Darkness and Light

Chapter 29

The dragon cal1ed to them, rousing them from their slumber. The gnomes bounced up, eager to be about their business. Sturm rubbed his eyes and looked about. Kitiara was not in sight.

He stretched and hunted around for a drink of water. As he was gulping a cool drink, Kitiara appeared. She tossed aside a handsaw and said, "What's the beast yelling about? I couldn't quite make it out."

"He wants us to get on with the demolition," said Sturm.

"Fine. I'm ready."

All the glass and porcelain jars and cups they had were to be used to pour vitriol on the lead mortar seams. The gnomes lined up like soldiers, mugs and cream pitchers in hand like swords. Kitiara gave them a mocking salute and told them to bide their time.

Inside, Cupelix was nervously hopping from one massive leg to the other. "All my books and manuscripts are safe," he said. "The Micones have transferred everything to a safe place in the cave." There was no longer reason to delay.

Cupelix put his three-toed feet into the hole and curled his tail up close to his chest. It would be a tight fit.

"Get your wings in," Sturm said. "Closer. That's it."

"Good thing I am a svelte example of my race," Cupelix said. His massive body was in the hole. Only his head showed inside the obelisk.

"I believe I shall miss this place," he said.

"Go on!" Kitiara shouted. Cupelix's head disappeared. He fell forty feet before getting his wings open. He hit the cavern floor with enough force to rock the tower on its foundations, but to the dragon it was a minor tumble. He telepathed his good health and told the mortals to proceed.

"Cupelix is safely in the cavern," Sturm said to Stutts when they were outside.

Stutts put two fingers to his mouth and blew a shrieking whistle. "Begin pouring!" he cried.

The gnomes, spaced around the three sides of the obelisk, applied vitriol to the lead. Wisps of noxious vapor coiled off the walls, choking all the gnomes but Roperig and Fitter, who had invented Caustic Smoke Filters for Noses and

Mouths (Mark II). Keen observers would have recognized the filters as being made of old bandannas and suspenders.

"Right! Now clear off the top level and pour on the sec ond!" Stutts called. Convenient beakers of vitriol were posi tioned on the lower platforms of the scaffold.

Flash climbed down the spindly collection of poles and planks. He swung to the second level and promptly kicked over his beaker. Oil of vitriol streamed down the scaffold, eating away the wood and rope lashing with as much vigor as it consumed the lead.

"Look out!" said Sturm. The poles under Flash sagged and came apart. The gnome wavered back and forth on his toes and toppled from the planking.

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.

"Well, I'm glad they're enjoying themselves," Sighter said sourly. "But can we get underway, ourselves?"

Sturm waved to Kitiara and called for her to come down.

After several mock diving attacks at the rubble, the gnomes, and Sturm, Cupelix landed and Kitiara jumped to the ground.

"Thank you, dragon," she said. Her face was flushed. She pounded Sturm on the shoulder and said, "Well, let's get going. No need to stand around here all day."

The humans and the gnomes trekked to the tethered fly ing ship. In a moment of creative vandalism, Flash and Bird call had agreed to sever the useless wings and tail, so the ship presented an austere, clipped appearance. Kitiara was smiling and humming a marching song.

"Pick up your feet, soldier," she said, linking an arm in

Sturm s.

"What are you so pleased about?" he said. "The ship may not take flight."

"Believe that we will fly, and we will."

"I'll think lightheaded if it will help." She laughed at his morose tone.

The ship was reloaded with what food and water the gnomes collected, and a few items for emergency use — spare lumber, tools, nails, and so forth. Sturm bent down and saw that the keel was firmly set in the red dirt.

The gnomes filed up the ramp. Sturm and Kitiara paused, each with one foot at the ramp, the other on the soil of the red moon.

"Will anyone ever believe we were here?" he asked, tak ing in the panorama."It all seems like a wild dream."

"What difference does it make?" Kiiiara replied. "We know what we've done and where we've been; even if we never tell another soul, we'll know."

They walked up the ramp and hauled it up behind them.

When the hatch was secure, Sturm went up to the main deck. Kitiara disappeared into the hold.

Cupelix swooped in, beat his wings hard and alighted gently beside the Cloudmaster. "Glorious, my friends! I am reborn — no, born for the first time! Freed of the stone sar cophagus in which I dwelt, I am a new dragon.

"Henceforth, I am no longer Cupelix, but Pteriol, the Fly er!"

