Time of the Twins

“Yes, my little one,” Raistlin said, still smiling. “It works well for coughs, too, as I remember.” He waved his hand over the still water. The mage’s voice became a lulling chant. “And now, sleep, my brother, before you do anything else stupid. Sleep, kender, sleep, little Bupu. And sleep as well, Lady Crysania, in the realm where Paladine protects you.”

Still chanting, Raistlin made a beckoning motion with his hand. “And now come, Forest of Wayreth. Creep up on them as they sleep. Sing them your magical song. Lure them onto your secret paths.”

The spell was ended. Rising to his feet, Raistlin turned to Dalamar. “And you come, too, apprentice”—there was the faintest sarcasm in the voice that made the dark elf shudder—“come to my study. It is time for us to talk.”

9

Dalamar sat in the mage’s study in the same chair Kitiara had occupied on her visit. The dark elf was far less comfortable, far less secure than Kitiara had been. Yet his fears were well-contained. Outwardly he appeared relaxed, composed. A heightened flush upon his pale elven features could be attributed, perhaps, to his excitement at being taken into his master’s confidence.

Dalamar had been in the study often, though not in the presence of his master. Raistlin spent his evenings here alone, reading, studying the tomes that lined his walls. No one dared disturb him then. Dalamar entered the study only during the daylight hours, and then only when Raistlin was busy elsewhere. At that time the dark elf apprentice was allowed—no, required—to study the spellbooks himself, some of them, that is. He had been forbidden to open or even touch those with the nightblue binding.

Dalamar had done so once, of course. The binding felt intensely cold, so cold it burned his skin. Ignoring the pain, he managed to open the cover, but after one look, he quickly shut it. The words inside were gibberish, he could make nothing of them. And he had been able to detect the spell of protection cast over them. Anyone looking at them too long without the proper key to translate them would go mad.

Seeing Dalamar’s injured hand, Raistlin asked him how it happened. The dark elf replied coolly that he had spilled some acid from a spell component he was mixing. The archmage smiled and said nothing. There was no need. Both understood.

But now he was in the study by Raistlin’s invitation, sitting here on a more or less equal basis with his master. Once again, Dalamar felt the old fear laced by intoxicating excitement.

Raistlin sat before him at the carved wooden table, one hand resting upon a thick nightblue-bound spellbook. The archmage’s fingers absently caressed the book, running over the silver runes upon the cover. Raistlin’s eyes stared fixedly at Dalamar. The dark elf did not stir or shift beneath that intense, penetrating gaze.

“You were very young, to have taken the Test,” Raistlin said abruptly in his soft voice.

Dalamar blinked. This was not what he had expected.

“Not so young as you, Shalafi,” the dark elf replied. “I am in my nineties, which figures to about twenty-five of your human years. You, I believe, were only twenty-one when you took the Test.”

“Yes,” Raistlin murmured, and a shadow passed across the mage’s golden-tinted skin. “I was... twenty-one.”

Dalamar saw the hand that rested upon the spellbook clench in swift, sudden pain; he saw the golden eyes flare. The young apprentice was not surprised at this show of emotion. The Test is required of any mage seeking to practice the arts of magic at an advanced level. Administered in the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth, it is conducted by the leaders of all three Robes. For, long ago, the magic-users of Krynn realized what had escaped the clerics—if the balance of the world is to be maintained, the pendulum must swing freely back and forth among all three—Good, Evil, Neutrality. Let one grow too powerful—any one—and the world would begin to tilt toward its destruction.

The Test is brutal. The higher levels of magic, where true power is obtained, are no place for inept bunglers. The Test was designed to get rid of those—permanently; death being the penalty for failure. Dalamar still had nightmares about his own testing, so he could well understand Raistlin’s reaction.

“I passed,” Raistlin whispered, his eyes staring back to that time. “But when I came out of that terrible place I was as you see me now. My skin had this golden tint, my hair was white, and my eyes...” He came back to the present, to look fixedly at Dalamar. “Do you know what I see with these hourglass eyes’?”

“No, Shalafi.”

“I see time as it affects all things,” Raistlin replied. “Human flesh withers before these eyes, flowers wilt and die, the rocks themselves crumble as I watch. It is always winter in my sight. Even you. Dalamar”—Raistlin’s eyes caught and held the young apprentice in their horrible gaze—“even elven flesh that ages so slowly the passing of the years are as rain showers in the spring—even upon your young face, Dalamar—I see the mark of death!”