"He, ammm" — Kali's mind jumped its track for a moment — "didn't make it, I'm afraid." Perhaps she would show sympathy, and that would let him comfort her by revealing that Oster was alive and well. Or maybe even returned to life by a passing holy man.
"And his body?" she continued. Something in her tone, her tight smile, the way her fingers dug into the wood of the table told Kali that sympathy was riot a current priority for the woman.
"Well," Kali said, "We ah, tend to burn such things. Had we known you wanted it, we would have kept it for you. I didn't know he meant that much to you."
The woman laughed — a throaty, deep-seated laugh that started in orbit around her stony heart and, by the time it escaped her lips, held the cruelty of a creature who would throttle birds before breakfast. (See above notes on cats and dogs. Kali's case: no birds were endangered by the laugh.)
"Meant much? I wanted to take him apart in pieces, cracking each bone, and hang him by his living entrails on a hook in the village to show how I deal with traitors and rebels. His kind cost me a treasure train, and now he has cost me my dragon as well. May Morgion rot his body and Chemosh stir his bones!"
Kali was struck by the coldness of her oaths, which carried none of the nobility and passion of Oster's oaths, though they invoked the same beings. This human did not seem to have much difficulty in expressing herself at all. It now dawned on him that if he brought her together with Oster, she would be irate — not only at Oster, but at Kali as well. Best to backtrack, he thought, and try to make the situation turn out right.
"Well, he seemed a nice sort before he, ah… well…" Kali looked at Eton for support in the conversation. His fellow gnome had backed up next to the hearth and was trying to blend in with the fireplace furnishings.
"Did he suffer?" asked the woman. "Were his bones snapped?
Kali said yes and answered in the affirmative to a long list of horrible things that she described, just about filling the dance card with all the things that can happen to an individual who has fallen from a high place to a low one. Snapped bones, shattered skull, inner workings scattered over sharp rocks, just enough breath left in the crushed body to plead for mercy and deliver a parting rattle. Kali wondered if this passed for polite conversation where the woman came from. His answers seemed to get the woman more agitated and excited, until he would swear her eyes became like twin pilot lights, glowing and sparking in a malevolent fashion.
Having exhausted that interesting subject, the woman demanded, "My weapons? My helm? My armor?"
"The hero, ah, the one who brought you in… ah… hid them," said the gnome.
"Hid them?" she shrieked, rising from the table.
"Ah, yes. To keep away burglars, you know. He said he would return them when he got back…"
Kali intended to say that the hero would not return for more than a few days and why didn't the woman rest, but things started to happen very quickly then. Making that gear-grinding noise again, the warrior pushed both hands up under the gnome's beard and, taking a firm hold of his neck, lifted him off the ground. Kali found that the grip closed off his breathing pipes. Small sparks danced between the woman's face and his. She enlivened this by screaming at him that he and his rat-faced friends would find her weapons if they had to eat their way through the mountains with their teeth, punctuating her remarks by banging Kali's head and shoulders against the back wall. The impact with the wall caused Kali to miss some of her words, but he caught the gist.
How long this fit went on Kali did not know. He was aware, finally, that he could breathe again, and save for a sore neck and a ringing headache, was still alive. He saw before him the form of the warrior-woman, resting less than comfortably in a heap of broken furniture, facedown. Across from him, Eton was holding a wide-mouthed shovel used to clean the hearth.
Kali gave a breathy, hoarse thanks, but he could see how Eton was already trying to figure out how to turn the hearth shovel into a combination sword/plowshare.
Kali put the woman back to bed and arranged for the delivery of new furniture by the time Oster and Archie returned with the material the next day. In that time, Kali had a long time to rub his sore head and think things through.
Now, despite a lot of stories, gnomes are not by nature violent. Nor, despite similar stories, are they stupid. Kali could see that this warrior was going to become enraged every time she awoke, and that telling her the truth would result in a rampage that would end up destroying a goodly amount of gnomish property and perhaps gnomish bodies. This would not be a good occurrence, given the fact that gnomes had surrendered to the woman and everything. Further, she would likely harm Oster if she knew he was alive. In the brief time Kali had known Oster, the gnome had decided that the man was one of the good humans, even given his terrible choice in creatures to fall smitten with. It would crush his heart if he found out she so cruel and mean. It would also likely crush his windpipe if the two were left in the same room together.
The problem was, Kali decided, that he was trying to work in an area he was unfamiliar with. He knew humans only from stories and wild tales, and his current personal encounters indicated something was lacking from his store of knowledge. Human emotions were even farther removed. Like most gnomes, Kali was most familiar with things he could touch, grip, twist, break, and repair. If only this situation had such "a simple, physical solution.
Looking at the blanket-covered woman, peaceful as the dead and lovely as the morning, Kali realized that perhaps there WAS a simple, physical solution.
By the time Oster and Archie had returned, Kali had not only laid out a plan, but he had made a list of materials: a closed wagon with oxen, two hundred pounds of plaster, a similar amount of wax, a stone mausoleum with an iron fence around it, seven tins of pastels and other shades of paint, the aid of Organathoran the painter, and sufficient medication to keep a horse in slumberland for a week.
He was just drawing up the last of it and was about to check on the woman (to make sure she had not woken up again), when Oster and Archie returned. A crowd of other gnomes clustered around them as Archie described something in glowing detail, making swing-of-a-sword gestures with his hands.
Kali met the pair at the door and Oster presented the gnome with a small package containing the herbs and other items they had gathered from the wild. At his side he had another, larger bundle. The human gave Kali a small, almost embarrassed smile, but all eyes were on Archie, who was gesticulating wildly.
"It was wonderful," cried Archie, noticing Kali for the first time. "The lad, er, the human Oster was magnificent 1 We were in the Smoking Vale two miles from here when suddenly we startled a wyrm of some type. A true monster, straight from the pits, with the legs of a pill-bug and the hunger of a bear and fangs twice as long as my arm."
"It was a behir," Oster said softly, his ears tinged with red, "and a small one at that."
Archie hurtled on without stopping to note the interruption. "I would have been dinner on a plate, but Oster — Oster the Brave — mind you, threw me out of the way of certain death."
"I, ah, knocked him over when I turned to run," Oster corrected, the glow spreading to his cheeks and increasing in intensity with each moment.
"Then brave Oster, armed with only with a sharpened rock, caught the beast's attention. It lunged at him" And here Archie did his best imitation of a serpent lunging forward, such that some of the gathered gnomes backed up a few paces. "And he pulled the side of the mountain down on the beast, killing it!"
"I tried to scramble up the cliff out of its path, and brought down an avalanche. Nearly buried us all." Oster's voice had grown quiet now as he saw that most of the gnomes liked Archie's recollection of events better than his.