“Where do you suppose Jenna and Dalamar went?” Usha asked, not particularly caring. She took a drink of hot, spiced cider, thought she had never tasted anything so delicious, and drank two more glasses.
“Dunno.” Tas was gnawing vigorously on a hunk of bread. “I didn’t see them leave. But then that’s not unusual. People come and go like that all the time around here. Say, look, your pouches are gone, too.”
“So they are.” Usha, for some reason, found that funny.
She laughed. Tasslehoff laughed. Their laughter made them thirsty, and they drank more cider. Their thirst made them hungry, and they kept eating … and eating.
Pausing at last, Usha wiped her hands on a clean cloth. Then, settling back in her chair, she said to Tas, “Tell me more about this person named Raistlin.”
In another room, Jenna spread the contents of Usha’s pouch onto a table. Dalamar bent over them, taking care not to touch them, but studying each with a critical eye.
“That’s the lot,” said Jenna.
“What’s in the other pouch?”
“Clothes, all made of silk, like those she’s wearing. Nothing else.”
“You said she said something about having a message for me.”
“That’s what she told the jailer. Three possibilities: she’s lying, she’s carrying it in her head, or she has it on her person.”
Dalamar considered this. “I doubt she’s lying. With what intent? She obviously has no idea who I am.”
Jenna sniffed. “She claims she doesn’t recognize the name Raistlin Majere, either.”
“That’s possible, all things considered.” Dalamar continued inspecting the contents of the pouch. Placing his hand over them, he recited certain words. Every object on the table began to glow with a soft light, a few shining brighter than the rest. He lowered his hand, sighed with satisfaction. “You are right. All of them magical, some of them extremely powerful. And, none of them were made by any mage in any of the orders. You agree with me, my love?”
“Most assuredly.” Jenna slipped her hand over his shoulder, kissed him lightly on the cheek.
Dalamar smiled, but did not withdraw his attention from the magical paraphernalia. “I wonder what spells are locked inside?” he said longingly.
He extended his hand again, this time moving toward a smallish piece of amber, which had been skillfully carved into the shape of a deer. Hesitantly, grimacing—as if he knew what was going to happen—he touched the amber with the tip of one finger.
A blue flash, a sizzling sound. Dalamar gasped in pain and hastily withdrew his hand.
Jenna, pursing her lips, shook her head.
“I could have told you that would happen. They are intended to be used by one person and one person only.”
“Yes, I guessed as much myself. Still, it was worth a try.”
The two exchanged glances, arrived at the same conclusion.
“Of Irda make?” Jenna asked.
“No doubt of it,” Dalamar replied. “We have a few such artifacts stored in the Tower of Wayreth. I recognize the workmanship and”—he shook away the pain in his injured hand—“the effects.”
“We can’t use them, but obviously, since the Irda gave them to this girl, she can. Yet, I sense none of the art about her.”
“Still, she must have some talent. If she is who we think she is.”
Jenna looked amazed. “Do you have any doubts? Didn’t you see her eyes? Like liquid gold! Only one man on Krynn had eyes like that. Even the kender recognized her.”
“Tasslehoff?” Dalamar glanced up from his study of the artifacts. “Did he? I wondered why you risked bringing him along. What did he say?”
“Too much. And too loudly,” Jenna replied grimly. “People were starting to take notice.”
“The kender as well.” Dalamar walked over to the window, stared out into the night that seemed merely a deepening of the perpetual darkness surrounding the tower. “Can it be that the legend is true?”
“What else? The girl has obviously been raised in some place far from Ansalon. She has with her magical objects of great value crafted by the Irda. The kender recognized her and, beyond all of that, she has the golden eyes. She would be of the right age. And then there is the very fact that she was guided here.”
Dalamar frowned, not altogether pleased at the notion. “I remind you again that Raistlin Majere is dead. He has been dead for well over twenty years.”
“Yes, my dear one. Don’t be upset.” Jenna ran her hand through Dalamar’s soft hair, gently kissed him on the ear. “But, there was that little matter of the Staff of Magius. Locked up inside the tower laboratory. Guarded by the undead with orders to allow no one to pass, not even you. Yet, who has the staff now? Palin Majere, Raistlin’s nephew.”
