The Soulforge

by Margaret Weis

  “I can’t leave Raistlin, Kit.”

  Kitiara frowned, angry, not accustomed to having her will thwarted. Folding her arms across her chest, she glared at Caramon. Her booted foot tapped irritably on the floor. Caramon, uncomfortable beneath her piercing gaze, ducked his head and whipped the eggs right out of the bowl.

  “You could talk to Raistlin,” Caramon said, his voice muffled by his shirt collar, into which he was speaking. “Maybe I spoke out of turn. Maybe he’ll want to go.”

  “I’ll do that,” Kitiara said, her tone sharp. She was pacing the length of the small room.

  Caramon said nothing more. He dumped what remained of the eggs into a skillet and placed it over the fire. He heard Kit’s booted footfalls sound hollowly on the wood, winced at a particularly loud and angry stomp. When the eggs were cooked, the two sat down to breakfast in silence.

  Caramon risked a glance at his sister, saw her regarding him with an affable air, a charming smile.

  “These eggs are really good,” said Kit, spitting out small bits of shell. “Did I ever tell you about the time the bandit tried to stab me in my sleep? What you did reminded me of the story. We’d had a hard fight that day, and I was dead tired. Well, this bandit …”

  Caramon listened to this story and to many other exciting adventures during the day. He listened and enjoyed what he heard—Kit was an excellent storyteller. Every so often, Caramon would go to the bedroom to check on Raistlin and find him slumbering peacefully. When Caramon returned, he would hear yet another tale of valor, daring, battles fought, victory, and wealth won. He listened and laughed and gasped in all the right places. Caramon knew very well what his sister was trying to do. There could be only one answer. If Raistlin went, Caramon would go. If Raistlin stayed, so did Caramon.

  That evening, Raistlin woke. He was weak, so weak that he couldn’t lift his head from the pillow without help. But he was lucid and very much aware of his surroundings. He didn’t appear all that surprised to see Kitiara.

  “I had dreams about you,” he said.

  “Most men do,” Kit returned with a grin and a wink. She sat down on the edge of the bed, and while Caramon fed his brother chicken broth, Kitiara made Raistlin the same proposition she’d made Caramon.

  She wasn’t quite as glib, talking to those keen blue, unblinking eyes that looked right through her and out the other side. “Who is it you work for?” Raistlin asked when Kit had finished.

  Kitiara shrugged. “People,” she said.

  “And what temple is this where you would have me work? Dedicated to what god?”

  “It’s not Belzor, that’s for sure!” Kitiara said with a laugh.

  When Caramon, spooning broth, tried to say something, Raistlin coldly shushed him.

  “Thank you, Sister,” Raistlin said at last, “but I am not ready.”

  “Ready?” Kit couldn’t figure out what he was talking about. “What do you mean, ‘ready’? Ready for what? You can read, can’t you? You can write, can’t you? So you don’t have any talent for magic. You gave it a good try. It’s not important. There are other ways to gain power. I know. I’ve found them.”

  “That’s enough, Caramon!” Raistlin pushed away the spoon. Wearily he lay back down on the pillows. “I need to rest.”

  Kit stood up. Hands on her hips, she glared at him. “That addlepated mother of ours had you wrapped in cotton, for fear you’d break. It’s time you got out, saw something of the world.”

  “I am not ready,” Raistlin said again and closed his eyes.

  Kitiara left Solace that night.

  “I’m only making a short trip,” she told Caramon, drawing on her leather gloves. “To Qualinesti. Do you know anything about that place?” she asked offhandedly. “Its defenses? How many people live there? That sort of thing?”

  “I know elves live there,” Caramon offered after a moment’s profound thought.

  “Everyone knows that!” Kit scoffed.

  Putting on her cloak, she drew her hood over her head.

  “When will you be back?” Caramon asked.

  Kit shrugged. “I can’t say. Maybe a year. Maybe a month. Maybe never. It depends on how things go.”

  “You’re not mad at me, are you, Kit?” Caramon asked wistfully. “I wouldn’t want you to be mad.”

