Brother's Majere Read online

  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.”

  The mage went to his bed. When he heard Caramon snoring, his breathing deep and regular, Raistlin all
owed himself to drift into sleep.

  Earwig. What are you doing?

  “I’m sleeping. What does it look like I’m doing?” the kender retorted.

  Huge claws, black claws, the claws of a gigantic cat, made a swipe at him. Earwig just barely managed to dodge out of the way.

  What are your friends doing?

  “They’re sleeping, too.”

  Both of them? Safe? Unharmed?

  “Yes! Now leave me alone. I have to get out of the way of this monster!” The kender jumped over something that resembled a metal box with teeth.

  I’ll be back, Earwig … I’ll be back … I’ll be back …

  The next day, Caramon, after the night’s sleep, felt as invigorated as ever. No trace of yesterday’s sickness remained. Earwig, however, was cross and out-of-sorts.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Caramon asked over breakfast.

  “Nothing,” said the kender. “I didn’t sleep well, all right?”

  “Sure,” said the astonished Caramon. “I was just asking. What are we going to do today, Raist?”

  Two more days until the Festival of the Eye. There isn’t much time. I wish I knew for what, thought Raistlin. Aloud he said, “I think we should explore the rest of the city.”

  “What? Why? What are you looking for?” Earwig asked sharply.

  The mage stared at the kender. “Nothing in particular.”

  “Well, I’m coming, too,” Earwig announced. “Where are we going?”

  “To the other two city gates, and then we’ll work our way back into the center.”

  “The innkeeper says those black carriages are ‘public conveyances,’ ” said Caramon, repeating the unfamiliar words carefully. “You pay to ride in ’em.”

  “Councillor Shavas will pay for us to ride in them,” said Raistlin. “Go find one.”

  The companions took the carriage around the outer road to Eastgate. Three major thoroughfares in Mereklar led from the gates to the center of town. The road they traveled cut across the lines of the city, making access to other neighborhoods fast and efficient. The trip took a little more than an hour on the warm day.

  Cats were everywhere—lying on sidewalks or sitting in the laps of people. Some of the more adventurous felines padded into the shops to browse with the few customers out in the streets, or climbed to rooftops to gaze down at the world below.

  It was Earwig who first noticed that some of the cats were following their carriage, maintaining a distance of ten feet. When the coach slowed to move around people or a cart crossing the street, the felines slowed as well.

  “Look!” said the kender, entranced.

  When Raistlin turned to investigate, the cats fled. All except one.

  “That’s the black cat. The one we found near the councillor’s house.”

  “I don’t know how you can tell, Raist,” Caramon said. “All black cats look alike to me.”

  “Except that there are no other black cats in the city.” The carriage rolled off. “It’s following us.”

  Caramon, his face unusually serious, leaned forward on the carriage seat. “Raist, I don’t like this. Any of this. I don’t like the way that cat looks at us. I don’t like people trying to murder us. I don’t like the way the kender’s acting—”

  “I’m not acting any sort of way!” protested Earwig.

  Caramon ignored him. “It’s not worth ten thousand steel pieces, Raist. Let’s leave—go find some nice, safe war.”

  Raistlin didn’t answer at first, but stared out the back of the carriage at the cat who was following behind. Then, nodding, he said, “You’re right, my brother. It isn’t worth ten thousand steel pieces.” He said nothing more. Caramon, heaving a sigh, sat back in the carriage.

  Eventually they reached the gate. Like the portcullis in the southern wall, it was also made from metal decorated with strange plates and sheets, each inscribed with the head of a cat.

  “What do you call this street?” the mage asked the driver.

  “This, sir? This is called Eastgate Street, sir.”

  “Councillor Shavas will pay your fare,” Raistlin said, climbing down out of the carriage. “No need to wait.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” The driver whipped up his horses and left as quickly as he could, nearly running over Caramon and Earwig.

  “Now that we’re here, what do we do?” Caramon asked.

  “We get a drink,” Raistlin said, heading toward the first hyava house he found.

  “Huh? This time of morning? Since when—”

  “Hush, my brother. I’m thirsty.”

  The fighter stared after his twin, wondering what had come over him. Shrugging, he grabbed the kender and followed.

  The hyava shop was similar to all of the other shops the companions had passed, offering tiny cups of the liquor with equally tiny saucers, and chairs and tables for sitting outside. Earwig and Caramon both ordered straight hyava with scones. Raistlin bought a small glass of brandy. The three relaxed in the warm sun.

  “Why did you get that?” Caramon asked. “I thought you wanted hyava.”