“The staff could have been a gift from Magius as well as Raistlin,” Dalamar said irritably, withdrawing from her touch. “Magius being the more likely, since he was friends with the knight Huma, and all know that Palin’s brothers were planning on entering the knighthood. I explained this all to the Conclave—”
“Yes, my love,” Jenna said, lowering her eyes. “Still, you are the one who refuses to believe in coincidence. Was it coincidence that brought that young woman here? Or something else?”
“Perhaps you are right,” Dalamar said, after a moment’s thought.
He walked over to a large, ornately framed wall mirror. Jenna joined him. For a moment, they saw only their own reflections. Dalamar reached out, brushed his hand across the glass. The reflections vanished, were replaced by Usha and Tasslehoff, eating the charmed food, drinking the enchanted cider, laughing at nothing and at everything.
“How strange,” Dalamar murmured, watching them. “I thought it no more than legend. Yet there she sits.”
“Raistlin’s daughter,” Usha said softly. “We have found Raistlin’s daughter!”
7
The inn of the last home.
A discussion between old friends.
t was nighttime in Solace. The day’s heat remained, rising from the dirt, the trees, the walls of the houses. But at least the night banished the angry, fiery sun, which glared down from the heavens like the baleful eye of some infuriated god. At night, the eye closed and people breathed sighs of relief and began to venture out.
This summer was the hottest and driest anyone in Solace could remember. The dirt streets were baked hard; cracks had formed. A choking dust, rising whenever a cart trundled by, hung in the air, cast a pall over the valley. The beautiful leaves of the gigantic vallenwood trees wilted, drooped limp and seemingly lifeless from dried-out, creaking boughs.
Life had turned upside-down in Solace. Usually the days were bustling, busy times, with people going to market, farmers working in the fields, children playing, women washing clothes in the streams. Now the days were empty, lifeless, drooping, like the leaves on the trees.
The crops in the fields had withered and died in the blaring heat, so the farmers no longer went to market. Most of the stalls in the market closed. It was too hot to play, so the children stayed indoors, fretting and whining and bored. The rushing streams had shrunk to meandering, muddy puddles. The waters of Crystalmir Lake were unnaturally warm. Dead fish washed up on the shoreline. Few people left the relative coolness of their homes during the day. They came out at night.
“Like bats,” Caramon Majere said gloomily to his friend, Tanis Half-Elven. “We’ve all turned into bats, sleeping during the day, flying about by night …”
“Flying everywhere except here,” Tika remarked. Standing behind Caramon’s chair, she fanned herself with a tray. “Not even during the war was business this bad.”
The Inn of the Last Home, perched high in the branches of an enormous vallenwood tree, was brightly lit, generally a welcome beacon to late-night travelers. Shining through the stained glass, the warm light conjured up images of cool ale, mulled wine, honey mead, tingling cider and, of course, Otik’s famous spiced potatoes. But the inn was empty this
night, as it had been for many nights previous. Tika no longer bothered to light the cooking fire. It was just as well, for the kitchen was too hot to work in comfortably anyway.
No customers gathered around the bar to tell tales of the War of the Lance or swap more recent gossip. There were rumors of civil war among the elves. Rumors that the dwarves of Thorbardin had sent out the word to all their people to return home or risk being shut out when the dwarves—fearing elven attack—sealed up their mountain fortress. No peddlers tramped by on their customary routes. No tinkers came to mend pots. No minstrels came to sing. The only people still traveling these days were kender, and they generally spent their nights in local jail cells, not inns.
“People are nervous and upset,” Caramon said, feeling called upon to make some excuse for his vanished customers. “All this talk of war. And unless this heat breaks soon, there’ll be no harvest. Food will be hard to come by this winter. That’s why they’re not corning—”
“I know, dear. I know.” Tika put the tray on the counter. Wrapping her arms around her husband’s brawny shoulders, she hugged him close. “I was just talking. Don’t pay any attention to me.”
