back on her pillow, drained of all spirit and vigor, her white hair soaked with sweat and plastered around her face. After one of these spells, Kitiara had learned from experience, her mother became even more useless and even more irrelevant to the daily life of the family.
Kitiara had taught herself everything-how to cook, how to sew and mend, how to watch and instruct the boys. Aside from cooking, she may not have done these things well, but, by the gods, she did them. And Kitiara was proud of what she had done, proud of surviving, even while she despised the homemaking skills she had learned.
Kit remembered, long ago, feeling something like love for her mother. It must have been love. What else could it have been? But nowadays she felt nothing but pity for her. Pity and growing distance.
'A bird!' exclaimed Kitiara, startled back to the present moment. She looked again at Raistlin, who was peering at her from atop the ladder, as if trying to discern her thoughts. She reached over and cuffed him affectionately on the ear. 'You were talking to a bird! That means…'
She lunged past him and hurtled down to the ground floor. Crossing the room, Kit threw one of the shutters open. Sunshine streamed through the window.
Spring! Sunshine, blue sky, fragrant air-and yes, birds, birds everywhere.
'Spring!' She leaned contentedly on the narrow sill.
'That's what I've been trying to tell you,' said Raistlin earnestly, following her. 'What do you think I was talking about?'
She gazed out the window. The snow, there in patches only the afternoon before, was practically all gone. The ground was wet, and buds and blossoms were peeking out. There was a brightness and color all around. From a ways off, she could hear music and laughter, the augury of a celebration. Then she remembered this was the first morning of the annual Red Moon Fair.
Eagerly, she stooped to lace up her boots and leggings. Gilon, she noted, was already gone, out chopping wood no doubt. Every morning her stepfather rose at dawn and went out to do his work accompanied by the faithful Amber. Gilon was solitary and secretive about his woodcutting, like a fisherman guarding his favorite trawling spots. Kitiara had never been asked to come with him, though she was thankful for that. Alone among the siblings, husky little Caramon had been invited to tag along once. When he came back from the day of chopping wood, he didn't say much. 'Lot of work,' he confided to Kit and Raistlin. 'Boring.'
Swiftly, Kitiara crossed the room, followed by Raistlin. She peered through the homespun drape Gilon had hung across the doorway of the small area that served as his and Rosamun's private space. Her mother was still sleeping, Kitiara saw with an apprehensive glance. Good. Let her sleep. She motioned Raist to be quiet.
She crept to where Caramon was still blithely snoring.
Raist followed her, as he always did. Caramon didn't even stir at their approach. That little imp could sleep through a rock slide, Kitiara thought.
She got a good grip on his pillow and leaned over to position herself close to his ear. As Kit yanked the pillow out from under her little brother, she gave a wild shout, 'Surrounded by enemies!'
Caramon's eyes flew open as his head thunked down on the headboard. The next instant, he sprang off the bed into a boyish fighting stance. His dazed look turned to a sheepish one when he saw Kitiara sprawled on the floor, clutching her sides and trying to muffle her laughter. As for Raistlin, a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
'Aw,' said Caramon, 'I was in the middle of a dream.'
'Maybe you dream too much,' said Raist blandly.
Caramon shot him an offended glance.
'First day of spring!' announced Kitiara. 'The fair is on.' She had already scrambled to her feet and was heading toward the door, Raistlin in tow.
'What about Mother? Shouldn't we wait for Father?' asked Caramon plaintively.
But Kit and Raist were already out the door, and Caramon, pulling on his clothes, had to hurry if he wanted to catch up.
By midmorning the sun was hot in the sky, and all memory of winter had been banished. For someone stuck in Solace through the cold months, not to mention those stuck there for their whole lives, this first festival of spring was the happiest time of the year. It was a day when the proverbial small-town door opened and the whole rest of the world seemed to step in and gaudily introduce itself.
The town's activity had moved completely from the elevated walkways between the vallenwoods to the spaces below, where the town square and smithy lay. Townspeople milled around the green, hailing friends and forming groups that set off for the Northfields on the outskirts of town where the Red Moon Fair set up. Kitiara and her two brothers scouted out the square before joining those headed for the fairgrounds.
When the dense vallenwoods ended and the Red Moon Fair began, Kit and the boys stopped for a moment to drink it all in-the sights and sounds and strangers.
Merchants who spent their entire lives journeying from fair to festival in Ansalon had set up tents with bright pennants. Booths offered dry goods and tapestries, glass vessels and ornaments, quills and precious spices, bulk commodities, medicinal herbs, copperware and shoes, linen and garments-anything and everything. Notaries stood ready with wax and parchment to seal contracts; groups of music-makers spun through the press of people; there were shows by stunt animals and rope dancers. Everywhere were crowds.
It was a veritable honeycomb of humanity, and some who were decidedly not human. Among the long lines of travelers who had arrived for the occasion were many kender and some elves, dwarves who kept to themselves mostly, and even a lone, haughty minotaur, hulking and sullen, who, wherever he chose to stroll, was given a wide berth among the people.
Caramon had stopped to gaze enviously at some metal wares. He listened to the craftsman extol the virtues of his handiwork as he hawked the items to several listeners. Safely below the man's line of vision, Caramon reached up to finger the elaborate buckles and spurs.
Kitiara and Raistlin waited patiently for him, some paces off. Kitiara was feeling a little hungry by now, and in vain she searched her pockets for some coins. Skeptically, she looked up at a booth with a sign that offered fried gull or hare, and a green drink that mixed chopped dittany, rue, tansy, mint, and gillyflowers. No coins. No matter. Her chin was in the air, and she was breathing in deep draughts of the smells of cooking all around.
Her attention was drawn to a group of men in motley regalia, standing on the fringes of the grounds. A saddle fell off one of their horses, and a member of the group, a thick, muscled fellow, swatted the head of his squire. But the swat was a good-natured one, and the other men laughed boisterously as the squire hastened to set things right. The men paid no attention to the hurly-burly of the fair. They were on their way to more important adventures.
For a moment Kit wondered if she might approach them and ask about her father, whether they had heard news of Gregor Uth Matar or actually met him on their travels. They looked like rogues who had been around. But she reacted too slowly, and they were already on their way, still yelling and laughing to one another, before she got up the nerve.
Immersed as she was in everything that was going on around her, Kitiara at first did not hear the noises and raucous gaiety coming from the gaggle of youths directly behind her. But now she became aware of some of the comments.
'If it isn't little Miss Woodcutter!'
'Kind of the motherly type!'
'Not much in the beauty department, that's for sure!'
She turned slowly to observe a pack of boys and girls, her own age and older. A few of them she recognized, elbowing and jostling each other, from school days, though she hadn't seen them in a while. With household chores and caring for the twins, Kitiara had found little time for school. In fact, she had little enough time to herself, barely enough to daydream for a few moments or practice her beloved swordplay. This last winter, she told Gilon she would not go to school any longer. Her stepfather knew better than to object when Kit told him something with her hands placed on her hips like that and her mouth set in a thin line.
One of the boys, the beefy one with the pink face swimming in brown freckles, she knew well from past encounters-a bullying lad named Bronk Wister. Bronk was a born troublemaker, the son of a tanner whom Gilon sometimes bartered with. Bronk's father always smiled gently at Kit, but the son had gotten it into his mind that he
