Sturm frowned, puzzled. They heard Wren's voice as a bird's song with their ears, but in their minds they heard the soft, gentle voice of a woman. This, at times, could be confusing. But Sturm suddenly understood Wren's reply when he heard Raistlin's dry, whispered laugh.
"What else?" the young mage asked. "What else would you make a kender? This mage, whoever he may be, understands kender as well as any it seems."
HE'S CAGED THE SQUIRREL. IT AMUSES HIM, I THINK, AS IT AMUSED HIM TO MAKE A CAT OF PYTR AND A BIRD OF ME.
Tanis winced at that. Flint growled low in protest. The soul of a kender caged or bound would wear the bruised colors of misery. "Who is this mage, Wren?"
Raistlin lifted his head then, the way a man who scents smoke on the wind does. Tanis glanced at him. Caramon, silent till then, sat forward.
"Raist?" Caramon said, his hand moving reflexively to the hilt of his sword lying scabbarded at his feet. "You've heard of this mage?"
"He has an evil reputation, this Rieve. I've heard of him." Raistlin smiled slowly then, humorlessly, as though he understood the question his twin hesitated to ask. "But you need have no fear, brother mine. Though I would be foolish indeed if I did not acknowledge that Rieve's skills are greater than mine might be now, I think he has gone so far in his cruelty that he has given me a weapon against him."
"A weapon?" Tanis asked.
Raistlin's pale blue eyes glittered. Had there been light from the moons that night, its wash across the new snow would have been as cold. "A weapon. Or perhaps four."
But though they pressed him, the young mage only settled back into the warmth of his cloak and did not answer further. He stared into the fire.
As Tanis set the night watches he wondered what weapons Raistlin might be forging out of the silence and the flame.
Pytr knew that the squirrel was in trouble. This was not, he realized, a squirrel after all. The dreams said that. But what he might be, Pytr did not know. He did know, however, that whatever the squirrel might have been before now would fade and vanish one day. With no piece of his real self to cling to, whoever he might have been, he would wake, dreamless, to find that he was indeed a squirrel. And likely, Pytr thought with a cold shudder, he would never know that there had been a time when he wasn't.