Kitiara blinked. "Sighter, you – you're a genius."
He polished his nails on his vest and said, "Well, I am extremely intelligent."
She turned to the wall and ran a hand over the dry plaster.
"I don't know if we can get enough purchase to climb up," she said.
"I can do it," said Roperig. He pressed his hands on the wall and muttered, "Strong grip. Strong grip." To everyone's delight, his palms stuck, and he proceeded to climb right up the wall like a spider. The gnomes cheered; Kitiara hushed them.
"It's all right," Roperig said from atop the wall. "It's just wide enough for me to walk on. Boost Fitter up, will you?"
Kitiara hoisted Fitter up with one hand. Roperig caught his upstretched hands and pulled his apprentice up beside him.
Cutwood and Wingover were next.
"That's enough," said Sighter. "We'll stay with the lady and divert the king's attention. You find Sturm."
The four gnomes on the wall set off. Kitiara went back to the entry of the audience hall, banging sword and dagger together for attention. Bellcrank and Sighter stood close behind her, filling the doorway.
'You're back. Happy, happy to see you!" exclaimed
Rapaldo, who was still hooting from his roost.
"We want to negotiate," Kitiara said. It was galling, even if it was a lie.
"You touched me with your sword," Rapaldo said petu lantly. "That's treason, impious blasphemy and treason.
Throw your sword into the hall where I can see it."
"I won't give up my sword, not while I still live."
"Really? The king will see about that!" Rapaldo hooted some words in the Lunitarians' language. The guards in the room took up the message and repeated it again and again, louder and louder. Soon thousands outside were hooting the words.
Roperig and the others could hear the tree-men take up
Rapaldo's chant as they fairly flew over the narrow wall tops, peeking into every room in the keep'. Cutwood, of course, stopped to make notes of the contents of every room and passage, while Wingover kept probing the distant vistas instead of searching the nearer rooms below. Only Fitter
' took his task to heart. The little gnome raced along at blind ing speed, running, leaping, searching. He doubled back to his panting boss.
"Where did you learn to run so fast?" Roperig gasped.
"I don't know. Haven't I always run this way?"
"No indeed!"
"Oh! The magic has gotten to me at last!" Fitter flashed along the wall, sidestepping Cutwood, who was in the midst of compiling his umpteenth catalog. Cutwood, startled by the speedy Fitter, lost his balance and fell.
"Oof!" said Sturm as the forty-pound gnome landed in his lap. "Cutwood! Where did you come from?"
"Sancrist." He called out to Roperig, and the other three gnomes quickly found them.
"My hands are bound," Sturm explained. He was sitting in an old chair, and his feet were tied to the chair legs.
"Rapaldo took my knife."
"The lady has the dagger," said Roperig.
"I'll get it!" said Fitter, and in an instant he was gone.
Sturm blinked. "I know I've got the grandfather of all headaches, but our friend Fitter seems to me to have gotten awfully fast since last I saw him."
"Here it is!" called Fitter. He dropped the dagger, point first. Cutwood picked it up and started sawing away at
Sturm's bonds. The dagger was made for thrusting, not cut ting, and didn't have much of an edge.
"Hurry," said Fitter breathlessly. "The others are in big trouble."
"What are we in, a pleasant daydream?" Cutwood said sourly.
"Don't talk, cut," said Sturm.
'Trouble' was a mild word for what Kitiara and the two gnomes were facing. Scores of Lunitarians had filled the cor ridor behind them, and guards from the audience hall had seized each of them. Rapaldo strutted in front of them, tap ping the back of the axe head against the palm of his hand.
"Treasonous piglets," he said imperiously. "You are all worthy of death. The question is, who shall feel the royal axe first?"
"Kill me, you witless scab; at least then I won't have to lis ten to you spout on like the gibbering swabby you are," Kiti ara said. She was held by no fewer than seven tree-men.
Their wooden limbs were wrapped around her so securely that only her face and feet showed. Rapaldo smirked and lifted her chin with the handle of his axe.
