Welcome back to the Dragonlance Reread!
Last week it all kicked off. Running and fighting and poisoning and stabbing and dying and magic and more dying and RAAAAAISTLIN. This time, Caramon confronts his twin, Berem faces his twin, and Tanis heads into the darkness…
“Jasla calls” and “The Debt Repaid”
Summary
Raistlin! No, really—it’s Raistlin! Thin and powerful and dressed in black velvet. He is, it seems, the last guardian who must be passed to reach their goal. Caramon is distraught, Berem is insisting they get to Jasla, and Raistlin says… hmm. Why yes, he does indeed wear the black robes now, but he suggests that their main concern should be the very, very bad situation they’re in.
He assures them that Berem is not immortal and that the Dark Queen will destroy him and his sister and be able to enter Kyrnn in her full glory. Caramon doesn’t quite get it, so Raistlin explains further: in a few steps, Berem will be reunited with Jasla, who has been waiting in agony all these years for him to free her from her torment.
Once that happens, the Queen will be sent howling back to the Abyss, the door to Krynn will be shut once again, and the Temple of Istar (which is where they are, ooh!) will fall.
Caramon now understands that he must get past Raistlin to get Berem to where he needs to be.
But… that ain’t happening. Raistlin throws a ball of flame at him. Caramon flounders, is bitten by baby dragons. Berem is frozen in place, yelling for Jasla. Raistlin reminds everyone that he is powerful and will become more so when the Dark Queen is gone. And that they exist in the shadow of his mercy, etc. etc. He frees Berem. He then reminds Caramon that this is happening only because he allows it happen. Just in case he missed it. Berem and Jasla face each other. Berem asks for forgiveness. They fall into each others arms.
Well, mostly.
What also happens is that Berem falls into the jagged pillar and impales himself. He shudders and convulses and bleeds all over the place. And then he dies.
Meanwhile, back where Tanis is: chaos. First a hobgoblin tries to attack him, then Lord Soth’s entire army. As Tanis starts to run, the ceiling collapses. Then the floor starts to cave in. The Dark Queen gets angry. Draconians stumble. The Temple of Istar falls.
Back with the twins, Raistlin pulls out the dragon orb. Caramon asks to be killed. Raistlin says he will save his life this one time, but, after that—they are even. He also agrees to save the others… except Tanis (Editors’ note: HA!), whom he feels he has already repaid tenfold. Raistlin tells Caramon that he will never need his brother again, and does a cool spell that flattens all the goblins and draconians and dark clerics and even other Black Robes. Raistlin’s power is massive, and the Black Robes end up bowing to him. When it is finally time to leave, Caramon must lean on his brother to walk.
Meanwhile the Hall of Audience is now split wide. Tanis is trying to find Laurana, who is fighting draconians. She bids him farewell and vanishes, because, while she may owe him her life, she does not owe him her soul. Tanis is bitter and heads into the darkness himself.
Back with the Twins, and they find Tika is hurt, but not dead, but Tas is thoroughly poisoned. Raistlin saves Tas, reminding everyone that he has now repaid his debts in full. Back to full annoying capacity, Tas, the hurt-but-alive Tika, the slightly-drained Raistlin and the very-wounded Caramon head onwards.
Notable Quotes
“But now you are in a very bad situation, my brother.”
You don’t say, Raistlin, you don’t say.
No longer forced to whisper, the mage yet found whispering more compelling.
That Raistlin, he’s so dramatic right now.
Monster(s) of the Week
- Draconians.
- A hobgoblin.
- Baby dragons.
- Lord Soth.
- Evil clerics and Black Robes.
- Raistlin.
Mahvesh’s Take
Wow, so much action! Such quick scene changes and all this high drama tossed in with the fight scenes. I do enjoy it when things get tightly strung together like this; when lots happens in very short chapters. Berem has met his end, he’s sealed the door, the evil world is collapsing, the Queen is… vanquished? Is she, just yet? Nevermind, we’re well on our way to saving the world, aren’t we? Even if one of us has gone to the dark, velvety side, we are pretty much there. Phew. That was exhausting.