“As if I could ever not pay attention to you,” Caramon said, running his hand through his wife’s hair.
The passing years had not been easy ones for either of them. Tika and Caramon both worked hard to maintain the inn and, though it was work they loved, it was not easy. While most of her guests slumbered, Tika was awake, supervising the cooking of breakfast. All day long there were rooms to be made up, food to be prepared, guests welcomed with a cheery smile, clothes to be washed. When night came and the guests went to bed, Tika swept the floor, scrubbed the tables, and planned out what she would do tomorrow.
Caramon was still as strong as three men, still as big as three men, though much of his girth had shifted location, due to what he claimed was his bound duty to taste all the food. His hair had gone a bit gray at the temples and he had what he called “cogitating lines” marking his forehead. He was genial, affable, and took life as it came. He was proud of his boys, adored his little daughters, dearly loved his wife. His one regret, his one sorrow, was the loss of his twin brother to evil and to ambition. But he never allowed that one small cloud to dim his life.
Though she had been married over twenty-five years, and had borne five children, Tika could still turn heads when she walked through the bar. Her figure had grown plumper over the years, her hands cracked and reddened from being constantly in sudsy water. But her smile was still infectious, and she could proudly boast that there wasn’t a strand of gray mingled with her luxuriant red curls.
Tanis could not say the same. His human blood was cooling—rapidly, it seemed to him. The elven blood could do little to warm him. He was strong, still, and could hold his own in battle—though he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Perhaps it was the sorrow, the worry, the turmoil of these past few months that streaked his hair with silver, his beard with gray.
Tika and Caramon remained for a moment in an affectionate embrace, finding rest and comfort in each other.
“Besides,” Tika added, glancing at Tanis, “it’s well for you that we’re not busy. When are they supposed to arrive?”
Tanis looked out the window. “Not until well after dark. At least that was Porthios’s plan. It will depend on how Alhana is feeling.…”
“Making her tramp about the wilderness! In this heat and in her condition. Men!” Tika sniffed. Straightening, she gave her husband a playful thump on the head.
“What’d you hit me for?” Caramon demanded, rubbing his scalp and peering around at his wife. “I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“You’re all alike, that’s what,” she said, somewhat vaguely. She stared out the window into the gathering darkness, twisting her apron around and around in her hands.
She’s middle-aged, Tanis realized suddenly. Odd. I never noticed before. Perhaps it’s because, whenever I think of Tika Waylan, I see that saucy red-headed girl who thwacked draconians over the head with her skillet. I used to be able to find that girl again in Tika’s green eyes, but not tonight. Tonight I see the lines around her mouth and the sag in her shoulders. And in her eyes—fear.
“Something’s wrong with the boys,” she said suddenly. “Something’s happened. I know it.”
“Nothing’s happened,” said Caramon, with fond exasperation. “You’re tired. It’s the heat—”
“I’m not tired. And it’s not the heat!” Tika snapped, temper flaring. “I’ve never felt like this before.” She put her hand over her heart. “As if I were smothering. I can’t draw a breath, my heart aches so. I … I think I’ll go see to Alhana’s room.”
“She’s seen to that room every hour on the hour, ever since you got here, Tanis.” Caramon sighed. He watched his wife climb the stairs, a worried expression on his face. “She’s been acting peculiar all day. It started last night, with some terrible dream she can’t remember. But then it’s been like that ever since the boys joined the knighthood. She was the proudest person at the ceremony. You remember, Tanis? You were there.”
Tanis smiled. Yes, he remembered.
Caramon shook his head. “But she cried herself to sleep that night, when we were alone. She thought nothing of fighting draconians when she was young. I reminded her of that. She called me a ‘dolt.’ Said that was then and this was now and I couldn’t possibly understand a mother’s heart. Women.”
“Where are young Sturm and my namesake?” Tanis asked.
“The last we heard from them, they were riding up north, toward Kalaman. Seems that the Solamnic leadership is finally taking you seriously, Tanis. About the Knights of Takhisis, I mean.” Caramon lowered his voice, though the common room was empty, except for the two of them. “Palin wrote that they were going north, to patrol along the coast.”
