War of the Twins (9 page)

“All will be well, my brother,” Raistlin said softly. “Trust me.”

Caramon glanced at his twin out of the corner of his eye. Seeing his look, Raistlin smiled sardonically. “I will send one of these with you,” the mage continued, motioning with his slender hand.

“I’d rather not!” Caramon muttered, scowling as the pair of disembodied eyes nearest him drew nearer still.

“Attend him,” Raistlin commanded the eyes. “He is under my protection. You see me? You know who I am?”

The eyes lowered their gaze in reverence, then fixed their cold and ghastly stare upon Caramon. The big warrior shuddered and cast one final glance at Raistlin, only to see his brother’s face turn grim and stern.

“The guardians will guide you safely through the Grove. You may have more to fear, however, once you leave it. Be wary, my brother. This city is not the beautiful, serene place it will become in two hundred years Now, refugees pack it, living in the gutters, the streets, wherever they can. Carts rumble over the cobblestones every morning, removing the bodies of those who died during the night. There are men out there who will murder you for your boots. Buy a sword, first thing, and carry it openly in your hand.”

“I’ll worry about the town,” Caramon snapped. Turning abruptly, he walked off down the corridor, trying without much success to ignore the pale, glowing eyes that floated near his shoulder.

Raistlin watched until his brother and the guardian had passed beyond the staff’s radius of magical light and were swallowed up by the noisome darkness. Waiting until even the echoes of his brother’s heavy footfalls had faded, Raistlin turned and reentered the study.

Lady Crysania sat in her chair, trying without much success to comb her fingers through her tangled hair. Padding softly across the floor to stand near her, unseen, Raistlin reached into one of the pockets of his black robes and drew forth a handful of fine white sand. Coming up behind her, the mage raised his hand and let the sand drift down over the woman’s dark hair.

“Ast tasark simiralan krynawi,”
Raistlin whispered, and almost immediately Crysania’s head drooped, her eyes closed, and she drifted into a deep, magical sleep. Moving to stand before her, Raistlin stared at her for long moments.

Though she had washed the stain of tears and blood from her face, the marks of her journey through darkness were still visible in the blue shadows beneath her long lashes, a cut upon her lip, and the pallor of her complexion. Reaching out his hand, Raistlin gently brushed back the hair that fell in dark tendrils across her eyes.

Crysania had cast aside the velvet curtain she had been using as a blanket as the room was warmed by the fire. Her white robes, torn and stained with blood, had come loose
around her neck. Raistlin could see the soft curves of her breasts beneath the white cloth rising and falling with her deep, even breathing.

“Were I as other men, she would be mine,” he said softly.

His hand lingered near her face, her dark, crisp hair curling around his fingers.

“But I am not as other men,” Raistlin murmured. Letting her hair fall, he pulled the velvet curtain up around her shoulders and across her slumbering form. Crysania smiled from some sweet dream, perhaps, and nestled more snugly into the chair, resting her cheek upon her hand as she laid her head on the armrest.

Raistlin’s hand brushed against the smooth skin of her face, recalling vivid memories. He began to tremble. He had but to reverse the sleep spell, take her in his arms, hold her as he held her when he cast the magic spell that brought them to this place. They would have an hour alone together before Caramon returned.…

“I am
not
as other men!” Raistlin snarled.

Abruptly walking away, his dour gaze encountered the staring, watchful eyes of the guardians.

“Watch over her while I am gone,” he said to several half-seen, hovering spectres lurking in the dark shadows in the corner of the study. “You two,” he ordered the two who been with him when he awakened, “accompany me.”

“Yes, Master,” the two murmured. As the staff’s light fell upon them, the faint outlines of black robes could be seen.

Stepping out into the corridor, Raistlin carefully closed the door to the study behind him. He gripped the staff, spoke a soft word of command, and was instantly taken to the laboratory at the top of the Tower of High Sorcery.

He had not even drawn a breath when, materializing out of the darkness, he was attacked.

Shrieks and howls of outrage screamed around him. Dark shapes darted out of the air, daring the light of the staff as bone-white fingers clutched for his throat and grasped his robes, rending the cloth. So swift and sudden was the attack and so awful the sense of hatred that Raistlin very nearly lost control.

