The Soulforge

by Margaret Weis

  “Raistlin,” said Caramon, speaking reluctantly, as if he, too, were under the spell of the sun, the breeze, the laughter, and loath to break it. “We have to decide what to do.”

  Raistlin couldn’t see his brother’s face for the sunshine. He was sensible of Caramon’s presence, sitting in the chair opposite. Strong and solid and reassuring. Raistlin remembered the fear he’d experienced when he had thought Caramon was dead. Affection for his brother welled up inside him, stung his eyelids. Raistlin drew back out of the sun, blinking rapidly to clear his vision. The moments had begun to slide by faster and faster, no longer his to touch.

  “What are our options?” Raistlin asked.

  Caramon shifted his bulk in his chair. “Well, we turned down going with Kit.…” He let that hang a moment, silently asking if his twin might reconsider.

  “Yes,” Raistlin said, a note of finality.

  Caramon cleared his throat, went on. “Lady Brightblade offered to take us in, give us a home.”

  “Lady Brightblade,” said Raistlin with a snicker.

  “She is the wife of a Solamnic knight,” Caramon pointed out defensively.

  “So she claims.”

  “C’mon, Raist!” Caramon was fond of Anna Brightblade, who had always been very kind to him. “She showed me a book with their family coat-of-arms. And she acts like a noble lady, Raist.”

  “How would you know how a noble lady acts, my brother?”

  Caramon thought this over. “Well, she acts like what I imagine a noble lady would act like. Like the noble ladies in those stories …”

  He fell silent, left his sentence unfinished, except in the minds of both twins. Like those stories Mother used to tell us. To speak of her aloud was to invoke her ghost, which remained inside the house.

  Gilon, on the other hand, had departed. He had never been there much in the first place, and all he left behind was a vague, pleasant memory. Caramon missed his father, but already Raistlin was having to work to remember that Gilon was gone.

  “I do care to have Sturm Brightblade as a brother,” Raistlin commented. “Master My-Honor-Is-My-Life. He’s so smug and arrogant, parading his virtue up and down the streets, making a show of righteousness. It’s enough to make one puke.”

  “Ah, Sturm’s not so bad,” Caramon said. “He’s had a rough time of it. At least we know how our father died,” he added somberly. “Sturm doesn’t even know if his father’s dead or alive.”

  “If he’s that worried, why doesn’t he go back and find out the truth?” Raistlin said impatiently. “He’s certainly old enough.”

  “He can’t leave his mother. He promised his father, the night they fled, that he’d take care of his mother, and he’s bound by that promise.”

  “When the mob attacked their castle—”

  “Castle!” Raistlin snorted.

  “—they barely escaped with their lives. Sturm’s father sent him and his mother out into the night with an escort of retainers. He told them to travel to Solace, where he would join them when he could. That was the last they heard of him.”

  “The knights must have done something to provoke the attack. People just don’t suddenly take it into their heads to storm a well-fortified keep.”

  “Sturm says that there are strange people moving into the north, into Solamnia. Evil people, who want only to foment trouble for the knights, drive them out so that they can move in and seize control.”

  “And who are these unknown evil-doers?” Raistlin asked caustically.

  “He doesn’t know, but he thinks they have something to do with the old gods,” Caramon replied, shrugging.

  “Indeed?” Raistlin was suddenly thoughtful, recalling Kitiara’s offer, her talk of powerful gods. He was also thinking back to his own experience with the gods, an experience he had wondered about since. Had it really happened? Or had it happened because he wanted it so much?

  Caramon had spilled some water on the table, and now he was damming it up with his knife and fork, trying to divert the course of the tiny river so that it wouldn’t drip onto the floor. He was busy with this as he spoke and did not look at his brother. “I said no. She wouldn’t have let you go on with your schooling.”

  “What are you talking about?” Raistlin asked sharply, looking up. “Who wouldn’t let me go on with my schooling?”

  “Lady Brightblade.”

  “She said that, did she?”

