Steel and Stone (14 page)

Speaker’s expression told the half-elf that the gnome thought his visitor had the intelligence of a gully dwarf. “This”—he pointed to the flower-shaped horn—“collects sunlight, focuses it through my special illuminatory derivation device”—he pointed to the small box at the base of the horn—“and picks up the auditory emanations of ordinary speech”—he indicated a series of small gears ribboned with copper wire—“and translates the auditory ululations into illuminatory permutational vectors”—he showed Tanis a spool wrapped with more wire and a paper covered with figures—“which can be perceived and retranslated back into auditory emanations suitable for comprehension by the ordinary ear!” He stood back and folded his arms across his small chest. It was apparent that he expected an outburst of applause.

“You don’t say,” Tanis said. He cast about for something else to say. “Why?”

The gnome’s violet eyes bugged. “Why? Why!” A pinkish streak was forming across his cheeks and nose. Tanis hoped it wasn’t a sign that the gnome was having an apoplectic seizure.

Speaker Sungear inclined his head. The blush faded from his face. “How do you find out about events
now?” he asked in an almost fatherly tone, as if explaining dewdrops to a child.

Tanis thought. “From friends. At alehouses. Overhearing things on the road.”

“And in larger towns?”

Tanis felt his brow furrow. “Larger alehouses?” he guessed.

Speaker rolled his eyes. “Town criers!” he crowed triumphantly.

“Oh. Town criers.”

“Think about it—some human standing on a street corner, yelling the day’s events to passersby. It’s not efficient!” That seemed to be the worst condemnation the gnome could devise. “Think of the improvements in communication if we could get machines to do it!” Speaker Sungear was enthralled with his notion.

“Machines?”

“Specifically my machine here. It will translate sound into sunlight and back into sound. We could send messages with this apparatus, learn about events in far-off corners of Ansalon almost as they happened!” Speaker, tears in his eyes, caressed the contraption with one hand, then cocked his head. “In fact, as a test, I will use this very machine to transmit some important news to all the inhabitants of Haven.” Speaker’s mustache drooped. “Of course there are a few wrinkles to smooth out.”

“I should say.” Tanis decided the creature was harmless, and certainly entertaining. He pulled up a wooden barrel and seated himself. “Tell me more.”

“Well, the technological aspect I was working on when … when …” Speaker floundered.

“… when the bugger exploded?” Tanis supplied helpfully.

Speaker cast him a dirty look. “… when I experienced
a momentary scientific setback was the illuminatory collection function.” He explained how fully half the machine’s workings were devoted to collecting the rays of the sun and concentrating them in the tiny box at the tip of the horn. “But I need to create an egress to the outdoors through which the illuminatory emanations will be transmortified. I’ve tried yards of tubing”—coils of which looped up to a hole in the roof—“but the light evaporates before it ever drains into the device.”

“Why not move the contraption outside?” Tanis suggested. “There’s plenty of sun out there.”

“Unscientific,” the gnome said. “Anyway, the device will rust if it gets rained on.”

Tanis pointed across the room to the eastern wall. The rising sun made coronas around cracks in the wooden shutter that blocked the window opening. “Why not just open the shutters?”

Speaker looked from him to the window. He murmured and stroked his bearded chin. “It just might work,” he agreed. “I’ll need an automated illuminatory facilitation coordinator, using wire and a trip switch and …” He set to work, turning his back on the half-elf.

Tanis watched the busy gnome for a short time, then walked across the stable and threw open the shutters. He folded back the two halves and fastened them in place. “There.”

Speaker jumped. “How did you do that?” he shouted. When Tanis showed him, the gnome’s face crinkled in revulsion. “Crude. What if no one’s around to open the window?”

Tanis was saved from replying, however, by the gnome’s burst of activity. The small creature bustled from switch to gear to lever, adjusting the sunbeam
collection horn into alignment with the window and traipsing from machine to window and back innumerable times.

“What’s in the little box?” Tanis pointed to the tiny box at the tip of the horn. The gnome had fondled it with particular awe.

“My beam-conducting concentration device.”

“Which is?”

“A wondrous piece of rock. See!”

The gnome flipped down a little door in the side of the box. Violet light poured into the shadowy stable. Tanis felt his eyes grow wide. “Where did you get that?”