  “No, I’m not mad. Just disappointed. You’d have been a great warrior, Caramon. The people I know would have really made something of you. As for Raistlin, he’s made a big mistake. He wants power, and I know where he could get it. If you both hang around here, you’ll never be anything but a farmer, and he’ll be—like that fellow Waylan—a coin-puking, rabbit-pulling conjurer who’s the joke of half of Solace. It’s such a waste.”

  She gave Caramon a slap on the cheek that was meant to be friendly but which left the red mark of her hand. Opening the door, Kit peered outside, looking in both directions. Caramon couldn’t imagine what she was looking for. It was well past midnight. Most of Solace was in bed.

  “Good-bye, Kit,” he said.

  “Good-bye, Baby Brother.”

  He massaged his stinging cheek and watched her walk off through the moonlit branches of the vallenwood, a black shadow against silver.

  6

  RAISTLIN WOKE TO THE SOUND OF RAIN PELTING THE ROOF. Thunder rumbled from sky to ground, the vallenwoods shuddered. The dawn was gray, tinged with pink lightning. Rain was falling on the newly dug graves, forming drowning pools around the vallenwood saplings planted at the head of each.

  He lay on his bed and watched the gray gradually lighten as the storm passed. All was quiet now, except for the incessant drip of water falling on sodden leaves. He lay without moving. Movement took an effort, and he was too tired. His grief had emptied him. If he moved, the dull, aching pain of his loss would flood in on him, and though the emptiness was bad, it wasn’t as bad as the pain.

  He could not feel the bedclothes under him. He could not feel the blanket that covered him. He had no weight or substance. Was this what it was like in that coffin? In that grave? To feel nothing, ever again? To know nothing? Life, the world, the people in the world go on, and you know nothing, forever surrounded by a cold and empty, silent darkness?

  Pain burst the levee, surged in to fill the void. Pain and fear, hot, burning, welled up inside him. Tears stung his eyelids. He closed his eyes, squeezed them shut and wept, wept for himself and for his mother and father, for all those who are born of the darkness, who lift their wondering eyes to the light, feel its warmth on their skin, and who must return again to darkness.

  He wept silently, so as not to wake Caramon. He did this not so much out of consideration for his brother’s weariness as for his own shame at his weakness.

  The tears ended, leaving him with a bad taste of salt and iron in his mouth, a clogged nose, and a tightness in his throat, which came from muffling his sobs. The bedclothes were damp; his fever must have broken during the night. He had only the vaguest recollection of being sick, a recollection tinged with horror—in his fevered dreams, he had become entwined with Rosamun. He was his mother, a shrunken corpse. People stood around the bed, staring down at him.

  Antimodes, Master Theobald, the Widow Judith, Caramon, the dwarf and the kender, Kitiara. He begged and pleaded with them to give him food and water, but they said he was dead and he didn’t need it. He was in constant terror that they would dump him in a coffin and lower him into the ground, into a grave that was Master Theobald’s laboratory.

  Remembering the terrible dreams robbed them of some of their power. The horror lingered, but it was not overwhelming. The wool blanket covering him was rough and chafed his skin; beneath it, he was wearing nothing.

  He tossed the blanket aside. Weak and tottering from his illness, he stood up. The air was chill and he shivered, groped hastily for his shirt, which had been flung over the back of a chair. Dragging the shirt on over his head, he thrust his arms into the sleeves, then stood in the middle of the small room and wondered bleakly, What now?


  There were two wooden beds in the room, each bed built into a wall. Raistlin crossed the room to look down on the slumbering form of his twin. Caramon was a late sleeper, a heavy sleeper. Usually he lay easily and comfortably on his back, his big body spread all akimbo, arms flung wide, one leg hanging off the bed, the other bent at the knee, leaning against the wall. Raistlin, by contrast, slept in a tight, huddled ball, his knees drawn up to his chin, his arms hugging his chest.

  But Caramon’s sleep this day was as restless and uneasy as his twin’s. Fatigue kept him manacled to his bed, he was so exhausted that not even the most terrifying dreams could jolt his body from sleep. He rolled and tossed, his head jerked back and forth. His pillow lay on the floor, along with the blankets. He had twisted the sheet so that it straggled around him like a winding cloth.

  He muttered and mumbled and panted, tugged at the collar of his nightshirt. His skin was clammy, his hair damp with sweat. He looked so ill that Raistlin, concerned, placed his hand on his brother’s forehead to feel if he were running a fever.

