War of the Twins (50 page)

Staring at him dumbly, Crysania felt tears sting her eyes. Raistlin did not see her. In his mind, he was back in those stinking little hovels that huddled on the outskirts of town as though they had run there to hide. He saw himself moving among the sick in his red robes, forcing the bitter medicine down their throats, holding the dying in his arms, easing their last moments. He worked among the sick grimly, asking for no thanks, expecting none. His face—the last human face many would see—expressed neither compassion nor caring. Yet the dying found comfort. Here was one who understood, here was one who lived with pain daily, here was one who had looked upon death and was not afraid.…

Raistlin tended the plague victims. He did what he felt he had to do at the risk of his own life, but why? For a reason he had yet to understand. A reason, perhaps, forgotten.…

“At any rate”—Raistlin returned to the present—“I discovered that light hurt their eyes. Those who recovered were occasionally stricken blind by—”

A terrified shriek from the kender interrupted him.

Tasslehoff was staring at him wildly. “Please, Raistlin! I’m trying to remember! Don’t take me back to the Dark Queen—”

“Hush, Tas,” Crysania said softly, gripping the kender with both hands as Tas seemed to be trying, literally, to climb into the wall behind him. “Calm down, Tas. It is Lady Crysania. Do you know me? I’m going to help you.”

Tas transferred his wide-eyed, feverish gaze to the cleric, regarding her blankly for a moment. Then, with a sob, he clutched at her. “Don’t let him take me back to the Abyss, Crysania! Don’t let him take you! It’s horrible, horrible. We’ll all die, die like poor Gnimsh. The Dark Queen told me!”

“He’s raving,” Crysania murmured, trying to disengage Tas’s clinging hands and force him to lie back down. “What strange delusions. Is this common with plague victims?”

“Yes,” Raistlin replied. Regarding Tas intently, the mage knelt by the bedside. “Sometimes it’s best to humor them. It may calm him. Tasslehoff-”

Raistlin laid his hand upon the kender’s chest. Instantly, Tas collapsed back onto the bed, shrinking away from the mage, shivering and staring at him in horror. “I’ll be good, Raistlin.” He whimpered. “Don’t hurt me, not like poor Gnimsh. Lightning, lightning!”

“Tas,” said Raistlin firmly, with a hint of anger and exasperation in his voice that caused Crysania to glance over at him reprovingly.

But, seeing only a look of cool concern on his face, she supposed she must have mistaken his tone. Closing her eyes, she touched the medallion of Paladine she wore around her neck and began to murmur a healing prayer.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Tas. Shhh, lie still.” Seeing Crysania lost in her communion with her god, Raistlin hissed, “Tell me, Tas. Tell me what the Dark Queen said.”

The kender’s face lost its bright, feverish flush as Crysania’s soft words flowed over him, sweeter and cooler than the waters of his delirious imaginings. The diminishing fever left Tas’s face a ghastly, ashen color. A faint glimmering of sense returned to his eyes. But he never took his gaze from Raistlin.

“She told me … before we left.…” Tas choked.

“Left?” Raistlin leaned forward. “I thought you said you escaped!”

Tas blanched, licking his dry, cracked lips. He tried to tear his gaze away from the mage, but Raistlin’s eyes, glittering in the light of the staff, held the kender fast, draining the truth from him. Tas swallowed. His throat hurt.

“Water,” he pleaded.

“When you’ve told me!” Raistlin snarled with a glance at Crysania, who was still kneeling, her head in her hands, praying to Paladine.

Tas gulped painfully. “I … I thought we were … escaping. We used th-the device and began … to rise. I saw … the Abyss, the plane, flat, empty, fall away beneath m-my feet. And”—Tas shuddered—“it wasn’t empty anymore! There … there were shadows and—” He tossed his head, moaning. “Oh, Raistlin, don’t make me remember! Don’t make me go back there!”

“Hush!” Raistlin whispered, covering Tas’s mouth with his hand. Crysania glanced up in concern, only to see Raistlin tenderly stroking the kender’s cheek. Seeing Tas’s terrified expression and pale face, Crysania frowned and shook her head.

