“That were by no means my fault!” the kender added hastily.
“That were by no means your fault, the spell you tried to cast was altered in such a way as to destroy magic.”
“Just so!” the kender beamed.
Cedwick gave a longing glance toward the tower and wished he were packing again.
“You do realize that the rest of the world believes magic is gone because the gods have departed, don’t you?”
“Of course!” the kender said. “Uncle Tasslehoff defeated Chaos and the gods departed, and so it’s only natural for everyone to assume that’s why magic is gone!”
“I want you to understand,” Cedwick said, “because of that, the Conclave isn’t likely to believe your story.”
“No?” Halivar pouted. He looked at the apprentice mage. “You believe me, though, don’t you, Master Cedwick?”
“What I believe doesn’t matter, Halivar. Master Laudus and the Conclave must believe.”
“Oh! I’ll go explain it Master Laudus then!”
“No!” Cedwick said quickly. “If you approach him with this story, he is likely to find the idea preposterous. In the end, he may dismiss the idea simply because it came from-” He paused. “Well, from a kender, Halivar.”
The wizard slayer pursed his lips. “He would?”
“Just because Master Laudus is part of the Conclave,” the young man explained, “doesn’t mean he is infallible. Perhaps because of his training, he can’t believe anything less than a god could take away magic. Do you understand?”
“I think so.”
“Good.”
“So you mean to say,” the kender’s eyes widened, “that I’m a god?”
“That’s not what I-” Cedwick began, when suddenly, the tree line exploded in a clap of thunder.
Cedwick fell to the ground, and Halivar clamped his hands over his ears. Green foliage flew in every direction, and behind it billowed a thick black cloud of smoke and debris. Something struck the tower behind Cedwkk with a deafening thud.
Cedwick spun his head around to glance at the tower, expecting part of the wall to be missing. To his astonishment, it appeared entirely undamaged. However, a large lump of metal sat smoldering on the ground where it had landed after deflecting off the wall.
“Good thing there’s some magic left in the walls,” Cedwick thought aloud, but he realized he couldn’t hear his own voice because the warning siren was wailing too loudly.
Warning siren?
Cedwick turned back toward the source of the explosion. A long, cylindrical metal snout emerged from the cloud of smoke. It rode forward unsteadily on a pair of mismatched wheels. Behind it appeared a horde of tiny sputtering men and women. They coughed and gagged and seemed very relieved when they finally cleared the smoke.
Gnomes.
They pushed the cannon forward a few more feet, and then a few of the little creatures began to reload their cannon. Cedwick quickly rose to his feet and began running toward them.
“Stop!” he shouted, his arms flailing.
Much to his dismay, no one heard him. This mainly stemmed from the fact that the gnomes could not figure out how to shut off their warning siren. In fact, they looked rather perplexed that the cannon even had a warning siren.
Several gnomes worked diligently on disengaging the warning siren, while another group occupied themselves with a debate as to why there was a warning siren, and half a dozen more targeted the tower for another blast. Behind the cannon, a delegation of four gnomes busied themselves with looking important and impressive.
Not one of them, in fact, paid any heed to the advancing young man. Nor did it occur to them that someone might be standing directly in the path of their cannon.
That person happened to be Cedwick.
“Stop!” Cedwick cried again, throwing himself to the ground, shutting his eyes, and covering his ears.
A long moment passed, and Cedwick felt quite certain he was about to be the recipient of a cannon blast. Quite suddenly, the siren ended. At last, when he decided that he might be still alive, he opened his eyes.
A dozen gnomes stood around him, looking down at him expectantly. The apprentice mage stood up, brushing off his white robes and trying to look as if falling in the dirt was a normal thing to do.
The lead gnome, dressed in his finest workman’s leather, bowed deeply.
“Howdoyoudo?” the gnome said, then remembering himself, he slowed his speech. “I am Jobin, the executive vice-director of the Subcommittee of Accidents and Mishaps pertaining to the Guild of Magic Analysis and Prestidigital Improvements.”
