a tarpaulin covering something the size of a crouching man.
'Why isn't this one in a room?' Mara asked.
Standback shuddered. 'In a room, with this? That would be far too dangerous.' He pointed to the long horizontal gashes in the tunnel walls, and parallel marks on the floor, chiseled into the rock. Some of them were bright and new.
Mara perked up. 'Is it really so dangerous as all that?'
'Absolutely,' the gnome replied. 'You can parry a sword. You can beat back a spear.' Standback paused for effect, not an easy thing for a gnome. 'But there is no way for your adversary to fight off the astonishing Floating Deathaxe.'
He pulled a cloth off the axe.
In spite of her disappointment, Mara felt like laughing at the sight of a pendulum-shaped axe, swinging from a framework of three strange oar-shaped wooden fans. The fans were attached to a gear arrangement of spools of thongs and elastics.
'Good design,' she said finally. 'If it's deadly, it hides its function well.'
'You think so?' Standback peered at it. 'It looks like any other weapon's design to me.'
'How does it work? No offense, but it looks as though it is designed to mix bread in some demented kitchen. What do these little oars do?'
The gnome reached a stubby finger out and spun them fondly. 'They're called propellers. When they're in balance, they propel it.'
Mara stared confusedly at the propellers, which weren't attached to any wheels or rollers. 'How?'
'In a straight line, if it's properly adjusted.'
'No, I mean, how can they move it?'
'It flies.'
Now Mara did laugh. 'And what makes it fly?' She saw a pull-cord hanging from one of the spindles. 'This?'
'Yes, but only after it's properly adjusted. If you — '
'Oh, leave it alone,' Mara said tiredly.
Standback looked crushed.
'I'm sorry.' Mara sighed. 'I didn't mean that. It's just — I was going to bring back such wonderful things, and save my people and make Kalend notice me — ' She choked back her tears. Queens of Thieves don't cry.
Standback patted her sympathetically and they walked together in silence, two people with little in common but the fact that life was not going well for either of them.
They returned to the skylight where Mara had first entered. She stood in the smoke and steam-filtered daylight of the square hole above them and slumped against the rock wall, looking at the hall of useless inventions.
From somewhere far overhead came a muffled boom. The entire tunnel shook, dropping dust and cobwebs. A huge bell carillon somewhere far above them clanged frantically, followed by some kind of trumpet, several clappers, a siren, and numerous whistles.
Invisible creatures shook themselves free of the ceiling and flapped to and fro in panic. Mara clapped her hands over her ears. Standback shouted in delight, 'It works!'
'What?' Mara could read his lips, though that was hard because of the gnome's beard.
'The perimeter alarm. I set it up around the top of the mountain.' Standback was actually dancing. 'It notifies bystanders — '
'I'll say.'
' — locates the point of entry, and even seals off rooms and levels.' He pointed to the stone trap door sliding slowly over the skylight to the crater floor.
Then he looked concerned. 'They'll need me up there to shut it off. They're probably completely deaf right now.'
'Whaaat?'
'Nothing.' Standback dashed over to the Gnomeflinger, leapt on the payload pad several times and (amazingly enough) sailed easily through the half-shut skylight. 'Illbebacktheleverletsyouout — '
The trap door slid shut and fell in place with a thud. The bells, whistles, clappers and sirens above grew muffled.
Mara stared upward, her mouth hanging open. A gnome device had actually worked as it was supposed to. But now how was she going to get out?
She examined the lever on the wall and tried to trace its relationship to the trap door. She could see a slack rope that disappeared into a hole in the tunnel ceiling, and she noted a rod leading from the lever up to a cantilever, but she couldn't understand how it would work.
The alarm noises stopped abruptly. Standback or someone else had found a way to shut them off or, more likely, had accidentally silenced them. Mara had seen enough of the gnomes to hope that there were no casualties.
Her ears adjusted to the sudden near-silence; she heard the soft hum (and drip) of ventilation devices somewhere, and the restless motion of invisible flying pests, and something else: a rustling, back in the side tunnels.
Feet moving — a scraping sound, not quite boots and not quite barefoot. The clink of metal on metal. It sounded definitely ungnomelike. At that point, it occurred to Mara that something had set off Standback's alarms. A real thief… Mara hid in a niche in the wall.
A shadowy figure came into view, wearing a helmet with a dragon crest.
'These must be the weapons the knights spoke of. Quick!' he hissed, 'While the gnome is gone. Take what looks useful and leave.'
It was a draconian! Two draconians! 'What about the girl we followed here?' The other draconian asked.
Mara's heart sank. She heard again in her mind Kalend saying,
The captain shrugged. 'She's served her purpose. If you see her, kill her, and don't waste time.'
Mara pressed against the tunnel wall, hidden by the shadows of cable and hanging hardware.
Four other draconians marched out of the narrow side tunnel into the hall. They were all carrying huge, cruel weapons. Their wings filled the tunnel. They had clawed hands and horrid sharp fangs. One of them started right for her. Mara the Brave couldn't help herself. She whimpered.
The draconians heard her. One lashed forward with a spear. Panicked, Mara dropped flat. The spear nearly parted her hair. Another draconian hissed and slashed sideways with his sword. She leapt up, dodged the sword, backing farther away. A mace raked her shoulder.
She began running, heading for escape out the skylight. I should stop them! she thought frantically, but a cold voice in her mind said, 'Face it. You're not a warrior, not even a thief. You're only a very stupid little girl.'
She bounced from wall to wall randomly to dodge more thrown weapons, stumbling over a pile of canisters. She paused. The top one had a label; in the middle of the polysyllables, Mara recognized the common word for PEST. She picked the canister up and tucked it under her arm. If it was the new batch of pesticide, she could dump it over herself and it would make her invisible. She began opening it, then stopped.
If it was the old batch, it might kill her.
But then, she could throw it back at the approaching draconians and kill them. She tugged at the top again.
Or she might make them invisible. She had a brief vision of herself surrounded by invisible draconians. She tossed the canister aside and kept running.
The draconians were close behind her when she reached the skylight. She leapt for the opening lever, pulling it down with her full weight. It groaned as it moved… and lowered a cantilevered weight, which tugged a guy rope, which spun a flywheel, which rotated an axis, which turned a worm gear, which wound up the pull rope…
Which broke. The whole system coasted to a stop, the end of the rope flapping uselessly.
'It would be nice,' Mara muttered between clenched teeth, 'if just once, a gnome invention worked reliably.'