“He is better,” she said. “He will not die. But dark shadows hover around him, preventing Paladine’s healing light from restoring him fully. They are the shadows of these feverish ramblings. Can you make anything from them?” Her feathery brows came together. “Whatever it is seems very real to him. It must have been something dreadful to have unnerved a kender like this.”

“Perhaps, lady, if you left, he would feel more comfortable talking to me,” Raistlin suggested mildly. “We are such old friends.”

“True,” Crysania smiled, starting to rise to her feet. To her amazement, Tas grabbed her hands.

“Don’t leave me with him, lady!” He gasped. “He killed Gnimsh! Poor Gnimsh. I saw him di-die!” Tas began to weep. “Burning lightning …”

“There, there, Tas,” Crysania said soothingly, gently but
firmly forcing the kender to lie back down. “No one’s going to hurt you. Whoever killed this—uh—Gnimsh can’t harm you now. You’re with your friends. Isn’t he, Raistlin?”

“My magic is powerful,” Raistlin said softly. “Remember that, Tasslehoff. Remember the power of my magic.”

“Yes, Raistlin,” Tas replied, lying quite still, pinned by the mage’s fixed and staring gaze.

“I think it would be wise if you remained behind to talk to him,” Crysania said in an undertone. “These dark fears will prey on him and hinder the healing process. I will return to my room on my own, with Paladine’s help.”

“So we agree not to tell Caramon?” Raistlin glanced at Crysania out of the corner of his eye.

“Yes,” Crysania said firmly. “This would only worry him unnecessarily.” She looked back at her patient. “I will return in the morning, Tasslehoff. Talk to Raistlin. Unburden your soul. Then sleep.” Laying her cool hand upon Tas’s sweat-covered forehead, she added, “May Paladine be with you.”

“Caramon?” Tas said hopefully. “Did you say Caramon? Is he here?”

“Yes, and when you’ve slept and eaten and rested, I’ll take you to him.”

“Couldn’t I see him now!” Tas cried eagerly, then he cast a fearful sideways glance at Raistlin. “If—if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, that is.…”

“He’s very busy.” Raistlin said coldly. “He is a general now, Tasslehoff. He has armies to command, a war to fight. He has no time for kenders.”

“No, I—I suppose not,” Tas said with a small sigh, lying back on his pillow, his eyes still on Raistlin.

With a final, soft pat on his head, Crysania stood up. Holding the medallion of Paladine in her hand, she whispered a prayer and was gone, vanishing into the night.

“And now, Tasslehoff,” Raistlin said in a soft voice that made Tas tremble, “we are alone.” With his strong hands, the mage pulled the blankets up over the kender’s body and straightened the pillow beneath his head. “There, are you comfortable?”

Tas couldn’t speak. He could only stare at the archmage in growing horror.

Raistlin sat down on the bed beside him. Putting one slender hand upon Tas’s forehead, he idly caressed the kender’s skin and smoothed back his damp hair.

“Do you remember Dalamar, my apprentice, Tas?” Raistlin asked conversationally. “You saw him, I believe at the Tower of High Sorcery, am I correct?” Raistlin’s fingers were light as the feet of spiders upon Tas’s face. “Do you recall, at one point, Dalamar tore open his black robes, exhibiting five wounds upon his chest? Yes, I see you recall that. It was his punishment, Tas. Punishment for hiding things from me.” Raistlin’s fingers stopped crawling about the kender’s skin and remained in one place, exerting a slight pressure on Tas’s forehead.

Tas shivered, biting his tongue to keep from crying out. “I—I remember, Raistlin.”

“An interesting experience, don’t you think?” Raistlin said offhandedly. “I can burn through your flesh with a touch, as I might burn through, say”—he shrugged—“butter with a hot knife. Kender are fond of interesting experiences, I believe.”

“Not—not quite
that
interesting,” Tas whispered miserably. “I’ll tell you, Raistlin! I’ll tell you everything that—that happened.” He closed his eyes a moment, then began to talk, his entire body quivering with the remembered terror. “We—we seemed not to rise up out of the Abyss so much as … as the Abyss dropped away beneath us! And then, like I said, I saw it wasn’t empty. I could see shadows and I thought … I thought they were valleys and mountains.…”

Tas’s eyes flared open. He stared at the mage in awe. “It wasn’t! Those shadows were
her
eyes, Raistlin! And the hills and valleys were
her
nose and mouth. We were rising up out of her face! She looked at me with eyes that were bright and gleamed with fire, and she opened her mouth and I—I thought she was going to swallow us! But we only rose higher and higher and she fell away beneath us, swirling, and then she looked at me and she said … she said.…”

“What did she say?” Raistlin demanded. “The message
was to me! It must have been!
That
was why she sent you! What did the Queen say?”

