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cloth. Two more darts followed, burying themselves in the cloth of the red robes before they reached their target.
The assassin dashed forward—a figure in black, dodging around the mage with the agility of an acrobat. He leaped over the dumbfounded kender, took the stairs to the first floor in one jump, and disappeared into the street.
Raistlin ran to the window, pulling a shard of glass from a pouch to use in a spell, but the assassin was already gone. Turning, he hurried back to his brother, who was lying on the floor.
“Caramon? Are you hurt?” he asked, kneeling at his brother’s side.
“No, I … don’t think so.”
Looking up into his twin’s face, Caramon saw true concern, true worry. Warmth spread through his body, banishing the sickness for a moment. Somewhere deep inside, Raistlin cared for him. The knowledge was worth facing all the assassins in the world. “Thanks, Raist,” he said weakly.
Raistlin inspected his robes and pulled the three darts from the cloth. Two were lodged in the folds, the third had struck a metal disk—the charm of good fortune he had received from the woman at the Black Cat. He looked at the amulet with a touch of amusement.
Earwig, aimlessly roaming the room, found another dart that the assassin had dropped. Without saying anything to the brothers, the kender slipped it into his pocket.
“Do you need anything, Caramon?” Raistlin asked.
“No, nothing. I just need to rest.” The warrior collapsed on the bed. His brother sat by his side. “Raist, I thought you said nobody’d hurt us now. Too many people knew we were here.”
“It wasn’t ‘us’ they were after, Caramon,” said Raistlin thoughtfully, studying the darts. “It was you.”
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“Huh?” The warrior propped himself up on his elbow.
“Why would anyone want to kill Caramon?” Earwig yawned.
‘The darts were aimed directly at you. None at me or the kender. And this strange illness. If I hadn’t been there, you wouldn’t have been able to react, to get out of the way. You would have been easy prey, my brother.”
Raistlin held one of the darts up to a lamp. The mage sniffed at the tip and drew his face back, wrinkling his nose in obvious repugnance. “Thorodrone,” he said, pursing his lips and sniffing again. “Definitely. An extremely deadly poison. You were fortunate he didn’t hit you, Caramon. You would have been dead in an instant.”
He held the dart over the flame of a nearby lamp, causing the tip to glow green. Spitting on his fingers, then rubbing them together lightly, Raistlin flaked off the poison, now turned ash gray on the black metal. He did the same to the other two darts, then deposited them carefully in one of his pouches.
Rising from the bed, the sorcerer extinguished the lamp and the light of his staff and walked to the window. “What did you see of the man?” he said, eyes scanning the streets for signs of intruders.
“Nothing. He was dressed in black, and he was fast.”
“And he was really good with a blowgun,” Earwig added, removing the top of his hoopak to reveal the exit hole for his own weapon.
Unseen in the darkness, the kender took out the poisoned dart and tried to insert it into the blowgun. It wouldn’t fit; it was too big. He stared at it, disappointed, until he realized that if he plucked away some of the feathers, the dart would fit quite nicely. He commensed plucking.
“I didn’t see anything of him either,” said Raistlin.
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Earwig slid the defeathered dart into a small, hidden pocket on his sleeve, and capped his hoopak. Yawning again, he unrolled his bedclothes, lay down, and was soon fast asleep.
“Did you notice anything unusual when you were walking around inside of her house tonight?” Raistlm asked suddenly.
“Unusual?” Caramon was sick and dizzy and wanted only to go to sleep.
“Unusual. Bizarre. Out of the ordinary. Did you see or hear anything you didn’t understand?”
Caramon thought back to Shavas’s room, remembering the touch of silk, the feel between his fingers, cold satin turning warm. A wave of heat stole over his body. He thought about hearing Earwig’s voice when the ken-der swore he hadn’t been in the room. He thought about the fact that he had wandered through the house for hours, yet it seemed to him as if it had been only a few moments.