Brothers in Arms

by Margaret Weis

  Caramon sneaked a quick look inside the tomb, looked quickly away before he had a chance to see anything horrible, like a moldy skeleton with bits of flesh hanging off the bones. Startled by what he saw, he looked back.

  “The Knight!” Caramon breathed. “The Knight who called to me!”

  A body lay in the tomb, a body clad in ancient armor that gleamed in the light of the Staff of Magius, a soft light shed down upon the Knight with loving grace. The Knight wore a helm made in a style that had been popular before the Cataclysm. He wore a tabard over his armor. The tabard’s fabric was old, yellowed; the embroidered satin rose that adorned it was worn and faded. The Knight clasped the hilt of a sword in his hands. Dried rose petals surrounded the Knight’s body, lay scattered over the tabard and the shining sword. A sweet fragrance of roses lingered in the air.

  “I thought I recognized the carven figure on the tomb,” Raistlin said thoughtfully. “The armor, the tabard, the helm—all exactly like those worn by the Knight who came to ask us to aid him. A Knight who has been dead perhaps hundreds of years!”

  “Don’t say things like that,” Scrounger pleaded, his voice a squeak. “This place is spooky enough as it is! Wouldn’t this be a good time to go?”

  Looking at the Knight lying in his tomb, Caramon was again reminded of his friend Sturm. The reminder was not a happy one. Caramon hoped it wasn’t an omen.

  He began to brush away some of the dust from the still, stone figure carved upon the lid.

  Raistlin stood gazing upon the Knight, resting in a peace and tranquillity that the young mage, who suffered the constant burning in his lungs and the more painful burning of his own ambitions, momentarily envied.

  “Look at this, Raist!” Caramon marveled. “There’s an inscription.”

  Brushing aside the dust, he uncovered a small plaque made of bronze that had been set into the stone above the knight’s heart.

  “I can’t read it,” Caramon said, twisting his head at an odd angle to see.

  “It’s in Solamnic,” Raistlin said, recognizing immediately the language he’d been wrestling for months, ever since receiving the book describing the Staff of Magius. “It says—” He brushed aside more dust and read aloud.

  “ ‘Here lies one who died defending the Temple of Paladine and its servants from the faithless and the forlorn. By the Knight’s last request, made with his dying breath, we bury him in this chamber so that he may continue to stand watch over the precious treasure, which it is our duty and our privilege to guard. Paladine grant him rest when his duty is fulfilled.’ ”

  All three looked at one another. All three repeated the same word at the same time.

  “Treasure!”

  Caramon looked about the chamber as if he expected to see chests spilling out coins and jewels. “Scrounger was right! Does it say where the treasure is, Raist?”

  Raistlin continued to brush away dust, but there was nothing more to be read.

  “It’s funny, but I’m not the least bit scared anymore,” Scrounger announced. “I wouldn’t mind exploring.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt to look around,” said Caramon, bending down to try to peer underneath the tomb. He was disappointed to find it set solidly into the cavern floor. “What do you say, Raist?”

  Raistlin was sorely tempted. The strange and unreasoning fear he’d experienced was gone. He had a responsibility to the wounded, but as he had said before, he had a responsibility to make certain that the temple was safe. If he happened to come across a treasure chest while doing so, no one could fault him.

  “What would you do if you found a treasure, Caramon?” Scrounger asked.

  “I’d buy an inn,” Caramon said.

  “You’d be your own best customer.” Scrounger laughed.

  I would do only good, if a treasure came into my possession, Raistlin thought. I would move to Palanthas and purchase the largest house in the city. I would have servants to wait on me and to work in my laboratory, which would be the largest and finest money could buy. I would purchase every spellbook in every mageware shop from here to Northern Ergoth. I would start a library that would rival the library in the Tower of High Sorcery. I would buy magical artifacts and magical gems and wands and potions and scrolls.

  He saw himself rich, powerful, beloved, feared. Saw himself quite clearly. He stood in a tower, dark, foreboding, surrounded by death. He wore black robes, around his neck, a pendant of green stone streaked with blood. …

  “Look what I found!” Scrounger called out excitedly, pointing. “Another gate!”

