Margaret Weis - Test of the Twins

“Why won’t we go, Caramon? This place is horrible. We don’t have any food or water and, from what I’ve seen, there’s not much likelihood of us finding either. Plus, we’re liable to get blasted right out of our shoes if one of those lightning bolts hits us, and that storm’s getting closer and closer and you know this isn’t Solace—”

“I don’t know, Tas,” Caramon said quietly. “But I’m going to find out. What’s the matter? Aren’t you curious? Since when did a kender ever turn down the chance for an adventure?” He began to limp down the trail again.

“I’m just as curious as the next kender,” Tas mumbled, hanging his head and trudging along after Caramon. “But it’s one thing to be curious about some place you’ve never been before, and quite another to be curious about home. You’re not supposed to be curious about home! Home isn’t supposed to change. It just stays there, waiting for you to come back. Home is someplace you say ‘My, this looks just like it did when I left!’ not ‘My, this looks like six million dragons flew in and wrecked the joint!’ Home is not a place for adventures, Caramon!”

Tas peered up into Caramon’s face to see if his argument had made any impression. If it had, it didn’t show. There was a look of stern resolution on the pain-filled face that rather surprised Tas, surprised and startled him as well.

Caramon’s changed, Tas realized suddenly. And it isn’t just from giving up dwarf spirits. There’s something different about him—he’s more serious and... well, responsible looking, I guess. But there’s something else. Tas pondered. Pride, he decided after a minute of profound reflection.

Pride in himself, pride and determination.

This isn’t a Caramon who will give in easily, Tas thought with a sinking heart. This isn’t a Caramon who needs a kender to keep him out of mischief and taverns. Tas sighed bleakly. He rather missed that old Caramon.

They came to the bend in the road. Each recognized it, though neither said anything—Caramon, because there wasn’t anything to be said, and Tas, because he was steadfastly refusing to admit he recognized it. But both found their footsteps dragging.

Once, travelers coming around that bend would have seen the Inn of the Last Home, gleaming with light. They would have smelled Otik’s spiced potatoes, heard the sounds of laughter and song drift from the door every time it opened to admit the wanderer or regular from Solace. Both Caramon and Tas stopped, by unspoken agreement, before they rounded that corner.

Still they said nothing, but each looked around him at the desolation, at the burned and blasted tree stumps, at the ash covered ground, at the blackened rocks. In their ears rang a silence louder and more frightening than the booming thunder. Because both knew that they should have heard Solace, even if they couldn’t see it yet. They should have heard the sounds of the town—the sounds of the smithy, the sounds of market day, the sounds of hawkers and children and merchants, the sounds of the Inn.

But there was nothing, only silence. And, far off in the distance, the ominous rumble of thunder.

Finally, Caramon sighed. “Let’s go,” he said, and hobbled forward.

Tas followed more slowly, his shoes so caked with mud that he felt as if he were wearing iron-shod dwarf boots. But his shoes weren’t nearly as heavy as his heart. Over and over he muttered to himself, “This isn’t Solace, this isn’t Solace, this isn’t Solace,” until it began to sound like one of Raistlin’s magical incantations.

Rounding the bend, Tas fearfully raised his eyes—and heaved a vast sigh of relief.

“What did I tell you, Caramon?” he cried over the wailing of the wind. “Look, nothing there, nothing there at all. No Inn, no town, nothing.” He slipped his small hand into Caramon’s large one and tried to pull him backward. “Now, let’s go. I’ve got an idea. We can go back to the time when Fizban made the golden span come out of the sky—”

But Caramon, shaking off the kender, was limping ahead, his face grim. Coming to a halt, he stared down at the ground. “What’s this then, Tas?” he demanded in a voice taut with fear.

Chewing nervously on the end of his topknot, the kender came up to stand beside Caramon.

“What’s what?” he asked stubbornly.

Caramon pointed.

Tas sniffed. “So, it’s a big cleared-off space on the ground. All right, maybe something was there.

Maybe a big building was there. But it isn’t there now, so why worry about it? I—Oh, Caramon!”

The big man’s injured knee suddenly gave way. He staggered, and would have fallen if Tas hadn’t propped him up. With Tas’s help, Caramon made his way over to the stump of what had been an unusually large vallenwood, on the edge of the empty patch of mud-covered ground.

Leaning against it, his face pale with pain and dripping with sweat, Caramon rubbed his injured knee.

“What can I do to help?” Tas asked anxiously, wringing his hands. “I know! I’ll find you a crutch!

There must be lots of broken branches lying about. I’ll go look.”

Caramon said nothing, only nodded wearily.

Tas dashed off, his sharp eyes scouring the gray, slimy ground, rather glad to have something to do and not to have to answer questions about stupid cleared-off spaces. He soon found what he was looking for—the end of a tree branch sticking up through the mud. Catching hold of it, the kender gave it a yank. His hands slipped off the wet branch, sending him toppling over backward.

Getting up, staring ruefully at the gunk on his blue leggings, the kender tried unsuccessfully to wipe it off. Then he sighed and grimly took hold of the branch again. This time, he felt it give a little.

“I’ve almost got it, Caramon!” he reported. “I—”

A most unkenderlike shriek rose above the screaming wind. Caramon looked up in alarm to see Tas’s topknot disappearing into a vast sink hole that had apparently opened up beneath his feet.

“I’m coming, Tas!” Caramon called, stumbling forward. “Hang on!”

But he halted at the sight of Tas crawling back out of the hole. The kender’s face was like nothing Caramon had ever seen. It was ashen, the lips white, the eyes wide and staring.

“Don’t come any closer, Caramon,” Tas whispered, gesturing him away with a small, muddy hand. “Please, stay back!”

But it was too late. Caramon had reached the edge of the hole and was staring down. Tas, crouched beside him on the ground, began to shake and sob. “They’re all dead,” he whimpered.

“All dead.” Burying his face in his arms, he rocked back and forth, weeping bitterly.

At the bottom of the rock-lined hole that had been covered by a thick layer of mud lay bodies, piles of bodies, bodies of men, women, children. Preserved by the mud, some were still pitifully recognizable—or so it seemed to Caramon’s feverish gaze. His thoughts went to the last mass grave he had seen the plague village Crysania had found. He remembered his brother’s angry, grief-stricken face. He remembered Raistlin calling down the lightning, burning everything, burning the village to ash.

Gritting his teeth, Caramon forced himself to look into that grave—forced himself to look for a mass of red curls... He turned away with a shuddering sob of relief, then, looking around wildly, he began to run back toward the Inn. “Tika!” he screamed.

Tas raised his head, springing up in alarm. “Caramon!” he cried, slipped in the mud, and fell.

“Tika!” Caramon yelled hoarsely above the howl of the wind and the distant thunder. Apparently oblivious to the pain of his injured leg, he staggered down a wide, clear area, free of tree stumps—the road leading past the Inn, Tas’s mind registered, though he didn’t think it clearly. Getting to his feet again, the kender hurried after Caramon, but the big man was making rapid headway, staggering through the mud, his fear and hope giving him strength.