"Pleased to meet you, Pteriol," said Fitter.

"We'd best be off," interrupted Sturm. "While it's still light."

'Yes, yes," said Stutts. "Listen, all of you; each fellow is to stand by the mooring ropes. When I give the word, slip the knots and let us rise."

"Tell them to pull in the ropes. They're all we've got," advised Roperig.

"And pull in the ropes!" Stutts said. "Everyone ready?"

The gnomes piped their readiness. "Very good. All hands, slip your ropes!"

They managed to get most of the lines loose at the same time, though Rainspot at the stern had a hard knot and lagged behind. The ship rolled sideways, the hull planks groaning.

"We're too heavy!" Wingover shouted.

The distinct sound of splitting wood erupted below their feet. The starboard side rose, throwing everyone to port.

Sturm banged the back of his head against the deck house.

Then, with an ear-piercing crack, the Cloudmaster righted itself and lifted into the air.

"Halloo!" called Pteriol. "You've lost something!"

Sturm and the gnomes filled the rail. They were rising very slowly, but from a height of fifty feet, they could see a wide section of the hull planking and a mass of dark metal on the ground.

"The engine!" Flash cried. Birdcall uttered a hawkish scream of dismay.

They rushed from the ladder down to the hold. Near the deck hatch, Flash fell into the arms of Kitiara. She was whis tling a Solacian dance tune.

"Quickly!" said the excited gnome. "We've lost the engine! We must go back and get it!"

Kitiara stopped whistling. "No," she said.

"No? No?"

"I don't know anything about aerial navigation, but I do know this ship was too heavy to get off the ground. So I arranged for the extra weight to stay behind."

"How'd you do that?" Sturm asked.

"Sawed through the hull around the engine," she said.

"It's not fair! It's not right!" Flash said, blinking through angry tears. Birdcall made similar noises.

Sturm patted the two on their shoulders. "It may not be fair, but it was the only thing to do," he said gently. "You can always build another engine once you get back to Sancrist."

Stutts and Wingover squeezed past Kitiara and started down the ladder. "We'd better inspect the hole," said Stutts.

"The hull may be seriously weakened. Not to mention drafty."

Drafty was an understatement. A yawning hole, twelve feet by eight feet, showed where the lightning-powered engine had been.

"My," said Stutts, peering down at the receding ground.

They were already a hundred feet up. "This is rather inter esting. We should have built a window into the bottom of the ship from the first."

"Keep that in mind," Sturm said, who kept well back from the hole. "We'll have to patch this somehow, if only to keep ourselves from tumbling out." He wasn't too surprised by

Kitiara's deed. It was typical of her: quick, direct, and a bit ruthless. Still, they were off the ground at last.

Pteriol's brass scales glistened as he passed under the ship.

The dragon circled in a rising spiral, wings flapping slowly.

The Cloudmaster moved very slowly westward, away from the fallen obelisk.

Wingover stepped forward until his toes were off the edge of the hull timbers. He pushed back the swath of bandages that shrouded his head. His disturbing black eyes focused on something far below.

"What is that?" he asked, pointing at the distant ground.

"I can't see anything," Stutts said.

"There's someone down there walking."

"A tree-man?" suggested Sturm. "It is daylight."

"Too small. It walks differently, more like — " Wingover scrubbed his eyes with his small fists. "No! It can't be!

"What, what?"

"It looks like a gnome — like Bellcrank!"

Sturm frowned. "Bellcrank is dead."

"I know! I know! But it looks just like him. His ears have this funny shape." Wingover brushed his own ears. "But now he's red all over!"

There was a shout from the upper deck. Sighter had spot ted the walking figure with his spyglass. Sturm, Stutts, and

Wingover hurried up. The astronomer gnome identified the figure as Bellcrank, too.

Fitter shivered. "Is it a ghost?" he asked plaintively.

"Hardly," Sighter responded. "It just stumbled on the turf."

"Then he's alive!" said Cutwood. "We have to go back for him!" Flash, Roperig, and Birdcall all seconded this notion.

Stutts cleared his throat to get their attention.

"We can't go back," he said sadly. "We've no control over direction or altitude." Rainspot began to sniffle, and Cut wood dabbed his eyes on his sleeve.

"Isn't there anything we can do?" Sturm asked.

Just then, Pteriol flashed by the port side, banked steeply, and rolled over the top of the bag. Everyone on the Cloud master felt his telepathic whoops of delight.

