by Tina Daniell
Aureleen held up one of her decorated pouches and shook it so that Kitiara could hear the coins jingling inside. “I’ve got enough for both of us,” she said invitingly. “They’re selling sausage sticks and custard pies and …”
Kitiara frowned, feeling the tug of her family responsibilities.
“And over there,” Aureleen pointed out slyly, “they’re setting up the sports and contests. Girls can enter too!”
Kit didn’t need much convincing. “Well, just for a few hours!” she said.
More than one teenage boy was dismayed that spring day in Solace when a girl who was several years younger than many of them took first place in the vine climb, barefoot sprint, and wiggleboat races—juvenile category.
Aureleen, her cheeks flushed, once again tried to explain to Kitiara that she ought to get in the habit of letting a man beat her occasionally, if she ever wanted to attract someone when she grew up and get happily married. But Kit was in a good mood. Aureleen could not faze her.
Bronk Wister was hanging around with his little brother, Dune, just watching the games. They jeered whenever Kit’s name was announced. Aureleen—because, after all, she was Kit’s booster—got in the spirit by cheering her friend on from the sidelines.
Afterward, they shared a prize-bag of chits from Kit’s victories that could be swapped for food and trinkets. They stuffed themselves with sugary sweets until their stomachs ached. Then they played a couple of the games of chance run by unsavory characters inside tents, but they had no luck. Aureleen thought the games were probably rigged.
They browsed the traders’ booths where Aureleen bargained for a shiny copper bracelet and Kit bought a pouch of magnets whose geometric shapes pleased her.
After several hours, low on energy, they sprawled on the grass in one corner of the fairgrounds, idly watching the crowd. A sign on a small striped tent she had not noticed before caught Kit’s eye: “Futures Foretold, The Renowned Madame Dragatemi.” A stout, important-looking man left the tent with a satisfied expression.
Kit was intrigued, but when she counted up the tickets in her hand, she realized that they only had enough for one fortune-telling.
“Go ahead,” said Aureleen, gesturing wearily. She had guessed Kit’s mind. “My future is right here for the moment.”
When Kit ducked under the tent flap, she came face to face with Madame Dragatsnu, a small, swarthy woman, ancient, with salt-and-pepper hair and whiskers sprouting from her nose and chin. Sitting on a woven rug, wearing a simple brown dress, the fortune-teller appeared rather unimpressive. Glancing around, Kit saw none of the mysterious paraphernalia she associated with the job of fortune-telling—no crystal sphere, cup of bones, jars of leaf crumbs, or the like.
“Sit down, child,” said Madame Dragatsnu, some irritation in her thick voice. Kit could not place her peculiar accent.
Kit settled herself with crossed knees in front of the fortune-teller. Madame Dragatsnu’s glistening eyes seemed to reach across the space between them and rake her over.
“It’s not for me,” the girl said softly, looking down, suddenly abashed. “The fortune, I mean.”
“Your boyfriend then?”
Kit looked up defiantly. “No.” She put down the chits she had been clutching and pushed them over to the old woman, who nodded.
“You have something that belongs to this person?”
Kit reached into her tunic and brought out a carefully folded piece of parchment—the Solamnic crest from her father. She had brought it along today in hopes of seeing people from that region who, if she showed the crest to them, might be able to give her information about Gregor or his family.
“It’s—”
“Your father,” said Madame Dragatsnu, cutting her off.
Kit watched the fortune-teller hopefully. Madame Dragatsnu turned the parchment over and over in her hands, feeling its surface in an almost sensuous way, as if the paper were a rare textile. While doing so, she gazed, not at Gregor’s Solamnic symbol, but at Kit herself. The impassive look on Madame Dragatsnu’s face didn’t tell Kit anything, but oh how her eyes burned!
“I was hoping,” Kit said, softly again, “that you might be able to tell me where he is.”
“I don’t reveal the present,” said Madame Dragatsnu sharply. “Futures foretold. That’s what the sign says.”
Kit flushed. “Can you tell me anything about his future?”
“Shush!”
Several minutes of silence ensued while Madame Dragatsnu continued to finger the parchment’s surface and stare at Kit, who was finding it difficult not to fidget.
