The Soulfarce
A Note from the Editors:
Some time ago, whilst cleaning out some old papers and notes tucked into a few storage chests in a back aisle of the Library, we were startled to discover what appeared to be a manuscript, in poor condition and barely legible, that refutes one of the most popular works Astinus ever allowed to be freely circulated outside the Library. We were shocked, and for years argued and debated over what to do with this find. Finally we agreed that in the name of truth, it should be published. Sadly, due to the cheap, non-acid-free parchment used by the original author, only bits and pieces of his true story remain, which we have reproduced below for your edification.
[N.B. The manuscript was discovered rolled tightly into a bundle and thrust under some old tic-tac-toe games marked with the initials F.B. The original seal upon it appeared to be of black wax and bore the mark of an ostrich's foot. The following note was enfolded within the manuscript, which had been tied several times with ordinary hemp twine.]
To whom it may concern:
There has been a lot of brouhaha surrounding the life and death of my beloved twin, the greatest mage ever to live, at least according to the repeated statements to that effect he made daily. I am getting really tired of thrill-seekers coming to my business and harassing me for mementos belonging to my late brother, who perished ten years ago. People are even saying he was a victim of what amounts to demonic possession, that he had an unnatural love for gully dwarves, and that he tried to take over the universe. That is all, not to put too fine a point on it, a wagonload of dung.
This is the real story of my brother's early life, which I found under his bed in our house after he passed on at the hands of the angry citizens of our town. Everything in it is completely true, no matter what the bards may sing about messed-up eyeballs and a deep appreciation of home cough remedies.
Sincerely,
Caramon Majere
November 12, 332
I despise the other children. They always make fun of me because I'm skinny and weak. I can't help it if I'm smarter than the lot of them put together.
I have made a new friend, though. The old crone everyone calls Weird Margaret invited me into her ramshackle house and showed me what amazing things one can see in a bowl of water, given some concentration and one of Margaret's "special" brownies.
Some old codger in a white dress later turned up at the Inn and Kit made me go talk to him. I was feeling very vague from the brownie Margaret gave me, so when he started asking me about magic I just said any old thing, and do you know what? He said I could go to mage school; apparently he was impressed by my intelligence, despite the fact that my eyes were probably more glazed than a doughnut. He kept fiddling with his hair a lot, too. At least I won't have to listen to Mother singing that "if I had a hammer" song night and day. You would think she was a dwarf, but she says it has nothing to do with metalworking.
December 3, 337
Today my brother and I went to the mercantile in search of something I read about in a book I swiped from Weird Margaret. It's called "borax." I told Caramon it was a spice that tasted good with fried eggs. Margaret's book said it was used to kill cockroaches. By taking him with me, no one will suspect it was me who poisoned him. I was pleased to find several pounds of it for sale, and bought it all. The mercantile owner asked me if I had a nasty pest problem, and I truthfully told him "yes." This is the seventh time I have tried to kill Caramon and I am running out of ideas. I hope this works.
[illegible]
…to school. The teacher is a lank-haired man in a black robe who said his name is Scrape or something like that. He is my favorite of all the teachers. If only he would pay more attention to me instead of hounding that jackanape with the spectacles. I shall have to try to kill him too when Caramon is gone and I get some more borax. On the other hand, he and his friends look like they could use some of the wares Weird Margaret has asked me to sell behind the mercantile for her, for which I get a percentage.
[date unknown]
…no butter in the house, and so she screamed, "Raistlin Abraxas Thelonius Majere! GET ME SOME BUTTER RIGHT NOW or I'll have to call the Jellicle Cats!" Then she started giggling wildly. I shall have to hide my wares more securely next time; Margaret made me pay for all the mushrooms Mother ate. I hate my mother!
[illegible]
…went down to the ground level and there was Caramon, gasping and red-faced, no doubt from the mandrake I had him drink last night, telling him it would make his complexion clear up. Unfortunately, he managed to vomit it all and so I am back at square one.
Now that I have made an attempt to grow the wares myself, I need no longer rely on Weird Margaret to fool everyone into thinking Mother is having "magical visions" when she's really just stoned out of her mind. This is what comes of overeducated upper-class girls marrying woodcutters; they can't cook, they can't wash, and they spend all day arguing leftist politics (which is enough for everyone in Solace to call her crazy as they all vote conservative here) and "expanding their consciousness." I hate my mother! Why can't she be like the other mage students' mothers and dress me normally instead of in her accursed tie-dyed shirts?
January 30 [year unknown]
Today Mother died. We were sitting around the kitchen table choking down some old recipe Caramon found in a cookbook called "macarones ynd chese" when she started pestering me. Caramon said maybe it'd make her shut up about Angela and Gloria and all the women she used to hang around with in college. Mother had been on a feminist rant all day, calling my brother and me "bicycles" for some reason, and she tried to burn Kitiara's corset, which set off a huge argument as there's nothing my bimbo of a sister likes better than those laced-up, insert-enhanced garments, unless it's parading around in them in front of half the town. (My oafish twin is trying to get her interested in swordplay but all she does is apply cosmetics all day long.)
So I gave a mushroom to Mother, and not long after, she started flapping her arms and yelled, "I can fly! I can fly!" Caramon tried to restrain her, but she jumped out a window and before we could stop her, it was too late.
Caramon seems quite upset about it. I don't know, I suppose I'll miss her, since she's the only one who seemed to understand me. She once said in a rare moment of sobriety that I was never to sell out to "The Man," although I'm not sure which man she meant, and besides I need all the business I can get.
