"How then?" Kit asked urgently.

Madame Dragatsnu paused. "Afterward."

"When?" demanded Kit. "When?"

Madame Dragatsnu stared at her. "Soon. Very soon."

"What can I do? What more can you tell me?" Kit felt like screaming into the old hag's face.

The fortune-teller was imperturbable. She took a long time to respond, and before she did, she carefully re-folded Gregor's sketch, handing it back to Kitiara.

"Nothing. The answer to both of your questions is, nothing."

In a rage, Kit leaped up and dashed outside the tent. She took refuge behind a tree some distance away, her eyes brimming with tears. It was all some kind of filthy fortune-telling charade. She knew that. At fairs these soothsayers were as common as horseflies. The old hag didn't have a clue as to Gregor's future. That was just a wild guess, when Madame Dragatsnu had said that the ink sketch had to do with her father.

It took Kit some time to convince herself, calm down, dry her eyes, and return to Aureleen, who had fallen asleep on her back and was dozing with a smile on her lips.

"Any good news?" inquired her pretty friend after Kit woke her.

"A charlatan," Kit said firmly, with a shake of her head. "A waste of good tickets. C'mon, it's late. I have to get home."

Well past sunset, Kit eased open the door to the cottage and slipped inside. Her face was tired and dirt-streaked, her clothes torn and mussed. But she had blocked the fortuneteller's prediction from her mind and was more than usually happy. It took her a moment to adjust her eyesight, from the darkness of night to the strange light of the interior.

"Shhh!" Gilon grabbed her arm and pulled her down next to him where he sat on the floor.

"Where have you been?" Caramon demanded to know. He was sitting next to his father.

Before she could answer, Gilon whispered, "That's OK." With his hand he gently brushed back Kit's black hair. "Watch!"

Now she could see what was going on. Raistlin was in the center of the room, doing some kind of show. Magic tricks? Yes, Raistlin was doing magic tricks.

"I don't know how he learned them," Caramon leaned over to confide, "but he's been doing them all night. He's pretty good!"

The look on Raistlin's face was solemn, intense. The boy held his hands aloft. Suspended between them-somehow, Kitiara couldn't figure out how-was a ball of white light. Raist's hands were moving slightly, fluttering, and out of his mouth came a low chant of words that were mostly indistinguishable, if they were words at all. After a moment, Kit had the uncomfortable realization that they sounded like Rosamun's gibberish during one of her trances.

Raistlin moved his hands, the ball of light separated into several balls of light, and he began to juggle them. He made a rapid movement. The balls separated again, this time into dozens of smaller spheres of light. One more movement, and they became hundreds of tiny globes, shimmering snowflakes, pulsing and throbbing as if alive, moving in an artfully conceived pattern.

Finally, as Kitiara watched, Raistlin's words and gestures slowed. The lights, too, slowed in tandem, almost to a halt. Gilon, Caramon, and Kit were silent, watching Raistlin's face, which now carried a look of almost painful concentration. Abruptly Raist murmured something and did a quick, elaborate charade with his hands.

The globes of light began to spin, to expand and glow with deep, bright colors. Then, more rapidly than could be distinguished, the globes exploded into tiny shapes: fire-flowers, shell blossoms, comet butterflies. There was a fusillade of tiny popping noises, climaxed by an explosion of white light that left all of them momentarily stunned and blinded.

"What's going on? What's the trouble?" asked Rosamun, her voice shaking with terror. She was clinging to the door frame of her small room, her face twisted with anxiety.

Gilon rose hurriedly to take her back to bed and reassure her.

All was back to normal now. Raistlin came and sat down. He held out his arms to his sister and brother, and they each took him by the hand. Kitiara and Caramon laughed with joy, and, most extraordinary, Raistlin laughed with them.

Gilon wrapped up some cheese and bread for the trip while Kitiara looked over Raistlin one last time. Hands and face-clean. Tunic and leggings-darned at the knees and elbows, but presentable. Kit stretched and yawned. The early spring sun had not been visible in the sky when Gilon had roused her to prepare for the day's outing.

Raistlin watched her solemnly. Kit knew by how still he held himself just how excited Raist was to be going to the mage school today. Faced with a similar outing, Caramon-and most six-year-olds-would be bouncing up and down uncontrollably, asking a million questions.

Not Raist. Always quiet and watchful, he grew even more so when anticipating his audience with the master mage.

"I'll never be as tall or strong as Caramon, will I? No matter how much gunk you rub on my legs?" he had asked Kit the night before, as she was getting him ready for bed by spreading some foul-smelling ointment on his legs and arms. It had been part of his nightly ritual ever since the last visit of the healer, Bigardus. After treating Rosamun that day, Bigardus had stared at the spindly arms and legs of little Raistlin and made a tch-tch face. He then rummaged around in his bag of palliatives and produced some wortwood salve, telling Kit to rub it over Raist's limbs every night, to strengthen them. Well, Kitiara had thought skeptically, maybe the ointment was worth trying.

Last night, looking forward to his trip to meet the master mage, Raist had protested at the smelly routine.

"This stuff isn't going to change the way I am," he said sincerely. "I'll always be small and weak. I know that. It doesn't matter. You can stop thinking you'll always have to look out for me."

Kit had leaned over, giving her little brother a quick hug while wondering at his perceptiveness. Not a day went by, truly, that she didn't think about ways she could stop being her younger brothers' caretaker-not just Raistlin, but Caramon, too. She was almost fourteen. She longed to set out on her own, to see the world, perhaps even to track down her father. She was bone-tired of doing everything Rosamun should have been doing, if it weren't for her stupid trances.

Raist had pushed her away and sat up straight in bed, flushed, his eyes glittering.

"Once I become a mage," the little boy vowed, "nobody is going to have to take care of me! I'll be the one who takes care of Mother and Father and Caramon. And I'll take care of anybody else, any way I see fit."

"Big talk," Kit said fondly, mussing his hair and putting the rest of the ointment away. "Just like your brother."

"Yeah, big talker," piped up Caramon sleepily from his bed.

"You'll see," Raistlin said.

"Go to sleep, both of you. Tomorrow's a big day."

Always exhausted by the end of the day, Raist had fallen back against his pillow, pale and glistening with sweat from his defiant declaration. His eyelids fluttered, then he fell into a restless sleep.

Kit had watched Raist for a few minutes to make sure he would stay asleep. That was a habit she had developed during his infancy, when she'd watched over him, sometimes staying up with him all through the night to make sure his breathing didn't falter.

In contrast, she never had needed to check on Caramon. He already snored contentedly on the small wooden bed next to Raist's along the wall opposite Rosamun's and Gilon's bedroom. For all his energy, Caramon usually preceded his twin brother into slumber.