Limbeck, along with the rest of his people, had been forced to delve far beneath the surface, seek shelter down below. This had been no hardship for the dwarves.[18] The great Kicksey-winsey was constantly delving and drilling and boring. Hardly a cycle passed without a new tunnel being discovered somewhere in Wombe or Het or Lek or Herat or any of the other Geg towns on Drevlin. Which was fortunate, because the Kicksey-winsey, for no apparent reason that anyone could see, would often bury, crush, fill up, or otherwise destroy previously existing tunnels. The dwarves took this philosophically, burrowing out of collapsed tunnels and trudging oft to seek new ones.
Of course, now that the Kicksey-winsey had stopped working, there would be no more collapses, no more new tunnels either. No more light, sound, heat. Jarre shivered, wished she hadn’t thought about heat. The torch was starting to fizzle and die. Swiftly, Limbeck rolled up another speech.
Limbeck’s living quarters were located far below the surface, one of the lowest points on Drevlin, directly beneath the large building known as the Factree. A series of steep, narrow stairs led down from a hallway to another hallway, which led to the hallway in front of Limbeck’s apartment. The steps, the hall, the apartment were not carved out of the coralite, as were most of the other tunnels made by the Kicksey-winsey. The steps were made of smooth stone, the hall had smooth walls, the floor was smooth, as was the ceiling. Limbeck’s apartment even had a door, a real door, with writing on it. None of the dwarves could read the writing and accepted Limbeck’s pronouncement—that BOILER ROOM meant HIGH FROMAN—without question. Inside the apartment, things were a bit cramped, due to the presence of a large and extremely imposing-looking part of the Kicksey-winsey. The gigantic contraption, with its innumerable pipes and tanks, no longer worked and had not worked for a long, long time, just as the Factree itself had not worked for as long as the dwarves could remember. The Kicksey-winsey had moved on, leaving this part of itself behind.
Jarre, not wanting to look at Limbeck in the spectacles, fixed her gaze on the contraption, and she sighed.
“The old Limbeck would have taken the thing apart by now,” she said to herself, whispering, to fill up the silence. “He would have spent all his time hammering this and unscrewing that and all the time asking why, why, why. Why is it here? Why did it work? Why did it stop?
“You never ask ‘why’ anymore, do you, Limbeck?” Jarre said aloud.
“Why what?” Limbeck muttered, preoccupied.
Jarre sighed again. Limbeck either didn’t hear her, or ignored her.
“We’ve got to go to the surface,” he said. “We’ve got to find out how the elves managed to shut down the Kicksey-winsey—”
The sound of footsteps, shuffling and slow—those made by a group trying to descend a steep staircase in pitch darkness, punctuated by an occasional crash and muffled curse—interrupted him.
“What’s that?” asked Jarre, alarmed.
“Elves!” said Limbeck, looking fierce.
He scowled at the bodyguard, who was also looking alarmed, but—at the sight of his leader’s frown—altered his expression to look fierce, as well. Shouts of “Froman! High Froman!” filtered through the closed door.
“Our people,” said Limbeck, annoyed. “They want me to tell them what to do, I suppose.”
“You are the High Froman,” Jarre reminded him with some asperity.
“Yes, well, I’ll tell them what to do,” Limbeck snapped. “Fight. Fight and keep on fighting. The elves have made a mistake, shutting down the Kicksey-winsey. Some of our people weren’t too keen on bloodshed before, but now they will be! The elves will rue the day—”
“Froman!” Several voices howled at once. “Where are you?”
“They can’t see,” said Jarre.
Taking the torch from Limbeck, she flung open the door, trotted out into the hallway.
“Lof?” she called, recognizing one of the dwarves. “What is it? What’s wrong?” Limbeck came to stand next to her. “Greetings, Fellow Warrior in the Battle to End Tyranny.”