  “Yeah,” Caramon answered. He added a spoon to the dam. “It’s nothing against you, Raist,” he added, looking up to see his brother’s thin face grow hard and cold. “The Solamnic knights think that magic-users are outside the natural order of things. They never use wizards in battle, according to what Sturm says. Wizards lack discipline and they’re too independent.”

  “We like to think for ourselves,” said Raistlin, “and not blindly obey some fool commander who may or not have a brain in his head. Yet they say,” he added, “that Magius fought at the side of Huma and that he was Huma’s dearest friend.”

  “I know about Huma,” Caramon said, glad to change the subject. “Sturm told me stories about him and how, long ago, he fought the Queen of Darkness and banished all the dragons. But I never heard of this Magius.”

  “No doubt the knights would like to forget that part of the tale. Just as Huma was one of the greatest warriors of all time, so Magius was one of the greatest wizards. During a battle fought against the forces of Takhisis, Magius was separated from Huma’s side. The wizard fought on alone, surrounded by the enemy, until, wounded and exhausted, he could no longer summon the strength to cast his magic. That was in the days when wizards were not allowed to carry any weapon other than their magic. Magius was captured alive and dragged back to the Dark Queen’s camp.

  “They tortured him for three days and three nights, trying to force him to reveal the location of Huma’s encampment so they could send assassins to kill the knight. Magius died, never revealing the truth. It was said that when Huma received the news of Magius’s death and learned how he had died, he grieved so for his friend that his men thought they might lose him as well.

  “Huma ordered that, from then on, wizards would be permitted to carry one small, bladed weapon, to be used as a last defense if their magic failed them. This we do in the name of Magius to this day.”

  “That’s a great story,” Caramon said, so impressed he let his river overflow. He went to fetch a cloth to wipe up the water. “I’ll have to tell that to Sturm.”

  “You do that,” Raistlin said wryly. “I’ll be interested to hear what he has to say.” He watched Caramon clean the floor, then said, “We have chosen not to join forces with our sister. We have decided that we do not want to be taken under the wing of a noble Solamnic lady. What do you suggest we do?”

  “I say we live here, Raist,” Caramon answered steadily. He stood up from his mopping. Hands on his hips, he surveyed the house as if he were a potential buyer. “The house is ours free and clear. Father built it himself. He didn’t leave any debts. We don’t owe anybody anything. Your school’s paid for. We don’t have to worry about that. I earn enough working for Farmer Sedge to keep us in food and clothes.”

  “It will be lonely for you when I am gone in the winter,” Raistlin observed.

  Caramon shrugged. “I can always stay with the Sedges. I do sometimes anyway if the snow blocks the road. Or I can stay with Sturm or some of our other friends.”

  Raistlin sat silent, brooding, frowning.

  “What’s the matter, Raist?” Caramon asked uneasily. “Don’t you think it’s a good plan”

  “I think it’s an excellent plan, my brother. I don’t feel right about you supporting me, however.”

  Caramon’s worried expression eased. “What does it matter? What’s mine is yours, Raist, you know that.”

  “It does matter to me,” Raistlin returned. “Very much. I must do something to pay my share.”

  Caramon gave the matter serious thought for about three minutes, but apparently
that process hurt, for he began rubbing his head and said that he thought it must be about time for lunch.

  He left to go rummage in the larder while Raistlin considered what he might do to add to their upkeep. He was not strong enough for farm labor, nor did he have the time for any other job, with his studies. His schooling now meant more than anything, was doubly important. Every spell he learned added to his knowledge … and to his power.

  Power over others. He remembered Caramon, strong and muscular, falling into a deep slumber, lying comatose at the command of his weaker brother. Raistlin smiled.

  Returning with a loaf of bread and a crock of honey, Caramon placed an empty vial down in front of his brother. “This belongs to that old crone, Weird Meggin. It had some sort of tree juice in it. Kit gave it to you to bring your fever down. I should probably return that to her,” he said reluctantly, adding in an awed tone, “Do you know, Raist? She’s got a wolf that sleeps on her door stoop and a human head sitting right smack on her kitchen table!”

