The Soulforge

by Margaret Weis

  No wind blew. The snow brought a hush to the land, muffling all sound, even the shrill shouting of the boys. He was wrapped in silence. The trees stood unmoving. Animals were tucked away in nest or lair or den, sleeping their winter sleep. All color was obliterated, leaving in its absence the white of the falling snow, the black of the wet tree trunks, the slate gray of the lowering sky.

  Raistlin stood on the edge of the forest. He had intended to walk among the trees, to follow a snow-choked path that led to a little clearing. In the clearing was a fallen log, which served well as a seat. This was Raistlin’s refuge, his sanctuary. No one knew about it. Pines shielded the clearing from the school and the play yard. Here Raistlin came to brood, to think, to sort through his collection of herbs and plants, to mull over his notes, reciting to himself the letters of the alphabet of the language of the arcane.

  He had been certain, when he’d first marked the clearing as his own, that the other boys would find it and try to spoil it—drag off the log, perhaps; dump their kitchen scraps here; empty their chamber pots in it. The boys had left the clearing alone. They knew he went off somewhere by himself, but they made no attempt to follow him. Raistlin had been pleased at first. They respected him at last.

  The pleasure had soon faded. He came to realize that other boys left him alone because, after the nettle incident, they detested him. They had always disliked him, but now they distrusted him so much that they derived no pleasure from teasing him. They left him severely alone.

  I should welcome this change, he said to himself.

  But he didn’t. He found that he had secretly enjoyed the attention of the others, even if such attention had annoyed, hurt, or angered him. At least by teasing him they had acknowledged him as one of them. Now he was an outcast.

  He had meant to walk to the clearing this day, but, standing on the outskirts, looking at the trackless snow flowing in smooth, frozen ripples around the boles of the trees, he did not enter.

  The snow was perfect, so perfect that he could not bring himself to walk through it, leaving a floundering trail behind, marring the perfection.

  The school bell rang. He lowered his head against the icy flakes that a slight, rising breeze was blowing into his eyes. Turning, he slogged his way back through the silence and the white and the black and the gray, back to the heat and the torpor and loneliness of the schoolroom.

  The boys changed their wet clothes and filed down to supper, which they ate under the watchful, if somewhat vacant, eye of Marm. Master Theobald entered the room only if necessary to prevent the floor from being awash in soup.

  Marm reported any misdeeds to the master, and so the bread-tossing and soup-spitting had to be kept to a minimum. The boys were tired and hungry after their hard-fought snow battles, and there was less horseplay than usual. The large common room was relatively quiet except for a few smothered giggles here and there, and thus the boys were extremely surprised when Master Theobald entered.

  Hastily the boys clamored to their feet, wiping grease from their chins with the backs of their hands. They regarded his arrival with indignation. Dinner was their own personal time, into which the master had no right or reason to intrude.

  Theobald either didn’t see or decided to ignore the restless feet shuffling, the frowns, the sullen looks. His gaze picked out the three eldest: Jon Farnish; Gordo, the hapless butcher; and Raistlin Majere.

  Raistlin knew immediately why the master had come. He knew what the master was going to say, what was going to happen. He didn’t know how he knew: premonition, some hereditary offshoot of his mother’s talent, or simple logical deduction. He didn’t know and he didn’t care. He couldn’t think clearly. He went cold, colder than the snow, fear and exultation vying within him. The bread he had been holding fell from his nerveless hand. The room seemed to tilt beneath him. He was forced to lean against the table to remain standing.

  Master Theobald called off the names of the three, names that Raistlin heard only dimly through a roaring in his ears, the roaring as of flames shooting up a chimney.

  “Walk forward,” said the master.

  Raistlin could not move. He was terrified that he would collapse. He was too weak. Was he falling sick? The sight of Jon Farnish, tromping across the floor of the common room with a hangdog air, certain that he was in trouble, brought a derisive smile to Raistlin’s lips. His head cleared, the chimney fire had burnt itself out. He strode forward, conscious of his dignity.