"The dragon! The dragon can fetch him!" said Rainspot.

"He might," said Kitiara.

"You're his favorite. You ask him," said Cutwood.

The brass form arrowed past the starboard rail, the wind from his wings stirring the drifting ship into a slow eddy.

"Hai, dragon. Cupelix! Suffering gods, I mean Pteriol!" Kiti ara yelled. The dragon swept under the stern and raced along the underside of the ship.

"He can't hear me," she said, peeved. "Big, dumb brute."

"He's drunk with freedom," Sturm said. "Can't blame him, after all the centuries he spent in that obelisk."

"We're losing Bellcrank!" Fitter cried as the ship floated over the valley cliff walls.

The tiny red figure shrank from even Wingover's power ful sight and was lost in the scarlet terrain. The gnomes watched, wordless, as the Cloudmaster drew away from their lost friend. Amid quiet weeping, Cutwood broke away and went below deck. He returned shortly with a hammer, a saw, and a pair of pliers. He threw these items overboard.

"Why did you do that I" Sturm said.

Cutwood turned his round pink face up to the taller man.

"Bellcrank will need tools," he said.

Sighter, Stutts, and Wingover left the rail. Flash and Bird call lingered a while longer, then they, too, departed.

Roperig pulled Fitter away. Rainspot and Cutwood stayed, even as the valley fell farther and farther behind.

"It's so hard to believe," Rainspot said. "Bellcrank was dead. We buried him."

"Perhaps there's some truth to what the dragon said," Kiti ara offered. Cutwood asked what she meant. "He said noth ing ever died on Lunitari."

"You mean that wasn't Bellcrank down there, just some thing that looked like him?"

"I don't know, I'm no cleric or philosopher," she said.

"The dead have been known to walk, even on Krynn. With all the magic rampant on Lunitari, it doesn't seem too strange that Bellcrank should return."

No one could answer her. Kitiara turned up the collar of her cloak and went below, leaving Rainspot and Cutwood alone at the rail.

They flew over many of the places they'd crossed on foot — the field of stones (alive with growth by daylight) and the oreless range of hills. From above, the short-lived jungle had a disquieting appearance. The plants writhed and undu lated, like swells in a wind-tossed sea. Even that grew boring after a while, and Sturm went below to see what was being done to the hole in the ship's belly.

He almost choked when he saw what the gnomes were doing. Cutwood and Fitter were lying on their bellies on thin lengths of planking stretched across the gap. Less-than inch-thick wood was all that stood between them and a long, long fall. Rainspot and Flash passed them other, short er pieces of wood to nail crosswise. In this knockabout, trial-and-error style, the gnomes were repairing the hole.

From the stern, Kitiara looked down at the red moon.

Three hours aloft, and the land had fallen away far enough to lose its surface features. Now it was just a rolling bolt of red velvet, no more real than the permanent black of the sky. Cupelix (for Kitiara scoffed at the dragon's new name) was behind and slightly below them. The continuous effort of flying was tiring him out, and he no longer swooped and danced through the air. Now it was long, slow, steady work.

How do you do it?

"How do I do what?" said Kitiara.

How do you in the ship fly so effortlessly?

"The ethereal air holds us up," she said. "That's all I know.

Shall I fetch Stutts, so he can explain?"

No. Gnomish explanations give me a headache.

She laughed. "Me, too." A thin veil fell between the ship and the flying dragon. "Clouds," said Kitiara. "We're getting pretty high."

My chest aches. I am not used to so much exertion.

"It's a long way to Krynn."

How long?

"Many days, at this rate. Maybe weeks. Did you think

Krynn was just over the horizon?"

There is not much sympathy in your tone, my dear.

"You're not master of your own world anymore. Take this as a lesson in discipline."

You are a hard woman.

"Life's hard," said Kitiara. She turned away from the rail.

The air was growing steadily colder and thinner, and she needed to don her gloves. In the former dining room (now without table or benches) Kitiara slipped into her boots. She did up her leggings and drew the string tight around her calves. The old knot passed by in the drawstring. She'd lost weight. No matter, she thought; I've traded ten pounds for the strength of ten men.

Kitiara tied a bow in the drawstring. Distracted, she pulled too hard and one end fell out, making a hard knot.

She stared at the result, puzzled — not for mistying the bow, but because she hadn't snapped the string like a cobweb.

No one was around. Kitiara grasped the woven silk cord in both hands and pulled harder. It did not break.