Kitiara gauged his fall and stepped below him. She held up her arms and caught the plummeting gnome.
"Thank you so much," he said.
"Certainly," she asked.
The walls of the obelisk steamed with vitriol vapor.
Streaks of black showed on the flawless red marble where the liquified lead ran down. The corrosive fluid ate into the joints between the courses of stone with alacrity, and half an hour after starting, the gnomes were down to the fourth level of their scaffold.
"It looks like it's weeping," Sturm observed of the struc ture. "But I don't think it's suffering much damage."
"The effect should be cumulative," said Stutts. "Without the lead support, each course will sag under the weight of the upper blocks. By the time we get down to ground level, the whole structure may be leaning as much as three feet out of plumb. The remaining fourth wall cannot support such an imbalance, and the obelisk will collapse."
The wine-purple sky segued into claret red. Sturm frowned. "Sunrise," he said. 'Will the discharges affect the process?"
"How can they not?" Kitiara replied. "They may bring the whole thing down on our heads." She went to the foot of the scaffold and yelled, "Get a move on! Dawn is coming!"
There were accidents, gnomes being gnomes, with the imminent sunrise pressing on them. Vitriol burns, falls, and sprained ankles multiplied. The stars faded from view as the heavens changed from claret to rose. The usual streak of meteors ricocheted from one horizon to another, and the intense stillness was broken by a stirring in the air that Kiti ara felt, though Sturm could not.
"Hurry!"
The gnomes tumbled off the scaffold like mice from a burning building. The platform groaned and curled up wherever the vitriol dropped on it, and the lower third of the obelisk was coated with sickly gray steam.
"Run!" Sturm said. "Run as far and as fast as you can!"
He grabbed Cutwood, who was slow, and dragged him off his feet. Kitiara scooped up Roperig and Flash, the last ones off the scaffold. And they ran, past the point at which they'd left Cloudmaster, on the unscarred side of the tower, as far as where the valley began to rise in elevation. A hor rendous grinding noise filled the valley, overpowering even the first crackle of the morning discharge.
From under Kitiara's arm, Flash twisted around to see.
"The blocks are giving way!" he cheered.
The grinding sound arrested their mad flight. Everyone stopped, turned, and stared.
Bolts of blue lightning sizzled from the obelisk's peak, not to the distant cliffs that defined the valley, but into the dry red soil a hundred yards from the monument's base. The obelisk leaned appreciably, and whole courses of stained marble tumbled to the ground. It seemed for a moment that the tower might withstand the loss of those blocks, but the weight of the upper reaches was too much for the under mined base. The five-hundred-foot obelisk slowly, grace fully, leaned over. Stones shattered under the unbearable pressure. The top broke apart in midfall, the stones separat ing with the tumult of a hundred thunderstorms"."Blocks twelve feet long, six feet high, and three feet thick hurtled to the ground, gouging out deep craters in the soft turf. The obelisk lay down like a falling tree, pieces weighing several tons bounced off each other, breaking, crushing, and com ing to rest at last, as though too tired to leap any farther.
The great pyramid capstone crashed with blue and white sparkles dancing around it. Will-o'-the-wisps rose above the swelling cloud of dust and vanished, silent witnesses to the mighty structure's fall.
There was silence. The rumble died away.
"My," said Stutts solemnly.
"It worked," said Wingover.
"Did it ever work," said Rainspot.
Suddenly, Kitiara gave out a loud, long whoop of tri umph. "Yaaahaaah!" she cried, leaping up into the air. "We did it! We did it!"
Sturm found himself grinning from ear to ear, but as the members of the little party moved slowly toward the fallen giant, an awed silence settled over them. Large blocks stood upright, buried to a third of their length. Sturm looked on and marveled. The shape of the obelisk proper could still be recognized as a heavier concentration of broken masonry.
Sturm climbed to a pile of blocks near the erstwhile base of the obelisk. The dust thrown up by the collapse had risen, making a dull red ring in the sky. He had an odd thought:
Would stargazers on Krynn be able to see the ring of dust? It was miles and miles across, and darker than the surface soil.