  Weird Meggin. An idea stirred in Raistlin’s mind. He lifted the vial, opened it, sniffed. Elixir of willow bark. He could make that easily enough. Other herbs in his garden could be used for cures as well. He now had the power to cast minor magicks. People would pay good steel if he could ease a colicky baby into sleep, bring down a man’s fever, or cause an itchy rash to disappear.

  Raistlin fingered the vial. “I’ll return this myself. You needn’t come if you don’t want to.”

  “I’m coming,” Caramon said firmly. “Where did she get that skull, huh? Just ask yourself that. I wouldn’t want to walk in and see your head in her dining room. You and me, Raist. From now on, we stick together. We’re all each other’s got.”

  “Not quite all, my dear brother,” Raistlin said softly. His hand went to the small leather bag he wore at his waist, a bag containing his spell components. It held only dried rose petals now, but soon it would hold more. Much more.

  “Not quite all.”

  BOOK 4

  Who wants or needs any gods at all? I certainly don’t. No divine force controls my life, and that’s the way I like it. I choose my own destiny. I am slave to no man. Why should I be a slave to a god and let some priest or cleric tell me how to live?

  —Kitiara uth Matar

  1

  TWO YEARS PASSED. SPRING’S GENTLE RAINS AND SUMMER’S sunshine caused the vallenwood saplings on the grave sites to straighten, sending forth green shoots. Raistlin spent winters at the school. He added another elementary spell—a spell he could use to determine if an object might be magical—to his spellbook. Caramon spent the winters working in the stables, the summers working at Farmer Sedge’s. Caramon wasn’t home much during the winter. The house was lonely without his brother and “gave him the creeps.” When Raistlin returned, however, the two lived there almost contentedly.

  That spring brought the customary May Day festival, one of Solace’s largest celebrations. A huge fair was set up in a large area of cleared land on the town’s southern borders.

  Free at last to travel, now that the winter thaw had cleared the roads, merchants came from all parts of Ansalon, eager to sell the wares they had spent all winter making.

  The taciturn, savage-looking Plainsmen traders were first to arrive, coming from villages with outlandish, barbaric names, such as Que-teh and Que-kiri. Clad in animal skins decorated with uncouth ornaments said to honor their ancestors, whom they worshiped, the Plainsmen held themselves aloof from the other inhabitants of the region, though they took their steel readily enough. Their clay pots were much prized; their hand-woven blankets were extraordinarily beautiful. Some of their other goods, such as the bead-decorated skulls of small animals, were coveted by the children, to the shock and dismay of their parents.

  Dwarves, well dressed, wearing gold chains around their necks, traveled from their underground realm of Thorbardin, bringing with them the metalwork for which they were famous, displaying everything from pots and pans to axes, bracers, and daggers.

  These Thorbardin dwarves sparked the first incident of the fair season. The Thorbardin dwarves were in the Inn of the Last Home, partaking of Otik’s ale, when they began to make disparaging comments regarding that ale, which they maintained was far below their own high standards. A local hill dwarf took exception to these comments on Otik’s behalf, added a few of his own relevant to the fact that a mountain dwarf wouldn’t know a good glass of ale if it was poured over his head, which it subsequently was.

  Several elves from Qualinesti, who had brought with them some exquisite gold and silver jewelry, maintained that the dwarves were all a pack of brutes, worse than humans, who were bad enough.

  A brawl ensued. The guards were summoned.

  The Solace residents took the side of the hill dwarf. The flustered Otik, not wanting to lose customers, was on both sides at the same time. He thought that perhaps the ale might not up to his usual high standards, was forced to admit that the Thorbardin gentlemen might be right on that point. On the other hand, Flint Fireforge was an exceptional judge of ale, having tasted a great deal of it in his time, and Otik felt called upon to bow to his expertise.

  Eventually it was determined that if the hill dwarf would apologize to the mountain dwarves and the mountain dwarves would apologize to Otik, the entire incident would be forgotten. The leader of the Thorbardin dwarves, wiping blood from his nose, stated in surly tones that the ale was “drinkable.” The hill dwarf, massaging a bruised jaw, mumbled that a mountain dwarf might indeed know something of ale, having spent enough nights on the barroom floor lying face first in it. The Thorbardin dwarf didn’t like the sound of that, thought it might be another insult. At this juncture, Otik hastily offered a free round to everyone in the bar to celebrate their newfound friendship.

