“I’m sorry, Raist, but I … I don’t feel very good.”
“Really? Shirak,” he whispered.
The staff’s light gleamed in the carriage. Raistlin stared into his brother’s face. The warrior’s features were sunken and his eyes had dark rings under them, as if he had been awake for many days. His back was bent, and his shoulders sagged.
“It must have been the brandy,” Caramon concluded, groaning and leaning against the side of the carriage.
“Just how much did you have to drink?” Raistlin asked.
“Not much,” Caramon mumbled defensively.
Raistlin regarded his brother silently. Caramon could generally drink most men under the table. Reaching out his hand, the mage closed his fingers over his brother’s wrist, felt his pulse, rapid and thready. Beads of sweat began to pop out on the warrior’s forehead and upper lip.
Raistlin knew the symptoms, knew them well. But he denied it to himself. “You should learn to control your appetites, my brother,” said the mage.
The carriage dropped them off in front of the inn. This time it was Raistlin who assisted his twin inside the door of Barnstoke Hall.
“I’m all right, Raist. Honest,” said Caramon, ashamed of his weakness. He stood up straight, refusing his brother’s arm.
Raistlin looked at him, then shrugged and, leaning on his staff, walked toward the stairs. Earwig trudged along behind. The kender’s head was bowed. He looked neither to the right nor the left, but kept his eyes straight ahead on the floor in front of him. Caramon followed, staggering slightly, wondering if the ceiling was actually going to cave in on him, as it seemed.
The proprietor stood behind the desk at the side of the main room, looking through a stack of books, making notes with a black quill. He looked up when he heard his guests arrive.
“You’re returning late. It’s way past the middle of the night. I assume your meeting with the councillor went well, then, sirs?”
“I don’t see that it’s any business of yours,” Raistlin said softly as he passed by the desk, ascending the stairs, heading up to their room. The proprietor, affronted, went back to his work.
Caramon stumbled over to the stairway, falling to his knees. Raistlin looked back, pausing in concern.
“Go ahead,” Caramon waved his brother on. “I … just need to rest. I’ll … meet you in the room.” The fighter heaved himself off the floor, leaning against the stairwell. Earwig, not looking around, kept climbing the stairs.
Raistlin stared after the kender, who was acting every bit as strangely as Caramon. The mage wasn’t certain whom to assist.
“I will wait for you here, on the landing, my brother,” he said, keeping one eye on Caramon and one on Earwig.
The warrior, nodding, made it up the stairs. Raistlin took the big man’s arm and helped him to the room.
“Earwig, open the door.”
The kender nodded and did as he was told without comment, acting as if he were walking in his sleep. Caramon stumbled headlong into the room. Lifting his head, he caught, by the light of the staff, a quick glimpse of movement in a dark corner.
“Raist-” he began, but before he could say anything more, his brother had shoved him to one side. A dart, its point glittering in the staff’s light, sped from the darkness straight at the fighter. Raistlin threw himself into the path of the missile, opening his cloak to create a shield of cloth. Two more darts followed, burying themselves in the cloth of the red robes before they reached their target.
The assassin dashed forward-a figure in black, dodging around the mage with the agility of an acrobat. He leaped over the dumbfounded kender, took the stairs to the first floor in one jump, and disappeared into the street.
Raistlin ran to the window, pulling a shard of glass from a pouch to use in a spell, but the assassin was already gone. Turning, he hurried back to his brother, who was lying on the floor.
“Caramon? Are you hurt?” he asked, kneeling at his brother’s side.
“No, I … don’t think so.”
Looking up into his twin’s face, Caramon saw true concern, true worry. Warmth spread through his body, banishing the sickness for a moment. Somewhere deep inside, Raistlin cared for him. The knowledge was worth facing all the assassins in the world. “Thanks, Raist,” he said weakly.
Raistlin inspected his robes and pulled the three darts from the cloth. Two were lodged in the folds, the third had struck a metal disk-the charm of good fortune he had received from the woman at the Black Cat. He looked at the amulet with a touch of amusement.
Earwig, aimlessly roaming the room, found another dart that the assassin had dropped. Without saying anything to the brothers, the kender slipped it into his pocket.
“Do you need anything, Caramon?” Raistlin asked.
“No, nothing. I just need to rest.” The warrior collapsed on the bed. His brother sat by his side. “Raist, I thought you said nobody’d hurt us now. Too many people knew we were here.”
“It wasn’t ‘us’ they were after, Caramon,” said Raistlin thoughtfully, studying the darts. “It was you.”
“Huh?” The warrior propped himself up on his elbow.
“Why would anyone want to kill Caramon?” Earwig yawned.
“The darts were aimed directly at you. None at me or the kender. And this strange illness. If I hadn’t been there, you wouldn’t have been able to react, to get out of the way. You would have been easy prey, my brother.”
Raistlin held one of the darts up to a lamp. The mage sniffed at the tip and drew his face back, wrinkling his nose in obvious repugnance. “Thorodrone,” he said, pursing his lips and sniffing again. “Definitely. An extremely deadly poison. You were fortunate he didn’t hit you, Caramon. You would have been dead in an instant.”
He held the dart over the flame of a nearby lamp, causing the tip to glow green. Spitting on his fingers, then rubbing them together lightly, Raistlin flaked off the poison, now turned ash gray on the black metal. He did the same to the other two darts, then deposited them carefully in one of his pouches.
Rising from the bed, the sorcerer extinguished the lamp and the light of his staff and walked to the window. “What did you see of the man?” he said, eyes scanning the streets for signs of intruders.
“Nothing. He was dressed in black, and he was fast.”
“And he was really good with a blowgun,” Earwig added, removing the top of his hoopak to reveal the exit hole for his own weapon.
Unseen in the darkness, the kender took out the poisoned dart and tried to insert it into the blowgun. It wouldn’t fit; it was too big. He stared at it, disappointed, until he realized that if he plucked away some of the feathers, the dart would fit quite nicely. He commensed plucking.
“I didn’t see anything of him either,” said Raistlin.
Earwig slid the defeathered dart into a small, hidden pocket on his sleeve, and capped his hoopak. Yawning again, he unrolled his bedclothes, lay down, and was soon fast asleep.
“Did you notice anything unusual when you were walking around inside of her house tonight?” Raistlin asked suddenly.
“Unusual?” Caramon was sick and dizzy and wanted only to go to sleep.
“Unusual. Bizarre. Out of the ordinary. Did you see or hear anything you didn’t understand?”
Caramon thought back to Shavas’s room, remembering the touch of silk, the feel between his fingers, cold satin turning warm. A wave of heat stole over his body. He thought about hearing Earwig’s voice when the kender swore he hadn’t been in the room. He thought about the fact that he had wandered through the house for hours, yet it seemed to him as if it had been only a few moments.
“No. Nothing,” was his short reply. “Leave the lady out of this, Raist. She didn’t have anything to do with it. I drank too much, that’s all. It was my fault.”
“Perhaps,” murmured Raistlin. “I must get into that house again … alone.”
“What?” asked Caramon drowsily.
“Nothing, my brother.”