“Self-fitting fabric!” exclaimed Niggil, a particularly excited onlooker. “Think of the possibilities for the Tailor’s Guild!”
“Can you take it off?” Teldin demanded of the oldest and most pompous observer of the lot, a dark-haired gnome named – for Teldin’s convenience – Ilwar. The fellow’s beard was curly, full, and squarely cut, each stray hair long since having been excised. The beard made the gnome’s chin look like of block of ebon stone.
The little expert circled slowly around Teldin, who was perched on a small stool, pausing only to finger the cloth. “It is possible to remove any item, given the correct application of —”
“Can you remove it now?” Teldin pressed quickly. He did not want them to spend all their time working out “correct applications.”
“All things must be done in their right time, since it would be a mistake to rush into something without all the facts,” Ilwar said pompously, his straight-cut beard bobbing with each word. “In this case, an examination period of at least one full lunar period will be necessary before …”
Teldin groaned as the gnomes launched into a debate about how best to proceed. In fact, they ignored him as he sat on a stool between them. Finally they agreed to keep the cloak under observation for twenty-four hours before trying anything else. The decision having been reached – without once consulting the human – the gnomes all shook hands and filed out of the room, ignoring Teldin’s protests and ushering Gomja from the room as well. When the farmer tried to follow, a small squadron of armed fellows kept him at the door. He made several vain attempts to escape, then gave up and returned to his stool. “Have a good time, Gomja!” the farmer yelled to his partner, though he suspected that was unlikely. The door clicked shut, leaving Teldin alone in the chamber, barren except for the single stool on which he sat.
The twenty-four hours were perfectly uneventful at least, though extremely frustrating and boring to spend alone. Teldin wondered what the giff might be up to, where Cwelanas was right now, and whether what was left of his farm was still there. He thought of his parents, Amdar and Sharl. When three gnomes – bearded Ilwar and two assistants, Niggil, and Broz – finally returned, they ushered him to a table in a nearby testing chamber and once again circled, touched, smelled, and examined. The fact that the cloak had done nothing was treated with the greatest of importance, nonaction being an event in itself.
The gnomes proceeded to poke and prod, citing these steps as necessary to remove the cloak. Ilwar sat on the floor and assiduously took notes of every test and reaction.
“And you are sure you can’t take it off?” asked Ilwar, in a remarkably short-winded question. As the group’s leader, his full, black, and square-cut beard lent a great deal of solemnity to the proceedings.
“Not since I put it on. I can’t open the clasp,” Teldin explained once again, chin propped on the table, wearily watching their shadows.
“More testing is what we need!” Niggil eagerly suggested. Niggil was a goggle-eyed fellow and had been suggesting this course of action from the start. “Puncture stress test, material resistance to temperature variability of extreme degrees, impact absorption analysis. I have all the tools right here!” the gnome rattled on excitedly. Teldin was getting used to the speed with which the gnomes spoke. He understood most of the words, though not always their meaning.
Suddenly one of the shadows on the wall waved a long, sharp-looking dagger. “See, we can puncture stress test it right here!” The shadow dagger suddenly pointed toward Teldin’s shadow back.
In an instant, Teldin was on his feet, sending Broz, the fat one, sprawling from his stool. There was a clink as the metal point of Niggil’s dagger bit stone. “
Wait
! Just wait right there!” Teldin bellowed, his face quivering with rage. He had been poked and jabbed enough already. The farmer wrapped the cloak tightly around himself and prowled the edges of the room, keeping Ilwar, Niggil, and Broz in sight at all times. “No more! That’s enough examining, and there will be no more testing!” As he spoke, Teldin whirled on Niggil, who was trying to creep forward with his dagger. “Just tell me this: Can you get this thing off?”
“Indubitably,” Ilwar answered gravely, scowling at the suggestion that there was something they
couldn’t
do.
“Theoretically possible,” said Niggil.
“We could cut it off,” suggested Broz in his relatively slow, earthy drawl. The other two both turned to Broz and evaluated his proposal.
“
Don’t even try
!” Teldin remarked through gritted teeth.
