The Search For Magic

Some Assembly Required

The stone floor shivered with the hum of a nearby high-speed axle that was gradually spinning faster and faster.

An accompanying crescendo of thuds sent puffs of dust rising up off the age-darkened wood floor. The thuds grew stronger and came closer together.

The resulting explosion shook the shelving until it rocked on its springs, throwing the topmost book out of the shelves.

Sorter, the gnome seated behind the desk that stood in front of the shelves, caught the book in his left hand seconds before it could smash his head and knock him senseless. He opened the volume and leafed through it, scanning the drawings and bills for materials.

“Self-winding,” he muttered to himself. “Self-propelled walker. Transport Section, East Outer Upper Right. Agricultural propulsion.”

He closed the book and looked wistfully out a side window, where he could see thick black smoke and the occasional teetering Multi-Story Fire Suppressor chasing a thoroughly soaked gnome.

“Nothing ever happens in here.” He sighed.

Beyond the smoke he could see the usual hammering, sawing, fastening, and soldering that was Mount Nevermind. Only inside the Great Repository was there quiet. Far too much of the stuff, to Sorter’s way of thinking.

He dropped the walker plans into one of the wicker baskets on the Flying Cata-Shelver, then laboriously cranked the windlass until the trigger on the basket arm caught in its latch. He dropped a few more dislodged portfolios in the labeled baskets and cocked each of the arms. Stepping well back, he gave the multi-trigger cord a single, quick tug.

The Cata-Shelver flew down the aisle, throwing books with unerring accuracy at the wrong shelves. Sorter followed the Cata-Shelver, picking up the strewn volumes and putting them in place.

At the end of the aisle he nearly bumped into a stocky older gnome, who was reading one of the thrown volumes and cautiously feeling a bump on the back of his bald head.

Sorter winced in sympathy. “I’m sorry, Blastmaster. Did it hurt?”

“Double-reciprocating action,” Blastmaster murmured as he read, oblivious to Sorter. “Who thinks of these things?” He looked up. “What was that? Oh, not much.” He rubbed his head again, blinking as his fingers touched the bump. “I think that shelver’s stronger than it used to be.”

Sorter nodded vigorously. “I added a second windlass. You should see it whip books into the Upper Stacks.” He gestured to the high shelves, where gnomes on ladders and the odd trapeze read the books they were supposed to be shelving.

Sorter added shyly, “The same principle would apply to a larger machine-”

Blastmaster was already shaking his head. “Sorter, Sorter, we have discussed this before. You may not design or build. You are a librarian-a sorter, chosen and named from birth.”

Blastmaster patted the younger gnome’s shoulder. “It is a noble role, and you fill it well. Stacker has nothing but praise for you.”

“He does?” Sorter asked, astounded. Stacker had always seemed exasperated by Sorter.

“Well, he says you work his crews hard, and that’s all to the good.” Blastmaster smiled at Sorter. “Take joy in your work, son, for you will never leave it.”

Sorter tugged glumly at the lever beside an empty stack of shelves and didn’t even smile when it slammed into the floor with a loud thunk.

“I’ll try to find some joy,” he said, sighing. “Even if it kills me.”

Before returning to his desk, he felt obligated to ask, “Blastmaster, there was an explosion a few moments ago…?”

Blastmaster beamed. “That was mine.” He pulled a scroll from one of his many pockets and unrolled it. “There is a very old legend that with the right detonating device, you can detonate water. I was testing a new device this morning.” He shrugged and laughed proudly. “What a marvelous detonator! Blew itself into more pieces than you can imagine. Completely destroyed the work of thirty years. I’ll have to start over.”

Sorter nodded and returned to his desk, muttering bitterly, “Some gnomes have all the luck.”

Sorter had been at his work long enough to accumulate a few stray volumes and stack them on a corner of the desk when a voice from the stack said, “Excuse me.”

Sorter blinked. “Excuse me?”

“That’s what I said.” The voice said reproachfully. “You have to say something different.”

“Ah.” Sorter looked this way and that, but saw nothing but the books. “Excuse me-I mean, sorry.” He opened the topmost book cautiously, peered inside. “Hello?”

“Down here.” A hand waved above the edge of his desk.

Sorter leaned forward and saw a small face with large eyes staring back at him. At first he thought the face belonged to a child, but children weren’t usually allowed to go around carrying dangerous-looking sticks like that.

“A kender,” Sorter said with certainty and some wonder. “You’re a kender.”

“I know I’m a kender, but how did you know?” the kender asked, sounding impressed.

“From reading,” Sorter said, though he hadn’t read very much about kender at all.

“That’s what I wanted to ask you about.” The kender looked up at the gnome earnestly. “Have you actually read all those books?”

Delighted, Sorter smiled down at him. “Nobody reads these books. They review parts of them and then come to revise them. What is your name?” Sorter’s right hand picked up a steam-powered quill pen that had all its feathers singed off and hovered over the Visitors Log.

“Franni,” the small visitor said, but he wasn’t paying attention. His gaze took him through the shelves, the aisles, all the myriad books. “If nobody reads them, what good are they?”

Sorter was shocked. “What good? Why, they’re history. They’re the history of the progress of gnome engineering down through the ages. Did you really think anyone could read all these books?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure,” the kender said cautiously. “Do you at least know what’s in them?”

“By category at least,” Sorter said. “Is Franni your full name?”

Sorter marveled. A short name for a short being. He was thoroughly charmed.

