Dragonlance 12 - Raistlin Chronicles - Soulforge (27 page)

Raistlin remained standing where she'd left him, as if he'd been struck by lightning and his feet had melted to the spot. Dazed and dazzled, he considered her invitation and what it meant. She liked him. Him! She had chosen him over Caramon, over all the other men in town who were vying for her affection.

Happiness, pure and untainted, happiness such as he had rarely experienced, poured over him. He basked in it, as in a hot summer sun, and felt himself grow like the newly planted seeds. He built castles in the air so rapidly that within seconds they were ready for him to take up residence.

He saw himself her acknowledged favorite. Caramon would envy him for a change. Not that what Caramon thought mattered, because Miranda loved him, and she was everything good and sweet and wonderful. She would bring out what was good in Raistlin, drive away those perverse demons

—jealousy, ambition, pride—who were always plaguing him. He and Miranda would live above the clothier shop. He didn't know anything at all about running a business, but he would learn, for her sake.

For her sake, he would even give up his magic, if she asked him.

The laughter of children jolted Raistlin from his sweet reverie. He was now very late for school and would receive a severe scolding from Master Theobald.

A scolding which Raistlin accepted so meekly, gazing at Theobald with what might almost be termed an affectionate smile, that the master was more than half convinced his strangest and most difficult pupil had, at long last, gone quite mad.

That night—for the first time since he had started school, not counting those times when he was ill

—Raistlin did not study his spellcasting. He forgot to water his herbs, left the mice and the rabbit to scrabble frantically in their cages, hungry for the food he neglected to give them. He tried to eat but couldn't swallow a mouthful. He dined on love, a dish far sweeter and more succulent than any served at the feast of an emperor.

Raistlin's one fear was that his brother would return before nightfall, for then he would have to waste time answering all sorts of stupid questions. Raistlin had his lie prepared, a lie brought to mind by Miranda herself. He had been called out to tend to a sick child. No, he did not need Caramon as an escort.

Fortunately Caramon did not return home. This was not unusual during planting season, when he and Farmer Sedge would stay out working in the fields by the light of the bright moon.

Raistlin left their house, walking the boardwalks. In his fancy, he walked on moonlit clouds.

He went to Miranda's house, but he was not going to visit her. Visiting a young unmarried woman after dark would not have been proper. He would speak to her father first, obtain his permission to court his daughter. Raistlin went only to gaze at the place where she lived, hoping perhaps to catch a glimpse of her through the window. He imagined her sitting before the fire, bent over her evening's sewing. She was dreaming of him, perhaps, as he was dreaming of her.

The clothier's business was on the lower level of his house, one of the largest in Solace. The lower level was dark, for the business was shut up for the night. Lights gleamed in the upper level, though, shining through gabled windows. Raistlin stood quietly on the boardwalk in the soft spring evening gazing up at the windows, waiting, hoping for nothing more than the sight of the light shining on her red-gold curls. He was standing thus when he heard a noise.

The sound came from down below, from a shed on the ground beneath the clothier's. Probably a storage shed. The thought came immediately to Raistlin's mind that some thief had broken into the shed. If he could catch the thief, or at least halt the robbery, he would, in his fevered, impossibly romantic condition, have a chance to prove himself worthy of Miranda's love.

Not stopping to think that what he was doing was extremely dangerous, that he had no means of protecting himself if he did come upon a thief, Raistlin ran down the stairs. He could see his way easily enough. Lunitari, the red moon, was full this night and cast a lurid glow along his path.

Reaching the ground, he glided forward silently, stealthily toward the shed. The lock on the door hung loose, the door was shut. The shed had no windows, but a soft light, just barely visible, gleamed out of a knothole on one side. Someone was definitely inside. Raistlin had been about to burst in the door, but common sense prevailed, even over love. He first would look through the knothole, see what was going on. He would be witness to the thief's activities. This done, he would raise the alarm, prevent the thief's escape.

Raistlin put his eye to the knothole.

