“Go away, please,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut, swallowing the tears like bitter medicine.
She felt warmth envelop her and the softness of velvet black robes brush against her bare arm. She smelled the sweet scent of spices and rose petals and a vaguely cloying scent of decay—bat’s wings, perhaps, the skull of some animal—those mysterious things magicians used to cast their spells. And then she felt a hand touch her cheek, slender fingers, sensitive and strong and burning with that strange warmth.
Either the fingers brushed the tears away or they dried at their burning touch, Crysania wasn’t certain. Then the fingers gently lifted her chin and turned her head away from the moonlight. Crysania couldn’t breathe, her heartbeat stifled her. She kept her eyes closed, fearing what she might see. But she could feel Raistlin’s slender body, hard beneath the soft robes, press against hers. She could feel that terrible warmth …
Crysania suddenly wanted his darkness to enfold her and hide her and comfort her. She wanted that warmth to burn away the cold inside of her. Eagerly, she raised her arms and reached out her hands … and he was gone. She could hear the rustle of his robes receding in the stillness of the corridor.
Startled, Crysania opened her eyes. Then, weeping once more, she pressed her cheek against the cold glass. But these were tears of joy.
“Paladine,” she whispered, “thank you. My way is clear. I will not fail!”
A dark-robed figure stalked the Temple halls. Any who met it shrank away from it in terror, shrank from the anger that could be felt if not seen on the hooded face. Raistlin at last entered his own deserted corridor, hit the door to his room with a blast that nearly shattered it, and caused flames to leap up in the grate with nothing more than a glance. The fire roared up the chimney and Raistlin paced, hurling curses at himself until he was too tired to walk. Then he sank into a chair and stared at the fire with a feverish gaze.
“Fool!” he repeated. “I should have foreseen this!” His fist clenched. “I should have known. This body, for all its strength, has the great weakness common to mankind. No matter how intelligent, how disciplined the mind, how controlled the emotions, that waits in the shadows like a great beast, ready to leap out and take over.” He snarled in rage and dug his nails into his palm until it bled. “I can still see her! I can see her ivory skin, her pale, soft lips. I can smell her hair and feel the curving softness of her body next to mine!”
“No!” This was fairly a shriek. “This must not, will not be allowed to happen! Or perhaps.…” A thought. “What if I were to seduce her? Would that not put her even more in my power?” The thought was more than tempting, it brought such a rush of desire to the young man that his entire body shook.
But the cold and calculating, logical part of Raistlin’s mind took over. “What do you know of lovemaking?” he asked himself with a sneer. “Of seduction? In this, you are a child, more stupid than your behemoth of a brother.”
Memories of his youth came back to him in a flood. Frail and sickly, noted for his biting sarcasm and his sly ways, Raistlin had certainly never attracted the attention of women, not like his handsome brother. Absorbed, obsessed by his studies of magic, he had not felt the loss—much. Oh, once he had experimented. One of Caramon’s girlfriends, bored by easy conquest, thought the big man’s twin brother might prove more interesting. Goaded by his brother’s gibes and those of his fellows, Raistlin had given way to her coarse overtures. It had been a disappointing experience for both of them. The girl returned gratefully to Caramon’s arms. For Raistlin, it had simply proved what he had long suspected—that he found true ecstasy only in his magic.
But this body—younger, stronger, more like his brother’s—ached with a passion he had never before experienced. Yet he could not give way to it. “I would end up destroying myself”—he saw with cold clarity—“and, far from furthering my objective, might well harm it. She is virgin, pure in mind and body. That purity is her strength. I need it tarnished, but I need it intact.”
Having firmly resolved this and being long experienced in the practice of exerting strict mental control over his emotions, the young mage relaxed and sat back in his chair, letting weariness sweep over him. The fire died low, his eyes closed in the rest that would renew his flagging power.
But, before he drifted off to sleep, still sitting in the chair, he saw once more, with unwanted vividness, a single tear glistening in the moonlight.
