The War of the Lance

War Machines

There was a great blast of steam in the passage through the mountain. Gnomes came sliding down the rock sides, a few dropping from above and caught, heartstoppingly, by nets; two popped out of compressed-air tubes in the ground and tumbled in the air before plummeting toward a landing-pad near the steam source. One landed on the pad, the other in a bush. The assembled gnomes pulled levers, rang bells, turned cranks, and shouted directions at each other without listening to the directions shouted back.

Mara dashed from rock to rock like a child playing hide-and-seek, each sprint taking her closer to her objective. In her whole life in Arnisson she had never heard this much whistling, clanking, and general noise. She resisted putting both hands over her ears and edged quietly and quickly through the assembled gnomes until she arrived at a narrow ledge at the point where the passageway met the inner crater wall of the mountain. She slid onto it, staring down in fascination at the array of gantries and cranes and at the almost continual rain of equipment and gnomes. Far below, she could see a trap door.

A loose cable drifted toward her.

Mara leapt nimbly out of the shadows, catching a hanging cable with her cloth-wrapped hand. She slid down, touching the mountainside lightly with her feet, then sailing back into open air. She vanished into a pit in the ground.

She saw above her, in a brief flash, layer on layer of gnome houses and workshops, cranes, nets, and the occasional flying (or falling) gnome. She congratulated herself on passing unseen and unheard, but part of her grudgingly admitted that any gnome who saw her would have assumed she was just testing a new invention, unless the gnome was also close enough to notice that she was human. And no one could have heard her over the clanking, whirring, grinding, and intermittent steam whistles.

The cable swung against the edge of the pit, which was now a skylight, above her. She climbed up with the rope, pumped with her legs to accelerate its swinging, tucked, sprang, rolled over in midair and landed noiselessly on the stone floor next to a gnomeflinger.

"Perfect, of course," she said with satisfaction. Mara unwrapped her hand from the rope, took three swaggering steps forward, and accidentally knocked down a gnome who was looking the other way. Mara sprawled backward, legs in the air and arms flailing.

The gnome scrambled up and offered her a hand. "Awfully sorry; it was my fault, after all I was busy thinking, there must be a defect in the — "

"It was my fault really," she began. "I'm sorry — " Then she realized that he hadn't stopped talking.

" — a little borrowed hydraulic gear would make it more efficient yet, if it didn't make it top-heavy — and a spring with a trigger-catch might store the energy — "

"Stop."

He did.

"Now," Mara said, "what are you talking about?"

"I was just telling you," the gnome said impatiently, "about the idea I had when I watched you trying to sneak down here — "

"You saw me coming?" She sagged slightly.

" — and I thought, if people are going to jump through the air, which I hadn't considered — until I saw you; you were obvious — we need precautions because of the gnomeflingers." His eyes, a light violet, all but glowed. "We all need bumpers. Yes. Being-bumpers, employing my sensors. Large, high-tension fenders suspended from our shoulders to absorb the shock. They'd have metal frames, cloth padding on the outside — "

"They sound awfully heavy," Mara objected. She was quite young, and slightly built, compared to the gnome.

"Then we'd add wheels to it," he continued without pausing, "And a spring-loaded axle for each wheel, and a governor to keep the axles balanced — "

"Who could move with all that on?"

" — and a motor to move the whole thing," the gnome finished firmly. "How do you expect to walk anywhere, if you don't use a motor? Youngsters these days." He rolled his eyes, but smiled at her. "Excuse me." Pulling a bulky pen from a loop on his belt, he tucked his chin and began drawing frantic, jagged lines across his shirt — a shirt that was already covered with sketches of wooden frames, toothed and worm gears, and interlocking systems of pulleys. One design started on his belly and moved through conduits and guy ropes all down his left sleeve.

The gnome looked up and saw Mara staring at him. "Well, I can't always find a sheet of paper when a thought strikes," he said with some asperity.

"Is each shirt a different project?"

"Of course not. In fact, some designs are on five or six different shirts. I keep hoping," he said wistfully, "that some day I'll be able to cross-index them, but every time I even get close, I need to do laundry. And here you are." He peered at her. "Speaking of you, are you someone I should know?"

"Everyone should," Mara said proudly, standing very straight.

"Everyone doesn't," the gnome said thoughtfully, "because I don't. Who are you?"

"I am known," she said with a bow and flourish, "as Mara the Wild." She did a standing flip. "Also Mara the Clever." She tapped the gnome's pockets significantly. "Also," she said in a loud whisper, "Mara the Queen of Thieves."

The gnome blinked. "Goodness," he said disapprovingly, "have you stolen much?"

"Not — much," the Queen of Thieves admitted. She scuffed her toe on the tunnel floor. "Not anything, in fact." This was why, after announcing her current planned heist to her family, she was also known as Mara the Dangerously Stupid.

She looked defiantly at the gnome. "But I'm sure that I could steal something if it was really important. I am also," she said demurely, "a woman of dazzling beauty, whom all men worship and crave." She coyly brushed at her short-cropped dark hair.

The gnome only looked at her.

"Okay," Mara said grudgingly, "so I won't be a woman of dazzling beauty for a couple of years. It's going to happen, I promise."

"I hope," he said seriously, "that you can accept all that worship and craving without becoming overly vain."

Mara smiled and, in the absence of a mirror, admired her slender shadow against the rock wall. "I'm sure I'll manage perfectly. Anyway, what's your name?"

The gnome immediately went on at some length, pausing for breath in what were clearly accustomed places.

"I only asked your name," Mara broke in finally.

The gnome looked disconcerted. "I'm not even halfway through it."

"Maybe I asked the wrong question. What does your name mean to humans?"

He nodded. "It's very descriptive, even for my people, and surprisingly apropos. I'm known among humans as He Who Will Not Stand Upon Accepted Science, But Will Research Back Into Dangerous and Even Unworkable Ideas, Nor Will He Stand on Conventional Testing, But Will Fall Back on Hazardous and Injurious Techniques, and Will Stand up for Belief in Technology, Which, Back Before the Great Cataclysm — "

"What," Mara said desperately, "do humans call you for short?"

The gnome said simply, "Standback."

Mara leaped back.

"No, no," said the gnome. "That's my name. Standback."

"Are you an inventor? Where's your workshop? Do you do all your work down here? You're not going to tell anyone you've seen me, are you?"

Poor Standback had no idea how to answer four questions thoroughly without taking a month off. "Would it upset you terribly if I answered in brief?" he said diffidently.

Mara, realizing with a shudder how narrowly she had avoided dying of old age during a participial phrase, put a hand on the gnome's arm. "Please, take as little of your research time as possible."

Standback was flattered and grateful. He concentrated. "Yes, I'm an inventor. These tunnels are my work area; I know they don't look like much, but they're roomy. I do all my work here. And no, I won't tell anyone I've seen you," he finished with slight melancholy, "because there's no one else to tell. I'm the only one — down here. It's nice to talk to somebody. Where are you from?"

Mara assumed an heroic stance, arms folded across her thin chest. "I am from Arnisson, a village under siege, desperate to keep itself free from the cruel talons of the draconian army. We are under the command of a lone Knight of Solamnia, a former townsman named Kalend. He's a friend of my older brother's," she sighed and her voice softened. "Kalend's nice, and he thinks I'M wonderful, but that's really not that surprising, because I'm ravishingly beautiful." She sighed again, this time in dejection. "Though I do wish he'd stop calling me 'little girl' all the time. Anyway, when I met him on the rampart walls a few nights ago, I asked him if we were likely to survive, and he said not really, but if the draconians attacked too early or while they thought we were unprepared, we still might win. And he said that if he had even one working gnome weapon, we'd stand a chance. And I think he meant it," she added sincerely.

She went on and on — some about the draconians, some about how dire the situation was, but mostly about Kalend, who grew taller and better looking as her story progressed. Standback nodded frequently.

"And so," she said, resuming the heroic stance, "I left Arnisson that very night. I left unseen," she added, pausing and staring at Standback earnestly.

"Unseen," he echoed dutifully.

"Exactly." She stared into space. "Stealthily creeping out under the cover of darkness, I, alone, crawling through the enemy camp…

She went on again for quite some time, not bothering much about the truth, which was actually pretty boring and she was sure no one wanted to hear anyway.

Standback listened patiently, feeling only a little put out that she had been going on like that after making him be brief. When she finished, he said, "But why did you come?"

"What?" Mara brought herself back to being Queen of Thieves. "I came here," she began boldly, then faltered as she realized how it would sound, "to — borrow, or — get, or somehow — take — okay, STEAL some gnome weaponry for the war with the draconians." She was blushing.

Standback decided that he liked her, but he wasn't sure how sensible she was.

"Gnome technology is famous throughout Krynn," Mara added wheedlingly, with some truth. FAMOUS and INFAMOUS were fairly close. "There are legends of past great weapons. The Knights of Solamnia still speak of your poison gas — "

"Yes, well," Standback said uncomfortably, "it was supposed to make us invisible, you know. Still, not a total loss; it does wonders for pest control down here. Mostly." He glanced from side to side.

"Mostly?" Mara jumped as a loud chittering sound flew by her ear. She whirled, but saw nothing.

"We ran out of the original batch lately, so we made a new one. It doesn't seem to kill them any more." Standback ducked as a flapping sound passed near his head. "Lately it just makes them invisible."

Mara looked around nervously. The tunnel, at the bottom of the crater that formed Mount Nevermind, was rough-hewn rock scored by some huge excavating blade and riddled with drill holes and iron bolts. Ropes and cables hung every which way, with pulleys, blocks and tackles, and crane tracks running the length of the ceiling.

Though there were no torches, the tunnel was quite bright. Mara gingerly felt the walls; they were warm to the touch, but nowhere near hot enough to give off light. "How are these tunnels lit?"

Standback pointed to the glowing fungi on the wall. "We cultivated them for food. Fortunately, the ones we cultivated for light are quite tasty." He mused, "You know, we'd like to do more with biological engineering. It's the technology of the future."

"Or the end of the world," Mara muttered. She was beginning to worry, marginally, about the wisdom of stealing gnome inventions. However, if the wise and wonderful Kalend. Knight of Solamnia, believed in gnome technology… "Could you show me some of your weapons?"

"I would love to," Standback said unhesitatingly and formally. "This way, please."

They moved down the junk-strewn tunnel. "You seem awfully at ease with women, even startlingly beautiful ones," Mara told him.

Standback was silent — a rare condition for a gnome. Finally he said, "Perhaps that is because I love someone."

"Really?" Mara was fascinated. "What's she like?"

Standback Went on at length about the exquisite curve of her left little finger.

"Okay, we'll take it that she's pretty. What's her name? Her human name," Mara added hastily.

"It's very beautiful." Standback stared upward dreamily. "She's called Watch As Her Machines Move In and Out, Like a Night Watchman Blowing Out A Candle to Light a Lamp of Such Incredible — "

"The short form."

"Watchout." He sighed.

Mara nodded. "Standback and Watchout. You were made for each other."

"I think so," he said sadly, "and she thinks so. But unless things change, it can never be."

"Why?" Mara asked sympathetically.

Standback glowered and said suddenly, gnome-tognome, "Thatisabsolutelytheworstpart — "

"What?"

He took a shuddering breath and said in slower human fashion, "That is absolutely the worst part of this whole business. I have not as yet received approval for my Life Quest."

"Your what?"

"My Life Quest. My one achievement, my one goal. It is to be the sensors that go into the burglar alarms. I've already designed them and put them in place throughout Mount Nevermind."

Mara, remembering how she had slipped in without setting any off, murmured, "Still in the development stage, I guess."

"Oh, no; they're highly functional. By the way, how did you pass them?"

"I made an elaborate and clever plan to drop from the top of the crater by rope on a winch…" Mara hesitated.

Standback shook his head. "Impossible. I have every passage, every window, every cranny and cut of the outer mountain covered by a sensor. How did your plan work?" -

Mara fidgeted. "I didn't use it," she said finally. "I was standing at the steel entrance doors, trying to figure out how to climb up the mountain, while the doors were sliding shut. But the triple-lock fell off and jammed them open so I was able to slip through — "

"The doors." Standback slapped his forehead, leaving a pen mark. "Of course. I knew I'd forgotten something. Sensors on the doors. Still," he said quickly, "it was very clever, making a plan with a lot of rope and a winch. You're almost thinking like a gnome."

Mara chose to take that as a compliment. "Have you shown the committee the evidence of your research?"