“How long has it been since you have seen him?” the fortune-teller asked unexpectedly. The question wasn’t as surprising as the manner in which it was asked. Madame Dragatsnu had dropped her businesslike tone and allowed an unmistakable note of sympathy to surface.
“More than five years.”
“Ummm. I cannot tell you very much. I think, North. Yes. Somewhere in the North.”
“He has family in the North, I think, in Solamnia,” Kitiara said excitedly.
“Somewhere else,” Madame Dragatsnu declared. Another long spell of silence followed as she traced Gregor’s crude ink drawing of the crest with her finger. “A battle,” she continued in a trancelike voice. “A big battle, many men—”
“Will he be in danger?” Kit could hardly contain herself.
“Yes.”
Kit drew in her breath sharply, her heart pounding. Gregor in danger!
“But not from the battle,” said Madame Dragatsnu with finality. “He will win the battle.”
“How then?” Kit asked urgently.
Madame Dragatsnu paused. “Afterward.”
“When?” demanded Kit. “When?”
Madame Dragatsnu stared at her. “Soon. Very soon.”
“What can I do? What more can you tell me?” Kit felt like screaming into the old hag’s face.
The fortune-teller was imperturbable. She took a long time to respond, and before she did, she carefully re-folded Gregor’s sketch, handing it back to Kitiara.
“Nothing. The answer to both of your questions is, nothing.”
In a rage, Kit leaped up and dashed outside the tent. She took refuge behind a tree some distance away, her eyes brimming with tears. It was all some kind of filthy fortune-telling charade. She knew that. At fairs these soothsayers were as common as horseflies. The old hag didn’t have a clue as to Gregor’s future. That was just a wild guess, when Madame Dragatsnu had said that the ink sketch had to do with her father.
It took Kit some time to convince herself, calm down, dry her eyes, and return to Aureleen, who had fallen asleep on her back and was dozing with a smile on her lips.
“Any good news?” inquired her pretty friend after Kit woke her.
“A charlatan,” Kit said firmly, with a shake of her head. “A waste of good tickets. C’mon, it’s late. I have to get home.”
Well past sunset, Kit eased open the door to the cottage and slipped inside. Her face was tired and dirt-streaked, her clothes torn and mussed. But she had blocked the fortuneteller’s prediction from her mind and was more than usually happy. It took her a moment to adjust her eyesight, from the darkness of night to the strange light of the interior.
“Shhh!” Gilon grabbed her arm and pulled her down next to him where he sat on the floor.
“Where have you been?” Caramon demanded to know. He was sitting next to his father.
Before she could answer, Gilon whispered, “That’s OK.” With his hand he gently brushed back Kit’s black hair. “Watch!”
Now she could see what was going on. Raistlin was in the center of the room, doing some kind of show. Magic tricks? Yes, Raistlin was doing magic tricks.
“I don’t know how he learned them,” Caramon leaned over to confide, “but he’s been doing them all night. He’s pretty good!”
The look on Raistlin’s face was solemn, intense. The boy held his hands aloft. Suspended between them—
somehow, Kitiara couldn’t figure out how—was a ball of white light. Raist’s hands were moving slightly, fluttering, and out of his mouth came a low chant of words that were mostly indistinguishable, if they were words at all. After a moment, Kit had the uncomfortable realization that they sounded like Rosamun’s gibberish during one of her trances.
Raistlin moved his hands, the ball of light separated into several balls of light, and he began to juggle them. He made a rapid movement. The balls separated again, this time into dozens of smaller spheres of light. One more movement, and they became hundreds of tiny globes, shimmering snowflakes, pulsing and throbbing as if alive, moving in an artfully conceived pattern.
Finally, as Kitiara watched, Raistlin’s words and gestures slowed. The lights, too, slowed in tandem, almost to a halt. Gilon, Caramon, and Kit were silent, watching Raistlin’s face, which now carried a look of almost painful concentration. Abruptly Raist murmured something and did a quick, elaborate charade with his hands.