Franni kicked at the desk, watching with interest as his kicks drove the top book bit by bit off the corner stack. “It’s all the name I’ve ever had. What’s your name?”

Sorter beamed and took in a deep breath and launched into his name, which took several hours and a large jug of ale to tell in full.

When he paused a good while later, Franni broke in, “Can’t we pretend I asked your nickname?”

Sorter stopped himself before launching into the second part of his full name. “Actually, it’s just that first bit-Sorter.”

The kender’s repeated kicking caused the book to slide off the corner stack. Sorter caught it nimbly.

“Careful, Franni. I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”

Franni’s eyes went round with interest and his ears twitched. “Is it dangerous here?”

“Oh, my, yes.” Sorter looked around proudly. “There is nothing more dangerous than the knowledge in any library.” He waved an arm at the shelves. “And this isn’t just any library. This is the Great Repository.” He saw the blank look in Franni’s face and explained, “A copy of every design a gnome has conceived is stored here.”

“And they’re all dangerous?” Franni repeated. He stared, fascinated, at the shelves. “Can I read one?”

“Of course you can. And no, they’re not all dangerous.” Sorter shook his finger with mock severity. “But just you watch yourself in North Central Lower Left. That’s the Large War Machines section. Killers, every book.”

Franni nodded vigorously. “I’ll remember,” he said solemnly, and walked away whispering, “North Central Lower Left, North Central Lower Left, North Central…”

Sorter chuckled and returned to his work. As stated, he had not read much about kender, or he might not have been so complacent.

Several hours later, Sorter was standing in the central portion of the Repository, confirming the shelving of a rarity in the Grinders and Meta-Rasps section, when he heard the thump of a bookshelf snapping back into the floor.

“Busy morning,” he said under his breath.

Then he heard another thump, and another, and another-

Then he heard a sound that began softly and grew until it was louder than the thumps: the thud of book after book being flung out of their shelves, slamming into the floor like gigantic hailstones.

The concussion of the books and the thumping of the shelves grew so severe that the vibrations caused the floor to shake. Sorter stood staring as if in a dream while the lever holding up the nearest shelf jarred free of its holding loop. He looked down a line of shelves to see row on row of levers coming unhinged.

An older gnome, hanging by his legs from one of the shelves, cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed over the growing din, “Threshold effect! Book avalanche!”

Sorter sprinted into the stacks. Diving underneath a thundering cascade of books, he slid to safety beneath a reading table.

Like many disasters, the book avalanche seemed to take forever but was actually over in moments. Sorter crawled uncertainly out from under the table and stared around the Repository, aghast.

He could see from wall to wall. Every last shelf section on the lower level had slammed into the floor. A veritable snowdrift of books lay on the floor, some almost the height of a tall gnome.

Teams of gnomes swung or dropped out of the upper-level rafters to examine the chaos.

“There hasn’t been a shelf avalanche of this magnitude in four generations,” said one, awed.

Another turned and bawled, “Stacker!”

“Stacker!” The others began shouting as well. “Stacker! Stacker!”

Sorter cringed. He was going to be blamed for this. He was certain.

A remarkably tall, thin, and long-armed gnome appeared from nowhere. Standing in the middle of the chaos, he judiciously surveyed the drift of books that extended from one end of the Great Repository to the other and said, “Congratulations, Sorter. You’ve given all of us job security for some time.”

“It wasn’t him,” said one of the stacking gnomes defensively. “It was that little person with the funny ears. I saw him in the epicenter.”

“Franni? Oh, no!” Sorter cried with heartfelt grief. He immediately began throwing books to either side of a pile. “The poor kender! Is he under there?”

“I don’t know,” said the stacking gnome dubiously. “The last I saw him, he was running from to stack to stack, pulling levers.”

“He did this on purpose?” Stacker had also not read much about kender.

“I’m sure the little fellow just panicked. Probably trying to find a way out,” Sorter said firmly. “Let’s keep looking for him.”

Stacker put two of his fingers in his mouth and gave a series of piercing whistles. The standing crew began methodically stacking books to either side of the avalanche. Sorter ran to and fro, moving books from the piles back to the drift and generally getting in the way. He was sick with worry over the kender.

It was sunset before the gnomes finally removed all the books from the floor. Miraculously, they found no bodies.

“We didn’t lose a single gnome,” Stacker said dryly.

“We should put up a shrine to someone.”

Sorter sighed with relief. “We didn’t lose any kender either. The little fellow is all right. Or at least he was all right enough to leave.”

“Not without taking something with him.” Stacker pointed to one of the piles of books.

“What do you mean?” Sorter asked.

“I mean,” Stacker said, scanning a scroll of parchment on which he had been making hatch marks, “that this morning’s shelf-census showed a grand total- counting the new entries-of one hundred and twenty thousand, five hundred, and fifty-seven books.”

He flipped the scroll over. “This evening’s count, taken as we stacked the books, totaled one hundred and twenty thousand, five hundred, and fifty-four.”

“The count’s wrong,” Sorter said, and he was instantly drowned out by a furious chorus.

“The count is never wrong!”

Stacker’s brushy eyebrows furrowed with righteous anger.

“You’re right, of course,” Sorter said meekly. “We must find out what’s missing.”

The gnomes set to work. Checking off books, sleeping in shifts, the gnomes had an answer by dawn. Stacker handed a sheet of foolscap to Sorter, who read off the titles with horror.