Cut me some slack here, because it’s been a tough week, but what was Caramon’s goal, exactly, at the start? He has to get Berem to… safety? Jasla, who is actually dead? The bedazzled pillar stump? It’s all a bit messy in my head. Why, for instance, does Raistlin have to smote? Smite? Caramon with a fireball in order to let Berem fulfil his destiny? My feeling is, Raistlin is just mean. Even when he’s saving them all, he makes sure they know that he’s doing this because he’s the greatest and because they’re useless and because he wants to be free of any debt to them. I do think he has a soft spot for his brother, but then… am I wrong? I’m so undecided about this… he loves him or does he just owe him, big time? He knocks him down with a fireball into a pit of snarling baby dragons pretty much just to prove that he can, when he could have frozen him, though even that was unnecessary, given they both wanted the same thing. Raistlin, though he may now be the most powerful of the mages, is basically a petty little brother, isn’t he?
Even so, how cool is he, with his spells?! He brings Tas back from death’s door! Even though he hates the annoying little Kender! #TeamRaistlin!
Aside: Jasla is in self-imposed torment? Yet she’s been waiting to be freed? But didn’t Berem kill her? Yeah, I don’t get it either, Caramon.
Jared’s Take
Thinking about Mahvesh’s questions… I wonder if, narratively-speaking, it has to be Caramon. First, for the dramatic tension of Raistlin being the last barrier. And second, because he’s the dumb one. You can see any of the others—even Tas or Tanis—questioning Berem’s blind, reckless charge. Caramon, however, is very happy to play sidekick; even when he has no idea what the quest is.
But it really is about the dramatic tension, isn’t it? Raistlin’s clearly been waiting his whole life for this moment—not just blasting down the enemies, but doing so in front of his brother. Flinging his brother about with magic, to show how much stronger he is. And this really is all about strength: perhaps the defining moment is when Caramon leans on him, rather than the other way around.
This also goes a lot to showing what makes for good writin’. Raistlin and Caramon are having a one-sided shouting match in an empty room, for a goal that no one really understands. Meanwhile, Tanis is fighting the entirety of the dragonarmies, in a collapsing room, with a shrieking goddess, two love interests, an army of the undead, and a very clear objective (capture the crown). But more, as we learn, isn’t always better. I’m not saying that Caramon’s scenes are a masterpiece of lean writing, but there’s a real, primal tension that comes from two characters doing something characterful. Even a templeful of undead can’t beat it.
I’m glad Tika made it. One thing that’s surprised me about this reading is that I’ve enjoyed the evolution of her character. In a few scenes (none in this chapter) she’s still… uncomfortably sexualised in a particular ‘girl next door / sexxxy virgin’ way… but setting that aside, it has been fun to witness how she’s grown from witness to sidekick to love interest to fully-fledged member of the team, with her own contribution to make. Not entirely unlike Laurana.
Also, is anyone having a worse day than Tanis right now? I mean, besides all the dead people.
Mahvesh loves dystopian fiction & appropriately lives in Karachi, Pakistan. She writes about stories & interviews writers the Tor.com podcast Midnight in Karachi when not wasting much too much time on Twitter.
Jared Shurin is an editor for Pornokitsch and the non-profit publisher Jurassic London.
I’ve never understood Laurana’s line about owing Tanis her life, but not her soul. The back half of the sentence sounds like she still believes he is trying to turn her over to Takhisis, but if so why would Laurana credit him with saving her life?
And why does she think she owes Tanis her life anyway? Laurana broke free on her own, defeated Kitiara on her own, set off the Dragonarmy civil war on her own, and fought her way out of the main hall on her own. Tanis didn’t help her do any of those things (if anything he was an obstacle she had to fight her way past), so how does she owe him anything? (Or is she thinking back to Tarsis when Tanis shoved her out of the collapsing inn. That’s really the only instance I can think of where Tanis could be said to have “saved” Laurana, though since Tanis himself survived the collapsing inn, Laurana presumably would have survived it as well.)
Oh well, still good watching Laurana tear through the draconians like a blonde buzz-saw.
No longer forced to whisper, the mage yet found whispering more compelling.
I never understand why they retcon this in Legends.
is basically a petty little brother, isn’t he?