Bundles of cloth had been stacked on one side of the shed, leaving a cleared place in the center. A blanket was spread on that cleared place. A candle stood on a box in a corner. On the blanket, indistinct in the shadows cast by the candle's wavering flame, two people writhed and panted and squirmed.

They rolled into the candle's light. Red curls fell across a bare white breast. A man's hand squeezed the breast and groaned. Miranda giggled and gasped. Her white hand raked across the man's naked back.

A broad, muscular back. Brown hair, brown curly hair, shone in the candlelight. Caramon's naked back, Caramon's sweat-damp hair.

Caramon nuzzled Miranda's neck and straddled her. The two rolled out of the light. Pants and heaves and smothered giggles whispered in the darkness, giggles that dissolved into moans and gasps of pleasure.

Raistlin thrust his hands into the sleeves of his robe. Shivering uncontrollably in the warm spring air, he walked silently and rapidly back to the stairs that were blood red in Lunitari's smugly smiling light.

Raistlin fled along the boardwalks, with no idea where he was or where he was going. He knew only that he could not go home. Caramon would be returning later, when his pleasure was sated, and Raistlin could not bear to see his brother, to see that self-satisfied grin and smell her scent and his lust still clinging to him. Jealousy and revulsion clenched Raistlin's stomach, sent bitter bile surging up his throat. Half blind, weak, and nauseous, he walked and walked, blind and uncaring, until he walked straight into a tree limb in the darkness.

The blow to his forehead stunned him. Dazed, he clung to the railing. Alone on the moonlit stairs, his hands dappled with the blood-red light, shaking and trembling with the fury of his emotions, he wished Caramon and Miranda both dead. If he had known a magical spell in that moment that would have seared the lovers' flesh, burned them to ashes, Raistlin would have cast it.

He could see quite clearly in his mind the fire engulfing the clothier's shed, see the flames—

crackling red and orange and white-hot—consuming the wood and the flesh inside, burning, purifying…

A dull aching pain in his hands and wrists jolted him back to conscious awareness. He looked down to see his hands white-knuckled in the moonlight. He had been sick, he realized from the stench and a puddle of puke at his feet. He had no recollection of vomiting. The purging had done him some good apparently. He was no longer dizzy or nauseated. The rage and jealousy no longer surged inside him, no longer poisoned him.

He could look around now, take his bearings. At first, he recognized nothing. Then slowly he found a familiar landmark, then another. He knew where he was. He had traversed nearly the length of Solace, yet he had no memory of having done so. Looking back, it was as if he looked into the heart of a conflagration. All was red fire and black smoke and drifting white ash. He gave a deep sigh, a shuddering sigh, and slowly let go his stranglehold on the railing.

A public water barrel stood nearby. He dared not yet put anything into his shriveled stomach, but he moistened his lips and splashed water on the boards where he'd been sick. He was thankful no one had seen him, thankful no one else was around. He could not have borne with pity.

As Raistlin came to figure out where he was, he came to the realization that he shouldn't be here.

This part of Solace was not considered safe. One of the first to be built, its dwellings were little more than tumbledown shacks, long since abandoned, the early residents having either prospered and moved up in Solace society or foundered and moved out of town altogether. Weird Meggin lived not far from here, and this was also the location of The Trough, which must have been very close by.

Drunken laughter drifted up through the leaves, but it was sporadic and muffled. Most people, even drunkards, were long abed. The night had crossed its midpoint, was in the small hours.

Caramon would be home by now, home and probably frantic with worry at the absence of his twin.

Good, Raistlin said sourly to himself. Let him worry. He would have to think up some excuse for his absence, which shouldn't be too difficult. Caramon would swallow anything.

Raistlin was chilled, exhausted, and shivering; he'd come out without a cloak, and he would have a long walk home. But still he lingered by the railing, looked back with uneasiness on the moment when he'd wished his brother and Miranda dead. He was relieved to be able to tell himself that he had not meant it, and he was suddenly able to appreciate the strict rules and laws that governed the use of magic. Impatient to gain power, he had never understood so clearly the importance of the Test, which stood like a steel gate across his future, barring his entry to the higher ranks of wizardry.