Walking Sledgehammer-for smashing small battlement walls. Complete plans, bill of materials. Additional plans for miscellaneous machines of destruction included, no extra charge.

Rolling Ram, for opening fortress gates. Complete plan, bill of materials.

Automated Siege Engine for demolishing cities. Complete plans, bill of materials. Addional plans for strike-while-launching fire arrows, no extra charge.

Sorter clutched the foolscap in his fist and wailed, “I warned him of the dangers of that section!”

Stacker rubbed his tired eyes. “Well, he didn’t listen. What are you going to do now?”

“What a good librarian does,” Sorter said firmly.

“File a report?” Stacker said, sneering. “Two things every gnome thinks he can do: draw plans and file a report.”

“And manage a library,” Sorter said with diginity. “And no, I’m not filing a report. I’m going to go recover those books.”

He should have definitely read more about kender.

Sorter packed quickly, throwing everything into a bundle-cloth. He put in a change of clothes, a compass, a lamp, food for three days, water for six, a seed planter and a cloud-seeder for after that, and a wonderful multi-purpose machine that was designed to part oceans and make crop circles.

After he tried to lift it, he began to unpack, leaving only a change of clothes, a day’s food and water, and some parchment and pens. He tied up the bundle and left Mount Nevermind quietly. In a few hours, the Great Repository would open for the day, and Blast-master would realize that Sorter was gone.

Sorter shook his head. Stacker and his crew had many months of work to do before the library could re-open. For a while, at least, no one would miss Sorter at all.

Sorter had no sooner left Mount Nevermind than he found himself at the first fork in the road beyond the mountains. He looked about, confused. He knew little geography and even less about the inhabitants of these strange lands. He knew that the island of Sancrist was not large, but at the moment, it seemed as immense as all of Ansalon with a few other unknown continents thrown in. He knew that one of these roads was an important trade route, leading through several small villages and finally into the great city of Gunthar. He knew that the other road was inconsequential and led into a swamp, but which was which?

Peering down the right-hand fork, Sorter thought he could see a wisp of smoke in the distance.

That decided him. If Franni had gone that way, he might be in need of help. Sorter tightened the knots on his sack, grasped his walking stick, and strode determinedly toward the smoke.

By the time he arrived at the village of Gormar, the wisp of smoke was a thick, dark, black cloud. A bucket brigade of men and women extended from a nearby stream to the center of town, where flames shot from the roof of a huge warehouse. Smoke poured from the front double doors and an upper window with a hoist above it. Men and women dashed through the doors of the warehouse, emptied their buckets, and dashed back out, coughing.

Just behind the bucket-wielding adults stood a knot of dirty children dressed in tattered clothes. The adults looked harried and worried. The children looked extemely happy as they toasted bread and cheese over the conflagration and watched gleefully as the fire consumed the building.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” Sorter asked the children.

“School?” said one. “What’s that?”

“We don’t go to school,” said another. “The adults made us work there.” He pointed to the blazing building. “That is-they used to.”

The children laughed and munched toasted cheese.

“Guess we won’t be working there anymore,” said another. “Maybe we’ll have time to play.”

“Play,” said a small child. “What’s that?”

Sorter naturally wanted to do his part to help the poor people of Gormar. Sitting down on a rock, he pulled a scrap of parchment from his bundle and began designing a bucket conveyor with a flow-and-direction control trough at the upper end..

He worked feverishly and was able to complete the entire schematic by late afternoon. He hastened over to an old man, who was standing beside a vast expanse of smoldering ashes, chewing his beard. The children were long gone. They had gone off to play.

Sorter handed the man the schematic drawing. “This will save your building,” he said earnestly.

The man blinked at the drawings, then blinked at Sorter. “Oh.” Rolling the plans up, he tucked them under one arm. “Thanks,” he said with a nasty tone.

“What was in the building?” Sorter asked.

“Trade goods. Cloth, furs, some jewelry and worked metals. The metal and jewelry, at least, will be likely unharmed. And I suppose the children won’t grow too spoiled by their time off from work.”

“I’m sure they’ll have a wonderful time,” Sorter agreed. He felt about children the way he felt about Franni. “Ten years from now, they’ll remember this day as something special, roasting cheese and dancing by firelight.”

“I suppose.” The old man chewed on his beard again. “I am Elder Ammion. I lead the village of Gormar. Who are you?”

“I am Sorter.” To clear up any confusion, he added, “A gnome.”

Elder Ammion eyed him suspiciously. “You are the second stranger to stop here this day. And the coming of the first was not a sign of good fortune.”

“Was he a kender?” Sorter burst out.

Ammion raised an eyebrow. “Indeed. A friend of yours?” He gestured to a young man and woman who both wore swords. Fingering their weapons, they walked up to stand beside the elder.

“I barely knew him,” Sorter replied.

The two holding the swords put them away.

“I’m following him,” Sorter continued. “It’s my duty.”

“Someone should,” Elder Ammion agreed, glancing back at the ashes of warehouse. “What else has he done?”

Sorter raised his index finger in the air for emphasis. “By accident, and I’m sure through no fault of his own, Franni-this kender-departed from Mount Nevermind carrying on his person instructions for building some of the most dangerous machines that gnomes have ever designed.”

He paused for emphasis, then went on solemnly, “Can you imagine the disaster that could befall a kender in possession of the Fire-Breathing Calliope? Can you understand how important it is that we come between him and danger?”

