Time of the Twins

“They’ll come from miles around,” he told Raag that night, “hoping to be there the night he loses. And, of course, he won’t lose—not for a good, long while. Meanwhile, he’ll be a heart-breaker. I can see that now. And I have just the costume...”

Tasslehoff, meanwhile, was finding his own life in the arena quite interesting. Although at first deeply wounded when told he couldn’t be a gladiator (Tas had visions of himself as another Kronin Thistleknot—the hero of Kenderhome), Tas had moped around for a few days in boredom. This ended in his nearly getting killed by an enraged minotaur who discovered the kender happily going through his room.

The minotaurs were furious. Fighting at the arena for the love of the sport only, they considered themselves a superior race, living and eating apart from the others. Their quarters were sacrosanct and inviolate.

Dragging the kender before Arack, the minotaur demanded that he be allowed to slit him open and drink his blood. The dwarf might have agreed—not having overly much use for kenders himself—but Arack remembered the talk he’d had with Quarath shortly after he’d purchased these two slaves. For some reason, the highest church authority in the land was interested in seeing that nothing happened to these two. He had to refuse the minotaur’s request, therefore, but mollified him by giving him a boar he could butcher in sport. Then, Arack took Tas aside, cuffed him across the face a few times, and finally gave him permission to leave the arena and explore the town if the kender promised to come back at night.

Tas, who had already been sneaking out of the arena anyway, was thrilled at this, and repaid the dwarf’s kindness by bringing him back any little trinket he thought Arack might like. Appreciative of this attention, Arack only beat the kender with a stick when he caught Tas trying to sneak pastry to Caramon, instead of whipping him as he would have otherwise.

Thus, Tas came and went about Istar pretty much as he liked, learning quickly to dodge the townguards, who had a most unreasonable dislike for kender. And so it was that Tasslehoff was able to enter the Temple itself.

Amid his training and dieting and other problems, Caramon had never lost sight of his real goal. He had received a cold, terse message from Lady Crysania, so he knew she was all right. But that was all. Of Raistlin, there was no sign.

At first, Caramon despaired of finding his brother or Fistandantilus, since he was never allowed outside the arena. But he soon realized that Tas could go places and see things much easier than he could, even if he had been free. People had a tendency to treat kender the same way they treated children—as if they weren’t there. And Tas was even more expert than most kender at melting into shadows and ducking behind curtains or sneaking quietly through halls.

Plus there was the advantage that the Temple itself was so vast and filled with so many people, coming and going at nearly all hours, that one kender was easily ignored or—at most—told irritably to get out of the way. This was made even easier by the fact that there were several kender slaves working in the kitchens and even a few kender clerics, who came and went freely.

Tas would have dearly loved to make friends of these and to ask questions about his homeland—particularly the kender clerics, since he’d never known these existed. But he didn’t dare. Caramon had warned him about talking too much and, for once, Tas took this warning seriously. Finding it nerve-racking to be on constant guard against talking about dragons or the Cataclysm or something that would get everyone all upset, he decided it would be easier to avoid temptation altogether. So he contented himself with nosing around the Temple and gathering information.

“I’ve seen Crysania,” he reported to Caramon one night after they’d returned from dinner and a game of arm wrestling with Pheragas. Tas lay down on the bed while Caramon practiced with a mace and chain in the center of the room, Arack wanting him skilled in weapons other than the sword. Seeing that Caramon still needed a lot of practice, Tas crept to the far end of the bed—well out of the way of some of the big man’s wilder swings.

“How is she?” Caramon asked, glancing over at the kender with interest.

Tas shook his head. “I don’t know. She looks all right, I guess. At least she doesn’t look sick. But she doesn’t look happy, either. Her face is pale and, when I tried to talk to her, she just ignored me. I don’t think she recognized me.”

Caramon frowned. “See if you can find out what the matter is,” he said. “She was looking for Raistlin, too, remember. Maybe it has something to do with him.”

“All right,” the kender replied, then ducked as the mace whistled by his head. “Say, be careful! Move back a little.” He felt his topknot anxiously to see if all his hair was still there.

“Speaking of Raistlin,” Caramon said in a subdued voice. “I don’t suppose you found out anything today either?”