Would the astronomers see it, theorize about it, make learned discourses on the cause and meaning of it?
Everyone gathered at the base. A dome of blocks had fallen over the hole in the obelisk floor, and only a very small person could wriggle through the resulting gap. Kiti ara called for Fitter.
"Go in and call to the dragon," she said. "See if he's all right. I can't get him to answer."
"Yes, ma'am." Fitter scampered into the arch of stone. In answer to his call, they all heard a telepathic Success!
"He's alive," Stutts said.
"We'll have to clear these stones away," Sturm said.
Get clear, little Fitter; I'm coming out!
Fitter crawled out, and the mortals drew back. The mass of blocks flew apart, and Cupelix emerged. His massive face was split by a wide smile. Huge teeth gleamed dully in the light as he flung back his head and expanded his chest.
"Rejoice, mortal friends! I am free!" he cried.
"You had no trouble shifting those blocks," Kitiara said.
"None at all, my dear Kit. When the structure was bro ken, so was its protective spell." Cupelix inhaled deeply, sucking in the tepid air in dragon-sized gulps. "It is sweet is it not, the first breath of freedom?
No one was sure what to do next. "I suppose," said Stutts reflectively, "we ought to prepare to depart ourselves." He folded his hands over his round belly. "That is, assuming the
Cloudmaster can rise on its ethereal air alone."
"I'm confident," Kitiara said. Sturm shot her a question ing look. She winked and smiled just like the old Kit, then moved away, toward the top end of the wreckage.
Without warning, Cupelix unfurled his wings to their fullest extent. Never in the close confines of the obelisk had he been able to spread his wings in all their glory. Now he groaned with pleasure at the stretching of his leathery wings. Cupelix launched himself in the air with one spring, and flapped leisurely, luxuriously, gaining height with each pass over the site of his deliverance. He rolled, stalled, hov ered, wings bellying full and emptying in rapid sweeps. He climbed so high that he was a golden dot in the sky, and dived with such wild abandon that it seemed certain he would crash into the obelisk's ruins.
Sturm turned his gaze from the joyous dragon and real ized that everyone had left him. Kitiara had nearly reached the top of the ruins and the gnomes were scattered through out the debris, measuring, arguing, and enjoying their tri umph immensely.
Kitiara found, amidst the rubble, the wonderful tapes tries she had seen in Cupelix's private aerie. They were tom to shreds, but here and there whole portions were identifi able. Cupelix hadn't bothered to save the moldering tapes tries, and she wondered why. She found a patch from the
Assembly of the Gods tapestry, the patch with the face of the Dark Queen on it. The woven face was nearly as wide as
Kitiara was tall, but she rolled the fragment up and tied it around her waist as a belt. She felt she had to save it.
"Care for a ride?" said Cupelix.
Kitiara looked up. The dragon hovered above her, the sweep of his wings sending dust swirling around the ruins.
Kitiara thought a brief moment, then said warily, "Yes.
But no acrobatics."
"Certainly not." Cupelix's mouth was wide in one of his unnerving grins.
He landed and Kitiara mounted his neck. She took hold of the brass plates and said, "Ready."
He launched them straight up, and Kitiara felt the breath snatched from her body. With slow, lazy sweeps of his wings, Cupelix circled the ruins and the flying ship. Kitiara again felt the exhilaration she'd experienced those first few minutes on the Cloudmaster, when the whole of Krynn had been spread out below her. With the wind whipping her short hair, Kitiara grinned down at Sturm's astonished face.
"Hai, Sturm Brightblade! Hai-yah!" She waved one hand at him. "You should try this!"
The gnomes set up a cheer as Cupelix banked into a steep climb. Sturm watched the dragon soar away with Kitiara.
He felt a strange uneasiness. He wasn't afraid for Kit. There was something about the image of a human riding on the back of a dragon that chilled him deep inside.