"I can't." Standback looked uncomfortable. "I was cleaning them — with a perfectly fine solvent invented by a friend of mine — when they dissolved. Also, the table under them. Wonderful stain remover, though." Standback's shaggy eyebrows dropped low as he brooded. "I can't reapply until I've proven that I have a semi-working prototype." He added sadly, "If only you had been caught or killed."

Mara sighed in her turn. "If only YOU were the master of the Weapons Guild."

Standback shook his head. "If I were, Watchout and I would be married by now. And I would be far above." He looked upward wistfully, as though he could see through the ceiling. "Up where there is honor, glory, and matching funding. Where draftsmen constantly draft bigger drafting boards for bigger projects with larger cost overruns…"

Mara, disheartened, listened as he described the Schedule Rescheduling Department, the Management Oversight Overseers, and the apparently all-powerful Expanding Contractors. "Tell me," she broke in finally, "have any of these projects ever been finished?"

Standback, shocked to the depth of his stubby little being, stared at her. "Young woman, any project worthy of state funding should be perfected, never finished."

"Well, if you're not the master of the Weapons Guild, then what ARE you?" she asked.

He lowered his eyes. "I'm a lower-level inventor whose future life work must be scrounged from the debris left by the failures of others — "

"Have you invented anything?"

"I've done more varied work than most gnomes you have met."

Since Mara had met no other gnomes, she simply nodded.

"My Life Quest — " Standback stopped, looked pained, and said with careful stress, "my primary work just now is still sensor-related, since that was my Life Quest. I invent security and safety equipment for home or fort, for the detection and prevention of unwanted forcible spies, intruders, or weapons — "

"Paladine's panties," Mara said irreverently. "You make burglar alarms and traps."

Standback said happily, "That's why I was so happy when you appeared. What luck, really — a burglar, coming straight through the burglar alarms and lockouts. It will be a boon to my data."

"Not luck." Mara was having trouble understanding. "I mean, Kalend ordered that I take this dangerous mission."

Standback looked dubious. "No offense and don't take this the wrong way, but you ARE rather young and did he really order you?"

Mara nodded emphatically. "It was when I was walking with him on the ramparts, which I try to do a lot — not that he minds or anything, even though I'm younger than he is, since I'm remarkably mature, responsible, and exceptionally good-looking for my age — and we were talking about the war. He said, 'If only there were one working gnome weapon, and we had it…'" Mara stopped and chewed her lip thoughtfully. "Or maybe he said, 'If there was only one gnome weapon that worked and we had it…'

"Anyway," Mara went on, "I remember thinking that he'd better not talk like that where the draconians could hear him, or they'd go get a weapon first, and then I thought about how happy he'd be if I went first instead and found him a weapon and saved the village, and — well, I left." She folded her arms over her chest. "Under cover of darkness, like I said. Through the draconian camps — "

The gnome raised a bushy eyebrow. He was coming to know Mara. "Through their camps?"

"Well, around. Under their very scaly noses."

"So you saw them?"

"Not actually saw them," she admitted, but added quickly, "But I knew they were there, and was too clever to be caught by them. Alone and courageous, I came — "

'To find weapons." Standback frowned, thinking. "To fight these draconians, whom you haven't really seen. Um."

He reached a conclusion and rubbed his stained and callused hands together. "Well, as long as you're here, I don't see why we shouldn't strike a deal. Do you still want some gnome weapons?"

"What?" It took Mara, caught up in dreams of her own heroism, a moment to remember what she was doing here. Her thin young mouth set firmly. "More than ever."

"I'll let you take one," he said. "Any one you want. If you'll test my security device."

She swallowed. Anti-burglar devices? "Do I have a choice?"

Standback was ecstatic. "And right afterward," Standback burbled happily, "I'll write up my test results and submit them to the Committee. And then if they approve my work — and I have no doubt they will — I'll marry Watchout."

They strode down the tunnel together, their footsteps setting off an uneasy rustling and flapping in the invisible colony clinging to the walls and roof above them.

"They're only bats," Standback said reassuringly. "I hope," he added, less so.

They walked past a number of side tunnels, their entrances half hidden by debris and hanging ropes and cables. Mara, like a good thief, took note of the turns and the fork back to the exit. "Where does the money come from for weapons research?"

"I use only junk, spare parts. The main projects were started on a grant from the Knights of Solamnia."

"The knights?" Mara looked serious. "I hope you're not counting on them for support. They aren't as rich as they used to be, you know — "

"This was a while back. They aren't as frequent visitors as they used to be, either," Standback pointed out. He screwed up his forehead. "In fact," he said thoughtfully, "I haven't seen them since the last In-House Weapons Test, several years ago. No, make that several decades ago."

"And you kept the project going?"

"It never lapsed, even before I took it over. A project," Standback said stiffly, "is a commitment. It's as important as a vow."

"They paid in advance, didn't they?" Mara asked dryly.

"Well, yes. Quite a lot, in fact. Here we are."

He pulled an elaborate key (four notches and a combination lock) from a ring at his waist. He inserted the key with some difficulty in a lock attached to a thick beam door in the tunnel wall. After three tries, it opened easily. "After you," he said. "This room has my first anti-spy device."

Mara stepped in cautiously. "Shouldn't your alarms have sensed me?"

"It's a proximity alarm," the gnome said. "Once testing is complete, I'll put hundreds of them in any place that needs monitoring. You can't have too much redundancy, you know." He was scribbling another note on his shirt. "Would you mind standing on that large black X on the floor?" The X had a small bump at the crosspoint.

A gnome-size test dummy on wheels stood next to the X. Mara rolled it almost onto the X and stood well off to one side. "Let's try it this way first."

"I've done this many times," Standback objected, "with that very dummy."

Mara said firmly, "Well, I haven't seen it work yet." She noted that the dummy hadn't a mark on it, though the walls and floor of the room were dented and scraped.

Standback complained, with some justification, "You promised. Is there no honor among thieves?"

"There was once," Mara said. "Someone stole it." Then she sighed and moved the dummy off the X. "I warn you, I'm leaving at the first sign of danger. What is it we're testing?"

"It's called the Room Security Spybanger," Standback said impatiently. "Now will you step on the X?"

Mara tapped the X with her toe, leapt, tucked, and rolled easily away, preparing to watch from a safe distance.

She heard a twang. A stone mallet — its head the size of her own — whistled above her close enough to ruffle her hair. Mara ducked, heard a second twang and felt a sudden sharp sting on her cheek as an elastic cord attached to the mallet handle snapped taut against her skin.

The mallet struck the far wall. A trap door popped open beside it. The mallet whizzed back. Mara's back flip carried her just out of range. She dropped flat as a second mallet spun out of the trap door and careened past her, setting off a third mallet.

Soon six stone hammers were ricocheting and thudding around the room. Mara rolled, leapt, ducked, twisted, and at one point slid down a thrumming elastic cord to keep out of the way.

Eventually, in desperation, she crawled back to a section of floor that every last mallet had failed to pass over. She glanced in all directions, poised to spring, until the mallets gradually lost momentum and dangled limply from the tangled elastics.

In the far comer, Standback applauded. "A perfect test." He wrote furiously on his stomach. "Absolutely perfect, with the exception of a few trajectory defects."

Mara looked down. She was crouched over the X. "You tried to kill me."

Standback shook his head violently. "Never. The Spybanger is designed only for self-protection; killing is purely accidental. Can you help me rig these back up?"

From a comer cabinet, Standback produced a large wooden crank. He inserted the crank into a spring and ratchet arrangement in the first trap and turned it until the mechanism was tight enough to leave room for the hammer in front of it. He lifted the mallet laboriously, then stood back, panting.

"And so amazingly easy to reload," he said, struggling to shut the trap before the hammer flew out.

Mara helped crank and lift the other five. "What else have you been working on?"

In answer, he led her through a second door — which led through a short tunnel to another room.

"This isn't for spies, and it's not an offensive weapon. It's a shock-lessening device, a preventive measure for high-impact disasters. A pneumatically seismosensitive counter-measure for offsetting combat-related upheavals."

"What does it do?"

"I just told you," Standback snapped. "When we get there, would you stand in the center of the room, right on the X?"

Mara started to agree readily, then stopped. "Is it supposed to be the safest place?"

Standback nodded.

"In that case," Mara said politely, "why don't YOU stand on it, and I'll observe?"

The gnome's shaggy eyebrows shot up. "That's kind of you." He stepped onto the X. "You don't mind taking the extra risk?"

"Never." Mara folded her arms. "Danger and I are well acquainted."

"All right. Watch, then. The Thudbagger is designed to protect against impact." He paused. "You've seen the gnomeflingers in use, above?"

Mara shuddered. She. had flitted down from level to level in the shadows, watching as gnomes sailed from level to level (and, usually, down again) from the bulky catapults that were equipped with everything except accuracy and control.

"Well," Standback continued, "this may surprise you, but several visiting knights thought that the gnomeflingers might also be dangerous."

"No!"

"Truly. They thought — now, to my mind, it takes a twisted mind to think this in the first place — that someone could use the gnomeflingers to throw dead weight projectiles instead of passengers. Well, we performed some experiments, but we never got reliable enough results to suggest that this would work."

"Why not?" Mara asked.

Standback sighed. "Mostly because the note-takers kept getting crushed by thrown rocks. At any rate, the knights asked us to come up with a defense to protect getting hurt by flying rocks. They talked about shields, and barriers, but our Hazard Analysis Committee interviewed the gnomeflinger Impact Test Survivors and concluded that the problem went beyond shields and walls. I brought their results down here with me." He led her into the next room.

The furniture, Mara noted with relief, did not look banged up at all. How dangerous could this room be?

A closer look revealed the furniture to be brand new. The comers of the room contained large piles of splinters.

"Are you sure you want ME to stand on the X?" Stand-back asked. "After all, I guarantee it to be the safest place in the room."

Mara bowed to him. "All the more reason to give it to you."

He was flattered. "How kind you are, and how brave."

"I am also called Mara the Courageous," she said.

Standback was not surprised.

He stepped onto the X and folded his arms confidently. "This room has a broad-band sensor." He pointed to a small round bump in the floor. "Stamp anywhere. You don't need to do it very hard."

The floor looked to be some kind of parquet, broken at regular intervals with circular lids each the size of a melon.

Mara eyed Standback narrowly and slammed her foot against the bare floor. Nothing happened. She stamped again, harder. Still nothing. She took a running start and stamped with both feet, hard enough to hurt her ankles. Nothing. She gave up and leaned on the wall.

Huge leather balloons popped out of the floor. Filling instantly with compressed air, the balloons smashed the new furniture to kindling.

Mara sidled around the edge of the room, squeezing between the wall and the balloons. "That's pretty impressive, Standback — hello?" She squeaked a balloon with her thumb. "Standback?"

Mara heard an answering squeak. She leapt onto one of the balloons, poised there like a cat, and saw a hand struggling upward in the crack where all the balloons met.

Mara rolled down to the hand and planted her feet against balloon, her right shoulder against another. Gradually, the two moved apart. She heard a gasping inhale below her, then a thump as something hit the floor.

"Thank you so very much," Standback said feebly. "The Thudbaggers are nearly perfect — I don't have a bruise on me — but I couldn't really breathe in there."

"You could make a snorkel," Mara said sarcastically. She had grown up near the sea, " — a short breathing tube."

There was a hiss, then another. The balloons were deflating. Standback appeared among them, stuffing them back below floor level. He said dubiously, "That's an awfully simplistic answer. You should leave design questions to the specialists. On the other hand," he added thoughtfully, "if it had reserve tanks — and an air pump — and free-swinging gimbals to keep it upright…" He sketched it all out on the only clear portion of his shirt.

Mara, who needed a rest, sat beside him, her chin in her hand. "I see why you're having problems getting promoted. Do you have to get these all working to win approval?"

"Oh, my goodness, no." Standback caught himself and added, almost defensively, "Besides, they all work wonderfully!" He stared out at the smashed furniture wistfully. "No, it's simply a matter of getting the Committee's stamp of approval. Unfortunately, I can't even get their attention. They completely ignore me."

"Do you do everything by committee?"

"Some humans think we invented the committee."

"And until you get their approval, poor Watchout can't be betrothed to you?"

"Nor should she be," Standback said glumly. "After all, would you agree to marry a gnome with no credentials?"

Mara didn't think she would marry a gnome at all, but decided it wouldn't be polite to point that out. "You're very nice just for yourself, credentials or no. And now," she said firmly, "what about the weapons?"