The globes of light began to spin, to expand and glow with deep, bright colors. Then, more rapidly than could be distinguished, the globes exploded into tiny shapes: fire-flowers, shell blossoms, comet butterflies. There was a fusillade of tiny popping noises, climaxed by an explosion of white light that left all of them momentarily stunned and blinded.
“What’s going on? What’s the trouble?” asked Rosamun, her voice shaking with terror. She was clinging to the door frame of her small room, her face twisted with anxiety.
Gilon rose hurriedly to take her back to bed and reassure her.
All was back to normal now. Raistlin came and sat down. He held out his arms to his sister and brother, and they each took him by the hand. Kitiara and Caramon laughed with joy, and, most extraordinary, Raistlin laughed with them.
Chapter 4
THE MAGE SCHOOL
———
Gilon wrapped up some cheese and bread for the trip while Kitiara looked over Raistlin one last time. Hands and face—clean. Tunic and leggings—darned at the knees and elbows, but presentable. Kit stretched and yawned. The early spring sun had not been visible in the sky when Gilon had roused her to prepare for the day’s outing.
Raistlin watched her solemnly. Kit knew by how still he held himself just how excited Raist was to be going to the mage school today. Faced with a similar outing, Caramon—and most six-year-olds—would be bouncing up and down uncontrollably, asking a million questions.
Not Raist. Always quiet and watchful, he grew even more so when anticipating his audience with the master mage.
“I’ll never be as tall or strong as Caramon, will I? No matter how much gunk you rub on my legs?” he had asked Kit the night before, as she was getting him ready for bed by spreading some foul-smelling ointment on his legs and arms. It had been part of his nightly ritual ever since the last visit of the healer, Bigardus. After treating Rosamun that day, Bigardus had stared at the spindly arms and legs of little Raistlin and made a tch-tch face. He then rummaged around in his bag of palliatives and produced some wortwood salve, telling Kit to rub it over Raist’s limbs every night, to strengthen them. Well, Kitiara had thought skeptically, maybe the ointment was worth trying.
Last night, looking forward to his trip to meet the master mage, Raist had protested at the smelly routine.
“This stuff isn’t going to change the way I am,” he said sincerely. “I’ll always be small and weak. I know that. It doesn’t matter. You can stop thinking you’ll always have to look out for me.”
Kit had leaned over, giving her little brother a quick hug while wondering at his perceptiveness. Not a day went by, truly, that she didn’t think about ways she could stop being her younger brothers’ caretaker—not just Raistlin, but Caramon, too. She was almost fourteen. She longed to set out on her own, to see the world, perhaps even to track down her father. She was bone-tired of doing everything Rosamun should have been doing, if it weren’t for her stupid trances.
Raist had pushed her away and sat up straight in bed, flushed, his eyes glittering.
“Once I become a mage,” the little boy vowed, “nobody is going to have to take care of me! I’ll be the one who takes care of Mother and Father and Caramon. And I’ll take care of anybody else, any way I see fit.”
“Big talk,” Kit said fondly, mussing his hair and putting the rest of the ointment away. “Just like your brother.”
“Yeah, big talker,” piped up Caramon sleepily from his bed.
“You’ll see,” Raistlin said.
“Go to sleep, both of you. Tomorrow’s a big day.”
Always exhausted by the end of the day, Raist had fallen back against his pillow, pale and glistening with sweat from his defiant declaration. His eyelids fluttered, then he fell into a restless sleep.
Kit had watched Raist for a few minutes to make sure he would stay asleep. That was a habit she had developed during his infancy, when she’d watched over him, sometimes staying up with him all through the night to make sure his breathing didn’t falter.
In contrast, she never had needed to check on Caramon. He already snored contentedly on the small wooden bed next to Raist’s along the wall opposite Rosamun’s and Gilon’s bedroom. For all his energy, Caramon usually preceded his twin brother into slumber.
The morning of Raist’s visit to the master mage, Caramon still lay in bed, all tangled up in the bedding, as if he had been dreaming about wrestling with a serpent. He had protested when Gilon told him he would be staying behind, but his arguments had died quickly when Rosamun promised they would bake sunflower seed muffins.
Rosamun was in the midst of one of her longer periods of good health. She had begun to dress up a little, to comb her hair regularly, and to set it off with beads and flowers. For weeks her face, usually so tense and lined with worry, had been more relaxed and almost happy.
