The Second Generation

He was in a room shaped like a cone—round at the bottom, it came to a point at the ceiling. The chamber was lit by oil lamps, placed at intervals around the circular floor, their flickering flames illuminating the room as brightly as day. Tanin was about to step through the door past Palin, when his brother stopped him.

“Wait!” Palin cautioned, catching hold of Tanin’s arm. “Look! On the floor!”

“Well, what is it?” Tanin asked. “Some sort of design—”

“It’s a pentagram, a magic symbol,” Palin said softly. “Don’t step within the circle of the lamps!”

“What’s it there for?” Sturm peered over Tanin’s broad shoulders, while Dougan jumped up and down in back, trying to see.

“I think... Yes!” Palin stared up into the very top of the ceiling. “It’s holding the Graygem! Look!” He pointed.

Everyone tilted back their heads, staring upward, except the dwarf, who was cursing loudly about not being able tosee. Dropping down to his hands and knees, Dougan finally managed to thrust his head in between Tanin’s and Sturm’s legs and peered upward, his beard trailing on the polished stone floor.

“Aye, laddie,” he said with a longing sigh. “That"s it! The Graygem of Gargath!”

Hovering in the air, below the very point of the cone, was a gray-colored jewel. Its shape was impossible to distinguish, as was its size, for it changed as they stared at it—first it was round and as big as a man’s fist; then it was a prism as large as a man himself; then it was a cube, no bigger than a lady’s bauble; then round again.... The jewel had been dark when they entered the room, not even reflecting the light from the lamps below. But now a soft gray light of its own began to beam from it.

Palin felt the magic tingle through him. Words to spells of unbelievable power flooded his mind. His uncle had been a weakling compared to him! He would rule the world, the heavens, the Abyss—“Steady, Little Brother,” came a distant voice.

“Hold onto me, Tanin!” Palin gasped, reaching out his hand to his brother. “Help me fight it!”

“If s no use,” came the voice they had heard through the door, this time sounding sad and resigned. “You can’t fight it. It will consume you in the end, as it did me.”

Wrenching his gaze from the gray light that was fast dazzling him with its brilliance, Palin peered around the conical room. Looking across from where he stood, he could make out a tall, high-backed chair placed against a tapestry-adorned wall. The chair’s back was carved with various runes and magical inscriptions, designed—apparently—to protect the mage who sat there from whatever beings he summoned forth to do his bidding. The voice seemed to be coming from the direction of the chair, but Palin could not see anyone sitting there.

Then, “Paladine have mercy!” the young man cried in horror.

“Too late, too late,” squeaked the voice. “Yes, I am Lord Gargath. The wretched Lord Gargath! Welcome to my home.”

Seated upon the chair’s soft cushion, making a graceful—if despairing—gesture with its paw, was a hedgehog.

“You may come closer,” said Lord Gargath, smoothing his whiskers with a trembling paw. “Just don’t step in the circle, as you said, young mage.”

Keeping carefully outside the boundaries of the flickering oil lamps, the brothers and Dougan edged their way along the wall. Above them, the Graygem gleamed softly, its light growing ever brighter.

“Lord Gargath,” Palin began hesitantly, approaching the hedgehog’s chair. Suddenly, he cried out in alarm and stumbled backward, bumping into Tanin.

“Sturm, to my side!” Tanin shouted, pushing Palin behind him and raising the spear.

The chair had vanished completely beneath the bulk of a gigantic black dragon! The creature stared at them with red, fiery eyes. Its great wings spanned the length of the wall. Its tail lashed the floor with a tremendous thud. When the dragon spoke, though, its voice held the same sorrow as had the hedgehog’s.

“You’re frightened,” said the dragon wistfully. “Thank you for the compliment, but you needn’t be. By the time I could attack you, I’d probably be a mouse or a cockroach.

“Ah, there! You see how it is,” continued Lord Gargath in the form of a lovely young maiden, who put her head in her hands and wept dismally.

“I’m constantly changing, constantly shifting. I never know from one moment to the next,” snarled a ferocious minotaur, snorting in anger, “what I’m going to be.”

“The Graygem has done this to you?”

“Yessssss,” hissed a snake, coiling around upon itself on the cushion in agony. “Once I wasssss a wizzzzard like you, young one. Once I wassss... powerful and wealthy. This island and its people were mine,” continued a dapper young man, sitting in the chair, a cold drink in his hand. “Care for some? Tropical fruit punch. Not bad, I assure you. Where was I?”

“The Graygem,” Palin ventured. His brothers could only stare in silence.