Darkness and Light

Chapter 21

As Kitiara pondered Cupelix's words, Wingover appeared, yawning, at the ship railing.

"G'morning! When's breckfiss?" he asked, thick-tongued.

"You ate not five hours ago," Kitiara chided. She slipped her shirt and mail back on her shoulder.

Roperig and Fitter stood in the hull door. Roperig's hand was still firmly fixed to his apprentice's back. "Hello, dragon!" he said heartily.

"Hello!" added Fitter.

"Did you sleep well, little friends?" asked Cupelix.

"Very well indeed, thank you. I — We thought we might go outside and take in a bit of fresh air," said Roperig.

"Stay close," Kitiara warned. "Every time one of you gnomes does something on his own, he ends up putting us to no end of trouble."

Roperig promised not to stray, and Fitter had no choice but to agree. They strolled to the door of the obelisk in hilar ious misstep. Small cyclones of wind swirled through the hollow interior of the obelisk. Kitiara realized that this was

Cupelix laughing. She couldn't resist; small chuckles burst out of her and changed to full-fledged guffaws.

Sturm braced himself on his arms and shook his head. He heard laughter. His head cleared, though his memory seemed adrift in fog. He got to his feet, turned to the sound of laughter, and was bowled down by Roperig and Fitter.

Kitiara hauled the gnomes off Sturm and held them up at arm's length. "What's the matter with you two? Didn't you see Sturm standing there?"

"But-but-but," stuttered Fitter.

She shook them. "Well, out with it!"

"It was an accident, Kit," said Sturm, getting to his feet once more. Poor Fitter was running in midair, his short legs churning. Kitiara set the gnomes on their feet.

"Tree-men!" Roperig exploded. "Outside!"

"What! How many?"

"See for yourself!"

They rushed to the door. Even as Sturm appeared in the outer opening, a red glass spear hit the pavement in front of him and shattered into a thousand razor-sharp slivers. Kiti ara grabbed him by his sword belt and hauled him back with one hand.

"Better stay back," Kitiara suggested.

"I can keep myself out of harm's way." Sturm pressed close to the right wall and peered out. The valley floor around the obelisk was thick with tree-men — thousands, if not tens of thousands of them. They began to hoot, "Ou-Stoom laud,

Ou-Stoom laud."

"What are they saying?" Kitiara asked, behind him.

"How should I know? Rouse all the gnomes," he told Kiti ara. "I'll speak to Cupelix." Kitiara got Roperig, Fitter, and

Wingover to help her.

"Cupelix?" Sturm called, for the dragon had vanished into the top of the tower again. "Cupelix, come down!

There's trouble outside!"

Trouble? I dare say, there is trouble!

A great rustle of brassy wings sounded, and the dragon alighted on one of the crossing pillars that ran from one side of the obelisk to the other. Cupelix's metallic claws closed over the marble pillar with a clack. He furled his wings and started preening himself along either wing.

"You don't seem very disturbed by this development,"

Sturm said, planting his fists on his hips.

"Should I be?" asked the dragon.

"Considering the tower is besieged, I would think yes."

"The Lunitarians are not very intelligent. They would never have come here if you hadn't killed that fool of a mor tal they made their king."

"Rapaldo was mad. He killed one of the gnomes, and would've killed others if we hadn't resisted," said Sturm.

"You should feel flattered that they have come all this way to kill you. That uncouth phrase they keep repeating — do you know what it means? 'Sturm must die.'"

Sturm's hand tightened around his sword handle. "I am prepared to fight," he said grimly.

"Your kind is always ready to fight. Relax, my knightly friend; the tree-folk will not attack."

"Are you so certain?"

Cupelix yawned, exposing teeth green with verdigris. "I am the Keeper of the New Lives. Only a severe trauma would have compelled the Lunitarians to come here in the first place.

However, they are not so bold as to trifle with me."

'›le can't just let them blockade us!" Sturm insisted.

"Shortly, the sun will set, and the tree-folk will take root.