  Raistlin only half-heard him. The image of himself was slow to dissolve. When it finally faded away, it left a disquieting feeling behind.

  Scrounger stood beside a wrought iron gate, his face pressed against the bars, staring into the darkness beyond.

  “It leads into another tunnel,” he reported. “Maybe it’s the tunnel where the treasure is!”

  “We’ve found it, Raist!” Caramon said exultantly, crowding behind Scrounger, looking out over his head. “I know we’ve found it! Bring your light over here!”

  “I don’t suppose it would hurt to take a look,” Raistlin said. “Move away from there. Give me room to see what I’m doing. Don’t touch the gate, Caramon! It might be magically trapped. Let me look at it.”

  Caramon and Scrounger dutifully stepped back.

  Raistlin approached the gate. He could sense magical power, immense magical power. But not from the gate. The power lay beyond. Magical artifacts, perhaps. Artifacts from hundreds of years ago, before the Cataclysm. Lying undisturbed all this time, waiting … waiting …

  He turned the handle. The iron gate creaked open. Raistlin took one step into the darkness beyond only to find a shadowy form blocking his way.

  “Shirak.” He lifted the staff to see what it was.

  The staff’s white light gleamed red in the burning eyes of Immolatus.

  19

  THE WIZARD’S EYES BURNED RED, FED FROM THE FIRE OF HATRED AND frustration that still roared in his belly and that could find no outlet in this accursed body. The heat of the flames radiated from his flesh. He had lost considerable blood from the wound in his side. Each breath he drew was agony. His head ached and throbbed. These weaknesses, a plague to his weak human form, would disappear once he regained his splendid, strong, and powerful dragon form. Once he was out of this accursed building. He would make them pay, make them all pay.…

  Finding his way blocked, Immolatus lifted his gaze and focused on a bright light, which pierced his aching eyes like a steel lance. He glared at the light, furious, and then he saw its source.

  “The Staff of Magius!” Immolatus cried with a grinding glee. “I’ll have something from this misadventure, after all.”

  Reaching out his hand, the dragon plucked the staff from Raistlin’s grasp, and with the other hand, he struck the young man a blow that sent him sprawling to the stone floor.

  Kitiara had trailed Immolatus through the cavern’s corridors. When he stopped at the entrance to the burial chamber, Kitiara crept forward, sword drawn, planning to attack the wizard in the burial chamber, where she had room to swing her sword.

  Unexpectedly, Immolatus stopped before entering the gate, shouting something about a staff. He sounded pleased, exultant, as if he’d just stumbled across a long-lost companion. Fearful that the dragon had found a friend and that he might yet escape her, Kitiara looked past Immolatus’s shoulder to see what new foe she might face.

  Caramon!

  Paralyzed with amazement, Kitiara at first doubted her senses. Caramon was safely back in Solace, not wandering about caverns in Hope’s End. But there was no mistaking those massive shoulders, the ham-fisted hands, the curly hair, and that gaping expression of dumbfounded astonishment.

  Caramon! Here! She was so lost in startlement that she barely paid attention to his companions—a red-robed wizard and a kenderish-looking fellow. Kit paid little attention to them. The sight of her brother, wearing the armor of the baro
n—the enemy no less—brought such confused thoughts to her that she lowered her sword and retreated a safe distance back down the corridor to consider how to deal with this bizarre situation.

  One thought was uppermost in her mind: now was not the time for a family reunion.

  The blow of the wizard’s hand struck Raistlin squarely on the breastbone. Stunned at the sight of Immolatus springing up out of the darkness, Raistlin could not react fast enough to save himself. He went down as if felled by a thunderbolt, struck his head when he landed—sprawled and gasping for breath—on the cavern floor. Pain lanced through his skull. He came near to blacking out.

  Looking up blearily from the floor, Raistlin saw Immolatus holding the Staff of Magius, gloating over his prize. Raistlin’s most precious possession, his most valued treasure, the symbol of his achievement, his triumph over sickness and suffering, his reward for long and torturous hours of study, his victory over himself—this was the prize Immolatus had taken from him.

  The loss of the staff banished pain, banished amazement, banished any fear he held for his life, any value placed on that life.

