War of the Twins

by Margaret Weis

  Gripping the Staff of Magius in his hand, Raistlin watched him warily. “So you survived,” he commented.

  “Thanks to the gods, not you,” Caramon replied.

  “Thanks to one god, my dear brother,” Raistlin said with a slight, twisted smile. “The Queen of Darkness. She sent the kender back here, and it was he, I presume, who altered time, allowing your life to be spared. Does it gall you, Caramon, to know you owe your life to the Dark Queen?”

  “Does it gall you to know you owe her your soul?”

  Raistlin’s eyes flashed, their mirrorlike surface cracking for just an instant. Then, with a sardonic smile, he turned away. Facing the Portal, he lifted his right hand and held it palm out, his gaze upon the dragon’s head at the lower right of the oval-shaped entrance.

  “Black Dragon.” His voice was soft, caressing. “From darkness to darkness/My voice echoes in the emptiness.”

  As Raistlin spoke these words, an aura of darkness began to form around Crysania, an aura of light as black as the nightjewel, as black as the light of the dark moon.…

  Raistlin felt Caramon’s hand close over his arm. Angrily, he tried to shake off his brother’s grasp, but Caramon’s grip was strong.

  “Take us home, Raistlin.…”

  Raistlin turned and stared, his anger forgotten in his astonishment. “What?” His voice cracked.

  “Take us home,” Caramon repeated steadily.

  Raistlin laughed contemptuously.

  “You are such a weak, sniveling fool, Caramon!” he snarled. Irritably he tried to shake off his twin’s grip. He might as well have tried to shake off death. “Surely you must know by now what I have done! The kender must have told you about the gnome, You know I betrayed you. I would have left you for dead in this wretched place. And still you cling to me!”

  “I’m clinging to you because the waters are closing over your head, Raistlin,” Caramon said.

  His gaze went down to his own, strong, sun-burned hand holding his brother’s thin wrist, its bones as fragile as the bones of a bird, its skin white, almost transparent. Caramon fancied he could see the blood pulse in the blue veins.

  “My hand upon your arm. That’s all we have.” Caramon paused and drew a deep breath. Then, his voice deep with sorrow, he continued, “Nothing can erase what you have done, Raist. It can never be the same between us. My eyes have been opened. I now see you for what you are.”

  “And yet you beg me to come with you!” Raistlin sneered.

  “I could learn to live with the knowledge of what you are and what you have done.” Looking intently into his brother’s eyes Caramon said softly, “But you have to live with yourself, Raistlin. And there are times in the night when that must be damn near unbearable.”

  Raistlin did not respond. His face was a mask, impenetrable, unreadable.

  Caramon swallowed a huskiness in his throat. His grip on his twin’s arm tightened. “Think of this, though. You have done good in your life, Raistlin—maybe better than most of us. Oh, I’ve helped people. It’s easy to help someone when that help is appreciated. But you helped those who only threw it back in your face. You helped those who didn’t deserve it. You helped even when you knew it was hopeless, thankless.” Caramon’s hand trembled. “There’s still good you could do … to make up for the evil. Leave this. Come home.”

  Come home … come home.…

  Raistlin closed his eyes, the ache in his heart almost unendurable. His left hand stirred, lifted. Its delicate fingers hovered near his brother’s hand, touching it for an instant with a touch as soft as the feet of a spider. On the edges of reality, he could hear Crysania’s soft voice, praying to Paladine. The lovely white light flickered upon his eyelids.

  Come home.…

  When Raistlin spoke next, his voice was soft as his touch.

  “The dark crimes that stain my soul, brother, you cannot begin to imagine. If you knew, you would turn from me in horror and in loathing.” He sighed, shivering slightly. “And, you are right. Sometimes, in the night, even I turn from myself.”

  Opening his eyes, Raistlin stared fixedly into his brother’s. “But, know this, Caramon—I committed those crimes intentionally, willingly. Know this, too—there are darker crimes before me, and I will commit them, intentionally, willingly.…” His gaze went to Crysania, standing unseeing in the Portal, lost in her prayers, shimmering with beauty and power.

  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 I 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 brother’s 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 mother’s 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.

  Half-blinded by the brilliance, tears ran from Raistlin’s eyes as he stared into the swirling vortex. And then he saw—the Portal was closing.

  Hurling his magical staff to the floor, Raistlin unleashed his rage in a bitter, incoherent scream of fury.

  Out of the Portal, in answer, came lilting, mocking laughter.

  Come home.…

  A feeling of calmness stole over Raistlin—the cold calm of despair. He had failed. But She would never see him grovel. If he must die, he would die within his magic.…

  He lifted his head. He rose to his feet. Using all of his great powers—powers of the ancients, powers of his own, powers he had no idea he possessed, powers that rose from somewhere dark and hidden even from himself—Raistlin raised his arms and his voice screamed out once again. But this time it was not an incoherent shriek of frustrated helplessness. This time, his words were clear. This time he shouted words of command—words of command that had never been uttered upon this world before.

