by David Cook
After both Teldin and Gomja were weighed and given disks denoting their tonnage, Snowball struck out for another section of the shaft. Here baskets and barrels shot into and out of the darkness above at alarming speeds. Those descending came rushing down with a blare of horns and bells. Teldin jumped involuntarily when one crashed onto a giant pile of pads beside him. The barrel tumbled over, rope raining down on it, and a pair of gnomes spilled onto the cushions and across the floor. They quickly got to their feet and wobbled away with all the dignity they could muster.
“Quickly, now. That is your car, and I will be in the next one,” urged Snowball, pointing to the empty barrel. Teldin went pale at the thought and Gomja planted his feet, one hand reaching for a pistol. “It is the only way up,” the gnome assured as the pair resisted, “because the vertical engineers are redesigning the stairs to make them faster, so come on and get in the car or you will not get to the examiners, besides other people are waiting and you do not want to be rude.” All the while, Snowball, far stronger than he looked, was tugging Teldin toward the hastily righted barrel. Perhaps desperate to be relieved of the cloak, the human finally gave in, steeled his courage, and climbed aboard. Gomja, not one to seem cowardly, followed suit.
Snowball stepped back with a smile and waved to the operators. “Level fifteen – eighty-nine dramnars! That is how much you weigh, see,” the gnome explained, “and up above – oh, up there somewhere – the vertical engineers will load twice your weight to lift you and the barrel, then pull the lever to ring the bell down here, and when that happens, you just hang on and —”
Before Snowball could finish, Teldin’s knees gave out as the barrel was forcefully jerked into the air. The farmer had a sickening feeling of hurtling through dizzying space as the gnome’s upturned face dwindled. One, two, three levels soared past, the number of each terrace disappearing in a brilliant flash. Teldin’s fingers dug into the barrel’s wooden sides. From somewhere below the human heard a clanging bell.
“— still a problem with stopping!” were Snowball’s last shouted words.
The levels whizzed past faster and faster, but Teldin took no notice – of that or of anything, including the pale blue giff frozen beside him. The terrified human was still trying to puzzle out the method of stopping when he looked up. Hurtling toward them was a giant wheel over which ran the rope affixed to their barrel. The yeoman suddenly had an awful guess just what the “problem with stopping” was. “Hang on, Gomja!” he howled over the din. Teldin closed his eyes and braced for the crash.
“I am, sir,” the giff answered in a barely audible voice.
All at once the rope stopped its upward flight, but the barrel, moving of its own momentum, continued upward until the giffs ears barely brushed the flywheel. Barrel, giff, and human hung weightless for an instant, then the wooden gondola plummeted. The shift from meteoric rise to uncontrolled fall was worst of all. The barrel dropped only a short distance before it snapped to a halt, almost throwing Teldin and Gomja over the low sides. As the barrel swung back and forth on the end of its rope, gnomes scrambled to pull the passengers onto a projecting landing. A big, black “15,” painted on the wall, announced the level. Teldin looked up and guessed that the flywheel was mounted on level sixteen.
Once their feet were back on solid ground, Gomja sagged against the wall in a weak-boned heap; Teldin managed to stagger a few steps before he collapsed. “Sir,” the giff announced, his voice trembling with finality, “I’d sooner go down on the blazing Penumbra again than ride one of those gnome things another time!” The farmer, his heart thumping wildly, could do little more than nod.
By the time the pair had regained their wits and their breath, Snowball had rejoined them, unruffled by his own harrowing ride. “It is good to see that everything went well and nothing went wrong this time, though it would be interesting to test the safety systems on people as large as you, because we have only had gnomes …” the wild-haired gnome said by way of greeting. Again, the doorkeeper could not suppress a smile at their panicked faces.
“Now what?” Teldin demanded, eager to get moving, get the cloak off, and get out of this madhouse. He weakly struggled to his feet, bracing himself against a wall. Gomja very slowly followed suit.