Elder Ammion, chewing on his beard even more slowly, looked at Sorter in a sort of pitying way. “Tell me, gnome, what do you know about kender?”

“Not much, really. Just what they look like.” Sorter added earnestly, “But I’ve met this kender, and he is friendly, he loves books, and I’d hate to see him come to any harm because of the gnomes.” He added, sadly, “Because of me. It was my fault, you see.”

“Then you must leave here at once if you’re going to catch him.” Ammion led Sorter out to the road. The elder had a thoughtful expression on his face. “This road leads to the village of Dormar, our rival- That is to say, our sister village. If you find your kender before you reach Dormar, be sure to take him to Dormar. It’s a trading town, like ourselves.” He stared hard at the gnome. “Trade competition is fierce. Yes, I would think Dormar would be a good place for a kender to stop and rest.”

Sorter was touched by the human’s concern for the kender.

The third-to-last thing Elder Ammion said, as Sorter was starting off, was, “Will you be coming back this way?”

Sorter looked at the twisting road ahead. “I hope to.”

The second-to-last thing Elder Ammion said was, “And will you be bringing your kender back with you?”

“Oh, no.” Sorter shook his head vigorously. “Only the books he mistakenly took with him. The village of Gormar is obviously much too dangerous a place for a kender.”

The last thing Elder Ammion said was, “In that case, I bid you safe journey. Travel far, good gnome. Really far.”

The village of Dormar was a day’s journey away, but the trip took Sorter far longer, due to the poor conditions of the highway. The road was extremely muddy. Entire parts of it had been washed out. Sorter walked carefully, leaping over the gullies, slogging through the mud, and climbing around the potholes. Finally, he left the road and walked alongside it. The grass and brush were soaking wet, but at least they didn’t stick to his boots.

The village of Dormar looked odd to him upon arrival. It was all roofs with no houses. When he got closer, he realized that there were houses, but they had all been covered with mud.

Upon entering the mud-clogged village, Sorter noticed children having a wonderful time, stomping in the puddles, wrestling in the mud, sailing small stick-boats in the streams of water that ran down the streets. He smiled, and stopped a moment to help a child create a three-masted schooner that sailed upstream until it grounded itself on a cobblestone.

Next Sorter noticed a group of adults moving through the village. The men had sopping wet hair and clothes and were covered in mud. They carried shovels, rakes, and threshers and looked extremely menacing.

Leading them was an old man, who chewed menacingly on his beard. Glaring at Sorter, the man stopped and brought his troops to a halt behind him.

“I am Elder Bammion. Who are you, and what brings you to Dormar?”

“My name is Sorter,” said Sorter. “I’m looking for a kender.”

“So are we!” the men growled.

“He was here, then?” Sorter looked around, appalled. He couldn’t believe the kender’s bad luck in village-visiting. “Did he survive?”

“We haven’t found him yet,” said one of the men darkly, “if that’s what you mean.”

Elder Bammion looked uphill, where Sorter could see what remained of a dam. “I suspect he was on high ground when it happened.”

“That’s a relief,” Sorter said. He explained briefly about the missing books. “So I must find him before he hurts himself. Can you imagine how dangerous it would be for him to be roaming around with a Perambulating Hole-Puncher?”

The men stared at Sorter in a silence he took to be fraught with concern for the kender.

“And what will you do with him when you find him?” asked the Elder. “Will you be bringing him back here?”

“Thanks for your care and generosity,” Sorter said politely, “but clearly, the village of Dormar is much too dangerous a place for the little fellow.” He gestured at the wreckage of a warehouse. “What was this place anyway?”

“Our goods warehouse. Cloth, fur, jewelry, metals… The jewels can be washed, but I fear the metals will rust and the cloth is ruined. And the children are now without any place to work.”

“But now they can play,” said Sorter.

The elder grunted.

“What was in here? Trade goods?” Sorter asked.

“Exactly. We are on a trade route.” The elder’s eyes narrowed as he chewed his beard. “And trade is very competitive.”

Sorter nodded. “So Elder Ammion said.”

Elder Bammion stiffened. “Ammion from Gormar sent you?” He gestured. The men with the farm implements moved closer. “He didn’t happen to send the kender, too, did he?”

“Oh, no,” Sorter said. “But he did say that if I saw the kender, I was to bring him here to this lovely village. And he wished me a safe journey, and a long one.”

“Did he now?” The Elder seemed thoughtful. “Then we can do no less. Take our blessing, and food for the journey. Do not stop until you have reached the next village on the road. The village of Mormar. If you find your kender friend, I trust he will be comfortable in Mormar. I can’t help but feel our corn-petit- I mean, our sister village would benefit by his presence.”

Sorter, touched, shook the elder’s hand. “You say competition is fierce, but you can’t keep yourself from thinking of others.”

“I can’t,” the elder admitted, chewing on his beard. “It is a habit born of trading.”

Noon of the third day found Sorter walking down a non-muddy road with no more damage to it than wheel ruts. The gnome was highly gratified to arrive in the village of Mormar without seeing any signs of disaster. The dam on the hill above the city looked strong. No buildings were going up in flames. The marketplace was free of firefighting equipment and sandbags. The central warehouse stood as solid as if it had been erected yesterday. Through its windows, Sorter could see bundles and crates piled from the floor to the ceiling.

Ragged children worked carrying bundles and crates from the market into the warehouse.

