Brothers in Arms

by Margaret Weis

  1 The story of Raistlin’s Test in the Tower of High Sorcery is related in The Soulforge, TSR publisher, 1998.

  2

  THE TREES OF WAYRETH FOREST, WAYWARD AND MAGICAL GUARDIAN of the Tower of High Sorcery, lined up like soldiers on parade duty, stood tall and silent and stern beneath the lowering clouds.

  “Guards of honor,” said Raistlin.

  “For a funeral,” muttered Caramon.

  He did not like the forest, which was no natural forest but a wandering and unexpected forest, a forest that was nowhere in sight of a morning and all around you in the evening. A dangerous forest to those who entered it unawares. He was thankful when they finally left the forest, or perhaps it was the forest who finally left them.

  Whichever way it was, the trees took the clouds with them. Caramon removed his hat and lifted his face to the sun, basking in the warmth and the radiance.

  “I feel like I haven’t seen the sun in months,” he said in a low voice with a baleful, backward glance at the Wayreth Forest, now a formidable wall of wet, black-boled trees, shrouded in gray mist. “It’s good to be away from that place. I never want to go back, not as long as I live.”

  “There’s absolutely no reason you should, Caramon,” Raistlin said. “Believe me, you will not be invited back. Nor,” he added an undertone, “will I.”

  “That’s good, then,” Caramon said stoutly. “I don’t know why you’d want to go back. Not after”—he glanced at his brother, saw his grim expression, the eyes glinting, and faltered—“not after … well … what they did to you.”

  Caramon’s courage, which had been squashed flat in the Tower of High Sorcery, was reviving wonderfully in the warm sunshine, out from under the shadows of the watching, distrustful trees.

  “It’s not right what those mages did to you, Raist! I can say it now that we’re away from that horrible place. Now that I’m sure no one’s going to turn me into a beetle or an ant or something just for speaking my mind.

  “I mean no offense, sir,” Caramon added, shifting his attention to their traveling companion, the white-robed archmagus, Antimodes. “I appreciate all you’ve done for my brother in the past, sir, but I think you might have tried to stop your fiends from torturing him. There was no need for that. Raistlin could have died. He very nearly did die. And you didn’t do a thing. Not a damn thing!”

  “Enough, Caramon!” Raistlin admonished, shocked.

  He glanced anxiously at Antimodes, who, fortunately, did not appear to have taken offense at Caramon’s blunt statement. It almost appeared as if the archmagus agreed with what had been said. Still, Caramon was behaving like a buffoon, as usual.

  “You forget yourself, my brother!” Raistlin stated angrily. “Apologize—”

  Raistlin’s throat constricted, he could not breathe. He let fall the reins to grip the pommel of the saddle, so weak and dizzy he feared he might fall from the horse. Leaning over the pommel, he tried desperately to clear his throat. His lungs burned, just as they had during the time years back when he’d been so sick, the time he’d collapsed in his mother’s grave. He coughed and coughed but could not catch his breath. Blue flame flickered before his eyes.

  This is the end! he thought in terror. I cannot survive this one!

  The spasm eased suddenly and Raistlin drew in a shuddering breath, another, and another. His vision cleared. The burning pain subsided. He was able to sit upright. Fumbling for a handkerchief, he spit out the phlegm and the blood, used the handkerchief to wipe his lips. His hand closed over the handkerchief quickly, stuffed it back into the silken cord belt he wore around his waist, tucked the stained cloth in the folds of his red robes so that Caramon did not see it.

  Caramon was off his horse, standing at Raistlin’s side, regarding him with anxiety, arms outstretched, ready to catch him should he fall. Raistlin was angry at Caramon, but more angry at himself, angry at the momentary twinge of self-pity that wanted to sob out, “Why did they do this to me? Why?”

  He gave his brother a scathing look. “I am quite capable of sitting a horse without assistance, my brother,” he said caustically. “Make your apologies to the archmagus and then let us proceed. And put your hat back on! The sun will fry what few brains you have left.”