The dwarves, shaken from their perilous trip down the stairs in the darkness, looked startled. Lof glanced around nervously, searching for such a fearsome-sounding personage.
“He means you,” said Jarre curtly.
“He does?” Lof was impressed, so impressed that he forgot momentarily why he’d come.
“You were calling me,” said Limbeck. “What do you want? If it’s about the Kicksey-winsey stopping work, I’m preparing a statement—”
“No, no! A ship, Yonor,” answered several at once. “A ship!”
“A ship has landed Outside.” Lof waved a hand vaguely upward. “Yonor,” he added belatedly and somewhat sullenly. He had never liked Limbeck.
“An elf ship?” Limbeck asked eagerly. “Crashed? Is it still there? Can you see any elves moving about? Prisoners,” he said in an aside to Jarre. “It’s what we’ve been waiting for. We can interrogate them and then use them for hostages—”
“No,” said Lof, after some thought.
“No what?” demanded Limbeck, irritated.
“No, Yonor.”
“I mean, what do you mean, by saying no.”
Lof considered. “No the ship hasn’t crashed and no it’s not a Welf ship and no I didn’t see anyone.”
“How do you know it’s not a Wel—elf ship? Of course, it has to be an elf ship. What other kind of ship could it be?”
“ ’Tisn’t,” stated Lof. “I should know a Welf ship when I see one. I was on one once.” He glanced at Jarre, hoping she’d be impressed. Jarre was the main reason Lof didn’t like Limbeck. “Leastwise, I was close to one, the time we attacked the ship at the Liftalofts. This ship doesn’t have wings, for one thing. And it didn’t fall out of the skies, like the Welf ships do. This one sort of floated down gently, like it meant it. And,” he added, eyes still on Jarre, having saved the best for last, “it’s all covered with pictures.”
“Pictures...” Jarre glanced at Limbeck uneasily. His eyes, behind his glasses, had a hard, bright gleam. “Are you sure, Lof? It’s dark Outside and there must have been a storm—”
“’Course I’m sure.” Lof wasn’t to be denied his moment of glory. “I was standing in the Whuzel-wump, on watch, and the next thing I know this ship that looks like a ... like a... well, like him.” Lof pointed at his exalted leader. “Kind of round in the middle and sawed off at both ends.” Fortunately, Limbeck had removed his spectacles and was thoughtfully polishing them again, and so missed the comparison.
“Anyway,” Lof continued, swelling with importance, noting that everyone, including the High Froman, was hanging on every word, “the ship sailed right smack out of the clouds and plunked itself down and sat there. And it’s all covered with pictures, I could see ’em in the lightning.”
“And the ship wasn’t damaged?” Limbeck asked, replacing his spectacles.
“Not a bit of it. Not even when the hailstones the size of you, Yonor, came smash down onto it. Not even when the wind was tossing pieces of the Kicksey-winsey up into the air. The ship just sat there, snug as could be.”
“Maybe it’s dead,” said Jarre, trying hard not to sound hopeful.
“I saw a light inside and someone moving around. It’s not dead.”
“It isn’t dead,” said Limbeck. “It’s Haplo. It has to be. A ship with pictures, just like the ship I found on the Terrel Fen. He’s come back!” Jarre walked over to Lof, grabbed hold of his beard, sniffed at him and wrinkled her nose. “Like I thought. He’s had his head in the ale barrel. Don’t pay any attention to him, Limbeck.”
Giving the astounded Lof a shove that sent him rolling backward into his fellows, Jarre took hold of Limbeck’s arm and attempted to turn him around, drag him back inside his quarters.
18
Haplo, in this and future accounts, uses the term “dwarves” as opposed to “Gegs,” as he used in the account of his first trip to Arianus. Haplo doesn’t give a reason for this change, but it is probable that he agreed with Limbeck that “Geg” was a demeaning term. Haplo includes a notation in this manuscript defining the word “Geg” as a short version of the elven word “gega’rega,” a slang term for an insect.