Only those with the discipline to handle such vast power were granted the right to use it. Looking back on the savagery of his emotions, his desire, his lust, his jealousy, his rage, Raistlin was appalled. The fact that his body—the yearnings and desires of his body—could have so completely overthrown the discipline of his mind disgusted him. He resolved to guard against such destructive emotions in the future.

Pondering this, he was just about to set out for home when he heard booted footsteps approaching.

Probably the town guard, walking their nightly patrol. He foresaw annoying questions, stern lectures, perhaps even an enforced escort home. He sidled near the bole of the tree, crept into its shadow, out of Lunitari's light. He wanted to be alone, he wanted to talk to no one.

The person continued walking, moved out of the shadows cast by the tree leaves, and entered a red pool of moonlight. The person was cloaked and hooded, but Raistlin knew Kitiara immediately, knew her by her walk—her long, quick, impatient stride that never seemed to carry her to her destination fast enough.

She passed close by Raistlin. He could have reached out to brush her dark cloak, but he only shrank still deeper into the shadows. Of all the people he did not want to see this night, Kitiara was foremost. He hoped she would remove herself from his vicinity quickly, so that he could return home, and he was extremely frustrated to see her halt at the water barrel.

He waited for her to take her drink and go on, but, though she did drink from the gourd cup attached to the barrel by a rope, she didn't move on. She dumped the gourd back into the water; it fell with a splash. Crossing her arms, Kit leaned back against the barrel and took up a position of waiting.

Raistlin was stranded. He could not leave his tree. He could not step out into the moonlight without her noticing him. But by now he would not have left if he could have. He was intrigued and curious.

What was Kitiara doing? Why was she out walking the streets of Solace at this time of night, walking alone, her half-elf lover nowhere to be seen?

She was meeting someone; that much was obvious. Kit was never good at waiting for anything, and this was no exception. She had not been standing two minutes before she stirred restlessly. She crossed her feet, uncrossed her feet, rattled the sword at her waist, slapped her leather gloved hands together, took another drink of water, and more than once leaned forward to peer impatiently down the walkway.

"I will give him five more minutes," she muttered. The night air was still, and Raistlin could hear her words quite clearly.

Footsteps sounded, coming from the direction in which Kit had been looking. She straightened, her hand going reflexively to the hilt of her sword.

The other figure was that of a man, also cloaked and hooded and reeking of ale. Even from where he stood, no more than ten paces from them, Raistlin could smell the liquor on the man. Kit wrinkled her nose in disgust.

"You sot!" Kit sneered. "Keep me waiting in the cold for hours while you suck down rotgut, will you! I've half a mind to slit your ale-swilling belly!"

"I am not past our meeting time," said the man, and his voice was cold and, surprisingly, sober. "If anything, I am early. And one cannot sit in a tavern, even in a tavern as wretched as The Trough, without drinking. Though I am thankful to say that more of that foul liquid the barkeep has the temerity to call ale is on me than is inside me. The barmaid helps herself to her own wares apparently. She managed to spill nearly a full flagon on me… Did you hear that?"

Raistlin had shifted his position ever so slightly in order to relieve a sudden painful cramp in his left leg. He had made hardly any noise at all, yet the man had heard him, for the hooded face turned in Raistlin's direction. Steel flashed in the moonlight.

Raistlin held perfectly still, not even breathing. He did not want to be caught spying on his sister.

Kit would be furious, and she had never had any qualms about relieving her anger with the flat of her hand. She might do worse now. And even if she didn't, even if she were inclined to be at all tenderhearted with her baby brother, then the man with the voice like frost-rimed iron would not.

Yet even as fear clenched his already shriveled belly, Raistlin realized that he did not dread being caught because he feared punishment, but because he would miss a chance to discover one of Kit's secrets. Kit had already tried to draw him into her world, place him under her influence. Raistlin was certain she would try again, and he had no intention of playing a subservient role to anyone.

Someday he would have to oppose the wishes of his willful sister. He would need every weapon at his disposal for the combat.