  “No need for you to apologize, Caramon,” Antimodes said mildly, though his gaze, when it fell upon Raistlin, was grave. “You spoke your heart. No harm in that. Your care and concern for your brother are perfectly natural. Laudable, in fact.”

  And that is intended as a rebuke to me, Raistlin said to himself. You know, don’t you, Master Antimodes? Did they let you watch? Did you watch me kill my twin? Or what turned out to be the illusion of my twin. Not that it matters. The knowledge that I have it within me to commit such a heinous act is the same as the deed. I horrify you, don’t I? You don’t treat me as you used to. I’m no longer the prize discovery, the young and gifted pupil you were so proud to exhibit. You admire me—grudgingly. You pity me. But you don’t like me.

  He said none of this aloud. Caramon remounted his horse in silence, and in silence the three rode off slowly. They had not traveled ten miles when Raistlin, weaker than he’d anticipated, stated that he could go no farther. The gods alone knew how he had pushed himself this far, for he was so weak that he was forced to allow Caramon to help ease him from the saddle, half-carry him inside.

  Antimodes fussed over Raistlin, ordering the best room in the inn—though Caramon said many times over that the common room would do for them both—and recommending the broth of a boiled chicken to settle the stomach.

  Caramon sat by Raistlin’s bed, gazing at him helplessly, until Raistlin, annoyed beyond endurance, ordered his brother to go about his business and leave him to rest.

  But he could not rest. He was not sleepy, his mind was active, if his body was not. He thought of Caramon—downstairs flirting with the barmaids and drinking too much ale. Antimodes would be down there, too, eavesdropping on conversations, picking up information. The fact that the white-robed wizard was one of Par-Salian’s spies was an open secret among the denizens of the Tower, a secret not hard to deduce. A powerful archmagus, who could whisk himself from place to place with a few words of magic, did not travel the dusty roads of Ansalon on the back of a donkey unless he had good reason to want to dawdle in inns and gossip with the innkeepers, all the while keeping an eye on who came in and who went out.

  Raistlin left his bed to sit at a small table next to a window, a window looking out onto a wheat field, bright gold against the green of the trees beneath a sun-filled blue sky. In his eyes—the cursed hourglass eyes of enchantment, first inflicted in ancient days as a lesson on the arrogant and dangerous renegade sorceress Relanna—Raistlin saw the wheat turning brown with the coming of autumn, drying up, its stalks stiff and brittle, to break beneath the snow. He saw the leaves on the trees wither and die, drift down to lie in the dust until they were blown away on cold winter winds.

  He shifted his gaze from the dismal view. He would spend this precious time, this time alone, on study. He opened and laid out on the table the small quarto that contained information about the precious Staff of Magius, the magical artifact given to him by Par-Salian as … what? Compensation?

  Raistlin knew better than that. Taking the Test had been his choice. He had known going into the Test that it would change him. All candidates are given that warning. Raistlin had been going to remind Caramon of this fact before the coughing fit seized him and wrung him like a dog wrings a knotted dishtowel. Mages had died during the Test before this, and the only compensation their families received was the mage’s clothes sent home in a neat bundle with a letter of condolence from the Head of the Conclave. Raistlin was one of the fortunate ones. He had survived with his life, if not his health. He had survived with his sanity, although he sometimes feared his hold on that was tenuous.

  He reached out to touch the staff, which was never far from his grasp. During their days in the Tower, Caramon had rigged a means of carrying the staff
on horseback, lashing the staff on the back of the saddle, always near to Raistlin’s hand. The smooth wood tingled with the lightning feel of magic beneath his fingers, acted as a tonic, easing his pain—pain of body, pain of mind, pain of soul.

  He meant to read the book, but he found himself distracted, pondering this strange weakness with which he was afflicted. He had never been strong, not like his hale and robust twin. Fate had played him a cruel joke, had given his twin health and good looks and a guileless, winning nature; had given Raistlin a weak body, nondescript looks, native cunning, a quick mind, and a nature incapable of trust. But in compensation, Fate—or the gods—had given him the magic. The tingle of the feel of the magical staff seeped into his blood, warming it pleasantly, and he did not envy Caramon his ale or his barmaids.

