The Second Generation

by Margaret Weis

  “Wanna bet?” roared the dwarf, with a slight slur.

  “A wager, then?” cried Sturm.

  “A wager!” shouted Dougan.

  “Name the rules and the stakes!” Tanin said, sitting forward.

  Dougan stroked his beard thoughtfully. “I’ll match you lads one on one, drink for drink—”

  “Ha!” Sturm burst out laughing.

  “—drink for drink,” continued the dwarf imperturbably, “until your beardless chins hit the floor.”

  “It’ll be your beard and not our chins that hits the floor, dwarf,” Sturm said. “What stakes?”

  Dougan Redhammer pondered. “The winner has the very great satisfaction of assisting the losers to their beds,” he said, after a pause, twirling a long moustache around his finger.

  “And loser pays the tabs for all,” added Tanin.

  “Done,” said the dwarf, with a grin, holding out his hand.

  “Done,” said Tanin and Sturm together. Each shook Dougan’s hand, then the dwarf turned to Palin, his hand outstretched.

  “I want no part of this!” Palin said emphatically, glaring at his brothers. “Tanin,” he said in a low voice, “think of our funds. If you lose, we—”

  “Little Brother,” Tanin interrupted, flushing in anger, “next journey, remind me to leave you home and bring along a cleric of Paladine! We’d get preached at less and probably have more fun.”

  “You have no right to talk to me that way!” Palin snapped.

  “Ah, it must be all three of you,” Dougan interrupted, shaking his head, “or the bet’s off. There’s no challenge in a dwarf outdrinking two humans. And it must be dwarf spirits. Why, the lad might as well be drinking his mother’s milk as that elf water!” (Elf water—a name dwarves use for wine, which they can’t abide.)

  “I won’t drink that—” Palin began.

  “Palin”—Tanin’s voice was stern and cold—“you are shaming us! If you can’t have some fun, go to your room!”

  Angrily, Palin started to rise, but Sturm caught hold of the sleeve of his robes.

  “Aw, come on, Palin,” his brother said cheerfully. “Relax! Reorx’s beard! Father’s not going to walk through that door!” He tugged at Palin’s sleeve until his brother slowly resumed his seat. “You’ve been studying too hard. Your brain’s gone all cobwebby. Here, try some. That’s all we ask. If you don’t like it, then we won’t say any more about it.”

  Shoving a full mug over to his brother, Sturm leaned close and whispered in Palin’s ear, “Don’t make Tanin mad, all right? You know how he sulks, and we’ll have to put up with him from here to Lord Gunthar’s. Big Brother’s got your own best interests at heart. We both do. We just want to see you have a little fun, that’s all. Give it a try, huh?”

  Glancing at Tanin, Palin saw that his brother’s face was grim and unhappy. Maybe Sturm’s right, Palin thought. Maybe I should relax and have some fun. Tanin was more than half serious when he said that about leaving me home. He’s never talked that way before. It’s just that I’ve been wanting them to take me seriously, to quit treating me like a kid. Maybe I have gone too far.…

  Forcing a laugh, Palin lifted the mug. “To my brothers,” he said huskily, and was pleased to see Tanin’s green eyes brighten and Sturm’s face break into a broad grin. Putting the mug to his lips, Palin took a drink of the infamous brew known as dwarf spirits.

  The taste wasn’t bad. It was pleasant, in fact, a kind of dark and earthy flavor that brought visions of the dwarves’ underground home of Thorbardin to his eyes. Rolling it on his tongue, Palin nodded in pleased surprise and swallowed.…

  The young mage wondered suddenly if a fireball had exploded in his head. Flames shot through his mouth. Fire burst out his ears and nose, roared down his throat, and seared his stomach. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t see. He was going to die, he knew it … any moment … here, in this filthy, gods-forsaken tavern.…

  Someone—Palin had the vague impression it was Sturm—was pounding him on the back and, at last, he was able to gasp for air.

  “I do enjoy seeing a man enjoy his liquor,” said Dougan earnestly. “My turn now. A drink to the young mage!” Putting his mug to his lips, the dwarf tilted his head back and drained it in one long swallow. When he reappeared, his eyes were watery and his large, bulbous nose bright red. “Ahhh!” he breathed, blinking back his tears and wiping his mouth with the end of his beard.

