The Soulforge

by Margaret Weis

  “Is that crone still around?” Kit asked abruptly. “You know, the one who talked to trees and whistled like a bird and kept a wolf for a pet?”

  “Weird Meggin? Yeah, she’s still around. I guess.” Caramon was doubtful. “I don’t go to that part of town much. Father doesn’t—” He paused, swallowed, and began over. “Father didn’t want us to go there.”

  “Father isn’t around anymore. You’re on your own now, Caramon,” Kitiara returned with brutal frankness. “Go to Weird Meggin’s and tell her you need elixir of willow bark. And hurry up. We’ve got to bring down this fever.”

  “Elixir of willow bark,” Caramon repeated to himself several times. He put on his cloak. “Anything else?”

  “Not right now. Oh, and Caramon”—Kitiara halted him as he stood in the open doorway—“don’t tell anyone I’m back in town, will you?”

  “Sure, Kit,” Caramon answered. “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to be bothered by a lot of tittle-tattlers snooping around and asking questions. Now, go along. Wait! Do you have any money?”

  Caramon shook his head.

  Kitiara reached into a leather purse she wore on her belt, fished out a couple of steel coins, and tossed them to him. “On your way back from the old crone’s, stop by Otik’s and buy a jug of brandy. Is there anything in the house to eat?”

  Caramon nodded. “The neighbors brought lots of stuff.”

  “Ah, I forgot. The funeral meats. All right. Go on. Remember what I said: tell no one I’m here.”

  Caramon departed, a little curious about his sister’s injunction. After several moments of long and considered thought, he at last decided that Kitiara knew what she was doing. If word got out that she was in town, every gossip from here to the Plains of Dust would be snooping around. Raistlin needed rest and he needed quiet, not a stream of visitors. Yes, Kit knew what she was doing. She would help Raistlin. She would.

  Caramon generally took a positive view of things. He was not one to fret over what had happened in the past or worry about what might come in the future. He was honest and trusting, and like many honest, trusting people, he believed that everyone else was honest and trustworthy. He put his faith in his sister.

  He hastened through the pouring rain to Weird Meggin’s, who lived in a tumbledown shack that sat on the ground beneath the vallenwood trees, not far from the disreputable bar known as The Trough. Concentrating on his errand, muttering “willow bark, willow bark,” to himself over and over, Caramon almost tripped over an ancient gray wolf lying across the threshold.

  The wolf growled. Caramon backed up precipitously.

  “Nice doggie,” Caramon said to the wolf.

  The wolf rose to its feet, the fur on its back bristling. Its lips parted in a snarl, showing extremely yellow but very sharp teeth.

  The rain beat down on Caramon. His cloak was wet through. He stood ankle-deep in mud. He could see candlelight in the window and a figure moving around inside. He made another attempt to pass the wolf.

  “There’s a good dog,” he said and started to pat the wolf on the head.

  A snap of the yellow teeth nearly took off Caramon’s hand.

  Abandoning the door, Caramon thought he might tap on the windowpane. The wolf thought he wouldn’t. The wolf was right.

  Caramon couldn’t leave. Not without the elixir. Shouting at the door wasn’t very polite, but in these circumstances, it was all the desperate Caramon had left to try.

  “Weird—I mean—”Caramon flushed, started over. “Mistress Meggin! Mistress Meggin!”

  A face appeared in the window, the face of a middle-aged woman with gray hair pulled back tight. Her eyes were bright and clear. She didn’t look crazy. She gazed intently at the sopping wet Caramon, then left the window. Caramon’s heart sank into the mud, which seemed to be up around his knees now. Then he heard a grating sound, as of a bar being lifted. The door swung open. She spoke a word to the wolf, a word Caramon couldn’t understand.

  The wolf rolled over, all four paws in the air, and the crone scratched its belly.

  “Well, boy” she said, looking up, “what do you want? The weather’s a bit inclement for you to be throwing rocks at my house, isn’t it?”

  Caramon went red as a pickled beet. The rock-throwing incident had happened a long time ago, he’d been a small boy at the time, and he had assumed she wouldn’t recognize him.

  “Well, what do you want?” she repeated.

