could wait.

Raistlin touched each moment that passed, held each moment cupped in his mind until it slipped away through

his fingers, to be replaced by another. The past and all its sorrow was behind him; he would never turn around to

look back. The future, with its promise and its fears, lay ahead of him, shone warm on his face like the sunshine,

darkened his face like the shadows. At this moment, he was suspended between past and future, floating free.

Outside, a bird whistle d, another answered. Two young women let fall a wet sheet onto one of the town's

guardsmen, who was walking his beat on the ground below. The sheet enveloped him, to judge by his muffled, goodnatured

cursing. The young women giggled and protested that it was an accident. They ran down the stairs to

reclaim their linen and spend a few pleasant moments flirting with the handsome guard.

"Raistlin," said Caramon, speaking reluctantly, as if he, too, were under the spell of the sun, the breeze, the

laughter, and loath to break it. "We have to decide what to do."

Raistlin couldn't see his brother's face for the sunshine. He was sensible of Caramon's presence, sitting in the

chair opposite. Strong and solid and reassuring. Raistlin remembered the fear he'd experienced when he had thought

Caramon was dead. Affection for his brother welled up inside him, stung his eyelids. Raistlin drew back out of the

sun, blinking rapidly to clear his vision. The moments had begun to slide by faster and faster, no longer his to touch.

"What are our options?" Raistlin asked.

Caramon shifted his bulk in his chair. "Well, we turned down going with Kit...." He le t that hang a moment,

silently asking if his twin might reconsider.

"Yes," Raistlin said, a note of finality.

Caramon cleared his throat, went on. "Lady Brightblade offered to take us in, give us a home."

"Lady Brightblade," said Raistlin with a snicker.

"She is the wife of a Solamnic knight," Caramon pointed out defensively.

"So she claims."

"C'mon, Raist!" Caramon was fond of Anna Brightblade, who had always been very kind to him. "She showed me a

book with their family coat-of-arms. And she acts like a noble lady, Raist."

"How would you know how a noble lady acts, my brother?"

Caramon thought this over. "Well, she acts like what I imagine a noble lady would act like. Like the noble ladies in

those stories..."

He fell silent, left his sentence unfinished, except in the minds of both twins. Like those stories Mother used to tell

us. To speak of her aloud was to invoke her ghost, which remained inside the house.

Gilon, on the other hand, had departed. He had never been there much in the first place, and all he left behind

was a vague, pleasant memory. Caramon missed his father, but already Raistlin was having to work to remember

that Gilon was gone.

"I do care to have Sturm Brightblade as a brother," Raistlin commented. "Master My-Honor-Is-My-Life. He's so

smug and arrogant, parading his virtue up and down the streets, making a show of righteousness. It's enough to

make one puke."

"Ah, Sturm's not so bad," Caramon said. "He's had a rough

time of it. At least we know how our father died," he added somberly. "Sturm doesn't even know if his father's

dead or alive."

"If he's that worried, why doesn't he go back and find out the truth?" Raistlin said impatiently. "He's certainly

old enough."

"He can't leave his mother. He promised his father, the night they fled, that he'd take care of his mother, and

he's bound by that promise."

"When the mob attacked their castle "

"Castle!" Raistlin snorted.

"-they barely escaped with their lives. Sturm's father sent him and his mother out into the night with an escort

of retainers. He told them to travel to Solace, where he would join them when he could. That was the last they

heard of him."

"The knights must have done something to provoke the attack. People just don't suddenly take it into their

heads to storm a well-fortified keep."