Dragonlance 02 - Dragons of Winter Night (42 page)

“I was going to, my lord,” Wills said stubbornly. “But there’s something about them—the old man in particular. He’s crackers, if you ask me, but he’s a smart crackers, for all that. Knows something, and it may be more than’s good for him—or us either.”

“What do you mean?”

The two had just opened the huge, wooden doors leading into the living quarters of the castle proper. Gunthar stopped and stared at Wills, knowing and respecting his retainer’s keen power of observation. Wills glanced around, then leaned close.

“The old man said I was to tell you he had urgent news regarding the dragon orb, my lord!”

“The dragon orb!” Gunthar murmured. The orb was secret, or he presumed it was. The Knights knew of it, of course. Had Derek told anyone else? Was this one of his maneuvers?

“You acted wisely, Wills, as always,” Gunthar said finally. “Where are they?”

“I put them in your war room, my lord, figuring they could cause little mischief there.”

“I’ll change clothes before I catch my death, then see them directly. Have you made them comfortable?”

“Yes, my lord,” Wills replied, hurrying after Gunthar, who was on the move again. “Hot wine, a bit of bread and meat. Though I trust the kender’s lifted the plates by now—”

Gunthar and Wills stood outside the door of the war room for a moment, eavesdropping on the visitors’ conversation.

“Put that back!” ordered a stern voice.

“I won’t! It’s mine! Look, it was in my pouch.”

“Bah! I saw you put it there not five minutes ago!”

“Well, you’re wrong,” protested the other voice in wounded tones. “It’s mine! See, there’s my name engraved—”

“ ‘To Gunthar, my beloved husband on the Day of Life-Gift,’ ” said the first voice.

There was a moment’s silence in the room. Wills turned pale. Then the shrill voice spoke, more subdued this time.

“I guess it must have fallen into my pack, Fizban. That’s it! See, my pack was sitting under that table. Wasn’t that lucky? It would have broken if it had hit the floor—”

His face grim, Lord Gunthar flung open the door.

“Merry Yuletide to you, sirs,” he said. Wills popped in after him, his eyes darting quickly around the room.

The two strangers whirled around, the old man holding a crockery mug in his hand. Wills made a leap for the mug, whisking it away. With an indignant glance at the kender, he placed it upon the mantlepiece, high above the kender’s reach.

“Will there be anything else, my lord?” Wills asked, glaring meaningfully at the kender. “Shall I stay and keep an eye on things?”

Gunthar opened his mouth to reply, but the old man waved a negligent hand.

“Yes, thank you, my good man. Bring up some more ale. And don’t bring any of that rotgut stuff from the servants’ barrels, either!” The old man looked at Wills sternly. “Tap the barrel that’s in the dark corner by the cellar stairs. You know—the one that’s all cobwebby.”

Wills stared at him, open-mouthed.

“Well, go on. Don’t stand there gaping like a landed fish! A bit dim-witted, is he?” the old man asked Gunthar.

“N-no,” Gunthar stammered. “That’s all right, Wills. I—I believe I’ll have a mug, too—of—of the ale from the cask by
the—uh—stairs. How did
you
know?” He demanded of the old man suspiciously.

“Oh, he’s a magic-user,” the kender said, shrugging and sitting down without being invited.

“A magic-user?” The old man peered around. “Where?”

Tas whispered something, poking the old man.

“Really? Me?” he said. “You don’t say! How remarkable. Now you know, come to think of it, I do seem to remember a spell … Fireball. How did it go?”

The old mage began to speak the strange words. Alarmed, the kender leaped out of his seat and grabbed the old man.

“No, Old One!” he said, tugging him back into a chair. “Not now!”

“I suppose not,” the old man said wistfully. “Wonderful spell, though …”

“I’m certain,” murmured Gunthar, absolutely mystified. Then he shook his head, regaining his sternness. “Now, explain yourselves. Who are you? Why are you here? Wills said something about a dragon orb—”

“I’m—” The mage stopped, blinking.

“Fizban,” said the kender with a sigh. Standing, he extended his small hand politely to Gunthar. “And I am Tasslehoff Burrfoot.” He started to sit down. “Oh,” he said, popping up again. “A Merry Yuletide to you, too, sir knight.”