  “Bark,” he said in a low voice, ashamed, flustered, and embarrassed. “Some sort of bark. I … I forget what.”

  “What’s it for?” Meggin asked sharply.

  “Uh … Kit … No, I don’t mean that. It’s my brother. He has a fever.”

  “Willow bark elixir. I’ll fetch it.” The crone eyed him. “I’d ask you to come in out of the rain, but I’ll wager you wouldn’t.”

  Caramon peered past her into the shack. A warm fire looked inviting, but then he saw the skull on the table—a human skull, with various other bones lying about. He saw what looked like a rib cage, attached to a spine. If it had not been too horrible to even imagine, Caramon might have thought the woman was attempting to build a person, starting from the bones and working outward.

  He took a step backward. “No, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am, but I’m quite comfortable where I am.”

  The crone grinned and chuckled. She shut the door. The wolf curled up on the threshold, keeping one yellow eye on Caramon.

  He stood miserably in the rain, worried over his brother, hoping the crone wouldn’t be long and wondering uneasily if he dared trust her. Perhaps she might need more bones for her collection. Perhaps she’d gone to get an ax.…

  The door opened with a suddenness that made Caramon jump.

  Meggin held out a small glass vial. “Here you go, boy. Tell your sister to have Raistlin swallow a large spoonful morning and night until the fever breaks. Understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.” Caramon fumbled for the coins in his pocket. Realizing suddenly what she’d said, he stammered, “It’s not … um … for my sister. She’s not here … exactly. She’s away. I don’t—” Caramon shut his mouth. He was a hopeless liar.

  Meggin chuckled again. “Of course she is. I won’t say anything to anyone. Never fear. I hope your brother gets well. When he does, tell him to come visit me. I miss seeing him.”

  “My brother comes here?” Caramon asked, astonished.

  “All the time. Who do you think taught him his herb lore? Not that dundering idiot Theobald. He wouldn’t know a dandelion from a crab apple if it bit him on the ass. You remember the dose, or do you want me to write it down?”

  “I … I remember,” said Caramon. He held out a coin.

  Meggin waved it away. “I don’t charge my friends. I was sorry to hear about your parents. Come visit me yourself some time, Caramon Majere. I’d enjoy talking to you. I’ll wager you’re smarter than you think you are.”

  “Yes, ma’ am,” said Caramon politely, having no idea what she meant and no intention of ever taking her up on her offer.

  He made an awkward bow and, holding the vial of willow bark elixir as tenderly as a mother holds her newborn child, he slogged through the mud to the staircase leading back up into the trees. His thoughts were extremely confused. Raistlin visiting that old crone. Learning things from her. Maybe he’d touched that skull! Caramon grimaced. It was all extremely baffling.

  He was so flustered that he completely forgot he was supposed to stop at the inn for the brandy. He received a severe scolding from Kit when he reached home, and had to go back out in the rain after it.

  5

  RAISTLIN WAS VERY ILL FOR SEVERAL DAYS. THE FEVER WOULD subside somewhat after a dose of the willow bark, but it would always go back up again, and each time it seemed to go higher. Kitiara made light of his twin’s illness whenever Caramon asked, but he could tell she was worried. Sometimes in the night, when she thought he was asleep, he’d hear Kit give a sharp sigh, see her
drum her fingers on the arm of their mother’s rocking chair, which Kit had dragged into the small room the twins shared.

  Kitiara was not a gentle nurse. She had no patience with weakness. She had determined that Raistlin would live. She was doing everything in her power to force him to get better, and she was irritated and even a little angry when he did not respond. At that point, she decided to take the fight personally. The expression on her face was so grim and hard and determined that Caramon wondered if even Death might not be a little daunted to face her.

  Death must have been, because that grim presence backed down.

  On the morning of the fourth day of his twin’s illness, Caramon woke after a troubled night. He found Kit slumped over the bed, her head resting on her arms, her eyes closed in slumber. Raistlin slept as well. Not the heavy, dream-tortured sleep of his sickness, but a healing sleep, a restful sleep. Caramon reached out his hand to feel his brother’s pulse and, in doing so, brushed against Kitiara’s shoulder.

