Dragons of Winter Night - Margaret Weis [140]
“But the book I read in Tarsis said the orb could control dragons!” Tas whispered. “Isn’t that good? I mean, the orbs aren’t evil, are they?”
“Evil? Oh, no! Not evil.” Fizban shook his head. “That’s the danger. They’re not good, not evil. They’re not anything! Or perhaps I should say, they’re everything.”
Tas saw he would probably never get a straight answer out of Fizban, whose mind was far away. In need of diversion, the kender turned his attention to their host.
“What does your name mean?” Tas asked.
Gnosh smiled happily. “In The Beginning, The Gods Created the Gnomes, and One of the First They Created Was Named Gnosh I and these are the Notable Events Which Occurred in His Life: He Married Marioninillis …”
Tas had a sinking feeling. “Wait—” he interrupted. “How long is your name?”
“It fills a book this big in the library,” Gnosh said proudly, holding his hands out, “because we are a very old family as you will see when I contin—”
“That’s all right,” Tas said quickly. Not watching where he was going, he stumbled over a rope. Gnosh helped him to his feet. Looking up, Tas saw the rope led up into a nest of ropes connected to each other, snaking out in all directions. He wondered where they led. “Perhaps another time.”
“But there are some very good parts,” Gnosh said as they walked toward a huge steel door, “and I could skip to those, if you like, such as the part where great-great-great-grandmother Gnosh invented boiling water—”
“I’d love to hear it.” Tas gulped. “But, no time—”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Gnosh said, “and anyway, here we are at the entrance to the main chamber, so if you’ll excuse me—”
Still talking, he reached up and pulled a cord. A whistle blew. Two bells and a gong rang out. Then, with a tremendous blast of steam that nearly parboiled all of them, two huge steel doors located in the interior of the mountain began to slide open. Almost immediately, the doors stuck, and within minutes the place was swarming with gnomes, yelling and pointing and arguing about whose fault it was.
Tasslehoff Burrfoot had been making plans in the back of his mind as to what he would do after this adventure had ended and all the dragons were slain (the kender tried to maintain a positive outlook). The first thing he had planned to do was to go and spend a few months with his friend, Sestun, the gully dwarf in Pax Tharkas. The gully dwarves led interesting lives, and Tas knew he could settle there quite happily, as long as he didn’t have to eat their cooking.
But the moment Tas entered Mount Nevermind, he decided the first thing he would do was come back and live with the gnomes. The kender had never seen anything quite so wonderful in his entire life. He stopped dead in his tracks.
Gnosh glanced at him. “Impressive, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Not quite the word I’d use,” Fizban muttered. They stood in the central portion of the gnome city. Built within an old shaft of a volcano, it was hundreds of yards across and miles high. The city was constructed in levels around the shaft. Tas stared up … and up … and up.…
“How many levels are there?” the kender asked, nearly falling over backward trying to see.
“Thirty-five and—”
“Thirty-five!” Tas repeated in awe. “I’d hate to live on that thirty-fifth level. How many stairs do you have to climb?”
Gnosh sniffed. “Primitive devices we improved upon long ago and now”—he gestured—“view someofthemarvelsoftechnologywehaveinoperat—”
“I can see,” said Tas, lowering his eyes to ground level. “You must be preparing for a great battle. I never saw so many catapults in my life …”
The kender’s voice died. Even as he watched, a whistle sounded, a catapult went off with a twang, and a gnome went sailing through the air. Tas wasn’t looking at machines of war, he was looking at the devices that had replaced stairs!
The bottom floor of the chamber was filled with catapults, every type of catapult ever conceived by gnomes. There were sling catapults, cross-bow catapults, willow-sprung