"A bargain's a bargain." Standback, making a final note on his shirt, opened the rear door of the Thudbagger room, and Mara found herself in a branch of the main tunnel again. They walked back toward the place where the tunnel split in two. Mara looked interestedly at the piles of debris and the bulky inventions half hidden under canvas or in shadow. Several of them were labeled, but life's too short to spend reading gnome labels.

"Wait." Mara had noticed a device carelessly tossed to one side on the tunnel floor.

It had a shiny black hand-grip butt and stock that supported a shining tube-and-yoke arrangement of blue steel and black wire, which was topped by a small sighting tube and a tiny ring with crossed hairs in it. The whole effect was remarkably menacing.

"What is it?" she asked, staring at it in awe.

"What? Oh, that." Standback nudged it with his foot disdainfully. "A co-worker made it."

"You disapprove of him?" Mara hazarded.

Standback nodded, his beard whipping up and down rapidly. "It was to be his Life Quest, and he abandoned it. Can you imagine, abandoning your Life Quest? He's always sworn that he'd fix it some day, but I doubt if he can; it has too few parts, it's far too small, and it can't even carry itself." He finished indignantly, "It doesn't even have a place for the operator to sit!"

Mara bent over it. "It fits in your hand."

"You see what I mean?"

She didn't, but only asked, "What's it for?"

The gnome snorted. "It's supposed to dowse for water, but it's hopeless. I can tolerate a few false starts, or a near miss, or the occasional explosion or dismemberment, but this — "

"It doesn't find any water, then?"

Standback said disgustedly, "Just diamonds, emeralds, rubies, other rocks…" He shoved it aside with a kick.

Mara looked back at it longingly, but kept walking.

Leaning alongside a hanging drop cloth on the tunnel wall was a human-size mannequin with some sort of backpack on it.

"This," Standback said as impressively as a gnome can be, in brief, "is the Mighty Thunderpack."

Mara examined the three nozzles connected to two tanks and what looked like a fire-starting flint. Near the top of the unit was also the now-familiar bulge of one of Standback's sensors. She gingerly touched the directional fin, like a fish's, on the Thunderpack. "How do you aim it?"

Standback laughed tolerantly. "It's not a weapon; it's personal troop transport."

Mara put it on her shoulders. For metal work, particularly for gnome metalwork, it was surprisingly light. "Very impressive," she said. She pictured an army (led by herself, naturally) swooping through squadrons of draconians and cutting them into small, non-combative strips. "How does it start up?"

"From the mere touch of an iron weapon," Standback said proudly. "I used a special kind of rock in it. Do you have a dagger?"

Mara hesitated.

"Come, come," the gnome said impatiently. "All thieves have daggers."

Embarrassed, Mara handed him the paring knife she had brought with her from her mother's kitchen.

Standback took it and said, "When I wave this near the sensor, the Mighty Thunderpack will burst into action." He tensed his arms and said in a melancholy voice, "Well, good-bye."

Mara, seeing the knife wave and noticing belatedly Standback's emphasis on "burst," lurched forward out of the way as Standback's arm moved near. To her relief, the Thunderpack did not activate. "What do you mean, 'goodbye?' Has this thing been tested before?" she demanded.

"Of course, extensively. Just look in the side room." The gnome gestured to the left, behind the drop cloth that Mara had assumed was hanging against the tunnel wall.

Mara lifted the cloth. Stacked floor to ceiling were the charred arms and legs of test dummies. Not one torso remained. "Has it ever been tested by a living person?"

"Of course not; why do you think — Oh, you mean, 'by someone living at the time he tested it.' Yes, once." Standback looked solemn. "Poor fellow. And so young."

Mara took off the Thunderpack, and, to her credit, she was barely shaking. "What else do you have?"

"I have other transport devices." He escorted her to what he called, "a variation on the gnomeflinger. I named it the Portapult."

IT looked more like THEM. The Portapult consisted of two gnomeflingers, ingeniously and intricately linked by cable, chain, and several pieces of fine wire, for which Mara could imagine no purpose.

Each gnomeflinger rested on six wheels on three axles. The front axle had a built-in pivot and the pivot axle of each gnomeflinger was connected to the other by chain.

Standback followed Mara's confused glance. "Oh, they're inseparable," he said proudly. "Linked in frame, function, and trigger. The Portapult breaks apart for transport" — it looked as though it might break apart as he spoke — "but it re-assembles for synchronized action. The Portapult can deliver six soldiers simultaneously, send them hundreds of feet through the air…

"Isn't it wonderful?" he finished huskily, and patted one of the delivery platforms affectionately. The platform shot upward and the Portapult spun sideways. An identical platform on the second gnomeflinger shot upward and that unit turned sideways as well — sideways toward the first — and the two platforms met with a smack that blew Standback's hair straight behind him and made Mara's ears pop.

"I should check that trigger again," he said thoughtfully. "Also, perhaps, the targeting ratchets."

He sat in a narrow seat beyond one of the platforms and pedaled strenuously. A chain on a toothed gear cranked down one platform; the other inched down in time with it. Mara heard the faintest of clicks as the minuscule triggers hooked over the platforms to hold the bent, straining beams and cablework in place.

She helped the gnome as, very gently, he put the two units side by side again. "They look dangerous," she said.

Standback misunderstood. "Oh, yes," he said happily. "Someday they'll have great strategic importance."

"But not yet." Mara sighed. "Is there anything useful down here?"

The gnome considered. "There is," he said slowly for a gnome, "a powerful defensive weapon, designed to break through any surrounding force. I'm not sure that I should let you see it — "

"Please." Mara had little faith left in gnome technology, but she wanted very badly to leave with something.

"Very well." Standback walked her down several bends in the corridor to a side tunnel. In the middle of it was a tarpaulin covering something the size of a crouching man.

"Why isn't this one in a room?" Mara asked.

Standback shuddered. "In a room, with this? That would be far too dangerous." He pointed to the long horizontal gashes in the tunnel walls, and parallel marks on the floor, chiseled into the rock. Some of them were bright and new.

Mara perked up. "Is it really so dangerous as all that?"

"Absolutely," the gnome replied. "You can parry a sword. You can beat back a spear." Standback paused for effect, not an easy thing for a gnome. "But there is no way for your adversary to fight off the astonishing Floating Deathaxe."

He pulled a cloth off the axe.

In spite of her disappointment, Mara felt like laughing at the sight of a pendulum-shaped axe, swinging from a framework of three strange oar-shaped wooden fans. The fans were attached to a gear arrangement of spools of thongs and elastics.

"Good design," she said finally. "If it's deadly, it hides its function well."

"You think so?" Standback peered at it. "It looks like any other weapon's design to me."

"How does it work? No offense, but it looks as though it is designed to mix bread in some demented kitchen. What do these little oars do?"

The gnome reached a stubby finger out and spun them fondly. "They're called propellers. When they're in balance, they propel it."

Mara stared confusedly at the propellers, which weren't attached to any wheels or rollers. "How?"

"In a straight line, if it's properly adjusted."

"No, I mean, how can they move it?"

"It flies."

Now Mara did laugh. "And what makes it fly?" She saw a pull-cord hanging from one of the spindles. "This?"

"Yes, but only after it's properly adjusted. If you — "

"Oh, leave it alone," Mara said tiredly.

Standback looked crushed.

"I'm sorry." Mara sighed. "I didn't mean that. It's just — I was going to bring back such wonderful things, and save my people and make Kalend notice me — " She choked back her tears. Queens of Thieves don't cry.

Standback patted her sympathetically and they walked together in silence, two people with little in common but the fact that life was not going well for either of them.

They returned to the skylight where Mara had first entered. She stood in the smoke and steam-filtered daylight of the square hole above them and slumped against the rock wall, looking at the hall of useless inventions.

From somewhere far overhead came a muffled boom. The entire tunnel shook, dropping dust and cobwebs. A huge bell carillon somewhere far above them clanged frantically, followed by some kind of trumpet, several clappers, a siren, and numerous whistles.

Invisible creatures shook themselves free of the ceiling and flapped to and fro in panic. Mara clapped her hands over her ears. Standback shouted in delight, "It works!"

"What?" Mara could read his lips, though that was hard because of the gnome's beard.

"The perimeter alarm. I set it up around the top of the mountain." Standback was actually dancing. "It notifies bystanders — "

"I'll say."

" — locates the point of entry, and even seals off rooms and levels." He pointed to the stone trap door sliding slowly over the skylight to the crater floor.

Then he looked concerned. "They'll need me up there to shut it off. They're probably completely deaf right now."

"Whaaat?"

"Nothing." Standback dashed over to the Gnomeflinger, leapt on the payload pad several times and (amazingly enough) sailed easily through the half-shut skylight. "Illbebacktheleverletsyouout — "

The trap door slid shut and fell in place with a thud. The bells, whistles, clappers and sirens above grew muffled.

Mara stared upward, her mouth hanging open. A gnome device had actually worked as it was supposed to. But now how was she going to get out?

She examined the lever on the wall and tried to trace its relationship to the trap door. She could see a slack rope that disappeared into a hole in the tunnel ceiling, and she noted a rod leading from the lever up to a cantilever, but she couldn't understand how it would work.

The alarm noises stopped abruptly. Standback or someone else had found a way to shut them off or, more likely, had accidentally silenced them. Mara had seen enough of the gnomes to hope that there were no casualties.

Her ears adjusted to the sudden near-silence; she heard the soft hum (and drip) of ventilation devices somewhere, and the restless motion of invisible flying pests, and something else: a rustling, back in the side tunnels.

Feet moving — a scraping sound, not quite boots and not quite barefoot. The clink of metal on metal. It sounded definitely ungnomelike. At that point, it occurred to Mara that something had set off Standback's alarms. A real thief… Mara hid in a niche in the wall.

A shadowy figure came into view, wearing a helmet with a dragon crest.

"These must be the weapons the knights spoke of. Quick!" he hissed, "While the gnome is gone. Take what looks useful and leave."

It was a draconian! Two draconians! "What about the girl we followed here?" The other draconian asked.

Mara's heart sank. She heard again in her mind Kalend saying,

They'll camp around us and wait for something to break — reinforcements, or better weapons…

The captain shrugged. "She's served her purpose. If you see her, kill her, and don't waste time."

Mara pressed against the tunnel wall, hidden by the shadows of cable and hanging hardware.

Four other draconians marched out of the narrow side tunnel into the hall. They were all carrying huge, cruel weapons. Their wings filled the tunnel. They had clawed hands and horrid sharp fangs. One of them started right for her. Mara the Brave couldn't help herself. She whimpered.

The draconians heard her. One lashed forward with a spear. Panicked, Mara dropped flat. The spear nearly parted her hair. Another draconian hissed and slashed sideways with his sword. She leapt up, dodged the sword, backing farther away. A mace raked her shoulder.

She began running, heading for escape out the skylight. I should stop them! she thought frantically, but a cold voice in her mind said, "Face it. You're not a warrior, not even a thief. You're only a very stupid little girl."

She bounced from wall to wall randomly to dodge more thrown weapons, stumbling over a pile of canisters. She paused. The top one had a label; in the middle of the polysyllables, Mara recognized the common word for PEST. She picked the canister up and tucked it under her arm. If it was the new batch of pesticide, she could dump it over herself and it would make her invisible. She began opening it, then stopped.

If it was the old batch, it might kill her.

But then, she could throw it back at the approaching draconians and kill them. She tugged at the top again.

Or she might make them invisible. She had a brief vision of herself surrounded by invisible draconians. She tossed the canister aside and kept running.

The draconians were close behind her when she reached the skylight. She leapt for the opening lever, pulling it down with her full weight. It groaned as it moved… and lowered a cantilevered weight, which tugged a guy rope, which spun a flywheel, which rotated an axis, which turned a worm gear, which wound up the pull rope…

Which broke. The whole system coasted to a stop, the end of the rope flapping uselessly.

"It would be nice," Mara muttered between clenched teeth, "if just once, a gnome invention worked reliably." And that gave Mara the idea.

She grabbed the dangling rope, swung up on it, pumping her legs vigorously. Kicking off the ceiling, she spun around and swung back over the heads of the astonished draconians. One of them raised a spear, but not quickly enough; it barely scratched her.

Mara let go of the rope, landing well behind the confused draconians, and dashed back the way she had come. But she had to make certain they followed her. At the bend in the tunnel, she scooped up a handful of decaying spare parts from old mechanisms and skimmed them off the tunnel walls and ceiling into the draconians. A rusted bolt caught the captain on his reptilian snout.

The captain howled. "After her! Kill her!"

"Quickly, or slowly?" A subordinate asked.