“Hello,” said Sorter, thinking that he’d never seen children look so very tired or unhappy.

One of the children, a girl with golden hair, wearily dropped her wooden box before she spoke to him.

“Are you people?” she asked.

Sorter smiled and bowed to her. “I’m people, but not mankind. Have you seen a gnome before?”

She stared at him wide-eyed. “An inventor! This is wonderful-” She stopped and looked back at a frowning adult. “I’m sorry. I have to stay in line.” She hoisted the wooden box over her small shoulders that bent beneath the weight.

“Wait!” Sorter said. “What’s your name?”

“Lila. I’m sorry, but I can’t wait.” The child turned and shuffled into the warehouse.

Sorter peered through the window, watching her as Lila climbed carefully to the top of a stack of crates. He was startled by a hand on his shoulder.

“May I ask your business here?” said an old man, chewing his beard.

“I’m looking for a kender named Franni,” said Sorter.

“And what would your business be with a kender?” asked the elder.

“I just want to make sure that he is safe.”

“Safety is our first priority. After profit.” The old man bowed. “I am Elder Cammion.”

Sorter looked at him curiously. “Do you come from a large family?”

“Large,” he said, nodding, “and, like trade, competitive. Are you a friend of the kender?”

A number of humans carrying sickles and scythes came up behind Elder Cammion.

“I’m an acquaintance,” Sorter said, “but I’m working in his best interest. Is he safe here?”

“Oh, yes.” Elder Cammion said. “We act in his best interest because he acts in ours. He has offered us the help of wonderful technology.”

“Technology?” Sorter gasped. A chill traveled up and down him before settling near his heart.

Elder Cammion nodded. “The plans he carried were quite interesting.”

“But they are plans for war machines! Machines for killing! Machines for war!”

“Just so. We are, after all, one of three trading villages. Competition,” the elder said slowly and solemnly, “is fierce.”

Sorter looked about in all directions, but saw no kender. “Will you tell me where he is?”

Elder Cammion looked as he chewed his beard. “Franni the kender is working at our technology a good distance from the village. I thought that was for the best.”

Sorter was relieved. “It seems to me that villages like this are dangerous places for a kender.”

Sorter followed the elder’s directions that led to a cleared field outside the village. He saw that someone was raising a wood frame for a house in the field.

As he drew closer, he saw that he had been mistaken. The frame had three sides, not four, as would he required for a house, or at least so Sorter supposed. Three upright poles connected with what must be roof beams. The beams in turn connected at the apex, above a platform.

Sorter moved closer. Why a platform? Why did the platform have a rocker arm on it, with a huge pole extending, and a mallet head on the pole.

“That’s the Automated Siege Engine with the remarkable Gatling Ballisra Attachment!” exclaimed Sorter.

Sorter walked under it, staring up. Strange noises came from above, but he couldn’t see anyone.

“Franni?” he called.

An iron chain with links as long as his forearms dropped almost on top of him. He dived for the ground as a cast-iron hook came to a stop so close to him that it ruffled the hair on the back of his neck.

An oil-soaked and thoroughly delighted kender slid down the chain, stopping with one foot in the hook.

“Mr. Sorter?”

“Just Sorter.” The gnome crawled out from under the hook. The kender had so much grease, oil, glue, and other substances on him that he was barely recognizable. “Franni?”

“It’s good to see you!” The kender hopped off the chain. “What are you doing here?”

Sorter said with a stern glare, “I’m looking for library books.”

Franni stared innocently back. “Then you should have stayed where you were, Mr. Sorter. There were lots of books there.”

“I’m looking for three books that aren’t there,” Sorter said.

“Three books? Now there’s a coincidence.” Franni pointed to his duffel, which lay alongside one wooden leg of the Walking Sledgehammer. “I happen to have exactly three books. Do you think they’re the ones you’re looking for?”

Sorter rubbed his eyes. “That depends. Where did you get them?”

“Oh, around,” Franni said vaguely. “Nobody was reading them, and that seemed a shame. They’re really interesting. Do you know the best part? The people of the village of Mormar are supplying parts for me to build the machines in the books. I’m nearly done with this one.”

He slapped one of the tripod legs affectionately. An unattached beam slid off from the drive mechanism and slammed into the earth beside him, nearly knocking him senseless.

“Are you all right?” Sorter gasped. “Are you hurt?”

“Not yet,” Franni said, poking unhappily at the beam. “I don’t think it was supposed to do that. Do you know how these things are supposed to work?”

Sorter spoke with absolute faith. “I could build them off the plans.”

“Good! Then you can stay and help me build these machines! I’m having a bit of trouble with this one,” Franni admitted.

Sorter said flatly, “I can’t. I must take the books back to the Repository immediately. It’s my duty.”

Franni looked disappointed. Sorter stood staring up at the machine. His palms itched. Before he quite knew what he was doing, his palms had taken hold of one of the books and opened it to the plans of the Walking Sledgehammer.

“Can you tell what’s wrong?” Franni asked innocently. “The others worked fine, but this one-” He caught himself, shut his mouth tight, and kept his eyes on the gnome.

Sorter looked at mallet hanging over them, its handle as long as a mature tree trunk.

“Franni,” said Sorter uncomfortably, not wanting to hurt the kender’s feelings, “is there any chance that you’ve… er… exaggerated some of the machine’s dimensions?”

