Tall and lithe, with a warrior’s strength and hard-muscled body, Kitiara, who was in her mid-thirties, looked much the same as she had looked at twenty. Her crooked smile still charmed. Her short, black curls clustered around her head, luxurious and rampant as when she was young. Her face was smooth, unmarred by lines of sorrow or joy.
No emotion ever touched Kitiara deeply. She took life as it came, living each moment to the fullest, then forgetting the moment to leap to the next. She had no regrets. She rarely thought about past mistakes. Her mind was too busy plotting and scheming for the future. She had no conscience to sting her, no morals to get in her way. The one crack in her armor, her one weakness, was her obsession with Tanis Half-Elven, the man she had not wanted until he turned his back on her and walked away.
Iolanthe roamed nervously around the room, her arms clasped beneath her cloak. The room was chill, and she was shivering, though perhaps not so much from the cold as from dread. She had insisted they arrive early in the day, so they could be gone before nightfall. Raistlin continued to watch Kit, who was struggling with her missive.
Writing was laborious work for Kitiara. Fond of action and excitement, easily bored, she had always been a poor student. She had never had a chance to go to school. Their mother, Rosamund, had an affinity for magic that she would later pass onto her son. Sadly, Rosamund was not able to cope with the gift. For her, the gift became an affliction. After her twin sons were born, she drifted for years on a sea of strange dreams and fantasies, barely clinging to sanity. When her husband died, Rosamund’s hand slipped from the last bit of reality that had been keeping her afloat and sank beneath the waves. Kit had taken over raising her younger brothers. She had remained with the boys until she determined that they were old enough to take care of themselves. Then she had gone off on her own, leaving her brothers to fend for themselves.
Kitiara had not forgotten her half brothers, however. She had returned to Solace some years later to see how they were getting along. It was then that she had met their friend Tanis Half-Elven. The two had begun a passionate affair. Raistlin had known at the time that the affair would end badly.
The last Raistlin had seen of Kitiara, she had been riding on the back of her blue dragon, Skie, and he had been on board a ship sailing to its doom in the Blood Sea. Caramon had wrung an admission from Tanis that he had been spending his time in Flotsam dallying with Kit, that he had betrayed his friends to the Dragon Highlord. Raistlin recalled Caramon’s outraged anger, yelling accusations at Tanis as their ship was swept up into the storm.
“So that’s where you’ve been these four days. With our sister, the Dragon Highlord! …”
“Yes, I loved her,” Tanis had said. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
Raistlin doubted if Tanis understood himself. He was like a man who cannot overcome his thirst for dwarf spirits. Kitiara intoxicated him, and he could not get her out of his system. She had been the ruin of him.
Kitiara was dressed for combat. She wore her sword, boots, and blue dragonscale armor, with her blue cape thrown over her shoulders. She was wholly absorbed in her work, hunched over the desk like a child in the schoolroom, forced to complete some hateful assignment. Her head, with its mass of black curls, almost touched the paper. Her teeth were clamped on her lower lip; her brow furrowed in concentration. She wrote, muttering, then scratched out what she had written and started again.
At last Iolanthe, mindful of the passing time, gave a delicate cough.
Kitiara held up her hand. “I know you’re waiting, my friend.” Kit stopped to sneeze. She rubbed her nose and sneezed again. “It’s that gods-awful perfume of yours! What do you do? Bathe in it? Give me a moment. I’m almost finished. Oh, damn it to the Abyss and back! Look what I’ve done!”
In her haste, Kit had passed the heel of her hand over the page, smearing the last sentence she had written. Swearing, she flung down the pen, spattering ink over the page and contributing to its final demise.
“Ever since that fool Garibanus got himself killed, I must write all my orders myself!”
“What about your draconians?” Iolanthe asked, glancing toward the closed door, through which they could hear the scraping of claws and subdued voices of Kit’s bodyguards. The draconians were grumbling. Apparently even the lizardmen found Dargaard Keep a loathsome place. Raistlin wondered how Kit could stand living here. Perhaps it was because, like much else in her life, the tragedy and horror of Dargaard Keep skidded off her hard surface, like skaters on ice.
Kitiara shook her head. “Draconians are good warriors, but they make lousy scribes.”
“Perhaps I might be of assistance, Sister,” said Raistlin in his soft voice.
Kitiara turned to face him. “Ah, Baby brother. I am glad to see you alive. I thought you had perished in the Maelstrom.”
No thanks to you, my sister, Raistlin wanted to say caustically, but he kept quiet.
“Your baby brother conned Ariakas out of one hundred steel to come here to spy on you,” said Iolanthe.
“Did he?” Kitiara smiled her crooked smile. “Good for him.”
The two women laughed conspiratorially. Raistlin smiled in the shadows of his cowl, which he had kept deliberately drawn low over his face, so he could observe without being observed. He was pleased to find his suspicions about Iolanthe confirmed. He decided to see what more he could discover.
“I do not understand,” he said, glancing from one woman to the other. “I thought—”
“You thought Ariakas hired you to spy on me,” said Kitiara.
“That is precisely what we wanted you to think,” said Iolanthe.
Raistlin shook his head, as though deeply puzzled, though in truth he had already suspected as much.
“I will explain later,” said Kit. “As I said, I was glad to hear from Iolanthe that you were still alive. I feared you and Caramon and the others would not escape the Maelstrom.”
“I escaped,” said Raistlin. “The others did not. They died in the Blood Sea.”
“Then you don’t know … ?” Kitiara began, then stopped. “Know what?” Raistlin asked sharply.
“Your brother did not die. Caramon survived, as did Tanis and that red-haired barmaid whose name I can never recall, as well as that woman with the blue crystal staff and her barbarian hulk of a husband.”
“That can’t be possible!” said Raistlin.
“I assure you it is,” Kit replied. “They were all in Kalaman yesterday. And there, according to my spies, they met up with Flint and Tas and that elf woman Laurana. You knew her too, I think.”
Kit continued to talk about Laurana, but Raistlin wasn’t listening. He was glad he had kept his hood covering his face, for his mind reeled and staggered around like a drunkard. He had been so certain that Caramon was dead. He had convinced himself of it, repeated it over and over, every morning, every night … He closed his eyes to keep the room from spinning and gripped the arms of the chair with his hands to try to regain control of himself.
What do I care whether Caramon is alive or dead? Raistlin asked himself, digging his fingers into the wood. It is all the same to me.
Except that it wasn’t. Somewhere deep, deep inside, some weak and much-despised part of him, a part he had long tried to excise, could have wept.
Kitiara was watching him, waiting for him to reply to some question he had not heard.
“I did not know my brother was alive,” Raistlin said, working to keep his emotions in check. “It’s odd that he would be in Kalaman. That city is half a world away from Flotsam. How did our brother come to be there?”