Kitiara could only stare at him, aghast. Finally, she found her
voice. “How – how do you know she will follow you? Surely
you didn’t tell her!”
“Only enough to plant the seed in her breast.” Raistlin
smiled, looking back to that meeting. Leaning back, he put his
thin fingers to his lips. “My performance was, frankly, one of
my best. Reluctantly I spoke, my words drawn from me by her
goodness and purity. They came out, stained with blood, and
she was mine… lost through her own pity.” He came back to
the present with a start. “She will come,” he said coldly, sitting
forward once more. “She and that buffoon of a brother. He will
serve me unwittingly, of course. But then, that’s how he does
everything.”
Kitiara put her hand to her head, feeling her blood pulse. It
was not the wine, she was cold sober now. It was fury and frus-
tration. He could help me! she thought angrily. He is truly as
powerful as they said. More so! But he’s insane. He’s lost his
mind…. Then, unbidden, a voice spoke to her from some-
where deep inside.
What if he isn’t insane? What if he really means to go
through with this?
Coldly, Kitiara considered his plan, looking at it carefully
from all angles. What she saw horrified her. No. He could not
win! And, worse, he would probably drag her down with him!
These thoughts passed through Kit’s mind swiftly, and none
of them showed on her face. In fact, her smile grew only more
charming. Many were the men who had died, that smile their
last vision.
Raistlin might have been considering that as he looked at her
intently. “You can be on a winning side for a change, my sister.”
Kitiara’s conviction wavered. If he could pull it off, it would
be glorious! Glorious! Krynn would be hers.
Kit looked at the mage. Twenty-eight years ago, he had been
a newborn baby, sick and weakly, a frail counterpart to his
strong, robust twin brother.
“Let ‘im die. ‘Twill be best in the long run,” the midwife had
said. Kitiara had been a teenager then. Appalled, she heard her
mother weepingly agree.
But Kitiara had refused. Something within her rose to the
challenge. The baby would live! She would make him live,
whether he wanted to or not. “My first fight,” she used to tell
people proudly, “was with the gods. And I won!”
And now! Kitiara studied him. She saw the man. She saw –
in her mind’s eye – that whining, puking baby. Abruptly, she
turned away.
“I must get back,” she said, pulling on her gloves. “You will
contact me upon your return?”
“If I am successful, there will be no need to contact you,”
Raistlin said softly. “You will know!”
Kitiara almost sneered but caught herself quickly. Glancing
at Lord Soth, she prepared to leave the room. “Farewell then,
my brother.” Controlled as she was, she could not keep an edge
of anger from her voice. “I am sorry you do not share my desire
for the good things of this life! We could have done much
together, you and I!”
“Farewell, Kitiara,” Raistlin said, his thin hand summoning
the shadowy forms of those who served him to show his guests
to the door. “Oh, by the way,” he added as Kit stood in the
doorway, “I owe you my life, dear sister. At least, so I have
been told. I just wanted to let you know that – with the death of
Lord Ariakas, who would, undoubtedly, have killed you – I
consider my debt paid. I owe you nothing!”
Kitiara stared into the mage’s golden eyes, seeking threat,
promise, what? But there was nothing there. Absolutely noth-
ing. And then, in an instant, Raistlin spoke a word of magic
and vanished from her sight.
The way out of Shoikan Grove was not difficult. The guard-
ians had no care for those who left the Tower. Kitiara and Lord
Soth walked together, the death knight moving soundlessly
through the Grove, his feet leaving no impression on the leaves
that lay dead and decaying on the ground. Spring did not come