"The Gift" is a story wrapped inside another story, and like any gift, the unwrapping is almost as important as what's inside. Inside this gift is a story of innocence betrayed and magic rejected. A boy named Tim is robbed of his childhood; a young king named Simon is tormented by hearing made magically acute. Both are victims of The Usher of the Night, once a boy like them, but now pathetically twisted by his own ambition and the malevolent creature of magic called Tomen. Together Simon and Tim must rid their land of the old, near-forgotten magic perverted by the misuse of Tomen and The Usher.