he was losing consciousness. He forced his eyes open another moment, trying to take in the room they had landed in.

It must have been a storeroom, or some old, abandoned part of Wayreth. Scattered old furniture, broken decanters, and rotting quills and parchment everywhere. Raistlin nodded, closing his eyes. They should have a few hours to recuperate, at least, no chance of anyone finding them.

It was only as he faded out of consciousness, that Raistlin wondered why it was so cold here, and why the furnishings were scorched, as though from a fire-

Then it was too late, and he was unconscious.

Someone was screaming. Someone was screaming, from far away, and it was him.

He threw up an arm, opened his eyes.

The undead face hovered, inches from his. One hand reaching, hungrily, for his chest.

Raistlin gave a wordless cry, and grabbed his staff. The light flared and the face retreated.

He knew that face. Raistlin threw the staff up between them. The dead creature hovered, too close, too close. Where had he seen that thing?

"Raistlin!" Crysania was awake now, Caramon behind her. "Where are we?"

Undead? In Wayreth? Raistlin kept the staff up, shivering. No, this couldn't be Wayreth. Gods, they were in Palanthas. How had this happened? His mind felt slow, sluggish. It was a struggle to fit his thoughts together. Had the spell gone wrong- no. The obsidian. That must have been it. He had been so sure it was been from Wayreth, but it had been from Palanthas. Palanthas, before Fistandantilus had come. With the Dead Ones hungry and hunting.

And there was that memory. Not his. Fistandantilus'. The jumbled mess of the lich's memories that he still hadn't sorted through. Those eyes stared out of his recent thoughts, a patchwork of the Tower, then undead, and-

No.

"We-" he started- and crumpled in a coughing fit.

He- he couldn't breathe. Had they gone too far forward in time? His chest knotted up in pain and Fistandantilus' old claws. He coughed and coughed, wiped his mouth and looked at his palm. No blood. Just a weak chest and too much dust. His hands were pale; they were still in the right time.

How much time did they have? He could be in Wayreth and taking his Test right now. "The curtains-" He waved at them. What time was it? He had to know. His spell had anticipated at least a day before… But there was no telling if that had gone wrong too.

Crysania got up and stumbled to the windows, dragging them open. The sky was grey and faded outside, but too bright to be early morning. His Test- the seventh day of the seventh month at the seventh hour. It seems like midmorning now. They had at least a night to recover.

The curtains tore, the rod carrying them snapping and falling down. Crysania tucked one of the curtains around Caramon and the still unconscious Tasslehoff, Caramon shuddered and buried himself further in the folds. Raistlin shivered and ducked under the spare curtain. Crysania moved to try and press close to him, Raistlin turned away. "A fire," he hissed, burying his face in cloth, his breath heating the hollow inside his robes.

He could see the undead faces, just outside the circle of his staff's light. Waiting for the light to go out. Hungry. Raistlin tightened his grip on the staff. "Begone," he snarled.

They did not move. Eager, empty eyes. "I thought they obeyed you," Caramon snarled, half muffled under his curtains.

"In the future," Raistlin growled. "Not now." He looked back at the faces. "You can see who I am." His throat spasmed, too dry, his chest clenched. "Go, or I'll turn you to dust."

We see who you are not. The whispers, from everywhere and nowhere. We taste his death on your hands.

"I am Master of Past and Present-" Raistlin snarled, and broke off, choking. Caramon looked at him, eyes narrowed, hands knotted white on the curtain. "I will- turn you to- dust-" he choked.

You are, they agreed. You will. They backed away, but did not go. Fading into the wall, waiting.

Crysania hovered uncertainly. "Water-" Raistlin coughed. "Quickly, before they return."

"I'll make a fire." Caramon got up, wavering towards the fireplace. "Lady Crysania," he dropped the curtain over her shoulders, "you're freezing! Here, put this around you."

Raistlin felt his eyes start to close again; he was cold, and tired. The cough was taking more out of him than the spellcasting had. He stirred as Caramon started pulling down spellbooks- apparently wanting to blow them all up. His eyes drifted closed again, he needed sleep-

"We must move Raistlin near the fire," Crysania whispered, "and he said something about a potion—"

"Yes." Caramon's voice was flat. "Let him magic himself over there if that's what he wants."

Raistlin forced an eye open. Caramon was scowling at him. "And you finally learn something about me, my brother." Raistlin smiled.

"I don't know you," Caramon snarled. "I don't know if you are even my brother."

Gods, not that again. Thankfully, there was a groan, and the thump of small boots on the floor. "Raistlin? Caramon? Crysania?"

"Tasslehoff?" Caramon turned. The fire was burning. Raistlin propped himself up stiffly, hobbled over to the fire and let himself down, rested his head against the wall. "We're all together then, at least."