  Caramon’s skin was cool. Whatever troubled him was of the mind, not the body. He shuddered at Raistlin’s touch and begged, “Don’t make me go there, Raist! Don’t make me go there!”

  Raistlin brushed aside a lock of the curly, tousled hair that was falling into his brother’s eyes and wondered if he should wake him. His brother must have been awake many long nights and he needed his rest, but this was more like torture than sleep. Raistlin put his hand on his twin’s broad shoulder, shook it.

  “Caramon!” he called peremptorily.

  Caramon’s eyes flared wide. He stared at Raistlin and cringed. “Don’t leave me! Don’t! Don’t leave me! Please!” He whimpered and flung himself about on the bed with such violence that he nearly fell on the floor.

  This was not dreaming. It was vaguely familiar to Raistlin, then suddenly frighteningly familiar.

  Rosamun. She had been much like this.

  Perhaps this wasn’t sleep. Perhaps this was a trance, similar to the trances into which Rosamun had stumbled, never to find her way back out.

  Caramon had not previously evinced any signs that he had inherited his mother’s fey talent. He was her son, however, and her blood—with all its strange fancies—ran in his veins. His body was weakened by nights of wakeful watching, tending his sick brother. His mind was upset by the tragic loss of his beloved father, then he had been forced to stand by helplessly and watch his mother dwindle away. With the body’s defenses lowered, the mind’s defenses confused and overwhelmed, his soul was laid bare and vulnerable. It might well retreat into dark regions never known to exist, there to find refuge from the battering armies of life.

  What if I lose Caramon?

  I would be alone. Alone without family or friend, for Raistlin could not count on Kitiara as family, nor did he want to. Her crudeness and her untamed animal nature disgusted him. That’s what he told himself. In reality, he feared her. He foresaw that someday there would be a power struggle between them, and, alone, he was not certain that he was strong enough to withstand her. As for friends, on this point he could not delude himself. He had none. His friends were not his friends at all, they were Caramon’s.

  Caramon was often irritating, often annoying. His slow thought processes frustrated his quicker thinking twin, who was at times tempted to grab hold of Caramon and shake him on the faint hope that a sensible thought might accidentally tumble out. But now, faced with the possibility of losing his brother, Raistlin looked into the void where Caramon had been and realized how much he would miss him, and not for just companionship, or to have someone strong on which to lean. Mentally speaking, Caramon was not a brilliant swordsman, but he made a good fencing partner.

  Besides, Caramon was the only person Raistlin had ever known who could come close to making him laugh. Shadow puppets on the wall, ridiculous rabbits …

  “Caramon!” Raistlin shook his brother again.

  Caramon only moaned and raised his hands, as if warding off some blow. “No, Raist! I don’t have it! I swear I don’t have it!”

  Frightened, Raistlin wondered what to do. He left the bedroom, went in search of his sister, with some idea of sending Kit out to fetch Weird Meggin.

  But Kitiara was gone. Her pack was gone; she must have left during the night.

  Raistlin stood in the parlor of the silent house, the too-silent house. Kitiara had packed all Rosamun’s clothes and possessions away in a wooden chest, stowed it under the bed. His mother’s rocking chair remained, however, the only one of her possessions that Kit had not removed, mainly because there was a shortage of chairs in the house as it was. Rosamun’s presence lingered like the fragrance of faded rose petals. The very emptiness, the lack of her, recalled his mother vividly to his mind.

  Too vividly. Rosamun sat in the chair, rocking. She rocked leisurely back and forth, her dress rustling. The toes of her small feet, encased in soft leather shoes, lightly touched the floor and then slid beneath her dress when the chair rocked backward. Her head and her gaze remained level, her lips smiling at Raistlin.

  He stared, willing with an aching heart for this to be true, even as a part of him knew it wasn’t.

  Rosamun ceased rocking, rose from the chair with grace and ease. He was conscious of sweet fragrance as she passed near him, a fragrance of roses.…

  In the next room, his brother gave a fearful yell, a horrible scream, as though he were being burned alive.

  The scent of roses in his nostrils, Raistlin searched the room, found what he sought. A dish of dried and withered rose petals had been placed on a table to sweeten the sickness-tainted air. He dipped his hand into the dish, and carried the rose petals into the bedroom.

