She gave Caramon a slap on the cheek that was meant to be friendly but which left the red mark of her hand.

Opening the door, Kit peered outside, looking in both directions. Caramon couldn't imagine what she was

looking for. It was well past midnight. Most of Solace was in bed.

"Good-bye, Kit," he said.

"Good-bye, Baby Brother."

He massaged his stinging cheek and watched her walk off through the moonlit branches of the vallenwood, a

black shadow against silver.

Raistlin woke to the sound of rain pelting the roof. Thunder rumbled from sky to ground, the

vallenwoods shuddered. The dawn was gray, tinged with pink lightning. Rain was falling on the newly

dug graves, forming drowning pools around the vallenwood saplings planted at the head of each.

He lay on his bed and watched the gray gradually lighten as the storm passed. All was quiet now, except

for the incessant drip of water falling on sodden leaves. He lay without moving. Movement took an effort,

and he was too tired. His grief had emptied him. If he moved, the dull, aching pain of his loss would flood in

on him, and though the emptiness was bad, it wasn't as bad as the pain.

He could not feel the bedclothes under him. He could not feel the blanket that covered him. He had no

weight or substance. Was this what it was like in that coffin? In that grave? To feel nothing, ever again? To

know nothing? Life, the world, the people in the world go on, and you know nothing, forever surrounded by

a cold and empty, s ilent darkness?

Pain burst the levee, surged in to fill the void. Pain and fear, hot, burning, welled up inside him. Tears

stung his eyelids. He closed his eyes, squeezed them shut and wept, wept for himself and for his mother and

father, for all those who are born of the darkness, who lift their wondering eyes to the light, feel its warmth

on their skin, and who must return again to darkness.

He wept silently, so as not to wake Caramon. He did this not so much out of consideration for his brother's

weariness as for his own shame at his weakness.

The tears ended, leaving him with a bad taste of salt and iron in his mouth, a clogged nose, and a tightness

in his throat,

which came from muffling his sobs. The bedclothes were damp; his fever must have broken during the night. He

had only the vaguest recollection of being sick, a recollection tinged with horror-in his fevered dreams, he had

become entwined with Rosamun. He was his mother, a shrunken corpse. People stood around the bed, staring

down at him.

Antimodes, Master Theobald, the Widow Judith, Caramon, the dwarf and the kender, Kitiara. He begged and

pleaded with them to give him food and water, but they said he was dead and he didn't need it. He was in

constant terror that they would dump him in a coffin and lower him into the ground, into a grave that was Master

Theobald's laboratory.

Remembering the terrible dreams robbed them of some of their power. The horror lingered, but it was not

overwhelming. The wool blanket covering him was rough and chafed his skin; beneath it, he was wearing

nothing.

He tossed the blanket aside. Weak and tottering from his illness, he stood up. The air was chill and he

shivered, groped hastily for his shirt, which had been flung over the back of a chair. Dragging the shirt on over

his head, he thrust his arms into the sleeves, then stood in the middle of the small room and wondered bleakly,

What now?

There were two wooden beds in the room, each bed built into a wall. Raistlin crossed the room to look down

on the slumbering form of his twin. Caramon was a late sleeper, a heavy sleeper. Usually he lay easily and

comfortably on his back, his big body spread all akimbo, arms flung wide, one leg hanging off the bed, the other

bent at the knee, leaning against the wall. Raistlin, by contrast, slept in a tight, huddled ball, his knees drawn up

to his chin, his arms hugging his chest.

But Caramon's sleep this day was as restless and uneasy as his twin's. Fatigue kept him manacled to his bed,

he was so exhausted that not even the most terrifying dreams could jolt his body from sleep. He rolled and

tossed, his head jerked back and forth. His pillow lay on the floor, along with the blankets. He had twisted the

sheet so that it straggled around him like a winding cloth.