“Yes, yes,” Gunthar shook hands, nodding absently. “Now about the dragon orb?”

“Ah, yes, the dragon orb!” The befuddled look left Fizban’s face. He stared at Gunthar with shrewd, cunning eyes. “Where is it? We’ve come a long way in search of it.”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” Gunthar said coolly. “If, indeed, such a thing were ever here—”

“Oh, it was here,” Fizban replied. “Brought to you by a Knight of the Rose, one Derek Crownguard. And Sturm Brightblade was with him.”

“They’re friends of mine,” explained Tasslehoff, seeing Gunthar’s jaw go slack. “I helped get the orb, in fact,” the kender added modestly. “We took it away from an evil wizard in a palace made of ice. It’s the most wonderful story—” He sat forward eagerly. “Do you want to hear it?”

“No,” said Gunthar, staring at them both in amazement. “And if I believed this swimming bird tale—wait—” He sank
back in his chair. “Sturm did say something about a kender. Who were the others in your party?”

“Flint the dwarf, Theros the blacksmith, Gilthanas and Laurana—”

“It must be!” Gunthar exclaimed, then he frowned. “But he never mentioned a magic-user.…”

“Oh, that’s because I’m dead,” Fizban stated, propping his feet upon the table.

Gunthar’s eyes opened wide, but before he could reply, Wills came in. Glaring at Tasslehoff, the retainer set mugs down on the table in front of his lordship.

“Three mugs
, here, my lord. And one on the mantle makes four. And there better be
four
when I come back!”

He walked out, shutting the door with a thud.

“I’ll keep an eye on them,” Tas promised solemnly. “Do you have a problem with people stealing mugs?” he asked Gunthar.

“I—no.… Dead?” Gunthar felt he was rapidly losing his grip on the situation.

“It’s a long story,” said Fizban, downing the liquid in one swallow. He wiped the foam from his lips with the tip of his beard. “Ah, excellent. Now, where was I?”

“Dead,” said Tas helpfully.

“Ah, yes. A long story. Too long for now. Must get the orb. Where is it?”

Gunthar stood up angrily, intending to order this strange old man and this kender from his chamber and his castle. He was going to call his guards to extract them. But, instead, he found himself caught by the old man’s intense gaze.

The Knights of Solamnia have always feared magic. Though they had not taken part in the destruction of the Towers of High Sorcery—that would have been against the Measure—they had not been sorry to see magic-users driven from Palanthas.

“Why do you want to know?” Gunthar faltered, feeling a cold fear seep into his blood as he felt the old man’s strange power engulf him. Slowly, reluctantly, Gunthar sat back down.

Fizban’s eyes glittered. “I keep my own counsel,” he said softly. “Let it be enough for you to know that
I
have come seeking the orb. It was made by magic-users, long ago! I know of it. I know a great deal about it.”

Gunthar hesitated, wrestling with himself. After all, there were knights guarding the orb, and if this old man really did know something about it, what harm could there be in telling him where it was? Besides, he really didn’t feel like he had any choice in the matter.

Fizban absently picked up his empty mug again and started to drink. He peered inside it mournfully as Gunthar answered.

“The dragon orb is with the gnomes.”

Fizban dropped his mug with a crash. It broke into a hundred pieces that went skittering across the wooden floor.

“There, what’d I tell you?” Tas said sadly, eyeing the shattered mug.

The gnomes had lived in Mount Nevermind for as long as they could remember—and since they were the only ones who cared, they were the only ones who counted. Certainly they were there when the first knights arrived in Sancrist, traveling from the newly created kingdom of Solamnia to build their keeps and fortress along the westernmost part of their border.

Always suspicious of outsiders, the gnomes were alarmed to see a ship arriving upon their shores, bearing hordes of tall, stern-faced, warlike humans. Determined to keep what they considered a mountain paradise secret from the humans, the gnomes launched into action. Being the most technologically minded of the races on Krynn (they are noted for having invented the steam-powered engine and the coiled spring), the gnomes first thought of hiding within their mountain caverns, but then had a better idea. Hide the mountain itself!

