War of the Twins (51 page)

He had to stop a moment for a brief argument with his legs—they still seemed much inclined to return to bed—but this momentary weakness passed, and the kender reached the bottom of the staircase. Listening, he could hear voices.

“Drat,” he muttered, coming to a halt and ducking back into the shadows. “Someone’s up there. Guards, I suppose. Sounds like dwarves. Those whatcha’ma call-ems—Dewar.” Tas stood, quietly, trying to make out what the deep voices were saying. “You’d think they could speak a civilized language,” he snapped irritably. “One a fellow could understand. They sound excited, though.”

Curiosity finally getting the better of him, Tas crept up the first flight of stone steps and peered around the corner. He ducked back quickly with a sigh. “Two of ’em. Both blocking the stair. And there’s no way around them.”

His pouches with his tools and weapons were gone, left behind in the mountain dungeon of Thorbardin. But he still had his knife. “Not that it will do much good against
those.”
Tas reflected, envisioning once again the huge battle-axes
he’d seen the dwarves holding.

He waited a few more moments, hoping the dwarves would leave. They certainly seemed worked up, but they also appeared rooted to the spot.

“I can’t stay here all night or day, whichever it is,” the kender grumbled. “Well, as dad said, ‘always try talk before the lockpick.’ The very
worst
they could do to me, I suppose—not counting killing me, of course—would be to lock me back up. And, if I’m any judge of locks, I could probably be out again in about half-an-hour.” He began to climb the stairs. “Was it dad who said that,” he pondered as he climbed, “or Uncle Trapspringer?”

Rounding the corner, he confronted two Dewar, who appeared considerably startled to see him. “Hello!” the kender said cheerfully. “My name is Tasslehoff Burrfoot.” He extended a hand. “And your names are? Oh, you’re not going to tell me. Well, that’s all right. I probably couldn’t pronounce them anyway. Say, I’m a prisoner and I’m looking for the fellow who was keeping me locked up in that cell back there. You probably know him—a black-robed magic-user. He was interrogating me, when something I said took him by surprise, I think, because he had a sort of a fit and ran out of the room. And he forgot to lock the door behind him. Did either of you see which way he—Well!” Tas blinked. “How rude.”

This in response to the actions of the Dewar who, after regarding the kender with growing looks of alarm on their faces, shouted one word, turned, and bolted.

“Antarax,”
Tas repeated, looking after them, puzzled. “Let’s see. That sounds like dwarven for … for … Oh, of course! Burning death. Ah—they think I’ve still got the plague! Mmmmm, that’s handy. Or is it?”

The kender found himself alone in another long corridor, every bit as bleak and dismal as the one he’d just left. “I still don’t know where I am, and no one seems inclined to tell me. The only way out is that staircase down there and those two are heading for it so I guess the best thing to do is just tag along. Caramon’s bound to be around here somewhere.”

But Tas’s legs, which had already registered a protest
against walking, informed the kender in no uncertain terms that running was out of the question. He stumbled along as fast as possible after the dwarves, but they had dashed up the stairs and were out of sight by the time he had made it halfway down the corridor. Puffing along, feeling a bit dizzy but determined to find Caramon, Tas climbed the stairs after them. As he rounded a corner, he came to a sudden halt.

“Oops,” he said, and hurriedly ducked into the shadows. Clapping a hand over mouth, he severely reprimanded himself. “Shut up, Burrfoot! It’s the whole Dewar army.”

It certainly seemed like it. The two he had been following had met up with about twenty other dwarves. Crouching in the shadows, Tas could hear them yelping excitedly, and he expected them to come tromping down after him any moment.… But nothing happened.

He waited, listening to the conversation, then, risking a peep, he saw that some of the dwarves present didn’t look like Dewar. They were clean, their beards were brushed, and they were dressed in bright armor. Arid they didn’t appear pleased. They glared grimly at one of the Dewar, as though they’d just as soon skin him as not.