  No dwarf alive has ever turned down free ale. Both sides went back to their seats, each group convinced that their side had won. Otik gathered up the broken chairs, the barmaids picked up the broken crockery, the guards drank a glass in honor of the innkeeper, the elves looked down their long noses at the lot of them, and the incident ended.

  Raistlin and Caramon heard about the fight the next day as they shoved their way through the crowds milling among the booths and tents.

  “I wished I’d been there.” Caramon gave a gusty sigh and clenched his large fist.

  Raistlin said nothing, he hadn’t been paying attention. He was studying the flow of the crowds, trying to determine where would be the most advantageous place to establish himself. At length he settled on a spot located at the convergence of two aisles. A lace-maker from Haven was across from him on one side and a wine merchant from Pax Tharkas on the other.

  Placing a large wooden bowl in front of a nearby stump, Raistlin gave Caramon his instructions.

  “Walk to the end of this row, turn around, and stroll back. You’re a farmer’s son in town for the day, remember. When you come to me, stop and stare and point and create a commotion. Once the crowd begins to form around me, move to the outside of the circle and catch people as they walk past, urge them to take a look. Got that?”

  “You bet!” said Caramon, grinning. He was enjoying himself immensely.

  “And when I ask for a volunteer from the crowd, you know what you must do.”

  Caramon nodded. “Say I’ve never seen you before in my life and that there’s nothing at all inside that box.”

  “Don’t overact,” Raistlin cautioned.

  “No, no. I won’t. You can count on me,” Caramon promised.

  Raistlin had his doubts, but there was nothing more he could do to alleviate them. He had rehearsed Caramon the night before, and he could only hope his twin would remember his lines.

  Caramon departed, heading for the end of the row as he’d been directed. He was almost immediately waylaid by a stout little man in a garish red waistcoat, who drew Caramon toward a tent, promising that inside the tent Caramon could see the epitome of female beauty, a woman renowned from here to the Blood Sea, who wa
s going to perform the ritual mating dance of the Northern Ergothians, a dance that was said to drive men into a frenzy. Caramon could witness this fabulous sight for only two steel pieces.

  “Really?” Caramon craned his neck, trying to sneak a peek through the tent flap.

  “Caramon!” His brother’s voice snapped across the back of his neck.

  Caramon jumped guiltily and veered off, much to the chagrin of the stout little man, who cast Raistlin a baleful look before catching hold of another yokel and resuming his spiel.

  Raistlin positioned the wooden bowl so that it showed to best advantage, dropped a steel piece inside to “prime the pump,” then laid out his equipment at his feet. He had balls for juggling, coins that would appear inside people’s ears, a remarkable length of rope that could be cut and made perfectly whole again in an instant, silken scarves that would flow wondrously from his mouth, and a brightly painted box from which would emerge a peeved and disheveled rabbit.

  He wore white robes, which he had laboriously sewn himself out of an old bed sheet. The worn spots were covered with stars and moon faces: red and black. No true wizard would have been caught dead wearing such an outlandish getup, but the general public didn’t know any better and the bright colors attracted attention.

  The juggling balls in his hands, Raistlin mounted the stump and began to perform. The multicolored balls—toys from his and Caramon’s childhood—spun in his deft fingers, flashed through the air. Immediately several children ran over to watch, dragging their parents with them.

  Caramon arrived, to loudly exclaim over the wonders he was witnessing. More people came to watch and to marvel. Coins clinked in the wooden bowl.

  Raistlin began to enjoy himself. Although he was not performing real magic, he was casting a spell over these people. The enchantment was helped by the fact that they wanted to believe in him, were ready to believe in him. He liked the admiration of the children especially, perhaps because he remembered himself at that age, remembered his own awe and wonder, remembered where that awe and wonder had led.