The Soulforge

by Margaret Weis

  “We’ll be part of your army, won’t we, Kit?” Caramon said. “Raist and me.”

  “You’ll be captains, both of you. I’ll be your commander, of course,” Kit said matter-of-factly.

  “I’d like being a captain.” Caramon was enthusiastic. “What about you, Raist?”

  Raistlin shrugged. “I don’t care.” After another lingering glance at the pouch, he said quietly, “We should leave now. I’ll be late.”

  Kit eyed them, her hands on her hips. “You’ll do, I suppose. You come straight back home, Caramon, after you drop Raistlin off. No hanging about the school. You two have to get used to being separated.”

  “Sure, Kit.” It was now Caramon’s turn to be glum.

  Raistlin went to his mother, took her by the hand. “Good-bye, Mother,” he said with a catch in his voice.

  “Good-bye, dear,” she said. “Don’t forget to cover your head when it’s damp.”

  And that was his blessing. Raistlin had endeavored to explain to his mother where he was going, but she had been completely unable to comprehend. “Studying magic? Whatever for? Don’t be silly, child.”

  Raistlin had given up. He and Caramon left the house just as the sun was gilding the tips of the vallenwood leaves.

  “I’m glad Kit didn’t want to come with us. I have something to tell you,” Caramon said in a loud whisper. He glanced back fearfully to see if his sister was watching them. The door slammed shut. Her duty for the morning done, Kitiara was going back to bed.

  The children took the tree walkways as far as they could. Then, when the rope bridges came to an end, the twins ran down a long staircase to reach the forest floor. A narrow road, little more than two wheel ruts and a hard-baked footpath, led in the direction they were going.

  The boys ate hunks of stale bread, which they had torn off a loaf that had been left out on the table.

  “Look, there’s blue stuff on this bread,” Caramon noted, pausing between bites.

  “It’s mold,” said Raistlin.

  “Oh.” Caramon ate the bread, mold and all, observing that it “wasn’t bad, just sort of bitter.”

  Raistlin carefully removed the part of the bread with the mold. He studied the mold intently, then slipped the piece inside a pouch he carried with him everywhere. By the end of the day, that pouch would be filled with various specimens of plant and animal life. He spent his evenings studying them.

  “It’s a long walk to the school,” Caramon stated, his bare feet scuffing up the dirt on the road. “Almost five miles, Father says. And once you get there, you have to sit at a desk all day and not move, and they don’t let you go outside or nothing. Are you sure you’re going to like that, Raist?”

  Raistlin had seen the interior of the school only once. It consisted of a large room, with no windows, so that there were no outside distractions. The floor was stone. The desks stood high off the stone floor, so that the winter cold would not chill their feet. The students sat on tall stools. Shelves containing jars with various herbs and other things in them that ranged from the horrible and disgusting to the pleasant or mysterious lined the walls. These jars held the spell components. Other shelves held scroll cases. Most of the scrolls were blank, meant for the students to write upon. But some were not.

  Raistlin thought of this quiet, dark room, the peaceful hours spent in study with no distractions from unruly brothers, and he smiled. “I won’t mind it,” he said.

  Caramon had picked up a stick, was slashing about with it, pretending it was a sword. “I wouldn’t want to go there. I know that. And that teacher. He has a face like a frog. He looks mean. Do you think he’ll whip you?”

  The teacher, Master Theobald, had indeed looked mean. Not only that, but their first meeting proved him to be haughty, self-important, and probably less intelligent than the majority of his pupils. Unable to gain their respect, he would almost certainly resort to physical intimidation. Raistlin had seen the long willow branch standing in a prominent place beside the master’s desk.

  “If he does,” Raistlin said, thinking of what Antimodes had told him, “it will be just another blow of the hammer.”

  “You think he’ll hit you with a hammer?” Caramon demanded, horrified. He halted in the middle of the road. “You shouldn’t go to that place, Raist.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant, Caramon,” Raistlin said, trying to be patient with his twin’s ignorance. After all, the statement had been somewhat bizarre. “I’ll try to explain. You fight with a stick now, but someday you’ll own a sword, a real sword, won’t you?”

