Kitiara surveyed the serious little faces. She'd never seen the gnomes so united and intent. "Very well, let's see if we can hunt down Sturm," she said.
Rapaldo was in his audience hall, flanked by twenty tall tree-men when Kitiara and the gnomes arrived. He was wearing Sturm's horned helmet, padded out with rags so that it wouldn't fall over his eyes. The axe lay nestled in his arms.
He regarded them idly. "I didn't send for you. Go away."
"Cut the lip wagging," Kitiara snapped. She recognized the helmet. "Where's Sturm?"
"Do all of the women of Abanasinia have such bad manners? That's what comes of letting them carry swords -"
She drew both weapons, sword and dagger, and took one step toward Rapaldo. The Lunitarians promptly raised their glass swords and spear.s and closed ranks around their divine, though mad, king.
"You'll never reach me," Rapaldo said, giggling. "It might be fun to see you try."
"Your Majesty," said Sighter diplomatically, "what has become of our friend Sturm?"
Rapaldo leaned forward and waggled a bony finger at the gnome. "See? Now that's the proper way to ask a question."
He slumped back in his high chair and pronounced, "He is resting. Shortly he will be the new king of Lunitari."
"New king? What's going to happen to the old one?"
asked Kitiara with barely concealed fury.
"I'm abdicating. Ten years is long enough to rule, don't you think? I'm going back to Krynn and live among my own kind as an honored and respected shipwright." He licked his fingers to smooth back his lank gray hair. "After my subjects take back the aerial ship, you all shall remain here, except for whatever gnomes are needed to fly it." He cocked his head toward Kitiara. "I was going to take you with me, but I see now that you are completely unsuited. Heh, heh.
Completely."
"We won't fly you anywhere," said Wingover defiantly.
"I think you will - if I order my faithful subjects to kill you off, one by one. I think you'll fall in with my plan."
"Never!" said Kitiara. The rage was rising in her.
Rapaldo looked up at the nearest tree-man and said, "Kill one of the gnomes. Start with the littlest one." The gnomes closed in a tight circle around Fitter.
The Lunitarian came at them straight on. Kitiara cried,
"Run!" and moved to meet the tree-man. She parried his strong but clumsy cuts. Chips of glass flew each time her steel blade met the glass one, but the haft of the tree-man's weapon was so thick that she didn't think it would snap without a direct crosswise blow. The gibbering gnomes retreated in a body to the door. None of the other Lunitarians deigned to bother them.
She had managed to pin the tree-man's point to the floor and now she raised her foot and smashed the glass sword in two. The Lunitarian stepped back out of her reach.
Rapaldo applauded. "Ta-ra!" he crowed. "What a show!"
There were too many of them. Though she hated to do it, Kitiara backed out of the room with her blood boiling.
Rapaldo laughed and whistled loudly.
Out in the passage, Kitiara halted, her face burning furiously with shame. To be whistled out of a room - what an insult! As if she were some juggler or painted fool!
"We're going back in there," she said tensely. "I'm going to get that lunatic woodcutter if I have to -"
"I have an idea," said Sighter, tugging vainly at her trouser leg.
"Suffering gods, we've got to find Sturm! We don't have time for a silly gnomish idea!"
The gnomes drew back with expressions of hurt. Kitiara hastily apologized, and Sighter went on. "As this place has no roof, why don't we climb the walls? We could walk along the top of the walls and peer down into every room."
Kitiara blinked. "Sighter, you - you're a genius."
He polished his nails on his vest and said, "Well, I am extremely intelligent."
She turned to the wall and ran a hand over the dry plaster.
"I don't know if we can get enough purchase to climb up,"
she said.
"I can do it," said Roperig. He pressed his hands on the wall and muttered, "Strong grip. Strong grip." To everyone's delight, his palms stuck, and he proceeded to climb right up the wall like a spider. The gnomes cheered; Kitiara hushed them.
"It's all right," Roperig said from atop the wall. "It's just wide enough for me to walk on. Boost Fitter up, will you?"
Kitiara hoisted Fitter up with one hand. Roperig caught his upstretched hands and pulled his apprentice up beside him.
Cutwood and Wingover were next.
"That's enough," said Sighter. "We'll stay with the lady and divert the king's attention. You find Sturm."
