Time of the Twins

“It is not a bad system,” Pheragas said with a shrug when Caramon confronted him the day after his return from the Temple. “Certainly better than a thousand men killing each other on the fields of battle. Here, if one nobleman feels offended by another, their feud is handled secretly, in private, to the satisfaction of all.”

“Except the innocent man who dies for a cause he doesn’t care about or understand!” Caramon said angrily.

“Don’t be such a baby!” Kiiri snorted, polishing one of her collapsible daggers. “By your own account, you did some mercenary work. Did you understand or care about the cause then? Didn’t you fight and kill because you were being well paid? Would you have fought if you weren’t? I don’t see the difference.”

“The difference is I had a choice!” Caramon responded, scowling. “And I knew the cause I fought for! I never would have fought for anyone I didn’t believe was in the right! No matter how much money they paid me! My brother felt the same. He and I—” Caramon abruptly fell silent.

Kiiri looked at him strangely, then shook her head with a grin. “Besides,” she added lightly, “it adds spice, an edge of real tension. You’ll fight better from now on. You’ll see.”

Thinking of this conversation as he lay in the darkness, Caramon tried to reason it out in his slow, methodical fashion.

Maybe Kiiri and Pheragas were correct, maybe he was being a baby, crying because the bright, glittering toy he had enjoyed playing with suddenly cut him. But—looking at it every way possible—he still couldn’t believe it was right. A man deserved a choice, to choose his own way to live, his own way to die. No one else had the right to determine that for him.

And then, in the predawn, a crushing weight seemed to fall on Caramon. He sat up, leaning on one elbow, staring unseeing into the gray cell. If that was true, if every man deserved a choice, then what about his brother’? Raistlin had made his choice—to walk the ways of night instead of day. Did Caramon have the right to drag his brother from those paths?

His mind went back to those days he had unwittingly recalled when talking to Kiiri and Pheragas—those days right before the Test, those days that had been the happiest in his life—the days of mercenary work with his brother.

The two fought well together, and they were always welcomed by nobles. Though warriors were common as leaves in the trees, magic-users who could and would join the fighting were another thing altogether. Though many nobles looked somewhat dubious when they saw Raistlin’s frail and sickly appearance, they were soon impressed by his courage and his skill. The brothers were paid well and were soon much in demand.

But they always selected the cause they fought for with care.

“That was Raist’s doing,” Caramon whispered to himself wistfully. “I would have fought for anyone, the cause mattered little to me. But Raistlin insisted that the cause had to be a just one. We walked away from more than one job because he said it involved a strong man trying to grow stronger by devouring others...

“But that’s what Raistlin’s doing!” Caramon said softly, staring up at the ceiling. “Or is it? That’s what they say he’s doing, those magic-users. But can I trust them? Par-Salian was the one who got him into this, he admitted that! Raistlin rid the world of this Fistandantilus creature. By all accounts, that’s a good thing. And Raist told me he didn’t have anything to do with the Barbarian’s death. So he hasn’t really done anything wrong. Maybe we’ve misjudged him... Maybe we have no right to try to force him to change...”

Caramon sighed. “What should I do?” Closing his eyes in forlorn weariness, he fell asleep, and soon the smell of warm, freshly baked muffins filled his mind.

The sun lit the sky. The Night of Doom ended. Tasslehoff rose from his bed, eagerly greeted the new day, and decided that he—he personally—would stop the Cataclysm.

12

“Alter time!” Tasslehoff said eagerly, slipping over the garden wall into the sacred Temple area and dropping down to land in the middle of a flower bed. Some clerics were walking in the garden, talking among themselves about the merriment of the forthcoming Yule season. Rather than interrupt their conversation, Tas did what he considered the polite thing and flattened himself down among the flowers until they left, although it meant getting his blue leggings dirty.

It was rather pleasant, lying among the red Yule roses, so called because they grew only during the Yule season. The weather was warm, too warm, most people said. Tas grinned. Trust humans. If the weather was cold, Yule-type weather, they’d complain about that, too. He thought the warmth was delightful. A trifle hard to breathe in the heavy air, perhaps, but—after all—you couldn’t have everything.