  “You bet. Kit’s going to bring me one. She’ll bring you one, too, if you ask her.”

  “I already have a sword, Caramon,” Raistlin said. “Not a sword like yours. Not one made of metal. This sword is inside me. It’s not a very good weapon right now. It needs to be hammered into shape. That’s why I’m going to this school.”

  “To learn to make swords?” Caramon asked, frowning with the mental effort. “Is it a blacksmith school, then?”

  Raistlin sighed. “Not real swords, Caramon. Mental swords. Magic will be my sword.”

  “If you say so. But anyhow, if that teacher does whip you, just tell me.” Caramon clenched his fists. “I’ll take care of him. This sure is a long walk,” he repeated.

  “It is a long walk,” Raistlin agreed. They’d gone only about a quarter of the distance, and he was already tired, although he didn’t admit it. “But you don’t have to come with me, you know.”

  “Well, of course I do!” Caramon said, looking astonished at the idea. “What if you get attacked by goblins? You’d need me to defend you.”

  “With a wooden sword,” Raistlin observed dryly.

  “Like you said, someday I’ll have a real one,” Caramon answered, his enthusiasm undaunted by logic. “Kitiara promised. Hey, that reminds me of what I was going to tell you. I think Kit’s getting ready to go somewhere. Yesterday I ran into her coming down the stairs from that tavern at the edge of town. The Trough.”

  “What was she doing there?” Raistlin asked, interested. “For that matter, what were you doing there? That place is rough.”

  “I’ll say!” Caramon agreed. “Sturm Brightblade says it’s a place where thieves and cutthroats hang out. That’s one reason I was there. I wanted to see a cutthroat.”

  “Well,” said Raistlin with a half-smile, “did you see one?”

  “Naw!” Caramon was disgusted. “At least, I don’t think so. All the men were pretty ordinary. Most didn’t look any different from Father, only not as big.”

  “Which is exactly what a good assassin would look like,” Raistlin pointed out.

  “Like Father?”

  “Certainly. That way, he can sneak up on his victim without the victim noticing him. What did you think an assassin would look like? Dressed all in black with a long black cape and a black mask over his face?” Raistlin asked mockingly.

  Caramon pondered. “Well … yes.”

  “What an idiot you are, Caramon,” Raistlin said.

  “I guess so,” Caramon replied, subdued. He stared down at his feet, kicked at the dirt for a few moments. But it wasn’t in Caramon’s nature to be depressed for long. “Say,” he said cheerfully, “if they really are ordinary, maybe I did see a cutthroat after all!”

  Raistlin snorted. “What you did see was our sister. What was she doing there? Father wouldn’t like her going into places like that.”

  “That’s what I told her,” Caramon said, self-righteous. “She smacked me and said that what Father didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, and I was to keep my mouth shut. She was talking to two grown-up men, but they left when I came. She was holding something in her hand that looked like a map. I asked her what it was, but she just pinched my arm real hard”—Caramon exhibited a blue and red bruise—“and took me away and made me swear on a grave in the graveyard that I’d never say a word to anyone. Otherwise a ghoul would come and get me one night.”

  “You told me,” Raist
lin pointed out. “You broke your promise.”

  “She didn’t mean you!” Caramon returned. “You’re my twin. Telling you is like telling myself. ’Sides, she knows I’ll tell you. I swore for both of us, anyway. So if the ghoul comes and gets me, it’ll get you, too. Hey, I wouldn’t mind seeing a ghoul, would you, Raist?”

  Raistlin rolled his eyes but said nothing. He saved his breath. He hadn’t covered half the distance to the school yet and already he was exhausted. He loathed his frail body that seemed determined to thwart every plan he made, to ruin every hope, to wreck every desire. Raistlin cast a jealous glance at his well-built, stout, and healthy twin.

  People said there had once been gods who ruled over mankind, but the gods had grown angry at man and had gone away. Before they left, the gods had cast down a fiery mountain on Krynn, shattering the world. Then they had abandoned man to his fate. Raistlin could well believe that this was so. No just and honorable god would have played such a cruel joke as had been played on him-splitting a single person in two, giving one twin a mind without a body, the other a body without a mind.