Yes, hasn’t this ALWASY been clear. Y’all get so star struck by Raist sometimes that you miss out on the fact that he is a right bastard. Especially to the person who loves him most.
Jasla is in self-imposed torment? Yet she’s been waiting to be freed? But didn’t Berem kill her? Yeah, I don’t get it either, Caramon.
Yes, Berem killed her. This act of evil freed Takhisis. But Jasla’s soul intervened, holding the door shut. Because she forgave her brother, it was no longer evil(think back to how Soth’s elven wife’s forgiveness could have led to his own redemption). If Takhisis could kill Berem before he could receive that forgiveness, then that allows her in. But if Berem can just reunite with her, and be forgiven, that closes the door for good. So long as things remained unsettled between the siblings, they existed in this limbo, allowing Takhisis to spread her influence, but unable to enter physically, in all her glory(a marked difference from Paladine who enters this world as a second rate wizard).
Raistlin’s actions are understandable (in the first trilogy) but certainly not the actions of a decent person. That is actually one of the triumphs of characterisation in these books. Unfortunately, given the marginalised teenagers (including yours truly) who read these books, the identification with Raistlin became so strong that he became seen by some as an actual ‘hero’. While it is true that the protagonists would not have triumphed without him, this is an example of the thesis ‘evil turns on itself’ rather than a justification of Raistin’s moral choices.
@3 Aussiesmurf
I think that many readers prefer well-developed, understandable bad characters over good characters who are either badly developed, dumber than a bag of hammers, or both. Raistlin and Caramon have a real relationship, however dysfunctional it is, and Raistlin has weaknesses and some degree of character development. He may not be a hero, but he is a protagonist, while Tanis spends every book stumbling into awful life choices through the sheer power of overwhelming stupidity. We need actual heroes if we want to avoid cheering for an anti-hero.
We need actual heroes if we want to avoid cheering for an anti-hero.
But Dragonlance has an actual hero with Laurana. And she certainly hits all the targets you laid out for what makes an engaging character. She’s intelligent, has understandable motivations, has real (even if dysfunctional) relationships, has weaknesses, and on character development she has the most of any character in the Chronicles. (And certainly far more than Raistlin who is pretty much the exact same character at the end of the story that he was at the beginning.) So with an interesting, capable, well developed character who is genuinely heroic in the story why do we need to cheer the anti-hero?
@5 bguy
Because most Laurana sections are also Tanis sections, and Tanis is uniquely frustrating as a character. Caramon is blinded by brotherly love, while Tanis just makes persistently awful decisions as a matter of principle. If he wasn’t around to hold things up, Laurana could probably have won the war a hundred pages earlier. Her relationship with Tanis is one of the most frustrating parts of the books; even as she grows and develops as a character, she’s still seeking a relationship with the chump she had a crush on in the first book. This realism adds depth to the character, but it also leads to me headdesking every time Laurana’s Tanis-related decisions wreck her increasingly capable and intelligent life choices. At least Raistlin is Camaron’s brother, while Tanis is that person we had a crush on at age twelve without actually knowing anything about them. It was all right back in Autumn Twilight, when Laurana was a fairly sheltered young woman, but by Spring Dawning she should be able to figure out that Tanis is basically Krynn’s dumbest man. The fact that she sticks with her first crush is a triumph of authorial fiat over basic sanity.
If he wasn’t around to hold things up, Laurana could probably have won the war a hundred pages earlier.
Well I can’t argue with that.
Her relationship with Tanis is one of the most frustrating parts of the books; even as she grows and develops as a character, she’s still seeking a relationship with the chump she had a crush on in the first book. This realism adds depth to the character, but it also leads to me headdesking every time Laurana’s Tanis-related decisions wreck her increasingly capable and intelligent life choices.
That seems a little harsh. Yes, she made a single bad Tanis-related decision in Dragons of Spring Dawning, but that was an isolated lapse in judgment that occurred at a time when she was suffering from extreme exhaustion and stress. When she’s in her right mind, she is perfectly capable of putting aside her feelings for Tanis when necessary for the good of others as demonstrated throughout Dragons of Winter Night where, whenever Laurana’s feelings for Tanis conflicted with her duty, she always chose her duty.