  He stood before Theobald, heard the master’s words in his bones, had no conscious recollection of hearing them in his ears.

  “I have, after long and careful consideration, decided that you three, by virtue of your age and your past performance, will be tested this night to determine your ability to put to use the skills you have learned. Now, don’t be alarmed.”

  This to Gordo, whose eyes, white-rimmed and huge with consternation, seemed likely to roll from their sockets.

  “This test is not the least bit dangerous,” the master continued soothingly. “If you fail it, nothing untoward will happen to you. The test will tell me if you have made the wrong choice in wanting to study magic. If so, I will inform your parents and anyone else interested in your welfare”—here he looked very sharply at Raistlin—“that, in my opinion, your remaining here is a waste of time and money.”

  “I never wanted to be here!” Gordo blurted out, sweating. “Never! I want to be a butcher!”

  Somebody laughed. Frowning in anger, the master sought the culprit, who immediately hushed and ducked behind one of his fellows. The others were silent. Certain that peace was restored, Theobald looked back at his pupils.

  “I trust you two do not feel the same way?”

  Jon Farnish smiled. “I look forward to this test, Master.”

  Raistlin hated Jon Farnish, could have slain him in that instant. He wanted to have spoken those words! Spoken them with that casual tone and careless confidence. Instead, Raistlin could only fumble and stammer, “I … I am … am ready.…”

  Master Theobald sniffed as if he very much doubted this statement. “We will see. Come along.”

  He shepherded them out of the common room, the wretched Gordo sniveling and protesting, Jon Farnish eager and grinning, as if this were playtime, and Raistlin so wobbly in the knees that he could barely walk.

  He saw his life balanced on this moment, like the dagger Caramon stood on its point on the kitchen table. Raistlin imagined being turned out of the school tomorrow morning, sent home with his small bundle of clothes in disgrace. He pictured the boys lining the walkway, laughing and hooting, celebrating his downfall. Returning home to Caramon’s bluff and bumbling attempts to be sympathetic, his mother’s relief, his father’s pity.

  And what would be his future without the magic?

  Again Raistlin went cold, cold all over, cold and ice-hard with the terrible knowledge of himself.

  Without the magic, there could be no future.

  Master Theobald led them through the library, down a hallway to a spell-locked door leading to the master’s private quarters. All the boys knew where the door led, and it was postulated among them that the master’s laboratory—of which he often spoke—could be reached through this door. One night a group of the boys, led by Jon Farnish, had made a futile attempt to dispel the magic of the lock. Jon had been forced to explain the next day how he had burned his fingers.

  The three boys in tow behind him, the master came to a halt in front of the door. He mumbled in a low voice several words of magic, words which Raistlin, despite the turmoil in his soul, made an automatic, concentrated effort to overhear.

  He was not successful. The words made no sense, he could not think or concentrate, and they left his brain almost the moment they entered. He had nothing in his brain, nothing at all. He could not call to mind how to spell his own name, must less the complicated language of magic.

  The door swung open. Master Theobald caught hold of Gordo, who was taking advantage of the spell being ca
st to do a disappearing act of his own. Master Theobald dug his pudgy fingers into Gordo’s shoulder, thrust him, blubbering and whimpering, into a sitting room. Jon Farnish and Raistlin followed after. The door swung shut behind them.

  “I don’t want to do it! Please don’t make me! A demon’ll grab me sure!” Gordo howled.

  “A demon! What nonsense! Stop this sniveling at once, you stupid boy!” Master Theobald’s hand, from force of habit, reached for the willow branch, but he’d left that in the schoolroom. His voice hardened. “I shall slap you if you don’t control yourself this instant.”

  The master’s hand, though empty, was broad and large. Gordo glanced at it and fell silent, except for a snivel now and then.

  “Won’t do no good, me going down there,” he said sullenly. “I’m rotten at this here magic.”

  “Yes, you are,” the master agreed. “But your parents have paid for this, and they have a right to expect you to at least make the attempt.”