Snowball plunged down a gloomy corridor. “Well, we go to the Magical Artificer’s Guild examination rooms, and they will do tests on you, which will be fascinating, because I have never seen the kinds of tests – are you coming? – they do …” Sharing a look of dread, Teldin and Gomja followed the prattling Snowball.
The magical artificers received Teldin with great interest and listened to his explanation of the cloak’s discovery. As usual, Teldin adjusted his story a bit, though this time he included the spelljammer and the captain in his tale. It seemed best to mention the cloak’s otherworldly source. What the farmer did not say related to the neogi, especially their deadly interest in the artifact. As he both hoped and now somewhat feared, the gnomes were fascinated by the tale. The human wound up repeating it at least six times as gnomes of greater and greater importance were brought in for consultation. Finally he showed them how the cloak grew and shrank on command.
“Self-fitting fabric!” exclaimed Niggil, a particularly excited onlooker. “Think of the possibilities for the Tailor’s Guild!”
“Can you take it off?” Teldin demanded of the oldest and most pompous observer of the lot, a dark-haired gnome named – for Teldin’s convenience – Ilwar. The fellow’s beard was curly, full, and squarely cut, each stray hair long since having been excised. The beard made the gnome’s chin look like of block of ebon stone.
The little expert circled slowly around Teldin, who was perched on a small stool, pausing only to finger the cloth. “It is possible to remove any item, given the correct application of —”
“Can you remove it now?” Teldin pressed quickly. He did not want them to spend all their time working out “correct applications.”
“All things must be done in their right time, since it would be a mistake to rush into something without all the facts,” Ilwar said pompously, his straight-cut beard bobbing with each word. “In this case, an examination period of at least one full lunar period will be necessary before …”
Teldin groaned as the gnomes launched into a debate about how best to proceed. In fact, they ignored him as he sat on a stool between them. Finally they agreed to keep the cloak under observation for twenty-four hours before trying anything else. The decision having been reached – without once consulting the human – the gnomes all shook hands and filed out of the room, ignoring Teldin’s protests and ushering Gomja from the room as well. When the farmer tried to follow, a small squadron of armed fellows kept him at the door. He made several vain attempts to escape, then gave up and returned to his stool. “Have a good time, Gomja!” the farmer yelled to his partner, though he suspected that was unlikely. The door clicked shut, leaving Teldin alone in the chamber, barren except for the single stool on which he sat.
The twenty-four hours were perfectly uneventful at least, though extremely frustrating and boring to spend alone. Teldin wondered what the giff might be up to, where Cwelanas was right now, and whether what was left of his farm was still there. He thought of his parents, Amdar and Sharl. When three gnomes – bearded Ilwar and two assistants, Niggil, and Broz – finally returned, they ushered him to a table in a nearby testing chamber and once again circled, touched, smelled, and examined. The fact that the cloak had done nothing was treated with the greatest of importance, nonaction being an event in itself.
The gnomes proceeded to poke and prod, citing these steps as necessary to remove the cloak. Ilwar sat on the floor and assiduously took notes of every test and reaction.
“And you are sure you can’t take it off?” asked Ilwar, in a remarkably short-winded question. As the group’s leader, his full, black, and square-cut beard lent a great deal of solemnity to the proceedings.
“Not since I put it on. I can’t open the clasp,” Tel
din explained once again, chin propped on the table, wearily watching their shadows.
“More testing is what we need!” Niggil eagerly suggested. Niggil was a goggle-eyed fellow and had been suggesting this course of action from the start. “Puncture stress test, material resistance to temperature variability of extreme degrees, impact absorption analysis. I have all the tools right here!” the gnome rattled on excitedly. Teldin was getting used to the speed with which the gnomes spoke. He understood most of the words, though not always their meaning.
Suddenly one of the shadows on the wall waved a long, sharp-looking dagger. “See, we can puncture stress test it right here!” The shadow dagger suddenly pointed toward Teldin’s shadow back.