Broz looked up in mild surprise. “Oh, I didn’t mean the cloak or the chain or the clasp,” the quiet one finally explained in a torrent of words, “since we certainly don’t want to damage these, but I have a friend in the Healer’s Guild, and he’s been working for years now on a device that should keep a person’s head perfectly functional while separated from the rest of the body, and now you’ve come along, and it’s a perfect opportunity to test his theories and see if they really work —” Broz took a deep breath while Teldin stared at him in disbelief — “then,” Broz continued, “he could begin work on learning how to reattach the head!”
“Capital idea,” applauded Niggil, “then we can do tests!”
Without waiting for another suggestion, Teldin seized his spear, long since returned from examination by the Weapons Guild, and sprang to the door. “Snowball!” he bellowed at the portal. “Take me to Gomja now!”
Chapter Nineteen
“There, sir. It’s not much too look at, but the gnomes say it’ll get into the void.” High on the thirty-fifth level, Gomja pointed out a rough-hewn window to the lake below, where a ramshackle and half-built ship, another great pride of gnomish engineering, floated. Teldin and Gomja were watching the work from well above the floor of the volcano, looking down on the crater lake filled with the pale-blue waters collected from yearly snowmelt and rains.
“It’s not even finished!” Teldin protested. Teldin leaned on the windowsill and studied the craft. It didn’t look like any ship he’d ever seen, neither the
Silver Spray
nor even the
Penumbra
’s wreckage. It looked more like an immense, flat-bottomed river barge topped with a collection of buildings, catwalks, gantries, windmills, gigantic chimneys, and, amidships, a pair of waterwheels mounted on the sides. There was a semblance of order, with decks, a sterncastle, and a single small mast, but the whole thing was cloaked in jury-rigged scaffolding that obscured details. Teldin was amazed the whole thing even floated. “They’ve got a lot of work to do,” he scoffed.
“I think it is finished, sir,” Gomja cheerfully offered, gamely struggling to suppress a grin. “That’s the way the gnomes want her to look.”
“Want?” Teldin walked away from the window, shaking his head in disbelief. Barely escaping three days of “examination” and hardly recovered from a harrowing barrel ride up to the thirty-fifth level, Teldin couldn’t fathom any more wonders of gnomish tinkering. He grabbed one of the too-small chairs from a corner and sat, his long legs sprawling across the floor.
“Do you understand these gnomes?” He sighed with frustration, throwing his arms out wide. Gomja answered with a lopsided grin and a shrug, but Teldin did not see it, because his head had flopped back so he could stare at the ceiling.
Before any more could be said, the door banged open and a small herd of gnomes barged into the room, solemn Ilwar in the lead, Niggil, Broz, and Snowball following. While Ilwar managed to maintain a stately appearance, the other three reminded Teldin of chickens leaving the coop in the morning, swirling and half-flying in every direction. Naturally the gnomes were all talking at once.
Snowball was the first to make himself heard. “Since I found you, it is my pleasure to say that your cloak is —”
“Amazing,” Niggil interrupted. “Your cloak, as we have determined, is —”
“
Quite
amazing,” Snowball countered, glaring at the uppity Niggle, “because we are certain it is not —”
“From this —” Niggil cut in again.
“World!” Snowball finished with a defiant scowl at his fellow gnome. Satisfied that he had the last word, the doorkeeper smiled triumphantly at Teldin.
“I know that,” Teldin peevishly replied. “You asked me and I told you.” Snowball’s smug posture deflated slightly at the scorn in Teldin ‘s voice.
Calm and dignified in contrast to his fellows, Ilwar held up his hand to prevent any more outbursts. Surprisingly enough, the other three kept quiet, though Broz had yet to speak anyway. “Ah, Teldin Moore of Kalaman, now we have proven it through our studies, where before we had only your word, and therefore the origin is certain, so there —”
“Well, excuse me, but if you know so much, how do I get it off?” Teldin interrupted, hoping that, just maybe, the gnomes might finally have the answer.
“That must be determined by further examination —”
“And testing,” chimed in Niggil. Ilwar glared at the big-eyed gnome, cowing him into silence.
“Fortunately, we three —”
“Four,” Snowball corrected. The square-bearded gnome glared again. Snowball looked to the floor, abashed.