  This time his words were heard and understood.

  The field held. He held it! He could feel himself holding onto it. At his command, the Portal shivered and ceased to close.

  Raistlin drew a deep, shuddering breath. Then, out of the corner of his eye, somewhere to his right, he saw a flash. The magical time-travel device had been activated!

  The field jumped and surged wildly. As the device’s magic grew and spread, its powerful vibrations caused the very rocks of the fortress to begin to sing. In a devastating wave, their songs surged around Raistlin. The dragons’ shrieking answered in anger. The ageless voices of the rocks and the timeless voices of the dragons fought, flowed together, and finally combined in a discordant, mind-shattering cacophony.

  The sound was deafening, ear-splitting. The force of the two powerful spells sundered the ground. The earth beneath Raistlin’s feet shuddered. The singing rocks split wide open. The metallic dragons’ heads cracked.…

  The Portal itself began to crumble.

  Raistlin fell to his knees. The magical field was tearing loose, splitting apart like the bones of the world itself. It was breaking, splintering and, because Raistlin still held onto it, it began to tear him apart as well.

  Pain shot through his head. His body convulsed. He writhed in agony.

  It was a terrible choice he faced. Let go, and he would fall, fall to his doom, fall into a nothingness to which the most abject darkness was preferable. And yet, if he held it, he knew he would be ripped apart, his body dismembered by the forces of magic he had generated and could no longer control.

  His muscles ripped from his bones, sinews shredding, tendons snapping.

  “Caramon!” Raistlin moaned, but Caramon and Tas had vanished. The magical device, repaired by the one gnome whose inventions worked, had, indeed, worked. They were gone. There was no help.

  Raistlin had seconds to live, moments to act. Yet the pain was so excruciating that he could not think.

  His joints were being wrested from their sockets, his eyes plucked from his face, his heart torn from his body, his brain sucked from his skull.

  He could hear himself screaming and he knew it was his death cry. Still he fought on, as he had fought all his life.

  I … will … control.…

  The words came from his mouth, stained with his blood.…

  I will control.…

  Reaching out, his hand closed over the Staff of Magius.

  I will!

  And then he was hurtling forward into a blinding, swirling, crashing wave of many-colored lights—

  Come home … come home.…

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There are many people whose interest in and work on the DRAGONLANCE books and modules have made the ser
ies the success it is today. We deeply appreciate their help and support.

  Members of the DRAGONLANCE Design Team: Harold Johnson, Laura Hickman, Douglas Niles, Jeff Grubb, Michael Dobson, Michael Breault, Bruce Heard, Roger E. Moore.

  Songs and Poems: Michael Williams

  Original Cover Artwork: Larry Elmore

  Interior Artwork: Valerie A. Valusek

  Design: Ruth Hoyer

  Maps: Steve Sullivan

  Editor: Jean Blashfield Black

  Valuable assistance and advice: Patrick L. Price, Dezra and Terry Phillips, John “Dalamar” Walker, Carolyn Vanderbilt, Bill Larson, Janet and Gary Pack

  1987 DRAGONLANCE Calendar Artists: Clyde Caldwell, Larry Elmore, Keith Parkinson, Jeff Easley

  And, finally, we want to thank all of you who have taken the time to write to us. We appreciate it very much.

  —Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

  About the Authors

  Margaret Weis

  Margaret Weis began her collaboration with Tracy Hickman on the DRAGONLANCE® series more than fifteen years ago when she was an editor for TSR, Inc. A decade and a half later she is the author of thirteen DRAGONLANCE novels, the four-volume galactic fantasy Star of the Guardian, and coauthor with her husband Don Perrin of The Doom Brigade, Draconian Measures, Knights of the Black Earth, Robot Blues, and Hung Out. She and Perrin are also the authors of Brothers in Arms, the sequel to Weis’ best-selling novel The Soulforge. Currently she is hard at work with Tracy Hickman on volume two of the War of Souls Trilogy. She lives happily in a converted barn in Wisconsin with her husband, an assortment of dogs and cats, and far, far too many books.

  Tracy Hickman

  In 1983, when Tracy Hickman was driving across country to start a new job at TSR as a game designer, he conceived of a world in which dragons would play a big part. That world became the DRAGONLANCE campaign setting and helped launch Hickman’s career as a major voice in fantasy fiction. He has also written, in collaboration with Margaret Weis, the Darksword series and the Death Gate Cycle, is the designer of the game setting Starshield, and is the author of The Immortals. In his spare time—not that he has much—he lives in Utah with his wife, two daughters, and two sons.