War of the Twins

by Margaret Weis

  With a final, soft pat on his head, Crysania stood up. Holding the medallion of Paladine in her hand, she whispered a prayer and was gone, vanishing into the night.

  “And now, Tasslehoff,” Raistlin said in a soft voice that made Tas tremble, “we are alone.” With his strong hands, the mage pulled the blankets up over the kender’s body and straightened the pillow beneath his head. “There, are you comfortable?”

  Tas couldn’t speak. He could only stare at the archmage in growing horror.

  Raistlin sat down on the bed beside him. Putting one slender hand upon Tas’s forehead, he idly caressed the kender’s skin and smoothed back his damp hair.

  “Do you remember Dalamar, my apprentice, Tas?” Raistlin asked conversationally. “You saw him, I believe at the Tower of High Sorcery, am I correct?” Raistlin’s fingers were light as the feet of spiders upon Tas’s face. “Do you recall, at one point, Dalamar tore open his black robes, exhibiting five wounds upon his chest? Yes, I see you recall that. It was his punishment, Tas. Punishment for hiding things from me.” Raistlin’s fingers stopped crawling about the kender’s skin and remained in one place, exerting a slight pressure on Tas’s forehead.

  Tas shivered, biting his tongue to keep from crying out. “I—I remember, Raistlin.”

  “An interesting experience, don’t you think?” Raistlin said offhandedly. “I can burn through your flesh with a touch, as I might burn through, say”—he shrugged—“butter with a hot knife. Kender are fond of interesting experiences, I believe.”

  “Not—not quite that interesting,” Tas whispered miserably. “I’ll tell you, Raistlin! I’ll tell you everything that—that happened.” He closed his eyes a moment, then began to talk, his entire body quivering with the remembered terror. “We—we seemed not to rise up out of the Abyss so much as … as the Abyss dropped away beneath us! And then, like I said, I saw it wasn’t empty. I could see shadows and I thought … I thought they were valleys and mountains.…”

  Tas’s eyes flared open. He stared at the mage in awe. “It wasn’t! Those shadows were her eyes, Raistlin! And the hills and valleys were her nose and mouth. We were rising up out of her face! She looked at me with eyes that were bright and gleamed with fire, and she opened her mouth and I—I thought she was going to swallow us! But we only rose higher and higher and she fell away beneath us, swirling, and then she looked at me and she said … she said.…”

  “What did she say?” Raistlin demanded. “The message was to me! It must have been! That was why she sent you! What did the Queen say?”

  Tas’s voice grew hushed. “She said, ‘Come home …’ ”

  CHAPTER

  13

  he effect of his words upon Raistlin startled Tasslehoff just about as much as anything had ever startled him in his entire life. Tas had seen Raistlin angry before. He had seen him pleased, he had seen him commit murder, he had seen the mage’s face when Kharas, the dwarven hero, drove his sword blade into the mage’s flesh.

  But he had never seen an expression on it like this.

  Raistlin’s face went ashen, so white Tas thought for a wild moment that the mage had died, perhaps been struck dead on the spot. The mirrorlike eyes seemed to shatter; Tas saw himself reflected in tiny, splintered shards of the mage’s vision. Then he saw the eyes lose all recognition, go completely blank, staring ahead sightlessly.

  The hand that rested upon Tas’s head began to tremble violently. And, as the kender watched in astonishment, he saw Raistlin seem to shrivel up before him. His face aged perceptively. When he rose to his feet, still staring unseeing around him, the mage’s entire body shook.

  “Raistlin?” Tas asked nervously, glad to have the mage’s attention off him but bewildered by his strange appearance. The kender sat up weakly. The terrible dizziness had gone, along with the weird, unfamiliar feeling of fear. He felt almost like himself again.

  “Raistlin … I didn’t mean anything. Are you going to be sick now? You look awfully queer—”

  But the archmage didn’t answer. Staggering backward, Raistlin fell against the stone wall and just stood there, his breathing rapid and shallow. Covering his face with his hand, he fought desperately to regain control of himself, a fight with some unseen opponent that was yet as visible to Tas as if the mage had been fighting a spectre.

  Then, with a low, hollow cry of rage and anguish, Raistlin lurched forward. Gripping the Staff of Magius, his black robes whipping around him, he fled through the open door.