The Micones will awaken and clear them away."

"The Micones come out only at night?"

"No, but they are practically blind in sunlight." Cupelix pricked up his ears when Kitiara returned, herding the gnomes ahead of her. The dragon reassured them all that they were in no danger from the Lunitarians.

"Perhaps we should prepare a barricade, just the same," said Stutts.

"I think our time would be better spent repairing the

Cloudmaster," said Sighter. "With the scrap metal we brought from Rapaldo's keep, we ought to be able to make repairs in a few hours."

Birdcall whistled a sharp note. Stutts nodded, saying,

"We haven't the fire needed to work iron."

"I may be able to help you there," Cupelix said smoothly.

"How much wood will you need?"

"You're being awfully helpful," Sturm said. "Why?"

The beast's eyes narrowed to vertical slits. "Do you ques tion my motives?" he asked. With his long ears laid back,

Cupelix looked quite fierce.

"Frankly, yes."

The dragon relaxed. "Ho, ho! Very good! I blink first,

Master Brightblade! I do have a favor to ask of you all, but first we shall see to the repair of your ingenious vessel."

Already the light in the obelisk had subsided to a dusty rose.

The hooting of the tree-men, muffled by the thick walls, faded with the sunlight. It was soon quite dark inside the obelisk. Kit iara complained to Cupelix, while the gnomes ranged noisily through the Cloudmaster in search of tools.

"Oh, very well," said the dragon. "I forget your mortal eyes cannot pierce the simple veil of darkness." He spread his wings until the tips scraped the surrounding walls and bowed his neck in a swanlike curve.

"Ah-biray solem! Creatures of the dark!

Bring forth a fair and living spark

To light the tower bright as day.

Come, Micones! Solem ah-biray!"

The glassy clicking that they all associated with the giant ants arose from the holes in the obelisk floor. It grew quite loud, as though hundreds of the formidable creatures were stirring below their feet.

Something stroked Sturm's leg. He was near one of the large holes in the floor, and a Micone had poked its head out to touch Sturm with one of its antennae. He recoiled, and the giant ant emerged, to be followed immediately by another, and another. The floor rapidly filled with Micones, all clicking and gently waving their crystalline feelers.

"To your places, my pets," ordered Cupelix."The ants nearest the walls climbed up to the lowest ledge and hung there, their broad, plum-shaped abdomens poised off the edge. When the entire interior was ringed with hanging ant bodies, the Micones began rubbing their bellies against the smooth marble shelf. As they did, their translucent abdo mens glowed, first a dull red, then warmer and brighter.

Like a mass of living lanterns, the ants gradually illuminated the whole lower half of the obelisk.

Sturm and Kitiara stared. No matter how jaded they thought they'd become to the strange wonders of the red moon, something new and startling was always happening.

"Better?" said Cupelix smugly.

"Tolerable," said Kitiara, sauntering away.

Sturm went to the door. The Lunitarians were a true for est now, still and tall in the starlight. This forest, though, was arranged in perfect concentric circles around the great obelisk that shielded the killers of their Iron King.

Cupelix withdrew to his lofty sanctum. Not long after he did, Sturm returned to the Cloudmaster, where the gnomes were up to their elbows in repair work.

When he descended to the engine room, he found to his shock that Flash, Birdcall, and Stutts had torn apart the entire engine, searching for defects. The deck was covered with cogs and gears, copper rods that Wingover called

'armatures,' and hundreds of other examples of gnomish technology. Sturm was afraid to enter, for fear of stepping on and crushing some delicate, vital component.

"Uh, how goes it?" he ventured.

"Oh, not to worry, not to worry!" Stutts said blithely.

"All is in good order." He snatched a metal curlicue from

Cutwood and snapped at Flash, "Stay away from the Indis pensable Inductor Coil! It mustn't be magnetized!" Lunitari had finally bestowed its 'gift' upon Flash; he was intensely magnetic. Bits of iron and steel had begun to cling to him.