“I am Cedwick.”
“Are you a wizard?” Jobin asked.
“Of course.”
“Cedwick!” came a bellowing voice from above.
Cedwick turned to see a graven face leaning out of the study window.
“Master!”
“What is that confounded racket? Have you gotten rid of that kender?”
“No, I’m here!” said the kender happily.
“What are these gnomes doing here? Cedwick! If I have to come down there-”
“You won’t, Master Laudus! I assure you. I’ll handle the situation.”
“See that you do!” said the archmage and ducked back into the tower.
Instantly the air filled with a fugue of gnomish chatter. With a shrill toot from a bright silver whistle, Jobin silenced the party.
“We are honored, Master Cedwick, to meet one who knows Master Laudus. We have journeyed long and far to speak with him.”
“Then why were you attacking his tower?”
The gnomes shot each other baffled glances.
“We were doing no such thing!” Jobin asserted.
“You fired a cannon at the tower!” Cedwick cried.
“Yes,” the gnome nodded. “That is our signal cannon.”
“Signal cannon?”
“Indeed! We use it to announce our arrival and to request an audience with whomever we are visiting. It is quite ingenious really! A measured amount of explosive powder is stuffed into-”
“But why fire it at the tower?” Cedwick said, “Couldn’t you have fired it into an open area?”
The gnomes pondered this idea excitedly for a moment. Several of them broke away from the group to examine and modify the cannon.
“Truly you are a wise man, Master Cedwick,” said Jobin solemnly.
“He is! He truly is!” came a voice from behind the apprentice mage. Halivar bounded forward, one hand still clamped over an ear. Apparently, his rings had become tangled with his earrings and the whole mess was proving difficult to separate.
“Who might you be?” the gnome inquired.
“I’m Halivar Wizardslayer,” the kender said, “the god!”
Cedwick interjected, addressing Jobin politely. “May I ask what business you have here?”
“Certainly! As I said, we are here to see Master Laudus!”
“Regarding what?”
“We have very important information that will be relevant to the upcoming Conclave meeting.”
“Conclave meeting?”
“Yes. That’s why we are here, you see-because Master Laudus is going to the Conclave meeting.”
“If you don’t mind me asking-?” the apprentice began.
“Yes?” said the gnome.
“How is it that everyone in the world knows about the Conclave meeting?”
The gnomes looked at each other uncomfortably.
“Is it a secret?” Jobin asked.
“Yes,” replied Cedwick.
“We probably shouldn’t discuss it near the kender then.”
“It’s okay!” Halivar said. “I already know.”
“How did you find out, Halivar?” asked Cedwick.
“My Aunt Fern told me,” said the kender, “only she’s not my aunt. She’s really a second cousin once removed. Or is it a first cousin twice removed?”
“Please, Halivar. Just the explanation.”
“Anyway, she heard it from Glider Snapdragon, who got it from Miriam Redrash, who overheard a drunken wizard talking about it in jail.”
“How coincidental!” said Jobin. “We too heard of the Conclave meeting from a drunken wizard. Only he wasn’t in jail. He was sitting on a fence.”
“Really? I wonder if it was the same wizard.”
“It doesn’t matter! I understand now, thank you,” said Cedwick with irritation.
“Don’t be alarmed,” the kender whispered loudly. “He gets a little cranky.”
Cedwick turned to the kender to argue that he was not even a little cranky when a sharp wailing-similar, but distinctly different from the warning siren-erupted a few meters away. Spinning to face the new noise, the young man noticed a bulky gnomish contraption bearing down on him at a frightening pace. Just when he thought the thing would crush him and continue straight on into the tower, the loud wail sounded again, and the front of the beast suddenly belched a cloud of white steam. The lumbering thing came to a sudden stop.
Cedwick stared at the gnomish aberration. In most respects, it resembled a wooden cart. The front of it, however, supported what might have been an old iron stove. From the front of the stove jutted a large metal cylinder out of which steam was pouring. Connected to the bottom of the cylinder were two smaller cylinders. These, in turn, connected via a metal shaft to the wheels. They were called spitspins, Jobin announced proudly, presumably because they spun the wheels around, all the while spitting hot steam.