Kit’s mother stood by the kitchen table now, preparing tea for the trio of travelers. Kit avoided her mother’s solicitous gaze as she went over to take a warm mug. When Rosamun turned to tend to the fire, Gilon, who had just emerged from the bedroom, drew Kit aside.
“Caramon knows to run and get Bigardus if Rosamun … if … you know …” he trailed off, looking at Kit anxiously.
“If she goes off her head, you mean,” Kit said bluntly, ignoring the look of hurt that crossed Gilon’s face. “Yes. Caramon may not be able to do anything else for Mother, but he certainly knows how to run.
“And,” she added, seeing Gilon’s anxiety mounting, “it wouldn’t take him much time to get to Bigardus’s and back, as long as he doesn’t run into one of his dumb friends and—”
“Perhaps we shouldn’t go,” Gilon said. “I mean, if you think your mother won’t be all right or that Caramon can’t manage without us …” He lifted his hands questioningly.
It had been Gilon’s idea to pay a visit to the mage school today. Kit’s stepfather had spent two long evenings at the kitchen table, laboring over a letter to the master mage asking for permission to enroll Raist. He had searched his brain for the right wording, the proper tone. But he was not satisfied with any one of his dozen drafts, and at the end of the second night he had stood up and crumpled his latest effort into the fire.
“Letters are so cold,” he had declared. He would go himself to make a plea for his youngest child. Then the master mage could see for himself what a gifted pupil Raist would make.
The mage school was mysteriously situated on the outskirts of Solace, its location a source of rumor and gossip, and Kit did not know anyone who could make a credible claim to have actually been there. Yet Gilon, with his simple, stubborn nature, was determined to go. Kit knew Gilon wanted to get Raist’s future “settled” as much as she did, if for different reasons.
“No, no. Caramon can manage fine. It’s Rosamun who can’t. We’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed,” she reassured Gilon—without comforting him much.
During this whispered exchange, Caramon had woken up and trudged sleepily over to the table, where Ro
samun was coaxing Raist to eat some porridge. Kit watched her mother turn toward Caramon with a loving smile and hug him before serving up a generous bowl of porridge. Caramon dug into his portion eagerly, asking, with his mouth full, what else there was to eat.
Both boys watched their mother avidly, obviously delighted to have her up and about. Rosamun glanced up from her duties and met Kit’s judgmental gaze.
“Kitiara, won’t you have something to eat before you leave? You have a busy morning ahead, and who knows what hospitality you will find at your destination,” Rosamun said kindly.
“Don’t worry about me, Mother.” Kit must have put an edge on the word that caused Rosamun to flinch. “I’ve packed some bread and cheese, enough for me, Gilon, and Raist. I know how to fend for myself—I’ve been doing just that for years. Don’t start worrying about me now.”
Flushing, Rosamun turned back to the twins. Caramon, busy shoveling porridge into his mouth, hadn’t paid any attention to the exchange, but Raistlin, ever observant, had been listening with a frown.
Gilon stepped in from the outside, breaking the tension. “Hurry up, Raist. We want to arrive early enough so that the master mage will have time to see us. Kitiara, are you ready?”
Raistlin slipped off his chair, had his face wiped by Rosamun, and joined Gilon at the door. Kit tied a rope around the sack of food she had prepared and slung it over her shoulder. Gilon planted a gentle kiss on Rosamun’s forehead, then hesitated, obviously torn about leaving her and Caramon for the day.
Rosamun, looking the very image of a typical, if slightly disheveled, homebody, shrugged off his concern affectionately. “Go on,” she urged. “We’ll be just fine.”
As they filed out the door, Caramon had already pulled out a mortar and pestle from the kitchen cabinet and was kneeling on a chair next to the eating table, determinedly grinding sunflower seeds while his mother looked on, beaming with approval.
The last to leave, Kitiara took in the domestic scene before closing the door, gripped by envy as well as resentment. She hated the way the twins and Gilon doted on Rosamun during her “normal” periods. If her mother had ever spent any special time with Kit, it was so long ago she could not remember it.