Margaret Weis - Test of the Twins

“Yes.”

“And he must die as well,” Tanis murmured.

“Pray that he dies!” Dalamar licked his lips. The pain was making him dizzy, nauseated. “For he cannot return through the Portal either. And though death at the hands of the Dark Queen can be very slow, very unpleasant, believe me, Half-Elven, it is far preferable to life!”

“He knew this—”

“Yes, he knew it. But the world will be saved, Half-elven,” Dalamar remarked cynically. Sinking back into his chair, he continued staring into the Portal, his hand alternately crumpling, then smoothing, the folds of his black, rune-covered robes.

“No, not the world, a soul,” Tanis started to reply bitterly, when he heard, behind him, the laboratory door creak.

Dalamar’s gaze shifted instantly. Eyes glittering, his hand moved to a spell scroll he had slipped into his belt.

“No one can enter,” he said softly to Tanis, who had turned at the sound. “The guardians—”

“Cannot stop him,” Tanis said, his gaze fixed upon the door with a look of fear that mirrored, for an instant, the look of frozen fear upon Kitiara’s dead face.

Dalamar smiled grimly, and relapsed back into his chair. There was no need to look around. The chill of death flowed through the room like a foul mist.

“Enter, Lord Soth,” Dalamar said. “I’ve been expecting you...

Caramon was blinded by the dazzling light that seared even through his closed eyelids. Then darkness wrapped around him and, when he opened his eyes, for an instant he could not see, and he panicked, remembering the time he had been blind and lost in the Tower of High Sorcery. But, gradually, the darkness, too, lifted, and his eyes became accustomed to the eerie light of his surroundings. It burned with a strange, pinkish glow, as if the sun had just set, Tasslehoff had told him. And the land was just as the kender had described—vast, empty terrain beneath a vast, empty sky. Sky and land were the same color everywhere he looked, in every direction.

Except in one direction. Turning his head, Caramon saw the Portal, now behind him. It was the only swatch of colors in the barren land. Framed by the oval door of the five heads of the dragon, it seemed small and distant to him even though he knew he must be very near. Caramon fancied it looked like a picture, hung upon a wall. Though he could see Tanis and Dalamar quite clearly, they were not moving. They might well have been painted subjects, captured in arrested motion, forced to spend their painted eternity staring into nothing.

Firmly turning his back upon them, wondering, with a pang, if they could see him as he could see them, Caramon drew his sword from its sheath and stood, feet firmly planted on the shifting ground, waiting for his twin.

Caramon had no doubts, no doubts at all, that a battle between himself and Raistlin must end in his own death. Even weakened, Raistlin’s s magic would still be strong. And Caramon knew his brother well enough to know that Raistlin would never—if he could help it—allow himself to become totally vulnerable. There would always be one spell left, or at least—the silver dagger on his wrist. But, even though I will die, my objective will be accomplished, Caramon thought calmly. I am strong, healthy, and all it will take is one sword thrust through that thin, frail body.

He could do that much, he knew, before his brother’s magic withered him as it had withered him once, long ago, in the Tower of High Sorcery... .

Tears stung in his eyes, ran down his throat. He swallowed them, forcing his thoughts to something else to take his mind from his fear... his sorrow.

Lady Crysania.

Poor woman. Caramon sighed. He hoped, for her sake, she had died quickly... never knowing...

Caramon blinked, startled, staring ahead of him. What was happening? Where before there had been nothing to the pinkish, glowing horizon—now there was an object. It stood starkly black against the pink sky, and appeared flat, as if it had been cut out of paper. Tas’s words came to him again. But he recognized it—a wooden stake. The kind... the kind they had used in the old days to burn witches!

Memories flooded back. He could see Raistlin tied to the stake, see the heaps of wood stacked about his brother, who was struggling to free himself, shrieking defiance at those whom he had attempted to save from their own folly by exposing a charlatan cleric. But they had believed him to be a witch. “We got there just in time, Sturm and I,” Caramon muttered, remembering the knight’s sword flashing in the sun, its light alone driving back the superstitious peasants. Looking closer at the stake—which seemed, of its own accord, to move closer to him—Caramon saw a figure lying at the foot. Was it Raistlin? The stake slid closer and closer or was he walking toward it? Caramon turned his head again. The Portal was farther back, but he could still see it. Alarmed, fearing he might be swept away, he fought to stop himself and did so, immediately. Then, he heard the kender’s voice again. All you have to do to go anywhere is think yourself there. All you have to do to have anything you want is think of it, only be careful, because the Abyss can twist and distort what you see.

Looking at the wooden stake, Caramon thought himself there and instantly was standing right beside it. Turning once again, he glanced in the direction of the Portal and saw it, hanging like a miniature painting in between the sky and ground. Satisfied that he could return at any second, Caramon hurried toward the figure lying below the stake.

At first, he had thought it was garbed in black robes, and his heart lurched. But now he saw that it had only appeared as a black silhouette against the glowing ground. The robes it wore were white. And then he knew.

Of course, he had been thinking of her... .

“Crysania,” he said.

She opened her eyes and turned her head toward the sound of his voice, but her eyes did not fix on him. They stared past him, and he realized she was blind.

“Raistlin?” she whispered in a voice filled with such hope and longing that Caramon would have given anything, his life itself, to have confirmed that hope.

But, shaking his head, he knelt down and took her hand in his. “It is Caramon, Lady Crysania.”

She turned her sightless eyes toward the sound of his voice, weakly clasping his hand with her own. She stared toward him, confused. “Caramon? Where are we?”

“I entered the Portal, Crysania,” he said.

She sighed, closing her eyes. “So you are here in the Abyss, with us...

“Yes.”

“I have been a fool, Caramon,” she murmured, “but I am paying for my folly. I wish... I wish I knew... Has harm come to... to anyone... other than myself? And him?” The last word was almost inaudible.

“Lady—” Caramon didn’t know how to answer.

But Crysania stopped him. She could hear the sadness in his voice. Closing her eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks, she pressed his hand against her lips. “Of course. I understand!” she whispered. “That is why you have come. I’m sorry, Caramon! So sorry!”

She began to weep. Gathering her close, Caramon held her, rocking her soothingly, like a child. He knew, then, that she was dying. He could feel her life ebbing from her body even as he held it. But what had injured her, what wounds she had suffered he could not imagine, for there was no mark upon her skin.

“There is nothing to be sorry for, my lady,” he said, smoothing back the thick, shining black hair that tumbled over her deathly pale face. “You loved him. If that is your folly, then it is mine as well, and I pay for it gladly.”

“If that were only true!” She moaned. “But it was my pride, my ambition, that led me here!”