"Quickly," he hissed. A hex nut clanged off his helmet. "But not too quickly."

They dashed after her again, weapons ready, their terrible jaws open. Mara fled, but made sure that they saw which way she turned. They chased her confidently; after all, what did they have to fear from a single unarmed human child?

The draconians came on her suddenly, around a comer. She was apparently helpless with fear.

The draconian captain leered at her and barked unnecessarily, "Now you die."

"If you must!" she said more coolly than she felt. "But be quick."

The draconian eyed her with resentment, tinged with admiration. "Don't we frighten you?"

"You? Never." Mara pointed to the floor. "That thing frightens me. I can bear anything," she said earnestly, "but the Flying Deathaxe."

At a gesture from his captain, the lead draconian picked it up. "This thing?" he said, laughing, incredulously.

Mara shrank away. "Don't pull that cord. Please. Put it down — "

The captain smiled at her, revealing an amazing quantity of pointed teeth. "Of course, I'll put it down." He set it on the ground in front of her with a low bow. As he straightened up, with one swift motion he pulled the starting cord, setting the propellers in motion. He watched, chuckling evilly.

The propellers spun and, unbelievably, the Deathaxe rose into the air. As it cleared the floor, the razor-sharp axe blade swung back and forth with a loud shearing noise. It hovered, hesitated, then began slowly spinning in a circle. Mara watched, open-mouthed, as the axe blade sliced through a boom extending from the tunnel wall. Now the axe was moving faster, and the circle was widening as well. Mara took a nervous step backward.

The Deathaxe hit the roof and bounced off. The blade sliced through the helmet and head of a draconian soldier without slowing down. The soldier turned to stone and toppled.

The captain uttered a command, succinct even for draconian field orders: "Run!"

Mara obeyed. So did the other draconians. The axe gashed the wall where she had been standing a moment before, spun back on itself, and cut one of the draconian soldiers in the chest before careening upward to strike the ceiling and spin back down.

The wounded draconian, shouting in panic, crashed head-on into one of his companions. Both sank to the tunnel floor, unconscious but not dead. The remaining two sprinted after Mara, just ahead of the whining, humming Deathaxe.

Mara wouldn't have thought that the heavy draconians could run that fast, but then she surprised herself with her own speed. Once, in a crazy rebound off a hanging pulley, the Deathaxe spun into the floor in front of her and shot straight up at her. She fell backward, rolled between the legs of the startled draconian soldier behind her, and leapt to one side. The Deathaxe cut off his head. Turning to stone, it thudded to the floor where she had been. The draconian captain behind her screeched with frustration. The Deathaxe, now behind him, spun back toward both of them, and they were off again.

Perversely, the axe continued after them, instead of backtracking or taking wrong tunnels. Mara wondered if that was a side-function of Standback's sensors. She also wondered how long she and the draconian captain could keep up their pace; she was naturally faster, but he had more endurance. If she should tire or fall… She grit her teeth and kept dodging and running.

After what seemed like days, Mara thought that the axe might be slowing down. A minute more and she was positive; it was losing forward momentum and spinning more slowly. Finally, with a creak from its handle and a flutter of propellers, the Deathaxe crashed to the tunnel floor. Mara and the draconian, wheezing, collapsed — a spear's length apart — just beyond it.

The draconian recovered first. He rose unsteadily and searched for the sword. He had dropped it when he fell. The weapon was now lying within Mara's reach.

Mara staggered to her feet, picked up the heavy sword and nearly overbalanced. The draconian laughed at her and moved forward to recover it and kill her.

Mara heard an uneasy rustling on the tunnel ceiling above her, though she could see nothing. She swung the sword against the tunnel wall and banged it, shouting.

The air was suddenly filled with a terrible chittering and the sound of hundreds of wings. The draconian, disconcerted, waved his arms in the air. Mara steadied the sword, gathering her strength.

The draconian opened his mouth and snapped at the noises in the empty air; there was a tiny shriek, which cut off abruptly. Mara, feeling sick, took a deep breath and lunged with the sword.

It was far too heavy for her, but she managed to catch the draconian captain just below the kneecap. He roared, driving away all the flyers. Mara let go of the sword and backed off.

Grimacing, he looked down at his leg. Green blood oozed from the wound. He opened his mouth to shout at her; nothing but snarling and flecks of foam came out.

Mara dashed away, thinking to herself, "I'll need a new name. Mara the Warlike… Mara, Queen of Battle…" A thrown dagger flashed between her arm and her side. Mara, Queen of Battle, legged it like Mara the Rabbit down the left fork of the tunnel. The draconian lumbered after her, limping painfully.

Mara dashed into a room. The draconian found her, crouched against the far wall. She stood holding the leg of a splintered chair as a weapon. As the captain came forward, she dropped it and shrank against the wall, her face a mask of terror.

"I have you," he said slowly, with satisfaction. He limped into the center of the room, smiling -

Mara tapped the wall lightly with one finger.

The Thudbaggers activated. The draconian lost his footing. Both his arms were pinned in place by the bags; he couldn't reach the sword he had dropped when the first bag inflated in his face. He poked his head up out of the balloons, and glared helplessly at Mara, who had clambered onto the bags. "You!" he said bitterly, beside himself with rage. "You — "

"Shut up," said Mara and, pulling off his helmet, knocked him cold.

She heard the sound of running feet, and then Standback appeared in the door.

"Are you all right?" He was panting.

Mara slid off the balloon. "Mara the Bold is always all right."

"That's good. When I arrived at the top level, I thought that it was a false alarm, and I came back down, and then I saw the dead and knocked-out draconians — " He paused. "You're bleeding."

She looked at her shoulder in surprise. "Not too badly." She grinned. "I gave better than I got."

Standback looked at the unconscious captain. "I see that," he said, impressed. "Were they after my weapons?"

Mara nodded. Standback, looking again at the pinned and unconscious captain, said thoughtfully, "Mount Nevermind isn't at war with draconians. We don't dare kill them, and they're too dangerous to take prisoner. What are we going to do with them?"

"I've thought about that." Mara paused for effect. "Let them escape."

Standback goggled at her. "But if they escape, they'll take our weapons or plans for our weapons away with them — "

"You want them to," she said simply.

Standback was now a complete rarity in Mount Nevermind or anywhere else: a speechless gnome.

"Think about it," she went on. "The draconians want the weapons. You need the weapons tested. They're soldiers. Who could better test them?"

As he still hesitated, she added, "And isn't the theft by real warriors a kind of validation that your weapons are worth testing? You'll be able to tell that to the committee and then ask for the hand of Watchout."

Standback blinked. "But you're not afraid to let them use these.. terrible weapons against your people?"

Mara thought about draconian troops setting off the Portapults in the field. "They are indeed terrible weapons," she said, "but letting the draconians have them will only make it a more even battle. It's a matter of honor — something the knights are big on."

Standback took her hand, pumping it up and down. "Never have I met a warrior of so much integrity — "

"Oh, I wouldn't say that."

" — and modest too." He looked back at the unconscious draconian captain. "I'll let them escape with the Portapult, the Flying Deathaxe — "

"Um, I don't know that they'll want the Deathaxe. Why don't you let them have the Thunderpack, instead?"

Standback protested. "This is too much. Won't you take anything for yourself?"

"Sometimes," Mara said nobly, "there's a greater joy in giving." She had a sudden thought. "If you don't mind, I'll just take the little failed dowser." She picked it up.

"The one that can't even find water? You want it?"

"Just as a souvenir."

Standback, tears in his eyes, said, "You're amazing. Nothing but a trinket for yourself, while you give fullscale gnome weapons to your worst enemies."

Mara, pocketing the jewel-finder, beamed. "Well," she said modestly, "I'm like that."

The Promised Place

Dan Parkinson

Once, very recently, this had been a city. Only days before, there had been a tiered castle on the highest point of the hill. Studded battlements overlooked the lands for miles around. In a walled courtyard, throngs gathered.

Below the battlements, spreading down toward the fields, had been a raucous, bustling city — inns and dwellings, shops and markets, public houses, smithies, barns and lofts, weavers' stalls and tanneries, music and noise and life.

Chaldis had been a city. But the dragonarmies of the Dark Queen had come and the city was a city no more. Where battlements had stood was smashed and blackened rubble, and all beneath was scorched, twisted ruin. Of Chaldis, nothing was left. Only the road it had defended was yet intact, and its surface showed the tracks and treads of armies just passed. The people who had been here were gone now — some fleeing, some dead, some led off as slaves. Where there had been herds now were only scorched pastures, and where crops had grown now were ruined fields.

Stillness lived here now. A somber stillness — shadows and silence, broken only by the weeping of the wind.

Yet in the stillness, something lurked. And in the shadows, small shadows moved.

Muffled voices, among the rubble: "What kind place this? Ever'thing a real mess." 'Talls been here. Somebody clobber 'em, I guess." "This all fresh scorch." "Forget scorch! Look for somethin' to eat."

And another sound, from somewhere in the lead, "Sh!" A thump and a clatter.

"Sh!" "Somebody fall down."

"Sh!"

"Somebody say, 'Sh.' Better hush up."

Another thump and several clatters.

"Wha' happen?"

"Somebody bump into somebody else. All fall down."

"Sssh!!"

"What?"

"Shut up an' keep quiet!"

"Oh. Okay."

Abruptly hushed, the shadows moved on, small figures in a ragged line, wending among fallen stone and burned timbers, making their cautious way through the rubble that once had been a city. For several minutes, they proceeded in silence, then the whispers and muted chatter began again as the effect of exercised authority wore off.

"Wanna stop an' dig? Might be nice stuff under these gravels."

"Forget dig. Need food first. Look for somethin' make stew."

"Like what?"

"Who knows. Mos' anything make stew."

"Hey! Here somethin'… nope, never mind. Just a dead Tall."

"Rats."

"What?"

"Oughtta be rats here. Rats okay for stew."

"Keep lookin'."

"Ow! Get off a my foot!"

Thump. Clatter.

"Sh!"

"Somebody fall down again."

"Sh!

They were travelers. They had been travelers since long before any of them could remember, which was not very long unless the thing to remember was truly worth remembering: traveling generally was not. It was just something they did, something they had always done, something their parents and their ancestors had done. Few of them had any idea why they traveled, or why their travels — more often than not — tended to be westward.

For the few among them who might occasionally wonder about such things, the answer was simple and extremely vague. They traveled because they were in search of the Promised Place.

Where was the Promised Place? Nobody had the slightest idea.

Why did they seek the Promised Place? No one really knew that, either. Someone, a long time ago — some Highbulp, probably, since it was usually the Highbulp who initiated unfathomable ventures — had gotten the notion that there was a Promised Place, to the west, and it was their destiny to find it. That had been generations back — an unthinkable time to people who usually recognized only two days other than today: yesterday and tomorrow. But once the pilgrimage was begun, it just kept going.

That was the nature of the Aghar — the people most others called gully dwarves. One of their strongest driving forces was simple inertia.

The size and shape of the group changed constantly as they made their way through the ruins of the city, tending upward toward its center. Here and there, now and then, by ones and threes and fives, various among them lost interest in following along and took off on side expeditions, searching and gawking, usually rejoining the main group somewhere farther along.

There was no way to know whether all of them came back. None among them had any real idea of how many of them there were, except that there were more than two — a lot more than two. Maybe fifty times two, though such concepts were beyond even the wisest of them. Numbers greater than two were seldom considered worth worrying about.

Gradually, the stragglers converged upon the higher levels of the ruined city. Here the fallen building stones were more massive — huge, smoke-darkened blocks that lay aslant against one another, creating tunnels and gullies roofed by shattered rubble. Here they found more dead things — humans and animals, corpses mutilated, stripped and burned, the brutal residue of battle. They crept around these at a distance, their eyes wide with dread. Something fearful had happened here, and the pall of it hung in the silent air of the place like a tangible fear.

At a place where a flanking wall had fallen, some of them paused to stare at a tumble of great, iron-bound timbers that might once have been some piece of giant furniture but now was a shattered ruin. The thing lay as though it had fallen from high above, its members and parts in disarray. Having not the faintest idea of what it might be, most of them crept past and went on. One, though, remained, walking around the huge thing, frowning in thought.

His name was Tagg, and an odd bit of memory tugged at him as his eyes traced the dimensions of the fallen thing. He had seen something like it before… somewhere. Tugging at his lip, Tagg circled entirely around the thing. A few others were with him now. They had seen his curiosity and returned, curious themselves.