“Palin went with them? A mage?” Tanis was amazed. For the moment, he forgot his own troubles.
“Unofficially. The knights would never sanction having a mage along, but since this was routine patrol duty, Palin was allowed to accompany his brothers. At least that’s what High Command said. Palin obviously thought there’s more to it than that. Or so he implied.”
“What made him think so?”
“Well, Justarius’s death, for one.”
“What?” Tanis stared. “Justarius … dead?”
“You didn’t know?”
“How could I?” Tanis demanded. “I’ve been skulking about in the woods for months, trying my best to keep the elves out of civil war. This night will be the first I’ve slept in a real bed since I left Silvanesti. What happened to Justarius? And who’s head of the Wizards’ Conclave now?”
“Can’t you guess? Our old friend.” Caramon was grim.
“Dalamar. Of course. I should have known. But Justarius—”
“I don’t know the details. Palin can’t say much. But the wizards of the three moons took your warnings about the dark knights seriously, if no one else on Ansalon did. Justarius ordered a magical assault on the Gray Robes of Storm’s Keep. He and several others entered the tower there. They barely escaped with their lives, and Justarius didn’t even do that much.”
“Fools,” Tanis said bitterly. “Ariakan’s wizards are immensely powerful. They draw their magic from all three moons, or so Dalamar told me. A small force of magic-users from Wayreth entering the Gray Tower would be marked for disaster. I can’t imagine Dalamar going along with a lame-brained scheme like that.”
“He came out of it well enough,” Caramon said dryly. “You’ve got to wonder which side he’s on in all this. He serves the Dark Queen, too.”
“His allegiance is to magic first, though. Just as his shalafi taught him.”
Tanis smiled at old memories, was pleased to see that Caramon smiled, too. Raistlin, Caramon’s twin brother, had been Dalamar’s shalafi—the elven term for teacher. And though the relationship had ended in disaster—and very nearly the destruction
of Krynn—Dalamar had learned a great deal from his shalafi. A debt he never hesitated to acknowledge.
“Yes, well, you know the dark elf better than I do,” Caramon acknowledged. “At any rate, he took part in the raid, was one of the few to return unscathed. Palin said Dalamar was extremely shaken and upset, refused to talk about what happened. It was the dark elf who brought back Justarius’s body, though I guess since Dalamar is keeping company with Justarius’s daughter, Jenna, he didn’t have much choice. At any rate, the wizards took a drubbing. Justarius wasn’t the only one to die, though he was the highest rank. And now Dalamar’s head of the Conclave.”
“You think he was the one who sent Palin out with the knights?”
“Palin would have had to get permission to leave his studies.” Caramon grunted. “The wizards are a lot stricter now than in the old days. Raistlin came and went as he chose.”
“Raistlin was a law unto himself,” Tanis said, yawning. He wished he hadn’t mentioned sleeping in a bed. The thought of clean sheets, soft mattress, fluffy pillow, was suddenly overpowering. “I’ll have to have a talk with Dalamar. Obviously, he knows something about these dark knights.”
“Will he tell you?” Caramon was dubious.
“If he thinks it’s to his benefit,” Tanis replied. “Porthios will be staying here for at least a few weeks. Alhana will need time to rest and, though he won’t admit it, Porthios himself is on the verge of exhaustion. Hopefully, I can find time to get away, pay Dalamar a visit.
“Which reminds me, I can’t thank you enough, Caramon”—Tanis rested his hand over the large hand of the big human—“for letting Porthios and Alhana stay here. Their presence could put you in danger if anyone found out. They have been formally cast out, exiled. They are dark elves, which means they are fair game—”
“Bah!” Caramon waved away the thought, inadvertently driving away a pesky fly at the same time. “The people in Solace don’t know anything about elven tiffs, could care less anyway. So Porthios and Alhana have been exiled, branded ‘dark elves.’ Unless they’ve both suddenly turned purple, no one here will ever know the difference. An elf’s an elf, to us.”
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