Franni stared blankly. “Dimensions? Dimensions…” He glanced at one of the books. “Oh. Right. Those little numbers beside each the sketches.” He shrugged. “I didn’t know what they meant, so I ignored them.”

“You what?” Sorter said. “Franni, you can’t ignore the numbers! Gnome designs are very complicated. They have to be executed to every specification, or they may not work. Even then,” he conceded, “sometimes there are a few problems. But if you change the dimensions, you don’t have any idea what the machine will do when you start it up.”

“But we’ll know now, won’t we, Mr. Sorter? Because you know what the numbers mean, and you can help me fix it. Toss me that thing with the propeller on the end, will you? I think it fits up here.”

Sorter thought of the Great Repository. He thought of Blastmaster, of thirty years of work going up in a moment’s spectacular explosion. Sorter picked up the propeller thing and handed it to the kender.

Construction took a month. During that time, Sorter dodged falling bricks, ducked swinging beams, and fled varying sizes of rolling objects-not always successfully. He was covered in welts, bruises, calluses, and one extremely interesting scar that ran the length of his left arm. He lost a fifth of his body weight, and his skin grew dark and weather-beaten. He was happier than he had ever been in his life.

He peered up at the Automated Siege Engine with the remarkable Catling Ballista Attachment. In just thirty days, he and the kender had raised a tower ten times the gnome’s height and seventeen times the kender’s. They had equipped the tower with three tiers of enormous bows and more than a dozen racks of pitch-dipped fire arrows. In a burst of inspiration, they had added on the Rolling Ram and the Walking Sledgehammer.

Surprisingly, it was the battering ram portion of the Siege Engine that gave them the most trouble. The governor on the engine spun out of control three times, leaving Franni and Sorter to dance frantically around trying to shut the engine down by throwing rocks at it or poking at it cautiously with sticks. Then, once that was fixed, the wheel blocks slid mysteriously out from under the undercarriage, sending the entire structure rolling downhill while they chased it. Franni enjoyed that part a lot more than Sorter did.

Now the ram stood shining in the starlight, the mallet’s steel plated head gleaming.

“Tomorrow’s the big day,” said Franni.

“It is,” Sorter said, trying to imagine it. “The whole village of Mormar is turning out to watch.”

“Think the test will go well?”

Sorter fell back on the old gnome maxim. “I can’t think of a single reason why it shouldn’t work.”

Franni said solemnly, “Then you’ll take your books and go back to the library.”

“Of course,” Sorter said slowly. “That’s my duty. I’ll miss the children, though.”

Every few days, Lila and some of the other children would run out from the town with loaves of fresh-baked bread and food. She and the children stayed as long as they dared, asking questions about the machines and climbing over them with a reckless courage that even Franni admired. Then they would run back, late for work. After the children left, Franni was always very sad-an odd thing for a kender, or so Sorter had read.

Franni rolled over on his pallet. “It’s all right that you want to go back. It was really fun at the Repository, just not as interesting as what we’ve been doing. To me, anyway,” he finished tactfully.

“To you,” Sorter echoed. “Well, our work has been interesting. To tell you the truth, I’ve enjoyed myself.”

“I’m glad,” Franni said. “I’d hate to think that I’d completely wasted your time.”

“Not a bit.” Sorter looked around with awe at the machinery the two of them had assembled. “I’ll remember this all my life.”

Franni was delighted. “You really think so?”

“I swear it. Listen, we’d better get some sleep.”

“For the big day, and for your journey home.”

“For the big day,” Sorter agreed.

Franni rolled over and fell asleep. Sorter stared into the stars, saying nothing more out loud.

The day dawned clear and warm, with next to no breeze. Sorter scanned the sky and saw no clouds at all. They couldn’t have asked for a better day.

The test was going to be conducted on a city wall and a warehouse that the people of the village of Mormar had built in the field near the machine. Flags flew atop the warehouse and battlements- the flags of Dormar and Gormar. The people of Mormar told the gnome that the flags had been placed there for a joke.

The festivities began the moment the sun rose. A band consisting of a flaternette, a floozie, a rebec, a cit-terne, a serpent, a tabor, a tambour, and three large brass instruments that sounded like extremely unhappy livestock marched into the field. The people of the village of Mormar gathered near the band but not too near. Elder Cammion stood with his people, wincing occasionally at the music.

There was a rustle of motion in the grass and Lila appeared, carrying a bouquet of wildflowers in her hands. She was scrubbed clean of work-dirt and wore a linen dress. Sorter barely recognized her. She handed him the flowers.

“Good luck!” she said.

Sorter put the flowers in an open-ended canister used for injecting grease onto axles, making a mental note as he did so: Automated Siege Machine with the remarkable Catling Ballista and Flower Vase.

“Thank you, Lila.”

“This is fun,” Lila said. “Today I don’t have to haul boxes or check inventory.” She ran back across the field.

Sorter noticed that Franni was once again sad about something.

Sorter put his hand on the kender’s shoulder. Hoping to cheer him up, he said, “We’d better start the pre-test checklist.”

They climbed up and down each part of the machines, inspecting bolt tightness, wheel lubrication, gear mesh, and worm-gear travel distance.

When they dropped to the ground, Franni asked, “Is that everything?”

“You have a grease smudge on your nose,” Sorter told him.

“Yes,” Franni said impatiently, “but is that everything?”

“Are you nervous?” Sorter asked. “I didn’t think kender were ever nervous.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Franni said, and he clearly didn’t. “I’m just excited by all these people watching.”

