Ник О'Донохью - Kender, Gully Dwarves, and Gnomes

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 spanning the length of the wall, its tail lashing 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 sadly. “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, setting 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.

“Ah, yes,” burbled a toad unhappily. “My great-great-great

well, you get the picture—grandfather followed the damn

thing, centuries ago, in hopes of retrieving it. He did, for a time. But his power failed as he grew old, and the Graygem escaped. I don’t know where it went, spreading chaos throughout the world. But I always knew that ... someday

.. it would come within my grasp. And I’d be ready for it!”

A rabbit, sitting up on its hind feet, clenched its paw with a stem look of resolve.

“Long years I study,” said a gully dwarf, holding up a grubby hand. “Two years. I think two years.” The gully dwarf frowned. “I make pretty design on floor. I wait. Two years. Not more than two. Big rock come! I catch ...

“And I’d trapped the Graygem!” shrieked an old, wizened man with a wild cackle. “It couldn’t escape me! At last, all the magic in the world would be mine, at my fingertips! And so it was, so it was,” squeaked a red-eyed rat, chewing nervously on its tail. “I could have anything I wanted. I demanded ten maidens—Well, I was lonely,” said a spider, curling its legs defensively. “You don’t get a chance to meet nice girls when you’re an evil mage, you know.”

“And the Graygem took control of the women!” said Palin, growing dizzy again, watching the transformations of the wizard. “And used them against you.”

“Yes,” whinnied a horse, pacing back and forth restlessly in front of the chair. “It educated them and gave them this palace. My palace! It gives them everything! They never have to work. Food appears when they’re hungry. Wine, whatever they want ... All they do is lounge around all day, reading elven poetry and arguing philosophy. God, I hate elven poetry!” groaned a middle aged bald man. “I tried to talk to them, told them to make something of their lives! And what did they do? They shut me in here, with that!” He gestured helplessly at the stone.

“But the women are getting restless,” Palin said, his thoughts suddenly falling into order.

“One can only take so much elven poetry,” remarked a walrus, gloomily waving its flippers. “They want diversion ”

“Men ... and not their husbands. No, that wouldn’t suit the Graygem at all. It needs the warriors to guard the gem from the outside while the women guard it from inside. So, to keep the women happy, it brought—”

“Us!” said Tanin, rounding upon the dwarf in fury.

“Now, don’t be hasty,” Dougan said with a cunning grin. He glanced at Palin out of the corner of his eye. “You’re very clever, laddie. You take after your uncle, yes, you do. Who was the gem guarding itself from, if you’re so smart? What would it have to fear?”

“The one person who’d been searching for it for thousands and thousands of years,” said Palin softly. Everything was suddenly very, very clear. “The one who made it and gambled it away. It has hidden from you, all these centuries, staying in one place until you got too close, then disappearing again. But now it is trapped by the wizard. No matter what it does, it can’t escape. So it set these guards around itself. But you knew the women were unhappy. You knew the Graygem had to allow them to have what they wanted—”

“Good-looking men. They’d let no one else in the castle,” said Dougan, twirling his moustache. “And, if I do say so myself, we fill the bill,” he added proudly.

“But who is he?” said Sturm, staring from Palin to the dwarf in confusion. “ Not Dougan Redhammer, I gather—”

“I know! I know!” shouted Lord Gargath, now a kender, who was jumping on the cushion of the chair. “Let me tell! Let me tell!” Leaping down, the kender ran over to embrace the dwarf.

“Great Reorx!” roared Dougan, clutching his empty money pouch.

“You told!” The kender pouted.

“My god!” whispered Tanin.

“That about sums it up,” Palin remarked.

“Yes!” roared Dougan Redhammer in a thunderous voice. “I am Reorx, the Forger of the World, and I have come back to claim what is mine!”

Suddenly aware of the presence of the god, aware, now, of the danger it was in, the Graygem flared with brilliant gray light. Trapped by the magic of the wizard’s symbol on the floor, it could not move, but it began to spin frantically, changing shape so fast that it was nothing more than a blur of motion to the eye.

The aspect of the wizard changed too. Once again, the black dragon burst into being, its great body obliterating the chair, its vast wingspan filling the cone-shaped room.

Palin glanced at it without interest, being much more absorbed in his own internal struggles. The Graygem was exerting all its energy, trying to protect itself. It was offering Palin anything, everything he wanted. Images flashed into his head. He saw himself as Head of the Order of White Robes, he saw himself ruling the Conclave of Wizards. He was driving the evil dragons back into the Abyss! He was doing battle with the Dark Queen. All he had to do was kill the dwarf ...

Kill a god? he asked in disbelief.

I will grant you the power! the Graygem answered.

Looking around, Palin saw Sturm’s body bathed in sweat, his eyes wild, his fists clenched. Even Tanin, so strong and unbending, was staring straight ahead, his skin pale, his lips tight, seeing some vision of glory visible only to himself.

Dougan stood in the center of the pentagram, watching them, not saying a word.