In an instant, Teldin was on his feet, sending Broz, the fat one, sprawling from his stool. There was a clink as the metal point of Niggil’s dagger bit stone. “Wait! Just wait right there!” Teldin bellowed, his face quivering with rage. He had been poked and jabbed enough already. The farmer wrapped the cloak tightly around himself and prowled the edges of the room, keeping Ilwar, Niggil, and Broz in sight at all times. “No more! That’s enough examining, and there will be no more testing!” As he spoke, Teldin whirled on Niggil, who was trying to creep forward with his dagger. “Just tell me this: Can you get this thing off?”
“Indubitably,” Ilwar answered gravely, scowling at the suggestion that there was something they couldn’t do.
“Theoretically possible,” said Niggil.
“We could cut it off,” suggested Broz in his relatively slow, earthy drawl. The other two both turned to Broz and evaluated his proposal.
“Don’t even try!” Teldin remarked through gritted teeth.
Broz looked up in mild surprise. “Oh, I didn’t mean the cloak or the chain or the clasp,” the quiet one finally explained in a torrent of words, “since we certainly don’t want to damage these, but I have a friend in the Healer’s Guild, and he’s been working for years now on a device that should keep a person’s head perfectly functional while separated from the rest of the body, and now you’ve come along, and it’s a perfect opportunity to test his theories and see if they really work —” Broz took a deep breath while Teldin stared at him in disbelief — “then,” Broz continued, “he could begin work on learning how to reattach the head!”
“Capital idea,” applauded Niggil, “then we can do tests!”
Without waiting for another suggestion, Teldin seized his spear, long since returned from examination by the Weapons Guild, and sprang to the door. “Snowball!” he bellowed at the portal. “Take me to Gomja now!”
Chapter Nineteen
“There, sir. It’s not much too look at, but the gnomes say it’ll get into the void.” High on the thirty-fifth level, Gomja pointed out a rough-hewn window to the lake below, where a ramshackle and half-built ship, another great pride of gnomish engineering, floated. Teldin and Gomja were watching the work from well above the floor of the volcano, looking down on the crater lake filled with the pale-blue waters collected from yearly snowmelt and rains.
“It’s not even finished!” Teldin protested. Teldin leaned on the windowsill and studied the craft. It didn’t look like any ship he’d ever seen, neither the Silver Spray nor even the Penumbra’s wreckage. It looked more like an immense, flat-bottomed river barge topped with a collection of buildings, catwalks, gantries, windmills, gigantic chimneys, and, amidships, a pair of waterwheels mounted on the sides. There was a semblance of order, with decks, a sterncastle, and a single small mast, but the whole thing was cloaked in jury-rigged scaffolding that obscured details. Teldin was amazed the whole thing even floated. “They’ve got a lot of work to do,” he scoffed.
“I think it is finished, sir,” Gomja cheerfully offered, gamely struggling to suppress a grin. “That’s the way the gnomes want her to look.”
“Want?” Teldin walked away from the window, shaking his head in disbelief. Barely escaping three days of “examination” and hardly recovered from a harrowing barrel ride up to the thirty-fifth level, Teldin couldn’t fathom any more wonders of gnomish tinkering. He grabbed one of the too-small chairs from a corner and sat, his long legs sprawling across the floor.
“Do you understand these gnomes?” He sighed with frustration, throwing his arms out wide. Gomja answered with a lopsided grin and a shrug, but Teldin did not see it, because his head had flopped back so he could stare at the ceiling.
Before any more could be said, the door banged open and a small herd of gnomes barged into the room, solemn Ilwar in the lead, Niggil, Broz, and Snowball following. While Ilwar managed to maintain a stately appearance, the other three reminded Teldin of chickens leaving the coop in the morning, swirling and half-flying in every direction. Naturally the gnomes were all talking at once.
Snowball was the first to make himself heard. “Since I found you, it is my pleasure to say that your cloak is —”
“Amazing,” Niggil interrupted. “Your cloak, as we have determined, is —”
“Quite amazing,” Snowball countered, glaring at the uppity Niggle, “because we are certain it is not —”
“From this —” Niggil cut in again.
