Weis Margaret Read online

  Fistandantilus had managed to retain his bloodstone and, armed with that, he lay in wait for victims. He sought out young magicusers, particularly those who were leaning toward darkness, for they would be most likely to succumb to temptation.

  The Conclave of Wizards knew Fistandantilus was searching for prey, but they were powerless to stop him. Whenever a young magic-user took the dread Test in the Tower of High Sorcery, the Conclave knew there was a chance that Fistandantilus would seize him. Many who died taking the Test were thought to have been his victims.

  Five years prior to the start of the War of the Lance, a young mage and his twin brother came to the Tower of Wayreth to take the Test. The young man had shown great promise in his studies. Foreseeing a time of war and evil coming to Krynn, the head of the Conclave, Par-Salian, hoped that this young mage would assist in defeating the darkness.

  The young mage was himself arrogant and ambitious. Although he wore the red robes, his heart and soul tended toward darkness and his own choices led him to strike a bargain with Fistandantilus. * The evil wizard did not intend to keep his side of the deal; he meant to drain the young man of his life.

  Raistlin Majere was not like others before him. He was in his own way as skilled in magic as Fistandantilus. When the evil mage came to seize the young man’s heart and rip it from his body, Raistlin grasped hold of the heart of Fistandantilus.

  “You may take my life,” Raistlin told Fistandantilus, “but you will serve me in return.”

  The young man survived his Test, but he was shattered in body, for Fistandantilus was continually draining him of life in order to sustain himself on his magical plane. In return, however, Fistandantilus had to keep Raistlin alive and would come to his aid by feeding him knowledge of magicks that were far advanced for such a young wizard.

  Raistlin did not remember any of his Test, nor did he remember his bargain. He thought the Test had ruined his health, and Par-Salian did not tell him otherwise.

  “He will know the truth only when he comes to know the truth about himself, confront and admit the darkness within.”

  Par-Salian spoke those words, but not even he in his wisdom could foresee how the dark and strange alliance would, in the end, be resolved.

  * The story can be found in The Soulforge by Margaret Weis, published by Wizards of the Coast.

  1

  A Roll of the Dye. An Unexpected Encounter.

  2nd Day, Month of Mishamont, Year 352 AC

  he 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.

  Raistlin didn’t know what Astinus thought and he didn’t care. Keeping his cowl pulled low to conceal the fact that his skin shimmered gold in the sunlight and that the pupils of his eyes were the shape of hourglasses, he would mutter an excuse and hurry on. He hoped sourly that the workers at his destination were actually doing some work, that they were not out gossiping in the street.

  He regretted thinking of Tasslehoff. The memory of the kender brought back memories of his friends and his brother. He should say
his deceased friends, deceased brother: Tanis Half-Elven, Tika, Riverwind and Goldmoon, and Caramon. All of them dead. He alone had survived, and that was because he had been smart enough to have foreseen disaster and planned a way out. He had to face the fact that Caramon and the others were dead and quit obsessing over it. But even as he told himself he should stop thinking about them, he thought about them.

  Fleeing the dragonarmies in Flotsam, he and his brother and their friends had sought to escape by taking passage aboard a pirate ship, the Perechon. They had been pursued by a Dragon Highlord—his half-sister, Kitiara, as it turned out. The crazed helmsman had steered the ship deliberately into the Blood Sea’s feared Maelstrom. The ship was being ripped apart, spars falling, sails being torn to tatters. The wild water was breaking over the decks. Raistlin had a choice. Either he could die with the rest of them or he could leave. The choice was obvious to anyone with a brain—which excluded his brother. Raistlin had in his possession the magical dragon orb that had once belonged to the ill-fated King Lorac. Raistlin had used the magic of the orb to escape. True, he might have taken his friends with him. He might have saved all of them. He might at least have saved his brother.

  But Raistlin was only just learning about the powers of the dragon orb. He was not certain the orb had the ability to save the rest, and therefore, he had saved himself—and the other. The other who was always with him, who was with him even as he pushed his way through the streets of Palanthas. Once this “other” had been a whispered voice in Raistlin’s head, unknown and mysterious and maddening. But the mystery had been solved. Raistlin could put a hideous face to the disembodied voice, give the speaker a name.

  “Your decision was logical, young magus,” Fistandantilus said, adding with a sneer, “Your twin is dead. Good riddance. Caramon weakened you, diminished you. Now that you are free of him, you will go far. I will see to that.”

  “You won’t see to anything!” Raistlin retorted.

  “I beg your pardon?” said a passerby, halting. “Were you speaking to me, sir?”

  Raistlin muttered something and, ignoring the man’s offended stare, kept on walking. He had been forced to listen to the yammering voice all morning. He had even fancied he could see the black-robed, soul-sucking specter of the archmage dogging his footsteps. Raistlin wondered bitterly if the bargain he had made with the evil wizard had been worth it.

  “Without me, you would have died taking the Test in the Tower at Wayreth,” said Fistandantilus. “You came out of our deal well enough. A bit of your life in exchange for my knowledge and power.

  Raistlin had not been afraid he would die. He had been afraid he would fail. That was the true reason he had made the bargain with the old man. Raistlin could not have borne failure. He could not have endured his brother’s pity or the fact that he would have been dependent on his stronger twin for the rest of his days.

  Just thinking about the undead leech of a wizard sucking the life out of him as one sucks the juice from a peach brought on a coughing fit. Raistlin had always been frail and sickly, but the bargain he had struck with Fistandantilus, which allowed the spirit of the archmagus to remain alive on his dark plane of tortured existence in return for Raistlin’s escape, had exacted its toll. His lungs seemed to be always filled with wool. He felt as though he were being smothered. He was subject to fits of coughing that almost doubled him over, as happened at that moment.