“Mountain dwarves!” Tas muttered to himself in astonishment, recognizing the armor. “And, from what Raistlin said,
they’re
the enemy. Which means they’re supposed to be in their mountain, not in ours. Provided we’re in a mountain, of course, which I’m beginning to think likely from the looks of it. But, I wonder—”

As one of the mountain dwarves began speaking, Tas brightened. “Finally, someone who knows how to talk!” The kender sighed in relief. Because of the mixture of races, the dwarf was speaking a crude version of Common and dwarven.

The gist of the conversation, as near as Tas could follow, was that the mountain dwarf didn’t give a cracked stone about a crazed wizard or a wandering, plague-ridden kender.

“We came here to get the head of this General Caramon,” the mountain dwarf growled. “You said that the wizard promised it would be arranged. If it is, we can dispense with the wizard. I’d just as soon not deal with a Black Robe anyway.
And now answer me this, Argat. Are your people ready to attack the army from within? Are you prepared to kill this general? Or was this just a trick? If so, you will find it will go hard with your people back in Thorbardin.”

“It no trick!” Argat growled, his fist clenching. “We ready to move. The general is in the War Room. The wizard said he make sure him alone with just bodyguard. Our people get the hill dwarves to attack. When
you
keep your part bargain, when scouts give signal that great gates to Thorbardin are open—”

“The signal is sounding, even as we speak,” the mountain dwarf snapped. “If we were above ground level, you could hear the trumpets. The army rides forth!”

“Then we go!” Argat said. Bowing, he added with a sneer, “If your lordship dares, come with us—we take General Caramon’s head right now!”

“I will join you,” the mountain dwarf said coldly, “if only to make certain you plot no further treachery.”

What else the two said was lost on Tas, who leaned back against the wall. His legs had gone all prickly-feeling, and there was a buzzing noise in his ears.

“Caramon,” he whispered, clutching at his head, trying to think. “They’re going to kill him! And Raistlin’s done this!” Tas shuddered. “Poor Caramon. His own twin. If he knew that, it would probably just kill him dead on the spot. The dwarves wouldn’t need axes.”

Suddenly, the kender’s head snapped up. “Tasslehoff Burrfoot!” he said angrily. “What are you doing—standing around like a gully dwarf with one foot in the mud. You’ve got to save him! You promised Tika you’d take care of him, after all.”

“Save him? How, you doorknob?” boomed a voice inside of him that sounded suspiciously like Flint’s. “There must be twenty dwarves! And you armed with that rabbit-killer!”

“I’ll think of something,” Tas retorted. “So just keep sitting under your tree.”

There was a snorting sound. Resolutely ignoring it, the kender stood up tall and straight, pulled out his little knife, and crept quietly—as only kender can—down the corridor.

he had the dark, curly hair and the crooked smile that men would later find so charming in her daughter. She had the simple, guileless honesty that would characterize one of her sons and she had a gift—a rare and wonderful power—that she would pass on to the other.

She had magic in her blood, as did her son. But she was weak—weak-willed, weak-spirited. Thus she let the magic control her, and thus, finally, she died.

Neither the strong-souled Kitiara nor the physically strong Caramon was much affected by their mother’s death. Kitiara hated her mother with bitter jealousy, while Caramon, though he cared about his mother, was far closer to his frail twin. Besides, his mother’s weird ramblings and mystical trances made her a complete enigma to the young warrior.

But her death devastated Raistlin. The only one of her children who truly understood her, he pitied her for her weakness, even as he despised her for it. And he was furious at her for dying, furious at her for leaving him alone in this world,
alone with the gift. He was angry and, deep within, he was filled with fear, for Raistlin saw in her his own doom.

Following the death of her father, his mother had gone into a grief-stricken trance from which she never emerged. Raistlin had been helpless. He could do nothing but watch her dwindle away. Refusing food, she drifted, lost, onto magical planes only she could see. And the mage—her son—was shaken to his very core.