There was a pot on the fire, the water Crysania conjured was inside, warming. Raistlin reached into his pouch and – of course, he didn't have his tea leaves. Fistandantilus hadn't bothered and it hadn't occurred to him he might need them. He'd had two months in Istar without that damned cough, he hadn't missed it.

It wasn't bad, not yet. The hot water should help clear out his throat and settle the rawness in his chest.

"Are we in the Tower of High Sorcery?" Tasslehoff hopped over, looked into the pot, and dropped back on his heels.

"Yes," Raistlin said dully. "In Palanthas."

Tasslehoff frowned. "I thought we wanted-"

"Yes," Raistlin said quickly.

"Oh, are we dropping them off first?" Tasslehoff didn't take the hint. "That's good, I like Palanthas. They don't seem to like kender much though-"

"What is he talking about?" Caramon growled.

The fire hissed, the water was boiling over. Raistlin took the opportunity to move the pot off the fire. An old, cracked bowl seemed clean enough. He dipped it in the water and the steam wafted off, warm and comforting. The tightness in his chest loosened, felt easier.

He took his time drinking, Caramon was still watching him, eyes narrowed and glittering. Finally, he had to put the bowl down. Caramon took a deep breath-

And his stomach growled.

Tasslehoff giggled. Crysania covered her mouth. Caramon started going red. Crysania couldn't hold it in, and began laughing too. A high, trembling sound in the oppressive silence of the tower.

"Thus do the gods remind us we're human." Crysania wiped her eyes. "Here we are, in the most horrible place imaginable, surrounded by creatures waiting eagerly to devour us whole, and all I can think of right now is how desperately hungry I am!"

"We need food," said Caramon, and straightened. "And decent clothing, if we're going to be here long." He looked at Raistlin. "How long are we going to be here?"

"Not long." Raistlin closed his eyes. "A few hours to rest and gather our strength. Then-"

"You're leaving us, is that it?" Caramon crossed his arms. "We're still in the past, aren't we? You'll leave us here and go back to our time-"

"Oh, be quiet," Raistlin groaned, huddling in the curtain. "No one is going anywhere for hours, and you will know when we leave."

"We'll all go home," Tasslehoff assured.

"I only hope that's true," Caramon growled. Raistlin's eyes were closed, but he could feel his brother's eyes boring into him.

"We need food," Raistlin murmured. "Food and clothing. I will need my strength tomorrow. One of you will need to venture out and purchase what we need-"

"I'll go!" Tasslehoff said brightly. "Maybe you can come with me, Caramon-"

The Grove. The Shoikan Grove. Fistandantilus' memories were cold, even in his own mind. Safe behind the Wall in his thoughts, but reaching for them made him shudder. "I can make you a charm." Could see it, clear in his mind, the spell. "But I only have the strength for one." He looked at Tasslehoff. "If you go, we are likely to need to try and find a way to eat handkerchiefs-"

"Hey!" Tasslehoff sat up, indignant.

"-You must go, Caramon."

Caramon hesitated, looked at Crysania. Then crossed his arms. "Alright. But you are going to stay here." To Tasslehoff. "No going off with him." Indicating Raistlin.

"Go now." Raistlin dragged an unsteady breath. "Or you will miss the markets. Bring back food, and what day and month it is."

Caramon said nothing, frowning. Raistlin sighed, and drew out a pouch from his robes, it held a few scraps left over from making the circle- gemstone pieces. He tossed it at Caramon.

"And this charm?"

"Come here to me."

Caramon hesitated, "Why?"

"For the charm, and there is the matter of that iron collar around your neck. Would you walk the streets with that mark of slavery? Rather out of place in this time."

Caramon walked over stiffly, and knelt down. The collar dropped free with a word, and Raistlin gritted his teeth, and leant closer. This charm- made by Fistandantilus to seduce the cleric. When he had a chance, he would make a better one. There was only one person he wanted to do this with, and he was not here.

His lips touched Caramon's forehead. Caramon blinked, looked up at him, and for a moment the suspicion and dread cracked in his eyes. The old, desperate hope, the longing for- for what? Raistlin despaired. What did he want? Caramon had always hungered for something from Raistlin, always. Raistlin had no idea what to give him, even if he wanted to.

"Am I your brother now, Caramon?" Raistlin sighed, exhausted. "Do you know who I am?"

Caramon met his eyes. His mouth moved, but he said nothing. He turned away, covering his face.

"There, now, Caramon," he said heavily. "I have given you the charm."

He slept. When he woke. Caramon was gone. Crysania was sitting in a chair, trying to settle her tangled hair. Tasslehoff was picking through the contents of his pockets. Raistlin nodded, and drew out a handful of white sand. An old spell, but his own. In this place, surrounded by Fistandantilus' memories, it was suddenly very important to make that distinction.