  But this weakness, this burning of fever in his body, this constant cough, this inability to draw a breath, as if his lungs were filled with dust, the blood on the handkerchief. The weakness would not kill him, at least so Par-Salian had assured him. Not that Raistlin believed everything Par-Salian told him—white-robed mages did not lie, but they did not necessarily tell you the truth either. Par-Salian had been extremely vague when it came to explaining to Raistlin just exactly what was wrong with him, what it was that had happened to him during the Test to have left him in such a weak and pitiful condition.

  Raistlin remembered the Test clearly, most of it, at least. The magical Tests were designed to teach the mage something about himself, also to determine the color of the robes he wore, to which of the gods of the magic he pledged his allegiance. Raistlin had gone into the Test wearing white robes to honor his sponsor, Antimodes. Raistlin had come out wearing red, the robes of neutrality, honoring the goddess Lunitari. Raistlin did not walk the paths of light, nor did he walk the shadowed paths of darkness. He walked his own path, in his own way, of his own choosing.

  Raistlin remembered fighting with a dark elf. He remembered—a terrible memory—the elf stabbing him with a poisoned dagger. Raistlin remembered pain, remembered his strength ebbing. He remembered dying, remembered being glad to die. And then Caramon had come to rescue him. Caramon had saved his twin with the use of his twin’s one gift—the magic. It was then, in a jealous rage, that Raistlin had killed his brother. Except that it had only been an illusion of his brother.

  And Caramon had seen his brother slay him.

  Par-Salian had permitted Caramon to watch this part of the Test, the last part. Caramon now knew the darkness that twisted and writhed in his twin’s soul. Caramon should, by rights, hate his twin for what he’d done to him. Raistlin wished Caramon would hate him. His brother’s hatred would be so much easier to bear than his pity.

  But Caramon did not hate Raistlin. Caramon “understood,” or so he said.

  “I wish I did,” Raistlin said bitterly.

  He remembered the Test, but not all of it. A part was missing. When he looked back on the Test in his mind, it was like looking at a painting that someone has deliberately marred. He saw people, but the faces were blotted out, smeared over with black ink. And ever since the Test, he had the oddest feeling; the feeling that someone was following him. He could almost feel a hand about to touch his shoulder, the whiff of a cold breath on the back of his neck. Raistlin had the impression that if he could just turn around quickly enough, he’d catch a glimpse of whatever it was that lurked behind him. He’d caught himself more than once whipping his head around, staring over his shoulder. But there was never anyone there. Only Caramon, with his sad and anxious eyes.

  Raistlin sighed and banished the questions, which wearied him for no good reason, for they led him nowhere. He set himself to read the book, which had been written by a scribe attached to Huma’s army, and which occasionally mentioned Magius and his wondrous staff. Magius—one of the greatest wizards ever to have lived, a friend to the legendary Knight Huma—Magius had assisted Huma in his battle against the Queen of Darkness and her evil dragons.

  Magius had placed many enchantments on the staff, but he had left no record of them, a common practice among magi, particularly if the artifact was exceptionally powerful and they feared it might fall into the wrong hands. Generally the master passed the artifact and the knowledge of its power on to a trusted apprentice, who would hand it on in turn. But Magius had died before he could hand over the staff. Whoever used the staff now would have to puzzle out its abilities for himself.

  After only a few days’ study, Raistlin had already learned from his reading that the staff gave the possessor the ability to float in the air as lightly as thistledown and that, if used as a club, its magic would increase the force of a blow, so that even someone as weak as Raistlin could deal considerable harm to an enemy. These were useful functions, but Raistlin was quite certain the staff was far more powerful. The reading was slow going, for the language was a mixture of Solamnic, which he had learned from his friend Sturm Brightblade, and Common and a slang used by soldiers and mercenaries. It would often take Raistlin an hour to figure out the meaning of a single page. He read again a passage, which he was certain was important, but one that he had yet to understand the meaning of.

