The Second Generation

I first heard the legend of Raistlin’s Daughter about five years after my twin’s death. As you can imagine, I was extremely intrigued and disturbed by the rumors and did what I could to investigate. In this I was assisted by my friends—the old Companions—who had by this time scattered over most of Ansalon. We found versions of the legend in almost every part of Ansalon. It is being told among the elves of Silvanesti, the people of Solamnia, and the Plainsmen who have returned to Que-shu. But we could find no verification of it.

Even the kender Tasslehoff Burrfoot, who goes everywhere and hears everything (as kender do), could discover no firsthand information regarding it. The story is always told by a person who heard it from his aunt who had a cousin who was midwife to the girl... and so forth.

I even went so far as to contact Astinus the Historian, who records history as it passes before his all-seeing eyes. In this, my hope to hear anything useful was slim, for the Historian is notoriously close-mouthed, especially when something he has seen in the past might affect the future.

Knowing this, I asked only for him to tell me whether or not the legend was true. Did my twin father a child? Does he or she live still on this world?

His response was typical of that enigmatic man, whom some whisper is the god Gilean himself. “If it is true, it will become known. If not, it won’t.”

I have agreed to allow the inclusion of the legend in this volume as a curiosity and because it might, in the distant future, have some bearing upon the history ofKrynn. The reader should before—warned, however, that my friends and I regard it as veritable gossip.

—Caramon Majere

Twilight touched the Wayward Inn with its gentle hand, making even that shabby and ill-reputed place seem a restful haven to those who walked or rode the path that led by its door. Its weather-beaten wood—rotting and worm-ridden when seen in broad daylight—appeared rustic in the golden-tinged evening.

Its cracked and broken windowpanes actually sparkled as they caught the last rays of dying light, and the shadows hit the roof just right, so that no one could see the patches. Perhaps this was one reason that the inn was so busy this night—either that or the masses of gray, lowering clouds gathering in the eastern sky like a ghostly, silent army.

The Wayward Inn was located on the outskirts—if the magical trees deemed it so—of the Forest of Wayreth. If the magical trees chose otherwise, as they frequently did, the inn was located on the outskirts of a barren field where nothing anyone planted grew. Not that any farmer cared to try his luck. Who would want anything from land controlled, so it was believed by the archmages of the Tower of High Sorcery; by the strange, uncanny forest?

Some thought it peculiar that the Wayward Inn was built so close to the Forest of Wayreth (when the forest was in appearance), but then the owner—Slegart Havenswood—was a peculiar man. His only care in the world, seemingly, was profit—as he would say to anyone who asked. And there was always profit to be made from those who found themselves on the fringes of wizards' lands when night was closing in.