“Me, too.” Sorter confessed, and added shyly, “It’s the best day of my life.” To cover his embarrassment, he said quickly, “Isn’t that Elder Cammion in the center of the townspeople?”

Franni squinted and shrugged. “I never could tell them all apart. You don’t suppose he’s going to make a speech, do you?” Now he sounded nervous.

“Why don’t you engage the Siege Engine?” Sorter suggested hastily.

Franni clambered up the lashed timbers of the Siege Engine. On the topmost platform, fastened in place with a panoply of rivets, grommets, staples and tabs, was a huge blood-red button. The plans called for manual controls.

Franni looked at the breathless crowd. He waved his hand at Sorter, who stood off to one side and prepared to take notes. The kender raised his fist and punched the button.

There came a strong smell of hot metal. A motor whined. Seconds later, the siege engine, its bows bending and its arrows loading, rolled and rumbled toward the test fortifications. According to the plan, the engine would stop in front of the walls, fire its arrows and strew about a few flowers.

Franni leaped clear of the platform, landed on the rolling ram, and pulled back on the stick that freed the flywheel.

Now Sorter was nervous. The siege engine was supposed to be rolling to a stop about now. Instead it was picking up speed, rumbling toward the fortress. Something was very wrong.

Sorter ran alongside. “Did you override the safety cutouts?” he hollered.

“Who needs ‘em?” Franni shouted back happily, and spun a crank. The air filled with a high-pitched whine, and the rolling ram rolled on.

“Yaaaah!” Franni screeched, as he leaped to the dangling starter pull of the mallet.

The sledgehammer engine turned over with a roar. As the great tripod legs strode forward, the mighty hammer swung down with a threatening whoosh. The crowd sighed expectantly.

At that point, the starter-pull tried to rewind, swinging the kender to one side. He dropped down to land on one foot of the walking sledgehammer tripod. Off balance, he steadied himself using his hoopak, which, unfortunately, happened to jam in between the toes of the tripod foot.

The tripod turned on the stuck foot. The mallet, slicing down, knocked the rolling ram sideways. The rolling ram hit a corner of the siege engine, which spun around one hundred and eighty degrees.

The Automated Siege Engine with the remarkable Catling Ballista and Flower Vase shifted away from the fake village of Gormar and Dormar and rolled, walked, and crawled inexorably toward the real village of Mormar.

The assembled villagers stared, stunned, at the technology that was headed straight for them. They scattered for the high ground, leaving behind a few musical instruments and the elder’s notes for a speech. The children, shouting gleefully, cheered the machine.

Suddenly Sorter saw that one of the children, Lila, had fallen down. The siege engine was headed straight for her.

“No!” Sorter cried, and dashed toward her as fast as he could.

A shadow fell on Lila. She looked up, frozen, at the mallet head swinging forward, prepared to crush her against the city wall.

Sorter threw himself on top of her. His last thought was, “It’s been fun-”

“Hop on!” cried a voice.

Sorter looked up, saw that Franni had managed to regain control of the machine. It jumped over both of them, as the whizzing mallet head smashed a chunk out of the city wall.

Sorter and Lila jumped onto the machine. Sorter shouted over the sound of falling stone, “So you’ve got the manual controls working again?”

“Yes. Sort of. Well, no,” Franni answered, hunched over the ropes. “I can’t untie them.” He tugged at a loop and a tiller spun to the left. The ram swung toward the city wall. “I think we all better hop back off now.”

The three of them hopped. The ram smashed into the wall and kept going. The walking sledgehammer, with monumental unconcern, stepped over the wall and began hammering public buildings. The siege engine rolled through the new gap in the wall, firing flaming arrows into thatch and wood, but it was clear that the machine was winding down. The great warehouse stood unharmed.

Sorter breathed a sigh of relief.

Franni chewed his lip. “You know, I thought that all of this would go better.”

“We need to put out the fires,” said Sorter. “Before they reach the warehouse.” He pointed to the dam above the city. “If we can send some of that water down here-”

“What a wonderful idea!” Franni cried, and leaped to his feet. “Come with me.”

He scampered toward the rolling ram. Sorter and Lila followed.

The ram hit a cobblestone and spun toward them. Franni used his hoopak to vault onto the ram. He leaned down, hand extended, and hauled Sorter and the excited Lila onboard the ram. Franni pulled at the half-tied rope on the manual controls, and the rolling ram changed direction, careened madly uphill.

“We’re here!” shouted Franni, adding gleefully, “I can’t stop it!”

Sorter grabbed Franni with one hand and Lila with the other and jumped for their lives.

The rolling ram plowed straight into the center of the earthen dam. A few drops of water leaked through the dirt. The drops became a trickle. The trickle became a stream, then two streams.

Sorter grabbed Lila’s hand and Franni’s hand and said briefly and succinctly, “Run. For the high ground.”

“And miss this?” cried Franni.

Before Sorter could stop him, the kender was gone, dashing downhill and keeping three steps ahead of the mud.

Sorter and Lila sprinted uphill. Franni and the malfunctioning siege engine thundered down.

Turning around, Sorter was astonished to see how quickly the dirt had mixed with the mud, forming a slurry that bore down on the village like the blade of a shovel. The streets backed up with water, as if a sewer had overflowed. Sorter tried to keep sight of Franni. Water rose to the kender’s knees, then his waist, then Franni vanished altogether, as did the warehouse.

