The Second Generation

Amberyl hung her head. “No. I mean yes. Well, partly.” Raising her face, she looked at the mage. “I did truly come here to see if there wasn’t some way . . .”

Laughing bitterly, Raistlin dropped her hands. “How can I remove a spell when you won’t tell me what you have cast?”

“It isn’t a spell!” Amberyl cried despairingly. She could see the marks his fingers had left on her flesh.

“Then what is it?” Raistlin shouted. His voice cracked, and, coughing, he fell backward, clutching his chest.

“Here,” Amberyl said, reaching out her hands, “let me help—”

“Get out!” Raistlin panted through lips flecked with blood and froth.

With his last strength, he shoved Amberyl away from him, then sank down into his chair. “Get out!” he said again. Though the words were inaudible, his eyes spoke them clearly, the hourglass pupils dilated with rage.

Frightened, Amberyl turned and fled. Opening the door, she plummeted out into the hallway, crashing headlong into Caramon and the barmaid who were heading for another room,

“Hey!” Caramon cried, catching Amberyl in his arms. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

“Your—your brother,” Amberyl said in confusion, hiding her face in her long hair. “He ... he’s ill.”

“I warned him ...” Caramon said softly, his face crumpling in worry as he heard his brother’s rasping cough. Forgetting the barmaid, who was setting up a disappointed cry behind him, the big warrior went back into his room.

Amberyl ran blindly down the hall, yanked open her door, and stumbled inside her room to stand, shivering, against the wall in the darkness.

She may have slept. She wasn’t certain. Her dreams were too near her waking thoughts. But she’d heard a sound. Yes, there it was again. A door slamming. Though it could have been any one of the rooms in the inn, Amberyl knew instinctively whose door it was.

Rising from the bed on which she’d been lying, fully dressed, the girl opened her door a crack as a voice echoed down the hall.

“Raist! It’s a blizzard out there! We’ll perish! You can’t take this!”

“I am leaving this inn! Now!” came the mage’s voice. No longer whispering, it was hoarse with anger and fear. “I am leaving, and I go with you or without you. If s up to you!”

The mage started walking down the hall, leaning upon his staff.

Stopping, he cast a piercing glance at Amberyl’s room. Panic-stricken, she ducked back into the shadows. He headed toward the stairs, his brother standing behind him, hands spread helplessly.

“This has to do with that girl, doesn’t it?” Caramon shouted. “Name of the Abyss, answer me! I—He’s gone.” Left alone in the hall, the big warrior scratched his head. “Well, he won’t get far without me. I’ll go after him. Women!” he muttered, hurrying back into the room and reappearing, struggling to lift a pack to his back. “Just after we got out of that damn magic forest, too. Now, I suppose we’ll end up right back in it.”

Amberyl saw Caramon look down the hall toward her room and, once more, ducked back.

“I’d like to know what’s going on, my lady,” the big man said in her general direction. Then, snaking his head, Caramon shouldered the pack and clumped hastily down the stairs.

Amberyl stood for a moment in the darkness of her room, waiting until her breathing calmed and she could think clearly. Then, grabbing her scarf, she wound it tightly around her face. Pulling a fur cloak from her own pack, she crept cautiously down the hall after Caramon.

Amberyl could recall no worse storm in her life and she had lived many years in the world, though she was young yet by the standards of her kind. The snow was blinding. Blown by a fierce wind, it blotted out all traces of any object from her sight—even her own hands held out before her were swallowed up by the stinging, blinding white darkness. There was no possible way she could have tracked Raistlin and his brother—no way except the way she did it—by the bond that had been accidentally created between herself and the mage.

Accidental. Yes, it must have been accidental, she thought as she trudged through the drifts. Though the snow had been falling only a matter of hours, it was already knee-deep. Strong as she was, she was having some difficulty plowing her way through the steep drifts and she could imagine the magic-user ... in his long robes....

Shaking her head, Amberyl sighed. Well, the two humans would stop soon. That much was certain. Wrapping her scarf tighter about her face, covering her skin from the biting snow, she asked herself what she intended to do when they did stop. Would she tell the mage?

What choice do I have? she argued with herself bitterly and, even as she asked the question, she slipped and stumbled. There! she thought, a sickening wave of fear convulsing her. It’s beginning already, the weakness that came from the bond. And if it was happening to her, it must be happening to him also! Would it be worse in a human? she wondered in sudden alarm.

What if he died!