“You may not know it, Master Cedwick,” the gnome added confidentially, “but the Guild of Safely and Efficiently Getting from Point A to Point B is not the most reliable of guilds. The Veryveryhot broke down three times this morning,” he added in despair. “I honestly wouldn’t use it, but my second cousin Smidge designed it, and she’s very enthusiastic about the thing.”
As if on cue, a female gnome popped her soot-stained head out from behind one of the Spitspins, smiling and waving a well-bandaged hand. She very nearly fell off the cart. Balance restored, she went back to tinkering with the machine. There came a sound like bacon sizzling, and the little gnome gave out a yelp of pain.
Cedwick had a sudden inkling as to why they called it the Veryveryhot.
“Of course,” the gnome said, “without it, we never would have been able to bring the signal cannon, much less the God Trap.”
“Excuse me?” was all the young man could think to say.
Hah’var, however, thought of quite a lot to say.
“Really? A God Trap?” he said. “Can I see? How does it work? Will it really trap a god? I doubt if it could trap me!”
“We based it on the Graygem,” Jobin said proudly, “and we were going to use it on Chaos, except we had a slight problem with a new weapon we were testing. It delayed our arrival.” He paused, as if unsure how to go on. “I really should be explaining this to Master Laudus.”
“You’re in luck!” cried the kender as he climbed on top of the God Trap. “Master Cedwick is the man in charge of deciding who speaks to Master Laudus.”
Cedwick sighed. What had he gotten himself into?
The gnome perked up considerably. “In that case. .” he straightened his workman’s leather and cleared his throat. “Master Cedwick, it is my sad duty to inform you that the Guild of Magic Analysis and Prestidigital Improvements has accidentally trapped magic.”
Something inside the young man made a noise not unlike gears popping loose. He assumed it was his sanity becoming unhinged.
The gnome droned on. “The Subcommittee for Accidents and Mishaps has further determined that the magic of Krynn is located inside the complex and wonderful device inadequately named the God Trap Machine. We are therefore here with said machine in order to assist the wizards in the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth in removing the magic from the God Trap Machine and restoring it to Krynn proper.”
“That can’t be true!” said the kender. “I myself personally destroyed magic!”
“I’m afraid you’re wrong,” replied Jobin. “In actuality, we gnomes trapped magic in our machine.”
“Impossible,” said the kender. “Even gnomes couldn’t build something that traps magic.”
“Well, magic certainly wasn’t destroyed by a kender!” Jobin said, his face flushing, and his speech steadily increasing in speed. “Akendercouldn’tdestroymagicifhetried. Ithadtobegnomishingenuity.”
“Ridiculous,” the kender retorted. “Kender ingenuity can destroy anything! It’s vastly superior to gnome ingenuity!”
At this, Jobin did a very un-executive-vice-director-like thing and punched Halivar in the stomach. The kender tumbled over in a jangling mass of jewelry, but not before swinging his staff, tripping the gnome. Jobin also went down, and upon impact, nuts, bolts, and screws flew everywhere.
In reaction to this assault on their leader, half a dozen gnomes in Jobin’s party hefted wrenches and hammers and glared hostile gnomish glares at the winded kender. The small group of gnomes who had been so diligently modifying the signal cannon to point in a harmless direction suddenly resolved to point it directly at Halivar. Several other gnomes quickly ran to assist Jobin, who flailed miserably under the weight of his workman’s leather.
A moment later-just when both the kender and the gnome had risen to their feet and decided to hit each other again-Cedwick stood between them.
“Stop!” he shouted, a strange fire burning in his eyes.
“But-” both the gnome and the kender began.
“You will not have a fist fight on the Tower grounds!”
Both the kender and the gnome shrank away from him, and Cedwick suddenly realized he must be more intimidating than he thought. He kept up his vicious stare, wondering idly if it might work just as well against other people. The gnomes and kender continued to back away, holding their noses as they went and shifting farther and farther upwind. Cedwick thought about this idly as well, until he realized that intimidated people don’t generally travel upwind as they back away.
