“My friend!” Caramon’s eyes were wet. He seemed about to say more but was overcome by emotion. Tanis was also momentarily unable to talk, but this was because he’d had his breath sqeezed out of him by Caramon’s muscular arms.
“Where’s Raistlin?” he asked when he could talk. The twins were never far apart.
“There.” Caramon nodded toward the end of the table. Then he frowned. “He’s changed,” the warrior warned Tanis.
The half-elf looked into a corner formed by an irregularity of the vallenwood tree. The corner was shrouded in shadow, and for a moment he couldn’t see anything after the glare of the fire-light. Then he saw a slight figure sitting huddled in red robes, even in the heat of the nearby fire. The figure had a hood cast over its face.
Tanis felt a sudden reluctance to speak to the young mage alone, but Tasslehoff had flitted away to find the barmaid and Flint was being lifted off his feet by Caramon. Tanis moved to the end of the table.
“Raistlin?” he said, feeling a strange sense of foreboding.
The robed figure looked up. “Tanis?” the man whispered as he slowly pulled the hood off his head.
The half-elf sucked in his breath and fell back a pace. He stared in horror.
The face that turned toward him from the shadows was a face out of a nightmare. Changed, Caramon had said! Tanis shuddered. “Change” wasn’t the word! The mage’s white skin had turned a golden color. It glistened in the firelight with a faintly metallic quality, looking like a gruesome mask. The flesh had melted from the face, leaving the cheekbones outlined in dreadful shadows. The lips were pulled tight in a dark straight line. But it was the man’s eyes that arrested Tanis and held him pinned in their terrible gaze. For the eyes were no longer the eyes of any living human Tanis had ever seen. The black pupils were now the shape of hourglasses! The pale blue irises Tanis remembered now glittered gold!
“I see my appearance startles you,” Raistlin whispered. There was a faint suggestion of a smile on his thin lips.
Sitting down across from the young man, Tanis swallowed.
“In the name of the true gods, Raistlin-”
Flint plopped into a seat next to Tanis. “I’ve been hoisted into the air more times today than-.Reorx” Flint’s eyes widened.
“What evil’s at work here? Are you cursed?” The dwarf gasped, staring at Raistlin.
Caramon took a seat next to his brother. He picked up his mug of ale and glanced at Raistlin. “Will you tell them, Raist?” he said in a low voice.
“Yes,” Raistlin said, drawing the word out into a hiss that made Tanis shiver. The young man spoke in a soft, wheezing voice, barely above a whisper, as if it were all he could do to force the words out of his body His long, nervous hands, which were the same golden color as his face, toyed absently with uneaten food on a plate before him.
“Do you remember when we parted five years ago?” Raistlin began. “My brother and I planned a journey so secret I could not even tell you, my dear friends, where we were going.”
There was a faint note of sarcasm in the gentle voice. Tanis bit his lip. Raistlin had never-in his entire life-had any “dear friends.”
“I had been selected by Par-Salian, the head of my order, to take the Test,” Raistlin continued.
“The Test!” Tanis repeated, stunned. “But you were too young. What-twenty? The Test is given only to mages who have studied years and years-”
“You can imagine my pride,” Raistlin said coldly, irritated at the interruption. “My brother and I traveled to the secret place-the fabled Towers of High Sorcery. And there I passed the Test.” The mage’s voice sank. “And there I nearly died!”
Caramon choked, obviously in the grip of some strong emotion. “It was awful,” the big man began, his voice shaking. “I found him in that horrible place, blood flowing from his mouth, dying! I picked him up and-”
“Enough, brother!” Raistlin’s soft voice flicked like a whip. Caramon flinched. Tanis saw the young mage’s golden eyes narrow, the thin hands clench. Caramon fell silent and gulped down his ale, glancing nervously at his brother. There was clearly a new strain, a tension between the twins.