April 17, 344
After school I was standing around the back of the mercantile again, waiting for customers, then my new partner Silent Hobart pointed at something. There were two girls walking over. I'd never seen them before but one of them had red hair and was extraordinarily beautiful, tall and slender and fashionably dressed. Then they got closer and…
[illegible passage]
through the knothole. They didn't know I was there. I saw Caramon's boorish mullet haircut, then in a second I saw…everything. I was so nauseated I threw up later, right outside the bar where I'd told Kitiara that I'd meet her and her date and score them some Hilo Holt. I'll never be able to look at my brother the same way again.
Silent Hobart was standing there waiting for me as business always picks up on Friday nights, and as I passed he tried to say something meaningful that would make sense of it all, but I was of no mood for philosophical candor and just told the fat bitch to shut up.
October 21, 345
We have just returned from what is probably the worst road trip ever. Flint decided he wanted to go to a nearby town festival in order to sell some of his handcrafted jewelry, though most of what he sells is made of multicolored clay and tribal beads anyway, unpleasantly reminiscent of Mother and her obsessions. We all decided to go along, so we started down the road in Flint's wagon. Along the way we were accosted by a swarm of kender, but as I do not sell to those pests, I told them I didn't have anything and soon they besieged Tasslehoff for whatever he had. I rue the day the kender came to Solace; people find it so much more of a perverse thrill to buy from a topknotted nuisance than from someone as experienced as I am. Hardly anyone ever comes up to ask me the time anymore.
The trip turned into a nightmare fairly soon after we arrived, as I immediately saw that the goods being purveyed at Havenstock were of inferior quality. I tried to tell everyone not to accept the brown variety, but no one would listen to me, and after some business in which everyone mass hallucinated a giant snake that played the Abanasinian anthem on a lute with its teeth, the townsfolk tried to have me burnt alive! I had chosen a rather impressive robe that day and after someone looked at me and shouted, "It's Maleficent! GET HER!" my fate was sealed, or so it seemed. Sturm and Tanis and Kit and my lumbering twin had to rescue me from the mob, who were shaking the wagon I was manacled in back and forth and shouting that I was a stooge of The Man. I remembered my mother's words and understood the truth at last; The Man is everywhere, even disguised as one's seemingly accepting neighbors! It crushed what little faith I had in the goodness of my fellow beings. After the rescue, I told Caramon that I was through with peddling to strangers, and from now on would only sell to people we knew and trusted.
May 7, 346
Tomorrow I am going to Wayreth to take the Test. I got a personally delivered letter from Par-Salian by the Master, who told me I was the worst student ever at the history of Bogwhack's Riverbottom Academy of Magic, and said I was never to admit I'd been his pupil, as all I did was "business" instead of paying attention in class. I always considered it a crime that the school had no accelerated program, so it wasn't my fault I was bored senseless, and as for the "business," school costs money, and ever since Antimodes ran off with those two tiger-tamers with the poufy shirts and strange accents, I've had to complete my education on my own.
All our friends are leaving too. Sturm Brightblade sold his dead mother's goats for the money to go north so he could kick the stuffing out of his father (who made up some cockamamie story about a mob attacking their castle in order to run Sturm and his mother off and avoid squire support). Caramon is heartbroken, of course, though everyone believes it is because the town tramp married someone else, as if he hasn't "sampled the wares" of three-quarters of the women in Solace. Tanis muttered something to the effect of he must go and "find himself," which makes me think he has been hanging around with Tas for too long, as it sounds like something the kender would say, and Tanis doesn't even use the goods Tas or I sell! Kit disappeared not long after the Havenstock incident, saying that some agent had met her in a dance hall and said she had the look the Palanthian runways were craving, so she left all a-twitter, having not once used the sword Caramon gave her last Yule. Silent Hobart indicated to me that he had plans to build a multi-shoppe building with food stalls and its own security force. I had long suspected that he had been "skimming" from our wares; this proves it as such a scheme will never succeed.
Anyway, Caramon, who remains alive despite thirty-eight murder attempts, is coming with me, damn him. I suppose the school will get along for a time without its caretaker, particularly since the You Know Who that everyone in school dreaded turned out to be some strung-out elf I'd once sold to, who had gone about harassing the students while pretending to be an evil undead sorcerer.
They say the Test's penalty for failure is death. I'm not worried. I have the Cliff's Notes for it.
June 22, 346
Damn.
I took the Test and they made me promise not to speak of it, but I will say that at last I managed to kill Caramon. It didn't take, however; he's snoring in the bed behind me as I write this. It was all fake! DAMN THEM! I was so disappointed to see him alive afterwards that I cried, and Caramon thought I was glad he had survived the inferno I subjected him to in my glee. Someday, I will succeed at doing away with him for good.
Apparently Par-Salian has seen fit to punish me for cheating in the Test. (They said no calculators; I had one hidden in the sleeve of my robe, but I am certain they didn't see it.) Now I am in constant discomfort. People stare at me wherever I go. I am jeered and pointed at by all, just because the Head of the Conclave thinks I needed to be taught a lesson. As I sit here with my thighs propped on a footstool and my feet pointing back at my head, I can only wonder what terrible thing it is I'm supposed to have done to earn this curse.
Someday when I am a powerful archmage, no one will shun or mock me for my strange appearance. They will cower before Raistlin Majere despite his three-toed, clawed feet and backwards-bending knees. They will not have the mettle to strut around, arms flapping and making "Awk, awk!" sounds as I pass. I will triumph, and no two-copper mercenary or smug innkeeper will dare to call out, "Hey, Ostrich Boy!" ever again!
At least I finally have a license to deal in pharmaceutical-grade herbs.
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