Margaret Weis: War of the Twins

Caramon looked at her and his face grew grim.

Raistlin, watching, smiled. “Yes, my brother. She will enter the Abyss with me. She will go before me and fight my battles. She will face dark clerics, dark magic-users, spirits of the dead doomed to wander in that cursed land, plus the unbelievable torments that my Queen can devise. All these will wound her in body, devour her mind, and shred her soul. Finally, when she can endure no more, she will slump to the ground to lie at my feet... bleeding, wretched, dying.

“She will, with her last strength, hold out her hand to me for comfort. She will not ask me to save her. She is too strong for that. She will give her life for me willingly, gladly. All she will ask is that I stay with her as she dies.”

Raistlin drew a deep breath, then shrugged. “But I will walk past her, Caramon. I will walk past her without a look, without a word. Why? Because I will need her no longer. I will continue forward toward my goal, and my strength will grow even as the blood flows from her pierced heart.”

Half-turning, once again he raised his left hand, palm outward. Looking at the head of the dragon upon the top of the Portal, he softly said the second chant. “White Dragon. From this world to the next / My voice cries with life.”

Caramon’s gaze was on the Portal, on Crysania, his mind swamped by horror and revulsion. Still he held onto his brother. Still he thought to make one last plea. Then he felt the thin arm beneath his hand make a sharp, twisting motion. There was a flash, a swift movement, and the gleaming blade of a silver dagger pressed against the flesh of his throat, right where his life’s blood pulsed in his neck.

“Let go of me, my brother,” Raistlin said.

And though he did not strike with the dagger, it drew blood anyway; drew blood not from flesh but from soul. Quickly and cleanly, it sliced through the last spiritual tie between the twins. Caramon winced slightly at the swift, sharp pain in his heart. But the pain did not endure. The tie was severed. Free at last, Caramon released his twin’s arm without a word.

Turning, he started to limp back to where Tas waited, still hidden behind the pillar.

“One final hint of caution, my brother,” Raistlin said coldly, returning the dagger to the thong he wore on his wrist.

Caramon did not respond, he neither stopped walking nor turned around.

“Be wary of that magical time device,” Raistlin continued with a sneer. “Her Dark Majesty repaired it. It was she who sent the kender back. If you use it, you could find yourselves in a most unpleasant place!”

“Oh, but she didn’t fix it!” Tas cried, popping out from behind the pillar. “Gnimsh did. Gnimsh fixed it! Gnimsh, my friend. The gnome that you murdered! I—”

“Use it then,” Raistlin said coldly. “Take him and yourself out of here, Caramon. But remember I warned you.”

Caramon caught hold of the angry kender. “Easy, Tas. That’s enough. It doesn’t matter now.”

Turning around, Caramon faced his twin. Though the warrior’s face was drawn with pain and weariness, his expression was one of peace and calm, one who knows himself at last. Stroking Tas’s topknot of hair soothingly with his hand, he said, “Come on, Tas. Let’s go home. Farewell, my brother.”

Raistlin didn’t hear. Facing the Portal, he was once again lost in his magic. But, out of the corner of his eye, even as he began the third chant, Raistlin saw his twin take the pendant from Tas and began the manipulations that would transfer its shape from pendant to the magical time-travel device.

Let them go. Good riddance! Raistlin thought. Finally, I am free of that great hulking idiot!

Looking back at the Portal, Raistlin smiled. A circle of cold light, like the harsh glare of the sun upon snow, surrounded Crysania. The archmage’s behest to the White Dragon had been heard.

Raising his hand, facing the third dragon’s head in the lower left part of the Portal, Raistlin recited its chant.

“Red Dragon. From darkness to darkness I shout / Beneath my feet, all is made firm.”

Red lines shot from Crysania’s body through the white light, through the black aura. Red and burning as blood, they spanned the gap from Raistlin to the Portal—a bridge to beyond.

Raistlin raised his voice. Turning to the right, he called to the fourth dragon. “Blue Dragon. Time that flows/Hold in your course.”

Blue streams of light flowed over Crysania, then began to swirl. As though floating in water, she leaned her head back, her arms extended, her robes drifting about her in the whirling flashes of light, her hair drifting black upon the currents of time.

Raistlin felt the Portal shiver. The magical field was starting to activate and respond to his commands! His soul quivered in a joy that Crysania shared. Her eyes glistened with rapturous tears, her lips parted in a sweet sigh. Her hands spread and, at her touch, the Portal opened!

Raistlin’s breath caught in his throat. The surge of power and ecstasy that coursed through his body nearly choked him. He could see through the Portal now. He could see glimpses of the plane beyond, the plane forbidden to mortal men.

From somewhere, dimly heard, came his brother’s voice activating the magical device—“Thy time is thy own, though across it you travel... Grasp firmly the beginning and the end... destiny be over your head...”

Home. Come home... .

Raistlin began the fifth chant. “Green Dragon. Because by fate even the gods are cast down / Weep ye all with me.”

Raistlin’s voice cracked, faltered. Something was wrong! The magic pulsing through his body slowed, turned sluggish. He stammered out the last few words, but each breath was an effort. His heart ceased to beat for an instant, then started again with a great leap that shook his frail frame.

Shocked and confused, Raistlin stared frantically at the Portal. Had the final spell worked? No! The light around Crysania was beginning to waver. The field was shifting!

Desperately, Raistlin cried the words of the last chant again. But his voice cracked, snapping back on him like a whip, stinging him. What was happening? He could feel the magic slither from his grasp. He was losing control...

Come home...

His Queen’s voice laughing, mocking. His brothers voice, pleading, sorrowful... And then, another voice—a shrill, kender voice—only half-heard, lost in his greater affairs. Now it flashed through his brain with a blinding light.

Gnimsh fixed it... The gnome, my friend...—

As the dwarf’s blade had penetrated Raistlin’s shrinking flesh, so now the remembered words of Astinus’s Chronicles stabbed his soul:

At the same instant a gnome, being held prisoner by the dwarves of Thorbardin, activated a time-traveling device... The gnome’s device interacted somehow with the delicate and powerful magical spells being woven by Fistandantilus... . A blast occurred of such magnitude that the Plains of Dergoth were utterly destroyed...

Raistlin clenched his fists in anger. Killing the gnome had been useless! The wretched creature had tampered with the device before his death. History would repeat itself! Footsteps in the sand...

Looking into the Portal, Raistlin saw the executioner step out from it. He saw his own hand lift his own black hood, he saw the flash of the axe blade descending, his own hands bringing it down upon his own neck!

The magical field began to shift violently. The dragon heads surrounding the Portal shrieked in triumph. A spasm of pain and terror twisted Crysania’s face. Looking into her eyes, Raistlin saw the same look he had seen in his mothers eyes as they stared unseeing into a far-distant plane.

Come home...

Within the Portal itself, the swirling lights began to whirl madly. Spinning out of control, they rose up around the limp body of the cleric as the magical flames had risen around her in the plague town. Crysania cried out in pain. Her flesh began to wither in the beautiful, deadly fire of uncontrolled magic.