  He moved a fancifully braided rug aside with his foot, revealing a trapdoor. This, too, was wizard-locked. Again the master mumbled arcane words. He passed his hand three times over the lock, reached down, clasped hold of an iron ring, and lifted.

  The trapdoor opened silently. A set of stone stairs led down into warm, scented darkness.

  “Gordo and I will go first,” Master Theobald said, adding caustically, “to clear the place of demons.”

  Grasping the unfortunate Gordo by the scruff of his neck, Theobald dragged him down the stairs. Jon Farnish clattered eagerly after him. Raistlin started to follow. His foot was on the top stair when he froze.

  He was about to set foot into an open grave.

  He blinked his eyes, and the image vanished. Before him were nothing more sinister than cellar stairs. Still, Raistlin wavered there on the threshold. He had learned from his mother to be sensitive to dreams and portents. He had seen the grave quite clearly and he wondered what it meant, or if it meant anything at all. Probably it was nothing more than his cursed fancy, his overactive imagination. Yet, still, he hovered on the stairs.

  Jon Farnish was down there, except it wasn’t Jon Farnish. It was Caramon, standing over Raistlin’s grave, gazing down at his twin in pitying sorrow.

  Raistlin shut his eyes. He was far from this place, in his clearing, seated on the log, the snow falling on him, filling his world, leaving it cold, pure, trackless.

  When he opened his eyes, Caramon was gone and so was the grave.

  His step quick and firm, Raistlin walked down the stairs.

  4

  THE LABORATORY WAS NOT AS RAISTLIN—OR ANY OF THE OTHER boys in the class—had imagined. Much speculation had been given to this hidden chamber during clandestine midnight sessions in the dormitory room. The master’s laboratory was generally conceded to be pitch dark, knee-deep in cobwebs and bats’ eyeballs, with a captured demon imprisoned in a cage in a corner.

  The elder boys would whisper to the new boys at the start of the year that the strange sounds they could hear at night were made by the demon rattling his chains, trying to break free. From then on, whenever there was a creak or a bump, the new boys would lie in bed and tremble in fear, believing that the demon had freed itself at last. One night the cat, mousing among the pots and kettles, knocked an iron skillet off the wall caused a general outbreak of panic, with the result that the master, having been wakened by the heartrending cries of terror, heard the story and banned all conversation after the candles had been removed.

  Gordo had been one of the most inventive when it came to giving life to the demon in the laboratory, effectively frightening the wits out of the three six-year-olds currently boarding at the school. But it was now apparent that Gordo had scared no one quite as much as himself. When he turned around and actually beheld a cage in the corner, its bars shining in the soft white light cast by a globe suspended from the ceiling, the boy’s knees gave way and he sank to the floor.

  “Drat the boy, whatever is the matter with you? Stand on your own two feet!” Master Theobald gave Gordo a prod and a shake. “Good evening, my beauties,” the master added, peering into the cage. “Here’s dinner.”

  The wretched Gordo turned quite pale, evidently seeing himself as the next course. The master was not referring to the boys, however, but to a hunk of bread that he dredged up from his pocket. He deposited the bread in the cage, where it was immediately set upon by four lively field mice.

  Gordo put his hand on his stomach and said he didn’t feel so good.

  Under other circumstances, Raistlin might have been amused by the discomfiture of one of his most inveterate tormentors. Tonight he was far too pent up, anxious, eager, and nervous to enjoy the whimperings of the chastened bully.

  The master made Gordo sit down on the floor with his head between his legs, and then went to a distant part of the laboratory to putter about among papers and inkpots. Bored, Jon Farnish began teasing the mice.

  Raistlin moved out of the glare of the light, moved back into the shadows, where he could see without being seen. He made a methodical sweep of the laboratory, committing every detail to his excellent memory. Long years after he left Master Theobald’s school, Raistlin could still shut his eyes and see every item in that laboratory, and he was only in it once.