At least Raistlin is Camaron’s brother, while Tanis is that person we had a crush on at age twelve without actually knowing anything about them.
Well, it’s not like Laurana just met Tanis. She’s known him for the better part of a century.
It was all right back in Autumn Twilight, when Laurana was a fairly sheltered young woman, but by Spring Dawning she should be able to figure out that Tanis is basically Krynn’s dumbest man.
She seems to have figured it out. (As witnessed by her breaking free in Neraka on her own rather than trusting Tanis to save her.)
The fact that she sticks with her first crush is a triumph of authorial fiat over basic sanity.
Is that really that remarkable? Even smart people can fall hard for people that are bad for them. And Laurana for all her amazing abilities and achievements is still very young during the Chronicles. She’s essentially still a teenager, and teenagers aren’t exactly known for having the best judgment where matters of the heart are concerned.
@7 bguy
Sadly, Laurana knew Tanis for decades without ever moving out of the “first crush” stage of the relationship. Until she left with him, Laurana only knew Tanis as the cool guy her dad didn’t want her to date. The best solution to that kind of infatuation is actually getting to know someone, and Laurana couldn’t do that as long as her father kept Tanis at a distance from her. Take heed, parents; sometimes you need to let your children make dubious life choices so that they can learn from that experience. That way, they’re less likely to run away with some idiot because you tried to lock them away from the outside world.
It was only one bad choice, but wow was it a bad choice. “Let’s go off with the sneery evil dude to conduct a prisoner exchange in the middle of nowhere. No way that can go wrong!” Laurana is exhausted and under enormous stress, and she’s desperate to protect someone she’s close to. I like her character more for breaking under the pressure and completely losing her judgement. However, she’s risking her life on behalf of someone who is currently making out with the Dragon Highlady of Schemy Ambition.
That’s the real breaking point for me. We all make bad decisions, and Laurana is still a teenager. As you say, she’s demonstrated her ability to put her duty above her relationship, and one mistake isn’t the end of the world. Afterwards, though, she discovers that Tanis wasn’t captured by the forces of evil, but has been dating the most evil member of the Majere family. That would be a good time to reconsider their relationship. No one can have perfect judgement when it comes to matters of the heart, but everyone should have the good sense to break up with someone who decided to have a relationship with a murderously evil enemy general in the middle of a war. If Tanis was evil, he’d have more possibility to change, but he’s so spectacularly clueless that he doesn’t even understand the disaster he creates until it’s too late. That’s not a good starting point for a relationship.
It was only one bad choice, but wow was it a bad choice. “Let’s go off with the sneery evil dude to conduct a prisoner exchange in the middle of nowhere. No way that can go wrong!” Laurana is exhausted and under enormous stress, and she’s desperate to protect someone she’s close to. I like her character more for breaking under the pressure and completely losing her judgement. However, she’s risking her life on behalf of someone who is currently making out with the Dragon Highlady of Schemy Ambition.
True, but one thing to consider there is that Laurana didn’t risk her life there out of hopes of rekindling her relationship with Tanis. She went to Tanis because she genuinely thought he was dying and wanted to provide him what comfort she could in his last hours. It was an act of compassion not romance. And thus while it is fair to criticize her for her enormous mistake in trusting Kitiara, I don’t think she should be further criticized for showing compassion to what she thought was a dying man, even if he had willingly become the boytoy of the Dragon Highlady of Schemy Ambition.
That’s the real breaking point for me. We all make bad decisions, and Laurana is still a teenager. As you say, she’s demonstrated her ability to put her duty above her relationship, and one mistake isn’t the end of the world. Afterwards, though, she discovers that Tanis wasn’t captured by the forces of evil, but has been dating the most evil member of the Majere family. That would be a good time to reconsider their relationship. No one can have perfect judgement when it comes to matters of the heart, but everyone should have the good sense to break up with someone who decided to have a relationship with a murderously evil enemy general in the middle of a war.
Well I would say Laurana shoving Tanis off the platform and then running off without him is a pretty good indication she had reconsidered their relationship and was done with him.