The villagers stood on top of the hill and watched, dumbfounded.

The mudslide ceased. The water level stablized. Furniture and crates filled with trade goods floated past.

“What a mess,” said Lila, awed.

Sorter paid no attention. “Franni?” He cupped his hands and bellowed. “Franni!”

“Over here!” Franni shouted, climbing on the tottering remains of the siege engine that was still staggering about the village, thumping and malleting whatever was still standing.

At that moment, the siege engine, its joints popping bolts right and left, collapsed with a groan and a crash directly on top of the kender.

“No!” Sorter cried and ran forward, heedless of the water that was knee deep. “Please, no.”

Arriving at the twisted wreck of the tower, he heaved at broken beams and joists.

“Franni!” he cried desperately.

A hoopak rose to meet him.

Sorter grabbed it. His hand was muddy and the hoopak slid out of his grasp. The hoopak was braced against a cog and a beam, working as a lever and fulcrum.

This was technology. Sorter understood it. He seized a disconnected drive rod and braced against the beam, pushing to dislodge it. Lila came running up to join him, helping him lift with all the strength given to her by years of toting trade.

The beam shifted. Franni popped out, muddy but unharmed, and tugged his hoopak free. He glanced around at the wrecked machinery.

“Isn’t this great?” he said happily. “We did it.” He gestured at the ruined walls and warehouses.

Lila looked back at the town and said again with frank disapproval, “It’s a mess.”

“It sure is,” Franni said, and added with a grin, “but I’ll bet you don’t have to work for weeks. Months maybe.” He looked around at the destruction, thoroughly satisfied. “Fire and water. This is even better than the other two.”

“Other two what?” Sorter asked, a horrible suspicion forming in his mind. “You don’t mean-”

Franni shrugged and looked Sorter in the eye. “Children should have time to play.”

“What’s ‘play?’ “ Lila asked.

“You’ll get the hang of it,” said Franni, patting her shoulder.

She smiled suddenly and radiantly, then ran off to where a group of her friends were splashing around in the muddy puddles.

Franni looked at the ruined town, then at the villagers who had been on the hill but who weren’t anymore. Indeed, they were coming toward the gnome and the kender, and they didn’t appear particularly pleased.

“I think our work here is done,” said Franni. “I know that the grateful populace will probably want to give some sort of reward, but we didn’t do this for the money, did we?”

“No, we didn’t,” said Sorter.

“So I think we should leave,” Franni hinted. The villagers were getting up speed. “Now.”

It is an unfortunate fact, however, that the legs of gnomes and the legs of kender are shorter than the legs of humans.

Elder Cammion caught both of them before they’d taken much more than twenty steps.

Cammion stood in front of the wreckage and chewed his beard. “I see your machinery works.”

“Indeed it does,” said Sorter. He looked at the faces of the crowd and would have chewed his own beard if he’d had one. “I grieve for the destruction of your town.”

Elder Cammion waved a hand dismissively. “The knowledge you brought us is cheap at any price. In fact, we owe you money.”

“You do?” Sorter was astounded.

The elder poured steel coins into a bag and added more, coin by coin. “Plus, we are prepared to augment this payment with a construction grant.”

“A grant?” Sorter repeated, stunned. “But we haven’t filed the proper paperwork with the Committee on GrantsLoansHereTodayGoneTomorrow-”

“You were the only applicant we considered,” said Elder Cammion hastily. “Your construction talents are unique. We want you to continue to exercise them. Besides,” he added, “there are still the villages of Bomar, Comar, and Formar, guided by the Elders Nammion, Pammion, Tammion…” He passed the kender the bag of coins. “We owe it to my brothers- to our brothers in trade to share your technical expertise.”

“You want me to do for these villages what I’ve done for yours?” Franni asked.

“Indubitably,” said the elder. “We are on a trade route. Competition-”

“Is fierce,” Sorter agreed. “Yes, I’ve heard.”

Elder Cammion raised his palm in warning. “This grant has two conditions. One is that you visit only villages other than ours.”

Franni nodded.

The Elder pointed at Sorter. “The other is that you take the gnome with you.”

Franni glanced unhappily at Sorter and shrugged. “Well, that’s that, then. He has to go back to his library. Overdue books. Thanks anyway.” The kender muttered to himself, “All those kids…”

Sorter looked at the kender, then at the ruined town, then at the wrecked machinery on the plain.

He turned to Elder Cammion and handed him the books. “The next time you leave on your trading, will you take these to Mount Nevermind? Mention that Sorter will not be coming back.”

The gnome took a few of Franni’s coins and dropped them into the man’s hand. On impulse, he added two more. “Thank Stacker for his kindness, and tell him I will send a design or two his way.”

Sorter turned to Franni. “Time to go. Have we forgotten anything?”

“But how are we going to build anything?” Franni wailed. “You sent away our plans!”

Sorter took a sketch out of his pack. “Bear in mind that this is a preliminary.”

Franni looked reverently at the sketch. “That’s wonderful, Mr. Sorter. All those sharp blades going every which way.”

Sorter nodded, pleased. “I call it the Solamnic Army Knife.”

“I’d make it ten times bigger,” Franni suggested.

“And add wheels. And a motor.”

“Perfect,” Sorter said fervently.

“Then we’ll add a rotary saw with sharp teeth on a swinging arm at the front.”

“Great.” Sorter unrolled a blank piece of parchment and began sketching. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

A few moments later, walking southward, they surely were.