He sat up with her on that last night. Holding her wasted hand in his, he watched as her sunken, feverish eyes stared at wonders conjured up by magic gone berserk.

That night, Raistlin vowed deep within his soul that no one and nothing would ever have the power to manipulate him like this—not his twin brother, not his sister, not the magic, not the gods. He and he alone would be the guiding force of his life.

He vowed this, swearing it with a bitter, binding oath. But he was a boy still—a boy left alone in darkness as he sat there with his mother the night she died. He watched her draw her last, shuddering breath. Holding her thin hand with its delicate fingers (so like his own!), he pleaded softly through his tears, “Mother, come home.… Come home!”

Now at Zhaman he heard these words again, challenging him, mocking him, daring him. They rang in his ears, reverberated in his brain with wild, discordant clangings. His head bursting with pain, he stumbled into a wall.

Raistlin had once seen Lord Ariakas torture a captured knight by locking the man inside a bell tower. The dark clerics rang the bells of praise to their Queen that night—all night. The next morning, the man had been found dead—a look of horror upon his face so profound and awful that even those steeped in cruelty were quick to dispose of the corpse.

Raistlin felt as if he were imprisoned within his own bell tower, his own words ringing his doom in his skull. Reeling, clutching his head, he tried desperately to blot out the sound.

“Come home … come home.…”

Dizzy and blinded by the pain, the mage sought to outrun it. He staggered about with no clear idea of where he was,
searching only for escape. His numb feet lost their footing. Tripping over the hem of his black robe, he fell to his knees.

An object leaped from a pocket in his robes and rolled out onto the stone floor. Seeing it, Raistlin gasped in fear and anger. It was another mark of his failure—the dragon orb, cracked, darkened, useless. Frantically he grabbed for it, but it skittered like a marble across the flagstone, eluding his clawing grasp.

Desperate, he crawled after it and, finally, it rolled to a stop. With a snarl, Raistlin started to take hold of it, then halted. Lifting his head, his eyes opened wide. He saw where he was, and he shrank back, trembling.

Before him loomed the Great Portal.

It was exactly like the one in the Tower of High Sorcery in Palanthas. A huge oval door standing upon a raised dais, it was ornamented and guarded by the heads of five dragons. Their sinuous necks snaking up from the floor, the five heads faced inward, five mouths open, screaming silent tribute to their Queen.

In the Tower at Palanthas, the door to the Portal was closed. None could open it except from within the Abyss itself, coming the opposite direction—an egress from a place none ever left. This door, too, was closed, but there were two who could enter—a White-Robed Cleric of Infinite Goodness and a Black-Robed Archmage of Infinite Evil. It was an unlikely combination. Thus the great wizards hoped to seal forever this terrible entrance onto an immortal plane.

An ordinary mortal, looking into that Portal, could see nothing but stark, chill darkness.

But Raistlin was no longer ordinary. Drawing nearer and nearer his goddess, bending his energies and his studies toward this one object, the archmage was now in a state suspended between both worlds. Looking into the closed door,
he
could almost penetrate that darkness! It wavered in his vision. Wrenching his gaze from it, he turned his attention back to retrieving the dragon orb.

How did it escape me? he wondered angrily. He kept the orb in a bag hidden deep within a secret pocket of his robes.
But then he sneered at himself, for he knew the answer. Each dragon orb was endowed with a strong sense of self-preservation. The one at Istar had escaped the Cataclysm by tricking the elven king, Lorac, into stealing it and taking it into Silvanesti. When the orb could no longer use the insane Lorac, it had attached itself to Raistlin. It had sustained Raistlin’s life when he was dying in Astinus’s library. It had conspired with Fistandantilus to take the young man to the Queen of Darkness. Now, sensing the greatest danger of its existence, it was trying to flee him.

He would not allow it! Reaching out, his hand closed firmly over the dragon orb.

There was a shriek.…

The Portal opened.

Raistlin looked up. It had not opened to admit him. No, it had opened to warn him—to show him the penalty of failure.