Маргарет Уэйс - Dragons of Spring Dawning

“I watched him kill me!” Caramon cried wretchedly. “They made me watch so that I would understand him!” The big man’s head dropped in his hands, his body convulsed with a shudder. “I do understand!” he sobbed. “I understood then! I’m sorry! Just don’t go without me, Raist! You’re so weak! You need me—”

“No longer, Caramon,” Raistlin whispered with a soft sigh. “I need you no longer!”

Tanis stared at them both, sick with horror. He couldn’t believe this! Not even of Raistlin! “Caramon, go ahead!” he commanded hoarsely.

“Don’t make him come near me, Tanis,” Raistlin said, his voice gentle, as if he read the half-elf’s thoughts. “I assure you—I am capable of this. What I have sought all my life is within my grasp. I will let nothing stop me. Look at Caramon’s face, Tanis. He knows! I killed him once. I can do it again. Farewell, my brother.”

The mage put both hands upon the dragon orb and held it up to the light of the flaming candle. The colors swirled madly in the orb, flaring brilliantly. A powerful magical aura surrounded the mage.

Fighting his fear, Tanis tensed his body to make a last desperate attempt to stop Raistlin. But he could not move. He heard Raistlin chanting strange words. The glaring, whirling light grew so bright it pierced his head. He covered his eyes with his hands, but the light burned right through his flesh, searing his brain. The pain was intolerable. He stumbled back against the doorframe, hearing Caramon cry out in agony beside him. He heard the big man’s body fall to the floor with a thud.

Then all was still, the cabin plunged into darkness. Trembling, Tanis opened his eyes. For a moment he could see nothing but the afterimage of a giant red globe imprinted on his brain. Then his eyes became accustomed to the chill dark. The candle guttered, hot wax dripping onto the wooden floor of the cabin to form a white puddle near where Caramon lay, cold and unmoving. The warrior’s eyes were wide open, staring blankly into nothingness.

Raistlin was gone.

Tika Waylan stood on the deck of the Perechon staring into the blood-red sea and trying very hard to keep from crying. You must be brave, she told herself over and over. You’ve learned to fight bravely in battle. Caramon said so. Now you must be brave about this. We’ll be together, at least, at the end. He mustn’t see me cry.

But the last four days had been unnerving for all of them. Fearful of discovery by the draconians swarming over Flotsam, the companions had remained hidden in the filthy inn. Tanis’s strange disappearance had been terrifying. They were helpless, they dared do nothing, not even inquire about him. So for long days they had been forced to stay in their rooms and Tika had been forced to be around Caramon. The tension of their strong attraction to each other—an attraction they were not able to express—was torture. She wanted to put her arms around Caramon, to feel his arms around her, his strong, muscular body pressed against hers.

Caramon wanted the same thing, she was certain. He looked at her, sometimes, with so much tenderness in his eyes that she longed to nestle close to him and share the love that she knew was in the big man’s heart.

It could never be, not as long as Raistlin hovered near his twin brother, clinging to Caramon like a frail shadow. Over and over she repeated Caramon’s words, spoken to her before they reached Flotsam.

“My commitment is to my brother. They told me, in the Tower of High Sorcery, that his strength would help save the world. I am his strength—his physical strength. He needs me. My first duty is to him and, until that changes, I can’t make any other commitments. You deserve someone who puts you first, Tika. And so I’ll leave you free to find someone like that.”

But I don’t want anyone else, Tika thought sadly. And then the tears did start to fall. Turning quickly, she tried to hide them from Goldmoon and Riverwind. They would misunderstand, think she was crying from fear. No, fear of dying was something she had conquered long ago. Her biggest fear was fear of dying alone.

What are they doing? she wondered frantically, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. The ship was being carried closer and closer into that dreadful dark eye. Where was Caramon? I’ll go find them, she decided. Tanis or no Tanis.

Then she saw Tanis come slowly up out of the hatchway, half-dragging, half-supporting Caramon. One look at the big warrior’s pale face and Tika’s heart stopped beating.

She tried to call out, but she couldn’t speak. At her inarticulate scream, however, Goldmoon and Riverwind both turned around from where they had been watching the awesome maelstrom. Seeing Tanis stagger beneath his burden, Riverwind ran forward to help. Caramon walked like a man in drunken stupor, his eyes glazed and sightless. Riverwind caught hold of Caramon just as Tanis’s legs gave way completely.

“I’m all right,” Tanis said softly in answer to Riverwind’s look of concern. “Goldmoon, Caramon needs your help.”

“What is it, Tanis?” Tika’s fear gave her a voice. “What’s the matter? Where’s Raistlin? Is he—” She stopped. The half-elf’s eyes were dark with the memory of what he had seen and heard below.

“Raistlin’s gone,” Tanis said briefly.

“Gone? Where?” Tika asked, staring wildly around as if expecting to see his body in the swirling blood-colored water.

“He lied to us,” Tanis answered, helping Riverwind ease Caramon down onto a mass of coiled rope. The big warrior said nothing. He didn’t seem to see them, or anything for that matter; he just stared sightlessly out over the blood-red sea. “Remember how he kept insisting we had to go to Palanthas, to learn how to use the dragon orb? He knows how to use the orb already. And now he’s gone—to Palanthas, perhaps. I don’t suppose it matters.” Looking at Caramon, he shook his head in sorrow, then turned away abruptly and walked to the rail.

Goldmoon laid her gentle hands upon the big man, murmuring his name so softly the others could not hear it above the rush of the wind. At her touch, however, Caramon shivered, then began to shake violently. Tika knelt beside him, holding his hand in hers. Still staring straight ahead, Caramon began to cry silently, tears spilling down his cheeks from wide open, staring eyes. Goldmoon’s eyes glimmered with her own tears, but she stroked his forehead and kept calling to him as a mother calls a lost child.

Riverwind, his face stern and dark with anger, joined Tanis.

“What happened?” the Plainsman asked grimly.

“Raistlin said he— I can’t talk about it. Not now!” Tanis shook his head, shuddering. Leaning over the rail, he stared into the murky water below. Swearing softly in elven—a language the half-elf rarely used—he clutched his head with his hands.

Saddened by his friend’s anguish, Riverwind laid his hand comfortingly on the half-elf’s slumped shoulders.

“So at the end it comes to this,” the Plainsman said. “As we foresaw in the dream, the mage has gone, leaving his brother to die.”

“And as we saw in the dream, I have failed you,” Tanis mumbled, his voice low and trembling. “What have I done? This is my fault! I have brought this horror upon us!”

“My friend,” Riverwind said, moved by the sight of Tanis’s suffering. “It is not ours to question the ways of the gods—”

“Damn the gods!” Tanis cried viciously. Lifting his head to stare at his friend, he struck his clenched fist on the ship’s rail. “It was me! My choosing! How often during those nights when she and I were together and I held her in my arms, how often did I tell myself it would be so easy to stay there, with her, forever! I can’t condemn Raistlin! We’re very much alike, he and I. Both destroyed by an all-consuming passion!”