PART ONE: WANNA BET?

Chapter One:
Knights
Raistlin hung back as he watched his two nephews be guided into the keep of Castle Uth Wistan. Leaning on his staff he wasn't in the least surprised when he wasn't exactly invited in. Raistlin settled himself into a long wait then froze when a cat looked him up and down. Okay. So he wasn't afraid of cats, but this was a big white tiger that was looking at him like he was dinner.

"Go on, shoo," he whispered at it. "Go away. I wouldn't make for a nice meal. I'm naught but sinew and bone."

"Ah, I see you found my guide," came a familiar voice behind him.

For the second time in one day, Raistlin was struck speechless as he turned to the blind cleric. Please, don't be her, please, please, Gods, if you are listening, don't let it be... heturned the rest of the way around and saw who it was. Oh shit, he swore, but said respectfully and what he hoped was shyly, "Revered Daughter Crysania."

"Are you not coming in with us... Sir..." Crysania trailed off as she tried to figure him out by sound and voice.

"I'm no Knight, Revered Daughter," he answered. "My name is Palin Majere, I'm a wizard of the White Robes."

"Ah, that explains the familiar voice. I knew another Majere that sounded just like you, except not so friendly," she smiled then held out her hand. "I would consider it an honor if you would be my guest if the Knights would not invite you. After all, it is your brothers who are being knighted this day, is it not."

"Yes," he answered as he took her arm, while switching the Staff to his other hand.

It tapped on the ground as they walked, and he noticed her frowning, "Does something bother you?"

"It's nothing," she laughed it off. "You have a staff, and I guess the smell of your spell components remind of your Uncle. It doesn't help that you sound so much the same," she felt his arm. "Even built the same."

Raistlin laughed, "Goes with the territory of being a wizard, my Lady."

Good cover, he thought. Now, if I can do something decidingly un-Raistlin, maybe she'll stop wondering at how 'like my Uncle' I am... Crysania shook her head, "I don't think you have to call me that."

"Call you what?"

"Revered Daughter," she answered then turned to him, grasping a hand and leaning close and she whispered the next part. "You never did."

Raistlin's heart nearly stopped as he froze to the spot, his eyes wide. Oh nonononono....! Raistlin looked at her eyes and knew that she could not see him. He took a breath and released with a sigh. Tanin had figured him out the same way while listening to him talk in a barn, why should he be surprised that Crysania did it by being with him for five minutes. "How?" he still asked.

"Your voice, the way you walk, your general way you stand," she said, touching her nose. "And even though your spell components cover it very well, there was always something of you that I could always, just barely, pick up," she touched his face then as she said this. "I wonder, if no one else knows, does that mean that your curse was broken?"

Raistlin looked down and turned away to lean on the window sill, looking out to the sea he could just spot in the distance from the direction he stood. Turning to her and leaning on the sill, he said softly, "Crys..."

She sat beside him on the sill, looked at him even though she could not see him, "Something has changed. I can feel the grief from you in waves. The sadness. Tell me?"

A guard closed the door they stood in, and the tiger kept guard. Raistlin looked at his Staff for a long time, at first relieved that he could let his guard slip and be himself, be allowed to grieve for a nephew he never had the honor of knowing, and the shame of failing. "The Dark Queen interfered my youngest nephew's Test at the Tower of High Sorcery. She somehow made it possible for him to enter the Abyss, and when he did, she was waiting for him. She kidnapped him, held him hostage. All she wanted was me. She did it to get to me. Oh, and it worked. I woke from my slumber and went to his rescue."

"And then?" prompted Crysania gently.

"I was too late," answered Raistlin. "She killed him before I could– and made me watch her do it."

"Oh, Raist, I'm so sorry," she said, as she laid a hand on his leg. "But why do you do this?"

"I woke up in my lab, found myself in the White Robes. I can't remember how I got there," he answered. "I then passed out again. A few days later I found myself in Palin's bed. My brother had thought I was Palin, and... I couldn't tell him. I couldn't even bring myself to do it. Something... something made the idea of seeing them grieve too hard to tell them the truth. I've been passing myself off as Palin for a year now."

"And your robes haven't changed color?" her tone was carefully flat.

"No," he said, trailing this out as if he didn't quite follow what she her point was.

"I knew it!" she put her hands up in the air. "I knew it."

Raistlin quirked an eyebrow, then suddenly figured out what she meant. The last time they had... met... she had maintained that he was redeemable, able to feel mercy and do good even if it did not benefit himself. Just because the act was kind. She had termed it his 'random acts of kindness' and followed him into the Abyss believing it.

It was a strange and very, very odd feeling to note that this entire charade, lie though it may be, was done simply because he couldn't bear to see his brother pre-maturely grieve for a son. In so doing, he had also proved Crysania's point. "Don't get me wrong, Revered Daughter," said Raistlin. "I'm still who I am, I can still do what you saw me do. And if it wouldn't leave with no one to worship me, I would do it all over again..."

"Would you really?" she asked. "Raistlin, answer this simple question: Why did you try and save Palin in the first place?"