  She bolted to her feet, caught hold of the collar of his shirt with one hand, twisted the cloth tight around his neck. In her other hand, a knife flashed in the morning sunlight.

  “Kit! It’s me!” Caramon croaked, half-strangled.

  Kit stared at him without recognition. Then her mouth parted in a crooked grin. She let loose of him, smoothed the wrinkles from his shirt. The knife disappeared rapidly, so rapidly that Caramon could not see where it had gone.

  “You startled me,” she said.

  “No kidding!” Caramon replied feelingly. His neck stung from where the fabric had cut into his flesh. He rubbed his neck, gazed warily at his sister.

  She was shorter than he was, lighter in build, but he would have been a dead man if he hadn’t spoken up when he did. He could still feel her hand tightening the fabric around his throat, cutting off his breathing.

  An awkward silence fell between them. Caramon had seen something disquieting in his sister, something chilling. Not the attack itself. What he’d seen that bothered him was the fierce, eager joy in her eyes when she made the attack.

  “I’m sorry, kid,” she said at length. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” She gave him a playful little slap on his cheek. “But don’t ever sneak up on me in my sleep like that. All right?”

  “Sure, Kit,” Caramon said, still uneasy but willing to admit that the incident had been his fault. “I’m sorry I woke you. I just wanted to see how Raistlin was doing.”

  “He’s past the crisis,” Kitiara said with a weary, triumphant smile. “He’s going to be fine.” She gazed down on him proudly, as she might have gazed down on a vanquished foe. “The fever broke last night and it’s stayed down. We should leave him now and let him sleep.”

  She pushed the reluctant Caramon out the door. “Come along. Listen to big sister. By way of repaying me for that fright you gave me, you can fix my breakfast.”

  “Fright!” Caramon snorted. “You weren’t frightened.”

  “A soldier’s always frightened,” Kit corrected him. Sitting down at the table, she hungrily devoured an apple, still green, one of this season’s first fruits. “It’s what you do with the fright that counts.”

  “Huh?” Caramon looked up from his bread slicing.

  “Fear can turn you inside out,” Kit said, tearing the apple with strong white teeth. “Or you can make fear work for you. Use it like another weapon. Fear’s a funny thing. It can make you weak-kneed, make you pee your pants, make you whimper like a baby. Or fear can make you run faster, hit harder.”

  “Yeah? Really?” Caramon put a slice of bread on the toasting fork, held it over the kitchen fire.

  “I was in a fight once,” Kit related, leaning back in her chair and propping her booted feet on another nearby chair. “A bunch of goblins jumped us. One of my comrades—a guy we called Bart Blue-nose ’cause his nose had a kind of strange bluish tint to it—anyway, he was fighting a goblin and his sword snapped, right in two. The goblin howled with delight, figuring he had his kill. Bart was furious. He had to have a weapon; the goblin was attacking him from six directions at once, and Bart was dancing around like a fiend from the Abyss trying to keep clear. Bart takes it into his head that he needs a club, and he grabs the first thing he can lay his hand on, which was a tree. Not a branch, a whole god-damned tree. He dragged that tree right out of the ground—you could hear the roots pop and snap—and he bashed the goblin over the head, killed it on the spot.”

  “C’mon!” Caramon protested. “I don’t believe it. He pulled a tree out of the ground?”

  “It was a young tree,” Kit said with a shrug. “But he couldn’t do it again. He tried it on another, about the same size, after the fight was over, and he couldn’t even make the tree’s branches wiggle. That’s what fear can do for you.”

  “I see,” said Caramon, deeply thoughtful.

  “You’re burning the toast,” Kit pointed out.

  “Oh, yeah! Sorry. I’ll eat that piece.” Caramon snatched the blackened toast from the fork, put another in its place. A question had been nagging at him for the last day or so. He tried to think of some subtle way of asking, but he couldn’t. Raistlin was good at subtleties; Caramon just blundered on ahead. He decided he may as well ask it and have done with it, especially since Kitiara appeared to be in a good mood.

  “Why’d you come back?” he asked, not looking at her. Carefully he rotated the toast on the fork to brown the other side. “Was it because of Mother? You were at her burial, weren’t you?”

