that needs to be removed from a shaft, Kelley sees a
shaft that needs to be freed from a wheel. This odd
viewpoint becomes critical as the story progresses.
The narrator encounters Kelley by chance
after a gap of several years and finds him nursing
his brother Hal, who is suffering from a series of
inexplicable injuries. His bones break with no ap-
parent cause, and he appears to be on the verge
of death. The only clue to the cause is the odd-
looking Haitian doll he gave to his ex-girlfriend,
from whom he parted under extremely unpleasant
circumstances. Although the narrator and Hal’s
doctor are skeptical about the possibility that
voodoo could work without the victim knowing
about it and becoming psychologically convinced
that he was dying, they can think of no other ex-
planation. The doctor’s efforts to retrieve the doll
fail, but the narrator is more imaginative. Pre-
tending to be drunk, he approaches the girl,
Charity, and allows himself to be invited up to her
apartment, where he does, in fact, find several
voodoo dolls, but it is apparent to him that Char-
ity has no magical powers. He also discovers that
the doll she named after Hal is missing and real-
izes that Kelley has anticipated him and burglar-
ized the apartment.
Hal dies the same day, and Kelley promptly
appears at the narrator’s apartment. It is clear that
Charity was not directly responsible because her
other dolls were all ineffectual, but the specific doll
he has in his possession may be the original magi-
cal creation upon which all others were based. Kel-
ley leaves the doll in his friend’s charge and
disappears, and during the months that follow the
doll undergoes several horrible transformations. Its
limbs are broken, and it smells of putrefaction. The
narrator fails to realize the implications until a
young woman dies in a nearby hospital exhibiting
the exact same wounds after insisting that her as-
sailant kept calling her Dolly. It is only then that
the reader understands the indirect and horrible
fashion in which Kelley has exacted revenge for
the death of his brother.
Weis, Margaret(1948– )
Margaret Weis’s career started in the middle of the
1980s, when she began collaborating with Tracy
Hickman on a series of novels based on the DRAG-
ONLANCE role-playing game system, with Weis
doing the bulk of the writing and Hickman draw-
ing on a background in game design. Their first
joint venture was a trilogy consisting of Dragons of
Winter Night(1984), Dragons of Autumn Twilight
(1984), and Dragons of Spring Dawning(1985). A
group of humans, elves, and other folk gather to-
gether to battle and eventually defeat an evil
power in a manner very reminiscent of the Lord of
the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. TOLKIEN. They fol-
lowed up with a second trilogy about those charac-
ters who had survived the first round of
adventures, this time sending them back through
time for Time of the Twins, War of the Twins,and
Test of the Twins,all published in 1986. The second
trilogy is noticeably inferior, poorly paced, hastily
constructed, and with even less characterization
than their first effort.
Their third trilogy includes Doom of the Dark-
sword, Triumph of the Darksword, and Forging the
Darksword,all published in 1988. The premise is
more interesting in this fantasy world. Since virtually
everyone has some magical talent, those who do not
are viewed as handicapped and are shunned. The
protagonist flees to another land where he discovers
the wonders of technology, builds a weapon that
neutralizes magic, and then returns, eventually
bringing weapons from our reality. For the most part,
the series is much better written, and the concept is
original enough to compensate for some of the repet-
itive sequences. Their next trilogy, The Will of the
Wanderer, The Paladin of the Night,and The Prophet of
Akhran,appeared in 1990 and blends elements from
Arabian Nights–style adventures with legends of the
Greek gods. There is a war raging among the gods,
one of whom wishes to become ascendant and dis-
place all the others. The battlefield is Earth, but
since the gods cannot intervene directly in the works
of humanity, they must work through subtle influ-
ence and the efforts of their particular champions.
Their next collaborative effort was a much
longer series, starting with Dragon Wing(1990). The
Death Gate series is set in a fantasy realm divided
into separate areas with unique sets of physical
rules, although there is considerable crossover
among them. The seventh and final volume was
The Seventh Gate(1994), which resolves the battle372 Weis, Margaret