Time of the Twins

The sun sank behind the distant mountains, the sky, lit by the afterglow, was a gemlike purple. Servants entered quietly, lighting the fire in the small chamber of Astinus. Even it burned quietly, as if the flames themselves had been taught by the historian to maintain the peaceful repose of the Great Library. Crysania sat once more in the uncomfortable chair, her hands folded once more in her lap. Her outward mien was calm and cool as always. Inwardly, her heart beat with excitement that was visible only by a brightening of her gray eyes.

Born to the noble and wealthy Tarinius family of Palanthas, a family almost as ancient as the city itself, Crysania had received every comfort and benefit money and rank could bestow. Intelligent, strong-willed, she might easily have grown into a stubborn and willful woman. Her wise and loving parents, however, had carefully nurtured and pruned their daughter’s strong spirit so that it had blossomed into a deep and steadfast belief in herself. Crysania had done only one thing in her entire life to grieve her doting parents, but that one thing had cut them deeply. She had turned from an ideal marriage with a fine and noble young man to a life devoted to serving long-forgotten gods.

She first heard the cleric, Elistan, when he came to Palanthas at the end of the War of the Lance. His new religion—or perhaps it should have been called the old religion—was spreading like wildfire through Krynn, because new-born legend credited this belief in old gods with having helped defeat the evil dragons and their masters, the Dragon Highlords.

On first going to hear Elistan talk, Crysania had been skeptical. The young woman—she was in her mid-twenties—had been raised on stories of how the gods had inflicted the Cataclysm upon Krynn, hurling down the fiery mountain that rent the lands asunder and plunged the holy city of Istar into the Blood Sea. After this, so people related, the gods turned from men, refusing to have any more to do with them. Crysania was prepared to listen politely to Elistan, but had arguments at hand to refute his claims.

She was favorably impressed on meeting him. Elistan, at that time, was in the fullness of his power. Handsome, strong, even in his middle years, he seemed like one of the clerics of old, who had ridden to battle—so some legends said—with the mighty knight, Huma. Crysania began the evening finding cause to admire him. She ended on her knees at his feet, weeping in humility and joy, her soul at last having found the anchor it had been missing.

The gods had not turned from men, was the message. It was men who had turned from the gods, demanding in their pride what Huma had sought in humility. The next day, Crysania left her home, her wealth, her servants, her parents, and her betrothed to move into the small, chill house that was the forerunner of the new Temple Elistan planned to build in Palanthas.

Now, two years later, Crysania was a Revered Daughter of Paladine, one of a select few who had been found worthy to lead the church through its youthful growing pangs. It was well the church had this strong, young blood. Elistan had given unstintingly of his life and his energy. Now, it seemed, the god he served so faithfully would soon be summoning his cleric to his side. And when that sorrowful event occurred, many believed Crysania would carry on his work.

Certainly Crysania knew that she was prepared to accept the leadership of the church, but was it enough? As she had told Astinus, the young cleric had long felt her destiny was to perform some great service for the world. Guiding the church through its daily routines, now that the war was over, seemed dull and mundane. Daily she had prayed to Paladine to assign her some hard task. She would sacrifice anything, she vowed, even life itself, in the service of her beloved god.

And then had come her answer.

Now, she waited, in an eagerness she could barely restrain. She was not frightened, not even of meeting this man, said to be the most powerful force for evil now living on the face of Krynn. Had her breeding permitted it, her lip would have curled in a disdainful sneer. What evil could withstand the mighty sword of her faith? What evil could penetrate her shining armor?

Like a knight riding to a joust, wreathed with the garlands of his love, knowing that he cannot possibly lose with such tokens fluttering in the wind, Crysania kept her eyes fixed on the door, eagerly awaiting the tourney’s first blows. When the door opened, her hands—until now calmly folded—clasped together in excitement.

Bertrem entered. His eyes went to Astinus, who sat immovable as a pillar of stone in a hard, uncomfortable chair near the fire.