The Night of Doom continued. An acolyte was awakened from a sound sleep and told to report to Quarath. He found the elven cleric sitting in his chambers.
“Did you send for me, my lord?” the acolyte asked, attempting to stifle a yawn. He looked sleepy and rumpled. Indeed, his outer robes had been put on backward in his haste to answer the summons that had come so late in the night.
“What is the meaning of this report?” Quarath demanded, tapping at a piece of paper on his desk.
The acolyte bent over to look, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes enough to make the writing coherent.
“Oh, that,” he said after a moment. “Just what it says, my lord.”
“That Fistandantilus was not responsible for the death of my slave? I find that very difficult to believe.”
“Nonetheless, my lord, you may question the dwarf yourself. He confessed—after a great deal of monetary persuasion—that he had in reality been hired by the lord named there, who was apparently incensed at the church’s takeover of his holdings on the outskirts of the city.”
“I know what he’s incensed about!” Quarath snapped. “And killing my slave would be just like Onygion—sneaky and underhanded. He doesn’t dare face me directly.”
Quarath sat, musing. “Then why did that big slave commit the deed?” he asked suddenly, giving the acolyte a shrewd glance.
“The dwarf stated that this was something arranged privately between himself and Fistandantilus. Apparently the first ‘job’ of this nature that came his way was to be given to the slave, Caramon.”
“That wasn’t in the report,” Quarath said, eyeing the young man sternly.
“No,” the acolyte admitted, flushing. “I-I really don’t like putting anything about … the magic-user … down in writing. Anything like that, where he might read it—”
“No, I don’t suppose I blame you,” Quarath muttered. “Very well, you may go.”
The acolyte nodded, bowed, and returned thankfully to his bed.
Quarath did not go to his bed for long hours, however, but sat in his study, going over and over the report. Then, he sighed. “I am becoming as bad as the Kingpriest, jumping at shadows that aren’t there. If Fistandantilus wanted to do away with me, he could manage it within seconds. I should have realized—this is not his style.” He rose to his feet, finally. “Still, he was with her tonight. I wonder what that means? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps the man is more human than I would have supposed. Certainly the body he has appeared in this time is better than those he usually dredges up.”
The elf smiled grimly to himself as he straightened his desk and filed the report away carefully. “Yule is approaching. I will put this from my mind until the holiday season is past. After all, the time is fast coming when the Kingpriest will call upon the gods to eradicate evil from the face of Krynn. That will sweep this Fistandantilus and those who follow him back into the darkness which spawned them.”
He yawned, then, and stretched. “But I’ll take care of Lord Onygion first.”
The Night of Doom was nearly ended. Morning lit the sky as Caramon lay in his cell, staring into the gray light. Tomorrow was another game, his first since the “accident.”
Life had not been pleasant for the big warrior these last few days. Nothing had changed outwardly. The other gladiators were old campaigners, most of them, long accustomed to the ways of the Game.
“It is not a bad system,” Pheragas said with a shrug when Caramon confronted him the day after his return from the Temple. “Certainly better than a thousand men killing each other on the
fields of battle. Here, if one nobleman feels offended by another, their feud is handled secretly, in private, to the satisfaction of all.”
“Except the innocent man who dies for a cause he doesn’t care about or understand!” Caramon said angrily.
“Don’t be such a baby!” Kiiri snorted, polishing one of her collapsible daggers. “By your own account, you did some mercenary work. Did you understand or care about the cause then? Didn’t you fight and kill because you were being well paid? Would you have fought if you weren’t? I don’t see the difference.”
“The difference is I had a choice!” Caramon responded, scowling. “And I knew the cause I fought for! I never would have fought for anyone I didn’t believe was in the right! No matter how much money they paid me! My brother felt the same. He and I—” Caramon abruptly fell silent.
Kiiri looked at him strangely, then shook her head with a grin. “Besides,” she added lightly, “it adds spice, an edge of real tension. You’ll fight better from now on. You’ll see.”