"Oh, no, pretty, I shall spare you, heh, heh. I would make you queen of Lunitari, if only for a day."
"I'd rather have my eyes put out!"
He shrugged and stepped in front of Sighter, held by a sin gle guard. "Shall I kill this one?" said Rapaldo. "Or that?"
"Kill me," pleaded Bellcrank. "I'm only a metallurgist.
Sighter is the navigator of our flying ship. Without him, you'll never reach Krynn."
"That's ridiculous," Sighter argued. "If you die, who will fix the damage to the Cloudmaster? No one can work iron like Bellcrank."
"They're just gnomes," said Kitiara. "Kill me, rotten
Rapaldo, or I'll surely kill you!"
"Enough, enough! Heh, heh, I know what to do, I do. You try to fool me, but I am the king!" He strode away a pace or two and dropped his axe. The king of Lunitari pulled apart the tied ends of his decrepit tunic. Under his shirt, but over his woolens, Rapaldo wore chain. Not chain mail, but heavy, rusty chain, wound around his waist.
'You see, I know what it means to live on Lunitari,"
Rapaldo said. He let his shirt fall off and untwisted a bale of wire that held the end of the chain in place. He unlooped several turns of chain. As the links piled up on the floor,
Rapaldo's feet rose. Soon he was floating two feet in the air, and the tree-folk were rapt in their devoted attention.
"I fly! Ta-ra! Who are you puny mortals to bandy words with me? I float! If I didn't wear fifty pounds of chain, I'd drift away. They won't let me have a ceiling, you know, the tree-people. Shade makes them take root. Without this chain, I'd fly away like a wisp of smoke." Rapaldo let another loop of chain fall to the floor. He pivoted until his feet were floating out behind him. "I am the king, you see!
The gods have given me this power!"
"No," Sighter tried to explain. "It must be a consequence of the Lunitari magic -"
"Silence!" Rapaldo made clumsy swimming motions with his hands and drifted over to Kitiara. "You wear armor, but you can take it off when you want to. I can't! I have to wear this chain every hour, every day." He shoved his dirty, bearded face close to hers. "I renounce the power! I'm going home, I am, and walk like a man again. The trees will not miss me with Sir Sturmbright as king.
"Treason! Treason! You're all guilty!" Rapaldo somer saulted in the air, away from Kitiara. He scooped up his axe and flung it at his chosen victim.
Chapter 17
Without Honor
The last loop of cord gave way, and Sturm's hands were free. He snatched the dagger from Cutwood and quickly worked through the ropes around his ankles. The hemp from the Tarvolina was old and quickly parted. Sturm leaped to his feet.
"Lead me back to the audience hall!" he said to the gnomes atop the wall. Fitter waved and ran all the way around the room before veering off for the king's audience chamber. Roperig and Wingover trotted behind him.
"Come on, Cutwood," Sturm shouted, hoisting the gnome on his shoulders.
The sun was going down. Sturm thanked Paladine for that. Without sunlight, the hordes of tree-men loyal to the mad Rapaldo would soon revert to rooted plants.
He passed through another opening in the wall and found himself facing a dozen armed tree-men. They presented a solid front, barring his progress. Sturm had only Kitiara's dagger to oppose their long glass swords.
"Hold on, Cutwood," he said. The gnome gripped Sturm's head tightly.
Flat shadows climbed the walls. The sun was sinking fast.
Already the lower halves of the Lunitarians were in shade; soon their feet would fix where they stood. A tree-man thrust the forty-inch span of his scarlet glass sword at
Sturm. Though the guard was slow, the blade flickered past
Sturm's chin, far outreaching his twelve-inch dagger.
Woodenness began to claim the Lunitarians' lower bodies, and they took root. The edge of night was midway up their trunks now. The tree-men's arms wavered in slow motion, like weeds beneath the surface of a pond. The guard that Sturm faced snagged the tip of his sword on
Sturm's fur hood and ripped through the hide and hair. That was the tree-man's last act. Bark closed over his eyes, leav ing him and the others featureless and inert.