The four gnomes on the wall set off. Kitiara went back to the entry of the audience hall, banging sword and dagger together for attention. Bellcrank and Sighter stood close behind her, filling the doorway.
'You're back. Happy, happy to see you!" exclaimed Rapaldo, who was still hooting from his roost.
"We want to negotiate," Kitiara said. It was galling, even if it was a lie.
"You touched me with your sword," Rapaldo said petu-lantly. "That's treason, impious blasphemy and treason.
Throw your sword into the hall where I can see it."
"I won't give up my sword, not while I still live."
"Really? The king will see about that!" Rapaldo hooted some words in the Lunitarians' language. The guards in the room took up the message and repeated it again and again, louder and louder. Soon thousands outside were hooting the words.
Roperig and the others could hear the tree-men take up Rapaldo's chant as they fairly flew over the narrow wall tops, peeking into every room in the keep'. Cutwood, of course, stopped to make notes of the contents of every room and passage, while Wingover kept probing the distant vistas instead of searching the nearer rooms below. Only Fitter
' took his task to heart. The little gnome raced along at blinding speed, running, leaping, searching. He doubled back to his panting boss.
"Where did you learn to run so fast?" Roperig gasped.
"I don't know. Haven't I always run this way?"
"No indeed!"
"Oh! The magic has gotten to me at last!" Fitter flashed along the wall, sidestepping Cutwood, who was in the midst of compiling his umpteenth catalog. Cutwood, startled by the speedy Fitter, lost his balance and fell.
"Oof!" said Sturm as the forty-pound gnome landed in his lap. "Cutwood! Where did you come from?"
"Sancrist." He called out to Roperig, and the other three gnomes quickly found them.
"My hands are bound," Sturm explained. He was sitting in an old chair, and his feet were tied to the chair legs.
"Rapaldo took my knife."
"The lady has the dagger," said Roperig.
"I'll get it!" said Fitter, and in an instant he was gone.
Sturm blinked. "I know I've got the grandfather of all headaches, but our friend Fitter seems to me to have gotten awfully fast since last I saw him."
"Here it is!" called Fitter. He dropped the dagger, point first. Cutwood picked it up and started sawing away at Sturm's bonds. The dagger was made for thrusting, not cutting, and didn't have much of an edge.
"Hurry," said Fitter breathlessly. "The others are in big trouble."
"What are we in, a pleasant daydream?" Cutwood said sourly.
"Don't talk, cut," said Sturm.
'Trouble' was a mild word for what Kitiara and the two gnomes were facing. Scores of Lunitarians had filled the corridor behind them, and guards from the audience hall had seized each of them. Rapaldo strutted in front of them, tapping the back of the axe head against the palm of his hand.
"Treasonous piglets," he said imperiously. "You are all worthy of death. The question is, who shall feel the royal axe first?"
"Kill me, you witless scab; at least then I won't have to listen to you spout on like the gibbering swabby you are," Kitiara said. She was held by no fewer than seven tree-men.
Their wooden limbs were wrapped
around her so securely that only her face and feet showed. Rapaldo smirked and lifted her chin with the handle of his axe.
"Oh, no, pretty, I shall spare you, heh, heh. I would make you queen of Lunitari, if only for a day."
"I'd rather have my eyes put out!"
He shrugged and stepped in front of Sighter, held by a single guard. "Shall I kill this one?" said Rapaldo. "Or that?"
"Kill me," pleaded Bellcrank. "I'm only a metallurgist.
Sighter is the navigator of our flying ship. Without him, you'll never reach Krynn."
"That's ridiculous," Sighter argued. "If you die, who will fix the damage to the Cloudmaster? No one can work iron like Bellcrank."
"They're just gnomes," said Kitiara. "Kill me, rotten Rapaldo, or I'll surely kill you!"
"Enough, enough! Heh, heh, I know what to do, I do. You try to fool me, but I am the king!" He strode away a pace or two and dropped his axe. The king of Lunitari pulled apart the tied ends of his decrepit tunic. Under his shirt, but over his woolens, Rapaldo wore chain. Not chain mail, but heavy, rusty chain, wound around his waist.
'You see, I know what it means to live on Lunitari,"
Rapaldo said. He let his shirt fall off and untwisted a bale of wire that held the end of the chain in place. He unlooped several turns of chain. As the links piled up on the floor, Rapaldo's feet rose. Soon he was floating two feet in the air, and the tree-folk were rapt in their devoted attention.