The gnome looked away. “I acquired it—and-elevenothersImightadd—fromaQualinestielfwhohad-retrievedthemfromakenderwhoborrowedthemfroma-hilldwarfwhoboughtthemfromahumanwhowon-themfromagamblingsailorwhogottheminsomefrozen-southernportthenameofwhichlneverlearned-althoughnowIwishIhad.”

“In other words, you stole them,” Tanis observed. Gnomes were not above outright theft—acceptable in the name of technology and science, of course.

“This could revolutionize …” The gnome stopped at the frown on the half-elf’s face. “Ah, what would a half-elf know of science? Elves know only magic, magic, magic.” He turned his back and resumed work on his machine. After a while, Tanis realized he’d been dismissed, and he moved toward the open double doors. But he turned back when he heard the gnome crow, “And now the test!”

Speaker Sungear threw the main switch just as the sun rose above the low building to the east. Its beams poured into the window, over the floor, and into the huge metal horn.

“By the gods,” Tanis said in awe. Unbelievably, the contraption began to percolate. It spluttered and creaked and groaned, and Tanis remembered Flint reciting a proverb about gnomes:
Everything gnomish makes five times the noise it needs to
. The air around the horn began to glow. Speaker Sungear leaned forward and hummed a gnomish folk tune into a mesh of wire. Sparks of purple and magenta erupted around the box that held the violet stone. Then the machine gave a hum—the same notes the gnome had hummed. Speaker froze, wordless, before the apparatus; tears streamed down his cheeks. “It works! By the great god Reorx, father of gnomes and dwarves, it works!”

The machine continued to hum—the same tune, over and over, faster and faster. Metal rasped against metal. The violet glow around the stone’s box became an angry, plum-colored haze.

Tanis took a step toward the gnome. “Speaker …” The gnome didn’t seem to hear him. More sparks spat from the base of the horn. The creaking turned to shuddering, which in turn became convulsions. Bits of metal were being shaken off the contraption. Light and smoke spewed from widening gaps between parts. Tanis leaped to close the shutters. Darkness closed around them, but the machine continued to heave and shudder. “Shut it off!” he shouted to the gnome.

“I …” Speaker faltered. “… can’t.”

Tanis grabbed the gnome around his thick middle and catapulted toward the open door. Speaker struggled, protesting all the way. “Half-elf, I’ve got to see what hap—”

Tanis dove into the street just as the contraption, and then the building, shattered into a thousand flaming
pieces. Bits of wood and metal rained upon fleeing onlookers. Tanis flung Speaker Sungear under a wagon and dove after him. They caught their breath as dozens of people, in various stages of undress, dashed from surrounding buildings to form a bucket brigade between the conflagration and the town well. A quick check by the half-elf revealed nothing but minor bumps and bruises on either of them.

“It must have been the tangential hydroencephalator, now that I think about it,” Speaker said. “Inadequate water filtration to prevent ancillary overheating.”

Tanis had nothing to say.

“I’ve no time to build another device today. Or money, for that matter.” For the first time, the gnome seemed deflated. Then he brightened. “Of course, there might be pieces of the device left. Oh!” He dimmed again. “The beam-conducting concentration device!”

“What?” Tanis had about had it with gnomes. “The what?”

“The purple stone. It’s destroyed. I saw it explode as you hauled me away.” His face crinkled with thought. “This will take some engineering.” He seemed delighted at the prospect.

“Didn’t you say you’d ‘acquired’ eleven others?” Tanis asked.

“Yes, but I sold them to buy wire. Nearly a year ago. To a mage. Before I knew what technological promise they held.” The gnome mused, “Perhaps I could buy them back … but I have no money.”

“You could always
steal
them back,” Tanis said spitefully, and he began to back out from under the wagon. Speaker Sungear looked reproachfully at him, and the half-elf relented. “Why don’t you just
tell
people your important news? Wouldn’t that be just as efficient under the circumstances?” he added tactfully.

“Yes, but …”

“So stand on the street corner and holler.”

The gnome looked aghast. “Do it
myself?
”

Tanis nodded.

“Me, a town crier,” Speaker muttered. “If my mother could see me. So unscientific. So inefficient.”

“So necessary.”

With another reproachful glance, Speaker Sungear crawled out from under the wagon. Ignoring the throngs of people who’d gathered to watch the fire burn itself out and without so much as a glance back at the smoldering heap of wreckage that used to be his laboratory, the gnome started toward the busiest corner of the market. Tanis trailed behind. Speaker took up a stance. “Hear ye, hear ye!” the gnome bellowed. No one listened.