"Ast tasark simiralan krynawi," Raistlin murmured.

Crysania's head nodded, slumped against the back of the chair. Tasslehoff dropped forward, curling up on the rotten carpet among handfuls of his scattered belongings. Raistlin checked over the collection, found his dagger and a handful of small diamonds, and got up.

The Tower stretched up around him. Still, silent and hungry. Raistlin was tempted to snatch up Tasslehoff and go- but even after a step, he felt drained and dizzy. He needed food. He could wait until Caramon came home, put him to sleep too, eat and go from there.

But for now- Raistlin turned, and walked out of the room.

The Dead Ones hovered, outside the light of his staff. "Out of my way," Raistlin hissed. They moved, enough to let him through, but not enough to keep from being a threat. He had killed Fistandantilus, but he was not Master of Past and Present, not here, not now.

That would have to wait. Raistlin smiled tightly. Give it a few days. Maybe they could come here and sit out the war-

The dark swarmed as he stepped away from the door. He looked up the hollow interior of the Tower. Fistandantilus' memories flickered, a spell. Raistlin looked up at the laboratory, high above. His, or soon to be. The spell numbed his lips, three words and he was standing outside the laboratory. The Dead Ones gathered around him, but the light of his staff and a few quick spells forced them back. They hovered, further away than before he thought with satisfaction.

"I am the Master of Past and Present," he whispered, leaning on his staff. "And Fistandantilus is dead. It has been two months, but you can still smell his blood on me, I think."

We taste his blood in you, little mage. Mocking in the shadows. But you are not the Master of Past and Present, not yet.

"Yet you do not face me." Raistlin smiled. "Run away, or end up like your Master."

They faded away. A flare of triumph burnt up Raistlin's throat, he had won. No matter what those idiots downstairs said, no matter what the echoes in the darkness, in his mind, sneered- he had won. All he needed now was to prepare for his final victory, and rejoice in the spoils of triumph.

His life, his again. Without the stain of Fistandantilus' claws or the puppet strings of the Conclave. His life. His magic. Dalamar. The world open and waiting for the two of them, shorn of its terrors.

Raistlin grinned, threw up his head and found the door handle. Opened the door.

It looked much like the laboratory in Fistandantilus' stolen memories. Raistlin shoved it away as much as he could, but the shadow of candles flickered in the corner of his eyes, the walls clad in blue-bound spellbooks that were not there. Raistlin gritted his teeth and hissed, driving his nails into his palm at the memory of a dark shadow on the edges of the laboratory, wounded and angry and hurting.

No. This was a mistake. He would turn and leave; return and wait for his brother's return, then take Tasslehoff to the Conclave and banish these shadows forever. They would never be allowed to become real. He would not allow it-

Raistlin stopped. Raised the staff. The light glinted off the very back of the laboratory. Fistandantilus' memories gathered all to this one place. The Door That Was Never Opened. Over and over, it glared through the Wall between their memories. The five heads of the doorway. The Silver-steel door with no keyhole.

And it wasn't there.

Raistlin stared. Glanced around. Nothing else had changed. Had Fistandantilus moved it into place? No, it had been there since the age of Huma. What in the Abyss was going on-

"Raistlin!" A roar from downstairs. Caramon's boots crashing on the stairs. Raistlin spun around, lifting his staff. He hurried back to the door and looked down from the landing.

Caramon was storming up towards him, sword out and hacking at the eager Dead Ones. "Call them off!"

Raistlin scowled, focused on the staff and brightened the light. The Dead Ones shrunk back, snarling soundlessly.

"Where have you taken us?" Caramon pulled himself up, level with Raistlin. "I was ambushed three times out there! I barely got away with a stale loaf and a bag of old turnips! If this is Palanthas then I'm a gully dwarf!"

Raistlin stared. A terrible, clenching terror seized his throat. The missing Door. The wrong tower. No. No no no no-

The spell came up so fast Caramon barely had time to protest before Raistlin vanished, snapped back to himself on the roof of the Tower, on the Deathwalk.

Below him, the Shoikan Grove hissed and whispered to itself, unchanging. The remains of Andras Rannoch hung, still impaled on the railings outside. All as it had been in his own time.

But beyond, that similarity ended.

The jewel of Solamnia, they called Palanthas. Perhaps one day that would be true. The city beyond more closely resembled the tent cities Fistandantilus remembered in Neraka, or the slums Raistlin recalled in Tarsis. The buildings were shattered, the streets bursting with refugees. Everything was filthy, blackened with thousands of dung-fires.

Raistlin tried to catch his breath, but couldn't. It came faster and faster until he had to release the railing and slump down, his back to the terrible view, clinging on to the staff.

Out of time.

He was out of time.

The spell had gone completely wrong.