  The lab was neat, orderly, and clean. No dust, no cobwebs; even the mice were sleek and well groomed. A few magical spellbooks, bound in noncommittal colors of gray and tan, stood upon a shelf. Six scroll cases reposed in a bin designed to hold many more. There was an assortment of jars intended for storing spell components, but only a few had anything in them. The stone table, on which the master was supposed to perform experiments in the arcane, was as clean as the table on which he ate his dinner.

  Raistlin felt a sadness seep into him. Here was the workshop of a man with no ambition, of a man in whom the creative spark had flickered out, presuming that spark had ever once been kindled. Theobald came to his lab not to create, but because he wanted to be alone, to read a book, throw crumbs to the mice in their cage, crush some oregano leaves for the luncheon stew, perhaps draw up a scroll now and then—a scroll whose magic might or might not work. Whether it did or it didn’t was all the same to him.

  “Feeling better, Gordo?” Master Theobald bustled about importantly, doing very little with a great deal of fuss. “Fine, I knew you would. Too much excitement, that’s all. Take your place at the far end of the table. Jon Farnish, you take your place there in the center. Raistlin? Where the devil—oh! There you are!” Master Theobald glared at him crossly. “What are you doing skulking about there in the darkness? Come stand in the light like a civilized human being. You will take your place at the far end. Yes, right there.”

  Raistlin moved to his assigned seat in silence. Gordo stood hunch-shouldered and glum. The laboratory was a sad disappointment, and this was starting to look far too much like schoolwork. Gordo was bitter over the lack of a demon.

  Jon Farnish took his seat, smiling and confident, his hands folded calmly on the table in front of him. Raistlin had never hated anyone in his life as much as he hated Jon Farnish at that moment.

  Every organ in Raistlin’s body was tangled up with every other organ. His bowels squirmed and wrapped around his stomach, his heart lurched and pressed painfully against his lungs. His mouth was dry, so dry his throat closed and set him coughing. His palms were wet. He wiped his hands surreptitiously on his shirt.

  Master Theobald sat at the head of the table. He was grave and solemn and appeared to take exception to the grinning Jon Farnish. He frowned and tapped his finger on the table. Jon Farnish, realizing his mistake, swallowed his grin and was immediately as grave and solemn as a cemetery owl.

  “That’s better,” said the master. “This test you are about to take is quite a serious matter, as serious as the Test you will take when you are grown and prepared to advance through the various ranks of magical knowledge and power. I repeat, this test is every bit as serious, for if you do not pass the one,
you will never have a chance to take the other.”

  Gordo gave a great, gaping yawn.

  Master Theobald cast him a reproving glance, then continued. “It would be advisable if we could give this test to every child who enrolls in one of the mage schools prior to his or her entrance. Unfortunately, that is not possible. In order to take this test, you must possess a considerable amount of arcane knowledge. Thus the conclave has deemed that a student should have at least six years of study before taking the elementary test. Those who have completed six years will be given the elementary test even if they have previously shown neither talent nor inclination.”

  Theobald knew, but did not say, that the failed student would then be placed under surveillance, watched throughout the rest of his life. It was improbable, but such a failure might become a renegade wizard, one who refused to follow the laws of magic as handed down and adjudicated by the conclave. Renegade wizards were considered extremely dangerous—rightly so—and were hunted by the members of the conclave. The boys knew nothing about renegade wizards, and Master Theobald wisely refrained from mentioning it. Gordo would have been a nervous wreck the remainder of his existence.

  “The test is simple for one who possesses the talent, extremely difficult for one who does not. Every person wanting to advance in the study of magic takes the same elementary test. You are not casting a spell, not even a cantrip. It will take many more years of study and hard work before you have the discipline and control necessary to cast the most rudimentary of magical spells. This test merely determines whether or not you have what was called in the old days ‘the god’s gift.’ ”

  He was referring to the old gods of magic, three cousins: Solinari, Lunitari, Nuitari. Their names were all that was left of them, according to most people on Ansalon. Their names clung to their moons, to the silver moon, the red, and the supposed black moon.