“What?” the proprietor yelled.
“Shh!” Caramon insisted, feeling that they must be nearing the important part.
“I went to your room, and Raistlin’s staff had come back by itself! Which is truly remarkable, except that I did go to a lot of trouble and it might have had more consideration. Then I couldn’t remember my room number, so I went to sleep under the table and when I woke up, that woman was sitting down right on top of me and I saw that this part of her clothing was sliding down her leg. And if this”-the kender pointed at the garter-“had slid down and wrapped around her ankle, she would have tripped and maybe hurt herself so I just took it off her. I guess you heard her scream, huh? After that she fainted. Then all these people jumped on me. For no reason!” Earwig added indignantly.
His face burning, still holding the garter, Caramon glanced around uncertainly, wondering what to do.
“I’ll take it, sir,” offered one of the female servants.
“Yeah! Thanks!” Caramon handed it over in relief. “He didn’t really mean to cause any trouble, Master Innkeeper. He just sort of found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ll keep an eye on him after this. It won’t happen again.”
“I surely hope not,” said the proprietor, somewhat mollified.
“Please give our apologies to the young lady,” Caramon added, marching Earwig up the stairs.
“I thought maybe I’d get another kiss, Caramon,” said the kender cheerfully. “Boy! That was fun!”
Raistlin stood at the window, staring down into the street below. There were hardly any more people out by day than by night. Those who were moving about on some business of their own walked with heads down, casting furtive looks this way and that. Raistlin had seen cities in the grip of plague. He could smell fear in the air. Now, he thought he could detect the same odor.
And there, shining against the white stone pavement, was the line.
Caramon walked into the room just behind Earwig, pushing the kender forward so that there would be no chance for him to escape. Raistlin slowly turned around from the window.
“How are you feeling?” Caramon asked.
“How do I ever feel?” Raistlin snapped. Seeing Caramon’s hurt look, the mage shook his head. “I’m sorry, my brother. I feel as if a crushing weight were on me. As if I’d been sent here to do something important, yet I haven’t any idea what! And we don’t have much time to do it!”
“What do you mean? We’ve got all the time in the world,” said Caramon practically. “I’ve ordered breakfast. It’ll be up in a moment.”
“Time!” Raistlin turned back to the window, staring down at the white line. “ ‘… To find the gate, to be there when the time arrives.’ We have no time, my brother. We have only until the Festival of the Eye. Three days.”
“Huh?” Caramon frowned.
“That’s the poem you quoted, isn’t it, Raistlin?” Earwig piped up. “I remember it, you see. ‘Darkness sends its agents, stealthy and black, to find the gate, to be there when the time arrives.’ I love stories, and that’s as good as a story. Did I ever tell you the one about Dizzy Longtongue and the minotaur-?”
“I think you dropped something,” said Caramon, jostling one of the kender’s pouches and spilling its contents on the floor.
Glass and ivory game pieces rolled across the wood, one of the pieces coming to rest at Raistlin’s feet. Reaching down, he picked it up. It was a small, yellowing statue carved into the likeness of a beautiful woman-beautiful, regal, evil, domineering. The mage held it up to his eyes, inspecting it, observing every tiny detail cut into the bone. Turning it over to look at the pedestal on which the woman stood, he saw an “X” on the bottom, a sign designating the piece as the Dark Queen in one of the mage’s favorite games, Wizards and Warriors.
“It can’t be coincidence,” he murmured. “The ‘cats decide the fate,’ and they are vanishing. The time of the Great Eye comes once again, when untold power awaits those who can use it. If I were the Dark Queen and I wanted to choose a time to come back into the world …” Raistlin’s voice died.
Caramon scoffed. “Hey, don’t talk like that, Raist! You said it yourself. Coincidence. We’ll find the cats, and there’ll be a perfectly logical explanation for their disappearance. Maybe it’ll be like that story about the guy with the flute who came into a town and played, and all of the rats followed him past the city limits.”
“But you forget the end of the story, my brother. In the end, the piper came back and stole away the children.”
Caramon kept silent. He didn’t think he’d helped matters any.
Looking at the game piece carefully one more time, Raistlin handed it back to the kender. Earwig looked at the piece as carefully as the mage had, but he didn’t find anything of interest. It was just another game piece.
“ ‘Fate moves the free,’ ” Caramon said under his breath, repeating one of his current, favorite proverbs. “What do we do now?”
“It’s time we explored the city of Mereklar.”
“How about seeing this Councillor Shavas? Shouldn’t we go meet her?”
“I think, my brother, that I will let her come to me,” said Raistlin coolly.
“You’re strangers, so you don’t see it like we do.”
“I guess not, ma’am,” Caramon said. “To me, this place looks overrun.”
“No, sir, no. Where once there were thousands, there are now few. Too few,” said the old woman.
“That’s true,” added a man who was seated at another table. “From morning to evening, the cats would roam the streets. White, gray, brown, striped, spotted, mottled. All sorts.”
“Except black,” the old woman interposed. “We never knew why, but there wasn’t a black cat among the lot of em.”
“Some think mages came and took the black ones,” said the man, glowering darkly at Raistlin.
Raistlin lifted an eyebrow and glanced at his brother. Caramon, looking uncomfortable, buried his head in a mug of ale. The three companions were wandering through the city, supposedly seeing the sights. But every time they came to any sort of a tavern, Raistlin insisted on going inside. He left most of the conversing to his brother. The handsome, good-natured fighter took to people easily, and they likewise warmed to him.
Caramon wondered, at first, how they were going to pay for what they drank, but all Raistlin had to do was to produce the scrollcase and, at the sight of it, no one ever asked them for money.
Raistlin listened and kept an eye on the kender, watching to note if anyone took an unusual interest in the skull necklace Earwig wore.
“We always left plates of food and small bowls of milk outside our house for the cats to eat and drink,” a middle-aged man told the warrior, “though sometimes we simply left the doors open and waited for the cats to come inside, where they could join us for breakfast.”
“They would always roam about on the street or in the parks, waiting to be petted,” a young barmaid explained, her eyes on Caramon. “No one would dream of harming them. After all, they’ll one day save the world!” The others in the tavern nodded in agreement.
“You haven’t seen a guy around here, playing a flute, have you?” Caramon began, but his brother gave him such a vicious look that the big warrior lapsed into silence. They stood up to go.
“Damn all wizards to the Abyss,” one of the guests said as the magician left.
“Well, how rude!” exclaimed Earwig.
Caramon turned, fist clenched, but Raistlin put his hand on his brother’s knotted arm.