though, was arranged in perfect concentric circles around the great obelisk that shielded the killers of their Iron King.
Cupelix withdrew to his lofty sanctum. Not long after he did, Sturm returned to the Cloudmaster, where the gnomes were up to their elbows in repair work.
When he descended to the engine room, he found to his shock that Flash, Birdcall, and Stutts had torn apart the entire engine, searching for defects. The deck was covered with cogs and gears, copper rods that Wingover called
'armatures,' and hundreds of other examples of gnomish technology. Sturm was afraid to enter, for fear of stepping on and crushing some delicate, vital component.
'Uh, how goes it?' he ventured.
'Oh, not to worry, not to worry!' Stutts said blithely.
'All is in good order.' He snatched a metal curlicue from
Cutwood and snapped at Flash, 'Stay away from the Indis pensable Inductor Coil! It mustn't be magnetized!' Lunitari had finally bestowed its 'gift' upon Flash; he was intensely magnetic. Bits of iron and steel had begun to cling to him.
Flash meekly stepped away from the Indispensable Inductor
Coil. 'We're trying to find what parts were damaged by the lightning strike,' Stutts went on, 'so they can be fixed, too.'
'Keep at it,' Sturm said, trying not to smile. He knew the gnomes would find an answer of sorts — eventually.
He found Kitiara in the wheelhouse, sitting in Stutts's chair. She had one leg cocked over the arm of the chair and was drinking from a tall clay tankard. 'Dragon ale?' asked
Sturm.
'Umm. Want some? No, of course you don't.' She drank some more. 'All the more for me then.'
'The gnomes are hard at it,' he said. '%le could be on our way home in a day or two.'
'Can't be too soon for me,' she replied.
'Oh? Do you have plans?'
Kitiara cradled the tankard in her lap. 'Do you really want to know?'
'I feel a bit useless with the gnomes working, and the
Micones working, and us not doing anything.'
She let her head fall back as she slouched lower in the small chair. 'I was thinking how I would like to raise an army of my own and not be a mercenary any longer. My own troops, loyal to me.'
'And what would you do with your own army?'
'Make myself a kingdom. Seize an existing one in a weak ened state, or carve one out of a larger country.' Kitiara looked Sturm in the eye. 'What do you think of that?'
He sensed she was baiting him. He merely replied, 'Do you think you're up to commanding an entire army?'
She made a fist. 'I'm almost an army on my own. With my new strength and my old experience, yes, I'm up to it.
Would you like a commission in my guard? You're pretty decent with a sword. If I could break you of your foolish notions of honor, you'd be even better.'
'No, thank you, Kit,' he spoke seriously. 'I have a duty to my heritage. I know that one day in my lifetime, the Knights of Solamnia will recover from their disgrace. I shall be there when they do.' He turned away to the wide windows. 'And
I have other obligations. There's still my father to find. He's alive, I've seen that. He has left a legacy for me at our castle, and I intend to claim it.' His voice trailed off.
'Is that your final word?' she asked. Sturm nodded. 'I don't understand you. Don't you ever think of yourself?'
'Of course I do. Entirely too much, sometimes.'
Kitiara let the tankard dangle from her fingers. 'Name an occasion. It can't have been since I've known you.'
Sturm opened his mouth to speak, but before he could a shadow fell across the bow of the Cloudmaster. Kitiara jumped up. It was the shadow of the dragon.
Will you come out a moment, my friends? he thought at them. Kitiara and Sturm went down the ramp and descended to the obelisk floor.
'What is it?' asked Kitiara.
'I have set the Micones to building a rampart that will impede the tree-folk from entering the obelisk,' Cupelix said. He preened himself with a foreclaw, as if proud of his ingenuity.
'I thought you said they didn't dare come in,' Sturm said sharply. Cupelix stopped in midpreen.
'That was true of ordinary times, but you, dear fellow, have incited the Lunitarians to overcome their fear of me.
Their presence here is proof of that. It does not take deep wisdom to deduce they may soon decide to go where they have never been.'
'We can't have that,' said Kitiara, folding her arms bellig erently.
'No indeed. So I thought you might like to inspect my defenses, as it is your lives they will defend.'
Sturm roused the gnomes from their current work, sal vaging scraps of wood from the Cloudmaster to burn in the forge fire. Everyone trooped to the open door to see what
Cupelix had set the Micones doing.
The giant ants were lined up in echelon, parallel to the door of the obelisk. At some invisible, inaudible signal, the
Micones lowered their triangular heads to the ground. They pushed the red soil forward in a long heap, and repeated this process many times. Thus they created a trench around the obelisk. The dirt they piled into a high rampart.
'Satisfactory?' asked the dragon from his perch.
Kitiara shrugged and sauntered back to the ship. The gnomes followed in twos and threes as they grew bored with watching the mighty Micones shift the red earth. Soon only
Sturm was left. He watched until all the gaps in the rampart were filled. The loose dirt spilled down from the top of the wall, burying the nearest tree-men until only their jagged tops protruded from the crimson soil.
Chapter 22
The forge fine's making shgowed the party yet another of Cupelix's powers. With scavenged stones, they erected a crude hearth. Kitiara, stripped to her shirt and with her pants legs rolled up, stood by, sweating, as the last of the stones was put in place.
'Now,' she said, 'who's got the flint?'
Stutts put his hand out to Wingover. Wingover stared at the open palm. 'Come, come, give me the flint,' Stutts said.
'I haven't got the flint,' his colleague replied.
'I gave it to you when you went off on your march.'
'No, you didn't. Maybe you gave it to one of the others.'
A quick poll of the remaining gnomes failed to turn up any flint.
'This is ridiculous! Who made the fires while we were on our own?' asked Kitiara.
Fitter raised a hand timidly. 'Bellcrank,' he said.
Stutts clapped a hand to his head. 'He had the flint!'
'I think so,' said Wingover, looking at his dusty, worn out shoes.