Tanis sidled up to Speaker. “You need a platform of some kind,” he advised.

The gnome looked about. “I could build one,” he conceded. “An automatic gnome-lifting trans—”

In reply, the half-elf scooped up the gnome and set him on one wide shoulder. “Now, town crier, spread your news.”

“Oh, this is so … manual,” Speaker murmured, clutching the half-elf’s auburn hair to keep his balance. Then he waved the other hand and bellowed “Hear ye, hear ye!” again. This time several people turned to listen. “I have news …”

He recited his litany of news—only three items, it turned out, but one drew Tanis’s attention. “The heads of the Haven agricultural consortium, meeting in an emergency session, have offered a reward of fifteen steel to the person or persons who kill the ettin
that’s been slaying farm stock south of Haven,” Speaker trumpeted.

“What’s an ettin?” a man shouted from the back of the throng.

“An ettin is a creature, twelve or thirteen feet tall, with two heads, usually native to cold, mountainous climates. It is related to the trolls, and in fact is sometimes called a two-headed troll.”

The crowd murmured. The man in question shook his head and moved away, followed by several others. Speaker continued, “The ettin eats only meat. In fact, this one has slaughtered and devoured fully a half-dozen cows, several dogs, numerous chickens, and a dozen sheep. Last night it came upon and attacked a shepherd south of Haven. The man assayed to stop the beast from raiding his flock and paid with his life.”

The remaining listeners blanched and hurried away. Speaker said a few more words, then halted. His audience was gone. “Was it my delivery?” he asked the half-elf.

“No, my friend. It was the ettin,” Tanis said good-naturedly.

Tanis bid the confused gnome good-bye and minutes later was taking the steps of the Seven Centaurs two at a time. He didn’t see Wode sit up suddenly on a bench across the street.

“How would you feel about hunting down a monster for pay?” Tanis said without preamble as he entered his and Kitiara’s room.

The swordswoman was dressed but pale. The empty tankard of tea, with crumbs of toast next to it, stood on a tray on the chair by the door. “Pregnancy tea, my foot, half-elf,” Kitiara said with a growl. Then she caught what he’d said. “Kill a monster? For how much?”

“Fifteen steel.”

She whistled.

“Ever hear of an ettin?” he asked.

Kitiara stood stock-still. “A two-headed troll?” Two lines appeared between her eyes; she seemed to look deep within. “No, it’s impossible,” she murmured to herself. Aloud, ignoring Tanis’s quizzical look, she said, “My last employer had an ettin slave. I know something about them. They’re dangerous but stupid and, like most stupid things, very, very loyal.”

“Feel like trying to slay one?”

Kitiara didn’t react with the immediate enthusiasm Tanis had expected, but the half-elf put that down to her probable hangover. “We’d take care of your debt to Mackid, send him on his way, and have five steel left over,” he said.

Kitiara gazed at him. “Why are you doing this, Tanis?” she asked softly. “You don’t owe Caven Mackid anything. An ettin is a dangerous beast.”

Tanis began folding his few belongings into his pack. He didn’t speak for a few moments, and when he finally did, his face was averted. “You saved my life back there with the will-o’-the-wisp,” he said.

Kitiara’s expression was a study in suspicion.

“We worked well together then,” the half-elf continued at last. “We could do so again.”

He said no more. After standing for some time in apparent indecision, Kitiara shook her head and also began to pack. “It’s your skin, half-elf. At any rate,” she said quietly, seemingly to herself, “I’d rather take on the ettin here than in Solace. I don’t want to draw the creature near home.”

Tanis looked up from his pack, surprise on his face. “Why would we draw it toward Solace? What are you thinking of, Kit?”

But Kitiara would say no more. Moments later they were astride Dauntless and Obsidian, heading for the trail that led south out of Haven.

*   *   *   *   *

“What is it?” Tanis asked an hour later. He heard nothing but rustling foliage.

“Someone is following us.” Kitiara bit her lip and moved her hand to her sword.

In response, Tanis clicked his tongue at Dauntless; the big gelding, used to the ways of the road, was already heading for cover along the path. Kitiara and Obsidian melted into the vegetation at the other side.