The Second Generation

A magical spell, Palin realized. His vision blurred, and tears streamed down his cheeks as he attempted to see through the dazzling light into the portal. The multicolored lights began to whirl madly, spinning around the outside of the great, gaping, twisting void within the center of the portal.

Growing dizzy, Palin clutched the staff and kept his gaze on the void within. The darkness moved! It began to swirl, circling around an eye of deeper darkness within its center, like a maelstrom without substance or form.

Round... and round... and round... sucking the air from the laboratory up in its mouth, sucking up the dust, and the light of the staff....

“No!” Palin cried, realizing in horror that it was sucking him in as well!

Struggling, he fought against it, but the force was irresistible. Helpless as a babe trying to stop his own birth, Palin was drawn inside the dazzling light, the writhing darkness. The dragon’s heads shrieked a paean to their Dark Queen. Their weight crushed Palin’s body, then their talons pulled him apart, limb by limb. Fire burst upon him, burning his flesh from his bones.

Waters swirled over him; he was drowning. He screamed without sound, though he could hear his voice. He was dying, and he was thankful he was dying, for the pain would end.

His heart burst.

Chapter Eight

Everything stopped. The light, the pain.

Everything was silent.

Palin was lying facedown, the Staff of Magius still clutched in his hand.

Opening his eyes, he saw the light of the staff shining silver, gleaming cold and pure. He felt no pain, his breathing was relaxed and normal, and his heartbeat steady, his body whole and unharmed. But he wasn’t lying on the floor of the laboratory. He was in sand! Or so it seemed. Glancing around, slowly rising to his feet, he saw that he was in a strange land—flat, like a desert, with no distinguishing features of any type. It was completely empty, barren. The landscape stretched on and on endlessly as far as he could see. Puzzled, he looked around. He had never been here before, yet it was familiar. The ground was an odd color—a kind of muted pink, the same color as the sky. His father’s voice came to him, As though it was sunset or somewhere in the distance, a fire burned....

Palin closed his eyes to blot out the horror of realization as fear surged over him in a suffocating wave, robbing him of breath or even the power to stand.

“The Abyss,' he murmured, his shaking hand holding the staff for support.

“Palin—” The voice broke off in a choked cry.

Palin’s eyes flared open, startled at hearing his name, alarmed by the sound of desperation in the voice.

Turning around, stumbling in the sand, the young man looked in the direction of that terrible sound and saw, rising up before him, a stone wall where no wall had been only seconds previously. Two undead figures walked toward the wall, dragging something between them. The “something” was human, Palin could see, human and living! It struggled in its captors' grasp, as though trying to escape, but resistance was useless against those whose strength came from beyond the grave.

The three drew nearer the wall, which was, apparently, their destination, for one pointed to it and laughed. The human ceased his struggles for a moment.

Lifting his head, he looked directly at Palin.

Golden skin, eyes the shape of hourglasses ...

“Uncle?” Palin breathed, starting to take a step forward.

But the figure shook its head, making an almost imperceptible movement with one of its slender hands as though saying, “Not now!”

Palin realized suddenly that he was standing out in the open, alone in the Abyss, with nothing to protect him but the Staff of Magius—a staff whose magic he had no idea how to use. The undead, intent upon their struggling captive, had not noticed him yet, but it would be only a matter of time.

Frightened and frustrated, Palin looked about hopelessly for someplace to hide. To his amazement, a thick bush sprang up out of nowhere, almost as if he had summoned it into being.

Without stopping to think why or how it was there, the young man ducked swiftly behind the bush, covering the crystal on the staff with his hand in an attempt to keep its light from giving him away. Then he peered cautiously out into the pinkish, burning land.

The undead had hauled their captive to the wall that stood in the middle of the sand. Manacles appeared on the wall at a spoken word of command.

Hoisting their captive up into the air with their incredible strength, the undead fastened Raistlin to the wall by his wrists. Then, with mocking bows, they left him there, hanging from the wall, his black robes stirring in the hot breeze.