The Soulforge

by Margaret Weis

  Flint was so comfortable that Tanis was beginning to worry that the dwarf was enjoying his leisure too much. The pain in his back and leg had nearly subsided, but it was beginning to look as if Flint might never walk again.

  Tanis called his friends together, hatched a plot to cause the dwarf to leave his bed, “without the use of gnome powder,” as the half-elf put it.

  “I hear there’s a new metalsmith moving to Solace,” Tasslehoff Burrfoot announced one morning as he fluffed up the dwarf’s pillows.

  “What’s that?” Flint looked startled.

  “A new metalsmith,” the kender repeated. “Well, it’s only to be expected. Word has gone out that you’ve retired.”

  “I have not!” Flint said indignantly. “I’m only taking a bit of a rest. For my health.”

  “I hear it’s a dwarf. From Thorbardin.”

  Leaving this poisoned shaft inside the wound, guaranteed to rankle, Tasslehoff left on his daily tour of Solace to see who was new in town and, more important, what interesting objects might find their way into his pouches.

  Sturm was next to arrive, with a pot of hot soup sent by his mother. In regard to the dwarf’s anxious questions, Sturm replied that he had “heard something about a new metalsmith coming to town” but added that he rarely paid attention to gossip and couldn’t provide any more details.

  Raistlin was a good deal more forthcoming, providing a great many details about the Thorbardin metalsmith, down to his clan and the length and color of his beard, also adding that the main reason the Thorbardin dwarf had chosen Solace as a place to locate his business was that “he’d heard they’d had no good metalwork done here in a long, long while.”

  By the time Tanis arrived late that afternoon, he was pleased but not terribly surprised to find Flint in his workshop, firing up the forge that been cold all summer long. The dwarf still walked with a limp (when he remembered) and still complained of pain in his back (particularly when he had to go rescue Tasslehoff from any number of minor disasters). But he never took to his bed again.

  As for the Thorbardin metalsmith, he found that the air of Solace didn’t agree with him. At least that’s what Tanis said.

  The summer had been a long one and a prosperous one for the people of Solace. Large numbers of travelers, the most travelers anyone could remember, passed through the town. The roads were relatively safe. There were thieves and footpads, certainly, but that was a fact of life on the road and not considered to be more than a nuisance. War was the great disrupter of travel, and no wars were being fought anywhere on Ansalon at this time, nor were any expected. Ansalon had been at peace for three hundred years, and everyone in Solace assumed complacently that the peace would last for another three hundred.

  Almost everyone, that is. Raistlin believed differently, and it was for this reason that he had decided to concentrate his area of study in the realm of magic on war wizardry. It was not a decision based on a young boy’s idealized picture of battle as something glorious and exciting. Raistlin had never played the games of war, as had the other children. He was not enamored of a martial life, nor was he at all excited at the thought of entering into battle. His was a calculated decision, made after long deliberation, and it had to do with one object: money.

  The overheard conversation of Kitiara and the stranger had a great deal to do with Raistlin’s planning. He could repeat the conversation verbatim, and he went over the words in his mind almost nightly.

  Up north—Sanction, presumably—a great lord with vast sums of money was interested in gaining information about Qualinesti. He was also interested in recruiting skilled warriors; he had loyal and intelligent agents working for him. A gully dwarf child could have taken this evidence and worked it to its logical conclusion.

  Someday, somewhere, sometime soon, someone was going to need to put together an army to defend against this lord, and they would need to put it together fast. This unknown someone would pay highly for soldiers and even more highly for mages skilled in the art of combining sword and sorcery.

  Raistlin assumed, and rightly so, that dealing death would pay him far better than mixing herbs to heal sick babies.

  Having made this decision, he pondered on the best way to act upon it. He needed to acquire magical spells that were combative in nature, that much was certain. He would also need spells to defend himself, else his first fight would be his last. But what would he be defending against? What did a commander expect of a warrior mage? What would be his place in the ranks? What attack spells would be required? Raistlin knew little about soldiering, and he realized then that he needed to know more if he was going to make an effective war wizard.