And yes she did subsequently take Tanis back, but by that point Laurana had learned that he literally stormed an evil castle for her. It’s understandable why his doing that for her might convince Laurana to give him one more chance. (Especially since if Laurana talked things over with Caramon and Tika, she would also have learned that Tanis wan’t actually truly in a relationship with Kitiara as a Highlord since he fled from her in Flotsam the first chance he had.)
If Tanis was evil, he’d have more possibility to change, but he’s so spectacularly clueless that he doesn’t even understand the disaster he creates until it’s too late. That’s not a good starting point for a relationship.
That’s certainly true. (And indeed Tanis does come astonishingly close to betraying Laurana yet again in Legends). But why does Tanis’s weakness diminish Laurana as a character?
@9 bguy
Tanis’s weakness doesn’t diminish Laurana as a character. If anything, their relationship makes her better, since it provides a humanizing weakness that continues even as she grows stronger and more capable. It just frustrates me every time I read their sections, because I knew he was going to screw things up. I was remarkably okay with Caramon’s sibling-related blindness, since I had a better understanding of how Caramon’s love for his brother and sense of responsibility prevented him from thinking logically. As brother and, in a strange way, parent, he had spent his entire childhood and young adulthood protecting Raistlin, taking care of Raistlin, to the point where had most of his own identity invested in the idea of Raistlin as a weak child who had to be shielded from danger. Even when it would have been a really good idea for Caramon to bail on Raistlin, I still couldn’t really expect him to do it.
However, as a fourteen year old reading the series for the first time, I could want Laurana to bail on Tanis. I also wanted the other members of the party to recognize that all of them were better qualified to lead than he was. Even Raistlin. Even Tasselhoff!
So no, I really don’t blame Laurana for going to comfort a dying man, even if she temporarily lost her reason under extremely difficult and painful circumstances. I’m even down with her giving Tanis another chance, since he did come back to rescue her and she found out that he was more “unbelievably stupid” than “actually in league with Kitiara”. I’m just upset at Weis and Hickman for making a character this dumb the party leader for such a long period of time, and then bombarding us with his mistakes while fourteen year old me headdesked. It’s actually good writing, because it helped me engage with the books in a memorable way, though that memorable way involved me hoping really hard that this would be the book when Tanis was eaten by a dragon. At least I was personally invested in the characters!
@10: Fully agree with everything you said there.
If we had a Laurana PoV on this scene, it would have echoes of Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”, wherein she is taken into the heart of darkness and finds the one she loves is involved in it.
Caramon’s request for Raistlin to kill him (presumably quickly) is entirely reasonable. Raistlin is a brat in the way he responds, focusing on the language Caramon picks (of “owing”) rather than the fact that he is abandoning the brother who has given him everything to be killed by monsters. Fully agree with the comments by Aeryl @2 and Aussiesmurf @3, though when I was a 13-year-old dweeb picked on by the popular kids, I identified with Raistlin as much as anyone.
Raistlin is also dead wrong about never needing Caramon again, as we who have read the Legends know.
When Raistlin has his Moment of Awesome here (which reminds me a bit of Pug in the Tsurani arena in Feist’s “Magician”), the text haphazardly mentions that Raistlin sent the attacking black-robed mages “departing on the wings of wish spells”. Again we see the way W&H have dispensed with game mechanics; “Wish” was the most potent spell in AD&D and casting it was the pinancle of accomplishment for a Magic-User character. It required 18 intelligence and you had to be at least 18th level. It also aged the caster (five years, I think) to avoid unbalancing the game; casting it really cost something. For it to be mentioned so offhandedly seems jarring to those of us who played the game. Also, are all these black-robed mages that Raistlin easily slaughters a part of the Tower of High Sorcery hierarchy, or do they serve the Dark Queen independently?
Raistlin rather takes the role of Gollum here; it is ultimately not the actions of the primary “good guys” who determine the outcome of the Dark Queen’s bid for moral domination, but a self-serving action by a highly morally questionable character. This is sort of the “twist” of the ending of the Dragonlance Chronicles which helps to make it a memorable series. A conventional ending might have involved a duel between the heroes and the Highlords, with it coming down to Tanis against Lord Ariakas in the end.
And while we’re talking of game mechanics, what spell was it that Raistlin used to save Tas? I’ll have to research that.