  Staring after Raistlin in astonishment, Tas saw him hurtle past the dark dwarf standing guard in the doorway. The dwarf took one look at the mage’s cadaverous face as Raistlin ran blindly past him, and, with a wild shriek, whirled around and dashed off in the opposite direction.

  So amazing was all this that it took Tas a few moments to realize he wasn’t a prisoner anymore.

  “You know,” the kender said to himself, putting his hand on his forehead, “Crysania was right. I do feel better now that I’ve gotten that off my mind. It didn’t do much for Raistlin, unfortunately, but then I don’t care about that. Well, much.” Tas sighed. “I’ll never understand why he killed poor Gnimsh. Maybe I’ll have a chance to ask him someday.

  “But, now”—the kender glanced around—“the first thing to do is find Caramon and tell him I’ve got the magical device and we can go home. I never thought I’d say this,” Tas said wistfully, swinging his feet to the floor, “but home sounds awfully nice right now!”

  He was going to stand up, but his legs apparently preferred to be back in bed because Tas suddenly found himself sitting down again.

  “This won’t do!” Tas said, glaring at the offending parts of his body. “You’re nowhere without me! Just remember that! I’m boss and when I say move—you’ll move! Now, I’m going to stand up again,” Tas warned his legs sternly. “And I expect some cooperation.”

  This speech had some effect. His legs behaved a bit better this time and the kender, though still somewhat wobbly, managed to make his way across the dark room toward the torch-lit corridor he could see beyond the door.

  Reaching it, he peeped cautiously up and down the hall, but no one was in sight. Creeping out into corridor, he saw nothing but dark, closed-up cells like the one he’d been in—and a staircase at one end, leading up. Looking down the other end, he saw nothing but dark shadows.

  “I wonder where I am?” Tas made his way down the corridor toward the staircase—that being, as far as he could tell, the only way up. “Oh, well!”—the kender reflected philosophically—“I don’t suppose it matters. One good thing about having been in the Abyss is that every place else, no matter how dismal, looks congenial by comparison.”

  He had to stop a moment for a brief argument with his legs—they still seemed much inclined to return to bed—but this momentary weakness passed, and the kender reached the bottom of the staircase. Listening, he could hear voices.

  “Drat,” he muttered, coming to a halt and ducking back into the shadows. “Someone’s up there. Guards, I suppose. Sounds like dwarves. Those whatcha’ma call-ems—Dewar.” Tas stood, quietly, trying to make out what the deep voices were saying. “You’d think they could speak a civilized language,” he snapped irritably. “One a fellow could understand. They sound excited, though.”

  Curiosity finally getting the better of him, Tas crept up the first flight of stone steps and peered around the corner. He ducked back quickly with a sigh. “Two of ’em. Both blocking the stair. And there’s no way around them.”

  His pouches with his tools and weapons were gone, left behind in the mountain dungeon of Thorbardin. But he still had his knife. “Not that it will do much good against those.” Tas reflected, envisioning once again the huge battle-axes he’d seen the dwarves holding.

  He waited a few more moments, hoping the dwarves would leave. They certainly seemed worked up, but they also appeared rooted to the spot.

  “I can’t stay here all night or day, whichever it is,” the kender grumbled. “Wel
l, as dad said, ‘always try talk before the lockpick.’ The very worst they could do to me, I suppose—not counting killing me, of course—would be to lock me back up. And, if I’m any judge of locks, I could probably be out again in about half-an-hour.” He began to climb the stairs. “Was it dad who said that,” he pondered as he climbed, “or Uncle Trapspringer?”

  Rounding the corner, he confronted two Dewar, who appeared considerably startled to see him. “Hello!” the kender said cheerfully. “My name is Tasslehoff Burrfoot.” He extended a hand. “And your names are? Oh, you’re not going to tell me. Well, that’s all right. I probably couldn’t pronounce them anyway. Say, I’m a prisoner and I’m looking for the fellow who was keeping me locked up in that cell back there. You probably know him—a black-robed magic-user. He was interrogating me, when something I said took him by surprise, I think, because he had a sort of a fit and ran out of the room. And he forgot to lock the door behind him. Did either of you see which way he—Well!” Tas blinked. “How rude.”