“World!” Snowball finished with a defiant scowl at his fellow gnome. Satisfied that he had the last word, the doorkeeper smiled triumphantly at Teldin.
“I know that,” Teldin peevishly replied. “You asked me and I told you.” Snowball’s smug posture deflated slightly at the scorn in Teldin ‘s voice.
Calm and dignified in contrast to his fellows, Ilwar held up his hand to prevent any more outbursts. Surprisingly enough, the other three kept quiet, though Broz had yet to speak anyway. “Ah, Teldin Moore of Kalaman, now we have proven it through our studies, where before we had only your word, and therefore the origin is certain, so there —”
“Well, excuse me, but if you know so much, how do I get it off?” Teldin interrupted, hoping that, just maybe, the gnomes might finally have the answer.
“That must be determined by further examination —”
“And testing,” chimed in Niggil. Ilwar glared at the big-eyed gnome, cowing him into silence.
“Fortunately, we three —”
“Four,” Snowball corrected. The square-bearded gnome glared again. Snowball looked to the floor, abashed.
Satisfied, Ilwar continued. “We four are familiar with the new and wonderful science of spelljamming and are perfectly suited to —”
“Is that your ship?” a voice suddenly boomed. Ilwar, automatically assuming one of the gnomes had spoken again, glowered at the trio. They, in turn, did their best to look innocent, nodding back toward the large giff. Gomja was pointing to the vessel that floated on the lake. “Excuse me, sir, for interrupting,” the alien offered. The human dismissed the whole thing, secretly relieved to be free of the building barrage of gnomish gibberish. The gnome’s call for more testing had the ominous ring of failure to it.
Before Ilwar could regain control, the other three gnomes scurried to the window and, practically piling onto one another, peered over the edge of the sill to the lake below.
“Oh! The pride of our fleet, the finest ship we ever built,” chattered Snowball, “the Unquenchable Fire-Powered Sidewheel-Shaped …” He continued on with an endless name.
“Certainly finer than our last ship,” the goggle-eyed Niggil assured the giff, “the Improved Star-Sailing Ship Based On Modified Plans From the Previously Improved Star-Sailing Ship That Broke in Half and Sank …”
“Indeed,” Ilwar gravely added as he came to the window, clearing a way through his juniors. “This one has remained afloat for an entire thirty days, whereas the Improved …”
“And it doesn’t require all those squirrels,” the heretofore silent Broz announced in his deep voice. Gomja’s eyes darted from gnome to gnome as the giff vainly tried to follow a single conversation.
Squirrels? Teldin thought, hopelessly trying to puzzle out that one.
“But what do you call this one?” the big alie
n asked, totally lost by the four different speakers.
Snowball harrumphed in self-importance. “As I was saying, the Unquenchable Fire-Powered Sidewheel-Shaped Motive —”
“Does it have a shorter name?” Teldin asked from across the room, breaking the litany of words flowing from Snowball’s lips. Everyone fell silent at the grave import of this question.
Ilwar stroked at his black beard several times before finally speaking. “No,” he allowed slowly, “but to help you, it could be given one, such as the Unquenchable Side-Mounted Steam Generated —”
Teldin tried to suppress a wince as the litany began anew. “Maybe something smaller-like one word?” the farmer suggested.
“Hmm, that will be difficult, for it is not in the gnomish nature to be anything less than absolutely precise,” Ilwar answered, almost rationally explaining his people’s trait, “unless, of course, you or your companion, who is not like any other creature we have seen on Krynn, can make a suggestion that we could use —”
“The Unquenchable,” Gomja eagerly interrupted, sensing an opportunity to end the discussion. “Will that do?”
The gnomes turned to each other in serious consideration of the title, with Ilwar acting as dignified moderator of the discussion. Finally they quit chattering and looked at one another with wonder in their eyes.
