Margaret Weis - Time of the Twins

Looking up, fighting the pain, the kender saw the flash of golden armor and the torchlight glisten upon the blade of a sword. He recognized the man’s bronze, muscular body, but the man’s face—the face that should have been so familiar—was the face of someone Tas had never seen before.

“Caramon?” he whispered as the man surged past him. But Caramon neither saw him nor heard him. Frantically, Tas tried to stand up.

Then the aftershock hit and the ground rocked out from beneath Tas’s feet. Lurching back against a wall, he heard a cracking sound above him and saw the ceiling start to give way.

“Caramon!” he cried, but his voice was lost in the sound of wood tumbling down on top of him, knocking him in the head. Tas struggled to stay conscious, despite the pain. But his brain, as if stubbornly refusing to have anything more to do with this mess, snuffed out the lights. Tas sank into darkness.

Hearing in her mind Raistlin’s calm voice drawing her past death and destruction, Crysania ran without hesitation into the room that lay far below the Temple. But, on entering, her eager steps faltered. Hesitantly, she glanced around, her pulse beating achingly in her throat.

She had been blind to the horrors of the stricken Temple. Even now, she glanced at the blood on her dress and could not remember how it got there. But here, in this room, things stood out with vivid clarity, though the laboratory was lit only by light streaming from a crystal atop a magical staff. Staring around, overawed by a sense of evil, she could not make herself walk beyond the door.

Suddenly, she heard a sound and felt a touch on her arm. Whirling in alarm, she saw dark, living, shapeless creatures, trapped and held in cages. Smelling her warm blood, they stirred in the staff’s light, and it was the touch of one of their grasping hands she had felt. Shuddering, Crysania backed out of their way and bumped into something solid.

It was an open casket containing the body of what might have once been a young man. But the skin was stretched like parchment across his bones, his mouth was open in a ghastly, silent scream. The ground lurched beneath her feet, and the body in the casket bounced up wildly, staring at her from empty eye sockets.

Crysania gasped, no sound came from her throat, her body was chilled by cold sweat. Clutching her head in shaking hands, she squeezed her eyes shut to blot out the horrible sight. The world started to slip away, then she heard a soft voice.

“Come, my dear,” said the voice that had been in her mind. “Come. You are safe with me, now. The creatures of Fistandantilus’s evil cannot harm you while I am here.”

Crysania felt life return to her body. Raistlin’s voice brought comfort. The sickness passed, the ground quit shaking, the dust settled. The world lapsed into deathly silence.

Thankfully, Crysania opened her eyes. She saw Raistlin standing some distance from her, watching her from the shadows of his hooded head, his eyes glittering in the light of his staff. But, even as Crysania looked at him, she caught a glimpse of the writhing, caged shapes. Shuddering, she kept her gaze on Raistlin’s pale face.

“Fistandantilus?” she asked through dry lips. “He built this?”

“Yes, this laboratory is his,” Raistlin replied coolly. “It is one he created years and years ago. Unbeknownst to any of the clerics, he used his great magic to burrow beneath the Temple like a worm, eating away solid rock, forming it into stairs and secret doors, casting his spells upon them so that few knew of their existence.”

Crysania saw a thin-lipped sardonic smile cross Raistlin’s face as he turned to the light.

“He showed it to few, over the years. Only a handful of apprentices were ever allowed to share the secret.” Raistlin shrugged. “And none of these lived to tell about it.” His voice softened. “But then Fistandantilus made a mistake. He showed it to one young apprentice. A frail, brilliant, sharp-tongued young man, who observed and memorized every turn and twist of the hidden corridors, who studied every word of every spell that revealed secret doorways, reciting them over and over, committing them to memory, before he slept, night after night. And thus, we stand here, you and I, safe—for the moment—from the anger of the gods.”

Making a motion with his hand, he gestured for Crysania to come to the back part of the room where he stood at a large, ornately carved, wooden desk. On it rested a silverbound spellbook he had been reading. A circle of silver powder was spread around the desk. “That’s right. Keep your eyes on me. The darkness is not so terrifying then, is it?”

Crysania could not answer. She realized that, once again, she had allowed him, in her weakness, to read more in her eyes than she had intended him to see. Flushing, she looked quickly away.

“I-I was only startled, that’s all,” she said. But she could not repress a shudder as she glanced back at the casket. “What is—or was—that?” she whispered in horror.

“One of the Fistandantilus’s apprentices, no doubt,” Raistlin answered. “The mage sucked the life force from him to extend his own life. It was something he did... frequently.”

Raistlin coughed, his eyes grew shadowed and dark with some terrible memory, and Crysania saw a spasm of fear and pain pass over his usually impassive face. But before she could ask more, there was the sound of a crash in the doorway. The black-robed mage quickly regained his composure. He looked up, his gaze going past Crysania.

“Ah, enter, my brother. I was just thinking of the Test, which naturally brought you to mind.”

Caramon! Faint with relief, Crysania turned to welcome the big man with his solid, reassuring presence, his jovial, good-natured face. But her words of greeting died on her lips, swallowed up by the darkness that only seemed to grow deeper with the warrior’s arrival.

“Speaking of tests, I am pleased you survived yours, brother,” Raistlin said, his sardonic smile returned. “This lady”—he glanced at Crysania—“will have need of a body-guard where we go. I can’t tell you how much it means to me to have someone along I know and trust.”

Crysania shrank from the terrible sarcasm, and she saw Caramon flinch as though Raistlin’s words had been tiny, poisoned barbs, shooting in his flesh. The mage seemed neither to notice nor care, however. He was reading his spellbook, murmuring soft words and tracing symbols in the air with his delicate hands.

“Yes, I survived your test,” Caramon said quietly. Entering the room, he came into the light of the staff. Crysania caught her breath in fear.

“Raistlin!” she cried, backing away from Caramon as the big man came slowly forward, the bloody sword in his hand. “Raistlin, look!” Crysania said, stumbling into the desk near where the mage was standing, unknowingly stepping into the circle of silver powder. Grains of it clung to the bottom of her robe, shimmering in the staff’s light.

Irritated at the interruption, the mage glanced up.

“I survived your test,” Caramon repeated, “as you survived the Test in the Tower. There, they shattered your body. Here, you shattered my heart. In its place is nothing now, just a cold emptiness as black as your robes. And, like this swordblade, it is stained with blood. A poor wretch of a minotaur died upon this blade. A friend gave his life for me, another died in my arms. You’ve sent the kender to his death, haven’t you? And how many more have died to further your evil designs?” Caramon’s voice dropped to a lethal whisper. “This ends it, my brother. No more will die because of you. Except one—myself. It’s fitting, isn’t it, Raist? We came into this world together; together, we’ll leave it.”