"Got a arm," he muttered, squatting to reason out the placement of a great timber jutting outward from the device. Within the twisted structure itself, the timber was bound to a sort of big, wooden drum, with heavy rope wrapped around it and a set of massive gears at its hub.

"Fling-thing," he said, beginning to remember. It was like something he had seen from a distance, atop some human structure his people had skirted long ago in their travels. He remembered it because he had seen the Talls operate it, and had been impressed. It was a wooden tower atop a tower, and a lot of the humans — the Talls — had gathered around it and slowly cranked the extended arm around and back, then abruptly had released it. It had made a noise like distant thunder, and the thing that flew from it had been very large and had knocked down a tree.

"That it," he decided. "One a' them. Fling-thing."

Several other gully dwarves were gathered around him now. One asked, "What Tagg talkin' 'bout?"

"This thing," Tagg pointed. "This a fling-thing. Throws stuff."

"Why?" another wanted to know.

"Dunno. Does, though. Throws big thing, knock a tree down."

"I know. Cat'pult."

"Nope. That some other kind. This called a… uh… dis.. disca… somethin'."

"Okay." Losing interest, some of them wandered away again, though Tagg and two others lingered, creeping through the wreckage in wonder. One was a white-bearded ancient named Gandy, who was given to occasional bursts of lucid thought and served as Grand Notioner to the combined clans of Bulp. The other was a young female named Minna.

Tagg was vaguely glad that Minna was interested in the same thing that interested him. He found her presence pleasant. His eyes lighting on a glistening bauble among the rubble, he picked it up and held it out to her. "Here," he said, shyly. "Pretty thing for Minna."

Climbing among the twisted members of the fallen discobel, Tagg helped Minna across a shattered timber, then turned and stumbled over old Gandy. The Grand Notioner was on his knees, staring at something, and Tagg tripped over him and thudded facedown in the sooty dust.

Barely noticing him, Gandy brushed his hand over a vague shape on the floor and said, "Here somethin'. What this?"

Tagg crawled over to look, and Minna peered over his shoulder. The object was a big, iron disk with sharpened serrations all around its edge, except for one area where it had been blunted and bent.

"That disk," Tagg said. "It what th' fling-thing fling. Knock down trees with these."

"Knock down somethin'," Gandy decided, looking at the blunted edge. The disk had hit something very solid, very hard. He rubbed it again and looked at the dark stains on its surface. There were other stains on the cracked floor nearby, as though blood had congealed there. He scraped the stain with his finger, then tasted his finger. He frowned and spat. It was not any kind of blood he knew about.

It reminded him, though, of the primary goal of the moment. He stood, tapping the ground with the battered old mop handle he always carried. "'Nough look at stuff," he proclaimed. "Look for food first. Come 'long."

Obediently, they followed him out of the wreckage of the war engine, then paused and looked around.

"Where ever'body go?" Tagg wondered.

Gandy shrugged. "Aroun' someplace. Can't get far, followin' Highbulp. Glitch don' move that fast."

From where they were, a dozen tunnels and breaks in the rubble led away. Choosing one at random, old Gandy led off, with Tagg and Minna following. "Now watch good," he ordered.

"Watch what?"

"What?"

"You gonna do trick or somethin'?"

"No! Watch for food. Need to find stuff for make stew."

The tunnel they were in was a long, winding way created by the spaces between building stones that had fallen on one another. After a few minutes, Tagg asked, "What kind food Grand Notioner expect find here?"

"He didn' say," Minna said.

Just ahead of them, Gandy turned, frowning in the shadows. "Any kind food," he snapped. "Keep lookin'. If it moves, it prob'ly good for stew."

"Okay." Moving on, Tagg stepped into the lead.

They had gone only a few steps when Tagg, his alert young eyes scanning everywhere, saw something move.

It was something that protruded, curving downward, from a crack between fallen stones. It was a tapered thing, about as long as his arm. Dark and greenish, it was almost invisible against the muted, mottled colors of the rubble around it. But as his eyes passed over it, it twitched.

Tagg stopped, and the others bumped into him from behind. Old Gandy tottered for a moment, then regained his balance. Minna clung to Tagg, her pressure against him totally distracting him. He decided at that moment that any time Minna wanted to bump into him, it was all right as far as he was concerned.

"Why Tagg stop?" Gandy snapped. "I nearly fall down."

"Okay," Tagg murmured, paying no attention at all to the elder. "That fine."

"Not fine!" Gandy pointed out. "S'posed to be lookin' for food, not foolin' aroun'. You!" He nudged Minna with his mop handle. "Leggo Tagg. Stop th' foolishness!"

"Oh." Minna backed away, shrugging. "Okay."

With a sigh, Tagg turned to go on, then saw the thing he had seen before. The thing that twitched. He pointed at it. "What that? Maybe food?"

They gathered close, and Gandy bent for a better look. The thing was sticking out of a small crevice in the rubble. It was hard to tell in the subdued light, but it seemed to be round and tapered, with a sort of sharp ridge running along the top of it. Its color was dark green. And as they stared at it, it twitched again.

They stumbled back, wary.

"What it is?" Tagg asked.

Gandy peered again. "Dunno. Maybe half a snake?"

"Might be." Tagg approached it carefully, thrust out his arm and prodded the thing with his finger, then jerked away. When he touched it, it writhed with a motion that was more than a twitch. Like the tail of a huge rat, it swayed this way and that. But it seemed otherwise harmless. Whatever might be at the other end of it, this end had no teeth or claws.

"This food?" Tagg asked the Grand Notioner.

"Might be," Gandy decided. "Snake okay for stew sometimes, if not bitter. Check it out."

"What?"

"Taste it. See if it bitter."

Reluctantly, Tagg approached the thing again, grasping it with both hands. It writhed and struggled in his grip. Whatever it was, it was very strong. But he held on, and when it seemed a bit subdued, he lowered his head, opened his mouth and bit it as hard as he could.

Abruptly, the thing flicked and surged, flipping Tagg across the jagged tunnel into the far wall. And all around them, seeming to come from the stone itself, a huge roar of outrage rang through the air.

Tagg got his feet under him just as the Grand Notioner surged toward him, running for his life, with Minna right behind. Both of them collided with Tagg, and all three went down, rolling along the cracked floor, a tumble of arms, legs and muffled curses.

They had barely come to a halt when others — a lot of others — piled into them, over them, and onto them. The main party, led by the Highbulp Glitch I himself, had been emerging from a connecting way when they heard the roar and panicked. In an instant, there were gully dwarves tumbling all along the tunnel, and a great pile of gully dwarves at the convergence where Glitch I — and everyone behind him — had stumbled over the flailing trio.

It took several minutes to get everyone untangled from everyone else, and Tagg — at the bottom of the heap — was thoroughly enjoying being tangled up with Minna again until he looked up and gazed into the thunderous face of his lord and leader, Glitch I, Highbulp by Persuasion and Lord Protector of This Place and Anyplace Else He Could Think Of.

Glitch glared at the three just getting to their feet. "Gandy! What goin' on here?"

"Dunno," Gandy grumbled. "Ever'body pile up on me. How I know what goin' on? Couldn' see a thing."

"Heard big noise," the Highbulp pressed. "You do that?"

"Not me," Gandy shook his head. He pointed an accusing mop handle at Tagg. "His fault. He do it."

"Do what?"

"Snakebite."

Feeling that he should explain, Tagg pointed up the corridor. "Somethin' stickin' out over there. Like half a snake. Tasted it to see if it bitter."

The Highbulp squinted at the twitching thing. "Is it?"

The earlier roar had faded into echoes, leaving an angry, hissing sound that seemed to come from nowhere in particular.

"Is now, sounds like." Tagg nodded.

Cautiously, the clans of Bulp gathered around the green thing protruding from the rubble. Glitch scrutinized it carefully, first from one side, then from the other, then beckoned. "Clout, come here. Bring bashin' tool."

A squat, broad-shouldered gully dwarf stepped forward uncertainly. On his shoulder he carried a heavy stick about three feet long.

Glitch pointed at the twitching thing. "Clout, bash snake."

Clout looked doubtful, but he did as he was told. Raising his stick over his head, he brought it down against the twitching thing with all his might. This time the roar that erupted, somewhere beyond the rockfall, was a shriek of sheer indignation. Stones trembled and grated, dust spewed from crevices, and the entire wall of fallen rock began to shift. The twitching green thing disappeared, withdrawn into the rubble, and massive movements beyond sent fragments flying from the rocks there. All around, the debris shifted and settled, closing crevices and escape tunnels.

As gully dwarves scampered back, falling and sprawling over one another, the entire wall of rubble parted, and in the settling dust a huge, scaled face glared out. Slitted green eyes as bright as emeralds shone with anger, and a mouth the size of a salt mine opened to reveal rows of dripping, glistening fangs. The scale crest atop the head flared forward, and the head was raised to strike. Then the emerald eyes widened slightly and the mouth closed to a grimace.

"Gully dwarves," Verden Leafglow hissed, her voice laced with pain and contempt. "Nothing but gully dwarves."

For a time, she simply ignored them. Their pleas for mercy, the smell of their fear, the cowering huddles of them here and there in the shadows, were dimly pleasant to her, an undertone like music, soothing in its way.

A gaggle of gully dwarves. They could do her — a powerful green dragon — no harm. They could not get away — all the exits they might reach were sealed by rockfall — and at the moment, she decided, they were not worth the effort it would take to crush them. So she ignored them, concentrating instead on her wounds. The indignities of a bitten and thumped tail rankled her, but she could deal with the perpetrators later, when she was stronger. They were trapped here in the rubble with her. They had nowhere to go.

The saw-edged disk had ripped into her body, bringing her down in the rubble. In the darkness of the fallen castle, almost buried by debris, she had lain bleeding as the armies of the Dragon Queen passed by — passing, she thought bitterly, and leaving her behind. For that, she would not forgive Flame Searclaw. The huge, arrogant red dragon with his preoccupied human rider, had known she was there. In her mind, clearly, had been his dragon-voice, chiding and taunting her.

Her left wing hung useless beside her, her left foreclaw was terribly maimed and it had been all she could do — through spells and sheer concentration — to close the gaping slash at the base of her neck. That wound alone could have killed her, had her powers been less.

Still, the healing was slow, painful, and incomplete. In ripping through the armored scales at her breast, the disk had cut her potion flask — hidden beneath the scales — and carried away the precious self-stone concealed there. It was gone, somewhere among the rubble, and without it the powerful green dragon lacked the magic to reshape her maimed parts. The ultimate healing power was beyond her, without her self-stone.

Focusing all of her concentration upon the damaged parts of her, she drew what strength she had and applied it to healing. And when the effort tired her, she slept.

When their initial blind panic began to fade, replaced by simple dread and awe, the subjects of Glitch I — Highbulp by Persuasion and Lord Protector of This Place, Etc. — turned to their leader for advice. They had to find him first, though. At first sight of the apparition that had appeared in the shifting rubble, Glitch had darted through the first several ranks of his subjects, crawled over, around and under several more layers of panicked personnel, and finally wedged himself into a crack behind all of them. Getting him out was a task made more difficult by the fact that he did not want to come out.

Finally, though, he stood among them, gawking at the huge, green, sleeping head of the thing in the hole only a few feet away. "Wha.. " He choked, coughed and tried again. "Wha… what that thing?"

Most of them looked at him blankly. Some shrugged and some shook their heads.

"That not snake," Tagg informed his leader. "Not stew stuff, either."

Emboldened by the Highbulp's restored presence, old Gandy, the Grand Notioner, crept a step or two closer to the sleeping thing and raised his mop handle as though to prod it. He changed his mind, lowered his stick and leaned on it, squinting. "Dragon?" he wondered. "Might be. Anybody here ever see dragons?"

No one recalled ever seeing a dragon, and most were sure that they would remember, if they had.

Then Tagg had a bright idea. "Dragons got wings," he said, adding, doubtfully, "don't they?"

"Right," Gandy agreed. "Dragons got wings. This thing got wings?"

Some of them crept about, trying to see around the huge head in the hole, to see what was beyond it. But the dim light filtering in from above did not reach into the hole. There was only darkness there. They couldn't see whether the creature had wings or not.

"Somebody bring candle," Glitch I ordered. "Highbulp find out."

With glances of surprise and admiration at such unexpected courage, several of them produced stubby and broken candles, and someone managed to light one. He handed it to Glitch. The Highbulp held it high, stood on tiptoes and peered into the darkness of the hole. Then he shook his head and handed the candle to Tagg, who happened to be nearby. "Can't see," he said. "Tagg go look."