Tas’s voice grew hushed. “She said, ‘Come home …’ ”

he effect of his words upon Raistlin startled Tasslehoff just about as much as anything had ever startled him in his entire life. Tas had seen Raistlin angry before. He had seen him pleased, he had seen him commit murder, he had seen the mage’s face when Kharas, the dwarven hero, drove his sword blade into the mage’s flesh.

But he had never seen an expression on it like this.

Raistlin’s face went ashen, so white Tas thought for a wild moment that the mage had died, perhaps been struck dead on the spot. The mirrorlike eyes seemed to shatter; Tas saw himself reflected in tiny, splintered shards of the mage’s vision. Then he saw the eyes lose all recognition, go completely blank, staring ahead sightlessly.

The hand that rested upon Tas’s head began to tremble violently. And, as the kender watched in astonishment, he saw Raistlin seem to shrivel up before him. His face aged perceptively. When he rose to his feet, still staring unseeing around him, the mage’s entire body shook.

“Raistlin?” Tas asked nervously, glad to have the mage’s attention off him but bewildered by his strange appearance. The kender sat up weakly. The terrible dizziness had gone, along with the weird, unfamiliar feeling of fear. He felt almost like himself again.

“Raistlin … I didn’t mean anything. Are
you
going to be sick now? You look awfully queer—”

But the archmage didn’t answer. Staggering backward, Raistlin fell against the stone wall and just stood there, his breathing rapid and shallow. Covering his face with his hand, he fought desperately to regain control of himself, a fight with some unseen opponent that was yet as visible to Tas as if the mage had been fighting a spectre.

Then, with a low, hollow cry of rage and anguish, Raistlin lurched forward. Gripping the Staff of Magius, his black robes whipping around him, he fled through the open door.

Staring after Raistlin in astonishment, Tas saw him hurtle past the dark dwarf standing guard in the doorway. The dwarf took one look at the mage’s cadaverous face as Raistlin ran blindly past him, and, with a wild shriek, whirled around and dashed off in the opposite direction.

So amazing was all this that it took Tas a few moments to realize he wasn’t a prisoner anymore.

“You know,” the kender said to himself, putting his hand on his forehead, “Crysania was right. I
do
feel better now that I’ve gotten that off my mind. It didn’t do much for Raistlin, unfortunately, but then I don’t care about that. Well, much.” Tas sighed. “I’ll never understand why he killed poor Gnimsh. Maybe I’ll have a chance to ask him someday.

“But, now”—the kender glanced around—“the first thing to do is find Caramon and tell him I’ve got the magical device and we can go home. I never thought I’d say this,” Tas said wistfully, swinging his feet to the floor, “but home sounds
awfully
nice right now!”

He was going to stand up, but his legs apparently preferred to be back in bed because Tas suddenly found himself sitting down again.

“This won’t do!” Tas said, glaring at the offending parts of
his body. “You’re nowhere without me! Just remember that! I’m boss and when I say move—you’ll move! Now, I’m going to stand up again,” Tas warned his legs sternly. “And I expect some cooperation.”

This speech had some effect. His legs behaved a bit better this time and the kender, though still somewhat wobbly, managed to make his way across the dark room toward the torch-lit corridor he could see beyond the door.

Reaching it, he peeped cautiously up and down the hall, but no one was in sight. Creeping out into corridor, he saw nothing but dark, closed-up cells like the one he’d been in—and a staircase at one end, leading up. Looking down the other end, he saw nothing but dark shadows.

“I wonder where I am?” Tas made his way down the corridor toward the staircase—that being, as far as he could tell, the only way up. “Oh, well!”—the kender reflected philosophically—“I don’t suppose it matters. One
good
thing about having been in the Abyss is that every place else, no matter how dismal, looks congenial by comparison.”