"Because the Dark Queen was after me, not him," he answered. "He... he should have never been there. If not for me he wouldn't have been her target, her bait. I couldn't let him die over my mistakes in life. And he had so much potential."

"So... what gain could you possibly have gotten out of that?" she asked.

"Satisfaction of foiling Her Royal Darkness?" quipped Raistlin a bit lamely.

Okay, not up to his usual sarcastic self, but given the fact that she was hitting some very sensitive issues with him, he could, and would, chalk that up to emotional distraction. He heard her sigh, "Really?"

"No, not really," mumbled Raistlin. "I couldn't gain anything by trying to rescue Palin. I did it because I felt he didn't deserve Her attention. Didn't deserve to be tortured for my 'benefit'."

"So, you did it for him?" she said. "I wonder, are you still? You tried to save him, but found you could not, so are you now living as him, for him? So that whatever potential you felt he had he reaches, even if you have to sacrifice not only your life but your identity and what makes you yourself just so he lives on?"

Raistlin closed his eyes and looked down at the ground, both his hands caressing the soft wood of his staff. Looking at how Crysania reflected in the stone, he turned to face her, his voice heavy, "Yes, you are correct. That's why I do it. He was cut down and never even given the chance to begin his Test, let alone his career. And why? Because of me. It was my fault the Dark Queen lured him in. It was my fault she used him as bait. It was my fault that she decided that a good way to hurt me was to kill him while I watched." He turned to face the window and looked out to the darkening sky. "You want to know something else? I failed him that day too. I couldn't do a thing to save him, I wasn't fast enough to stop her blade from sinking into his belly. It's my fault that he's dead. I owe him this, but the more I fail at being him, the more I fail him as it falls to pieces around me."

Crysania's tears were falling freely as Raistlin, who never said two words when one would suffice, found that he couldn't stop the self-recrimination once he had started. Maybe it was overdue, but something inside him had snapped and felt that too much had been left unsaid. "I shouldn't be surprised. Look at the way I failed you."

"Oh no, you never..." she started as she moved to grasp his hand.

He laughed bitterly, and this much was familiar to her. She could see what she had always remembered, but perhaps, without her physical sight, she saw another way she could help him. Pain she had missed previously was now glaringly obvious. Reasons he did things, and perhaps what he would do half a thought before he even did was also easy to see.

He hated himself, hated the Gods, perhaps even hated everyone else on Krynn. Everything he did he had done to prove to the Gods and everyone else, and perhaps even himself, that he was actually worth something. To be noticed.

"Lady Crysania," he began. "I used you the way I hated to be used. You know, I might have even loved you. But did I allow myself to feel that? No! And all because I felt that if I proved myself superior to everyone else, then maybe, just maybe I could be."

"Raistlin," she put a hand on his shoulder. "Look at me."

He did so, slowly. Forced himself to look into her sightless eyes, and said, his voice shaky, "Look what I've done to you, and yet you still try to be kind to me."

She held him, and felt him stiffen. Well, that much was familiar. Raistlin had never liked being touched. "Let go," she whispered. "Let it all go. Grieve."

His arms surrounded her as if she was the one floating branch in a sea, and he was the drowning man, and let himself grieve. She held him as he cried himself out, then continued as he degenerated into dry sobs. "Why couldn't I save him? I should have been able to..." he cried in one loud wail as he finally pushed himself away and began to pace the room as he wiped away the remnants of his tears.

Crysania shook her head, "I don't have an answer to that. But you can't blame yourself like that. People are going to pick up on it. You continue to punish yourself for something you did not do. You have to learn to let more pass."

"Are you telling me I'm uptight?" he asked suddenly.

"Uptight?" she smiled. "I would call it more 'intense'. You have a nasty habit of letting too much get too personal when it could mean nothing to you at all. You're such a sensitive person that you get stressed emotionally so you simply turn it all off and push it down so deep that half the time you don't even realize it exists until it gets to be too much and you simply overload. And Raistlin, that isn't exactly healthy. You have to learn to let more out."

He thought for a moment, "Crysania, I do think you've gotten a lot more wise in your years."

"Raistlin?"

She caught him as he was about to open the door, "Yes?"

"Palin listened to that advice and so was a less intense, less stressed emotionally, person," she pointed out. "That's the other way I figured him out. If you decide to live your life for Palin, you're going to have to so the same thing or more people are going to figure you out."

"Thank you, Revered Daughter..." he said. "Crysania... I..."

"I know," she whispered. "Be well, and if you ever need to de-stress, you know where to find me."

He nodded, even though he knew she couldn't see him, "I will."

"Paladine be with you," with that, she opened the door and left him in the room alone, silhouetted in the window, a shadow in the twilight sun as it outlined him.

Tanin went searching for Raistlin shortly after the ceremony. Somehow he hadn't been surprised when he had not seen his Uncle in the crowds that were there to see their children be Knighted. Sturm, thankfully, had been too caught up with the pageantry to really notice the absence of the not-so-White-Robed Wizard. Given that they were now mingling with the other nobility and parents of new Knights, Tanin was a bit concerned.