But how? He seized that. How wrong? Too far forward, or too far back? Was this some terrible long-flung future- no, no his skin was pale, his hair brown. He would have reverted to gold and white had it been the future.

Raistlin forced himself to breath slowly. In. Out. In. Out. He was too far back. He racked his brains to try and remember, when had Palanthas become a great city? Centuries before, not long after the Cataclysm.

So they must be before that. Hundreds of years still out of time. How? How could this have happened? He'd had weeks to prepare his spell; he had picked out everything meticulously. He should be in Wayreth, in his own time, preparing to fight Fistandantilus-

But he wasn't. Raistlin snarled to himself. He wasn't, and no amount of dreaming would change that. Gods, what had happened? Gods-

Raistlin looked up. The daytime sky hid the stars, but he bared his teeth anyway. Was this some idiotic scheme to stop him from the Dark Queen? Was She so oblivious She thought he planned to continue Fistandantilus' plans? Or was it the dust from the crumbling temple above, disrupting the spell and throwing them across time?

There was one way of finding out. He took a deep breath, then stood up. Around the shanty town and ramshackle city, one building rose up clear and clean. The Library.

"What is happening?" Caramon protested. Raistlin ignored him. He shoved the gates open and stormed out of the tower. "You said we were going home-"

"Stay inside." Raistlin turned, scowled at Caramon. Crysania and Tasslehoff hovered at the door of the Tower.

Caramon crossed his arms. "And leave us here? You're not slipping away again. What happened?!" He repeated, furious.

"The spell failed," Raistlin hissed. "We are in the wrong time. I must go to Astinus, and discover what happened- and what the year is."

They paled. "We are trapped here?" Crysania faltered.

"I do not know unless I travel to the library, so unless you wish to spend another night uncertain of when we are, let me go."

"I'm coming." Caramon jutted his chin out mulishly.

Raistlin turned, he was wasting time. "Then come, I could use a bodyguard. And hurry."

The city of Palanthas was now little different to the many ruined cities and poverty-stricken slums Raistlin had seen in his five years as a mercenary. The difference was, he no longer had Dalamar at his back.

Caramon was large and imposing enough, even in his rags, and his sword kept any would-be assailants at bay. But his eyes were narrowed when he looked at Raistlin, and his hand tightened on his sword.

Raistlin tried to ignore the big man, drown out the terrified shrieking within his head that he could not afford to lose his brother, that he would need him- need a man who seemed half ready to murder him.

The library loomed up before them and the fear churned up in rage. His first glimpse of the Library should have been awe, should have been delight, should have been eager hunger for the knowledge within. Instead he came here sick and lost and frightened, and all joy of discovery had long since been sucked out of him because Fistandantilus had been here half a hundred times already.

He didn't ask the acolytes, did not wait or give his name. He knew exactly where to go, after all. He stormed down the hall, ringed with outraged shouts, and pushed the Aesthetic's door open.

He was waiting for him. Calm, unruffled, still as a marble statue. At least until he saw Raistlin.

"You!" He fumbled with his quill- almost dropped it, and started crossing out what he had just written. Then began to flick back through the book, and crossed out, rewrote entire paragraphs. His lips were drawn back in a snarl, and small snatches of 'no respect for time' and 'desperate human scrabblings'.

"If you have quite finished," Raistlin crossed his arms. "I am not in my right time."

The Aesthetic gave him a cool look of utter contempt. "You are exactly where you should be." He dipped his quill, kept writing. "But you are not who you should be."

Behind him, he heard Caramon draw in a ragged breath.

"I care not what your delusions might be." Raistlin glared. "I require to know what time we are in, and what went wrong with my spell."

Astinus lay down his quill, and looked at Raistlin. It was a look such as Raistlin had never seen- not from a living face. For a moment, it was as though Fistandantilus was in his head again, grasping through his memories, casting them aside and discarding them as worthless. Raistlin gripped his staff. He could not speak. He wanted to scream, or throw something, or attack-

Fistandantilus had wanted to fight a god, why not start with this one? Raistlin wondered wildly. Astinus smiled as though he had heard the thought.

"You come in another's stead." He said finally. "And you will pay his debts. That information will cost you."

"And what will that be?" Raistlin sneered.

"You know." Astinus sounded amused. "You are in his place, you know."

And- he did. The memory was ringed in ice, burnt in his head as though Astinus had dragged it there, burnt it in the forefront of his mind-

Get out of my head!

"You promised it to me, long ago." A smile on those ageless lips. "I do not know this face, and your eyes are strange to me. I see the future in their depths. So you have become master of time, yet you do not return with power, as was foretold."

"Fistandantilus."

If you enjoyed this, please leave a review! I know it has been a while, but I would like to know if people are still enjoying this fic.