He stared, willing with an aching heart for this to be true, even as a part of him knew it wasn't.
Rosamun ceased rocking, rose from the chair with grace and ease. He was conscious of sweet fragrance as she passed near him, a fragrance of roses.
In the next room, his brother gave a fearful yell, a horrible scream, as though he were being burned alive.
The scent of roses in his nostrils, Raistlin searched the room, found what he sought. A dish of dried and withered rose petals had been placed on a table to sweeten the sickness-tainted air. He dipped his hand into the dish, and carried the rose petals into the bedroom.
Caramon clutched the sides of the bed, his hands white-knuckled. The bed shook beneath him. His eyes were wide open, staring at some horror visible only to himself.
Raistlin had no need to refer to his primer for the wording of the spell. The words were etched into his brain with fire, and like a wildfire racing across parched grass, so the magic raced from his brain down his spine, burned through every nerve, en-flamed him.
He crushed the rose petals, strewed them over his brother's tormented form.
"Ast tasarak sinuralan kyrnawi."
Caramon's eyelids fluttered. He gave a great sigh, shuddered, then his eyes closed. He lay for a moment, flattened on the bed, not breathing, and Raistlin knew a fear unlike any he'd ever previously experienced. He thought his twin was dead.
"Caramon!" Raistlin whispered. "Don't leave me, Caramon! Don't!"
His hands gently brushed the rose petals from Caramon's still face.
Caramon drew a breath, long, deep, and easy. He let that breath go and then drew another, his chest rising and falling. His face smoothed, the dreams had not cut too deep, had not left their chisel mark upon him. The lines of weariness, grief, and sorrow would soon fade away, ripples on the surface of his customary genial tranquillity.
Weak with relief, Raistlin sank down beside his brother's bed, rested his head in his hands. It was only then, his eyes closed, seeing nothing but darkness, that Raistlin realized what he had done.
Caramon was asleep.
I cast the spell, Raistlin said inwardly. The magic worked for me.
The fire of the spellcasting flickered and died out, leaving him weak and shaking so that he could not stand, yet Raistlin knew such joy as he had never known in his life.
"Thank you!" Raistlin whispered, his fists clenched, his nails digging into his flesh. He saw again the eye, white, red, black, regarding him with satisfaction. "I won't fail you!" he repeated over and over. "I won't fail!"
The eye blinked.
A tiny pinprick of concern, of jealous doubt, jabbed him.
Had Caramon fallen into a trance? Was it possible that he had likewise inherited the magic?
Raistlin opened his eyes, stared hard and long at his slumbering brother. Caramon lay on his back, one arm flopped over the edge of the bed, the other across his forehead. His mouth was open, he gave a prodigious snore. He had never looked more foolish.
"I was mistaken," Raistlin said, and he pushed himself to his feet. "It was a bad dream, nothing more." He smiled scornfully at himself. "How could I have ever imagined that this great oaf would inherit the magic?"
Raistlin left the room on tiptoe, moving quietly so as not to disturb his brother, and shut the door to their room softly behind him. Entering the parlor, Raistlin sat down in his mother's rocking chair, and, rocking gently back and forth, he reveled fully in his triumph.
Chapter 7
Caramon slept that day through and on into the night, The next day he woke, recalled nothing of his dreams, was amused and even skeptical to hear his twin describe them.
"Pooh, Raist!" Caramon said. "You know I never dream."
Raistlin did not argue. He himself was gaining strength rapidly, was strong enough to sit at the kitchen table that morning with his brother. The day was warm; a soft breeze carried sounds of women's voices, calling and laughing. It was laundry day, and the women were hanging their wet clothes among the leaves to dry. The early autumn sunshine filtered through the changing leaves, casting shadows that flitted around the kitchen like birds. The twins ate breakfast in silence. There was much they had to talk about, much they needed to discuss and settle, but that could wait.
Raistlin touched each moment that passed, held each moment cupped in his mind until it slipped away through his fingers, to be replaced by another. The past and all its sorrow was behind him; he would never turn around to look back. The future, with its promise and its fears, lay ahead of him, shone warm on his face like the sunshine, darkened his face like the shadows. At this moment, he was suspended between past and future, floating free.
Outside, a bird whistled, another answered. Two young women let fall a wet sheet onto one of the town's guardsmen, who was walking his beat on the ground below. The sheet enveloped him, to judge by his muffled, good-natured cursing. The young women giggled and protested that it was an accident. They ran down the stairs to reclaim their linen and spend a few pleasant moments flirting with the handsome guard.
"Raistlin," said Caramon, speaking reluctantly, as if he, too, were under the spell of the sun, the breeze, the laughter, and loath to break it. "We have to decide what to do."
Raistlin couldn't see his brother's face for the sunshine. He was sensible of Caramon's presence, sitting in the chair opposite. Strong and solid and reassuring. Raistlin remembered the fear he'd experienced when he had thought Caramon was dead. Affection for his brother welled up inside him, stung his eyelids. Raistlin drew back out of the sun, blinking rapidly to clear his vision. The moments had begun to slide by faster and faster, no longer his to touch.
"What are our options?" Raistlin asked.
Caramon shifted his bulk in his chair. "Well, we turned down going with Kit." He let that hang a moment, silently asking if his twin might reconsider.
"Yes," Raistlin said, a note of finality.
Caramon cleared his throat, went on. "Lady Brightblade offered to take us in, give us a home."
"Lady Brightblade," said Raistlin with a snicker.
"She is the wife of a Solamnic knight," Caramon pointed out defensively.
"So she claims."
"C'mon, Raist!" Caramon was fond of Anna Brightblade, who had always been very kind to him. "She showed me a book with their family coat-of-arms. And she acts like a noble lady, Raist."
"How would you know how a noble lady acts, my brother?"
Caramon thought this over. "Well, she acts like what I imagine a noble lady would act like. Like the noble ladies in those stories…"
He fell silent, left his sentence unfinished, except in the minds of both twins. Like those stories Mother used to tell us. To speak of her aloud was to invoke her ghost, which remained inside the house.
Gilon, on the other hand, had departed. He had never been there much in the first place, and all he left behind was a vague, pleasant memory. Caramon missed his father, but already Raistlin was having to work to remember that Gilon was gone.
"I do care to have Sturm Brightblade as a brother," Raistlin commented. "Master My-Honor-Is-My- Life. He's so smug and arrogant, parading his virtue up and down the streets, making a show of righteousness. It's enough to make one puke."
"Ah, Sturm's not so bad," Caramon said. "He's had a rough time of it. At least we know how our father died," he added somberly. "Sturm doesn't even know if his father's dead or alive."