  The one person who might know the answers to these questions was the one person he dared not ask: Kitiara. He did not want to put ideas into her head. Asking Tanis Half-Elven was the same these days as asking his sister, for Tanis would surely discuss anything Raistlin said with Kit. Neither Sturm nor Flint would be of any help; knights and dwarves distrusted magic intensely and would never rely on a mage in a battle situation. Tasslehoff wasn’t even a consideration. Anyone who asks a question of a kender deserves the answer.

  Raistlin had secretly searched Master Theobald’s library and found nothing useful.

  “This age on Krynn will be called the Age of Peace,” Master Theobald was wont to predict. “We are a changed people. War is an institution of unenlightened generations past. Nations have learned how to peacefully coexist. Humans, elves, and dwarves have learned to work together.”

  By pointedly ignoring each other, Raistlin thought. That is not coexistence. It is blindness.

  When he looked into the future, he saw it ablaze with flame, awash in blood. He could see the coming wars so clearly, in fact, that he sometimes wondered if he hadn’t inherited some of his mother’s talent as a seer.

  Convinced that his scheme was the right one, the one that would win him fame and fortune, Raistlin required only knowledge to put it into action. Such knowledge could come from only one source: books. Books his master did not have. How to acquire them?

  The Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth had the most extensive library of magic anywhere on Krynn. But as a novice mage, an initiate, not even yet an apprentice, Raistlin would not be permitted inside the Tower. His first entry into that fabled and dread edifice would be if and when he was invited to take the Test. The Tower of Wayreth was out of the question.

  There were other sources for books of magic and books on magic: mageware shops.

  Mageware shops were not numerous in this day and age, but they did exist. There was a mageware shop in Haven; Raistlin had heard Master Theobald speak of it. He knew the location, having made surreptitious inquiries.

  One night, shortly after Flint’s marvelous recovery, Raistlin knelt down beside a small wooden chest he kept in his room. The chest was guarded by a simple locking cantrip, one of the first magicks every mage learns, a spell that is absolutely essential in a world populated by kender.

  Removing the cantrip with a single spoken command, a command that could be personalized to suit each wizard who utilized it, Raistlin opened the lid to the chest and took out of it a small leather purse. He counted the coins—completely unnecessary. He knew to the halfpence how much he had acquired. He deemed he had enough.

  The next morning he broached the subject with his brother.

  “Tell Farmer Sedge that you must take some time off, Caramon. We are traveling to Haven.”

  Caramon’s eyelids opened so wide it seemed probable he might never be able to close them. He stared at his twin in wordless astonishment. The distance from Solace to Master Theobald’s former school, about five miles, had been the farthest Caramon had ever traveled from his home in his life. The distance to the Lordcity of Haven was perhaps some ninety miles and seemed liked the end of the known world to Caramon.

  “Flint is journeying to the Harvest Home Festival in Haven next week. I heard him tell Tanis so last night. Tanis and Kit will undoubtedly travel al
ong. I propose that we go with them.”

  “You bet we will!” cried Caramon. In his joy, he performed an impromptu dance upon the door stoop, causing the entire house to shake on its tree-limb foundations.

  “Calm down, Caramon,” Raistlin ordered irritably. “You’ll crash through the floorboards again, and we can’t spare the money for repairs.”

  “Sorry, Raist.” Caramon quieted his elation, especially as he had a sobering thought. “Speaking of money, do we have enough? Going to Haven will cost plenty. Tanis will offer to pay for it, but we shouldn’t let him.”

  “We have enough if we are frugal. I will handle that detail. You need not worry about it.”

  “I’ll ask Sturm if he wants to go,” Caramon said, his happiness returning. He rubbed his hands together. “It will be a real adventure!”

  “I trust not,” Raistlin said caustically. “It is a three-day journey by wagon on well-traveled roads. I see no adventuring involved.”