After several months of unending toil by their greatest mechanical geniuses, the gnomes were prepared. Their plan? They were going to make their mountain disappear!

It was at this juncture that one of the members of the gnomish Philosopher’s Guild asked if it wasn’t likely that the knights would have already noticed the mountain, the tallest on the island. Might not the sudden disappearance of the mountain create a certain amount of curiosity in the humans?

This question threw the gnomes into turmoil. Days were spent in discussion. The question soon divided the Philosopher gnomes into two factions: those who believed that if a tree fell in a forest and no one heard it, it still made a crashing
sound; and those who believed it didn’t. Just what this had to do with the original question was brought up on the seventh day, but was promptly referred to committee.

Meanwhile, the Mechanical Engineers, in a huff, decided to set off the device anyhow.

And thus occurred the day that is still remembered in the annals of Sancrist (when almost everything else was lost during the Cataclysm) as the Day of Rotten Eggs.

On that day an ancestor of Lord Gunthar woke up wondering sleepily if his son had fallen through the roof of the hen house again. This had happened only a few weeks before. The boy had been chasing a rooster.

“You take him down to the pond,” Gunthar’s ancestor told his wife sleepily, rolling over in bed and drawing the covers up over his head.

“I can’t!” she said drowsily. “The chimney’s smoking!”

It was then that both fully woke up, realizing that the smoke filling the house was not coming from the chimney and that the ungodly odor was not coming from the hen house.

Along with every other resident of the new colony, the two rushed outside, choking and gagging with the smell that grew worse by the minute. They could see nothing, however. The land was covered with a thick yellow smoke, redolent of eggs that had been sitting in the sun for three days.

Within hours, everyone in the colony was deathly sick from the smell. Packing up blankets and clothes, they headed for the beaches. Breathing the fresh salt breezes thankfully, they wondered if they could ever go back to their homes.

While discussing this and watching anxiously to see if the yellow cloud on the horizon might lift, the colonists were considerably startled to see what appeared to be an army of short, brown creatures stagger out of the smoke to fall almost lifeless at their feet.

The kindly people of Solamnia immediately went to the aid of the poor gnomes, and thus did the two races of people living on Sancrist meet.

The meeting of the gnomes and the knights turned out to be a friendly one. The Solamnic people had a high regard for four things: individual honor, the Code, the Measure, and technology. They were vastly impressed with the labor-saving
devices the gnomes had invented at this time, which included the pulley, the shaft, the screw, and the gear.

It was during this first meeting that Mount Nevermind got its name as well.

The knights soon discovered that, while gnomes appeared to be related to the dwarves—being short and stocky—all similarity ended there. The gnomes were a skinny people with brown skin and pale white hair, highly nervous and hot-tempered. They spoke so rapidly that the knights at first thought they were speaking a foreign language. Instead, it turned out to be Common spoken at an accelerated pace. The reason for this became obvious when an elder made the mistake of asking the gnomes the name of their mountain.

Roughly translated, it went something like this: A Great, Huge, Tall Mound Made of Several Different Strata of Rock of Which We Have Identified Granite, Obsidian, Quartz With Traces of Other Rock We Are Still Working On, That Has Its Own Internal Heating System Which We Are Studying In Order to Copy Someday That Heats the Rock Up to Temperatures That Convert It Into Both Liquid and Gaseous States Which Occasionally Come to the Surface and Flow Down the Side of the Great, Huge, Tall Mound—

“Nevermind,” the elder said hastily.

Nevermind! The gnomes were impressed. To think that these humans could reduce something so gigantic and marvelous into something so simple was wonderful beyond belief. And so, the mountain was called Mount Nevermind from that day forth, to the vast relief of the gnomish Map-Makers Guild.

The knights on Sancrist and the gnomes lived in harmony after that, the knights bringing the gnomes any questions of a technological nature that needed solving, the gnomes providing a steady flood of new inventions.

When the dragon orb arrived, the knights needed to know how the thing worked. They gave it into the keeping of the gnomes, sending along two young knights to guard it. The thought that the orb might be magic did not occur to them.