  He had to pause and lean against a building for support, wiping the blood from his lips with the gray sleeve of the purloined robe. He felt weaker than usual. Using the magic of the dragon orb to transport him across a continent had taken far more out of him than he had anticipated. He had been half dead when he had arrived in Palanthas four days earlier, so weak that he had collapsed on the steps of the Great Library. The monks had taken pity on him and carried him inside. He was recovered somewhat, but he was still not well. He would not be well ever … not until he ended his bargain.

  Fistandantilus seemed to think that Raistlin’s soul was to be his reward. The archmagus was going to be disappointed. Since Raistlin’s soul was finally his own, he was not going to meekly hand it over to Fistandantilus.

  Raistlin considered that the archmagus had done well out of the deal he’d made with Raistlin in the Tower. Fistandantilus was, after all, leeching part of Raistlin’s life-force in order to cling to his miserable existence. But as far as Raistlin was concerned, the two of them were even. It was time to end their bargain. Except Raistlin couldn’t figure out how to do that without Fistandantilus knowing about it and stopping him. The old man was constantly lurking about, eavesdropping on Raistlin’s thoughts. There had to be a way to shut the door and lock the windows of his mind.

  Raistlin finally recovered enough to be able to resume his errand. He continued through the streets, following directions that were given to him by people he met along the way, and soon left the central part of Old City behind and, with it, the crowds. He entered the working part of the city, where streets were known by their trade. He passed Iron-Mongers Avenue and Butchers’ Row and the Horse Fair and Goldsmith Lane on his way to the street where wool merchants plied their trade. He was searching for a particular business when he glanced down an alleyway and saw a sign marked with the symbols of three moons: a red moon, a silver, and a black. It was a mageware shop.

  The shop was small, a mere hole in the wall. Raistlin was surprised to find such a shop at all, surprised that someone had even bothered to open a shop dealing in objects related to the use of magic in a city that despised those who wielded magic. He knew of only one wizard who resided in the city and that was Justarius, head of Raistlin’s own order, the Red Robes. Raistlin supposed there must be others. He’d never given the matter much thought.

  His steps slowed. The mageware shop would have what he sought. It would be costly. He could not afford it. He had only a small sum of steel, hoarded up and hidden away over months. He had to save his steel for lodging and food in Neraka, his destination, once his health was restored and his business in Palanthas was finished.

  Besides, the owner of the mageware shop would be bound to report Raistlin’s purchase to the Conclave, the body of wizards that enforced the laws of magic. The Conclave could not stop him, but he would be summoned to Wayreth and called upon to explain himself. Raistlin didn’t have time for all that. Events were happening—momentous, world-shaking events. The end was coming. The Dark Queen would soon be celebrating her victory. Raistlin did not plan to be standing on the street corner cheering as she rode past in triumph. He planned to be leading the parade.

  Raistlin walked past the mageware shop and came at last to the place he’d been seeking. The stench alone should have guided him, he thought, covering his nose and mouth with his sleeve. The business was located in a large, open-air yard filled with stacks of wood to stoke the fires. Smoke mingled with steam rising from the huge kettles and vats and reeked with the odors of the various ingredients used in the process, some of which were not at all pleasant.

  Clutching his bundle, Raistlin entered a small building located near the compound, where men and women were hauling wood and stirring the contents of the vats with big, wooden paddles. A clerk on a stool was writing figures in a large book. Another man sat on another stool, studying long lists. Neither took any notice of Raistlin.

  Raistlin waited a moment; then he coughed, causing the man looking over the lists to raise his eyes. Seeing Raistlin waiting in the entrance, the man left his stool and came over to inquire how he might serve one of the honored Aesthetics.

  “I have some cloth to be dyed,” said Raistlin, and he brought forth the red robes.

  He kept his hood over his face, but he could not very well hide his hands. Fortunately the building was shadowy, and Raistlin hoped the man would not notice his gold-colored skin.

  The dyer examined the color, running his hands over the cloth. “A nice wool,” he pronounced. “Not fine, mind you, but good and serviceable. It should take the dye well. What c
olor would you like, Revered Sir?”

  Raistlin was about to reply when he was interrupted by a fit of coughing so severe that he staggered and fell back against the doorframe. He missed his brother’s strong arm, which had always been there to support him.

  The dyer eyed Raistlin and backed up slightly in alarm. “Not catching, is it, sir?”

  “Black,” Raistlin gasped, ignoring the question.

  “I am sorry, what did you say?” asked the dyer. “It’s hard to hear with all that jabbering.”

  He gestured to the compound behind him, where women engaged in dunking the cloth in the kettles were yelling back and forth or exchanging barbed comments with the men who stoked the fires.

  “Black,” Raistlin said, raising his voice. He generally spoke softly. Talking irritated his throat.

  The dyer raised an eyebrow. Aesthetics who served Astinus in the Great Library wore robes of gray.

  “It is not for me,” Raistlin added. “I am acting for a friend.”

  “I see,” said the dyer. He cast Raistlin a quizzical glance, which Raistlin, overtaken by another fit of coughing, did not notice.

  “We have three types of black dye,” stated the dyer. “Our cheapest grade uses chromium, alum, and red argol, logwood and barwood. This produces a good black, though not very durable. The color will fade with washing. The next grade dye utilizes camwood and copperas and logwood. This grade is better than the first I named, though the black can turn slightly green over a long period of time. The best grade is done with indigo and camwood. This provides a deep, rich black that will not fade no matter how many times the cloth is washed. The latter is, of course, the most expensive.”