Thinking of this conversation as he lay in the darkness, Caramon tried to reason it out in his slow, methodical fashion. Maybe Kiiri and Pheragas were correct, maybe he was being a baby, crying because the bright, glittering toy he had enjoyed playing with suddenly cut him. But—looking at it every way possible—he still couldn’t believe it was right. A man deserved a choice, to choose his own way to live, his own way to die. No one else had the right to determine that for him.
And then, in the predawn, a crushing weight seemed to fall on Caramon. He sat up, leaning on one elbow, staring unseeing into the gray cell. If that was true, if every man deserved a choice, then what about his brother? Raistlin had made his choice—to walk the ways of night instead of day. Did Caramon have the right to drag his brother from those paths?
His mind went back to those days he had unwittingly recalled when talking to Kiiri and Pheragas—those days right before the Test, those days that had been the happiest in his life—the days of mercenary work with his brother.
The two fought well together, and they were always welcomed by nobles. Though warriors were common as leaves in the trees, magic-users who could and would join the fighting were another thing altogether. Though many nobles looked somewhat dubious when they saw Raistlin’s frail and sickly appearance, they were soon impressed by his courage and his skill. The brothers were paid well and were soon much in demand.
But they always selected the cause they fought for with care.
“That was Raist’s doing,” Caramon whispered to himself wistfully. “I would have fought for anyone, the cause mattered little to me. But Raistlin insisted that the cause had to be a just one. We walked away from more than one job because he said it involved a strong man trying to grow stronger by devouring others.…
“But that’s what Raistlin’s doing!” Caramon said softly, staring up at the ceiling. “Or is it? That’s what they say he’s doing, those magic-users. But can I trust them? Par-Salian was the one who got him into this, he admitted that! Raistlin rid the world of this Fistandantilus creature. By all accounts, that’s a good thing. And Raist told me he didn’t have anything to do with the Barbarian’s death. So he hasn’t really done anything wrong. Maybe we’ve misjudged him.… Maybe we have no right to try to force him to change.…”
Caramon sighed. “What should I do?” Closing his eyes in forlorn weariness, he fell asleep, and soon the smell of warm, freshly baked muffins filled his mind.
The sun lit the sky. The Night of Doom ended. Tasslehoff rose from his bed, eagerly greeted the new day, and decided that he—he personally—would stop the Cataclysm.
CHAPTER
12
lter time!” Tasslehoff said eagerly, slipping over the garden wall into the sacred Temple area and dropping down to land in the middle of a flower bed. Some clerics were walking in the garden, talking among themselves about the merriment of the forthcoming Yule season. Rather than interrupt their conversation, Tas did what he considered the polite thing and flattened himself down among the flowers until they left, although it meant getting his blue leggings dirty.
It was rather pleasant, lying among the red Yule roses, so called because they grew only during the Yule season. The weather was warm, too warm, most people said. Tas grinned. Trust humans. If the weather was cold, Yule-type weather, they’d complain about that, too. He thought the warmth was delightful. A trifle hard to breathe in the heavy air, perhaps, but—after all—you couldn’t have everything.
Tas listened to the clerics with interest. The Yule parties must be splendid things, he thought, and briefly considered attending. The first one was tonight—Yule Welcoming. It would end early, since everyone wanted to get lots of sleep in preparation for the big Yule parties themselves, which would begin at dawn tomorrow and run for days—the last celebration before the harsh, dark winter set in.
“Perhaps I’ll attend that party tomorrow,” Tas thought. He had supposed that a Yule Welcoming party in the Temple would be solemn and grand and, therefore, dull and boring—at least from a kender viewpoint. But the way these clerics talked, it sounded quite lively.
Caramon was fighting tomorrow—the Games being one of the highlights of the Yule season. Tomorrow’s fight determined which teams would have the right to face each other in the Final Bout—the last game of the year before winter forced the closing of the arena. The winners of this last game would win their freedom. Of course, it was already predetermined who would win tomorrow—Caramon’s team. For some reason, this news had sent Caramon into a gloomy depression.
