Margaret Weis - Test of the Twins

A doorway! Tanis realized suddenly. The five heads rose from a golden dais, forming an oval shape with their necks. Each craned inward, its mouth open in a frozen scream. Tanis looked beyond them into the void within the oval. Nothing was there, but that nothing moved. All was empty, and alive. He knew suddenly, instinctively, where the doorway led, and the knowledge chilled him.

“The Portal,” said Caramon, seeing Tanis’s pale face and staring eyes. “Come here, give me a hand.”

“You’re going in there?” Tanis whispered savagely, amazed at the big man’s calm. Crossing the room, he came to stand beside his friend. “Caramon, don’t be a fool!”

“I have no choice, Tanis,” Caramon said, that new look of quiet decision on his face. Tanis started to argue, but Caramon turned away from him, back to the injured dark elf.

“I’ve seen what will happen!” he reminded Tanis.

Swallowing his words, choking on them, Tanis knelt down beside Dalamar. The dark elf had managed to drag himself to a sitting position, so that he could face the Portal. He had lapsed into unconsciousness again, but, at the sound of their voices, his eyes flared open.

“Caramon!” He gasped, reaching out a trembling hand. “You must stop—”

“I know, Dalamar,” Caramon said gently. “I know what I must do. But I need your help! Tell me—”

Dalamar’s eyes fluttered shut, his skin was ashen. Tanis reached across Dalamar’s chest to feel for the lifebeat in the young elf’s neck. His hand had just touched the mage’s skin when there was a ringing sound. Something jarred his arm, striking the armor and bouncing off, falling to the floor with a clatter. Looking down, Tanis saw a blood-stained dagger. Startled, he whirled around, twisting to his feet, sword in hand.

“Kitiara!” Dalamar whispered with a feeble nod of his head.

Staring into the shadows of the laboratory, Tanis saw the body in the corner.

“Of course,” Caramon murmured. “That’s how she killed him.” He lifted the dagger in his hand.

“This time, Tanis, you blocked her throw.”

But Tanis didn’t hear. Sliding his sword back into his sheath, he crossed the room, stepping unheedingly on broken glass, kicking aside a silver candlestand that rolled beneath his feet. Kitiara lay on her stomach, her cheek pressed against the bloody floor, her dark hair falling across her eyes. The dagger throw had taken her last energy, it seemed. Tanis, approaching her, his emotions in turmoil, was certain she must be dead.

But the indomitable will that had carried one brother through darkness and another into light, burned still within Kitiara.

She heard footsteps... her enemy... .

Her hand grasped feebly for her sword. She raised her head, looking up with eyes fast dimming.

“Tanis?” She stared at him, puzzled, confused. Where was she? Flotsam? Were they together there again? Of course! He had come back to her! Smiling, she raised her hand to him.

Tanis caught his breath, his stomach wrenching. As she moved, he saw a blackened hole gaping in her chest. Her flesh had been burned away, he could see white bone beneath. It was a gruesome sight, and Tanis, sickened and overwhelmed by a surge of memories, was forced to turn his head away.

“Tanis!” she called in a cracked voice. “Come to me.”

His heart filled with pity, Tanis knelt down beside her to lift her in his arms. She looked up into his face... and saw her death in his eyes. Fear shook her. She struggled to rise. But the effort was too much. She collapsed.

“I’m... hurt,” she whispered angrily. “How... bad?” Lifting her hand, she started to touch the wound.

Snatching off his cloak, Tanis wrapped it around Kitiara’s torn body. “Rest easy, Kit,” he said gently. “You’ll be all right.”

“You’re a damn liar!” she cried, her hands clenching into fists, echoing—if she had only known it—the dying Elistan. “He’s killed me! That wretched elf!” She smiled, a ghastly smile. Tanis shuddered. “But I fixed him! He can’t help Raistlin now. The Dark Queen will slay him, slay them all!”

Moaning, she writhed in agony and clutched at Tanis. He held her tightly. When the pain eased, she looked up at him. “You weakling,” she whispered in a tone that was part bitter scorn, part bitter regret, “we could have had the world, you and I.”

“I have the world, Kitiara,” Tanis said softly, his heart torn with revulsion and sorrow.

Angrily, she shook her head and seemed about to say more when her eyes grew wide, her gaze fixed upon something at the far end of the room.

“No!” she cried in a terror that no torture or suffering could have ever wrenched from her. “No!”

Shrinking, huddling against Tanis, she whispered in a frantic, strangled voice. “Don’t let him take me! Tanis, no! Keep him away! I always loved you, half-elf! Always... loved... you...”

Her voice faded to a gasping whisper.

Tanis looked up, alarmed. But the doorway was empty. There was no one there. Had she meant Dalamar? “Who? Kitiara! I don’t understand—”

But she did not hear him. Her ears were deaf forever to mortal voices. The only voice she heard now was one she would hear forever, through all eternity.

Tanis felt the body in his arms go limp. Smoothing back the dark, curly hair, he searched her face for some sign that death had brought peace to her soul. But the expression on her face was one of horror—her brown eyes fixed in a terrified stare, the crooked, charming smile twisted into a grimace.

Tanis glanced up at Caramon. His face pale and grave, the big man shook his head. Slowly, Tanis laid Kitiara’s body back down upon the floor. Leaning over, he started to kiss the cold forehead, but he found that he couldn’t. The look on the corpse’s face was too grim, too ghastly. Pulling his cloak up over Kitiara’s head, Tanis remained for a moment, kneeling beside her body, surrounded by darkness. And then he heard Caramon’s step, he felt a hand upon his arm. “Tanis—”

“I’m all right,” the half-elf said gruffly, rising to his feet. But, in his mind, he could still hear her dying plea.

“Keep him away!”

“I’m glad you’re here with me, Tanis,” Caramon said.

He stood before the Portal, staring into it intently, watching every shift and wave of the void within. Near him sat Dalamar, propped up by pillows in his chair, his face pale and drawn with pain, his arm bound in a crude sling. Tanis paced the floor restlessly. The dragon’s heads now glowed so brightly it hurt the eye to look at them directly.

“Caramon,” he began, “please—”

Caramon looked over at him, his same grave, calm expression unchanged.

Tanis was baffled. How could you argue with granite? He sighed. “All right. But just how are you going to get in there?” he asked abruptly.

Caramon smiled. He knew what Tanis had been about to say, and he was grateful to him for not having said it.

Giving the Portal a grim look, Tanis gestured toward the opening. “From what you told me earlier, Raistlin had to study years and become this Fistandantilus and entrap Lady Crysania into going with him, and even then he barely made it!” Tanis shifted his gaze to Dalamar. “Can you enter the Portal, dark elf?”

Dalamar shook his head. “No, As you say, it takes one of great power to cross that dread threshold. I do not have such power, perhaps I never will. But, do not glower, Half-Elven. We do not waste our time. I am certain Caramon would not have undertaken this if he did not know how he could enter.” Dalamar looked at the big warrior intently. “For enter he must, or we are doomed.”

“When Raistlin fights the Dark Queen and her minions in the Abyss,” Caramon said, his voice even and expressionless, “he will need to concentrate upon them completely, to the exclusion of all else. Isn’t that true, Dalamar?”