  “Hear, hear,” cried both Sturm and Tanin, raising their mugs. “A drink to our brother, the mage!” They, too, drained their mugs, not quite as fast as the dwarf, but without stopping for breath.

  “Thank you,” said Palin, deeply moved. Cautiously, he took another gulp. The effect wasn’t so awful the second time. In fact, it was pleasurable. Palin took another drink, then another, and finally drained the mug. Setting it down on the table amid cheers from his brothers and Dougan, the young man felt warm and good all over. His blood tingled in his veins. Tanin was looking at him with approval and pride; Sturm was filling his mug again. Dougan downed two more mugs in a row, Sturm and Tanin drank theirs, and then it was Palin’s turn again. He lifted the mug to his lips.…

  Palin was smiling, and he couldn’t quit smiling. He loved Tanin and Sturm better than anyone else in the world, and he told them so, until he broke down and cried on Sturm’s broad shoulder. But no! There was someone else he loved—that was the dwarf. He staggered to his feet and went round the table to shake the dwarf’s hand. He even made a speech. Fast friends … firm friends, like his father and his father’s friend … old Flint, the dwarf … He went back to his chair, only there seemed to be four chairs now, instead of just one. Picking one, Palin sat down, missed and would have ended up on the floor if Tanin hadn’t caught him. He drank another mug, watching his brothers and his new friend with tears of affection streaming down his face.

  “I tell you, lads”—Dougan’s voice seemed to Palin to come from a long distance away—“I love you like my own sons. And I must say, I think you’ve had a wee bit more to drink than you can handle.”

  “Naw!” Sturm cried indignantly, pounding his hand on the table.

  “We can keep up with you,” Tanin muttered, breathing heavily, his face beefy red.

  “Damnrigh’,” said Palin, striking the table—or he would have if the table hadn’t suddenly and unaccountably leapt out of the way.

  And then Palin was lying on the floor, thinking this was an interesting place to be, much safer than up there in four chairs, with tables jumping around.… Glancing around blearily, he saw his staff on the floor beside him. He reached out, caressed it lovingly.

  “Shirak!” he slurred, and the crystal atop the staff burst into light. He heard some commotion at this; high, shrill voices jabbering and chattering somewhere in the background. Palin giggled and couldn’t quit giggling.

  From high above, Dougan’s voice came floating down to him. “Here’s to our beds,” said the dwarf, “and a sound night’s sleep!” And if there was a sinister note in the gruff voice or more than a trace of triumphant laughter, Palin discounted it. The dwarf was his friend, a brother to him. He loved him like a brother, his dear brothers …

  Palin laid his head on the floor, resting his cheek on the staff’s cool wood. Shutting his eyes, he slipped away into another world—a world of small creatures in brown robes, who lifted him up and ran away with him.…

  Chapter Two

  A Really Bad Hangover

  The world heaved and shivered, and Palin’s stomach heaved and his skin shivered in agreement, misery loving company. Rolling over on his side, he was violently sick, and he wondered as he lay on whatever it was he was lying on—he couldn’t open his eyes to see; they felt all gummed together—how long it would take him to die and end this suffering.

  When he could be sick no more and when it seemed that his insides might actually stay inside, Palin lay back with a groan. His head was beginning to clear a little, and he realized suddenly, when he tried to move, that
his hands were tied behind his back. Fear shot through his muzzy brain, its cold surge blowing away the mists of the dwarf spirits. He couldn’t feel his feet, and he dimly realized that cords tied around his ankles had cut off his circulation. Gritting his teeth, he shifted his position slightly and wiggled his toes inside his soft leather boots, wincing as he felt the tingling of returning blood.

  He was lying on a wooden plank, he noticed, feeling it beneath him with his hands. And there was a peculiar motion to the plank, it was rocking back and forth in a manner most unsettling to Palin’s aching head and churning stomach. There were strange noises and smells, too—wood creaking, an odd whooshing and gurgling, and, every so often, a tremendous roaring and thudding and flapping above his head that sounded like a stampede of horses or, Palin thought with a catch in his throat, his father’s description of attacking dragons. Cautiously, the young mage opened his eyes.