Flash meekly stepped away from the Indispensable Inductor

Coil. "We're trying to find what parts were damaged by the lightning strike," Stutts went on, "so they can be fixed, too."

"Keep at it," Sturm said, trying not to smile. He knew the gnomes would find an answer of sorts — eventually.

He found Kitiara in the wheelhouse, sitting in Stutts's chair. She had one leg cocked over the arm of the chair and was drinking from a tall clay tankard. "Dragon ale?" asked

Sturm.

"Umm. Want some? No, of course you don't." She drank some more. "All the more for me then."

"The gnomes are hard at it," he said. '%le could be on our way home in a day or two."

"Can't be too soon for me," she replied.

"Oh? Do you have plans?"

Kitiara cradled the tankard in her lap. "Do you really want to know?"

"I feel a bit useless with the gnomes working, and the

Micones working, and us not doing anything."

She let her head fall back as she slouched lower in the small chair. "I was thinking how I would like to raise an army of my own and not be a mercenary any longer. My own troops, loyal to me."

"And what would you do with your own army?"

"Make myself a kingdom. Seize an existing one in a weak ened state, or carve one out of a larger country." Kitiara looked Sturm in the eye. "What do you think of that?"

He sensed she was baiting him. He merely replied, "Do you think you're up to commanding an entire army?"

She made a fist. "I'm almost an army on my own. With my new strength and my old experience, yes, I'm up to it.

Would you like a commission in my guard? You're pretty decent with a sword. If I could break you of your foolish notions of honor, you'd be even better."

"No, thank you, Kit," he spoke seriously. "I have a duty to my heritage. I know that one day in my lifetime, the Knights of Solamnia will recover from their disgrace. I shall be there when they do." He turned away to the wide windows. "And

I have other obligations. There's still my father to find. He's alive, I've seen that. He has left a legacy for me at our castle, and I intend to claim it." His voice trailed off.

"Is that your final word?" she asked. Sturm nodded. "I don't understand you. Don't you ever think of yourself?"

"Of course I do. Entirely too much, sometimes."

Kitiara let the tankard dangle from her fingers. "Name an occasion. It can't have been since I've known you."

Sturm opened his mouth to speak, but before he could a shadow fell across the bow of the Cloudmaster. Kitiara jumped up. It was the shadow of the dragon.

Will you come out a moment, my friends? he thought at them. Kitiara and Sturm went down the ramp and descended to the obelisk floor.

"What is it?" asked Kitiara.

"I have set the Micones to building a rampart that will impede the tree-folk from entering the obelisk," Cupelix said. He preened himself with a foreclaw, as if proud of his ingenuity.

"I thought you said they didn't dare come in," Sturm said sharply. Cupelix stopped in midpreen.

"That was true of ordinary times, but you, dear fellow, have incited the Lunitarians to overcome their fear of me.

Their presence here is proof of that. It does not take deep wisdom to deduce they may soon decide to go where they have never been."

"We can't have that," said Kitiara, folding her arms bellig erently.

"No indeed. So I thought you might like to inspect my defenses, as it is your lives they will defend."

Sturm roused the gnomes from their current work, sal vaging scraps of wood from the Cloudmaster to burn in the forge fire. Everyone trooped to the open door to see what

Cupelix had set the Micones doing.

The giant ants were lined up in echelon, parallel to the door of the obelisk. At some invisible, inaudible signal, the

Micones lowered their triangular heads to the ground. They pushed the red soil forward in a long heap, and repeated this process many times. Thus they created a trench around the obelisk. The dirt they piled into a high rampart.

"Satisfactory?" asked the dragon from his perch.

Kitiara shrugged and sauntered back to the ship. The gnomes followed in twos and threes as they grew bored with watching the mighty Micones shift the red earth. Soon only

Sturm was left. He watched until all the gaps in the rampart were filled. The loose dirt spilled down from the top of the wall, burying the nearest tree-men until only their jagged tops protruded from the crimson soil.