Taken by surprise, Tagg looked from the candle thrust into his hand to the fierce, sleeping features of the thing in the hole. He turned pale, gulped and started to shake his head, then saw Minna in the crowd. She was gazing at him with something in her eyes that might have been more than the candle's reflection.

Tagg gulped a shuddering breath, steeling himself. "Rats," he said. "Okay."

The huge, green head almost filled the hole in the wall of rubble. As Tagg eased alongside it, his back to the stones at one side, he could have reached out and touched the nearest nostril, the exposed dagger-points of the great fangs, the glistening eyelid. The spiked fan of the creature's graceful crest stood above him as he crept deeper, edging alongside a long, tapered neck that was nearly as wide as he was tall and seemed to go on and on, into the darkness.

"Tagg pretty brave," Minna whispered as they watched him go. Instinctively, her hand went into her belt pouch and clutched the pretty bauble Tagg had found for her. Her fingers caressed it, and the great, sleeping creature stirred slightly, then relaxed again in sleep.

"Not brave," Gandy corrected. "Just dumb. Highbulp gonna get Tagg killed, sure."

Tagg crept through sundered rubble, just inches away from the big green neck that almost filled the tunnel. Then he was past the rubble, and raised the candle. The place where he found himself was some kind of cavern, beneath a rise in the sundered hill above. It was dim and smelled musty, and was nearly filled by the huge body of the green creature.

Where the thing's neck joined an enormous, rising body, Tagg spotted ugly, gaping wounds in the scales. He stared at them in awe, then beyond them, and his eyes widened even more. The green thing was huge. Arms like scaly pillars rested below massive shoulders, and ended in taloned "hands" as big as he was — or bigger. The nearest shoulder had another ugly wound, and the hand below it was mangled as though it had been sliced apart.

He raised his eyes, squinting in the dim candlelight. Above the thing, on its far side, stood a great, folded wing. Nearer, a second wing sprawled back at an angle, exposing yet another gaping wound.

"This thing in bad shape," Tagg whispered to himself. "Pretty beat up."

The huge body towered over him and its crest was lost in shadows above. Farther along, the body widened abruptly, and he realized that what he was seeing was a leg — a huge leg, folded in rest. Beneath it was a toed foot with claws as long as his arms. Beyond, curled around from behind, was the tip of a long tail. He recognized that appendage now. It was what he had bitten, when he thought it might be half a snake. The recollection set his knees aquiver and he almost fell down.

Tagg's nerves had taken all they could stand. He had seen enough. He headed back.

Just as he was edging past it, the nearest eye opened an inch, and its slitted pupil looked at him. With a howl, Tagg erupted from the hole, bowling over a half-dozen curious gully dwarves in the process. Behind him, the great eyelid flickered contemptuously, and closed again.

As Tagg got to his feet, Glitch stepped forward. "Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Well…" Glitch hesitated in confusion, trying to recall what he had sent Tagg to do.

"That thing got wings?" Gandy rasped.

"It got wings, all right. Got claws an' tail an' gashes, too." Recovering his candle, Tagg handed it back to Glitch. "Highbulp want any more look, Highbulp go look. I" ve seen enough."

"Gashes?" Gandy blinked. "What kind gashes?"

"That dragon all sliced up," Tagg told him. "Somebody hurt it pretty bad."

Minna eased up beside him, gazing with sympathy at the hideous face of the green dragon asleep a few feet away. "Poor thing," she said.

As she spoke, the dragon's eyes opened to slits, then closed again. It shifted slightly, sighed, and seemed to relax, as though the pain of its wounds had somehow eased a bit.

For an hour, then, they searched for a way out of the rubble trap. They found nothing — at least, nothing they could reach without going past the dragon. The shifting of the beast in its lair had resettled the fallen stone, blocking every exit. One after another, the searchers gave up, shrugging and gathering into a tight little group as far from the dragon as they could get.

When it was obvious that they were truly trapped, Clout asked — of no one in particular — "So, now what?"

Gandy scratched his head and leaned on his mop handle. "Dunno," he said. "Better ask what's-'is- name."

"Who?"

"WHAT'S-'is-name. Th' Highbulp " He turned. "Highbulp, what we do now?" He peered around in the dimness. "Highbulp? Where th' Highbulp?"

It took a few minutes to find him. With nothing better to do. Glitch I had curled up beside a rock. He was sound asleep.

They were all asleep when Verden Leafglow awakened — gully dwarves everywhere, scattered in clumps and clusters about the dim recess, most of them snoring. At a glance, she counted more than sixty of the little creatures in plain sight, and knew there were more of them behind rocks, in the shadows, and beneath or beyond the sleeping heaps. One of them, she knew, had even crept past her into her lair, thinking that in sleep she might not notice. But it had only looked around and returned to the others.

Her first inclination was to simply exterminate them. But she had a better idea. They might be useful to her, if she kept them alive for a time — and if she could make them serve her.

Gully dwarves. Her contempt for them was even greater than the contempt most other races felt for the Aghar. As a dragon, she loathed ALL other races, and these were certainly the most contemptible of the contemptible. Even compared to the intelligence of humans, full dwarves, and others of the kind, the mentality of gully dwarves was so incredibly simple that it bordered on imbecility. And compared to dragon intelligence, it was nothing at all.

Still, the pathetic creatures had certain instincts that might be useful. They were excellent foragers, adept at getting into and searching out places that others might not even know existed. And they were good at finding things, provided they managed to concentrate their attention on the effort for any length of time.

Somewhere here, among the rubble of the destroyed city of Chaldis, was her self-stone. In her sleep she had sensed its presence. With her self-stone, she could heal herself completely. Properly motivated, the gully dwarves might find and deliver the self-stone.

Closing her eyes, she thought a spell, and her dragonsenses heard the beginnings of tiny movements among the rubble beyond the rock-fall cavern where the gully dwarves were trapped. Tiny, scurrying sounds, hints of movement carried more by vibration in the stones than by any real noise. She concentrated on the spell, and the hints of movement increased in number and volume. She added a dimension of difference to the spell, and other movements could be sensed; slithering, scuffing movements seeming to come from the soil above her lair.

The vibrations became true sound, and things scuttled in the deepest shadows within the chamber. From cracks and crevices everywhere, small things emerged, coming toward her. Rats and mice, here and there a squirrel, a rabbit or a hare — they emerged by the dozens, answering the call of her spell.

For a moment it seemed the place was filled with rodents, darting around and over the tumbles of sleeping gully dwarves, then they were all directly in front of her. Moving carefully, ignoring the pain of her injuries, she thrust out her right paw, and its talons sliced downward, slaughtering great numbers of the rodents. Using her tail, she scraped the ceiling of her lair, and brought forth the herbs and roots that hung there, drawn downward from above by her magic. These she pushed from tail to foot to forepaw, and deposited them in front of her hole, beside the dead rodents there. A final twist to the spell, and rocks moved, somewhere above. Seconds later, water began to drip from the roof of rubble, a small spring diverted to flow through the chamber. And a small, crackling fire appeared in mid-chamber.

"Wake up, you detestable creatures," Verden Leafglow rumbled. "Wake up and make stew. You are no good to me if you starve."

"Sure. We find thing for you. No problem. What thing is?" Glitch I stifled a belch and grinned a reassuring grin at the monstrous face looking at him from its hole.

After the first shock of sharing a closed cave of rubble with a dragon had worn off, and when it became obvious that the dragon didn't intend to kill them and eat them — at least not right away — the Clans of Bulp had gotten down to business. First things first. They were hungry, and there was food.

Within minutes, savory stew was bubbling in their best pot over what — to some of the ladies especially — was the most remarkable cooking fire they had ever encountered. The fire seemed to have no fuel, nor to need any, and none of them had ever seen stew become stew so quickly.

Then, when their bellies were full, the dragon explained to them what she needed. She seemed, despite her great size and horrendous appearance, to be a pleasant enough dragon. Her voice was low and comforting, her words simple enough for most of them to understand and she even managed to seem to smile now and then. Quite a few of them discovered — without ever considering that there might be a touch of magic involved here — that they were really quite fond of the unfortunate Verden Leaf glow.

"The thing I need is a small thing," she told the Highbulp. "It is a sort of stone, about this big…" A huge, three-fingered "hand" with needle-sharp talons a foot long appeared beside the green face, two talons indicating a size. About an inch and a half.

"Lotta stones 'round here," Glitch said dubiously, looking around the cavern. "Whole lot more outside, though. Oughtta look outside of here."

"By all means," Verden agreed. "Outside, of course. And I am sure that, once you are outside, you wouldn't for a minute consider just going off and leaving me, would you?"

"Nope," Glitch shook his head, speaking just a bit too loudly. "Nope, wouldn' do that. Sure wouldn'."

"Of course you wouldn't," Verden said softly. "Because that would be very unwise."

"Sure would," Glitch agreed emphatically. Then his face twisted in confusion. "How come not wise?"

"Because only a few of you will go out to search," the dragon hissed. Suddenly, as subtly as the narrowing of her eyes, all hints of the "friendly" dragon were gone and the gully dwarves saw Verden Leaf glow as she really was. "All the rest will remain here," she said, "with me."

As they cowered away from her, she pointed with a huge talon. "You," she said, pointing at old Gandy. "You will search. And you." This time she pointed at Tagg. "You two, and three more. The rest stay. The way out is here" — a talon turned, pointing — "just behind my head."

Some of them crept closer to look. Just behind the "hole," on her right side, was a crevice in the rubble. Tagg grabbed Minna's hand and headed for the opening. Abruptly, the dragon moved her head, blocking the way. "Not the female," Verden hissed. "She stays."

Verden knew her choices were right. The old gully dwarf with the mop handle staff was, within the limits of Aghar intelligence, the smartest of them all. He would search well, and he was the least likely to wander off. The young male was the same one who had slid past her to look into her lair. For his kind, he had a certain courage and a degree of curiosity. And it was unlikely that he would flee, as long as the dragon had the female he favored.

She would also keep the one they called Highbulp. The rest had a certain dim loyalty to him, she sensed — probably more than he had to any of them.

She moved her head again. "Go. Now! Find the disk that cut me. The stone should be nearby."

Tagg and Gandy darted past the dragon's jaws and through the opening, Tagg glancing back at Minna with frightened eyes. As soon as they were out, others hurried to follow them. Verden let three others pass, then blocked the way again.

Verden relaxed. There was a chance the gully dwarves would find the self-stone. It was somewhere nearby. She could sense its presence, dimly. There was a chance they would recover it for her. If not… well, then she would just have to kill them and try to find it, herself.

As her eyes closed, the hostages began to chatter among themselves. She ignored them, then opened one eye in mild curiosity. "Promised place?" she murmured. "What promised place?"

From his refuge behind a rank of his subjects, Glitch peeked out at her. "P… Promised Place," he said. "Where we s'posed to go. Our de… density."

"Density? You mean, destiny?"

"Right. Dest'ny."

"And where is the Promised Place?"

"Dunno," Glitch admitted. "Nobody know."

She closed her eye again, bored with the "density" of gully dwarves. Within seconds she was asleep.

With Clout and two others — Gogy and Plit — following them, Gandy and Tagg made their way back to where they had found the dented disk. The dragon had said to look there, and they were in no mood to argue with a dragon.

More than a day had passed. Maybe two or three days, for all they knew. The smoke that had lingered above the ruined city was gone now, blown away, and only bleak rubble remained. But otherwise, things were as they had been… almost. Rounding a turn in a ravine among rubble, the five heard voices ahead. Clinging to shadow, they crept forward to see who was there. Tagg was the first to see, and he almost bowled the others over, backpedaling. Talls," he whispered. "Sh!"

From the shadowed mouth of a "tunnel" where great stones had fallen across the gaps between other stones, they peered out.

The humans ahead of them were ragged and scarred. There were two of them, and they were working frantically at the great, tumbled skeleton of the fallen discobel, turning its huge crank inch by inch as the long throwing arm rose above them. Lying on its side, the sidearm thing became a slanted pole, its outward end creeping toward the sky above the sheer walls of rubble around them.

"No business… comin' this way… in the first place," one of them grunted, heaving at the windlass of the crank. "Nothin' here.. just ruins."

"Shut up!" the other hissed. "Your fault we… fell in this — canyon… now pull… harder… only way to… get out of here."

In the shadows. Clout whispered, "What Talls doin'?"

"Dunno," Gandy shrugged. "Tall stuff don' make sense. Hush."