  Almost instantly, he shut them again. Sunlight streaming through a small, round window pierced his brain like an arrow, sending white-hot pain bouncing around the backs of his eyeballs. The plank rocked him this way and that, and Palin was sick again.

  When he recovered sufficiently to think he might not die in the next ten seconds—a matter of extreme regret—Palin braced himself to open his eyes and keep them open.

  He managed, but at the cost of being sick again. Fortunately or unfortunately, there was nothing left inside him to lose, and it wasn’t long before he was able to look around. He was on a plank, as he had surmised. The plank had been built into a curved wooden wall of a small room and was obviously intended as a crude bed. Several other planks lined the walls of the oddly shaped room, and Palin saw his two brothers lying unconscious on these, bound hand and foot as he was. There was no other furniture in the room, nothing but a few wooden chests, which were sliding along the wooden floor.

  Palin had only to look out the small, round window on the wall across from him to confirm his worst fears. At first, he saw nothing but blue sky and white clouds and bright sunlight. Then the plank on which he was lying dropped—it seemed—into a chasm. The wooden chests scraped across the floor, running away past him. Blue sky and clouds vanished, to be replaced by green water.

  Shutting his eyes once more, Palin rolled over to ease his cramped muscles, pressing his aching head against the cool, damp wood of the crude bed.

  Or perhaps he should say “berth.” That’s the nautical term, isn’t it? he thought to himself bitterly. That’s what you call a bed on a ship. And what will they call us on the ship? Galley slaves? Chained to the oars, subject to the overmaster with his whip, flaying the flesh from our backs.…

  The motion of the ship changed, the sea chests skittered along the floor in the opposite direction, sky and clouds leapt back into the window, and Palin knew he was going to be sick again.

  “Palin … Palin, are you all right?”

  There was an anguished tone in the voice that brought Palin to consciousness. Painfully, he once again opened his eyes. He must have slept, he realized, though how he could have done so with this throbbing in his head and the queasy state of his stomach he had no idea.

  “Palin!” The voice was urgent.

  “Yes,” said Palin thickly. It took an effort to talk; his tongue felt and tasted as though gully dwarves had taken up residence in his mouth. The thought made his stomach lurch, and he abandoned it hurriedly. “Yes,” he said again, “I’m … all right …”

  “Thank Paladine!” groaned the voice, which Palin recognized now as Tanin’s. “By the gods, you looked so pale, lying there, I thought you were dead!”

  “I wish I was,” Palin said feelingly.

  “We know what you mean,” said Sturm—a very subdued and miserable Sturm, to judge by the sound.

  Twisting around, Palin was able to see his brothers. If I look as bad as they do, he thought, no wonder Tanin believed I was dead. Both young men were pale beneath their tan skin, their pallor had a faint greenish tinge, and there was ample evidence on the deck below that both had been extremely sick. Their red curls were tangled and wet and matted, their clothes soaked. Both lay on their backs, their hands and feet tied with rough leather thongs. Tanin had a large bruise on his forehead and, in addition, his wrists were cut and bleeding. He had obviously been trying to free himself and failed.

  “This is all my fault,” said Tanin glumly, with another groan as nausea welled up inside of him. “What a fool I was, not to see this coming!”

  “Don’t give yourself all the credit, Big Brother,” said Sturm. “I went right along with you. We should have listened to Palin—”

  “No, you shouldn’t have,” Palin mumbled, closing his eyes against the sight of the sea and sky constantly shifting places in the porthole. “I was being a superior, self-righteous twit, as both of you tried to point out.” He was silent a moment, trying to decide if he was going to be sick or not. Finally, he thought he wasn’t and added, “We’re in this together now, anyway. Either of you know where we are and what’s going on?”

  “We’re in the hold of a ship,” Tanin said. “And, from the sounds of it, they’ve got some great beast chained up there.”

  “A dragon?” Palin asked quietly.

  “Could be,” Tanin answered. “I remember Tanis describing the black dragon that attacked them in Xak Tsaroth. He heard a gurgling noise and a hissing, like water boiling in a kettle.…”

  “But why would anyone chain up a dragon on a ship?” argued Sturm weakly.

  “All kinds of reasons,” Palin muttered, “most of them nasty.”