  Which only proved that he had not inherited his mother’s gift of foresight after all.

  9

  THE JOURNEY BEGAN AS UNEVENTFULLY AS ANYONE COULD HAVE wished, with the possible exception of two young and aspiring warriors eager to display their newfound skills. The weather was clear and cool, the sunshine warmed them pleasantly in the afternoons. Recent rains kept the dust down. The road to Haven was filled with travelers, for Harvest Home was the city’s largest festival.

  Tanis drove the wagon, which was filled to capacity with the dwarf’s wares. Flint hoped to make money enough at the festival to help offset the amount he had lost over the summer. Raistlin rode up front with Tanis, to keep the half-elf company. Kitiara sometimes rode, sometimes walked. She was far too restless to ever do anyone thing for long. Flint had a place in the back of the wagon, where he was comfortably ensconced among the rattling pots and pans, keeping a close eye upon his more valued wares: silver bracers and bracelets, necklaces set with precious stones. Sturm and Caramon walked alongside, ready for trouble.

  The two young men peopled the road with bands of robbers, legions of hobgoblins (despite Tanis’s amused assurances that a goblin had not been seen in Solace since the time of the Cataclysm), and hordes of ravening beasts from wolves to basilisks.

  Their hopes for combat (nothing serious, a minor altercation would do) were aided and abetted by Tasslehoff, who took great delight in relating every tale he’d ever heard and quite a few he made up on the spot. Tales about unwary travelers having their hearts ripped out and eaten by ogres, travelers who were dragged off by bears, travelers who were changed into undead by wraiths.

  The result was that Sturm kept his hand on the hilt of his sword, coldly scrutinizing every person he met with such intensity that most of them figured Sturm himself for a thief and hurried to get out of his way. Caramon wore a perpetual scowl on his usually cheerful face, thinking that this made him look mean, though in reality, as Raistlin said, it only made him look bilious.

  By the end of the first day, Sturm’s hand was cramped from gripping his sword hilt, and Caramon had developed a splitting headache from keeping his jaw thrust forward at an unnatural angle. Kitiara’s ribs ached from suppressed laughter, for Tanis would not allow her to openly ridicule the young men.

  “They have to learn,” he said. It was shortly after lunch, and Kit was riding on the wagon’s seat between Tanis and Raistlin. “It doesn’t hurt them to develop habits of watchfulness and caution on the road, even if they are overdoing it a bit. I remember when I was young. I was the exact opposite. I set off from Qualinesti without a care in the world or a brain in my head. I took everyone I met for a friend. It was a wonder I didn’t end up in a ditch with my silly skull bashed in.”

  “When you were young,” Kit scoffed. She squeezed his hand. “You talk like an old man. You are still young, my friend.”

  “In elven terms, perhaps,” Tanis said. “Not in human. Don’t you ever think about that, Kit?”

  “Think about what?” she asked carelessly. In truth, she was not really paying attention. Having recently purchased a knife from Flint, a fine steel blade, she was engrossed in wrapping the handle with braided strips of leather.

  Tanis persisted. “About the fact that I have lived well over a hundred of your human years. And that I will live hundreds more.”

  “Bah!” Kit bent over her work, her fingers quick at their task but not particularly efficient. The braided leather provided a better grip, but it wouldn’t be much to look at. Kit didn’t care how it looked. Finishing her task, she tucked the knife into the top of her boot. “You’re only part elf.”

  “But I have an expanded life span compared to—”

  “Hey, Caramon!” Kit yelled in mock alarm. “I think I saw something move over in that bush! Look at that great idiot. If anything did jump out at him, he’d pee in his pants.… What were you saying?”

  “Nothing,” Tanis said, smiling at her. “It wasn’t important.”

  Shrugging, Kit jumped off the wagon to go tease Sturm by hinting that she was certain they were being followed by goblins.