  Caramon clutched the sides of the bed, his hands white-knuckled. The bed shook beneath him. His eyes were wide open, staring at some horror visible only to himself.

  Raistlin had no need to refer to his primer for the wording of the spell. The words were etched into his brain with fire, and like a wildfire racing across parched grass, so the magic raced from his brain down his spine, burned through every nerve, enflamed him.

  He crushed the rose petals, strewed them over his brother’s tormented form.

  “Ast tasarak sinuralan kyrnawi.”

  Caramon’s eyelids fluttered. He gave a great sigh, shuddered, then his eyes closed. He lay for a moment, flattened on the bed, not breathing, and Raistlin knew a fear unlike any he’d ever previously experienced. He thought his twin was dead.

  “Caramon!” Raistlin whispered. “Don’t leave me, Caramon! Don’t!” His hands gently brushed the rose petals from Caramon’s still face.

  Caramon drew a breath, long, deep, and easy. He let that breath go and then drew another, his chest rising and falling. His face smoothed, the dreams had not cut too deep, had not left their chisel mark upon him. The lines of weariness, grief, and sorrow would soon fade away, ripples on the surface of his customary genial tranquility.

  Weak with relief, Raistlin sank down beside his brother’s bed, rested his head in his hands. It was only then, his eyes closed, seeing nothing but darkness, that Raistlin realized what he had done.

  Caramon was asleep.

  I cast the spell, Raistlin said inwardly. The magic worked for me.

  The fire of the spellcasting flickered and died out, leaving him weak and shaking so that he could not stand, yet Raistlin knew such joy as he had never known in his life.

  “Thank you!” Raistlin whispered, his fists clenched, his nails digging into his flesh. He saw again the eye, white, red, black, regarding him with satisfaction. “I won’t fail you!” he repeated over and over. “I won’t fail!”

  The eye blinked.

  A tiny pinprick of concern, of jealous doubt, jabbed him.

  Had Caramon fallen into a trance? Was it possible that he had likewise inherited the magic?

  Raistlin opened his eyes, stared hard and long at his slumbering brother. Caramon lay on his back, one arm flopped over the edg
e of the bed, the other across his forehead. His mouth was open, he gave a prodigious snore. He had never looked more foolish.

  “I was mistaken,” Raistlin said, and he pushed himself to his feet. “It was a bad dream, nothing more.” He smiled scornfully at himself. “How could I have ever imagined that this great oaf would inherit the magic?”

  Raistlin left the room on tiptoe, moving quietly so as not to disturb his brother, and shut the door to their room softly behind him. Entering the parlor, Raistlin sat down in his mother’s rocking chair, and, rocking gently back and forth, he reveled fully in his triumph.

  7

  CARAMON SLEPT THAT DAY THROUGH AND ON INTO THE NIGHT. The next day he woke, recalled nothing of his dreams, was amused and even skeptical to hear his twin describe them.

  “Pooh, Raist!” Caramon said. “You know I never dream.”

  Raistlin did not argue. He himself was gaining strength rapidly, was strong enough to sit at the kitchen table that morning with his brother. The day was warm; a soft breeze carried sounds of women’s voices, calling and laughing. It was laundry day, and the women were hanging their wet clothes among the leaves to dry. The early autumn sunshine filtered through the changing leaves, casting shadows that flitted around the kitchen like birds. The twins ate breakfast in silence. There was much they had to talk about, much they needed to discuss and settle, but that could wait.

  Raistlin touched each moment that passed, held each moment cupped in his mind until it slipped away through his fingers, to be replaced by another. The past and all its sorrow was behind him; he would never turn around to look back. The future, with its promise and its fears, lay ahead of him, shone warm on his face like the sunshine, darkened his face like the shadows. At this moment, he was suspended between past and future, floating free.

  Outside, a bird whistled, another answered. Two young women let fall a wet sheet onto one of the town’s guardsmen, who was walking his beat on the ground below. The sheet enveloped him, to judge by his muffled, good-natured cursing. The young women giggled and protested that it was an accident. They ran down the stairs to reclaim their linen and spend a few pleasant moments flirting with the handsome guard.