The issue of food was not quite as easily addressed as the issue of fire. Raistlin snorted at that thought – as if the fire had been easily acquired – and he shifted his body closer to the raging, impossible flames he had given rise to. With an uneasy sense of certainty, Raistlin had a feeling that what he had done – whatever it was he had done – to call up the flames they all huddled around was not over. It was one of those actions that resounded, marking ripples on the waters of reality; it was one of those actions that had consequences. But before he had a chance to pursue that flitting feeling farther into his tired mind, Flint decided it was high time to break the silence that had fallen over the group after Raistlin had – still basking in the literal and metaphorical glow of his magical fire – requested a moment to recuperate before moving on to their next problem.
"Well, well. This is quite… cozy. Bet not a one of us expected to be warmed through tonight." Flint, whether as a result of his age or his being a dwarf or some more inchoate idiosyncrasy, had the gift of – almost – always sounding confident and sincere in his speech. But, no matter the customary bluster of the dwarf's voice, it was obvious that he was unsure quite how to deal with the situation. Raistlin had no doubt that the others – those intelligent and alert enough to bother thinking the situation through – were facing similar dilemmas: should they just accept the fire that was thawing their frozen fingers and hope that food would be as magically forthcoming, or should they confront Raistlin and question the source of this sudden power?
Raistlin suppressed a smirk and stretched shaking fingers closer to the dancing flames. He rather enjoyed knowing he had caused his companions such distress; he knew himself for a vindictive, mischievous person, and was prepared to put his pleasure down as yet another manifestation of his rather wide cruel streak. It wasn't quite the truth, though. And, by the cruelty of chance, Caramon seemed to pick up on the disturbance that that thought caused him.
"Hey, Raist, are you okay? Are you still cold? Cause I could – " Raistlin turned and gave him a look, replete with raised eyebrow and downturned mouth, effectively ending any ill-advised offer Caramon was about to extend.
"I am perfectly fine, brother. In fact, given the amount of times your stomach's growling has jolted me out of my thoughts in the last few minutes, I suppose we should deal with our lamentable lack of sustenance." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Raistlin regretted them. The frustrating reality was that he wasn't sure how to procure them food – of any sort. The packs, despite the disgustingly unshakable optimism of Goldmoon and Tanis, had been rifled through by at least three pairs of hungry hands and had turned out to be completely empty of anything edible, soggy or otherwise. Raistlin had considered using magic to somehow conjure them up some food, but he had abandoned the thought almost immediately: it would definitely require recourse to the presence in his mind – something he was not at all prepared to do – and Raistlin had read too much of the inevitable consequences of bending Nature's rules too far to be so foolhardy as to test her will. Nature had tolerance, but Nature also had a temper: Raistlin feared pushing his luck by attempting to create a four-course meal out of thin air after his rather unnaturally inflammatory rock-fire.
There was a balance to be respected.
But as Caramon's gut grumbled obnoxiously and all eyes turned expectantly to fix on him, Raistlin knew that wasn't going to be enough. He had managed to scramble away from the precarious edge in his mind and avoid succumbing to hysterics in front of his companions – he most certainly wasn't going to bow to defeat before them either. And then there was the whole point of his somewhat ostentatious display: the need for distraction. He couldn't let their minds drift back to his lapse, the moment when he – when he had looked like –
Raistlin stood in a swirl of red and gold, letting his mind flood with nervous energy and defiant annoyance. Sweeping his eyes over the upturned faces, lit in warm orange light that still managed to look otherworldly despite being normal in every respect aside from its origin, Raistlin allowed himself to sneer at them, to feel loftiness seep through his veins, to look down at the hope in their eyes and scoff at their optimism and at their helplessness. He was a mage, and they were not. After all Sturm's protestations of being hostile to sorcery on principle, he still tilted his head up to look at Raistlin, hope and anticipation as plain on his face as on any of the others; after all Caramon's constant boorish attempts to help Raistlin, drawing unwelcome attention to his physical infirmities and frailties, he was just as useless in this situation as Raistlin would be in a crop at harvest time with only a scythe and his wasted body to aid him; after all Tanis' subtle reservations, his cringing and his distrust, the fearless leader was now sitting at his feet, looking to him in deference to his power.
Looking down at them, Raistlin let himself feel superior. And it was enough to spur his mind into action.
"Sturm, I shall require your aid in this." Raistlin directed his words to the first person his eyes focused on, infusing his voice with the kind of impersonal authority he knew would appeal to the knight. It was a gamble, testing the knight's tenuous acceptance of magic and Raistlin himself, but Raistlin was in a gambling mood, his mind buoyed on the high tide of energy and emotion he had deliberately given himself over to. He waited, face a shimmering mask of expectation.
