Nothing further happened to them for a long while—or perhaps it was only a second. No one looked twice at Raistlin in his black robes and no one looked at Crysania at all. She might well have been invisible. They passed through Sanction easily, Raistlin growing in strength and confidence. He told Crysania they were very close now. Godshome was located somewhere to the north in Khalkist Mountains.
How he could tell any direction at all in this weird and awful land was beyond Crysania—there was nothing to guide them, no sun, no moons, no stars. It was never really night and never truly day, just some sort of dreary, reddish in between. She was thinking of this, trudging wearily beside Raistlin, not watching where they were going since it all looked the same anyway, when, suddenly, the archmage came to a halt. Hearing his sharp intake of breath, feeling him stiffen, Crysania looked up in swift alarm.
A middle-aged man dressed in the white robes of a teacher was walking down the road toward them...
“Repeat the words after me, remembering to give them the proper inflection.” Slowly he said the words. Slowly the class repeated them. All except one.
“Raistlin!”
The class fell silent.
“Master?” Raistlin did not bother to conceal the sneer in his voice as he said the word.
“I didn’t see your lips moving.”
“Perhaps that is because they were not moving, Master,” Raistlin replied.
If someone else in the class of young magic-users had made such a remark, the pupils would have snickered. But they knew Raistlin felt the same scorn for them that he felt for the Master, and so they glowered at him and shifted uncomfortably.
“You know the spell, do you, apprentice?”
“Certainly I know the spell,” Raistlin snapped. “I knew it when I was six! When did you learn it? Last night?”
The Master glared, his face purpled with rage. “You have gone too far this time, apprentice! You have insulted me once too often!”
The classroom faded before Raistlin’s eyes, melting away. Only the Master remained and, as Raistlin watched, his old teacher’s white robes turned to black! His stupid, paunchy face twisted into a malevolent, crafty face of evil. A bloodstone pendant appeared, hanging around his neck.
“Fistandantilus!” Raistlin gasped.
“Again we meet, apprentice. But now, where is your magic?” The wizard laughed. Reaching up a withered hand, he began fingering the bloodstone pendant.
Panic swept over Raistlin. Where was his magic? Gone! His hands shook. The words of spells tumbled into his mind; only to slip away before he could grasp hold of them. A ball of flame appeared in Fistandantilus’s hands. Raistlin choked on his fear.
The Staff! he thought suddenly. The Staff of Magius. Surely its magic will not be affected! Raising the staff, holding it before him, he called upon it to protect him. But the staff began to twist and writhe in Raistlin’s hand. “No!” he cried in terror and anger. “Obey my command! Obey!” The staff coiled itself around his arm and it was no longer a staff at all, but a huge snake. Glistening fangs sank into his flesh.
Screaming, Raistlin dropped to his knees, trying desperately to free himself from the staff’s poisonous bite. But, battling one enemy, he had forgotten the other. Hearing the spidery words of magic being chanted, he looked up fearfully. Fistandantilus was gone, but in his place stood a drow—a dark elf. The dark elf Raistlin had fought in his final battle of the Test. And then the dark elf was Dalamar, hurling a fireball at him, and then the fireball became a sword, driven into his flesh by a beardless dwarf.
Flames burst around him, steel pierced his body, fangs dug into his skin. He was sinking, sinking into the blackness, when he was bathed in white light and wrapped in white robes and held close to a soft, warm breast...
And he smiled, for he knew by the flinching of the body shielding his and the low cries of anguish, that the weapons were striking her, not him.
7
“Lord Gunthar!” said Amothus, Lord of Palanthas, rising to his feet. “An unexpected pleasure. And you, too, Tanis Half-Elven. I assume you’re both here to plan the War’s End celebration. I’m so glad. Now we can get started on it early this year. I, that is, the committee and I believe—”
“Nonsense,” said Lord Gunthar crisply, walking about Amothus’s audience chamber and staring at it with a critical eye, already calculating—in his mind—what it would take to fortify it if necessary. “We’re here to discuss the defense of the city.”
Lord Amothus blinked at the Knight, who was peering out the windows and muttering to himself. Once he turned and snapped, “Too much glass,” which statement increased the lord’s confusion to such an extent that he could only stammer an apology and then stand helplessly in the center of the room.
“Are we under attack?” he ventured to ask hesitantly, after a few more moments of Gunthar’s reconnaissance.
Lord Gunthar cast Tanis a sharp look. With a sigh, Tanis politely reminded Lord Amothus of the warning the dark elf, Dalamar, had brought them—the probability that the Dragon Highlord, Kitiara, planned to try to enter Palanthas in order to aid her brother, Raistlin, Master of the Tower of High Sorcery, in his fight against the Queen of Darkness.
“Oh, yes!” Lord Amothus’s face cleared. He waved a delicate, deprecating hand, as though brushing away gnats. “But I don’t believe you need be concerned about Palanthas, Lord Gunthar. The High Clerist’s Tower—”
“—is being manned. I’m doubling the strength of our forces there. That’s where the major assault will come, of course. No other way into Palanthas except by sea to the north, and we rule the seas. No, it will come overland. Should matters go wrong, though, Amothus, I want Palanthas ready to defend herself. Now—”
Having mounted the horse of action, so to speak, Gunthar charged ahead. Completely riding over Lord Amothus’s murmured remonstration that perhaps he should discuss this with his generals, Gunthar galloped on, and soon left Amothus choking in the dust of troop disbursements, supply requisitions, armorment caches, and the like. Amothus gave himself for lost. Sitting down, he assumed an expression of polite interest, and immediately began to think about something else. It was all nonsense anyway. Palanthas had never been touched in battle. Armies had to get past the High Clerist’s Tower first and none—not even the great dragon armies of the last war—had been able to do that.
Tanis, watching all of this, and knowing well what Amothus was thinking, smiled grimly to himself and was just beginning to wonder how he, too, might escape the onslaught when there was a soft knock upon the great, ornately carved, gilt doors. With the look of one who hears the trumpets of the rescuing division, Amothus sprang to his feet, but before he could say a word, the doors opened and an elderly servant entered.
Charles had been in the service of the royal house of Palanthas for well over half a century. They could not get along without him, and he knew it. He knew everything from the exact count of the number of wine bottles in the cellar, to which elves should be seated next to which at dinner, to when the linen had been aired last. Though always dignified and deferential, there was a look upon his face which implied that when he died, he expected the royal house to crumble down about its master’s ears.
“I am sorry to disturb you, my lord,” Charles began.
“Quite all right!” Lord Amothus cried, beaming with pleasure. “Quite all right. Please—”
“But there is an urgent message for Tanis Half-Elven,” finished Charles imperturbably, with only the slightest hint of rebuke to his master for interrupting him.