  Yet it would be comforting to think that there was an intelligent reason behind the decision, a purpose; comforting to know that he and his twin were not just some freak of nature. It would be comforting to know that there were gods, if only so that one could blame them!

  Kitiara often told Raistlin the story of how he had nearly died, how she had saved his life when the midwife had told her the baby was good as dead and to leave it alone to gasp out its pitiful life. Kit was always a little miffed that Raistlin was not properly grateful to her. She was never to know, being strong herself, that sometimes, when Raistlin’s body burned with fever and his muscles ached beyond endurance, when his mouth was parched with a thirst he could never quench, he cursed her in the night.

  But Kitiara had been responsible for his entry into the school of magic. She had made amends.

  If only he could manage to reach that school without collapsing first.

  A farm cart, trundling past, proved Raistlin’s salvation. The farmer stopped and asked the boys where they were going. And although he frowned when Raistlin told him of their destination, he agreed to give them a lift. He gazed pityingly at the frail child, coughing in the dust and the wheat chaff blowing off the fields.

  “You plan on making this walk this every day, lad?”

  “No, sir,” Caramon answered for his brother, who couldn’t speak. “He’s going to magic school to learn to make swords. And he’s got to stay there by himself, and they won’t let me stay with him.”

  The farmer was a kindly man who had small children of his own. “Look, boys, I come this way every day. If you met me at the crossroads of a morning, I could give you a lift. I’ll meet you in the afternoon coming back. That way, you could at least be home with your family in the evenings.”

  “That’d be great!” Caramon cried.

  “We can’t pay you,” Raistlin said at the same time, his face flushed with shame.

  “Pshaw! I don’t expect pay!” the farmer shot back, looking quite fierce. He glanced sidelong at the boys, especially the sturdy Caramon. “What I could use is help in the fields. My own young’uns are too little to be of much good to me yet.”

  “I could work for you,” said Caramon promptly. “I could help you while Raist is in school.”

  “It’s agreed, then.”

  Caramon and the farmer each spat on their palms, clasped hands on the bargain.

  “Why did you agree to work for him?” Raistlin demanded after they had settled themselves at the back of the empty wagon, their feet dangling over the edge.

  “So you could ride back and forth to school,” Caramon said. “Why? What’s wrong with that?” Raistlin bit his tongue. He should thank his brother, but the words stuck in his throat like a bad-tasting physic.

  “It’s just … I don’t like you working for me.…”

  “Oh, heck, Raist, we’re twins,” Caramon said, and grinning happily, he nudged his brother in the ribs. “You’d do the same for me.”

  Thinking about it, as the cart rolled toward Master Theobald’s School for Mages, Raistlin wasn’t all that certain he would.

  The farmer’s cart was there to pick them up in the afternoon. Raistlin returned home to find that his mother had never missed him. Kitiara was surprised to see him back and demanded to know the reason. She was always angry when her plans were thwarted. She had made up her mind that Raistlin was to board at the school, and she was displeased to hear that he had decided to do otherwise.

  She had to hear the story of the farmer twice, and even then was certain he was up to no good. The idea of Caramon working for the farmer further angered her. Caramon would grow up to be a farmer, she said in disgust. With manure instead of blood on his boots.

  Caramon protested that he would not. They argued for a while; Raistlin went to bed with a headache. He awoke to find the argument settled. Kit appeared to have other things on her mind. She was preoccupied, more irritable than usual, and the boys were careful to keep out of the way of the flat of her hand. She did see to it that they were fed, however, frying up some dubious bacon and serving the remainder of the moldy bread.

  Late that night, as Kitiara slept, small, deft hands lifted the pouch from her belt. Fingers, whose touch was delicate as the legs of a butterfly, removed the pouch’s contents—a torn leaf of paper and a thick, folded piece of leather. Raistlin took them both to the kitchen, studied them by the light of the banked cooking fire.

  Traced on the paper was a family crest picturing a fox standing victorious over a dead lion. The motto was “None too mighty” and beneath that was written “Matar.” On the soft leather was a crudely drawn map of the route between Solace and Solamnia.