But he was in command of himself quickly. Swinging the staff in a wide arc, shouting hoarse words of magic, he drove back the spectres.

“Talk to them!” he commanded the two guardians with him. “Tell them who I am!”

“Fistandantilus,” he heard them say through a roaring in his ears, “… though his time has not yet come as was foretold … some magical experiment.…”

Weakened and dizzy, Raistlin staggered to a chair and slumped down into it. Bitterly cursing himself for not being prepared for such an onslaught and cursing the frail body that was, once again, failing him, he wiped blood from a jagged cut upon his face and fought to remain conscious.

This is
your
doing, my Queen. His thoughts came grimly through a haze of pain. You dare not fight me openly. I am too strong for you on this—my plane—of existence! You have your foothold in this world. Even now, the Temple has appeared in its perverted form in Neraka. You have wakened the evil dragons. They are stealing the eggs of the good dragons. But the door remains closed, the Foundation Stone has been blocked by self-sacrificing love. And that was your mistake. For now, by your entry into
our
plane, you have made it possible for us to enter
yours!
I cannot reach you yet … you cannot reach me.… But the time will come … the time will come.…

“Are you unwell, Master?” came a frightened voice near him. “I am sorry we could not prevent them from harming you, but you moved too swiftly! Please, forgive us. Let us help—”

“There is nothing you can do!” Raistlin snarled, coughing. He felt the pain in his chest ease. “Leave me a moment.… Let me rest. Drive these others out of here.”

“Yes, Master.”

Closing his eyes, waiting for the horrible dizziness and pain to pass, Raistlin sat for an hour in the darkness, going over his plans in his mind. He needed two weeks of unbroken rest and study to prepare himself. That time he would find here easily enough. Crysania was his—she would follow him
willingly, eagerly in fact, calling down the power of Paladine to assist him in opening the Portal and fighting the dread Guardians beyond.

He had the knowledge of Fistandantilus, knowledge accumulated by the mage over the ages. He had his own knowledge, too, plus the strength of his younger body. By the time he was ready to enter, he would be at the height of his powers—the greatest archmage ever to have lived upon Krynn!

The thought comforted him and gave him renewed energy. The dizziness subsided finally, the pain eased. Rising to his feet, he cast a quick glance about the laboratory. He recognized it, of course. It looked exactly the same as when he had entered it in a past that was now two hundred years in the future.
Then
he had come with power—as foretold. The gates had opened, the evil guardians had greeted him reverently—not attacked him.

As he walked through the laboratory, the Staff of Magius shining to light his way, Raistlin glanced about curiously. He noticed odd, puzzling changes. Everything should have been
exactly
as it was when he would arrive two hundred years from now. But a beaker now standing intact had been broken when he found it. A spellbook now resting on the large stone table, he had discovered on the floor.

“Do the guardians disturb things?” he asked the two who remained with him. His robes rustled about his ankles as he made his way to the very back of the huge laboratory, back to the Door That Was Never Opened.

“Oh, no, Master,” said one, shocked. “We are not permitted to touch anything.”

Raistlin shrugged. Lots of things could happen in two hundred years to account for such occurrences. “Perhaps an earthquake,” he said to himself, losing interest in the matter as he approached the shadows where the great Portal stood.

Raising the Staff of Magius, he shone its magical light ahead of him. The shadows fled the far corner of the laboratory, the corner where stood the Portal with its platinum carvings of the five dragon heads and its huge silver-steel door that no key upon Krynn could unlock.

Raistlin held the staff high … and gasped.

For long moments he could do nothing but stare, the breath wheezing in his lungs, his thoughts seething and burning. Then, his shrill scream of anger and rage and fury pierced the living fabric of the Tower’s darkness.

So dreadful was the cry, echoing through the dark corridors of the Tower, that the evil guardians cowered back into their shadows, wondering if perhaps their dread Queen had burst in upon them.

Caramon heard the cry as he entered the door at the bottom of the Tower. Shivering with sudden terror, he dropped the packages he carried and, with trembling hands, lit the torch he had brought. Then, the naked blade of his new sword in his hand, the big warrior raced up the stairs two at a time.

Bursting into the study, he saw Lady Crysania looking around in sleepy fearfulness.