"I fly! Ta-ra! Who are you puny mortals to bandy words with me? I float! If I didn't wear fifty pounds of chain, I'd drift away. They won't let me have a ceiling, you know, the tree-people. Shade makes them take root. Without this chain, I'd fly away like a wisp of smoke." Rapaldo let another loop of chain fall to the floor. He pivoted until his feet were floating out behind him. "I am the king, you see!
The gods have given me this power!"
"No," Sighter tried to explain. "It must be a consequence of the Lunitari magic -"
"Silence!" Rapaldo made clumsy swimming motions with his hands and drifted over to Kitiara. "You wear armor, but you can take it off when you want to. I can't! I have to wear this chain every hour, every day." He shoved his dirty, bearded face close to hers. "I renounce the power! I'm going home, I am, and walk like a man again. The trees will not miss me with Sir Sturmbright as king.
"Treason! Treason! You're all guilty!" Rapaldo somer-saulted in the air, away from Kitiara. He scooped up his axe and flung it at his chosen victim.
Chapter 17
Without Honor
The last loop of cord gave way, and Sturm's hands were free. He snatched the dagger from Cutwood and quickly worked through the ropes around his ankles. The hemp from the Tarvolina was old and quickly parted. Sturm leaped to his feet.
"Lead me back to the audience hall!" he said to the gnomes atop the wall. Fitter waved and ran all the way around the room before veering off for the king's audience chamber. Roperig and Wingover trotted behind him.
"Come on, Cutwood," Sturm shouted, hoisting the gnome on his shoulders.
The sun was going down. Sturm thanked Paladine for that. Without sunlight, the hordes of tree-men loyal to the mad Rapaldo would soon revert to rooted plants.
He passed through another opening in the wall and found himself facing a dozen armed tree-men. They presented a solid front, barring his progress. Sturm had only Kitiara's dagger to oppose their long glass swords.
"Hold on, Cutwood," he said. The gnome gripped Sturm's head tightly.
Flat shadows climbed the walls. The sun was sinking fast.
Already the lower halves of the Lunitarians were in shade; soon their feet would fix where they stood. A tree-man thrust the forty-inch span of his scarlet glass sword at Sturm. Though the guard was slow, the blade flickered past Sturm's chin, far outreaching his twelve-inch dagger.
Woodenness began to claim the Lunitarians' lower bodies, and they took root. The edge of night was midway up their trunks now. The tree-men's arms wavered in slow motion, like weeds beneath the surface of a pond. The guard that Sturm faced snagged the tip of his sword on Sturm's fur hood and ripped through the hide and hair. That was the tree-man's last act. Bark closed over his eyes, leaving him and the others featureless and inert.
Wingover appeared atop the wall. "Master Brightblade!
Come quickly! Something terrible has happened!" Before the human could ask what, the gnome ran back the way he'd come.
"He was weeping," Cutwood. noted in astonishment.
"Wingover never weeps."
Sturm thrust his arms and shoulder between the trunks of the tree-men and heaved himself through. Their bark scraped and pulled at him, but he struggled on until he broke out of the rear rank of guards. The passage ahead was clear.
Sturm and Cutwood burst into the audience hall. The knight looked first to Kitiara. Was it her? Was she hurt, dying, or dead? The woman and the two gnomes were locked tightly in the embrace of their now-immobile guards.
Blood stained the knotty fingers of the one that held Bellcrank.
Bellcrank was dead. Rapaldo was nowhere to be seen.
"Kit! Are you all right?" Sturm called.
"Yes, and Sighter, too, but Bellcrank -"
"I see. Where's Rapaldo?"
"He's nearby. Be wary, Sturm, he's got that axe."
The room was thick with immobile tree-men. The gathering darkness made the audience hall a forest of shadows.
Out of the uncertain dark came Rapaldo's snickering laugh.
"Who has a lamp to light you to bed? Who has a chopper to chop off your head?"
"Rapaldo! Face me and fight!" Sturm cried.
"Heh, heh, heh."
Something moved overhead. From the wall, Wingover shouted, "He's up there! Duck, Sturm!"