  Raistlin sipped at his brandy. Caramon sat, brooding. Earwig ate his scone in one bite. Seeing that his large friend was not going to eat his scone, the kender snatched the pastry off the plate, lifting it to his mouth.

  “Hey! What are you doing?” Caramon yelled, batting at the kender’s hand.

  “Watch it!” Earwig yelled in return, trying to hang on to the scone. It broke apart in his hands and fell to the ground. “Now see what you’ve done. You’ve ruined my snack!”

  “Your snack?” the warrior said in disbelief. “What do you mean, your snack?”

  “You weren’t going to eat it, so I assumed you wanted to give it to me.”

  “How do you know I wasn’t going to eat it? I— Oh, never mind. At least it won’t go to waste.”

  Several cats had wandered by and, assuming that neither the kender nor the fighter wanted the scone, took it upon themselves to resolve the argument. The warrior cheered at the sight, bent down to pet one of the animals. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a figure, dressed in black, crouched in the shadows.

  “Earwig!” Caramon whispered. “Do you see someone standing in that alley? No, don’t look up!”

  “What?” the kender said loudly, looking up. “Where?”

  Caramon gritted his teeth. There were times, he realized, when a kender’s companionship was not worth the effort. “I said not to look!”

  “Well, how am I supposed to see if I don’t look?”

  “Never mind. It’s too late, now. Do you see somebody standing in that alley across the street?”

  “No, not anymore,” Earwig said.

  Caramon sat up and turned around, staring directly into the alley. No one was there. In fact, looking closer, the fighter saw that he must have been mistaken. What he had taken for a figure in black was a water barrel.

  “Well?” demanded Raistlin.

  “Nothing. I guess I’m just spooked from last night,” Caramon muttered. Raising up from petting the cat, he saw—in astonishment—tears streaming down his twin’s golden-skinned face.

  “Raistlin! What’s the mat—”

  “Nothing, Caramon,” the mage interrupted. “In fact, quite the opposite. I’m beginning to understand something about this city.” Raistlin clenched his hand around his wooden staff to control his mounting excitement.

  There are two lines, the mage concluded. They both cut through the center of the two main streets. This one must also lead directly to the councillor’s house! And I’ll wager my staff that a third line runs down the west street. Lines of power, stretching across the world, perhaps; shining more brightly every moment. Lines that end here! In this city. “The city that stands before the first gods.”

  “Caramon,” said Raistlin aloud. “I must have a sextant.”

  The companions walked to the third section of the city, looking into several shops for the navigational tool. Whe
n they finally found one—a small brass sextant with an extremely accurate lens and even more accurate gradations—it was far too expensive.

  “A bargain,” the shopkeeper assured them, but the mage handed it back.

  “Can’t you use Lady Shavas’s scroll to get it?” Caramon asked.

  “No. It only allows for ‘minor expenses.’ I doubt if a sextant counts as that.”

  The brothers walked up the street, never noticing that the kender was missing until he rejoined them.

  “Raistlin,” Earwig said, tugging at the mage’s robes.

  A look of anger flared in the strange, black pupils. “Don’t you dare touch me! Ever!” The mage shoved the kender back.

  “But I’ve got something for you!” Earwig said. Reaching into his pouch, he pulled out the sextant.

  The mage brought his hand up over his mouth quickly, putting his fingers over his twitching lips.

  “Earwig. Where did you get that?” Caramon tried to sound severe.

  “From the shop, of course,” the kender said, nodding his head. “The owner said you could have it if you promised to return it when you were done.”

  “Really? And the owner actually said this to you?”

  “Well, he didn’t actually say it, but I’m sure he would have if he had been in the room.”

  Raistlin averted his head. His thin shoulders shook, and Caramon could have sworn that his brother was laughing.

  “Uh, Raist, don’t you think we should return it?”

  “What, and spoil Earwig’s gift? Never!” Raistlin said. He took the tool from the kender’s hand and tucked it under his flowing robes to hide it from sight. “Thank you, Earwig,” he said solemnly. “That was very thoughtful of you.”

  “You’re welcome,” the kender said, beaming, and looking much more like the old Earwig.

  The travelers found another carriage. Raistlin directed the driver to take them to Westgate Street. By the time they reached their destination, the day was rapidly fading. The last portcullis was the same as the others, metal untouched by the elements, with the same indecipherable network of plates and shields on the bars.

  Next, they went to another hyava house, ordered the same drinks and food that they had ordered at the last one, with exactly the same results. Earwig tried to take Caramon’s scone, and when the fighter slapped the kender’s hand, the pastry broke and fell to the ground, only to be eaten by several cats sitting in front of the shop.