Sturm grimaced at hearing himself singled out by Raistlin's rasp, an expression that quickly morphed into a scowl at the realization that Raistlin was asking him – a Solamnic knight – to participate in his workings, whether magical in nature or otherwise, but undoubtedly summarily nefarious in the knight's mind. Sturm glared, rising slowly to his feet with a creak of protesting armour and joints, dripping noticeably as he faced Raistlin. The others watched with bated breath, none seeming at all inclined to step between them. Cowards, Raistlin thought spitefully before pausing and revising the thought to: shameless voyeurs. The revision was no less spiteful, but it was certainly more amused. Raistlin watched the knight without allowing his expression to change in the slightest, arms crossed before him and posture exuding a cold confidence Raistlin knew wouldn't stand up to scrutiny. So Raistlin didn't scrutinize it.
Judging by the increasingly stormy look of the scowl twisting the knight's features, Raistlin was certain Sturm wasn't scrutinizing the depth of his confidence either, only the depth of that confidence's insult to his honour as a knight. Opening his mouth, Sturm seemed set on spitting out a rejection, of both the mage's presumptuous request and the mage himself, as he had done countless times in the past. Raistlin prepared himself to throw a cutting, but dismissive, comment back at the knight in response and turn his request on the much surer alternative that was Caramon.
But the knight's mouth closed without his having spoken a word. Blinking, Sturm seemed to consider something, eyes fixed on Raistlin's face. Though startled by this break in the usual pattern of the knight's behaviour, Raistlin kept his expression fixed in its outward calm and his eyes fixed on Sturm's face. The knight searched Raistlin for a few leaden seconds, seeming more focused on some inward debacle than what he was seeing, before opening his mouth once more, his expression this time unreadable.
"What is it you need me to do?" Sturm's question hung in the silence, unexpected and unprecedented. There was some reluctance in the knight's tone, but it was largely neutral, something that rung oddly in Raistlin's ear, accustomed as it was to hostility or at least open opposition lacing Sturm's words when they were addressed to him. A moment trickled past in silence, Raistlin sharing in the initial shock before tucking his surprise and confusion away, slipping smoothly back into his aura of confidence, a guise meant to trick not only his audience but also himself.
"I will need you to gather me some snow. Given our location, I doubt the task will exceed your meagre wit, but please let me know if you will require a partner." Raistlin smirked at the offense on the knight's face, whether it was in response to being given such a menial task or at his jab, Raistlin didn't know or care. He left the circle of illumination afforded by the fire and retrieved one of Caramon's many packs, the warrior acting as the group's pack horse, and shook the largest pot surviving amongst their supplies out of the battered leather. This he unceremoniously shoved into the knight's hands, his smirk widening into a grin as Sturm's expression of offense intensified, bordering now on outrage.
"Fill this to the brim with snow." Sturm stared dangerously at the curt instruction, but contained himself – though only just – and stalked off to carry it out as Raistlin waved his hand in dismissal. Returning to the fire, Raistlin slipped his hands surreptitiously into his sleeves, counting hidden pockets until he found the one he was looking for. Raistlin promptly scooped out the pocket's contents – a handful of leafy herbs – and piled them neatly on the ground in front of the fire. Caramon and Tika looked over his shoulder curiously and conversations began to start up around him, but Raistlin didn't acknowledge them, hands returning to his sleeves. One by one, Raistlin single-mindedly retrieved as many edible spell components as he could recall as being in his possession – spices, flower petals, leaves, herbs, minerals, everything – and arrayed them on the ground before him in distinctly organized piles. The process was methodical, mechanical, reminding Raistlin of taking inventory of the stores at the mage school back in Solace, a mind-numbing, time-consuming job that had always been foisted on him as a result of the other students' – and Master Theobald's – laziness. But now, unlike when he was in school, Raistlin clung to the mindlessness of the task, reveling in it as he held onto it like a lifeline.
When Sturm returned, armour no longer dripping but once again frosted and snowy, Raistlin was hesitating at the mushrooms he held, uncertain whether they could quite be categorized as edible – or even safe. Tanis was the one who jolted Raistlin from his thoughts, clearing his throat pointedly. Raistlin looked up and carefully took in the sight before him: Sturm standing, wet and dejected, full pot of snow in hand, and the others looking uncertainly from him to Raistlin and back again. Laughter threatened, but Raistlin beat it down and merely let a mocking irritation shine clear in his tone.
"I had thought it would be obvious, but clearly I should have been less optimistic." Raistlin rose from his crouch and inspected Sturm's snow, humming with approval, and motioned to Caramon. The man clambered to his feet, eager as always to help his brother, and rushed over. Raistlin gestured wordlessly for Caramon to take the pot and smirked as Caramon stared at it curiously for a moment – as if some delectable meal were about to burst out of the monotonous frozen white – then up at Raistlin questioningly.