  Swiftly Raistlin folded the paper, tucked it back into the pouch, and reattached the pouch onto Kit’s belt.

  Raistlin did not mention his find to anyone. He had learned early on that knowledge is power, especially knowledge of other people’s secrets.

  The next morning Kitiara was gone.

  6

  IT WAS HOT IN THE MAGE SCHOOL. A FIRE ROARING ON THE HEARTH heated the windowless classroom to an almost unbearable degree. Master Theobald’s voice droned through the heat, whose currents could be seen radiating from the fireplace. A fire spell was the one spell the master was truly adept at casting. He was pleased to show off his talent whenever he could.

  Raistlin didn’t mind the heat nearly as much as the other boys. He would have enjoyed it if it weren’t for the fact that he would soon have to go out into the cold and the snow. Moving from one extreme to the other, venturing out into the chill in sweat-damp robes, took its toll on Raistlin’s frail body. He was just now recovering from a sore throat and high fever that had robbed him of his voice for several days, forcing him to remain at home in bed.

  He detested missing school. He was more intelligent than the master. And Raistlin knew in his soul that he was a better wizard than Master Theobald. Still, there were things he could learn from the master, things he must learn. The magic burned inside Raistlin like the fever, more pleasant yet just as painful. What Master Theobald knew and Raistlin did not was how to control the burning, how to make the magic serve the spellcaster, how to transmit the fever to words that could be written and spoken, how to use the fever to create.

  Master Theobald was such an inept teacher, however, that Raistlin often felt as if he were lying in ambush, waiting to pounce upon the first bit of useful information that might accidentally wander in his direction.

  The pupils of Master Theobald sat on their tall stools and tried desperately to stay awake, not easy to do in the heat after the heavy midday meal. Anyone caught dozing off would be awakened by the whip-snap of the lithe willow branch across his shoulders. Master Theobald was a big, flabby man, but he could move quickly and quietly when he wanted to. He liked nothing better than to catch a pupil napping.

  Raistlin had spoken quite glibly to his brother a
bout being whipped that first day of school. Since then his thin shoulders had felt the snap of the willow branch, a pain that cut more deeply into the soul than into the flesh. He had never before been struck, except for the occasional smack from his sister, slaps which were delivered in a spirit of sibling affection. If Kitiara sometimes hit harder than she’d meant, her brothers knew that it was the thought that counted.

  Master Theobald hit with a gleam in his eye and a smile on his fat face that left no doubt he enjoyed meting out punishment.

  “The letter a in the language of magic,” Master Theobald was saying in his somnambulistic monotone, “is not pronounced ‘aa’ as it is in the Common vernacular, nor is it pronounced ‘ah’ as you will hear it in the elven, nor yet ‘ach’ as we find it spoken among the dwarves.”

  Yes, yes, thought Raistlin drearily. Get on with it. Quit showing off. You’ve probably never spoken to an elf in your life, you fat old dundering idiot.

  “The letter a in the language of magic is spoken as ‘ai.’ ”

  Raistlin snapped to alertness. Here was information he needed. He listened attentively. Master Theobald repeated the pronunciation.

  “ ‘Ai.’ Now, you young gentlemen, say this after me.”

  A drowsy chorus of ais sighed through the stifling room, punctuated by one strong ai spoken firmly by Raistlin. Generally his voice was the quietest among them, for he disliked drawing attention to himself, mainly because such attention was usually painful. His excitement at actually learning something useful and the fact that he was one of the few awake and listening had prompted him to speak more loudly than he’d intended.

  He immediately regretted having done so. Master Theobald regarded Raistlin with an approving eye, at least what could be seen of that eye through the pouches of fat surrounding it, and gently tapped the willow branch upon the desk.

  “Very good, Master Raistlin,” he said.

  Raistlin’s neighbors cast him covert, malignant glances, and he knew he’d be made to pay for this compliment. The boy to his right, an older boy, almost thirteen, who had been sent to the school because his parents could not stand to have him around the house, leaned over to whisper.