  He heard Kit’s boots hit the floor and glanced up nervously, thinking he’d offended her. She stood with her back turned, staring out the small window. The rain had stopped finally. The vallenwood leaves, just starting to turn color, were tipped with gold in the morning sun.

  “I heard about Gilon’s death,” Kitiara said. “From some woodsmen I met in a tavern up north. I also heard about Rosamun’s … sickness.” Her mouth twisted, she glanced side-long at Caramon. “To be honest, I came back because of you, you and Raistlin. But I’ll get to that in a moment. I arrived here the night Rosamun died. I … um … was staying with friends. And, yes, I went to the burial. Like it or not, she was my mother. I guess her death was pretty awful for you and Raist, huh?”

  Caramon nodded silently. He didn’t like to think about it. Morosely he munched on the burnt toast.

  “Do you want some eggs? I can fry ’em,” he said.

  “Yes, I’m starved. Put in some of Otik’s potatoes, too, if you’ve got any left.” Kit remained standing by the window. “It’s not that Rosamun meant anything to me. She didn’t.” Her voice hardened. “But it would have been bad luck if I hadn’t gone.”

  “What do you mean, ‘bad luck’?”

  “Oh, I know it’s all superstitious nonsense,” Kit said with a rueful grin. “But she was my mother and she’s dead. I should show respect. Otherwise, well”—Kit looked uncomfortable—“I might be punished. Something bad might happen to me.”

  “That sounds like the Widow Judith,” Caramon said, cracking eggshells, making a clumsy and ineffectual attempt at extricating the egg from the shell. His scrambled eggs were noted for their crunchy texture. “She talked about some god called Belzor punishing us. Is that what you mean?”

  “Belzor! What a crock. There are gods, Caramon. Powerful gods. Gods who will punish you if you do something they don’t like. But they’ll reward you, too, if you serve them.”

  “Are you serious?” Caramon asked, staring at his sister. “No offense, but I’ve never heard you talk like that before.”

  Kitiara turned from the window. Walking over, her strides long and purposeful, she planted her hands on the table and looked into Caramon’s face.

  “Come with me!” she said, not answering his question. “There’s a city up north called Sanction. Big things are happening there, Caramon. Important things. I plan to be part of them, and you can, too. I came back on purpose to get you.”

  Caramon was tempted. Traveling with Kitiara, seeing the vast
world outside of Solace. No more backbreaking farm work, no more hoeing and plowing, no more forking hay until his arms ached. He’d use his arm for sword work, fighting goblins and ogres. Spending his nights with his comrades around a fire, or snug in a tavern with a girl on his knee.

  “What about Raistlin?” he asked.

  Kit shook her head. “I had hoped to find him stronger. Can he work magic yet?”

  “I … I don’t think so,” said Caramon.

  “Odds are he won’t ever be able to use it, then. Why, the mages I’ve heard of are practicing their skills at the age of twelve! Still, I’m sure I could get a job for him. He’s well schooled, isn’t he? There’s a temple I know about. They’re looking for scribes. Easy work and fat living. What do you say? We could leave as soon as Raistlin is well enough to travel.”

  Caramon allowed himself one more glimpse of walking around this town called Sanction, armor clanking, sword rattling on his hip, the women admiring him. He put the vision away with a sigh.

  “I can’t, Kit. Raist would never leave that school of his. Not until he’s ready to take some sort of test that they give in a big tower somewhere.”

  “Well, then, let him stay,” Kitiara said, irritated. “You come alone.”

  She eyed Caramon, giving him almost the same look he’d imagined from the women in Sanction. But not quite. Kit was sizing him up as a warrior. Self-conscious, he stood straighter. He was taller than the boys his age, taller than most men in Solace. The heavy farm labor had built up his muscles.

  “How old are you?” Kit asked.

  “Sixteen.”

  “You’d pass for eighteen, sure. I could teach you what you’d need to know on our way north. Raistlin will be fine here on his own. He’s got the house. Your father left it to you two, didn’t he? Well, then! There’s nothing stopping you.”

  Caramon might be gullible, he might be thickheaded—as his brother often told him he was—and slow of thought. But once he had made up his mind about something, he was as immovable as Prayer’s Eye Peak.