  This in response to the actions of the Dewar who, after regarding the kender with growing looks of alarm on their faces, shouted one word, turned, and bolted.

  “Antarax,” Tas repeated, looking after them, puzzled. “Let’s see. That sounds like dwarven for … for … Oh, of course! Burning death. Ah—they think I’ve still got the plague! Mmmmm, that’s handy. Or is it?”

  The kender found himself alone in another long corridor, every bit as bleak and dismal as the one he’d just left. “I still don’t know where I am, and no one seems inclined to tell me. The only way out is that staircase down there and those two are heading for it so I guess the best thing to do is just tag along. Caramon’s bound to be around here somewhere.”

  But Tas’s legs, which had already registered a protest against walking, informed the kender in no uncertain terms that running was out of the question. He stumbled along as fast as possible after the dwarves, but they had dashed up the stairs and were out of sight by the time he had made it halfway down the corridor. Puffing along, feeling a bit dizzy but determined to find Caramon, Tas climbed the stairs after them. As he rounded a corner, he came to a sudden halt.

  “Oops,” he said, and hurriedly ducked into the shadows. Clapping a hand over mouth, he severely reprimanded himself. “Shut up, Burrfoot! It’s the whole Dewar army.”

  It certainly seemed like it. The two he had been following had met up with about twenty other dwarves. Crouching in the shadows, Tas could hear them yelping excitedly, and he expected them to come tromping down after him any moment.… But nothing happened.

  He waited, listening to the conversation, then, risking a peep, he saw that some of the dwarves present didn’t look like Dewar. They were clean, their beards were brushed, and they were dressed in bright armor. Arid they didn’t appear pleased. They glared grimly at one of the Dewar, as though they’d just as soon skin him as not.

  “Mountain dwarves!” Tas muttered to himself in astonishment, recognizing the armor. “And, from what Raistlin said, they’re the enemy. Which means they’re supposed to be in their mountain, not in ours. Provided we’re in a mountain, of course, which I’m beginning to think likely from the looks of it. But, I wonder—”

  As one of the mountain dwarves began speaking, Tas brightened. “Finally, someone who knows how to talk!” The kender sighed in relief. Because of the mixture of races, the dwarf was speaking a crude version of Common and dwarven.

  The gist of the conversation, as near as Tas could follow, was that the mountain dwarf didn’t give a cracked stone about a crazed wizard or a wandering, plague-ridden kender.

  “We came here to get the head of this General Caramon,” the mountain dwarf growled. “You said that the wizard promised it would be arranged. If it is, we can dispense with the wizard. I’d just as soon not deal with a Black Robe anyway. And now answer me this, Argat. Are your people ready to attack the army from within? Are you prepared to kill this general? Or was this just a trick? If so, you will find it will go hard with your people back in Thorbardin.”

  “It no trick!” Argat growled, his fist clenching. “We ready to move. The general is in the War Room. The wizard said he make sure him alone with just bodyguard. Our people get the hill dwarves to attack. When you keep your part bargain, when scouts give signal that great gates to Thorbardin are open—”

  “The signal is sounding, even as we speak,” the mountain dwarf snapped. “If we were above ground level, you could hear the trumpets. The army rides forth!”

  “Then we go!” Argat said. Bowing, he added with a sneer, “If your lordship dares, come with us—we take General Caramon’s head right now!”

  “I will join you,” the mountain dwarf said coldly, “if only to make certain you plot no further treachery.”

  What else the two said was lost on Tas, who leaned back against the wall. His legs had gone all prickly-feeling, and there was a buzzing noise in his ears.

  “Caramon,” he whispered, clutching at his head, trying to think. “They’re going to kill him! And Raistlin’s done this!” Tas shuddered. “Poor Caramon. His own twin. If he knew that, it would probably just kill him dead on the spot. The dwarves wouldn’t need axes.”

  Suddenly, the kender’s head snapped up. “Tasslehoff Burrfoot!” he said angrily. “What are you doing—standing around like a gully dwarf with one foot in the mud. You’ve got to save him! You promised Tika you’d take care of him, after all.”

  “Save him? How, you doorknob?” boomed a voice inside of him that sounded suspiciously like Flint’s. “There must be twenty dwarves! And you armed with that rabbit-killer!”