Sturm dropped to the floor just as the axe blade whisked through the place his head had been. "Kit, where's your sword? Rapaldo has mine!"
"On the floor in front of Sighter," she said.
Sturm scrambled forward on his belly as Rapaldo flitted through the tops of the tree-men. Kitiara called to Sturm, explaining the crazed king's ability to levitate.
"He's dropped part of his weights," Sighter added. "He's floating about six feet off the ground."
Sturm's hand closed over Kitiara's sword handle and was up in a flash. Her blade was light and keen, and seemed to slice the air with a will of its own".' Sturm saw Rapaldo's tattered pants' legs and rope sandals stepping on the heads of the tree-men. Sturm slashed at him, but only succeeded in chipping off bits of the Lunitarian that Rapaldo was standing on. The king of Lunitari bounded away, giggling.
"I can't see him!" Sturm complained. "Wingover, where is he?"
"On your left - behind -" Sturm ducked the axe blow and cut at Rapaldo. He felt the tip of Kitiara's sword snag cloth and heard the cloth tear.
"Close, very close, Sir Sturmbright, but you're too heavy on your feet," Rapaldo said, chortling.
"Kit, I'd welcome any tactical suggestions you might want to make," Sturm said, his chest heaving in the chill night air.
"What you need is a crossbow," Kitiara hissed. She strained against the enfolded limbs of solid wood that held her. Because her arms were pinned at her sides, she could not get any leverage. Kitiara tried to twist her shoulders from side to side. The tree-man's arms groaned and cracked, but held firm.
Sturm shifted the dagger to his right hand and put the sword in his left. The hall was very quiet. The gnomes, who had been crying for their fallen colleague, ceased all noise.
Sturm crouched low and moved to the ramshackle throne.
He climbed up on the chair and stood erect. "Rapaldo!
Rapaldo, I'm on your throne. I spit on it, Rapaldo! You're a petty, lunatic carpenter who dreams he is a king."
The clink of chain warned him - a split second later the axe bit deeply into the back of the chair and stuck there, wedged tightly by the tough oak of Krynn. Rapaldo tried frantically to free the axe, but his spindly arms and lack of leverage prevented him.
/>
"Surrender!" Sturm demanded, presenting the point of the dagger to Rapaldo's throat.
"Ta-ra-ra!" cried the king, planting his feet on the back of the throne. He heaved the tall chair over backward, sending him, Sturm, bare sword, axe, and dagger down together in a heap. There was a mighty crash, a scream, and silence.
"Sturm!" called Kitiara.
He shook himself free of the shattered chair and stood. A gash in his cheek bled, but Sturm was otherwise unhurt.
Rapaldo was pinned to the floor, the dagger through his heart. His legs and arms floated above aimlessly. Drops of blood flowed up the dagger's hilt and detached, drifting up into the air.
Sturm found the axe in the debris. Stolidly ignoring the fact that the trees would be living beings again by morning, he chopped Kitiara and Sighter free. The other gnomes descended from the wall and helped get Bellcrank out of the wooden bonds. They laid the stout gnome gently on the floor and covered his face with their kerchiefs. Fitter began to sob.
"What shall we do?" asked Wingover tearfully.
Kitiara said, "Bellcrank is avenged. What more is there to do?"
"Oughtn't we to bury him?" said Roperig heavily.
"Yes, of course," said Sturm. He gathered Bellcrank in his arms and led the sorrowing band outside.
The gnomes stood together. The only sounds were sniffles and the scuffing of small shoes. Sighter brushed the wood chips from his clothes and strode off. The others fell in behind him. He went to the middle of the mushroom garden and stopped. Pointing to the red fluff, he declared that this was the spot.
The gnomes began to dig. Kitiara offered to help, but Cutwood politely declined. The gnomes knelt in a circle and dug the grave with their hands. When they were satisfied, Sturm stepped in and, with great feeling, laid the heroic Bellcrank in his final resting place.
Sighter spoke first. "Bellcrank was a fine technician and a good chemist. Now he is dead. The engine has ceased to run, the gears have seized and stopped." Sighter tossed a handful of pale crimson soil over his friend. "Farewell, farewell."
Wingover said, "He was a skilled metallurgist," and added another handful of dirt.
"An excellent arguer," noted Cutwood, choking back emotion.
Darkness & Light Page 15
