Margaret Weis - Test of the Twins

If that had been him. He remembered the last conversation between himself and his brother. Tas had altered time—so Raistlin had said. Because kender, dwarves, and gnomes were races created by accident, not design, they were not in the flow of time as were the human, elf, and ogre races.

Thus kender were prohibited from traveling back in time because they had the power to alter it.

But Tas had been send back by accident, leaping into the magical field just as Par-Salian, head of the Tower of High Sorcery, was casting the spell to send back Caramon and Crysania. Tas had altered time. Therefore, Raistlin knew he wasn’t locked into the doom of Fistandantilus. He had the power to change the outcome. Where Fistandantilus had died, Raistlin might live.

Caramon’s s shoulders slumped. He felt suddenly sick and dizzy. What did it mean? What was he doing here? How could he be dead and alive at the same time? Was that even his corpse? Since Tas had altered time, it could be someone else. But—most importantly—what had happened to Solace? “Did Raistlin cause this?” Caramon muttered to himself, just to hear the sound of his voice amid the flashing light and concussive blasts. “Does this have something to do with him? Did this happen because he failed or—”

Caramon caught his breath. Beside him, Tas stirred in his sleep and whimpered and cried out. Caramon patted him absently. “A bad dream,” he said, feeling the kender’s small body twitch beneath his hand. “A bad dream, Tas. Go back to sleep.”

Tas rolled over, pressing his small body close against Caramon’s s, his hands still covering his eyes. Caramon continued to pat him soothingly.

A bad dream. He wished that were all this was. He wished, most desperately, that he would wake up in his own bed, his head pounding from drinking too much. He wished he could hear Tika slamming plates around in the kitchen, cursing him for being a lazy, drunken bum even while she fixed his favorite breakfast. He wished that he could have gone on in that wretched, spirit-soaked existence because then he would have died, died without knowing...

Oh, please let it be a dream! Caramon prayed, lowering his head to his knees and feeling bitter tears creep beneath his closed eyelids.

He sat there, no longer even affected by the storm, crushed by the weight of his sudden understanding. Tas sighed and shivered, but continued to sleep quietly. Caramon did not move.

He did not sleep. He couldn’t. The dream he walked in was a waking dream, a waking nightmare.

He needed only one thing to confirm the knowledge that he knew, in his heart, needed no confirmation.

The storm passed gradually, moving on to the south. Caramon could literally feel it go, the thunder walking the land like the feet of giants. When it was ended, the silence rang in his ears louder than the blasts of the lightning. The sky would be clear now, he knew. Clear until the next storm. He would see the moons, the stars...

The stars...

He had only to raise his head and look up into the sky, the clear sky, and he would know.

For another moment he sat there, willing the smell of spiced potatoes to come to him, willing Tika’s laughter to banish the silence, willing a drunken aching in his head to replace the terrible ache in his heart.

But there was nothing. Only the silence of this dead, barren land, broken by the distant, faraway rumble of thunder.

With a small sigh, barely audible even to himself, Caramon raised his head and looked up into the heavens.

He swallowed the bitter saliva in his mouth, nearly choking. Tears stung his eyes, but he blinked them back so that he could see clearly.

There it was—the confirmation of his fears, the sealing of his doom.

A new constellation in the sky. An hourglass...

“What does it mean?” asked Tas, rubbing his eyes and staring sleepily up at the stars, only half awake.

“It means Raistlin succeeded,” Caramon answered with an odd mixture of fear, sorrow, and pride in his voice. “It means he entered the Abyss and challenged the Queen of Darkness and—defeated her!”

“Not defeated her, Caramon,” said Tas, studying the sky intently and pointing. “There’s her constellation, but it’s in the wrong place. It’s over there when it should be over here. And there’s Paladine.” He sighed. “Poor Fizban. I wonder if he had to fight Raistlin. I don’t think he’d like that. I always had the feeling that he understood Raistlin, perhaps better than any of the rest of us.”

“So maybe the battle is still going on,” Caramon mused. “Perhaps that’s the reason for the storms.” He was silent for a moment, staring up at the glittering shape of the hourglass. In his mind, he could see his brother’s eyes as they had been when he emerged—so long ago—from the terrible test in the Tower of High Sorcery—the pupils of the eyes had become the shape of hourglasses.

“Thus, Raistlin, you will see time as it changes all things,” Par-Salian had told him. “Thus, hopefully, you will gain compassion for those around you.”

But it hadn’t worked.

“Raistlin won,” Caramon said with a soft sigh. “He’s what he wanted to be—a god. And now he rules over a dead world”

“Dead world?” Tas said in alarm. “D-do you mean the whole world’s like this? Everything in Krynn—Palanthas and Haven and Qualinesti? K-kendermore? Everything?”

“Look around,” Caramon said bleakly. “What do you think? Have you seen any other living being since we’ve been here?” He waved a hand that was barely visible by the pale light of Solinari, visible now that the clouds were gone, shining like a staring eye in the sky. “You watched the fire sweep the mountainside. I can see the lightning now, on the horizon.” He pointed east. “And there, another storm coming. No, Tas. Nothing can live through this. We’ll be dead ourselves before long either blown to bits or—”

“Or... or something else...” Tas said miserably. “I-I really don’t feel good, Caramon. And it—it’s either the water or I’m getting the plague again.” His face twisting in pain, he put his hand on his stomach. “I’m beginning to feel all funny inside, like I swallowed a snake.”

“The water,” said Caramon with a grimace. “I’m feeling it, too. Probably some kind of poison from those clouds.”

“Are—are we just going to die here then, Caramon?” Tas asked after a minute of silent contemplation. “Because, if we are, I really think I’d like to go over and lie down next to Tika, if you don’t mind. It—it would make me feel more at home. Until I got to Flint and his tree.” Sighing, he rested his head against Caramon’s strong arm. “I’ll certainly have a lot to tell Flint, won’t I, Caramon? All about the Cataclysm and the fiery mountain and me saving your life and Raistlin becoming a god. I’ll bet he won’t believe that part. But maybe you’ll be there with me, Caramon, and you can tell him I’m truly not, well—er—exaggerating.”

“Dying would certainly be easy,” Caramon murmured, looking wistfully over in the direction of the obelisk. Lunitari was rising now, its blood-red light blending with the deathly white light of Solinari to shed an eerie purplish radiance down upon the ash-covered land. The stone obelisk, wet with rain, glistened in the moonlight, its crudely carved black letters starkly visible against the pallid surface.

“It would be easy to die,” Caramon’ repeated, more to himself than to Tas. “It would be easy to lie down and let the darkness take me.” Then, gritting his teeth, he staggered to his feet. “Funny,” he added as he drew his sword and began to hack a branch off the fallen vallenwood they had been using as shelter. “Raist asked me that once. ‘Would you follow me into darkness?’ he said.”