The room was brightly lit. Twenty or thirty thick candles stood on a ledge of stone inside the small chamber. Thick velvet curtains, hung from an interior door, closed off another room in the back, probably Judith's sleeping chamber. Wine in a pewter goblet and bread and meat, sustenance intended for the priestess's refreshment after her performance, had been placed on a small wooden table.
Judith no longer had need of food. Her performances were ended. The wizardess lay on the floor beneath the table. Blood covered the stone floor. Her throat had been slashed with such violence that the killer had almost severed the head from the neck.
At the horrible sight, Caramon retched, covered his eyes with his hands.
"Oh, Raist! I didn't mean it!" he mumbled, sickened. "About the Abyss! I didn't mean it!"
"Nevertheless, my brother," Raistlin said, regarding the corpse with terrible calm, "we may safely assume that the Abyss is where the Widow Judith is now residing. Come, we should leave immediately. No one must find us here."
As he started to turn away, he caught a flash out of the corner of his eye-torchlight glinting off metal. Looking closely, he saw a knife lying on the floor near the body. Raistlin knew that knife, he'd seen it before. He hesitated a split second, then, bending down, he snatched up the knife, slipped it into the sleeve of his robe.
"Quickly, my brother! Someone's coming!"
Outside, booted feet clattered; the girl was shrilly guiding the town guard to the High Priestess's chambers. Raistlin reached the door just as the captain of the guard entered, accompanied by several of his men. They stopped short at the sight of the body, alarmed and amazed. One guard turned away to be quietly sick in a corner.
The captain was an old soldier who'd seen death in many hideous aspects and was not unduly shocked by this one. He stared first at Judith, whom he had come to question about bilking money out of the good citizens of Haven, then he turned a stern gaze to the two young men. He recognized them both immediately as the two who had precipitated the evening's disastrous events.
Caramon, nearly as pale as the blood-drained corpse, said brokenly, "I-I didn't mean it."
Raistlin kept quiet, thinking quickly. The situation was desperate, circumstances were against them.
"What's this?" The captain pointed to a smear of blood on Raistlin's white robes.
"I have some small reputation as a healer. I bent down to examine her." Raistlin started to add, "to see if there were any signs of life." Glancing at the body, he realized how ludicrous that statement would sound. He clamped his mouth shut.
He was acutely aware of the knife clutched tightly in his hand. The blood on the hilt was sticky, was gumming his fingers. He was repulsed, would have given anything to have been able to wash it off.
Taking that knife had been an act of unbelievable stupidity. Raistlin cursed himself for his folly, couldn't imagine what had prompted him to do something so ill-judged. Some vague and instinctive desire to protect her, he supposed. She would have never done as much for him.
"The weapon's not here," said the captain after another glance at Raistlin's bloodstained robes and a cursory look around the room. "Search them both."
One of the guardsman seized hold of Raistlin, grabbed him roughly, pinned his arms. Another guard rolled up Raistlin's long sleeves, revealing the bloody knife, held fast in his blood-covered hand. The captain smiled, grimly triumphant.
"First a giant kender, and now murder," he said. "You've had a busy night, young man."
Chapter 17
The Haven jail was not a particularly nice jail, as Tasslehoff had complained. Located near the sheriff's house, the jail had once been a horse barn. It was drafty and cold, the dirt floors were strewn with refuse. The place stank of both horse and human piss and dung, mingled with vomit from those who had indulged too freely in dwarf spirits at the fair.
Raistlin didn't notice the smell, at least not after the first few seconds. He was too tired to notice. They could have hanged him-hanging being the penalty for murder in Haven-and he would not have protested. He sank down on a filthy straw mattress and fell into a sleep so deep that he didn't feel the rats skitter over his legs.
His dreamless, untroubled sleep provided much conversation among the jail's two guards. One held that such sleep was indicative of a mind innocent of murder, for all knew that a guilty conscience could never slumber peacefully. The other guard, older, scoffed at this notion. It proved the young man to be a hardened criminal, since he could sleep that soundly with the blood of his victim still on his hands.
Raistlin did not hear their arguments, nor did he hear the noisy voices of his fellow prisoners, mostly kender. The kender were filled with excitement, for this had been an eventful day, complete with a riot, a conflagration, a murder, and, most wonderfully, one of their own transformed into a giant. Not even Uncle Trapspringer had been known to accomplish such a magnificent feat. The giant kender was to become a celebrated figure in kender song and story ever after that, often seen striding across the oceans and hopping from mountaintop to mountaintop. If there was ever a night when the silver and red moons didn't rise, it was widely known that the giant kender had "borrowed" them.
Eager to discuss this momentous occasion, the kender were constantly in and out of each other's cells, picking the locks almost before the cell doors were shut. As soon as the guards had one kender locked up, two more were out roaming around.
"He's shivering," observed the young guard, glancing into Raistlin's cell during one of the few lulls given them by the kender, a lull that was quite ominous, if only they'd thought about it. "Should I get him a blanket?"
"Naw," said the jailkeep with a leer. "He'll be warm enough. Too warm, if you take my meaning. They say it's hotter'n the smithy's forge in the Abyss."
"I guess there'll be a trial first, before they hang him," said the young guard, who was new to the area.
"The sheriff will hold one, for form's sake." The jailer shrugged. "Myself, I don't see the need. He was caught with the knife in his hand standing over the body." He dredged up a filthy blanket. "Here, you can cover him up if you want. 'Twould be a shame if he caught cold and died before the hanging. Hand over the keys."
"I don't have the keys. I thought you had the keys."
As it turned out, the kender had the keys. They poured out of their cells and were soon having a picnic in the middle of the jail.
Intent on endeavoring to persuade the kender to return their keys, the jailer and the lone guard were too distracted to notice the flare of torchlight approaching the prison, nor could they hear over the shouts of the kender, the shouts of the approaching mob.
Raistlin, exhausted from the spellcasting and the sheriff's questioning, had fallen into a comatose- like sleep and heard nothing.
*****
Caramon did not see the torchlight either. He was far from the jail, running as fast as he possibly could for the fairgrounds.
Caramon had narrowly escaped being made a prisoner himself. When questioned by Haven's sheriff, Caramon steadfastly denied all knowledge of the crime, denied it in the name of himself and his brother. Raistlin had wearily repeated his own story. He had knelt beside the body to examine the victim. He had no idea why he had picked up the knife or why he had tried to hide it. He had been in a state of shock, did not know what he was doing. He added, emphatically, that Caramon was not involved.
Fortunately a witness, the young priestess, came forward to claim that she had been speaking to Caramon in the hallway when they heard Judith scream. Caramon swore that his twin had been with him at the time, but the girl said she had seen only one of them.