"I'll have to ask you to position the pot over the fire, if you wish to have anything to eat in the next hour or two." Raistlin spoke slowly and pointed to the fire, resigning himself to having to outline each step of this in detail. It was possibly just exhaustion that was making the fools so slow tonight, but somehow Raistlin doubted it. They were always slow, and Raistlin had little hope of that ever changing.
Frightening that the hopes of Krynn rested on such dim-witted shoulders.
After assuring himself that Caramon had the task of melting the snow and bringing the resultant water to boil in hand, Raistlin returned to his ingredients. Though originally intended as spell components or medicinal supplies, combined in the right mixture, they had the potential to give rise to, at the very least, a benign and vaguely nutritional meal. Well, soup. Thin soup. But a meal all the same. Raistlin spent the time it took for the snow to make the rather lengthy transition to boiling water picking which ingredients to use. As a soup made from every edible substance Raistlin possessed thrown together would inevitably be a repugnant sludge, he tried to be strategic, calling to mind every recipe he had ever come across or cooked up himself in a pinch. While he had never exactly given cuisine any lengthy amount of study, Raistlin had become the de facto chef for himself and his brother when they were on their own or journeying or wherever, mostly because Caramon showed no aptitude whatsoever – the dishes he had prepared prompting Raistlin to believe that Caramon's efforts might actually be more averse to their health than starvation – but also because Raistlin had something of a knack. Cooking was like magic, in that it took a certain finesse to produce something that was both edible and appealing to the senses, especially when working with limited supplies. Raistlin looked down at his piles and removed the coriander. There would never be a time when he wasn't working with limited supplies.
A lull in the conversation buzzing about him and a triumphant note in Caramon's incessant jabbering brought Raistlin's head up. The water had come to a boil much faster than Raistlin had imagined, much faster than was altogether natural, but Raistlin decided it wasn't worth the worry. Snow brought to a boil unnaturally quickly by an unnatural flame – hopefully two negatives made a positive in this case. Raistlin looked down at the five piles he had selected, carefully marking each in his mind to be replaced at the earliest opportunity, before gathering them up and dumping them into the bubbling liquid. Taking the stained wooden spoon from Caramon's hand, he stirred the water, watching as his selections tinted the water in a coalescing gradient – first yellow, then blue, then purple – and tried to block out the incipient whisper that started up in the recesses of his mind like an autumn wind.
Raistlin gripped the spoon handle until his knuckles went from gold to a jaundiced white, his teeth clenching as he bolstered his defenses against the prodding something lurking behind his conscious thoughts. Conversations continued around him, no one remarking his distress, but Raistlin was too focused to even feel relief. He would not allow anything to shake him, not now, not after – not now.
But the whisper didn't try to assail his defenses, the autumn wind not rising into a gale. Whatever it was, it wasn't trying to fight him. It wasn't trying to fight its way in. Hesitantly, stumbling on the thought that it might be a trick, Raistlin lowered the walls around his thoughts and reached out to the whisper. Nonetheless, it took him a moment to quell his trepidation to a point where he could actually decipher what the whisper was trying to convey.
Mint.
Mint. The grand threat to his psyche was a culinary suggestion. Raistlin snorted – he was actually running at shadows in his own mind, shielding himself against his own thoughts – and accidently drew Caramon's attention back to himself with the noise. And with Caramon's attention came those of his interlocutors, Tika – inevitably – and Sturm – unfortunately. Raistlin kept his eyes on the pot and feigned unconcern, feeling amongst his pouches for the troublesome herb. Pulling out a handful – mint was extremely useful, both in magic and the healing arts – he let the mint fall through his fingers and into his concoction like leaves from a tree in fall. Considering the state of his bony fingers, it wasn't hard to imagine them as the skeletal limbs of a tree in winter once the mint had all fallen. If the tree were golden. And rotting at a cursed pace. Raistlin felt his unconcerned smirk falter and quickly raised a spoonful of the liquid to his mouth, blowing on it in a cursory manner, and sipping at it.
The mint made all the difference. Finesse, it was a gift.
"Alright, I believe it is ready," Raistlin brandished the damp wooden spoon out in front of him like a sword at the mad scramble that was his only response, everyone getting to their feet and descending upon him at once like a pack of vultures. It took a moment, but his glare managed to cut through their excitement, like acid through linen, and restored some semblance of order around the fire. Raistlin placed his thin body between them and the pot, guarding it as jealously as any dragon. Dragon. Dragon – a thought that made him think – of ash falling on –
"Well, well, we're all tremendously excited now, aren't we?" Raistlin threw himself into the present with a vengeance, fleeing the associations that were growing in his mind, threading through his walls like weeds and weakening the stone at their foundations. "As amazing as I'm sure my soup is, and as understandable as your excitement is given the fact that it is I that has prepared it, I shall have to ask you to remain calm and orderly." Gilthanas looked like he was a mere breath away from apoplexy at the condescension dripping from Raistlin's voice, and Raistlin knew without looking that Laurana and Sturm were likely in similar states, but he let the offense of the haughtiest of the group fuel his energy rather than cause him to question it.