Slowly, out in the little clear area (which was, indeed, like a deep canyon among sheer walls, if one looked at it as a human would, not seeing the many avenues of exit that were like highways to gully dwarves), the two men labored at the discobel's windlass and the sling arm rose inch by inch. Several times they had to stop and rest, but finally the arm stood straight up, its tip only a few feet from the nearest wall of stone.

The men looked up. "That'll do," one of them panted. "Let's tie it off. I'd hate to have that thing trigger itself while we're climbing up there."

The other paled at the thought, and trembled. "Gods," he muttered. "Splat!"

"Shut up and tie this thing off with something. Here, what's this? The set-pin?" He picked up a sturdy cylinder of worked hardwood, about three feet long, and glanced from it to the barrel of the discobel. "Yeah, there's its slot. Hold that windlass 'til I get this in place."

With the other bracing the windlass, he set the pin in its slot and tapped it with a rock to firm it. The other eased off on the crank, eased a bit more, then stood back, sighing in relief. The pin held. The machine remained motionless.

"Let's get out of here," one of them said. Gingerly, he stepped to the base of the cranked-up arm and grasped it. Using its guy-bars as hand- and foot-holds, he began to climb. The other followed. From below, they looked like a pair of squirrels climbing a huge tree trunk, except that instead of branches, the trunk had triangles of cable bracings, held outward by heavy wooden guy-bars. They climbed higher and higher. At the top they hesitated, then swung from the tip of the arm to the top of the jagged wall, and disappeared from sight. Their voices faded, and were gone.

"Wonder what that all about," Tagg muttered. He scratched his head and looked around, puzzled. There was something he was supposed to do, but he had become so engrossed in watching the Talls that he had forgotten what it was. The others had, too, but after a moment old Gandy snapped his fingers. "Find stone for dragon," he reminded them. "Stone 'bout this big."

They stepped out from the "tunnel" and peered around. "Lotta stones 'bout that big, all over," Tagg pointed out. "Which one?"

"Dunno," Gandy admitted. "Better take 'em all."

They set to work gathering small stones — all except Clout, who had lost his bashing tool somewhere and felt uncomfortable without it. He set about finding a new bashing tool.

With Gandy selecting rocks, and Tagg, Plit, and Gogy collecting them, they had a nice pile of stones going by the time Clout found what he was looking for. It was a sturdy cylinder of polished hardwood, resting among the inexplicable vagaries of the great wooden device lying in the rubble.

It was exactly what he wanted, but it seemed to be stuck. He pulled at it, heaved at it, and it budged slightly but would not come free. Frowning with determination, he clambered out of the maze of timbers, found a good, heavy stone, and went back in.

Clout had a philosophy of life — only one, but it had always served him well. His philosophy was: if a thing won't move when you want it to move, bash it.

From outside, they heard him hammering in there — among the maze of timbers — and looked up. "What Clout doin'?" Plit asked.

"Dunno," Gandy shrugged, frowning. "Not gettin' stones, though."

The hammering went on, and then its ringing took on a new sound. After each thud, something creaked, and far above — though those below didn't notice it — the great braced arm began to tremble.

"Almos' got it," Clout's voice came from the timbers.

He banged again, and again, and abruptly the whole world went crazy. The entire maze of timbers groaned, crackled and heaved upward, seeming to dance. And the tall, heavy arm above shot downward, with such force that the air sang around it. It arched toward the ground, impelled by the released windlass, and smashed into the soil only yards from where the other gully dwarves were stacking their rocks.

The impact was enormous. Gully dwarves, rocks and surrounding rubble flew upward. Partial walls that still stood among the rubble teetered and fell, and a cloud of dust rose to blank out everything from sight. Below the dancing rubble, a deep, cavernous rumble sounded, and in its echoes came a muted roar of surprise and outrage. The very ground seemed to fall, resettling several feet lower than it had been.

For a time there was silence, then the dust blanketing the ground shifted and a small head came up. "Wha' happen?" Tagg asked.

Around him, others arose from the dust, wide-eyed and shaken. Plit and Gogy appeared first, then old Gandy, coughing and spitting dust.

"Wha' happen?" someone echoed Tagg's question.

Gandy looked around, bewildered. Then he looked up and blinked. "Fling-thing fall down," he said.

Not far away, the maze of timbers that had been a discobel was now an entirely different maze. It had rolled over, its timbers realigning in the process. At first the gully dwarves could see no movement there, then there were scuffing sounds and Clout appeared, crawling from a gap between broken spars. He got out, dusted himself off and blinked at the rest of them.

"Where Clout been?" Gandy demanded.

Clout held up a sturdy cylinder of polished wood. "Got new bashin' tool," he explained. "Wha' happen out here?"

The carefully-collected pile of rocks was gone — scattered all over the clearing. Gandy sighed and began again to pick up stones. The others watched for a moment, then joined him. And as other gully dwarves appeared, chattering, Gandy silenced them with a glare. "No talk," he snapped. "Get rocks."

Soon there were dozens of them there, all busily picking up stones. And then more, and then still more.

Suddenly, Tagg glanced around and saw Minna beside him, gathering rocks. He blinked, frowned and remembered. "What Minna doin' out here?" he asked.

"Gettin' little rocks," she explained. "Somebody say to."

"Where dragon? Let everybody go?"

"Hole fall down," she said. "Dragon can't move. Foun' new gully, though, for come out."

"Oh." He looked around. There were gully dwarves everywhere, all collecting stones. But to Tagg, that didn't seem quite as important as it had before. He went and found Gandy, and explained the situation to him. "Dragon don' got everybody anymore." he said. "Look."

It took a lot longer for Gandy to get everyone to stop collecting rocks than it had taken to get them to start. Inertia is a powerful force among gully dwarves. But finally they were all gathered around Gandy and someone asked, "What we do now?"

"Dunno," he said. "Ask Highbulp." He turned full circle, searching. "Where what's-'is-name?"

"Who?"

"Th' Highbulp! Ol' Glitch. Where th' Highbulp?"

None of them knew, so they went looking for Glitch I. They found him, eventually, right where they had left him.

Glitch had slept through the "earthquake," only to wake up and find everyone gone. He sat up, rubbed his eyes and noticed that the stones had shifted and a new tunnel had opened. So he headed that way, grumbling. It was just like his subjects to wander off and leave their leader to catch up when he got around to it.

He was just ducking to step through the opening when a voice behind him said, "Oh, all right! Let's make a deal!"

At first he couldn't see who had spoken. Sometime during his nap, a whole new rockfall seemed to have filled about half of the cavern. Huge slabs of stone had crashed down from above, and torrents of gravel with them. He peered here and there, then found the speaker: a big, angry green eye stared back at him from the depths of a crevice among the stone.

"Who that?" Glitch asked, backing hastily away.

"Verden Leafglow, you little imbecile!" The crackling voice subsided into a rasp of resignation. "I'm ready to make a deal."

"What kin' deal?" He hugged the cavern wall, ready to flee at an instant.

"I'm trapped here," the dragon voice admitted. "The hill fell in on me, and I can't move." The statement wasn't entirely true. She knew she could fight free if she had to, but the effort it would take to get loose — in her condition — might kill her. "I need help," she said.

The Highbulp relaxed slightly. "What kin' help?"

"The same thing I needed before!" the answer was almost a roar of aggravation. Then the dragon sighed and lowered her voice. "My self-stone. I told you about my self-stone. Remember?"

It took a bit of head-scratching, but then the Highbulp remembered. "Little stone? 'Bout this big? Special stone?"

"That's the one. I need it, and I need you and your… your people to find it for me."

The Highbulp scowled in deep thought, scuffing the ground with his toe. Then his eyes lighted with a shrewd look. "What in it for me?" he asked.

The deep growl that seeped through the fallen stone mixed irritation and controlled rage, but Verden held herself in check. She was trapped, but not helpless. It would be the work of a moment to free a claw and rend the arrogant little nuisance to shreds. But that wouldn't solve her problem. "What do you want?" she asked.

When the rest of his tribe found him — right where they had left him — Glitch I, Highbulp Etc., was sitting on a rock in the rockfall cavern, his chin resting on his knuckles. At first, he seemed to be deep in thought; then the other dwarves noticed that he was asleep.

They gathered around him, curious. Old Gandy walked around him, then prodded him with his mop handle staff to get his attention. "What Highbulp doin'?" he asked.

Glitch blinked, raised his head and looked around. "What?"

"Why Highbulp sittin' here?"

"Thinkin'," Glitch said, irritated at being awakened. "Highbulp doin' big think."

"Soun' 'sleep, thinkin'? Think 'bout what?"

Glitch scratched his head, trying to remember what he had been thinking about. From the shadowed rockfall beyond, a voice thin with exasperation said, "He's trying to decide what he wants from me."

The voice so startled the gully dwarves that several of them tripped over others, and for a moment the place was a tumble of confusion. Then Gandy stooped to look under the rocks. "Dragon? That still you?"

"It's still me," Verden Leaf glow assured him. "I can't believe that little oaf went to sleep. I thought he was thinking."

"Highbulp always go to sleep, when try to think," Gandy explained. "Think about what?"

"I am prepared to offer you stinking little… you people… something that you want, in return for delivery of my self-stone.

So what in the name of the Gods is it that you want?"

Gully dwarves tumbled about again, some diving for cover, some running for the exit. With a hiss, Verden exhaled a jet of noxious vapor — just a small stream, but aimed directly at the exit tunnel. Gully dwarves darting into the mist recoiled, gasping and coughing, tumbling backward as the green fumes assailed them. "No running away!" Verden commanded. "We are going to settle this, here and now! Tell me what you idiots want."

The Grand Notioner looked around him, puzzled. "Want? Dunno. Anybody know what we want?"

"Stew," several offered. "Out," a few others said. "Rats?" someone wondered.

"Make up your minds," the dragon hissed.

"We find self-stone, give to you, you give us somethin'?" Gandy pressed, trying to get it clear.

"Yes."

"What you give us?"

"I don't know!I'm trying to get you to…!"

Gully dwarves were diving, tumbling and rolling everywhere. The Highbulp tried to hide behind the stew pot, then sniffed at its aroma and realized that he was hungry.

With an effort, Verden lowered her voice again, speaking very slowly.

"I… am… trying… to… find… out… what… you… want," she said.

Gandy peeped out from behind a rock. "Oh," he said. "Okay. Highbulp, what we want?"

Glitch didn't respond. He was busy eating stew.

Something akin to inspiration tugged at Tagg's mind, possibly stirred up by realizing that Minna was beside him, holding his hand. "Maybe what we always lookin' for is what we want," he suggested.

Gandy glanced around. "What that?"

"Promised Place. Seem like we always lookin' for Promised Place."

"Mebbe so," Gandy nodded. To the dragon, he said, "We get you stone, you lead us to Promised Place?"

"Yes," she agreed, sighing. "Where is it?"

"Dunno," he said. "Hopin' you'd know."

"Rats," the dragon muttered.

"Rats, too," Gandy pressed. "Throw in some rats."

"All right! It's a deal."

Gandy crept nearer to the rockfall and leaned down to peer into the depths. A big, green eye looked back at him. "You say true?" Gandy asked.

The dragon glared at him, then sighed. "I say true. Have I ever lied to you?"

"Okay," Gandy decided. "When Highbulp finish eatin', somebody tell him he decided what we want. We get little rock for this dragon, we go to Promised Place."

Within moments, there were gully dwarves filing through the exit, all telling one another, "Find little rock, 'bout this big."

Tagg started to follow them, but Minna pulled him back. Still holding his hand, she crept toward the rockfall and looked beneath. "How come dragon make deal with us?" she asked.

"My lair collapsed," Verden said.

"Oh," Minna breathed. Again she looked into the depths of the fallen rock, at the great, green eye looking back at her. "Oh. Poor thing." Sympathetic and truly concerned, she reached into her belt pouch and brought out her finest treasure, the little bauble given to her by Tagg. "Poor dragon," she said. "Here. Here a pretty thing for you."

She reached the bauble toward the hole, and the green eye brightened. The dragon voice hissed, "That's it! It's mine!" A talon shot upward, spraying rock fragments into the cavern.

Tagg tumbled back, pulling Minna with him. She lost her hold on the self-stone, and it arced upward, then down.

There was a splash, and Glitch snapped, "Watch it! Highbulp eatin'!" Glaring, he swigged another mouthful of stew, gulped it down and grumped, "How come stew got rocks in it?"