  With a snarl of fury, Raistlin leapt to his feet, heedless of the pain and the blue and yellow stars that shot through his vision, half-blinding him. He attacked Immolatus with a courage and strength and ferocity that astounded his brother, already astounded by the sight of the strange Red Robe who had burst upon them so suddenly.

  Raistlin did not fight his desperate battle alone. The Staff of Magius aided him. Created by an archmage of immense power, brought into being with one intent—to aid in the fight against Queen Takhisis—the staff and its master had fought her evil wyrms during the last Dragon War.

  The staff had never known its master’s fate. The staff knew that Magius was dead only when they came to bring the staff to be laid to rest on his funeral pyre. History never recorded the name of the White Robe who saved the staff. Some say that it was Solinari himself, come down from the heavens, who plucked the staff from the flames. Certainly it was someone who had the foresight and the wisdom to know that although the Queen might be defeated now, dark wings would once again blot out Krynn’s sun.

  The Staff of Magius penetrated Immolatus’s disguise. The staff knew that a dragon, a red dragon, a minion of Queen Takhisis, had laid covetous hands upon it. The staff unleashed its anger, an anger pent up for hundreds of years. The staff waited until Immolatus had a good, solid grip on it, then let loose its magic.

  An explosion of white light erupted from the staff. A blast rocked the burial chamber. Caramon was staring directly at the staff when its anger flared. The light seared his eyes. He fell back in agony, clapping his hands over his face. A black hole ringed round with purple fire obscured his vision, left him blind as a child in the womb. Warm blood splattered his face and hands. He heard a horrible, rising scream.

  “Raist!” he cried, ragged and fearful, trying desperately to see. “Raist!”

  The blast knocked Scrounger to the cavern floor, rattled his wits in his head. He lay staring up dazedly at the ceiling, wondering how a lightning bolt had managed to strike this far underground.

  Raistlin had sensed the staff’s fury, realized it was about to unleash its magical rage. Averting his eyes, he flung up his arm to protect his face. The force of the explosion sent him staggering back against the tomb, where, it seemed, he felt a firm hand support and steady him, keep him from falling. Raistlin thought the comforting touch belonged to his twin. Raistlin would later come to realize that Caramon, blind and helpless, was halfway across the burial chamber at the time.

  Immolatus screamed. Pain such as he had known only once before—pain inflicted by the magical dragonlance—flared up his arm, spread like searing flame throughout his body. The dragon let go of the staff. He had no choice. He no longer had a hand.

  Drenched with his own blood, cut by the shards of his own broken bones, Immolatus had never been so furious in his life. Though grievous, the dragon’s wounds were not mortal. He had one desire and that was to kill these wretched beings who had inflicted such horrible damage on him. He released himself from the spell that bound him to human form. When he had regained his own body, he would incinerate these gnats, these worms with their infernal stinging bite.

  Raistlin’s enchanted gaze saw the dragon in midtransformation, he saw the wizard’s human body shriveling, saw something red, glittering, monstrously evil rising from it. What that being was, he had no idea. Raistlin had one thought now and that was to retrieve his staff, which lay on the floor, its crystal blazing fiercely. He knelt, seized the staff. Using all his strength, strength he did not know he possessed, drawing on his fear and his terror and his pain, he swung the staff at Immolatus, smote him on the chest.

  The staff’s own magical fury added impetus to Raistlin’s strike. Their combined force was like a lightning strike.

  The blow lifted Immolatus, propelled him backward through the iron gate, flung him, half in and half out of his dragon form, clear of the burial chamber into the narrow tunnel. Immolatus smashed up against the rock wall of the corridor. Bones cracked and snapped, but they were the bones of his feeble human form and he could knit them back together with a single word of magic.

  Immolatus lay a moment in the tunnel, in the darkness, reveling in the sensation of his strength, his power, his immenseness returning. His jaws grew and elongated, his teeth snapped with anticipation of crunching human bone, the muscles of his body rippled pleasantly beneath the newly forming scales that were soft now but would soon be hard as diamond. The fire burned in his belly, gurgled in his throat. He was growing too big for the corridor, but that didn’t matter. He would rise up, cleave through the rock, raise the mountain, and drop it on the bodies of those who had dared insult him. He needed only a few more moments.…

  A voice, a woman’s voice, cold and biting as steel, pierced his head. “You have disobeyed me for the last time.”

