The Second Generation

“What do you mean we? ” Tanin growled.

“I swear by Paladine and by Gilean and by the Dark Queen and by all the gods in the heavens that if I ever in my life see you even looking my direction, dwarf, I will turn around and walk—no, run—the opposite way!"

Sturm vowed devoutly.

“The same goes for me,” said Palin.

“And me!” said Tanin.

Dougan looked at them, downcast for a moment. Then, a grin split the dwarf’s face. His beady eyes glittered.

“Wanna bet?"

Book 4: Raistlin’s Daughter

The first sign of the change
is not the golden eye
nor the dangerous stature
the countenance of hill and desert,

instead it is the child’s breath
the chill of water underground
the cry at night a
memory of knives

and you startle
sit up in the bed and say
this is something I have made
somehow I have made this thing.

So you fear it away
let the night cover your dream
and the red moon wades
through a hundred journeys
jostled like blood
in the coded vein,

and then the arrivals
rending the edge of belief
a vacancy in play
the abstract smile
that has nothing to do
with whatever you did
and you know that your wishes
can never conceal
the long recollection of elsewhere.

The cuckoo’s story, the supplanted nest
the egg left in care of unwary others.
Surely its child is alien, elfshot,
stolen by gypsies, forever another, and
yet, in the accident
of blood and adoption,
as it was in your time and the
time of your mothers,
forever and always your own.
So sing to the stranger this lullaby
Sing the inventions of family
the fiction of brothers
the bardic ruse of the father
Sing the mother concocted of reasons and light,
Sing to me, golden-eyed daughter.