Free War of the Twins by Margaret Weis Page B

the strength of his younger body. By the time he was ready to enter, he would be at the height of his powers—the greatest archmage ever to have lived upon Krynn!
    The thought comforted him and gave him renewed energy. The dizziness subsided finally, the pain eased. Rising to his feet, he cast a quick glance about the laboratory. He recognized it, of course. It looked exactly the same as when he had entered it in a past that was now two hundred years in the future.
Then
he had come with power—as foretold. The gates had opened, the evil guardians had greeted him reverently—not attacked him.
    As he walked through the laboratory, the Staff of Magius shining to light his way, Raistlin glanced about curiously. He noticed odd, puzzling changes. Everything should have been
exactly
as it was when he would arrive two hundred years from now. But a beaker now standing intact had been broken when he found it. A spellbook now resting on the large stone table, he had discovered on the floor.
    “Do the guardians disturb things?” he asked the two who remained with him. His robes rustled about his ankles as he made his way to the very back of the huge laboratory, back to the Door That Was Never Opened.
    “Oh, no, Master,” said one, shocked. “We are not permitted to touch anything.”
    Raistlin shrugged. Lots of things could happen in two hundred years to account for such occurrences. “Perhaps an earthquake,” he said to himself, losing interest in the matter as he approached the shadows where the great Portal stood.
    Raising the Staff of Magius, he shone its magical light ahead of him. The shadows fled the far corner of the laboratory, the corner where stood the Portal with its platinum carvings of the five dragon heads and its huge silver-steel door that no key upon Krynn could unlock.
    Raistlin held the staff high … and gasped.
    For long moments he could do nothing but stare, the breath wheezing in his lungs, his thoughts seething and burning. Then, his shrill scream of anger and rage and fury pierced the living fabric of the Tower’s darkness.
    So dreadful was the cry, echoing through the dark corridors of the Tower, that the evil guardians cowered back into their shadows, wondering if perhaps their dread Queen had burst in upon them.
    Caramon heard the cry as he entered the door at the bottom of the Tower. Shivering with sudden terror, he dropped the packages he carried and, with trembling hands, lit the torch he had brought. Then, the naked blade of his new sword in his hand, the big warrior raced up the stairs two at a time.
    Bursting into the study, he saw Lady Crysania looking around in sleepy fearfulness.
    “I heard a scream—” she said, rubbing her eyes and rising to her feet.
    “Are you all right?” Caramon gasped, trying to catch his breath.
    “Why, yes,” she said, looking startled, as she realized what he was thinking. “It wasn’t me. I must have fallen asleep. It woke me—”
    “Where’s Raist?” Caramon demanded.
    “Raistlin!” she repeated, alarmed, and started to push her way past Caramon when he caught hold of her.
    “This is why you slept,” he said grimly, brushing fine white sand from her hair. “Sleep spell.”
    Crysania blinked. “But why—”
    “We’ll find out.”
    “Warrior,” said a cold voice almost in his ear.
    Whirling, Caramon thrust Crysania behind him, raising his sword as a black-robed, spectral figure materialized out of the darkness. “You seek the wizard? He is above, in the laboratory. He is in need of assistance, and we have been commanded not to touch him.”
    “I’ll go,” Caramon said, “alone.”
    “I’m coming with you,” Crysania said. “I
will
come with you,” she repeated firmly, in response to Caramon’s frown.
    Caramon started to argue, then, remembering that she
was
a cleric of Paladine and had once before exerted her powers over these creatures of darkness, shrugged and gave in, though with little grace.
    “What happened to him, if