Tas shook his head. He never would understand that man, he decided. All this sulking about honor. After all, it was only a game. Anyway, it made things easy. It would be simple for Tas to sneak off and enjoy himself.
But then the kender sighed. No, he had serious business to attend to—stopping the Cataclysm was more important than a party, maybe even a couple of parties. He’d sacrifice his own amusement to this great cause.
Feeling very self-righteous and noble (and suddenly quite bored), the kender glared at the clerics irritably, wishing they’d hurry up. Finally, they strolled inside, leaving the garden empty. Heaving a sigh of relief, Tas picked himself up and brushed off the dirt. Plucking a Yule rose, he stuck it in his topknot for decoration in honor of the season, then slipped into the Temple.
It, too, was decorated for the Yule season, and the beauty and splendor took the kender’s breath away. He stared around in delight, marveling at the thousands of Yule roses that had been raised in gardens all over Krynn and brought here to fill the Temple corridors with their sweet fragrance. Wreaths of everbloom added a spicy scent, sunlight glistened off its pointed, polished leaves twined with red velvet and swans’ feathers. Baskets of rare and exotic fruits stood on nearly every table—gifts from all over Krynn to be enjoyed by everyone in the Temple. Plates of wonderful cakes and sweetmeats stood beside them. Thinking of Caramon, Tas stuffed his pouches full, happily picturing the big man’s delight. He had never known Caramon to stay depressed in the face of a crystal sugared almond puff.
Tas roamed the halls, lost in happiness. He almost forgot why he had come and had to remind himself continually of his Important Mission. No one paid any attention to him. Everyone he passed was intent on the upcoming celebration or on the business of running the government or the church or both. Few even gave Tas a second glance. Occasionally, a guard stared sternly at him, but Tas just smiled cheerily, waved, and went on. It was an old kender proverb—Don’t change color to match the walls. Look like you belong and the walls will change color to match you.
Finally, after many windings and turnings (and several stops to investigate interesting objects, some of which happened to fall into the kender’s pouches), Tas found himself in the one corridor that was not decorated, that was not filled with merry people making gleeful party arrangements, that was not resounding with the sounds of choirs practicing their Yule hymns. In this corridor, the curtains were still drawn, denying the sun adm
ittance. It was chill and dark and forbidding, more so than ever because of the contrast to the rest of the world.
Tas crept down the hall, not walking softly for any particular reason except that the corridor was so grimly silent and gloomy it seemed to expect everyone who entered to be the same and would be highly offended if he weren’t. The last thing Tas wanted to do was offend a corridor, he told himself, so he walked quietly. The possibility that he might be able to sneak up on Raistlin without the mage knowing it and catch a glimpse of some wonderful magical experiment certainly never crossed the kender’s mind.
Drawing near the door, he heard Raistlin speaking and, from the tone, it sounded like he had a visitor.
“Drat,” was Tas’s first thought. “Now I’ll have to wait to talk to him until this person leaves. And I’m on an Important Mission, too. How inconsiderate. I wonder how long they’re going to be.”
Putting his ear to the keyhole—to see if he could figure out how much longer the person planned to stay—Tas was startled to hear a woman’s voice answer the mage.
“That voice sounds familiar,” said the kender to himself, pressing closer to listen. “Of course! Crysania! I wonder what she’s doing here.”
“You’re right, Raistlin.” Tas heard her say with a sigh, “this is much more restful than those garish corridors. When I first came here, I was frightened. You smile! But I was. I admit it. This corridor seemed so bleak and desolate and cold. But now the hallways of the Temple are filled with an oppressive, stifling warmth. Even the Yule decorations depress me. I see so much waste, money squandered that could be helping those in need.”
She stopped speaking, and Tas heard a rustle. Since no one was talking, the kender quit listening and put his eyes to the keyhole. He could see inside the room quite clearly. The heavy curtains were drawn, but the chamber was lit with soft candlelight. Crysania sat in a chair, facing him. The rustling sound he heard was apparently her stirring in impatience or frustration. She rested her head on her hand, and the look on her face was one of confusion and perplexity.
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