BOOK I
1
A Roll of the Dye. An Unexpected Encounter.
The city of Palanthas had been awake most of the night, bracing for war. The city had not panicked; ancient aristocratic grand dames such as Palanthas never panicked. They sat rigid in their ornately carved chairs, holding tight to their lace handkerchiefs and waiting with stern countenances and straight backs for someone to tell them if there was going to be a war and, if so, would it be so rude as to interrupt their plans for dinner.
The forces of the feared Blue Lady, Dragon Highlord Kitiara, were rumored to be marching on the city. The Highlord’s armies had been defeated at the High Clerist’s Tower, which guarded the pass leading down from the mountains into Palanthas. The small group of knights and foot soldiers who had held the Tower against the initial assault were not strong enough to hold out against another attack. They had left the fortress and the graves of their dead, retreating to Palanthas.
The city had not been pleased at that. If the militant, warmongering knights had not entered her walls, Palanthas would have been left in peace. The dragonarmies would not dare to attack a city so venerable and revered. The wise knew better. Almost all other major cities in Krynn had fallen to the might of the dragonarmies. The baleful eyes of Emperor Ariakas were turned to Palanthas, to her port, her ships, her wealth. The glittering city, the jewel of Solamnia, would be the most magnificent gem in Ariakas’s Crown of Power.
The Lord of Palanthas sent his troops to the battlements. The citizens hunkered down in their houses, shuttered their windows. Shops and businesses closed. The city believed she was prepared for the worst, and if the worst came, as it had come to other cities, such as Solace and Tarsis, Palanthas would fight valiantly. For there was courage in the heart of the old grand dame. Her rigid spine was made of steel.
She was not tested. The worst did not come. The forces of the Blue Lady had been routed at the High Clerist’s Tower and were in retreat. The dragons sighted that morning, winging toward the city’s walls, were not the red fire-breathing dragons or the lightning-crackling blue dragons people feared. The morning sun sparkled on shining silver scales. Silver dragons had flown from their homes in the Dragon Isles to defend Palanthas.
Or so the dragons claimed.
Since war did not come, the citizens of Palanthas left their homes and opened their shops and surged out into the streets, talking, arguing. The Lord of Palanthas assured the citizens that the new dragons were on the side of Light, that they worshiped Paladine and Mishakal and the rest of the gods of Light, that they had agreed to assist the Knights of Solamnia, protectors of the city.
Some people believed their lord. Some didn’t. Some argued that dragons of any color were not to be trusted, that they were there simply to lull the people into a state of complacency, and that the dragons would attack in the dead of night and they would all be devoured in their beds.
“Fools!” Raistlin muttered more than once as he shoved his way through the crowds, or rather as he was bumped and jostled and nearly run over by a careening horse cart.
If he had been wearing his red robes that marked him a wizard, the people of Palanthas would have eyed him askance, left him severely alone, gone out of their way to avoid him. Clad in the plain gray robes of an Aesthetic of the Great Library of Palanthas, Raistlin was trampled and pushed and trod upon.
Palanthians were not fond of wizards, even those of the red robes, who were neutral in the war, or the white, who were dedicated to the side of Light. Both Orders of High Sorcery had worked and sacrificed to bring about the return of the metallic dragons to Ansalon. The head of their order, Par-Salian, knew that the sight of the spring dawn glistening on silver and golden wings would come as a punch in the gut to Emperor Ariakas; the first blow that had been able to penetrate his dragonscale armor. All during the war, the wings of Takhisis’s evil dragons had darkened the skies. Now the skies of Krynn shone with brightening light, and the Emperor and his Queen were starting to grow nervous.
The people of Palanthas did not know that the wizards had been working to protect them and would not have believed such a claim if they heard it. To their minds, the only good wizard was a wizard who lived somewhere besides Palanthas.
Raistlin Majere was not wearing his red robes because they were wrapped in a bundle tucked under his arm. He wore the “borrowed” gray robes of one of the monks of the Great Library.
Borrowed. Thinking of that word brought to mind Tasslehoff Burrfoot. The light-hearted and lighter-fingered kender never “stole” anything. When caught with purloined goods upon his person, the kender would claim to have “borrowed” the sugar basin, “stumbled across” the silver candlesticks, and “was just coming to return” the emerald necklace. Raistlin had “stumbled upon” the Aesthetic’s robes lying folded neatly on a bed that morning. He had every intention of returning the gray robes in a day or two.
Mostly people, absorbed in their arguments, ignored him as he fought his way through the crowded streets. But occasionally some citizen would stop him to ask what Astinus thought about the arrival of the metallic dragons, the dragons of Light.