  We knew the black dragon was nearby, for we could hear the hissing of solid rock dissolving in the deadly acid of the foul wrym’s spittle. We could hear the creak of its wings and its claws scrape against the castle walls as it climbed over them in search of us. But we could see nothing, for the dragon had cast upon us some sort of evil magic, which quenched the sunshine and made all dark as the wrym’s own heart. The dragon’s plan was to come upon us in this darkness and slay us before we could battle it.

  Huma called for torchlight, but no flame could we kindle in the thick air, which had been poisoned by the fumes from the dragon’s deadly breath. We feared that all was lost and that we would die in this unholy darkness. But then Magius came forward, bearing light! I know not how he accomplished it, but the crystal of the staff he bore drove away the darkness and let us see the terrible monster. We had a target for our arrows and, by Huma’s command, we launched our attack. …

  Several pages detailed the killing of the dragon, which Raistlin skipped over impatiently as information he would probably never need to know. No dragon had been seen on Krynn since Huma’s time, and there were those who were now saying that even then they were only creatures of myth. That Huma had made it all up in order to glorify himself, that he’d been nothing but a showman, a self-aggrandizing liar.

  I asked a friend how Magius had caused his staff to shine with such a blessed light. The friend, who had been standing near the wizard at the time, said that Magius spoke but a single word of command. I asked what the word was, for I thought it might be of use to the rest of us. He maintained that the word was “shark,” which is a type of monstrous fish that lives in the sea and bites men in twain, or so I have heard sailors tell. I do not think he is right, for I tried the word myself, secretly, one night when Magius had left his staff propped up in a corner, and I could not make the crystal light. I can only suppose that the word is a foreign one, perhaps elvish in nature, for Magius is known to have dealings with their kind.

  Shark! Raistlin sniffed. Elvish! What a fool. The word was obviously spoken in the language of magic. Raistlin had spent a frustrating hour in the Tower trying every phrase that he could think of in the arcane tongue, every word that bore even a remote resemblance to “shark.” He had about as much luck causing the crystal atop the staff to light as had that long-dead and unknown soldier.

  A burst of laughter came from downstairs. Raistlin could distinguish Caramon’s booming guffaw among the shriller voices of the women. At least his brother was pleasantly occupied and not likely to barge in and disturb him.

  Raistlin turned to look at the staff. “Elem shardish,” he said, which meant, “By my command,” a standard phrase used to activate the magic in many an artifact.

  But not this one. The crystal, held fast in a golden replica of a dragon’s claw, remained dark.

  Frow
ning, Raistlin looked down at the next phrase he’d noted on his list. Sharcum pas edistus, another common magical command, which meant roughly “Do as I say.” The command did not work either. The crystal gleamed, but only with a beam of reflected sunlight. He continued on through the list, which included omus sharpuk derli, for “I will it to be so,” to shirkit muan, which meant “Obey me.”

  Raistlin lost patience. “Uh, Lunitari’s idish, shirak, damen du!”

  The crystal atop the staff burst into brilliant, radiant light.

  Raistlin stared, astonished, and tried to recall what he’d said, the exact words. His hand trembling, his gaze divided between the wondrous, magical light and his work, he wrote down the phrase, Uh, Lunitari’s idish, shirak, damen du! and its translation, Oh, for god’s sake, light, damn you!

  And there was the answer.

  Raistlin felt his skin burn in embarrassment and was extremely thankful he had not mentioned his puzzlement to anyone, especially Antimodes, as he’d considered doing.

  “I am the fool,” he said to himself. “Making something simple into something difficult. ‘Shark.’ ‘Shirak.’ ‘Light.’ That is the command. And to douse the light. ‘Dulak.’ ‘Dark.’ ”

  The magical light in the crystal blinked out.

  Triumphant, Raistlin unpacked his writing equipment, a small quill made of a trimmed goose feather and a sealed bottle of ink. He was entering his discovery in his own small journal when his throat seemed to thicken and swell, shutting off the windpipe. He dropped the quill, causing an inkblot upon the journal, and coughed and choked and struggled for breath. When the spasm passed, he was exhausted. He lacked the strength to lift the feather quill. Barely able to creep back to his bed, he lay down thankfully, resentfully, to wait for the dizziness, the weakness to pass.