“I heard a scream—” she said, rubbing her eyes and rising to her feet.

“Are you all right?” Caramon gasped, trying to catch his breath.

“Why, yes,” she said, looking startled, as she realized what he was thinking. “It wasn’t me. I must have fallen asleep. It woke me—”

“Where’s Raist?” Caramon demanded.

“Raistlin!” she repeated, alarmed, and started to push her way past Caramon when he caught hold of her.

“This is why you slept,” he said grimly, brushing fine white sand from her hair. “Sleep spell.”

Crysania blinked. “But why—”

“We’ll find out.”

“Warrior,” said a cold voice almost in his ear.

Whirling, Caramon thrust Crysania behind him, raising his sword as a black-robed, spectral figure materialized out of the darkness. “You seek the wizard? He is above, in the laboratory. He is in need of assistance, and we have been commanded not to touch him.”

“I’ll go,” Caramon said, “alone.”

“I’m coming with you,” Crysania said. “I
will
come with you,” she repeated firmly, in response to Caramon’s frown.

Caramon started to argue, then, remembering that she
was
a cleric of Paladine and had once before exerted her powers over these creatures of darkness, shrugged and gave in, though with little grace.

“What happened to him, if you were commanded not to touch him?” Caramon asked the spectre gruffly as he and Crysania followed it from the study out into the dark corridor. “Keep close to me,” he muttered to Crysania, but the command was not necessary.

If the darkness had seemed alive before, it throbbed and pulsed and jittered and jabbered with life now as the guardians, upset by the scream, thronged the corridors. Though he was now warmly dressed, having purchased clothes at the marketplace, Caramon shivered convulsively with the chill that flowed from their undead bodies. Beside him, Crysania shook so she could barely walk.

“Let me hold the torch,” she said through clenched teeth. Caramon handed her the torch, then encircled her with his right arm, drawing her near. She clasped her arm about him, both of them finding comfort in the touch of living flesh as they climbed the stairs after the spectre.

“What happened?” he asked again, but the spectre did not answer. It simply pointed up the spiral stairs.

Holding his sword in his left hand, his sword hand, Caramon and Crysania followed the spectre as it flowed up the stairs, the torchlight dancing and wavering.

After what seemed an endless climb, the two reached the top of the Tower of High Sorcery, both of them aching and frightened and chilled to the very heart.

“We must rest,” Caramon said through lips so numb he was practically inaudible. Crysania leaned against him, her eyes closed, her breath coming in labored gasps. Caramon himself did not think he could have climbed another stair, and he was in superb physical condition.

“Where is Raist—Fistandantilus?” Crysania stammered after her breathing had returned somewhat to normal.

“Within.” The spectre pointed again, this time to a closed door and, as it pointed, the door swung silently open.

Cold air flowed from the room in a dark wave, ruffling Caramon’s hair and blowing aside Crysania’s cloak. For a moment Caramon could not move. The sense of evil coming from within that chamber was overwhelming. But Crysania, her hand firmly clasped over the medallion of Paladine, began to walk forward.

Reaching out, Caramon drew her back. “Let me go first.”

Crysania smiled at him wearily. “In any other case but this, warrior,” she said, “I would grant you that privilege. But, here, the medallion I hold is as formidable a weapon as your sword.”

“You have no need for any weapon,” the spectre stated coldly. “The Master commanded us to see that you come to no harm. We will obey his request.”

“What if he’s dead?” Caramon asked harshly, feeling Crysania stiffen in fear beside him.

“If he had died,” the spectre replied, its eyes gleaming, “your warm blood would already be upon our lips. Now enter.”

Hesitantly, Crysania pressed close beside him, Caramon entered the laboratory. Crysania lifted the torch, holding it high, as both paused, looking around.

“There,” Caramon whispered, the innate closeness that existed between the twins leading him to find the dark mass, barely visible on the floor at the back of the laboratory.

Her fears forgotten, Crysania hurried forward, Caramon following more slowly, his eyes warily scanning the darkness.

Raistlin lay on his side, his hood drawn over his face. The Staff of Magius lay some distance from him, its light gone out, as though Raistlin—in bitter anger—had hurled it from him. In its flight, it had, apparently, broken a beaker and knocked a spellbook to the floor.