Kitiara put her hand to her head, feeling her blood pulse. It was not the wine, she was cold sober now. It was fury and frustration. He could help me! she thought angrily. He is truly as powerful as they said. More so! But he’s insane. He’s lost his mind... Then, unbidden, a voice spoke to her from somewhere deep inside.
What if he isn’t insane? What if he really means to go through with this?
Coldly, Kitiara considered his plan, looking at it carefully from all angles. What she saw horrified her. No. He could not win! And, worse, he would probably drag her down with him!
These thoughts passed through Kit’s mind swiftly, and none of them showed on her face. In fact, her smile grew only more charming. Many were the men who had died, that smile their last vision.
Raistlin might have been considering that as he looked at her intently. “You can be on a winning side for a change, my sister.”
Kitiara’s conviction wavered. If he could pull it off, it would be glorious! Glorious! Krynn would be hers.
Kit looked at the mage. Twenty-eight years ago, he had been a newborn baby, sick and weakly, a frail counterpart to his strong, robust twin brother.
“Let ’im die. ’Twill be best in the long run,” the midwife had said. Kitiara had been a teenager then. Appalled, she heard her mother weepingly agree.
But Kitiara had refused. Something within her rose to the challenge. The baby would live! She would make him live, whether he wanted to or not. “My first fight,” she used to tell people proudly, “was with the gods. And I won!”
And now! Kitiara studied him. She saw the man. She saw—in her mind’s eye—that whining, puking baby. Abruptly, she turned away.
“I must get back,” she said, pulling on her gloves. “You will contact me upon your return?”
“If I am successful, there will be no need to contact you,” Raistlin said softly. “You will know!”
Kitiara almost sneered but caught herself quickly. Glancing at Lord Soth, she prepared to leave the room. “Farewell then, my brother.” Controlled as she was, she could not keep an edge of anger from her voice. “I am sorry you do not share my desire for the good things of this life! We could have done much together, you and I!”
“Farewell, Kitiara,” Raistlin said, his thin hand summoning the shadowy forms of those who served him to show his guests to the door. “Oh, by the way,” he added as Kit stood in the doorway, “I owe you my life, dear sister. At least, so I have been told. I just wanted to let you know that—with the death of Lord Ariakas, who would, undoubtedly, have killed you—I consider my debt paid. I owe you nothing!”
Kitiara stared into the mage’s golden eyes, seeking threat, promise, what? But there was nothing there. Absolutely nothing. And then, in an instant, Raistlin spoke a word of magic and vanished from her sight.
The way out of Shoikan Grove was not difficult. The guardians had no care for those who left the Tower. Kitiara and Lord Soth walked together, the death knight moving soundlessly through the Grove, his feet leaving no impression on the leaves that lay dead and decaying on the ground. Spring did not come to Shoikan Grove.
Kitiara did not speak until they had passed the outer perimeter of trees and once more stood upon the solid paving stones of the city of Palanthas. The sun was rising, the sky brightening from its deep night blue to a pale gray. Here and there, those Palanthians whose business called for them to rise early were waking. Far down the street, past the abandoned buildings that surrounded the Tower, Kitiara could hear marching feet, the changing of the watch upon the wall. She was among the living once again.
She drew a deep breath, then, “He must be stopped,” she said to Lord Soth.
The death knight made no comment, one way or the other.
“It will not be easy, I know,” Kitiara said, drawing the dragonhelm over her head and walking rapidly toward Skie, who had reared his head in triumph at her approach. Patting her dragon lovingly upon his neck, Kitiara turned to face the death knight.
“But we do not have to confront Raistlin directly. His scheme hinges upon Lady Crysania. Remove her, and we stop him. He need never know I had anything to do with it, in fact. Many have died, trying to enter the Forest of Wayreth. Isn’t that so?”
Lord Soth nodded, his flaming eyes flaring slightly.
“You handle it. Make it appear to be... fate,” Kitiara said. “My little brother believes in that, apparently.” She mounted her dragon. “When he was small, I taught him that to refuse to do my bidding meant a whipping. It seems he must learn that lesson again!”
At her command, Skie’s powerful hind legs dug into the pavement, cracking and breaking the stones. He leaped into the air, spread his wings, and soared into the morning sky. The people of Palanthas felt a shadow lift from their hearts, but that was all they knew. Few saw the dragon or its rider leave.
Lord Soth remained standing upon the fringes of Shoikan Grove.
“I, too, believe in fate, Kitiara,” the death knight murmured. “The fate a man makes himself.”
Glancing up at the windows of the Tower of High Sorcery, Soth saw the light extinguished from the room where they had been. For a brief instant, the Tower was shrouded in the perpetual darkness that seemed to linger around it, a darkness the sun’s light could not penetrate. Then one light gleamed forth, from a room at the top of the tower.
The mage’s laboratory, the dark and secret room where Raistlin worked his magic.
“Who will learn this lesson, I wonder?” Soth murmured. Shrugging, he disappeared, melting into the waning shadows as daylight approached.
6
Let’s stop at this place,” Caramon said, heading for a ramshackle building that stood huddled back away from the trail, lurking in the forest like a sulking beast. “Maybe she’s been in here.”
“I really doubt it,” said Tas, dubiously eyeing the sign that hung by one chain over the door. “The 'Cracked Mug’ doesn’t seem quite the place—”
“Nonsense,” growled Caramon, as he had growled more times on this journey already than Tas could count, “she has to eat. Even great, muckety-muck clerics have to eat. Or maybe someone in here will have seen some sign of her on the trail. We’re not having any luck.”
“No,” muttered Tasslehoff beneath his breath, “but we might have more luck if we searched the road, not taverns.”
They had been on the road three days, and Tas’s worst misgivings about this adventure had proved true.
Ordinarily, kender are enthusiastic travelers. All kender are stricken with wanderlust somewhere near their twentieth year. At this time, they gleefully strike out for parts unknown, intent on finding nothing except adventure and whatever beautiful, horrible, or curious items might by chance fall into their bulging pouches. Completely immune to the self-preserving emotion of fear, afflicted by unquenchable curiosity, the kender population on Krynn was not a large one, for which most of Krynn was devoutly grateful.
Tasslehoff Burrfoot, now nearing his thirtieth year (at least as far as he could remember), was, in most regards, a typical kender. He had journeyed the length and breadth of the continent of Ansalon, first with his parents before they had settled down in Kenderhome. After coming of age, he wandered by himself until he met Flint Fireforge, the dwarven metalsmith and his friend, Tanis Half-Elven. After Sturm Brightblade, Knight of Solamnia, and the twins, Caramon and Raistlin, joined them, Tas became involved in the most wonderful adventure of his life—the War of the Lance.