  Kitiara’s sword caught the light of the Staff of Magius and shone silver in that light.

  Wounded, weakened by loss of blood and his spellcasting, dazzled by the flaring light, Immolatus looked into that light and thought he saw his Queen.

  Furious, vengeful, implacable. She stood over him and pronounced his doom.

  The sword drove into his back, severed his spine.

  Immolatus gave a horrific cry of anger and malice, he jerked and twitched spasmodically, no longer in control of his own body. He glared at his destroyer and though he saw her through a blood-dimmed mist, he recognized Kitiara.

  “I will not die … a human!” Immolatus hissed. “This will be my tomb. But I will see to it that it is yours, as well, worm!”

  Kitiara wrenched her sword free of the body, stumbled backward. In his death throes, the dying dragon was continuing to revert to his original form. The transformation was almost complete, his body—a body far too big for the narrow cavern corridor in which she stood—continued to expand.

  Immolatus twisted and writhed, his massive tail thrashed about, struck the rock wall, time and again. Wings flapped wildly, his clawed feet scrabbled and scraped against the tunnel walls. The ceiling cracked, supporting timbers creaked and sagged. The mountain shuddered, the floor shook.

  “Raist!” Caramon’s frantic voice. “Where are you? I … I can’t see! What’s happening?”

  “I am here, my brother. Here. I have hold of you! Stop flailing about! Take my hand! Scrounger, help me with him! Back out the way we came! Quickly!”

  Kitiara made a convulsive leap for the wrought iron gate. She stumbled into the burial chamber in time to see a flutter of red robe, a flickering light that came from a crystal atop a staff. The iron gate swung shut. The tunnel behind her gave way with a crash. Kitiara staggered toward the tomb of the Knight, hoping against hope that the burial chamber was strong enough to withstand the fury of a vindictive goddess.

  Rocks fell down around her. She grabbed hold of the tomb, clung to it as the floor shook.

  “I helped you, Sir
Phantom!” she cried. “Now it’s your turn!”

  She crouched by the tomb, keeping her hand on the marble. Rocks fell, but not near her. They fell on the place where she’d seen the body, the body of herself. Nothing there now but crumbled stone. Kitiara shut her eyes against the grit and the dust and pressed herself close against the tomb with more fondness than she had ever pressed against the body of any lover.

  Eventually the rumbling ceased, the dust settled.

  Kitiara stirred, opened her eyes, blinked away the grime, and dared to draw a breath. Dust flew into her mouth, she began to cough. The darkness was absolute. She could see nothing, not even her hand in front of her face. Hands outstretched, she grabbed hold of the top of the tomb, felt the marble, smooth and cold. She pulled herself to her feet and stood leaning against the sarcophagus for support.

  A faint light, softly gleaming, began to shine. Kit looked for the source, saw that the light came from the tomb. The sarcophogus was no longer empty, as it had been when she’d first seen it. It held a corpse. Kitiara looked on face of the corpse, a face at peace, a face victorious.

  “Thanks, Sir Nigel,” said Kit. “I guess we’re even.”

  She looked around, took stock of her situation. The cavern was filled with fallen rock, but she could see no cracks in the ceiling or the floor, no holes in the walls. She looked back at the iron gate that led to the tunnel into the mountains. Beyond the iron gate was a wall of rock. The dragon’s body lay buried beneath a cairn, flung down on him by his Queen. That way was blocked. But the way in, through the other silver and gold gate, was open and relatively clear of debris.

  “Be seeing you,” she said to the Knight and started to leave.

  A force held her, a force not of this world.

  Kitiara’s hand, her sword hand, froze to the marble as if she had placed wet fingers on a block of ice. Fear twisted her stomach. She might wrench her hand free, but she would leave her flesh and her blood behind. For one horrible moment she thought that was to be the price she would have to pay, and then she realized, suddenly, that she might escape with a lesser cost.