"Now, as I'm sure you've already remarked, we have five bowls and eleven aspiring diners. Which poses something of a problem." The dawning dismay on the faces closest to him told him quite clearly that none of them had yet remarked on that little detail. Raistlin barely restrained himself from sighing.
"The easiest solution to said problem would be to eat in turns, five at a time. The alternative being a fight to the death. Either way, it's your decision." At that, Tanis belatedly recalled himself and his supposed role as leader. The half-elf shook off the exhaustion that hung about his person like a pall and stepped up beside Raistlin, who did his best not to flinch away from the sudden proximity.
"Raistlin is right, we'll have to take this in turns if we're going to get anywhere at all." Tanis scanned the group gathered in front of them and began nodding. "Tika, Laurana, Goldmoon, Tas, and Raistlin – you'll take the first turn and the rest of us will wait."
"Ah, so the weakest go first. Very tactful, Tanis, I'm sure the ladies will appreciate such chivalry," Raistlin snapped sarcastically, watching as Tika's face morphed from an expression of relief to one of indignation. Tanis shot him an exasperated look and held up his hand in a placating gesture.
"You know that's not what I meant! It's just – we might as well – just – " Tanis searched the faces before him pleadingly, seeming to hope they would accept his earnestness by his expression alone. Goldmoon, of course, stepped up to take the situation in hand, haloed by her aura of firm calm.
"I think we all know Tanis' heart and that such an assumption was not what motivated his decision," Goldmoon's voice was as calm and smooth as her demeanor. "Moreover, I doubt any of us are inclined to contest this decision." It was almost a question, certainly a challenge. Raistlin saw Tika's face relax and her head shake almost imperceptibly – no, she would not contest it. None of them would, and Raistlin couldn't fault them for it: he knew they really had no reason to.
Except him.
"I contest it. Someone else can have my turn, it's not as if there's any dearth of choice. You all look like the living dead," Raistlin turned his eyes on Sturm and added, unable to resist, "Well, living in the loosest sense of the term…" Sturm's ever-present scowl darkened and, perversely, Raistlin felt his heart lift.
"You're one to talk, mage. You're more dead than alive and always will be." Sturm's words drifted to him in a whisper and Raistlin felt something plummet within him at the truth he doubted Sturm even realized he spoke. The silence dragged on just a little too long, Raistlin standing frozen, and Sturm shifted nervously, as if he regretted his words. Raistlin smiled at that and felt his paralysis shatter: as if Sturm would ever regret insulting him.
"That is very true, knight, I'm proud of you for finally showing some degree of perception," Raistlin kept his tone safely sneering, not that that was a difficult task looking at the knight's ridiculous face and ridiculous moustache. "I suggest you give my bowl to Riverwind – I'm sure he'd like to test my concoction for poison before his beloved digs in." Raistlin realized after a moment that, like as not, more than just Riverwind would be leery of poison in a meal he had prepared. He pushed the thought aside and shook his head. They could believe whatever they liked.
Tanis looked at him oddly and Caramon looked ready to protest as noisily as usual. But Flint beat them both to the punch.
"You should eat something, Raistlin. You made all this, after all." Opening his mouth, Raistlin realized he didn't have a retort, sarcastic, cutting, or otherwise. He could feel his energy draining from him, as tangible an abandonment as one of those fabled tides drawing back from a shore at the call of the moons. But, unlike the tides – a curiosity he had once read about in a history book – Raistlin was not at all sure the ebb would be balanced by a returning flow at any time in the near future. He met Flint's eyes with effort and grasped at whatever response came to him.
"Exactly. I did make it, and you should know that it is ill-luck for a mage to partake of his own potions." Raistlin couldn't hold back a breathy laugh when Sturm blanched at his use of the term 'potion.' He sobered as Caramon took a step towards him, obviously preparing to say something both useless and irritating, and turned to Tanis, handing him the spoon.
"I'm not hungry." Raistlin hadn't meant to say it out loud. He hadn't meant to let his creeping lassitude show so clearly in his voice. But at that moment, he couldn't quite bring himself to care. He turned and left the light of the fire, finding the sight of the orange tongues of flame suddenly tiring – something he couldn't afford when he had no energy left to spare.
Setting his back against the cold stone and shrouding himself in fitful shadow, Raistlin watched Tanis doling out his improvised soup and tried to keep himself from falling asleep.
For with sleep would come dreams, and with dreams would come danger.