He found his Uncle leaning against a marble pillar support for the balcony above that gave him shade. His cowl was down, loosely worn on his shoulders, and Tanin stopped dead when he realized who he was talking to.

Of all the people... Tanin's mind went numb with the implications of Raistlin talking to Crysania. Did she know, could she know? Tanin decided to take it lightly and came up to them, "Greetings Revered Daughter, my father has told us much about you."

Crysania turned to him, "Ah, Tanin Majere, is it?"

"Yes, my lady," answered Tanin, smiling.

"Tanin has been a huge help to me since my Test," said Raistlin, but Tanin could see the ever subtle curling of his lips in vague amusement.

Okay, so what was so funny? Crysania, without even seeing, seemed to pick up on it, "Oh has he? My, what a long time to be helping you..."

If Tanin had not known beforehand that Raistlin was masquerading as Palin, he would have missed the subtle intonation on that. She knew perfectly well that is was Raistlin, and was not going to raise any alarm. Tanin relaxed a little. "Sometimes it seems like forever..." Tanin said, but before either of them could say anything, a cleric came up to them.

"Revered Daughter, Battlemaster Uth Wistan would like to speak to you."

"I'll be there presently," she said, then turned to Raistlin. "I would like to continue this later. Remember what I said. Learn to let go more often or you'll never be truly happy."

"I will, Revered Daughter," murmured Raistlin, almost too low for Tanin to hear.

When she was out of earshot, Tanin asked, "She knows..."

"Yes..." Raistlin shrugged. "She figured me out before the ceremony even began. Something about my smell."

"When was the last time you took a bath?" Tanin smiled as he said this, but left his astonished Uncle standing there to search for Sturm before he could respond.

The next day was when Gunthar Uth Wistan, the Grand Master of Solamnia, announced assignments to the Knights. The Knights of the Sword, those who had just passed their time as a squire knight, usually ended up with the farther flung assignments. Since both Tanin and Sturm were Knights of the Sword, Raistlin expected that if he wanted to be near them he would be expected to travel far and lightly.

Even more surprising was that he had shown up in armor.

He was aware of the stares of the assembled Knights at him. He did make for an interesting sight.

Well, he guessed, in their eyes, it wasn't really armor. Raistlin's armor was simple, if extremely well-crafted, half suit leather armor that was worn over his robes. Unlike the robes he wore at the moment, the armor was an interesting shade of blue so dark that it appeared black unless he turned just so in the sun, at which point it was clearly a navy blue. Combined with his travelling robes, which, although still white, were of a weave of linen that was nearly a type of armor itself and much, much shorter than his typical robes. His dark brown breeches, since he had to wear them due to the length of his tunic robe, made him look like a very ready to travel war wizard. What rounded it all off was his deep brown and green edged travel cloak and the obvious belt and spell component bags that hung from it.

He had to admit that while he looked impressive as a archmagus before, he looked somewhat intimidating now. Where before only wizards could recognize the subtle signs that spelled power in his dress and the way he carried himself, now everyone could.

Not to mention that anyone with half a brain could sense the enchantment of said leather armor from where they stood. Raistlin, when he had originally found it, and identified it, had decided to hold on to it just in case of emergency...

...Traveling with two road-naive nephews had to count as an emergency.

A Knight of the Rose leaned over, "I didn't realize wizards wore armor."

"Wizards don't," answered Raistlin in a whisper. "But war wizards do."

He could see Sturm's eyebrows practically hitting the roof. Well, he would have to explain this, he realized. Tanin was smiling, and he shook his head before returning his attention to the front.

Raistlin listened for awhile, then found his attention wandering even if he was still listening to the conversations. Finally, it came around to them. "Knights Majere," said Gunthar. "I have decided, given your... ah... unusual advantage to assign you to Vingaard."

Raistlin raised an eyebrow in thought. Strange, but the thought of being a few days travel from Palanthas was not as important as it used to be. But, even stranger, he felt a bit nervous about being too far from Solace. The Gunthar sighed at the end of his assignments, "As you well know, I am advancing in years. This was my last induction ceremony for the Solamnic Order. I look forward to seeing more, but I will not preciding over them. That passes to a younger generation, a new generation. The Kingfisher watch over you all, and may Paladine bless your journeys!"

The assembly broke up, and he could see the Knights who had been facing the front arced eyebrows at Raistlin's appearance. Tanin came up to him and said, "Well, this is a new look for you."

"If I'm traveling with you two, I'm going to be prepared!"

A/N: In the last book, we posted Raistlin's 3.5e Stats. Many people asked: Raistlin in armor?!

Our answer in two words: War Wizard.

The next question was Raistlin a Rogue?

Well, that required more than two words, and, well, we were going to explain that here, but we decided to actually have the explanation of how, in canon, that would be. And trust us, it is possible. What's worse: Margaret Weis made it possible! How? Well, you're just going to have to read that...