Beyong the Moons

Chapter Eighteen

The gnome rattled on as he ducked under ropes creaking across pulleys and led Teldin and Gomja down the central corridor. Water dripped from patched and repatched pipes that ran at all angles across the ceiling. From down the hallway, toward the center of the mountain, came a faint but steady clamor of bells, whistles, and banging drums. Gnomes, bundles of parchment under their arms, hurried past, sometimes hailing Snowball with a greeting that was never completed until long past. Teldin, just for caution’s sake, remained alert, ready to plug his ears. The giff warily brought up the rear, leery of every rope, pipe, and unknown thing that hung from the ceiling.

At last their passage broke into an immense central shaft, both terrifying and grand. Although Teldin had seen a few impressive fortifications during the war, particularly the dark Tower of High Sorcery at Palanthas, nothing in all his brief travels could compare to the gnome works here. The inside of the mountain was an immense, hollowed out, and inverted cone, terraced just as the outside of the mountain had been, forming rings around a widening central shaft. Lights gleamed and moved along the sides. A constant rumble of noise filled the cavern; the deep drone of a thousand distant sounds were punctuated by occasional shrill bursts close at hand. The chamber soared upward into the darkness as far as Teldin could see and beyond, as he picked out quivering points of light somewhere high above him. They were like night stars, except he knew that neither was it night nor was he outside.

Almost as impressive as the shaft itself was the seemingly endless tangle; ropes and cables stretched across the center of the cavern to tie together far-flung gantries that projected over the rims of different terraces. It looked to Teldin like an incomplete spiderweb. The main floor was littered with catapults of all types and sizes. Gnomes swarmed over these, hammers and saws in hand. “Gnomeflingers,” Snowball explained. “They’re not working right now, because they’ve got just a few little problems that need to be worked out-”

“Such as?” Teldin asked, his curiosity piqued. He was starting to get the hang of gnome speech, the breakneck way they approached the Common tongue and their constant desire to keep talking.

“Oh, well, first, the sponges all died, so we have to get new ones,” Snowball explained as he led them around the perimeter of the main floor, “but we do have a few working gnomeflingers for cargo, and the sponges are only the emergency emergency backup safety system,” the gnome offered hopefully, ‘so it is perfectly safe, unless the new gears in the timing system are not right, which we have not tested yet, but you could be the first and- “No, thank you, Snowball,” Teldin politely refused.

“Besides, I think Gomja might be too heavy for your machines.” He laid a hand on the giffs bulky arm, eager to make his point.

Snowball rolled his eyes up as he made some quick mental calculations. “It might take a few shots, level one to level four, then level four to the big catapult on level seven, then-”

“Nobody is shooting me anywhere, little gnome,” Gomja boomed emphatically as he stepped forward, his ears perked with alarm. Legs set and arms crossed, the giff towered over Snowball.

“Well, then, I guess we will have to use the slow method,” Snowball answered in another peevish huff. “Not that we would ever hurt anyone-gnomes have such a bad repuration with you outsiders, but, really, everything is perfectly safe and I have only been hurt once-seriously.” Watching closely for the expected look of alarm, which did cross his guests’ face, the doorkeeper snickered at his own joke. He led them to a metal disk suspended by chains, like the pan of giant scale. “If you will step on there, we can get you ready…" The gnome tugged on Teldin’s sleeve, impatiently hustling the human onto the disk, talking all the while. The farmer did not hear any more, for his attention was caught suddenly by a creaking overhead. Above he saw a small gondola swinging precariously over open space and being furiously pulled along by a small gnome in a basket. As Teldin gawked upward, Snowball leaned over and scrutinized a needle and a team of gnomes loaded bags onto a similar disk. The gondola passed out of sight, and the farmer looked down and realized he was standing on a giant scale.

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-ftnally 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,” Teldin 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!”