  “I’ll think of something,” Tas retorted. “So just keep sitting under your tree.”

  There was a snorting sound. Resolutely ignoring it, the kender stood up tall and straight, pulled out his little knife, and crept quietly—as only kender can—down the corridor.

  CHAPTER

  14

  he had the dark, curly hair and the crooked smile that men would later find so charming in her daughter. She had the simple, guileless honesty that would characterize one of her sons and she had a gift—a rare and wonderful power—that she would pass on to the other.

  She had magic in her blood, as did her son. But she was weak—weak-willed, weak-spirited. Thus she let the magic control her, and thus, finally, she died.

  Neither the strong-souled Kitiara nor the physically strong Caramon was much affected by their mother’s death. Kitiara hated her mother with bitter jealousy, while Caramon, though he cared about his mother, was far closer to his frail twin. Besides, his mother’s weird ramblings and mystical trances made her a complete enigma to the young warrior.

  But her death devastated Raistlin. The only one of her children who truly understood her, he pitied her for her weakness, even as he despised her for it. And he was furious at her for dying, furious at her for leaving him alone in this world, alone with the gift. He was angry and, deep within, he was filled with fear, for Raistlin saw in her his own doom.

  Following the death of her father, his mother had gone into a grief-stricken trance from which she never emerged. Raistlin had been helpless. He could do nothing but watch her dwindle away. Refusing food, she drifted, lost, onto magical planes only she could see. And the mage—her son—was shaken to his very core.

  He sat up with her on that last night. Holding her wasted hand in his, he watched as her sunken, feverish eyes stared at wonders conjured up by magic gone berserk.

  That night, Raistlin vowed deep within his soul that no one and nothing would ever have the power to manipulate him like this—not his twin brother, not his sister, not the magic, not the gods. He and he alone would be the guiding force of his life.

  He vowed this, swearing it with a bitter, binding oath. But he was a boy still—a boy left alone in darkness as he sat there with his mother the night she died. He watched her draw her last, shuddering breath. Holding her thin hand with its delicate fingers (so like his own!), he pleaded softly
through his tears, “Mother, come home.… Come home!”

  Now at Zhaman he heard these words again, challenging him, mocking him, daring him. They rang in his ears, reverberated in his brain with wild, discordant clangings. His head bursting with pain, he stumbled into a wall.

  Raistlin had once seen Lord Ariakas torture a captured knight by locking the man inside a bell tower. The dark clerics rang the bells of praise to their Queen that night—all night. The next morning, the man had been found dead—a look of horror upon his face so profound and awful that even those steeped in cruelty were quick to dispose of the corpse.

  Raistlin felt as if he were imprisoned within his own bell tower, his own words ringing his doom in his skull. Reeling, clutching his head, he tried desperately to blot out the sound.

  “Come home … come home.…”

  Dizzy and blinded by the pain, the mage sought to outrun it. He staggered about with no clear idea of where he was, searching only for escape. His numb feet lost their footing. Tripping over the hem of his black robe, he fell to his knees.

  An object leaped from a pocket in his robes and rolled out onto the stone floor. Seeing it, Raistlin gasped in fear and anger. It was another mark of his failure—the dragon orb, cracked, darkened, useless. Frantically he grabbed for it, but it skittered like a marble across the flagstone, eluding his clawing grasp.

  Desperate, he crawled after it and, finally, it rolled to a stop. With a snarl, Raistlin started to take hold of it, then halted. Lifting his head, his eyes opened wide. He saw where he was, and he shrank back, trembling.

  Before him loomed the Great Portal.

  It was exactly like the one in the Tower of High Sorcery in Palanthas. A huge oval door standing upon a raised dais, it was ornamented and guarded by the heads of five dragons. Their sinuous necks snaking up from the floor, the five heads faced inward, five mouths open, screaming silent tribute to their Queen.

  In the Tower at Palanthas, the door to the Portal was closed. None could open it except from within the Abyss itself, coming the opposite direction—an egress from a place none ever left. This door, too, was closed, but there were two who could enter—a White-Robed Cleric of Infinite Goodness and a Black-Robed Archmage of Infinite Evil. It was an unlikely combination. Thus the great wizards hoped to seal forever this terrible entrance onto an immortal plane.