“Are you looking for something, Raistlin?” Shavas asked in concern.
“I have a cinder in my eyes,” he said, rubbing them. Then the knowledge struck him. He knew what had been bothering him.
His hourglass eyes saw the effects of time on everything upon which his gaze fell. The Masters of the Tower had cast this curse upon him, hoping to teach him compassion for others, hoping to remind him that all men were alike, all men dying. He saw the books on the shelves rotting away, their leather bindings cracking and fading. He saw the tables lose their lacquered sheens and grow old, their timbers and slats fall in scattered stacks. But when he looked at Shavas, he saw her young, beautiful, unchanging.
This can’t be! he railed, massaging his eyes with his hand. When he opened his eyes again, he felt his body grow cold. The councillor’s form was now nothing but a
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rotting corpse, struck down by the passage of untold eons, an abomination to life, something unspeakable and unnatural, a travesty that must be destroyed.
What new joke have the masters played on me now? Raistlin demanded silently. He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, attempting to shut out the horrible sight he had just witnessed.
“What is wrong?” Shavas asked, rising to her feet. She moved closer, and Raistlin felt her hands touch his golden flesh. He felt the touch of a woman, the fatal touch of something he never expected to feel.
“As I have said, I am fine,” Raistlin replied tersely. He snatched his arm away from the woman’s grasp.
She gazed at him, hurt, reminding him of Caramon.
Raistlin sighed. His hand reached for the staff, but he had left it standing beside the bookshelves.
“Please forgive me. Councillor. I’m not used to anyone . . . touching me. I apologize if I seem rude.”
“No apologies are necessary, Raistlin. I think I understand. You have been misused, ill-treated. You raise your defenses swiftly.” The councillor lifted her hand and placed it on the mage’s arm. “I assure you, sir,” she murmured, drawing nearer until he could smell the fragrance of her hair, “that you need no defenses around me!”
Raistlin caught his breath, feeling as if he were smothering. But the sensation, unlike his illness, was a pleasant one. She was beautiful to his eyes, the only thing of beauty he’d seen in a long, long time. His arm glided around the woman’s slender body, and he pulled her near.
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Cfrapten 12
CanaMON walked We CORRJOOKS of fl?e councillor’s house, becoming increasingly nervous with each step, though he could not imagine why. Nothing in the estate had been any more menacing than an inanimate suit of armor in the library. He rubbed at the muscles in his right leg, a very slight bruise rising blue on his flesh.
“How did that happen?” he asked himself. “I don’t remember bumping into anything.”
The hall led him from the library to the middle of the house. Here the corridor was dimly lit with a strange color, vaguely purple or lavender. Brass oil lamps, spaced at regular intervals and mounted directly to the
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wall, gave only a faint glow, the frosted glass covering the wicks and diffusing the yellow-white flames into almost nothing.
“Why the devil does she keep it so dark in here?” Cara-mon said to himself, wondering which of the many doors the kender might be behind. “Earwig! Earwig! Where are you?”
He wandered the house calling, waiting for an answer and finally, after what seemed like hours, heard one.
“Caramon? Is that you?”
“Of course, it’s me! Where are you?”
“In here!”
Caramon walked a few paces to a door in the middle of the hall. He twisted the knob, walked in, and stopped dead. “Shavas’s bedroom,” he said.
He knew he should leave, he knew what he was doing was highly improper. But he couldn’t help himself. The beauty and alluring mystery of the room seemed to beckon him forward. Besides, he told himself, he’d heard the kender’s voice and the last thing the lady would want would be the kender in amid her personal belongings.