  “Probably keeps slaves like us in line. Palin,” said Tanin in a low voice, “can you do anything? To free us, I mean? You know, your magic?”

  “No,” said Palin bitterly. “My spell components are gone—not that I could get to them if I had them, since my hands are tied. My staff—My staff!” he recalled with a pang. Fearfully, he struggled to sit up, glanced around, then breathed a sigh of relief. The Staff of Magius stood in a corner, leaning up against the hull of the ship. For some reason, it did not move when the ship listed, but remained standing perfectly still, seemingly unaffected by the laws of nature. “My staff might help, but the only thing I know how to make it do,” he admitted shamefacedly, “is give light. Besides,” he added, lying wearily back down, “my head aches so I can barely remember my name, much less a magic spell.”

  The young men were silent, each thinking. Tanin struggled against his bonds once more, then gave it up. The leather had been soaked with water and had tightened when it dried so that it was impossible for the big man to escape.

  “So, it looks like we’re prisoners in this wretched hole—”

  “Prisoners?” called a booming voice. “Losers, maybe. But prisoners, never!”

  A trapdoor in the ceiling opened, and a short, stocky figure in bright red velvet with black curling hair and beard poked his head through. “My guests you are!” cried Dougan Redhammer lustily, peering at them through the hatch. “And fortunate beyond all humans, because I have chosen you to accompany me on my grand quest! A quest that will make you famous throughout the world! A quest that will make that minor adventure your parents were involved in seem like a kender scavenger hunt!” Dougan leaned so far through the hatch that his face became quite red with the exertion and he almost tumbled through upside down.

  “We’re not going on any quest of yours, dwarf!” Tanin said with an oath. And, for once, both Palin and Sturm were in full agreement.

  Leering down at them through the hatch, Dougan grinned. “Wanna bet?”

  “You see, lads, it’s a matter of honor.”

  Throwing down a rope ladder, Dougan—somewhat perilously—climbed down into the hold of the ship, his journey being hampered by the fact that he couldn’t see his feet for his great belly. Reaching the deck, he rested a moment from his labors, removing a lace-covered handkerchief from the sleeve of his coat and using it to mop his perspiring face.

  “I tell you, lads,” he said solemnly,
“I’m feeling a bit under myself. By Reorx, but you can drink! Just like you said.” Stumbling slightly as the deck listed beneath him, the dwarf pointed at Sturm. “You, especially! I swear by my beard”—he stroked it—“that I saw two of yourself, lad, and I was workin’ on four before your eyes rolled back in your head and you crashed to the floor. Shook the foundations of the inn, you did. I had to pay damages.”

  “You said you were going to cut us loose,” Tanin snarled.

  “That I did,” Dougan muttered, drawing a sharp knife from his belt. Making his way around the sea chests, he began to saw away industriously at the leather thongs that bound Tanin’s wrists.

  “If we aren’t prisoners,” Palin asked, “then why are we bound hand and foot?”

  “Why, laddie,” said the dwarf, looking around at Palin with an injured air, “it was for your own safety! I had only your welfare at heart! You were so enthusiastic when you saw we were carrying you aboard this fine vessel, that we had to restrain your enthusiasm—”

  “Enthusiasm!” Tanin snorted. “We were out cold!”

  “Well, no, actually, you weren’t,” Dougan admitted. “Oh, he was.” The dwarf jerked his head back at Palin. “Sleeping like he was in his mother’s arms. But you two, as I saw the moment I clapped eyes on you, lads, are grand fighters. Perhaps you were wondering how you got that bit of a clout on your head—”

  Tanin said nothing, simply glared at the dwarf. Sitting up, the young man gingerly put his hand to his forehead, where there was a lump the size of an egg.

  “Enthusiasm,” said the dwarf solemnly, going over to cut Sturm loose. “That’s one reason I chose you for my quest.”

  “The only quest I’d consider going on with you is to see you in the Abyss!” Tanin retorted stubbornly.

  Lying back, Palin sighed. “My dear brother,” he said wearily, “has it occurred to you that we have little choice in the matter? We’re on a ship, miles away from land”—he glanced at Dougan, who nodded assent—“and completely at the mercy of this dwarf and his crew of cutthroats. Do you think he would release us from our bonds if we had the slightest chance of escaping?”