  Raistlin glanced at Tanis. The half-elf’s smooth, unlined face—a face that would not be lined or wrinkled with age for perhaps another hundred years—was shadowed with unhappiness. He would be still a young man when Kitiara was an old, old woman. He would watch her age and die, while he remained relatively untouched by time.

  The bards sang songs of the tragic love of elf for human. What would it be like? Raistlin pondered. To watch beauty and youth wither in those you love. To see them in their old age, in their dotage, while you are still young and vibrant. And yet, Raistlin considered, if the half-elf should fall in love with an elven woman, he would suffer a like fate, except that in this case he would be the one to age.

  Raistlin regarded Tanis with new understanding and some compassion. He is doomed, the young mage reflected. He was doomed from birth. In neither world can he ever be truly happy. Talk of the gods playing a cruel joke on someone!

  This brought to mind the three ancient gods of magic. Raistlin felt a twinge of conscience. He had not fulfilled his promise to them. If he truly believed in them, as he had professed to them so long ago, why was he constantly questioning and doubting his belief? He was reminded of the three gods yet again when, late in the day, the companions came upon a group of priests walking down the road.

  The priests—twenty of them, men and women-walked down the center of the road in two files. They walked slowly, their expressions as solemn as if they were accompanying a body to the burial ground. They looked neither to the right nor the left, but kept their faces forward, their eyes lowered.

  The slow-moving column traveling down the middle of the road had the effect—intentional or not—of seriously impeding the flow of traffic.

  A great many people were on the Haven road this day. Flint was just one of several merchants traveling in that direction, transporting their stock in horse-driven carts or pushcarts or lugging bundles on their backs and heads. The wagons could not pass the priests, slowed to a funereal pace. Those traveling by foot were luckier, or so it seemed at first. They would start to circle around the double lines of the priests, walk about halfway, then suddenly stop in the road, fearful of moving, or fall hastily back.

  Those on horseback who attempted to ride around the group failed when their animals shied nervously, dancing sideways into the brush, or balked completely, refusing to even come near the priests.

  “What is it? What’s going on?” Flint grumbled, waking from a refreshing nap in the warm autumn sun. He stood up inside the wagon, clumped his way forward. “What’s the delay? At this rate, we’ll arrive in Haven in time to do the May dance.”

  “Those priests up ahead,” said Tanis. “They won’t move off the road and no one can get around them.”

  “Maybe they don’t know we’re back here,” Flint suggested. “Someone should tell them.”

  The driver of the lead wagon was attempting to do just that. He was shouting—po
litely shouting—for the priests to move to the side of the roadway. The priests paid no attention. They might have been deaf, everyone of them. They continued walking down the center.

  “This is ridiculous!” said Kit. “I’ll go talk to them.”

  She strode forward, her cape whipping around her, her sword rattling. Tasslehoff dashed after her.

  “No, Tas, Kit! Wait—Blast!” Tanis swore softly.

  Tossing the reins to the startled Raistlin, the half-elf hastily climbed out of the wagon and hurried after the two. Raistlin grappled uncertainly with the reins; he’d never driven a wagon before in his life. Fortunately Caramon jumped up on the wagon. He brought the cart to a halt, watching.

  Few creatures on Krynn can move as fast as an excited kender. By the time Tanis caught up with Kitiara, Tasslehoff was far ahead of them both. Tanis shouted for Tas to stop, but few creatures on Krynn are as deaf as an excited kender. Before Tanis could reach him, Tas was alongside one of the priests, a bald man, the tallest in line, who was bringing up the rear of the file on the right-hand side.

  Tas reached out his hand in order to introduce himself, and then the kender performed an extremely remarkable feat, jumping two feet in the air straight up and three feet back simultaneously, to land in a confusion of bags and pouches in the middle of a hedgerow.

  Tanis and Kit reached the kender as he was extricating himself and his pouches from the clinging branches of the hedge.

  “He has a snake, Tanis!” Tasslehoff cried, brushing leaves and twigs from his best orange-and-green plaid trousers. “Each one of the priests is carrying a snake wrapped around his arm!”