Satisfied, Ilwar continued. “We four are familiar with the new and wonderful science of spelljamming and are perfectly suited to —”
“Is that your ship?” a voice suddenly boomed. Ilwar, automatically assuming one of the gnomes had spoken again, glowered at the trio. They, in turn, did their best to look innocent, nodding back toward the large giff. Gomja was pointing to the vessel that floated on the lake. “Excuse me, sir, for interrupting,” the alien offered. The human dismissed the whole thing, secretly relieved to be free of the building barrage of gnomish gibberish. The gnome’s call for more testing had the ominous ring of failure to it.
Before Ilwar could regain control, the other three gnomes scurried to the window and, practically piling onto one another, peered over the edge of the sill to the lake below.
“Oh! The pride of our fleet, the finest ship we ever built,” chattered Snowball, “the
Unquenchable Fire-Powered Sidewheel-Shaped
…” He continued on with an endless name.
“Certainly finer than our last ship,” the goggle-eyed Niggil assured the giff, “the
Improved Star-Sailing Ship Based On Modified Plans From the Previously Improved Star-Sailing Ship That Broke in Half and Sank
…”
“Indeed,” Ilwar gravely added as he came to the window, clearing a way through his juniors. “This one has remained afloat for an entire thirty days, whereas the
Improved
…”
“And it doesn’t require all those squirrels,” the heretofore silent Broz announced in his deep voice. Gomja’s eyes darted from gnome to gnome as the giff vainly tried to follow a single conversation.
Squirrels? Teldin thought, hopelessly trying to puzzle out that one.
“But what do you call this one?” the big alien asked, totally lost by the four different speakers.
Snowball harrumphed in self-importance. “As I was saying, the
Unquenchable Fire-Powered Sidewheel-Shaped Motive
—”
“Does it have a shorter name?” Teldin asked from across the room, breaking the litany of words flowing from Snowball’s lips. Everyone fell silent at the grave import of this question.
Ilwar stroked at his black beard several times before finally speaking. “No,” he allowed slowly, “but to help you, it could be given one, such as the
Unquenchable Side-Mounted Steam Generated
—”
Teldin tried to suppress a wince as the litany began anew. “Maybe something smaller-like one word?” the farmer suggested.
“Hmm, that will be difficult, for it is not in the gnomish nature to be anything less than absolutely precise,” Ilwar answered, almost rationally explaining his people’s trait, “unless, of course, you or your companion, who is not like any other creature we have seen on Krynn, can make a suggestion that we could use —”
“The
Unquenchable
,” Gomja eagerly interrupted, sensing an opportunity to end the discussion. “Will that do?”
The gnomes turned to each other in serious consideration of the title, with Ilwar acting as dignified moderator of the discussion. Finally they quit chattering and looked at one another with wonder in their eyes.
“
Unquenchable
!” Niggil chortled, hopping from foot to foot. “Superb, because now we can fit the name on the side, which is something we were going to have to build another ship to do, but now —”
“This is a wonderful advance for the Namer’s Guild, since now they won’t have to use the diving suits,” Snowball concurred, “and as a representative of the Doorkeeper’s Guild it is my duty to carry news of this great discovery —”
“Do not be so eager,” Ilwar scolded with a frown. “I am not so certain about this proposal. There must be a committee established to study the ramifications these alterations will have upon the overall design —”
From the other side of the room, Teldin coughed. “Excuse me, but what about the cloak?”
Ilwar stopped the lecture of his fellows, stroked his beard once more, and looked at Teldin with annoyance. “I was saying something important. But since you have asked, I should think the answer is obvious. Since the cloak is not from Krynn, we assumed you would accompany us into space, where the cloak can be properly studied and tested, since all calculations and observations made on Krynn cannot be considered definitive, given the non-Krynn origins of —”
“Accompany you where?” Teldin exclaimed. The mouths of Niggil, Broz, and Snowball all opened to have their say, but their de facto leader, the square-bearded one, silenced them again. The human walked to the window and looked at the wildly jury-rigged
Unquenchable
below. “You want me to fly into space on that?” he asked. “I don’t think so. I just want this cloak off so I can go back home and rebuild my life again.” Teldin knelt to look the gnomes in the eye. “Can you do that?”
Ilwar raised an eyebrow. “Your life is not our affair, Teldin Moore of Kalaman, so you will have to rebuild your farm on your own.”
“Do you insist?” Snowball asked, crestfallen. The gnome’s dreams of fame and importance were fast fading.