“Raist!” Caramon cried anxiously. “Are you all right?”
“No thanks to you,” Raistlin muttered. He hunched deeper into his blanket, kept his eyes closed. He could see Caramon well enough without looking at him.
Big, muscular, broad-shouldered, broad-smiling, genial, good-looking, his brother was everybody’s friend, all the girls’ darling.
“I was left to the tender mercies of a kender,” Raistlin told him, “while you were out playing slap and tickle with the buxom Tika.”
“Don’t talk about her like that, Raist,” said Caramon, and there was a harsh edge to his generally cheerful voice. “Tika’s a nice girl. We were dancing. That’s all.” Raistlin grunted.
Caramon stood there shuffling his big feet, then said remorsefully, “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to fix your tea. I didn’t realize it was so late. Can I—Can I get you anything? Do something for you?”
“You can stop talking, shut what passes for a door, and douse that blasted light!”
“Yeah, Raist. Sure.” Caramon picked up the lattice-work branch screen and set it back into place. He blew out the candle inside the lantern and undressed in the darkness.
Caramon tried to be quiet, but the big man—a muscular and healthy contrast to his weaker twin—stumbled into the table, knocked over a chair, and once, to judge by the sound of swearing, bumped his head on the cavern wall while groping about in the dark, trying to find his mattress.
Raistlin grit his teeth and waited in seething silence until Caramon finally settled down. His brother was soon snoring, and Raistlin, who had been so weary, lay wide awake, unable to sleep. He stared into the darkness, not blinded by it as his twin and all the rest of them. His eyes were open to what lived inside.
“Chicken feathers!” he muttered scathingly and began to cough again.
Chapter 2
Dawn of a New Day. The longing for home.
Tanis Half-Elven woke with a hangover, and he hadn’t even been drinking. His hangover came not from spending the night in jollity, dancing, and drinking too much ale. It came from lying awake half the night worrying.
Tanis had left the wedding early last night. The celebratory spirit grated on his soul. The loud music made him wince and glance uneasily over his shoulder, fearful that they were revealing themselves to their enemies. He longed to tell the musicians, banging and tooting on their crude instruments, not to play so loudly. There were eyes watching from the darkness, ears listening. Eventually he had sought out Raistlin, finding the company of the dark-souled, cynical mage more in keeping with his own dark and pessimistic feelings.
Tanis had paid for it, too. When he had finally fallen asleep, he dreamed of horses and carrots, dreamed he was that draft horse, plodding round and round in a never-ending circle, seeking vainly for the carrot he could never quite reach.
“First, the carrot is a blue crystal staff,” he said resentfully, rubbing his aching forehead. “We have to save the staff from falling into the wrong hands. We do and then we’re told this is not good enough. We have to travel to Xak Tsaroth to find the god’s greatest gift—the sacred Disks of Mishakal, only to discover that we can’t read them. We have to seek out the person who can, and all the while, we are being dragged deeper and deeper into this war—a war none of knew was even going on!”
“Yes, you did,” growled a largish lump, barely visible in the half-light of dawn that was slipping through the blankets covering the opening of the cave. “You had traveled enough, seen enough, heard enough to know war was brewing. You just wouldn’t admit it.”
“I’m sorry, Flint,” said Tanis. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I didn’t realize I was talking out loud.”
“That’s a sign of madness, you know,” the dwarf grumbled. “Talking to yourself. You shouldn’t make a habit of it. Now go back to sleep before you wake the kender.”
Tanis glanced over at another lump on the opposite side of the cave that was not so much a cave as a hole scooped out of the mountain. Tas had been relegated to a far corner by Flint, who’d been grumpily opposed to sharing his cave with the kender anyway. Tanis needed to keep an eye on Tas, however, and had finally persuaded the dwarf to allow the kender to share their dwelling.
“I think I could shout and not wake him,” said Tanis, smiling.
The kender slept the peaceful and innocent sleep of dogs and children. Much like a dog, Tas twitched and whiffled in his sleep, his small fingers wiggling as if even in his dreams he was examining all sorts of curious and wondrous things. Tas’s precious pouches, containing his treasure trove of “borrowed” items, lay scattered around him. He was using one as a pillow. Tanis made a mental note to go through those pouches sometime today when Tas was off on one of his excursions. Tanis regularly searched the kender’s possessions, looking for objects people had “misplaced” or “dropped.” Tanis would return said objects to their owners, who would receive them in a huff and tell him he really should do something about the kender’s pilfering. Since kender had been pilfering since the day the Graygem’s passing had created them (if you believed the old legends), there wasn’t much Tanis could do to stop it, short of taking the kender to the top of the mountain and shoving him off, which was Flint’s preferred solution to the problem.
Tanis crawled out from beneath his blanket, and moving as quietly as he could, he left the hut. He had an important decision to make today, and if he remained in his bed, trying to go back to sleep, he would only toss and turn restlessly thinking about it, risking another outraged protest from Flint. Despite the chill of the morning—and winter was definitely in the air—Tanis decided to go wash the thought of carrots out of his mind with a plunge in the stream. His cavern was just one of many that pocked the mountainside. The refugees of Pax Tharkas were not the first people to dwell in these caves. Pictures painted on the walls of some gave indications that ancient folk had lived here before. The pictures depicted hunters with bows and arrows and animals that resembled deer yet had long pointed horns, not antlers. And in some there were creatures with wings. Enormous creatures breathing fire from their mouths. Dragons. He stood for a moment on the ledge in front of his cave, gazing down at floor of the valley spread out before him. He could not see the stream; the valley was shrouded with a low-lying mist rising off the water. The sun lit the sky, but it had not yet risen over the mountains. The valley remained nestled in its foggy blanket, as though as loathe to wake up as the old dwarf. A beautiful place, Tanis thought to himself, climbing down from the rocks onto the wet grass in the misty half-light, heading toward the tree-lined stream.
The red leaves of the maple and the gold of the walnut and oak trees were a brilliant contrast to the dark green of the pines, as the gray rock of the mountains was a contrast to the stark white, new-fallen snows. He could see tracks of game animals on the muddy trail leading to the stream. Nuts lay on the ground, and fruit hung glistening from the vines.
“We could shelter in this valley though the winter months,” Tanis said, doing his thinking aloud. He slipped and slid down the bank until he came to the edge of the deep, swift-flowing water.
“What harm would there be in that?” he asked his reflection.
The face that looked up at him grinned in answer. He had elven blood in him, but one would never know by looking. Laurana accused him of hiding it. Well, maybe he did. It made life easier. Tanis scratched at the beard that no elf could grow. Long hair covered his slightly pointed ears. His body did not have the slender delicacy of the elven form but the bulk of humans. Stripping off his leather tunic, breeches, and boots, Tanis waded into the stream, dispersing his reflection in ripples, gasping at the shock of the cold water. He splashed water onto his chest and neck. Then, holding his breath, he braved himself for a plunge. He came up huffing and blowing water from his nose and mouth, grinning widely at the tingling sensation that spread throughout his body. Already he felt better.