"My self-stone!" Verden Leafglow shrieked. "You… you swallowed my self-stone!" Rocks erupted again, and a gigantic clawed arm emerged. For a second, huge talons flexed above the horrified Highbulp, then Verden hissed with frustration and pulled back her claws. The little nuisance might be nothing but a gully dwarf, but he was a living thing. And her self-stone was inside him. The self-stone, with its affinity for life.

If he died with the self-stone inside him, the crystal would be destroyed.

Under smoky skies, across a war-ravaged land, the combined clans of Bulp made their way out from Chaldis and into the vast reaches of the Kharolis Mountains, ever onward and ever upward, led by a thirty-six-foot-long green dragon who carried a Highbulp at her breast.

Verden Leafglow was not happy about the situation. As a guide for the puny creatures she so despised, she felt humiliated and degraded. She longed to simply splash their blood all over the nearest mountainside. She dreamed of doing that, but she did not do it. She was stuck with them. By holding Glitch I — and the self-stone within him — close to her breast, she had managed a temporary healing of her wounds. But it was only temporary, until she had her self-stone back, intact and uningested.

She needed the detestable little imbecile, and he knew it. At first, the sheer terror of being gripped in dragon claws and pressed against a dragon's breast had almost killed him. A more complex individual probably would have died from compounded fright and shock. Glitch had only screamed and passed out.

Since then, though, he had decided that he enjoyed being carried around by a dragon, and seemed to be doing everything in his power to maintain the status quo. Whether by his own doing or by simple luck, Glitch had kept Verden's self-stone lodged somewhere inside him for nearly a week. Through sheer stubborn perversity, it seemed, Glitch I had become constipated, and seemed determined to remain that way until Verden delivered him and his subjects to their Promised Place. She couldn't kill him, she couldn't dispose of him — each time she let go of him for more than an hour, her wounds began to open again — and she couldn't separate him from the rest without chancing that he would somehow disgorge the stone and lose it.

The self-stone in his belly was the Highbulp's guarantee, and the arrogant little pest knew it. Somehow, through all the days and all the stews, the self-stone remained inside Glitch as though it were glued there.

Their Promised Place. They didn't know where it was, or even what it was, but Glitch I was basking in his newfound glory as a dragon owner, and would settle for nothing less than the perfect spot. He had become downright obnoxious about it. Into the region of Itzan Nul she led them, and there — as the Aghar slept under bright moons — a familiar dragon-voice came again to Verden, speaking within her mind. "You have survived," it said. "I wondered if you would."

"No thanks to you, Flame Searclaw," she responded in kind, hatred riding on the thoughts. "You left me back there. You knew I was there, and you left me to die."

"You were injured and useless." The red dragon's mindvoice seemed almost to yawn with disinterest. "There are uses for you, now, though. The armies are…"

"Don't speak to me of uses," Verden shot, hot rage edging the thoughts. "You and I have much to settle… as soon as I am free to come for you."

"You have a duty…" Searclaw's thoughts were scathing.

"Begone!" Verden thought, blanking out the mindtalk.

She would not forget her "duty." But first she must retrieve her self-stone. She must deliver these useless gully dwarves to their Promised Place. Visions of slaughter danced in her mind as she thought of the moment when her precious talisman was safe once more. The Highbulp and all the rest… how she would make them suffer when they were no longer needed. But first…

Where might it be — the place they would accept as their Promised Place? There were many places — abandoned places, devastated places, places where no one now lived or might ever want to live again. Such, logic said, was a fair definition of a Promised Place for gully dwarves. So Verden led them, on and on, as the days passed. Past the fortress realm of Thorbardin, through wilderness and uncharted lands, beyond Pax Tharkas they journeyed, skirting the beleaguered realms of elf and man.

As she scouted aloft, carrying Glitch I at her breast, the voice of Flame Searclaw again sought her out. Cruel and impatient, its tones as fiery as the ruby scales that flashed when he flew, the red dragon penetrated her mind with his distant voice. "What are you doing?" he demanded. "You were told to come, but you are not here. Report!"

"You should be glad I have not come to you, Flame Sear-claw," she shot back, fiercely. "We have a score to settle, you and I."

"Any time you like, green snake," his voice was contemptuous. "But first, you have a duty. Why are you not here?"

"I can't come," she admitted. "Not just yet. There are these… these creatures. They have a hold on me, and insist that I lead them.. somewhere."

"Creatures?"

In her mind she felt the red dragon's presence, sensing beyond what she had said. Then it recoiled in disbelief. "Gully Dwarves? You, the great Verden Leafglow, a hostage to… to gully dwarves?" Cruel laughter echoed in the mind-talk. "What is it they want of you?"

"To take them to their Promised Place. But they don't know where that is!"

"Gully dwarves." Again the cruel, shadowy laughter. "Hurry and deal with your… with your new masters, Verden Leafglow. Your presence here is commanded."

The mind-voice faded and Verden trembled with rage.

"Ouch!"

She glanced down at the struggling Highbulp. "What?"

"You squishin' me! Don' squeeze so hard!"

You little twit, she thought. I could squeeze the very life out of you with no effort at all. Still, she sensed the self-stone lodged inside the little creature, responding to his discomfort. HER self-stone. It must be protected. Reluctantly, she eased her grip.

Everywhere, the dragonarmies were on the move, and Verden Leafglow ached to join them — to join in the death and destruction they brought. She itched for the sport of it.

A dozen times, holding the smelly, irritating little Highbulp to her breast, she led them to dismal, deserted, unwanted places — splendid places for gully dwarves. But each time, Glitch I, the Highbulp, took a slow, arrogant look around and said, "Nope, this not it. Try again."

Verden thought longingly of how pleasant it would be to slice the strutting little twit into a thousand bloody chunks and scatter him all over Ansalon. But for the selfstone lodged within him…

"Not Promised Place," he insisted, time and again. "Nope, this place okay for This Place, but not Promised Place. Dragon promise Promised Place. Try again."

Beyond the Kharolis', while her unwanted charges slept beneath the visible moons, a thoroughly exasperated Verden Leafglow took Glitch and went scouting. On great wings, fully healed if only temporarily, she soared high in the night sky. All her senses at full pitch, she searched, and where ancient scars creased the shattered land, the mind-talk came again.

Like a taunting, contemptuous message, hanging in the air, waiting for her to hear it, it was there. Flame Searclaw's voice, from far away. A chuckle of evil mirth, and words.

"So they still possess you," it said. "The least among the least, they search for their heritage. And Verden Leafglow is their slave. How marvelous. There is an answer to your riddle, though."

"Continue." Verden Leafglow sneered mentally. "You have my attention."

"Destiny," the non-voice snickered. "A Highbulp of destiny. And one such as you to guide him. How exquisite."

Verden growled in fury, but listened.

"Xak Tsaroth," the dragon voice said. "Xak Tsaroth is a suitable Promised Place. Xak Tsaroth. The Pitt. They belong there. Let the Pitt be their destiny. And delivering them to such a place, at such a time, is your reward."

With a final chuckle of deep, taunting amusement, the voice of Flame Searclaw repeated, "Xak Tsaroth… the Pitt…" and faded.

Xak Tsaroth. Soaring on wide wings, Verden looked down at the Highbulp Glitch I, pressed to her breast. The little twit had, of course, heard none of it. He was sound asleep. Xak Tsaroth. Despite her hatred of Flame Searclaw and the murderous rage she felt toward him, an evil delight grew in Verden. Her reward, indeed. She knew what was in Xak Tsaroth. There could be no finer revenge on the gully dwarves than to deliver them there. Others of their kind were there.. enslaved, abused and at the mercy of draconians. These should join them.

The idea was very sweet to her.

Verden Leafglow had returned to the combined clans by the time they awakened. Like a great, serpentine pillar of brilliant emerald, she towered above them. Her vast wings were radiant in the morning sun and her formidable fangs alight in her dragon mouth. Little Highbulp seemed a ragged doll clenched at her breast. Huge and malevolent, Verden Leafglow loomed over the puny creatures — and shuddered with revulsion when one of them tripped sleepily over her toe.

Without ceremony, she rousted them out and told them, "I have found your Promised Place. Get a move on, and I'll take you there."

"No hurry," Glitch squirmed in her grasp. "This place not bad This Place. Maybe stay here a while, then go."

"We go now," she hissed.

Gandy squinted up at her. "Where is Promised Place?"

"Xak Tsaroth."

"Bless dragon," Minna said.

"What?"

"Dragon sneeze."

"I did not sneeze! I never sneeze. I said, 'Xak Tsaroth'."

"Bless dragon," Minna repeated. "Where Promised Place?"

Verden shook her head as though insects were tormenting her. "The Pitt," she said.

All around her, gully dwarves glanced at one another with real interest. "That sound pretty good," several decided.

"Sound all right," Glitch conceded. "Maybe think 'bout that, day or so, then…"

"Shut up!" Verden roared. "We go now!"

Never before — as far as anyone who might have cared knew — had gully dwarves traveled as fast or as purposefully as the combined clans of Bulp traveled during the following two days. It was a nearly exhausted band that gathered by evening's light to gaze on Xak Tsaroth. They stood at the top of a high, sheared slope above shadowed depths, and looked out at distant crags beyond which were the waters of Newsea.

"The Promised Place," Verden Leafglow told them. "I have brought you here, as I promised. I have kept my word."

"Promised Place?" The Highbulp squinted around. "Where?"

"Down there," Verden pointed downward with a deadly, eloquent talon. "The Pitt." Not gently, she set Glitch down and said, "This is it. Now cough up my stone."

Tagg crept to the edge and looked down. It was a slope of sheer rock, a vertiginous incline that dropped away into shadows far below. "Wow," he said.

The Highbulp only glanced into the depths, then turned away, an arrogant, scheming grin on his face. "Prob'ly not it," he decided. "Nope, prob'ly not Promised Place. Better try again." With a casual wave of his hand, he added, "Dragon dis — dismiss for now. Highbulp send for you when need you."

It was just too much for Verden Leaf glow. She had taken more than she could stand. "Dismissed? You imbecilic little twit, you dismiss we? Rats!"

Gully dwarves backpedaled all around her, tumbling over one another. Some went over the edge, sliding and rolling away toward the shadowed depths. Others turned to watch them go. "They really movin'," someone said. "That steep." "Smooth, though," another noted. "Good slide."

"Rats!" Verden roared again, exasperated beyond reason and reverting to the vernacular of her charges. "RATS!" Annoyed beyond control, she aimed a swat at Glitch. The Highbulp dodged aside, ducked

… and belched. Something shot from his mouth, to bounce to a stop at Verden's foot. She scooped it up. It was her selfstone. She had it back, intact.

"Rats," Gandy said, realizing that the good times were over.

"That right," the Highbulp remembered, snapping his fingers. "Rats, too. Dragon promise us rats."

"You… want… rats?" The huge, dragon face lowered itself, nose to nose with the little Highbulp. "You want rats? Very well. You shall have rats."

Closing her eyes, she murmured a spell, and her dragon-senses heard the scurrying of tiny things in the distance — sounds below sound that grew in volume as they came closer.

The gully dwarves heard it then, too, and stared about in wonder. The sounds grew, seeming to come from everywhere. Then there were little, dark shadows arrowing toward them, emerging from crevices, coming over rises and up gullies — dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of small, scurrying things, homing in on them. Rats. A leaping, bounding, flowing tide of rats.

"Wow," Tagg murmured.

"Lotta rats," Minna concurred. "Gonna make lotta stew, for sure."

Clout, never one to be concerned with details, brandished his bashing tool and prepared to deal with dinner.

Gandy, though, took a different view of the matter, "Too much rats," he started. "Way too much rats for…"

The tidal wave of rats swept around them, under them, over them — and carried them with it. A second later, Verden Leafglow stood alone on the ledge, looking down at a slope awash with rats and gully dwarves, all gathering momentum on their way to Xak Tsaroth, buried city within the Pitt.

As they disappeared into shadows, her dragon eyes picked out details: Tagg and Minna hand in hand, their hair blowing around them; old Gandy flailing his mop handle as he tried to maintain his balance at great speed; Clout busily swatting rats and gathering up their corpses; and the Highbulp — Glitch I was rolling, tumbling downward, a flailing tangle of arms, legs and whipping beard, and his panicked voice rose above the others.

"Make way!" he shouted. "Get outta way! Highbulp on a roll!"

Somehow, even disappearing into the depths and the shadows — and the unsuspected horrors — of the ancient, lost city that was his destination and his destiny, Glitch I, Highbulp by Persuasion and Lord Protector of Lots of Places — including, now, the Promised Place — still managed to sound arrogant.