Margaret Weis - Time of the Twins

Fearfully, Tas raised his head. He saw Lady Crysania backing away. He saw the death knight walk toward her with slow, steady steps.

The knight raised its right hand and pointed at Crysania with a pale, shimmering finger.

Tas felt a sudden, uncontrollable terror seize him. “No!” he moaned, shivering, though he had no idea what awful thing was about to happen.

The knight spoke one word.

“Die.”

At that moment, Tas saw Lady Crysania raise her hand and grasp the medallion she wore around her neck. He saw a bright flash of pure white light well from her fingers and then she fell to the ground as though stabbed by the fleshless finger.

“No!” Tasslehoff heard himself cry. He saw the orange flaring eyes turn their attention to him, and a chill, dank darkness, like the darkness of a tomb, sealed shut his eyes and closed his mouth...

Dalamar approached the door to the mage’s laboratory with trepidation, tracing a nervous finger over the runes of protection stitched onto the fabric of his black robes as he hastily rehearsed several spells of warding in his mind. A certain amount of caution would not have been thought unseemly in any young apprentice approaching the inner, secret chambers of a dark and powerful master. But Dalamar’s precautions were extraordinary. And with good reason. Dalamar had secrets of his own to hide, and he dreaded and feared nothing more in this world than the gaze of those golden, hourglass eyes.

And yet, deeper than his fear, an undercurrent of excitement pulsed in Dalamar’s blood as it always did when he stood before this door. He had seen wonderful things inside this chamber, wonderful... fearful...

Raising his right hand, he made a quick sign in the air before the door and muttered a few words in the language of magic. There was no reaction. The door had no spell cast upon it. Dalamar breathed a bit easier, or perhaps it was a sigh of disappointment. His master was not engaged in any potent, powerful magic, otherwise Raistlin would have cast a spell of holding upon the door. Glancing down at the floor, the dark elf saw no flickering, flaring lights beaming from beneath the heavy wooden door. He smelled nothing except the usual smells of spice and decay. Dalamar placed the five fingertips of his left hand upon the door and waited in silence.

Within the space of time it took the dark elf to draw a breath came the softly spoken command, “Enter, Dalamar.”

Bracing himself, Dalamar stepped into the chamber as the door swung silently open before him. Raistlin sat at a huge and ancient stone table, so large that one of the tall, broad-shouldered race of minotaurs living upon Mithas might have lain down upon it, stretched out his full height, and still had room to spare. The stone table, in fact the entire laboratory, were part of the original furnishings Raistlin had discovered when he claimed the Tower of High Sorcery in Palanthas as his own.

The great, shadowy chamber seemed much larger than it could possibly have been, yet the dark elf could never determine whether it was the chamber itself that seemed larger or he himself who seemed smaller whenever he entered it. Books lined the walls, here as in the mage’s study. Runes and spidery writing glowed through the dust gathered on their spines. Glass bottles and jars of twisted design stood on tables around the sides of the chamber, their bright-colored contents bubbling and boiling with hidden power.

Here, in this laboratory long ago, great and powerful magic had been wrought. Here, the wizards of all three Robes—the White of Good, the Red of Neutrality, and the Black of Evil—joined in alliance to create the Dragon Orbs—one of which was now in Raistlin’s possession. Here, the three Robes had come together in a final, desperate battle to save their Towers, the bastions of their strength, from the Kingpriest of Istar and the mobs. Here they had failed, believing it was better to live in defeat than fight, knowing that their magic could destroy the world.

The mages had been forced to abandon this Tower, carrying their spellbooks and other paraphernalia to the Tower of High Sorcery, hidden deep within the magical Forest of Wayreth. It was when they abandoned this Tower that the curse had been cast upon it. The Shoikan Grove had grown to guard it from all comers until—as foretold—“the master of past and present shall return with power.”

And the master had returned. Now he sat in the ancient laboratory, crouched over the stone table that had been dragged, long ago, from the bottom of the sea. Carved with runes that ward off all enchantments, it was kept free of any outside influences that might affect the mage’s work. The table’s surface was ground smooth and polished to an almost mirrorlike finish. Dalamar could see the nightblue bindings of the spellbooks that sat upon it reflected in the candlelight.

Scattered about on its surface were other objects, too—objects hideous and curious, horrible and lovely: the mage’s spell components. It was on these Raistlin was working now, scanning a spellbook, murmuring soft words as he crushed something between his delicate fingers, letting it trickle into a phial he held.

“Shalafi,” Dalamar said quietly, using the elven word for “master.”

Raistlin looked up.

Dalamar felt the stare of those golden eyes pierce his heart with an indefinable pain. A shiver of fear swept over the dark elf, the words, He knows! seethed in his brain. But none of this emotion was outwardly visible. The dark elf’s handsome features remained fixed, unchanged, cool. His eyes returned Raistlin’s gaze steadily. His hands remained folded within his robes as was proper.

So dangerous was this job that—when They had deemed it necessary to plant a spy inside the mage’s household—They had asked for volunteers, none of them willing to take responsibility for cold-bloodedly commanding anyone to accept this deadly assignment. Dalamar had stepped forward immediately.

Magic was Dalamar’s only home. Originally from Silvanesti, he now neither claimed nor was claimed by that noble race of elves. Born to a low caste, he had been taught only the most rudimentary of the magical arts, higher learning being for those of royal blood. But Dalamar had tasted the power, and it became his obsession. Secretly he worked, studying the forbidden, learning wonders reserved for only the high-ranking elven mages. The dark arts impressed him most, and thus, when he was discovered wearing the Black Robes that no true elf could even bear to look upon, Dalamar was cast out of his home and his nation. And he became known as a “dark elf,” one who is outside of the light. This suited Dalamar well for, early on, he had learned that there is power in darkness.

And so Dalamar had accepted the assignment. When asked to give his reasons why he would willingly risk his life performing this task, he had answered coldly, “I would risk my soul for the chance to study with the greatest and most powerful of our order who has ever lived!”

“You may well be doing just that,” a sad voice had answered him.

The memory of that voice returned to Dalamar at odd moments, generally in the darkness of the night—which was so very dark inside the Tower. It returned to him now. Dalamar forced it out of his mind.

“What is it?” Raistlin asked gently.

The mage always spoke gently and softly, sometimes not even raising his voice above a whisper. Dalamar had seen fearful storms rage in this chamber. The blazing lightning and crashing thunder had left him partially deaf for days. He had been present when the mage summoned creatures from the planes above and below to do his bidding; their screams and wails and curses still sounded in his dreams at night. Yet, through it all, he had never heard Raistlin raise his voice. Always that soft, sibilant whisper penetrated the chaos and brought it under control.