Suddenly he smelled it.
For a moment he thought the gnomes might have been using more than wood to power the Veryveryhot. Then, quite unexpectedly, something tugged meaningfully at his robe. Glancing down, he discovered a large clod of dirt smiling up at him.
Two beady, piglike black eyes squinted at him. Meaty, filth-encrusted hands soiled his robe. Something that resembled hair grew out of the top of the clod of dirt and spilled out across the rest of it.
“Hello!” it said through rotting teeth.
Cedwick drew in a sharp breath of surprise, then rather wished he hadn’t.
“Does Master Laudus always allow gully dwarves to come to his Tower?” the kender asked, still holding his nose tightly.
“Never,” Cedwick answered, although today apparently everyone was allowed on the Tower grounds.
“Helg come for High Robe. Looking for High Robe,” the grimy little creature said. “You High Robe?”
The Conclave was not doing a very good job of keeping its plans a secret.
“I-” began the apprentice mage.
“High Robe!” the female gully dwarf said delightedly. “Me come far! Bring message from great gully dwarf shaman.”
“If this has anything to do with lost magic-”
Helg stared at him a moment in awe. “You smart High Robe!” she said. “You know secret shaman message!”
“Little One,” Cedwick said, “you did not steal, destroy, or in any way take magic.”
The gully dwarf made a sour face.
“You not smart after all,” she said. “You sure you High Robe?”
The apprentice mage’s expression transformed from one of weary calm to one of sheer bewilderment.
“Course gully dwarves not steal magic!” Helg said. “Big men lose magic. Stupid. How lose magic? Magic everywhere!”
Cedwick began to wonder what sort of nightmare he was in, where kender and gnomes picked fights on his front lawn and gully dwarves lectured him on t
he nature of magic.
“That why I come to Tower. Helg show Robes where is magic!”
“Do you know where magic is? Can you show me?”
“Helg show!”
Very slowly and deliberately, the gully dwarf reached into her bundles of rags. Carefully she removed an object from its resting place and dropped it in the young man’s outstretched hand.
Cedwick peered at it, suddenly realizing that the source of Helg’s magic resembled a small, very desiccated frog.
“Frog magic,” said Helg. “Very powerful!”
The apprentice mage began to turn green, a color the frog had not been for some time.
“Frog magic, indeed,” he heard Jobin remark to Halivar. Halivar snorted in derision.
Helg, however, heard them as well, and she reacted much less tolerantly. Faster than a desiccated frog could hop, she was across the courtyard. Two pudgy fists gave both the gnome and the kender a clout in the head.
This time, the scene erupted into an all-out war. The gnomes responded to the gully dwarf’s temper by scampering for suitable weapons. The kender smacked the gully dwarf with his staff; then, for good measure, he struck Jobin as well.
Jobin, not at all pleased at being clouted and struck, decided to retreat to the safety of the Veryveryhot. Helg followed quickly. Halivar, beset momentarily by several angry gnomes, swung his staff about as if it were a sword. Fortunately, it was not.
“Stop!” Cedwick cried amid the confusion. However, at that exact moment, someone set off the signal cannon, which in turn sent the warning siren blaring.
The whole spectacle became a massive brawl. The gnomes, outnumbering the gully dwarf and kender twelve to two, fought each other, “just to be fair.” Guild fought guild, and committee fought committee. Cedwick caught sight of Jobin and his cousin, wrenches locked. Somewhere above the screaming of the siren, someone was shrieking to be let out of the signal cannon.
The young apprentice mage waded into the fray, struggling to restore order, but every time he pulled a pair of fighters apart, another pair took their place. Just as he settled the second argument, a third fight ensued. By the time he finished with those two, the first two were at it again.
Standing atop the God Trap Machine, Helg held aloft the mummified frog, preaching, “This! This what happen when man lose sight of magic!”
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